I was standing in the Yankees clubhouse on July 5 after their 5-3 loss to the Red Sox when I received an angry text from my friend Andy, a huge Yankees fan. “How many years is it now that they light it up in the first half and because [sic] absolutely terrible in the second?”

I sent him back a few texts, first correcting his typo — Andy writes for a living, but considering that many of his texts are incoherent, this one wasn’t all that bad — and then answering his question about the trajectories of New York’s recent seasons. His response: “They’re just playing such ugly baseball.”

After the performance I’d just watched, which might best be described as the baseball equivalent of the poop emoji, it was hard to argue with his assessment. It was the first time in at least the last 115 years that the Yankees lost to the Red Sox at home when leading by multiple runs with two outs in the ninth inning. They made several baserunning blunders owing either to mental lapses, a lack of hustle, compromised health or some combination of the three. They botched two throws to second base, one from the catcher on a bunt attempt that probably should’ve been caught and another on a pickoff throw that sailed into center field. They allowed two two-run home runs to the bottom of Boston’s order — one in the ninth to tie the game and the other to lead off the 10th — and then failed to push across a run in the 10th with runners on the corners, nobody out, and their third, fourth, and fifth batters due up.

The loss was New York’s 14th in 18 games, and by the time the homestand ended with a 3-0 loss two nights later, the Yankees were 5-15 over a 20-game span. A week later, when they took two of three against the first-place Orioles, it was their first series victory in a month. Now, after a win Friday and two losses over the weekend, the Yankees enter this afternoon’s series finale against the Rays with a 9-20 record since June 15. Those nine wins are tied with the White Sox for the fewest in that span.

And yet, for as awful as the past five and a half weeks have been, the Yankees remain one of the best teams in baseball. At 59-42, they enter this week first in the AL Wild Card standings and just two games behind the Orioles in the division, and their Playoff Odds have fallen to 97.5%, down from 99.9% on June 14, the last night before all the losing began. Their 12.2% odds to win the World Series are the best in the American League; only the Phillies (16.1%) and Dodgers (15.3%) have a higher probability to win it all.

If you’re having a tough time making sense of this contradictory reality — that the Yankees have played terribly for over a month and remain the most likely American League team to win the pennant — you’re not alone. When I started writing this piece, I was skeptical, too. Living in New York surrounded by Yankees fans, it’s easy to understand why people like Andy are so frustrated; it’s difficult not to get caught up in the emotions of the moment, especially when that moment has spanned nearly six weeks. I also groan with cynicism when I hear manager Aaron Boone say, “It’s all right there in front of us,” because all we can see right now is a team standing amid the ruins of a season that was supposed to be different. However, on closer examination, it’s clear that the foundation of this once-promising team is still in tact, and I think the crumbled pieces from the caved in ceiling can be fixed and supported with beams borrowed, bought, or bartered from the neighbors.

To understand how the Yankees can keep the building from collapsing further, we need to figure out what exactly has gone wrong, and to do that, we should also determine what was working well. From there, we’ll look at how they can start putting their season back together and perhaps make it even better.

For the first two and a half months, this season really was different. On June 14, with a resounding 8-1 win against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Yankees became the first team in the majors this year to reach 50 wins, improved to a season-high 28 games over .500, and increased their odds to win the division to 76.6%. They had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball — this without reigning AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole, who hadn’t yet returned from the elbow injury that forced him to miss the first 83 days of the season — and their lineup, while still top heavy, was 20% better than league average. Aaron Judge (205 wRC+ at the time) and Juan Soto (188) were the two best hitters in the majors.

Of course, since then, their season has taken a turn for the worse in ways that feel all too familiar. Their potent lineup has become stagnant. Several key contributors have landed on the injured list, most notably Giancarlo Stanton, who was enjoying a resurgent season before suffering a hamstring strain the third week of June, and more recently Jose Trevino, who despite his reputation as a glove-first catcher was one of the handful of Yankees regulars who’d been above league average at the plate this season (103 wRC+). They are no longer hitting for average and they’re not slugging like they were over the first two and a half months. The only thing to improve since they started losing is their walk rate, but walks will only get you so far if you’re not getting the hits to bring those baserunners home. Oh, about running the bases — the Yankees have been the worst baserunning team in the majors all season, but now that they aren’t hitting for average or power, their ineptitude on the basepaths has turned into a much more glaring problem.

Some of these offensive woes can be attributed to injuries and players going cold at the same time, while some portion of it is probably due to players pressing as the losing persisted. Of course, some of it is just, to borrow one of Boone’s favorite clichés, “the ebbs and flows of the season.” We should expect some rebound here. This isn’t the case of Judge alone propping up an otherwise meek lineup as he did in 2022; remember, the Yankees held their own while their captain looked lost through April. That said, this offense still lacks depth.

Meanwhile, the Yankees pitching staff, which had been the bedrock of their success, has crumbled over the past four weeks. After posting the best ERA in baseball (2.90) over their 72 games through June 14, the Yankees have the second-worst ERA (5.37) during their 29-game slide, and they are the only team whose pitching staff has been below replacement level over that span.

Boone has cited a spike in home runs allowed as one of the main sources of trouble for Yankees pitchers — that the few mistakes his pitchers are making are ending up in the seats, whereas earlier in the year, they were staying in the ballpark, providing the pitchers a chance to escape the inning unscathed. And, for the most part, he is correct. Their opponents’ home run rate has increased 87.5%, from 2.4% through June 14 to 4.5% since then. But Yankees pitchers are also allowing a higher rate of non-HR hits than they did before. Their opponents recorded non-HR hits on 16.2% of their plate appearances through June 14; that rate is 19.0% since then. Meanwhile, using the same cutoff, the percentage of hits the Yankees allowed that were home runs has gone from 13.1% to 19.3%. So, yes, home runs are a big issue here, probably even the main issue, but the Yankees are also giving up more hits in general than they did before.

As the losing has continued, Boone and the players have resorted to the same keeping-the-faith approach that hasn’t worked for them before.

“Regardless of when we’re on winning streaks or when it’s like this, I think we have a really good clubhouse, staying even-keel and showing up every day,” said shortstop Anthony Volpe after that sloppy Friday night game against the Red Sox. “We trust each other, we trust ourselves. We know we’ve got everything in front of us. We play to win, we expect to win — we’re the Yankees.”

“We’re still believing,” Soto said after the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox on July 7. “We’re still grinding every day. We still come in with the same energy. I think that’s really positive on our side.”

“Nobody likes losing,” Judge said after the Yankees lost their July 11 rubber match with the Rays. “Nobody is happy about it. We’ve just got to keep showing up, doing our thing.”

That implies that “showing up, doing our thing” is working, and well, at least right now, it isn’t. To the fans who have been through this with the Yankees before, many of these comments sound like a lack of urgency. Simply being the Yankees won’t save them from more losing, nor will the power of positive thinking.

However, Boone is right in a sense when he says, “It’s all right there in front of us.” Unlike in 2022, when the Yankees had an even better start to the season, this year they went cold before the All-Star break, so there are more games ahead of them to turn things around. More importantly, the trade deadline is still a week away, meaning GM Brian Cashman has had time to assess the flaws of the roster and determine which moves he needs to make to improve it, and he still has more time to work the phones and make something happen. Two years ago, the Yankees were 70-34 and 12 games up in the AL East entering the day of the deadline. Their fall to earth began a few hours after the deadline passed, when they suffered the first of five straight losses that kicked off a 3-14 stretch. They couldn’t swing a trade to pull them out of their rut; they had to make due with the players they had and hope they would snap out of it. By the end of the month, their division lead was cut in half, and it was down to 3.5 games after a loss on September 9. They rebounded from there and won the division, but they were gassed and overmatched by the time they faced and were swept by the Astros in the ALCS.

This time, the Yankees can look externally to address their weaknesses, and considering their willingness to splurge for one season of Soto, we should expect the front office to double down on its intent to win it all this year with a major acquisition or two. We know the Yankees need to add a productive hitter in the infield, especially at third base. All-Star Ryan McMahon, who has another three years and $44 million left on his contract after this year, would make a lot of sense, though it’s unclear if the Rockies would be willing to trade him because of that club control.

Otherwise, the trade market for third basemen has yet to solidify because there are so many teams caught in the mediocre middle. There has been some chatter about Rays All-Star and Ben Clemens’ favorite player Isaac Paredes, but considering he’s only in his first year of arbitration eligibility and therefore is affordable and controllable through the 2027 season, it seems unlikely that Tampa Bay would trade him without getting a haul of prospects in return — especially not to a divisional foe like the Yankees.

But that doesn’t mean the Yankees shouldn’t look to the AL East to improve at third base. The Blue Jays have old friend Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the hot corner. He’s signed through next season at a relatively affordable $7.5 million, and while Yankees fans might balk at trading for someone who was best suited for a utility role during his two seasons in the Bronx, they should remember that depth is crucial down the stretch and into the postseason. Beyond that, though, they should look at IKF’s stats for this season, because if he were in the Yankees lineup today, he’d be their third-most productive hitter by wRC+ (117), behind only Judge (208) and Soto (185). Kiner-Falefa also plays excellent defense and runs the bases well. The one concern here is that Kiner-Falefa is currently on the injured list with a sprained left knee. He has started doing baseball activities and is expected back late this month or in early August.

At this point, it seems unlikely the Yankees would trade Gleyber Torres, because for as much as he’s disappointed this season, there aren’t many available second basemen who’d represent an offensive improvement, especially not ones who’d be worth the cost. If they’re going to add a bat in their infield, it will almost certainly come at third.

New York could also seek to improve its offense with an upgrade in the outfield. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman has reported that the Yankees have discussed Jazz Chisholm Jr. with the Marlins. A lefty batter with power and speed, Chisholm would slide into center field, with Judge moving to left. That would likely move Verdugo to the bench upon Stanton’s return from injury (which MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reported recently is “really close”). Verdugo started the season strong but has been awful (17 wRC+) since June 15. The Yankees’ outfield defense would get worse with Chisholm, a converted middle infielder now in his second season as an everyday center fielder, but he would be an upgrade at the plate and especially on the bases. New York could also mix and match its lineup and work Chisholm in at second base to give Torres a spell against tough righties. Chisholm has two years of arbitration left after this season, and trading for him would also fill the hole at second base that the Yankees are expected to have next season; Torres is a pending free agent, and given his lackluster performance this year, it seems unlikely that the Yankees will re-sign him. Another outfielder the Yankees could (read: should) target is Jesse Winker of the Nationals, who has a 132 wRC+ this season and, as a rental, would likely come cheap.

As is the case with every contender, the Yankees need to add at least one or two relievers. Their bullpen is especially light on high-leverage lefties, so Tanner Scott of the Marlins is the obvious best fit, but the Yankees should also see what it would take to get Andrew Chafin from the Tigers. Or, if the Yankees do decide to trade with the Blue Jays for IKF, maybe they could get Toronto to throw in righty Chad Green and make it a bigger reunion.

The Yankees will be in better shape if any of these players are on their roster come July 31, but those additions on their own are not going to solve all the problems that we’ve seen over the last month. The good news is the Yankees as currently constructed are still a good team, maybe even a great one. As we can see by their place in the standings and Playoff Odds even after such a disastrous stretch, one month of “ugly baseball” doesn’t erase all that came before it.

A more-consistent arm slot related to a move back to the third base side of the rubber has contributed to Cole Ragans’s success this season. The raw stuff was obviously already there. As Ben Clemens wrote back in March, the Kansas City Royals left-hander “looks like an absolute terror on the mound.” My colleague went on to say that if he “were designing a pitcher in a laboratory, he’d look a lot like Ragans.”

When I talked to the 2024 American League All-Star on the eve of the break, he told me that going into full attack mode following last year’s oft-reported velocity jump played a huge role in his emergence as a front-line starter. As he put it, “I kind of had to teach myself that I could get away with a little more of a miss compared to when I was throwing 90-91 [mph]. I have a good arsenal in my opinion, so I can just go after hitters.”

And then there’s the work he does in the laboratory.

“I use TrackMan in my bullpens, especially with the slider and the cutter, to kind of see where I’m at,” said Ragans, whose heater is now mid-to-high 90s. “The biggest thing for me is my release points, making sure that my pitches are in a tight cluster. I want everything coming out of the same tunnel. I don’t want to be throwing a fastball from this release height, and my slider from a lower release height.” Read the rest of this entry »

At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the third full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, four are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, eight are between 1.0 and 2.0, and three are above 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .245/.321/.421 for a 109 wRC+; that last figure is up three points from last year, and seven points from the last time I did this list, via a slash line that’s virtually identical (the majors’ slugging percentage as a whole has dropped 17 points from last season).

This year, we’re seeing a greater number of teams invest more playing time in a single DH. Whereas each of the past two seasons saw three players reach the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five; similarly, 11 player are on pace to reach 400 PA as DHs, compared to eight last year. That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances.

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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. This is a strange week for the column. The All-Star break cut into the number of games available to watch; mathematically speaking, fewer games means fewer chances for weird things to happen. I took a weekend trip and didn’t watch any MLB games on Friday or Saturday. I’m also hard at work on the upcoming trade value series, which comes out between the All-Star game and the deadline every year – check back Monday for that annual exercise’s kickoff. In any case, that means this is a hodgepodge list: some stuff from this week, sure, but also plays and series that got left out last week, and some low-level baseball to boot. Thanks, as always, to ESPN’s Zach Lowe for the format idea. And two quick programming notes: I won’t be doing my regular Monday chat or Five Things next week; instead, I’ll be doing a jumbo-sized chat Friday morning.

1. The New Derby Format
The modern swing-happy Home Run Derby has been a great success, at least as far as I’m concerned. It’s more fun to see sluggers launch as many home runs as they possibly can than it is to see them agonize over every single swing. The format wasn’t perfect, though. I’m not trying to be a grump about it – is it even possible to be a grump about the Home Run Derby? – but there was one downside to the timed-round format: not enough drama.
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The Toronto Blue Jays’ Matt Hague is earning a reputation as one of the best young hitting coaches in the game. Promoted to the big league staff this year after a pair of seasons spent working at Double-A, followed by a year in Triple-A, the 38-year-old former first baseman is one of the team’s two assistant hitting coaches. (Hunter Mense, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in July 2022, is the other, while Guillermo Martinez is the lead hitting coach and Don Mattingly serves as the team’s offensive coordinator.)

Hague’s playing career included several strong seasons in the minors, but only a smattering of opportunities in the majors. The Bellevue, Washington native logged just 91 big league plate appearances, 74 with the Pittsburgh Pirates and 17 with the Blue Jays. And while what he experienced over 11 professional campaigns influences the approach he brings to his current role, what he’s learned since is every bit as important. Like most coaches who excel at their jobs, Hague is not only an effective communicator, he embraces modern training methods.

Hague sat down to talk hitting when the Blue Jays visited Fenway Park in late June.

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David Laurila: You last played professionally in 2018. What do you know now that you didn’t know then?

Matt Hague: “Oh, man. That’s a really good question. I think the how. As a coach you’re kind of forced to unfold things that you thought as a player, but didn’t necessarily go really deep into, or didn’t have the chance to go as deep into. The importance of certain things shift on what you want to emphasize. That’s because you’re looking out for a whole group, even though it’s an individual plan, or an individual mover — a certain trait that an individual person needs to develop and continue to get better at.

“There are a lot of different pathways on how to bring out certain stuff, and the more you evolve as a coach, your perspective shifts. You try to find understandings on the mentality side, the game-planning side, the technical part of it. So yeah, I think it’s that you’re just forced to find out more. You’re forced to have a broader perspective than you had as a player.” Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I’ve batched the two corners together into one supersized roundup because three of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for left field also make the list for right field, and because there’s plenty of crossover in play with regards to personnel. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those three crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the July 30 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye on. All statistics are through July 14.

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Let’s start with a riddle: Team A and Team B have both played 98 games this season. Due to the vagaries of extra innings and unplayed bottoms of ninths, Team A’s pitchers have thrown four more innings than Team B’s pitchers. However, Team B’s pitchers have faced 259 more batters than Team A. How is this possible?

OK, yeah, so this was actually a pretty easy riddle. The answer is that Team B’s pitchers stink, while Team A’s pitchers are very good. Team A gets a higher percentage of batters out, which means that it faces fewer batters per inning. Let’s put some names and numbers to our hypothetical, shall we? Allow me to introduce you to the Mariners and the White Sox.

The Mariners have better pitchers and a better defense behind them. Consequently, the White Sox have allowed a whopping 130 more runs. But take a look at the last row of that table. The White Sox have thrown the most pitches in baseball, while the Mariners have thrown the second fewest. Having good pitching and good defense has allowed them to throw 1,477 fewer pitches than the South Siders. The average team throws 146 pitches per game, so we’re talking about 10 entire games’ worth of pitches. Ten games! That is a huge number, and these teams still have 64 games left to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Strahm making the All-Star team as a setup man with no saves is a bit of an anomaly. Especially because he didn’t take the Aaron Crow route — his team had its proverbial bases covered.

The Phillies are no. 1 in baseball in pitcher WAR. They’re no. 1 by a huge margin in starter WAR, and no. 2 (a tenth of a win behind a team that has both Emmanuel Clase and 16% more bullpen innings) in reliever WAR. So it’s no surprise that Philadelphia sent five pitchers to Texas among its NL record-tying eight All-Star representatives.

The fact that Strahm is third in his own bullpen in ERA, behind Jeff Hoffman and Orion Kerkering, is mostly a testament to how good that unit has been overall. Strahm is second among relievers in FIP and tied for third in WAR. It’s not bad for a player who was an afterthought when the Phillies acquired him on the free agent market in December 2022, the same week Trea Turner and Taijuan Walker joined the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength up the middle is important to any contender, but with so many teams still in the hunt for a playoff spot, it’s no surprise some of them are have some weak spots. Sometimes it’s easier for a team to convince itself that the metrics aren’t fully capturing the strength of a light-hitting player’s defense if they’re playing a premium position, which seems to be the case with the shortstops and some of the center fielders in this year’s batch of Killers. On the flip side, occasionally it’s easier to justify shaky defense if there’s at least a hope of getting adequate offense. Then there are the times that guys get hurt and somebody has to stand out there in the middle pasture looking like they know what’s going on.

While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

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One of my enduring memories of watching the All-Star game as a child — a child who became a baseball fan in a time before high-speed internet, social media, or even interleague play — was learning about all the players I’d been unable to see throughout the regular season. That included the American League and West Coast stars, but also a parade of forgettable pitchers, and yes, it always seemed to be pitchers, from crappy teams.

For some reason, Royals right-hander José Rosado is the guy who sticks out in my mind. Rookie of the Year vote-getter in his age-21 season, All-Star at 22 and 24, done in the majors at 25. If he hadn’t shown up in pregame intros between Justin Thompson and Jeff Cirillo that one time, I might never have been aware of him. Read the rest of this entry »