Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. With all of the playoff action going on throughout the weekend, we pushed things back a bit, but we’re back to go over what’s been on your mind this week. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
BFear04 asks: Glad the playoffs are here. Yet for me my main questions are for the offseason. We need to keep Belli, it’ll be costly yet it’s
needed. I also hope they offer a contract extension to Grisham… Alas, thoughts on putting Jose at shortstop and letting go of Volpe… It may be a stretch yet offering Weaver a contract as well?
I’ll touch on each of these topics quickly, since we’re covering a lot of ground and (hopefully) the offseason is still in the distance. Bellinger has been a massive part of last offseason’s Plan B succeeding, stepping in to fill Juan Soto’s shoes and doing so admirably providing 4.9 fWAR. Bellinger has also offered flexibility to a roster that initially lacked it, covering multiple outfield positions and first base — the Yankees will be heavily involved in the outfield market, but they should be at least interested in retaining the outfield they deployed this season. That includes Grisham, who found a way into the lineup and never let go leading to a career-high 34 home runs, though I expect that he will get a significantly higher pay raise than Bellinger will on the open market. That could price them out of retaining both, and that’s without even considering Jasson Domínguez’s playing time in this, as the former top prospect saw his starts diminish as Grisham started to take over regular appearances in the lineup.
As for shortstop, I don’t see a world where the Yankees are going to just get rid of Anthony Volpe, and he’s rewarding their patience in October once more. The embattled shortstop has looked much improved since getting a cortisone shot in his shoulder, and has taken back the starting gig after José Caballero briefly stepped in for him. The Yankees always wanted Caballero as a weapon to deploy off the bench, so it makes sense that they’ve pivoted back to Volpe, but I think they’ll open 2026 at least expecting to start Volpe again. The injury derails so much of what we can take away from his season, and while he’s standing on thin ice still I imagine the front office wants to give him one more go to prove he can be consistently good.
Finally, I fear we’re watching the last days of Luke Weaver in pinstripes, and it’s getting harder to feel emotional about that as he blows opportunity after opportunity. His appearance in Game 2 of the ALDS finally resulted in him recording an out, but he’s been a broken record for giving up runs for months now, and no amount of Matt Blake magic looks to save him now. His 2024 run will remain a cornerstone part of the team’s path to the World Series, but he isn’t the same guy anymore. Perhaps he wants to stick around on a cheap enough deal, but more likely than not he’s going to shop his talents elsewhere, especially if he believes he can convert back to a starting pitcher a la Clay Holmes.
OLDY MOLDY asks: Can the analytics show whether or not Boone got burned by his relievers more often than other managers this season? Are we just being influenced by the painful losses and blown saves?
To give a simplistic answer, the Yankees haven’t gotten a lot out of their bullpen this season, especially when compared to the rest of the playoff field. Yankees relievers earned a collective 2.8 fWAR as a unit this year, good for 21st in the league and second-worst among teams to make the postseason, ahead of only Detroit’s 1.4 fWAR. They’ve obviously had a lot of turnover throughout the season at the end of the bullpen, with Devin Williams losing the closer job twice and Weaver losing it to injury and then being a completely different pitcher in the second half. The deadline reinforcements were a mixed bag, with David Bednar locking down the closer role while Camilo Doval had an up-and-down year and Jake Bird was almost immediately demoted.
The Yankees’ bullpen problems in the postseason are merely a continuation of their seesaw performance in the regular season. Weaver has been the biggest disappointment, but he’s gotten these high-leverage spots to blow in the first place because few have stepped up to contest it. Fernando Cruz has been one of the only stable relievers, and Williams of late has seemingly gotten back in the circle of trust, but there’s few else that Aaron Boone can reasonably call on late in a close contest. Should Weaver have been the first name called in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series? Probably not, but his spot in Game 1 of the ALDS was much more reasonable to expect, and the result was still the same — multiple runners aboard, and not a single out recorded. Boone can only game plan for so much, and the volatility of this year’s ‘pen makes those plans much more difficult to see through.
Andrew Mearns asks: Why does Aaron Judge insist on continuing to do this to us?
Thanks for chiming in, boss. This question was posed half-jokingly near the end of Saturday’s Game 1 in Toronto, and I bet you can guess which moment it’s referring to. The Yankees, down 2-0 in the sixth inning after getting pretty much dominated by Kevin Gausman through the first five, found a spark and loaded the bases with no outs. The man at the plate was Aaron Judge, exactly who you’d want up for most of the season… and he struck out on a 3-2 splitter nowhere near the strike zone. Far be it from me to criticize an MVP player like Judge’s ability to read a strike, especially when he’s normally so elite at taking balls and swinging at strikes, but the situation became the latest in a long line of postseason failings Judge has collected. The Yankees did score one run in that inning on a Bellinger walk, but a Ben Rice pop up and Giancarlo Stanton strikeout ended the frame without much to sweat about if you’re Toronto. They never worried again as they blew the game wide open an inning later, but if that opportunity hadn’t been wasted as thoroughly as it was perhaps things never spiral as much as they ultimately did.
The narrative around Judge at this point is that he’s a regular season performer and a postseason choker. It dogged him in the 2024 playoffs until Game 5 of the World Series, where it looked like he’d taken over and launched a massive home run to keep his team in contention — only to drop the easy fly ball that started the chain reaction of hits leading to them blowing that game and the series. Otherwise, his batting numbers were rather dismal, and his 2022 run had even less to write home about. This year hasn’t been the same — Judge is 8-for-18 and owns a 1.024 OPS in the Yankees’ five games played, by all accounts contributing to setting up the team’s chances on offense. Without the big blast, however, he’s got nothing to point to on the scoreboard, as he’s only knocked in two runs and scored twice himself. He’s getting on base, but he’s getting singles that lead to him passing the baton and getting stranded instead of driving the ball into the gap and scoring runners.
If the Yankees end up losing this series to Toronto, whether that’s a sweep or if they fight back a little bit, most people won’t remember how efficiently Judge has gotten on base this postseason. They’ll remember the ugly strikeout that failed to equalize the score, just as they would’ve mainly remembered the bases-loaded, no outs situation that New York squandered in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series had Boston eliminated them. The narrative will persist and it’ll haunt him in the next moment where he could put the doubters to shame, perhaps influence him into reaching for another ball that even his 6-foot-7 frame can’t do anything with. The only way out is for Judge to tear the absolute cover off of the baseball with his back to the wall, and nothing we’ve seen over the past few years has given us any indication that it’s coming. Feel free to prove us wrong, Aaron.
