Alexander Wilson
Five straight losses and the New York Yankees are suddenly 8-7, tied with Baltimore and Tampa at the top of the division after getting swept by the Rays. The pitching has held up. The offense has been the problem, and after watching it from the heart of the lineup all week, Aaron Judge spoke up about what needs to change.
“We need to simplify some things at the plate,” Judge said. “We’re trying to hit every single pitch we see up there and getting ourselves in some bad counts and bad situations. As a group, if we simplify our approach a little bit, hunt the pitch that we’re looking for and pass the baton, I think we’ll be in a better spot.”
He’s not wrong. The Yankees have been swinging too aggressively, missing on hittable pitches, and falling behind in counts way too early. You can see it at-bat after at-bat, pitches just off the plate getting chased, two-strike situations appearing in the first pitch of sequences that should have never gotten there. When half the lineup is doing that simultaneously, nothing builds and the offense stalls out completely.
The Unlucky Side of the Equation
Not everything that has gone wrong is about approach, though, and it’s worth separating the two problems. Trent Grisham’s situation is a perfect example of a player doing almost everything right and getting absolutely nothing for it. His hard-hit rate ranks in the 99th percentile. His expected batting average is .238. His chase rate is in the 99th percentile and his walk rate is literally in the 100th percentile. On paper, he should be one of the best offensive players on the Yankees right now. Instead he’s hitting .133 because the baseball keeps finding gloves.
That is not an approach problem. That is a variance problem, and it resolves itself. The approach fix Judge is talking about will help guys like him, Judge, Bellinger, and Stanton who have been getting themselves into bad spots unnecessarily despite the talent to hit out of them.
The Bottom Half Is a Different Story
The problem is that the approach adjustment does not fix three infielders who have been dragging this lineup into the abyss for weeks. Ryan McMahon is hitting .114. Jose Caballero is a career backup who has been playing like one. Jazz Chisholm is in the most important contract year of his life and hitting .179 with no power to speak of.
None of those three situations get solved by hunting better pitches. McMahon’s contact rate is in the 3rd percentile in baseball and he’s been that way since arriving from Colorado. Caballero is what he’s always been, a glue guy and a speedster who was never going to carry a lineup spot. Chisholm is going to need to turn his season around on his own because nobody can do it for him, especially with the money he’s chasing this offseason.
The Yankees cannot afford to keep losing games against teams like the Marlins, Athletics, and Rays while they wait for the bottom half of the order to wake up. At some point, the roster construction side of this starts mattering more than the mental side.
Judge’s message was the right one to deliver publicly. Tighten up the approach, be more selective, stop giving pitchers easy outs. That fixes part of this. The rest of it requires players producing at a level they haven’t been close to yet.
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