When the Yankees were at their best, imposing their will with a powerful, relentless offense, their roster was full of talented lefties.It’s the reputation this legendary franchise has enjoyed for a century, a way to capitalize on the magnitude of Yankee Stadium and win titles along the way.Lately, production from the left side of the plate has been more damaging to the Yankees than anything else. Last season, the club’s overall offense was generally mediocre – with the exception of Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres – but the Yankees’ lefties were particularly lazy. No other team in baseball had a lower left-handed on-base percentage than the Yankees in 2023 (.295).
As MLB.com’s Mike Petriello noted this week in a must-read feature on the Juan Soto trade, that’s the second-lowest left-handed OBP of any Yankees team since 1974, when reliable platoon splits became available. Yankees lefties hit .219 in 2023 with a .763 OPS, 87 wRC+ and 55 home runs, ranking them among the bottom four teams in the league in each of those categories. He imagines what these numbers would look like if they hadn’t been inflated a bit by Jasson Domínguez’s spectacular debut in pinstripes (cut by Tommy John surgery) and Austin Wells’ promising first impression in the final month of the year.The Yankees also had the second-fewest at-bats among lefties in MLB this year (1,473). Filling your lineup with lefties isn’t always a direct correlation to success – the Astros had the fewest left-handed at-bats in the league this year – but when 75% of those at-bats come from Jake Bauers, Oswaldo Cabrera, Willie Calhoun , Billy McKinney, Ben Rortvedt, Franchy Cordero, Estevan Florial and Aaron Hicks (in descending order), it makes perfect sense why the Yankees have had so many problems. General manager Brian Cashman has attempted to correct this critical flaw in the past. The plan to trade Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo and Andrew Benintendi was perfect, but none of those deals worked out the way the Yankees hoped. Gallo was terrible in the pinstripe and Benintendi, on loan, suffered a season-ending injury that no one could have prepared for. Rizzo is an important piece of the puzzle for the Yankees since he re-signed with the club after his previous contract expired, but he had the worst season of his career in 2023, missing the last two months or so of the season due to a position. -concussion syndrome. It’s a question mark for 2024, even though manager Aaron Boone said the first baseman is in very good shape and having a normal offseason during his Winter Meetings speech this week.That brings us to this offseason and the Yankees’ recent public push to turn their left-handed power into something that will bring them closer to the competition, not out of it.
Leave a Reply