An early September matchup of the New York Yankees and Houston Astros would normally be a dress rehearsal for the playoffs -- the two teams have faced off in three of the past six American League Championship Series, of course, and both entered the season with expectations of the same. Instead, the Yankees' season took a turn, and what should have been a marquee matchup saw the team debuting a rookie center fielder in Jasson Dominguez and a rookie catcher in Austin Wells in the series opener.
The infusion of youth has been welcome so far -- the Yankees will look to sweep the Astros tonight on Sunday Night Baseball -- and it is the first of a coming wave of changes for a club that might suffer its first losing season in 31 years. It also proves owner Hal Steinbrenner's organizational review has already begun. Of course, Steinbrenner will eventually decide whether general manager Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone will stay or go, but the review will go far beyond the best-known names in the chain of command. There will be discussions about the effectiveness of the team's amateur scouting, pro scouting, player development, sports science practices, and, as Steinbrenner told The Associated Press this week, the club's deployment of analytics.
"We're looking to bring in possibly an outside company to really take a look at the analytics side of what we do," Steinbrenner said. "Baseball operations in general. We're going to have some very frank conversations with each other. This year was obviously unacceptable."
Hal Steinbrenner does not operate like his father, George, who reflexively fired managers and general managers to the degree that he and his method of operation became a national punch line. But because of the intense unhappiness of the fan base, which erupts daily in New York talk radio, there is more uncertainty than ever within the organization about the outcome of the broad examination -- about who will be fired or hired, about whether there will be tangible shifts in how the Yankees draft and develop players, and in the makeup of the major league roster.
Here are some of the areas that might be most scrutinized:
1. How can they fix the left-right balance of the team's lineup?
Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are both right-handed, and so are DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres and Anthony Volpe. The team's front office has looked for balance, adding the likes of Aaron Hicks (a switch-hitter) and the left-handed-hitting Anthony Rizzo. But stacking left-handed hitters within the Yankees' lineup has not been a priority in recent years in the way that it was for Gene Michael when he assumed control of the front office in 1990. In an era in which many teams -- including the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tampa Bay Rays and San Francisco Giants, among others -- focus on platoon advantage, batting lefty hitters against right-handed pitchers or right-handed hitters against lefty pitchers, the Yankees have consistently had one of the lowest matchup advantages. ESPN's Paul Hembekides dug out these numbers:
Yankees' percentage of PA with batter platoon advantage (MLB rank):
2023: 42% (28th, 3rd fewest)
2022: 44% (24th)
2021: 45% (28th)
2020: 44% (29th)
2019: 43% (28th)
As recently as 2015, the Yankees' platoon advantage was 73%, the highest in the majors; they also led the majors in 2009 (70%), when the Yankees last won a World Series.
If Steinbrenner demands more lineup balance, that change will not come easily: Judge, Stanton and LeMahieu are all playing under long-term contracts, and Volpe just finished his rookie year. The new arrivals do help here: Dominguez is a switch-hitter, and Wells is a left-handed hitter.
2. One organizational source asked a simple question: "Why don't our players improve more consistently once they reach the big leagues?"
This is a topic that certainly feels important after Dominguez's exciting debut, when he became the youngest Yankee ever to homer in his debut. Though Judge developed into an MVP and one of the league's biggest superstars, the Yankees have struggled to come close to the developmental success of other big-market teams that consistently pick near the end of the draft's first round.
Gary Sanchez, long viewed as a can't-miss prospect, had a great rookie showing (a 168 OPS+) in 2015 before starting a slow, steady descent that led to his eventual trade to Minnesota. Infielder Gleyber Torres had his best season as a rookie in 2018, with an adjusted OPS+ of 128, then lost his standing at shortstop before moving to second base. The Yankees have thrived in developing relievers but seemingly have struggled to match that sort of production in position players. Can Dominguez and Wells break the cycle?
3. Is there too much designed reliance on power?
Many rival executives asked about the Yankees for this piece offered similar observations about the team being older, slower and not as athletic.
Yankees % of runs via HR (MLB rank):
2023: 49% (2nd highest)
2022: 51% (1st)
2021: 48% (5th)
2020: 50% (5th)
In the span of the 2020-23 seasons, the Yankees have scored only 2.3 runs/game without homering -- you can call those manufactured runs, if you'd like. That figure ranks last in all of baseball. And in that time the Yankees are 38-98 when they don't homer, a winning percentage of .279; that ranks 234th in the majors. This is evidence -- and there is more -- that the Yankees need more dimensions to their offense.
4. Are the Yankees lagging behind other teams in sports science, or are the annual problems of injuries related to the types of older players upon which they rely?
The injuries have been devastating and voluminous, with many occurring to players on long-term contracts. LeMahieu suffered a toe injury that seemed to change the trajectory of his career (although he has hit much better in the past month while working with hitting coach Sean Casey). Luis Severino has been hurt repeatedly during the course of the deal he signed before the 2019 season. Hicks was with the Yankees for eight seasons, appearing in fewer than 100 games in five of them, undercutting the value of their seven-year, $70 million investment in him. The Yankees traded for Josh Donaldson prior to the 2022 season, a deal that turned out to be a disaster.
As Steinbrenner begins the internal discussions and external reviews he forecasted, the Yankees will try to find answers, common denominators and correctable mistakes in evaluation and development. And Steinbrenner will make choices that he believes will lift the Yankees out of this unfamiliar, uncompetitive morass.