The New York Yankees have the best player in the sport on their team, and he's in his prime. Aaron Judge isn't just a better hitter than everybody else in the league right now, he's the best hitter we've seen in quite some time. The pace he's on this season is more comparable to Barry Bonds' historic stretch from 2001 to 2004 during the steroid era than it is to any offensive season this decade. And the Yankees still might waste one of his prime years because of some front office malpractice.
The Yankees lost Juan Soto in free agency and rebuilt their team as best as possible. They replaced Soto in the outfield with Cody Bellinger. They replaced Anthony Rizzo at first base with Paul Goldschmidt. New York also added a few key players in other spots, but they didn't add anybody to replace Gleyber Torres, who left for a deal with the Detroit Tigers.
The failure to replace Torres is coming back to haunt the Yankees in a huge way.
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Yankees' failure to add infielders this offseason is coming back to haunt them
While the Yankees had a hole at third base that they have been filling with a few different players, the hole has gotten even wider now. Jazz Chisholm Jr., the Yankees' starting second baseman, has gone down with an oblique injury and is expected to miss at least a month. This leaves the Yankees shorthanded at third base and at second base with Anthony Volpe and his inconsistent bat being the team's everyday shortstop.
All in all, this leaves the Yankees with Volpe, prospect Jorbit Vivas, and Oswaldo Cabrera as the regular infielders aside from Goldschmidt at first base.
In the middle of Judge's prime, while he's having a historic offensive season, the Yankees are trotting out quite an underwhelming lineup and it all stems from their lack of urgency to add infielders.
Meanwhile, Torres has recorded a .291 batting average, a .361 on-base percentage, a .465 slugging percentage, four home runs, 13 runs, 15 RBI, and 25 hits in 86 at-bats (22 games). That, and Torres struck out just nine times while walking eight times.
Replacing Torres should have been the least the Yankees could do, but they didn't even do that. Now, they'll need to pony up some serious prospect capital to acquire one or else they run the risk of falling behind the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays in the loaded American League East.