By Bo Shek
In the last few years, after years of frivolous spending on big-name free agents, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman has taken a different approach in doing things – constructing a team with a core elite young right-handed bats. Thus far, they’ve been knocked out of the playoffs three consecutive seasons.
This begs the question of whether they can eventually win with this model?
Prior to the 2014 season, the team signed veterans Carlos Beltran (3/$48M), Brian McCann (5/$85M), and the oft-injured Jacoby Ellsbury (7/$153M) to anchor a team who missed the postseason for the first time since 1994.
Over time, these lefty hitters (Beltran being a switch-hitter), as well as veteran first baseman Mark Teixeira, were destroyed by the ever-growing presence of the shift.
Teixeira noted his reluctance to change his approach and go the other way during the tail-end of his 14-year career.
Now, these new-age Yankees are a bunch of righties with opposite-field pop.
However, an all righty lineup comes with its list of pitfalls. For instance, right-handed hitters generally suffer facing right-handed pitchers.
Not only that, but the Yankees core is built on home runs/strikeouts/walks, or the three-true outcomes, limiting their propensity to put the ball in play.
In short, right-handers have had an easy time against such a lineup that tends to sit fastball.
Listed here are the Yankees strikeout numbers from 2017 to 2019 versus righty pitchers ONLY, according to baseball-savant:
| Player | K-Rate (%) |
| Judge, Aaron | 31.8 |
| Stanton, Giancarlo* | 30.9 |
| Frazier, Clint | 29 |
| Voit, Luke+ | 28.3 |
| Sanchez, Gary | 24.5 |
*Stanton in MIA in 2017
+Voit debuted w/ STL in 2017
During the course of a 162-game season, this power-strikeout-walk model may work to win games, and it has for the Bombers, as evidenced by their 203 wins since the start of the 2018 season.
The execution of this model is simple: get men on base and eventually hit the three-run homer; you know, the old Earl Weaver-model.
In general, are the Yankees even good versus right-handed pitching?
Yankees’ core vs RHP
| Player | OPS | wRC+ |
| Judge, Aaron | .962 | 152 |
| Voit, Luke | .900 | 142 |
| Andujar, Miguel | .834 | 124 |
| Sanchez, Gary | .808 | 113 |
| Stanton, Giancarlo | .799 | 115 |
| Torres, Gleyber | .828 | 118 |
| Frazier, Clint | .762 | 99 |
When you take the Yankees lineup and take out their stats vs lefties, their lineup appears relatively average. Facing the likes of Baltimore’s David Hess and Jimmy Yacabonis, these numbers aren’t too alarming. It is possible a lineup such as this can feast on bad pitching and win 100 games utilizing this model.
Can the Yankees hit breaking balls from righties? Somewhat, but the most concerning aspect of this data is that the team’s two biggest offensive contributors seem to struggle the most
| Player | K% | BB% | BA | SLG |
| Stanton, Giancarlo* | 39 | 6 | .191 | .382 |
| Judge, Aaron | 44 | 15 | .148 | .388 |
| Sanchez, Gary | 32 | 3.6 | .235 | .447 |
| Voit, Luke | 32 | 10 | .248 | .482 |
| Torres, Gleyber | 20 | 4.5 | .283 | .497 |
| Andujar, Miguel* | 20 | 1 | .304 | .491 |
| Frazier, Clint | 36 | 3.4 | .255 | .505 |
*limited to 18 games in 2019 due to injury
It’s clear that some Yankees can’t seem to hit the breaking ball from the righties, though catcher Gary Sanchez bounced back from an embarrassing 2018 were he hit a pathetic .131 batting average and a weak .308 slugging percentage. Strikeouts aren’t the worst thing, but the frequency in which they occur here doesn’t help come playoff time when teams can stack their roster with right-handers who rely on their offspeed to get hitters out.
We saw the 2019 Astros leave Wade Miley off the ALCS roster, carrying 0 left-handed pitchers in their series against New York.
Seeing all these numbers does it make sense that the Yankees had 3 playoffs appearances and didn’t win it all.
How did the Yankees do vs elite righties
2017 ALCS
Verlander and McCullers
27 innings
2 earned runs
4 walks
30 strikeouts
2018 ALDS
Eovaldi and Porcello
12.2 innings
2 earned runs
2 walks
14 strikeouts
Houston’s “Big 3” of aces in Justin Verlander, Gerritt Cole, and Zack Grienke and the Back 3 of Roberto Osuna, Joe Smith, and Wil Harris pitched to a collective 2.70 ERA over 43.1 IP, striking out 45 (some of them really painful for Yankees fans), while walking 14.
With all of this data at our expense, it’s safe to say the Yankees model doesn’t work in the playoffs. An alteration of philosophy when it comes to lineup construction is necessary at this point.
The lineup needs representation from the left side of the plate, particularly the likes of DJ LeMahieu, whose offensive game is permeated on high contact, and low-swing and miss (13.7%).
Trading the likes of Luke Voit and Clint Frazier, both players, despite their offensive potential (Voit: .378 OBP, 124 OPS+), have hurt the team on the defensive side, with Voit and Frazier accounting for -14 DRS (defensive runs saved) in 2019 alone.
Stacking Stanton, Judge, and Sanchez, three hitters with a reputation, as seen above, to swing-and-miss only makes the approach for opposing pitchers that much simpler. Hitting Sanchez lower in the order, say 7th, leaving Judge in the 2 spot and placing Stanton either 4th or 5th gives manager Aaron Boone’s lineup the separation it needs to keep pitchers, rather than the hitters, guessing.
Implementation of a more balanced offensive approach could pay dividends, and should it be executed correctly, along with the additional concerns surrounding the pitching staff, we may see Cashman and co. hoisting up banner number 28 on East 161st St when it’s all said and done.
