Perspectives: Concerns

by Paul Semendinger

June 21, 2024

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As we look around baseball, we see the following:

• The Yankees have 51 wins. No other team has even 50

• The Yankees have a .662 winning percentage. No other team is better (although the Orioles and Phillies are tied)

• The Yankees are in first place

All of that is good news.

But, as we look at the Yankees, there is a lot to be concerned about.

The following is a list of the concerns I have regarding this team:

• First Base - There are three questions here. First, is Ben Rice a Major League caliber hitter? Second, will the Yankees allow Rice to play every day or will he be platooned with DJ LeMahieu? Third, if he does recover from his broken arm, will the Yankees go back to the "default setting" and put Anthony Rizzo in the lineup even if Ben Rice is doing well?

• Second Base - Gleyber Torres is having an awful season. His defense is not good. His hitting took a million steps backwards. His OPS+ of 82 shows that he is a well-below average MLB hitter. Because there are so many other holes in the lineup, Torres hits higher up than a batter with an 82 OPS+ should.

• Third Base - DJ LeMahieu looks like he is done. Completely. His OPS+ is 43. That is, simply, terrible. The Yankees' only other option at third, Oswaldo Cabrera, has an OPS+ of 75.

• The "Bases" Combined - When the Yankees play LeMahieu at first base, Torres at second base, and Cabrera at third base, they are playing an infield with three below average MLB hitters. These aren't three hitters who are slightly below average, they are way way way way below average. A team cannot win over a long season using that approach.

• Shortstop - Anthony Volpe has been terrific. Yet, while it seems like he's hitting a ton, his OPS+ is only 108. He's slightly above average. He's also the Yankees only real speed threat - and the Yankees rarely run him.

• Left Field - Alex Verdugo has been a fun player. His defense has been amazing. He has had some big hits. BUT, his OPS+ is only 103 making him an only slightly above average MLB hitter. Here's the problem... Verdugo is the team's clean-up hitter. He also is hitting only .211 agaisnt left handed pitchers.

• Judge and Soto - Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have been other wordly. There is nothing negative to say here. At all. Judge's OPS+ is 213. Soto's is 183. They have carried the Yankees to a large degree. That approach is, most likely, and most logically, not sustainable. For comparison, Mickey Mantle, across his entire career, had an OPS+ over 180 only six times. Joe DiMaggio only twice. I give those comparisons not to say that Judge and Soto can't do it, but to illustrate how rare it is for a player to be doing this well. For the Yankees to win,they need two players to be performing that well because the rest of the lineup, in a large degree, is that weak.

• Giancarlo Stanton - Thus far, Stanton has been a complete surprise. He is performing better than anyone could have hoped or imagined. I think some of this is smoke and mirrors. Yes, he has had some big hits, a whole bunch, in fact, but he strikes out 35% of his at bats and that, again, isn't sustainable. With a 119 OPS+, he ranks third on the team.

• The Catchers - Austin Wells isn't hitting (75 OPS+). Jose Trevino cannot throw out base runners. Both of these are huge issues. If the rest of the Yankees' offense was producing, they could carry a weak hitting catcher (Wells), but note above, the rest of the lineup isn't producing well enough to allow for that.
  

• The Starting Rotation - There was a period where the starters were all pitching lights out. No longer. While they were, at one point, pitching like the greatest rotation ever, that hasn't been the case for a while. Gerrit Cole is back, but he seems to be on a very strick pitch count. Luis Gil has already exceeded (by a lot) his combined innings from 2022 and 2023. Clarke Schmidt is injured. Where this was, for a good month, a strength, it is not right now. There are a lot of questions here.

• Bullpen - A disaster. Period.

• Aaron Boone - Boone has proven that he can win lot of games during the regular season. But, he has never proven that he can win big games against great opponents. The Yankees have lost most of their games against the best teams this year. That's just a fact. This continues something that has been true throughout the entire Boone era. There is a very real concern, based not on emotion, but a long track record, that Aaron Boone is not a big game or big series manager.

• Brian Cashman - Read the above. This is the team he created. They're winning right now, but one has to wonder how when they see all of these concerns. Thus far in 2024, it is working, but this does not seem sustainable. Cashman hasn't built a championship winning team in a long time. He builds very good teams. Absolutely. One has to wonder, though, if he can build a champion in today's game.

• Hal Steinbrenner - His last comments were basically that he spends too much money and that it isn't sustainable. Maybe that was posturing. Maybe. But those words don't fill me with hope that he'll spend more to address the many weaknesses this team has.

• The Medical Staff - Anthony Rizzo missed a ton of time in 2023. Jose Trevino too. And DJ LeMahieu. None of them has performed at the levels they need to in 2024. Did they get old? Or, maybe their injuries from last year are still impacting this year. In addition,on the farm, Jasson Dominguez is now out for "eight weeks." It's an oblique thing. Yes, players get hurt all the time, but, remember, he said his arm hurt last year but they played him anyway. Then he had Tommy John surgery. Now, as he's coming back from that, he suffers a different injury. Was this because he was ramping up too quickly? I don't know, but one has to wonder if that plays a role. What can't be denied is the overall record in this department is not very stellar. If nothing else, it's a concern.

• 2022 - It wasn't long ago that with the same organizational structure, we saw the Yankees play amazingly well to begin a season and then fall apart...

In short, that list above, shows a ton for Yankees fans to be concerned about.

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