The Yankees can't repeat their June...right?

07/03/2024 02:30 PM

Revisiting some assumptions I made when dismissing the Yankees slump.

Murphy's Law holds that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. As soon as I wrote my piece imploring everyone to take a deep breath, Giancarlo Stanton went on the IL with a hamstring strain, the rotation completely bypassed normal regression and became the worst rotation in the majors for the month of June, and everyone in the lineup not named Soto or Judge was either mired in a slump or had just joined the team. The Yankees got subsequently embarrassed by the Braves and Mets before splitting with last-place Toronto this past weekend. Honestly, it seems incredible that they are only a game behind the Orioles in the AL East.

Ever have that feeling of having the perfect comeback or addition to a conversation hours too late? The French call it l'espirit de l'escalier—literally "staircase wit," as in a guy who thinks of the perfect retort at the bottom of the staircase. Luckily for me, all of my thoughts about the Yankees are preserved online forever now that I write for Pinstripe Alley, and now that we're at the bottom of the staircase that was June 2024, I'd like to revisit the conversation and analyze the underlying assumptions I made when I said the Yankees would bust out of their slump sooner rather than later.

First, I argued the lineup was solid because it had six players with a OPS+ above 100. One of those players, Stanton, strained his hamstring either running to second on a double or scoring from second later in the inning. Maybe mistake number one was assuming Giancarlo would stay healthy enough to rely upon for the duration of this rough stretch. Certainly, though, it was a mistake assuming Alex Verdugo, Anthony Volpe, Gleyber Torres, and DJ LeMahieu wouldn't all have coordinated deep slumps. Since the June 22 game against Atlanta, DJ (4-for-23, .530 OPS), Verdugo (5-for-32, .447 OPS) and Volpe (6-for-37, .400 OPS) have all kept struggling in line with their abysmal June production.

I singled out these hitters because their performance in June was so far below what we've seen from them in their careers. Verdugo has consistently been slightly above a league-average hitter; DJ is certainly not a 45 OPS+ hitter. Volpe has shown improvement from his rookie year, even if he may not be quite suited to be the leadoff hitter. I figured that for the lineup to be good again, those guys just needed to play somewhat near their career averages.

That clearly did not happen. Still, there's hope. After being benched in the Mets series and getting dressed down by Marcus Stroman in the Blue Jays series, Gleyber has looked more like the 118 OPS+ player he was last year. Since June 22, he's batting .280/.296/.480 with a .776 OPS. He's swinging more freely and focusing on making contact, as this single off of Chris Bassitt shows.

This bloop single was reminiscent of 2023 Gleyber—not looking to get off his "A-swing", but just simply looking to put the ball in play. While I'm not ready to declare Torres all the way back, I can see at least one of Verdugo, LeMahieu, and Volpe becoming at least league average hitters again.

The reason league average performance would suffice is because Aaron Judge was in the midst of the best 50-game stretch of any batter in MLB history. Hitting .409/.524/.864 for a 1.378 OPS in June, Judge turned his already incredible performance this year up a notch. He did it behind Soto, who logged a .500 OBP for the month. We all witnessed Shohei Ohtani's and Mike Trout's historic numbers in the same lineup amount to nothing more than a Twitter meme, so maybe I was foolish in assuming Soto and Judge alone could power the lineup enough to see the team through any slump. This isn't to say the rest of the order doesn't need to pick it up—the "Bronx Bombers" have the second-weakest DH spot in MLB, and reinforcements have come in the form of unheralded prospect Ben Rice and J.D. Davis.

Judge and Soto are different gravy though. What we witnessed for the month of June was if you put Ted Williams in front of Barry Bonds. If I risked being wrong in thinking that a guy getting on base literally half the time in front of the guy slugging .800 can sustain a lineup for a couple of weeks, so be it.

Finally, while I didn't discuss the rotation in my original article, I gave the pitchers the benefit of the doubt in regards to what at the time was two or three bad starts each. Instead, it felt as if every game was starting 3-0. Carlos Rodón followed up his bad starts against the Red Sox and Braves with an even worse one against Toronto. Luis Gil fell victim to regression and looked horrendous against the Mets. Gerrit Cole hit a snag on the road back to dominance with his four-inning, six-run performance in Flushing. Collectively, the rotation compiled a 5.37 ERA in June, ahead of only Miami, Oakland, and Colorado for the worst in baseball. This was after they led the majors with a 2.02 ERA in May without Cole.

Given how bad the team has looked this past stretch, every start has been dissected and discussed passionately (to put it mildly) both here on Pinstripe Alleyand elsewhere. The ragtag bullpen continuing their ragtag season certainly has not helped, either. However, the rotation outside of Rodón has looked a bit better. Cole, for instance, looked more like himself, battling through 5 innings and throwing some nasty pitches, while his fastball was touched a more familiar 97 mph.

While the rest of the team was reeling, Nestor Cortes continued his quietly impressive season with a six-inning shutout of the Orioles and a seven-inning, three run affair against the Braves before turning in another mediocre road start. Marcus Stroman continues to outperform his metrics. So while I'm not quite sure reaching May levels of dominance will happen again for this rotation, I really don't think (or hope) the Yankees will be starting what seemed like every game in a 3-0 hole.

As soon as George Costanza dropped his jerk store comeback, he got hit with an even better retort. I realize that I may be sleepwalking into the same mistake I made when I wrote that first article, even after I've thought about it a bit more at the bottom of the staircase. This team has glaring, gaping holes that need to be addressed—they sorely need bullpen help and an infield bat. I'm not confident that the team is as good as they were in May, but I am willing to bet they are not as bad as they were in June.