When the Yankees improved to 8-2 on the season with their comeback, series-opening win against the A’s last Tuesday, all was well in the world. There were problems with a shaky bullpen and an unproductive bottom of the order, but the team was winning, and that’s all that matters. But the thing is, over the course of a 162-game season, those faults eventually show up and cost you games.
One of the faults that hadn’t reared its ugly head through 10 games was that, aside from Ben Rice and Giancarlo Stanton
(whose production has been very un-Stantonlike), pretty much everyone in the offense was underachieving to start the year. While some players are hitting into bad luck, the peripherals aren’t encouraging for several others, including noted slow starter Aaron Judge himself.
While some of this can just be chalked up to small sample sizes and some early-season timing issues, there’s one glaring issue with the offense as a whole that, if not corrected, could lead to genuine long-term struggles.
The Yankees have historically been a very disciplined team at the plate, routinely finishing at the top of leaguewide walk rates and pitches per plate appearance. They’ve had a reputation for wearing down pitchers and putting traffic on the bases by being patient, and it’s powered their yearly wRC+ totals, but there is such a thing as being too passive.
And too passive is what the Yankees currently are.
In 2025, the Yankees led baseball with a 119 wRC+, powered by a league-best 10.2 BB% and the second-lowest swing rate in baseball. They also posted a below-average 67.4 Z-Swing% (zone swing), indicating they allowed a lot of pitches to go past them in pursuit of driving up pitch counts.
Compare that to the 2026 Yankees, who are second in walk rate and 28th in Z-Swing%, it might not seem like there’s a big difference. So what’s behind the team’s drastic offensive slump?
There’s a lot of things that you can nitpick and break down, but there’s one partciular area where the Yankees are letting opposing pitchers off the hook: pitches down the heart of the plate.
On pitches classified as “meatballs”, or pitches in the center-middle part of the plate, in 2025, the Yankees swung at 76 percent, which came in almost exactly at the league average of 76.3% What do those numbers look like in 2026?
Yankees meatball Swing%: 68.8 percent
MLB Average meatball Swing%: 73.1 percent
The average is down across the MLB, but the Yankees have absolutely collapsed in this regard. While their in-zone swing rates were at least close to league average last year, they’re considerably below it this year. On a player-by-player level, the difference is jarring:
2025-26 Meatball Swing%:
Aaron Judge: 78.6% to 55.6% (-23%)
Austin Wells: 82.7% to 62.5% (-20.2%)
Trent Grisham: 71.6% to 55.0% (-16.6%)
Ryan McMahon: 74.7% to 66.7% (-8%)
Cody Bellinger: 77.7% to 71.4% (-6.3%)
Ben Rice: 74.8% to 69.2% (-5.6%)
Jazz Chisholm Jr.: 80.5% to 81% (+0.5%)
Giancarlo Stanton: 59% to 69.2% (+10.2%)
Is there a clear and conclusive trend? Not necessarily, considering the team’s biggest overachieving bat and most underachieving bat are next to each other, but you can overall see a massive decline across the board except for Giancarlo Stanton.
Additionally, the Yankees have gone from 18th in First-Pitch Swing% at 31.5 percent to T-20th at 29.1 percent. Why are these two stats important? Here are league-wide stats on both meatballs and first-pitch swings in 2025:
Meatball: .328 BA, .601 SLG%, .389 wOBA, 55.8 HardHit%
First-Pitch: .335 BA, .580 SLG%, .391 wOBA, 45.0 HardHit%
So, clearly, you want to swing at pitches down the middle and attack early to get the best pitches, but it’s especially important for the Yankees, who are running back the exact same offense that did this to these categories in 2025 and what they’re currently doing in 202
2025 Yankees:
Meatball: .324 BA, .680 SLG%, .413 wOBA, 57.7 HardHit%
First-Pitch: .367 BA, .700 SLG%, .449 wOBA, 49.2 HardHit%
2026 Yankees:
Meatball: .313 BA, .453 SLG%, .340 wOBA, 56.6 HardHit%
First-Pitch: .288 BA, .462 SLG%, .346 wOBA, 55.8 HardHit%
If you hang it, the Yankees will bang it, or at least they’re supposed to. They put up video game numbers in these situations and need to get back to that.
The one player who needs to get back to being aggressive, specifically, is the captain. He’s swinging at pitches in the heart of the zone 20 percent less, but only swinging at first pitches slightly less. He’s not doing nearly enough damage on those first pitches right now, but the bigger concern is the massive reduction in swinging at these “meatballs”.
Since Judge ascended into Bonds territory in 2022, he has absolutely feasted on pitches over the heart of the plate. Has it led to some affectionate nicknames in certain sections of social media? Sure, but every MLB player will see a lot of bad pitches; it’s what you do with them that counts. Judge went from swinging at more meatballs than almost anyone in baseball to being extremely passive, and that’s hurt his production:
2025 Judge vs meatballs:
.465 BA, 1.113 SLG%, .631 wOBA, 78.3 HardHit%, 78.6 Swing%
2026 Judge vs meatballs:
1-for-5, .182 wOBA
He’s swinging at less and doing less damage. Getting Judge going is the first step towards turning things around. When you lose eight games by a total of seven runs, you’re talking about multiple games that could’ve been swung by one swing. The entire roster needs to be more aggressive, and problem is best exemplified by their captain, who can lift a lineup by himself.
