Reality Check (s)

I do my best to be a realist.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m as giddy as any Yankee fan this morning after watching the Yanks sweep the Astros in the manner they did. Four wins would have been great, but three in come from behind fashion and one in the ninth? With major contributions from the Juan Soto and Oswaldo Cabrera far ends of the spectrum?

That’s a next level boost for the optimism heading into the rest of the season.

Yet I’m asking all Yankee fans to have some self-awareness. As much as most of us bemoaned the manner in which the Gods of randomness and luck beat up on the Yankees last season, many things went the Yankees way this weekend in Space City.

To wit, in 2023, the Yankees hit the ball harder on average than all but two teams in baseball and still had the lowest batting average on balls in play in MLB. I’ll pause while you re-read and consider that absurdity.

So far in 2024, the team’s BABIP is the seventh highest in baseball, despite having the seventh lowest average exit velocity.

For those of you who arrived late or missed much of the weekend’s action, Yankees batters had many – and I mean many – bloops, bleeders, flares, and groundballs with eyes find safety away from Houston fielders. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than for a team to sustain a .351 BABIP with an 87.6 average exit velocity for an extended period.

Additionally, for the folks who believe that John Smoltz and Alex Rodriguez are not buffoons, the batters’ good results (5.25 runs per game) have zero to do with contact, as the team’s batters are whiffing at a higher rate than they did in ’23.

Does this mean we shouldn’t love what’s going on? Of course not!

Luck is a far bigger part of the game than most fans realize. It’ll drive you crazy or make you pump your fist and yell depending upon which way the wind blows.

Yet at the risk of being overly officious, I’ll suggest that when the Yanks go through a stretch (“when”, not “if”) in which they consistently smoke line drives all over the field but have nothing to show for it, don’t react with a “They suck!”, “Fire Boone!”, “Stop swinging for the fences!”, etc.

That’s baseball, Suzyn.

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

Also, if you like piling on the Astros, Evan Drellich’s book “Winning Fixes Everything” about the Astros cheating culture was phenomenal.