NEW YORK — On the afternoon before Opening Day, Anthony Rizzo could see the future.
“There’s going to be ups and downs throughout the year — it’s inevitable,” said Rizzo, the Yankees first baseman. “We’re going to be really good at times, and we’re going to be ‘What the hell is wrong with the Yankees?’ at times. That comes with putting on this jersey.”
As far as prophecies go, this was not the hardest to conjure. The Yankees (10-6) play baseball inside a cauldron of expectations, in which a five-year postseason streak can be considered a failure and a $246 million payroll can be called a pauper’s receipt. Any game, even in April, can double as a referendum on the managerial acumen of Aaron Boone, the team-building tendencies of Brian Cashman, the perceived stinginess of Hal Steinbrenner. The crucible is daily. The next opposing franchise that pities their plight will be the first.
And so it was that the Yankees lived out Rizzo’s vision over the past week, a period in which the club won five games, lost once and still quieted few concerns about their offensive approach. When things go well, as they did during a sweep this weekend against Cleveland, the group looks resourceful and robust. When the offense sputters, as it did during a sloppy, inefficient but ultimately successful series in Detroit, the lineup looks creaky and one-dimensional.
This is the fate of all offenses when bats go quiet. It gets magnified in New York. And it becomes more pronounced when the lineup, as the Yankees do in the eyes of some rival evaluators, has a uniform goal. “The approach is just to try and hit home runs all the time,” one scout said. Added another, “Even guys who are more complete hitters aren’t trying to be that. It’s just ‘Get the ball up in the air, lift and drive.’”
This caricature is not new. It has endured, in recent years, despite the incorporation of contact-oriented hitters like Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu. It is unlikely to depart, even after the success against the Guardians. A two-homer evening from Aaron Judge keyed the offense on Friday. The group staged a walk-off comeback victory in the ninth inning on Saturday, with two-out hits supplied by Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Gleyber Torres. On Sunday, Rizzo launched a first-inning blast and opened a three-run third inning with a leadoff double.
The 10-run tally on Sunday was the team’s best output in this young season. The Yankees entered Sunday ranked 24th in runs scored and 25th in OPS with runners in scoring position. There was reason to believe both figures would improve. The Yankees also led the sport in barrel percentage, hard-hit percentage and exit velocity, according to Baseball Savant.
At one point over the weekend, Boone chuckled about the folly of attempting to draw conclusions from such a small sample of games. “I wish I had a nickel,” Boone said, “for every time I said ‘Understanding that we’ve only had two weeks . . . ’”
Boone downplayed the suggestion that his club had been penalized by the latest edition of the baseball, which appears to be less lively after Major League Baseball installed humidors at all 30 parks. Boone acknowledged “the baseball has obviously changed in the last year or two,” but declined to use that as cover.
“That’s not an excuse,” Boone said on Friday afternoon. “The baseball’s the same for everyone. We’ve got to go out there and perform as a group, as an offense, the way we’re capable of. If we’re doing things we’re capable of doing, the results will be there.”
For the past several seasons, the centerpiece of the Yankees lineup has been a pair of imposing, right-handed sluggers, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Both boast fearsome power. Both also strike out in more than a quarter of their at-bats. The team’s major addition at last year’s trade deadline was Joey Gallo, a former All-Star who strikes out more than 35 percent of the time and has played…
Read More: McCullough: Does it matter if the Yankees’ hitters have the same approach? Not