If I Were Running the Yankees

Matty Alou was once a Yankee too. 

I watched all of the Yankee games in the Playoffs, after not watching them much at all during the regular season.  I confess that I was bummed out by their mid-season swoon, but I became optimistic after that.  The last series with Toronto was hard for me to stomach and much of what I say here stems from that.

But first, some general comments.  We need more microscopic statistics, for pitching and hitting those need to be on a pitch-by-pitch basis.  With that, pitch quality needs to be assessed.  In particular, if the pitch has intended spin, did it do what it was supposed to do or did if flatten out and hang in the zone?  Speed and location also matter.  Given how much attention has been given to Aaron Judge's game-tying home run in the third game of the series, where the pitch was definitely inside, we need a better idea of what pitches outside the zone are hittable and whether swinging at them is better than taking them (or not).    We also need to know how pitch quality correlates with pitch count and the number of times the batter has faced the pitcher.  

For the Toronto series, in particular, I'd like to know how Gil, Fried, and Rodón performed on pitch quality, whether Toronto batters just made good swings on good pitches or if there were too many bunnies thrown. If it was bad pitching, worse than during the regular season, then the obvious cause is the added pressure of the playoffs, especially when you're playing for the Yankees.  On this, I haven't any brilliant thoughts other than that it's better to have experienced it beforehand, and make whatever inner adjustments one must make to get through it better the next time.  Luke Weaver may be a different story.  The New Yorker had a recent piece with the subject - Roger Angell writing about Steve Blass in the mid 1970s.  Weaver might be another instance of the Steve Blass phenomenon.  I don't know.  I'd like to see him try to work through it.  He was pretty awesome a year ago.  

Now, getting to the offense, I think the Yankees underutilized an asset - speed.  Grisham, Bellinger, and Chisholm all are very fast runners.  They are also all left-handed hitters.  But none of them have a particularly high on base percentage.  They swing for the downs much of the time.  What about, instead, trying to bunt for a base hit? I think this should be a regular feature of the Yankees offense with these players and they should put in the time during the offseason developing that skill. Indeed, Judge might bunt for a hit once in a while, to show leadership and encourage his teammates this way.  

There is also making a contact swing and trying to go the other way.  Bellinger does choke up on the bat, but then his swing has quite an arc to it.  Can he and the others learn to make a flatter swing and be comfortable at the plate doing so?  This goes as well for Volpe, who is right-handed.  He is also a fast runner and he has this same issue of swinging for the downs much of the time.  I conjecture that the added pressure of the playoffs makes that sort of swing more likely.  So possessing a flat and shorter swing would be a way to combat the pressure.  That seems to be what the Blue Jays did.

There are two Yankee hitters whom I wouldn't try to change, as far as their approach at the plate.  One is Stanton, whose swing is idiosyncratic, plus he's getting up there in years.  The other is Wells, who is a dead pull hitter but did okay in the Playoffs.  As the primary catcher, he's got his hands full with other things. So I'd leave his hitting alone.

The first base position and how that will be handled is something I'm still puzzling about.  Ben Rice looked like an awesome hitter against Boston.  But Toronto seemed to expose his weakness against the splitter.  Weaknesses do get amplified under pressure.  And then, his defense is okay but not great.  Goldschmidt is more reliable defensively and more predictable as a hitter.  I don't like the idea of platooning them, but maybe that's what the team needs to do.

I haven't mentioned third base yet.  It seems the Yankees have options there.  Oswaldo Cabrera was on the IL and didn't appear in the playoffs.  I liked watching him play and hope that the Yankees keep him in their plans.  If so, some of the others who appeared at third during the Playoffs won't be there next year.

Getting back to statistics, there should be won-loss percentages against each team played, home and away.  There may be a sense that Yankees were good because they won a lot at the end of the season.  But they played mediocre teams then.   There may also be a sense that sometimes a team goes on a hot streak while at other times it is in a slump.  A win or a loss should factor in how the other team is doing this way.   The overall idea is to get a sense of how good the team is beyond the win-loss record.  

The last thing I'll say here is about camaraderie among the players, coaches, and manager.  We fans don't get to observe this.  But in one brief interview with Aaron Boone, he seemed to say that Ryan McMahon has high marks in this dimension.  If the players themselves got to choose who would make the team and who would be in the starting lineup, would they be influenced by this camaraderie factor?  And, if so, would they be frank with each other about team weaknesses as well as team strengths?  I would hope so.  It's my belief that this team, largely with the same personnel, can be better if they shore up their weaknesses.  Raising the OBP of the players not named Judge would be a good indicator that they've done so.  Having improved pitching against high-quality opponents would be another such indicator.