Playoff Fastballs And The Yankees

By Andy Singer

October 3rd, 2024

Many of us have written about our expectations for the Yankees' performance in the playoffs in recent days. Just yesterday, our own Cary Greene noted the prevalence of World Series winning teams with high performing pitching staffs. Cary's research points to an old adage with which I'm generally partial: pitching wins championships. That seems basic enough, right? We've been told this time and time again throughout our lives, and most of us have come to believe that adage.

Cary chose to sort teams with a shot at winning the World Series by looking at the performance of a team's pitching staff during the regular season, finding that the average World Series winning team produces an ERA+ of roughly 113 during the regular season. Looking at the ERA+ rankings this season, the top-5 teams on the list (all of whom produced an ERA+ of 113 or higher) made the playoffs in some capacity. The top team, the Braves, were knocked out of the playoffs last night. Do you want to know what team came up just shy of the top-5? The New York Yankees, with a 110 ERA+, good for 6th in baseball.

Anecdotally, pitching has not cost the Yankees in the playoffs during their championship window that opened in 2017, save for individual hiccups, like Aroldis Chapman's blown game to lose in the 2019 ALCS, a season in which he was named the best reliever in baseball, I might add. Yankee pitching has been good enough to win a championship for some time now, and this season is no different. The team is right where they need to be on the pitching side of the equation.

Where I have had significant concerns over the years is with the offense. Often times, the Yankees' offense since 2019 has fallen short in the playoffs. Even when the team had a good offense throughout the year, as has been the case most years other than 2021 and 2023, the offense struggled in the playoffs. Numerous theories have been posited regarding the reason for this trend.

A couple of years ago (sadly, I believe the initial article was lost when we changed hosting services), I noted the historical trend of fastball velocity rising significantly in the playoffs. I also noted a strong correlation between players that performed well against 94+ MPH fastballs during the regular season and their playoff performance. In fact, I noted these facts in initially discussing the Harrison Bader for Jordan Montgomery trade. Whatever your thoughts are about that trade, I was right about one key component: Harrison Bader hit like crazy in the playoffs that year, as I predicted, and part of the reason was his performance against hard fastballs.

This off-season, I again noted that the Yankees were acquiring hitters that could hit hard fastballs, with Juan Soto, Trent Grisham, and Alex Verdugo all producing good statistics against hard fastballs throughout their careers prior to landing with the Yankees. With the ALDS just a couple of days away, I thought it would be good to look at the Yankees' performance against 94+ MPH fastballs in 2024 to get an indication of how the team might perform this playoff season:

This...isn't as good a sign as I had hoped. Aaron Judge and Juan Soto really carry the Yankees against hard fastballs. As a quick note, I realized I forgot Giancarlo Stanton in the list above, but he really doesn't move the needle much, with a .314 wOBA that slots him in the middle of the pack on the roster. Interestingly, I would argue that Ben Rice or Oswaldo Cabrera are better options for the Yankees at 1B, just on their ability to perform against high octane fastballs as compared to Anthony Rizzo. Trent Grisham, continuing the trend from earlier in his career, is the 3rd best Yankee against hard fastballs, and he might not even make the ALDS roster.

The statistics shown above really give me pause about my World Series prediction for the Yankees. I fear that the team, aside from Judge and Soto, will mysteriously catch a chill offensively this postseason given their futility against good fastballs that will be plentiful in the playoffs this year. For all of the front office's work to rebuild the offense, the team's performance against good fastballs remains an Achilles heel.