Some final thoughts on the 2024 regular season and the upcoming postseason:
Going by record, strength of schedule, and run differential, the Yankees were clearly the best team in the American League in 2024.
The good news? They’re better right now than they were at any point this season.
For a good chunk of the year, the Yankees were Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and keep your fingers crossed. Now, Jazz Chisolm, Austin Wells, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres* are in the lineup every day which wasn’t the case for more than half the season for various reasons. Newsflash: All those dudes can hit.
(*I’ve been saying all year Gleyber wasn’t 100 percent healthy. Yet he posted a 147 wRC+, .388 OBP, and .473 SLG over the last 35 games – all of those numbers are better than Soto’s over that stretch, so I think the real Gleyber is back.)
From the run prevention side, I’ve been saying this for a few years now: The Yankees pitching beyond Gerrit Cole is not good. The staff in 2024 gave up a lot of hard, airborne contact but were the beneficiaries of fortunate BABIP and HR/FB rates that made the results better than the actual pitching was. (The staff was 19th in MLB in xFIP, if you’re curious.)
That said, it helps having Clarke Schmidt back, and in the postseason, Gerrit Cole will make about one third of the starts. This, quite obviously, makes the Yankees postseason pitching better than their regular season pitching.
I have a good feeling about this team – they’re better than they’ve received credit for. That said, it’s the postseason. The Yankees and Dodgers are the best teams, and the most likely outcome is that neither will win the World Series, because of nothing but randomness. Good teams being better than great teams over the course of one week is not rare.
Prediction:
The Yankees will win the ALDS against Kansas City. In the ALCS, if the BABIP and HR/FB rate Gods are nice to the Yankees pitchers, the Yankees will win – if they are not the Yankees will lose. Same goes for the World Series.
It’s been a great year – we’ve seen a very good team performance and an otherworldly individual performance. Celebrate that and have fun with the postseason, try not to look too deeply into the results, good or bad.
Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or on the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.
Speaking of crazy postseasons, check out “The Bronx is Burning” – now those were crazy times in the Bronx.
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