2024 Yankees: Your New Opinion

(3.5 minute read time.)

Let’s start from the beginning:

The 2024 MLB season for the New York Yankees and New York Yankees fans was a great season.

Back in March, Baseball America, MLB.com, The Ringer, and ESPN all had the Yankees finishing somewhere between 4^th and 6^th in the American League. (Spoiler alert: The Yanks were clearly the best team in the AL in ’24.)

Juan Soto – who was already on an inner circle Hall of Fame track – put up his best season, Aaron Judge posted the best season ever by a right-handed hitter, they didn’t have the league’s best pitcher for most of the year, and yet another cast of no-name relievers produced better than average bullpen performance (take a bow, Aaron Boone).

In the postseason they went 8-6, which is a 93-win pace over 162 games, almost exactly their regular season result. They scored 4.78 runs per game and allowed 4.07 runs per game in the playoffs, both of which were better than MLB average in ’24.

Yet…

“If you lose the last game of the season, nobody gives a shit.” – some dude in some baseball movie.

So, why’d they lose the World Series?

1. Randomness. Sometimes shit just happens.
2. The guys on the other bench make a lot of money too.

To be clear, I’m not making excuses. On a team level during the series, the Yankees’ baserunning was awful and the defense was worse – but they allowed 25 runs and scored 24 – it’s not as if they were outclassed or blown off the diamond.

I think comparing teams from different seasons in this regard isn’t exactly apples to apples, but many fans feel this – losing in the postseason – is largely due to a recurring fundamental flaw or two, but I’m not sure that’s the case. (If you don’t believe me, multiple teams that were far inferior to the ’24 Yankees have won the World Series this century – again, shit happens.)

Since 2018, the Yankees have scored 4.64 runs per game in the postseason – that’s the highest across MLB (minimum 30 games) and have allowed only 4.13 runs per game over that stretch. That’s pretty damn good playoff performance.

Again:

1. Shit just happens all the time and sometimes it doesn’t go your way.
2. The guys on the other bench are damn good too.

All that said, there are clearly warts that have been ignored by the front office, and need to be addressed.

I’ve been writing it for a few years, so I’m not going to completely rehash, but for a long time now when Gerrit Cole’s numbers are removed from the equation, the Yankees pitching is not good – hasn’t been for a long time. Brian Cashman had every opportunity to acquire Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell in the winter and did neither. He also passed on improving the rotation in July, when it was clear to anyone with access to FanGraphs they were getting by on smoke and mirrors.

The garbage baserunning in the postseason was absolutely not a case of “shit happens” – it was awful all season – 30^th in baserunning runs above average across MLB in 2024 to be exact. Which, when you consider that Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisolm Jr. were both much better than average base runners in 2024, the depth of the rest of the roster’s baserunning incompetence is hard to fathom.

(Side note: The Yankees defense on a team level was better than average this season – much better than the Dodgers’ in fact. The embarrassments in Game 5 were a great example of shit just happening.)

With so many roster decisions up in the air, particularly with regards to free agency, there’s no way to predict what the team’s roster is going to look like on Opening Day in 2025, but acquiring a plus starting pitcher and a baserunning coach should be the non-Soto priorities.

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments, or yell at me on the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.

Recommended reading: “Opening Day” by Jonathan Eig.

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