Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
OLDY MOLDY asks: When was the last time a Yankees team carried one or more regular players batting under .200 into the All-Star break?
You don’t actually have to go too far back, as I believe Joey Gallo in the 2022 season would be the last time the Yankees had a regular starter below the Mendoza
line at the All-Star break, though they had many close calls in the years since. Just last year the team had both Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe in danger of the feat batting in the .210s, and they also had the black hole situation at third base where a rotation of guys were hitting rather poorly there — Oswald Peraza was hitting below .200, but he was a sharing the starting job with the corpse of DJ LeMahieu who managed to pull a decent .266 mark off.
That kind of illustrates the flaw in worrying too much about batting average though — we all know LeMahieu was a net negative for the Yankees in 2025, but by batting average he was tied for fifth-best on the team with a guy in José Caballero who didn’t join the roster until LeMahieu had already been released. It’s far from a great indicator of offensive production, but even with the hindsight of the analytical revolution it is jarring to see three Yankee starters under the mark. Two of those starters, Wells and Ryan McMahon, have been various shades of awful at the plate so it’s not like they couldn’t do with some more hits landing, but Trent Grisham at least looks a little more respectable with his total body of work, not to mention the luck he’s had drilling pitches right at defenders.
The Yankee offense needs to find some more consistency, there’s no question about that. It starts with the bottom of the lineup graduating from being automatic outs, but unfortunately there’s been little indication that things will change anytime soon. With the backup options also mightily struggling though, they’ll need to soldier on for a bit and prove that the team doesn’t need to consider making some drastic moves as we get closer to the trade deadline and the rumor mill starts to churn.
ReadingYankee asks: The Yankees bats are the one area we seem to be underperforming. When fully healthy, and I realize that is a foolish thing to suggest would ever happen, how should the best Yankee line up produce when compared to some of the best teams in baseball right now?
The thing is that they’re damn near close to healthy offensively. Giancarlo Stanton has been out for a while, yes, but that’s a fact that most assumed would happen at some point in the season, and Caballero has missed a couple of weeks and will be gladly welcomed back to provide a bit of a spark in the middle/lower half of the lineup, but otherwise? What you’ve seen is what you can expect with this offense, which overall isn’t a bad thing — they’re third in hitter fWAR and wRC+, with a negligible difference between them and second place in the former category.
The thing is that they’re carried entirely by their top three hitters in Ben Rice, Aaron Judge, and Cody Bellinger, with the only other effective batters throughout the season being Caballero and their platoon hitters in Paul Goldschmidt and Amed Rosario. That leads to a lot of volatility if one or two of the big three aren’t clicking, and they’ve had that problem with Judge in the middle of a slump for the last couple of weeks. Adding back some floor raisers will do wonders for avoiding a result like the Yankees’ most recent road trip, but as you noted it’s foolish to assume that they’ll get Stanton and Cabby back and just deal with no other issues health-wise the rest of the way. Jazz Chisholm Jr. has gotten hot since stepping (literally) into Stanton’s pants, and if the Yankee second baseman can transition this into playing like his old self through the summer then that’ll be do a lot to revamp their feast or famine outlook and keep them among the premium offenses in the league.
The Ghost of Pop Logan asks: I can recall multiple instances where the Yankees pitching lab (the Gas Factory) has been credited with adding velocity to young arms acquired in the draft. Are there any examples of adding velocity to established pitchers acquired via trade or free agency?
Part of what made the Yankees’ initial success with their bullpen diamond in the rough finds was their ability to do this, and both Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver’s time in pinstripes showcased a tick up in velo to prove just that. The current roster doesn’t any cases like that, but that speaks more to the struggles of this current bullpen and the elite status of their rotation being a product of signing already-great starters and supplementing them with their own developed prospects.
