Everything the Yankees Need is Right in Front of Them

Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports

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…