Of all Major League teams, thus far, the Yankees rank just twelfth (as of this writing) in hits.
That’s almost as middle-of-the-pack as you can get, given the thirty teams in the league over all. Not all that remarkable, one would think–certainly, one might expect a team which hits so, well, averagely, to be closer to the middle of the pack in the standings.
If, however, you learned baseball fan (which, by this point, you probably are), visit the stats page, and then move to the column third from right, labeled OBP, and click that to sort, you’ll see that the Yankees rank not 12th, but second.
On a team where Mark Teixeira and Nick Johnson are both hitting under .150, and Robinson Canó, albeit briefly, had a higher batting average than an on-base percentage, it can occasionally be hard to believe that the team has not yet had a game where they’ve scored less than three runs, or that they’ve scored five in nine of 12.
Still, if one really wants to know what’s gotten into the Yankees this season, all one has to do is look at the just-completed series with the Texas Rangers to get some idea.
The Rangers are not supposed to be a poor team, pitching wise, yet in this series only one of the three starters pitched more than four innings.
On the flip side, the Yankees starters all went at least six innings–and Sabathia, who threw 73 pitches and had a staggering 58 of them count as strikes, would have certainly pitched longer had not the game been called due to rain. AJ Burnett pitched seven innings; today Andy Pettitte has, despite not having his greatest ’stuff’, pitched eight.
One can’t discount the Texas offense, either–a team with Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Vladimir Guerrerro is hardly the Pittsburgh Pirates or the San Francisco Giants of recent memory.
So here you have it: the Yankees aren’t (necessarily) blowing teams out 10-0 every game, but with the way the starters are throwing and the bullpen is not making headlines (because it is, by and large, doing its job), four runs begins to feel like twenty.
It’s been a while since the Yankees have had this good of an April–not only are they winning, but they are winning against teams that should shape up to be among the league’s elite–so there is certainly a temptation to let it go to one’s head.
Yeah, this team is good, but Yankee fans should know better than most that the baseball season is a marathon (yeah, yeah, cliché and all that). A hot April can turn out to be insignificant if the team levels off in June and July.
That said, the more last season progressed, the better the Yankees became. Right now, the Yankees are pretty darn good, but some of their best hitters aren’t even hitting the Mendoza line, and Javier Vazquez has, well, not been great. So, as good as the Yankees are, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
That’s reason enough to be optimistic, if ever there was one.
Original Story:
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