The Hitting AND the Pitching Are Worse Than You Think

I’m certainly a flawed human, but for the most part I’ve always avoided being the overly reactionary, talk me down off the ledge type of fan. I’m a “Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light” type of baseball fan if there ever was one.

I’m writing this now as a preface in the off chance that you think I’m overreacting to a single game in which they allowed two touchdowns. This is not a one game issue – this team has serious problems and barring a Hollywood script level turn of events, the season is going to end in an ugly manner and the offseason is what’s going to be long and hard.

Aaron Judge being absent, quite obviously, is not a short-term issue. And without Judge the Yankees have been good at preventing runs (Or have they? More on that in a minute.), but awful at scoring them, resulting in a slightly below average team – 13 wins and 15 losses to be exact since Judge destroyed both a fence and his toe simultaneously on June 3^rd.

I wrote last year that there may never have been a team so reliant on one position player as the 2022 Yankees were and it’s even worse this season.

• The 2023 Yankees with Aaron Judge are 30-19, without him they are 18-21.
• Judge has missed almost half of the team’s games and still has almost double the fWAR of the Yankees next best position player – and that player is a 21-year-old with a 90 OPS+.
• Since Judge destroyed a fence and his toe, the Yankees have averaged 3.82 runs per game – prior to that, they were scoring almost one full run per game more (4.71 to be exact). For perspective, only Oakland has averaged fewer than 3.82 runs per game this season, while 4.71 R/G would land a team in the top 10 in MLB.

(*If you want to tell me there have been great teams that have gone through 13-15 stretches and still won the World Series, I’ll ask you to find me one this reliant on one position player and/or one that couldn’t score runs.)

There are plenty of matters compounding the issue obviously, but two of them are Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu drastically falling short of expectations. Again, if you want to say those are short term issues that will resolve themselves over a long season, I’ll remind you – they are not short-term issues.

Since July 7^th of last season – that’s one year for those of you scoring at home – Kyle Higashioka has been a better hitter than DJ LeMahieu, and IKF has been a better hitter than Giancarlo Stanton. And it’s not because Higgy and IKF have been “good”…

Let’s return to run prevention…

As I’ve noted numerous times this season, the Yankees have gotten 20 starts combined from their numbers two through five starters. But it’s even worse than that – here’s the pitching line from those 20 starts from Nestor Cortes and Luis Severino combined:

102 IP, 75 runs on 116 hits, 38 BB and 21 HR.  

In fact, when we take more than a cursory glance at the “Yankees are good at preventing runs” narrative – they really aren’t, unless Gerrit Cole is pitching.

Overall in 2023, the team has allowed 4.17 runs per game, which is good for eighth best in MLB. But in Cole’s 18 starts* they’ve allowed only 57 runs, or 3.17 RAG. In the other 70 games that Cole didn’t start, they allowed 310 runs, or 4.43 RAG.

(*That’s counting runs the bullpen gave up after Cole left in games he started.)

For some perspective, outside of Cole, the 4.43 runs per game allowed would put them 16^th in MLB in RAG. So, the reality is that the Yankees are “kind of average” at preventing runs when Gerrit Cole doesn’t start.

Bottom line: The Yankees are 13-5 in games Cole starts, exactly .500 in games he doesn’t. The disparity in winning percentage with him and without him is bigger than the disparity with and without Judge.

Unless Gerrit Cole is going to start every game and unless Judge returns quickly, “average at preventing runs and garbage at scoring them” is a very bad combination, that’s not going to have a happy ending.

Did I miss something? Let me know. Leave a comment below and/or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.