A big criticism of the Yankees last season, especially early on, was that their offense relied too much on the home run. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how teams score their runs, but early on this season they are showing that they are quite capable of scoring without a ton of homers.
“I like that,” Girardi told Chad Jennings of the Journal News. “We have speed and we can do some things with this club. We don’t always have to be station to station. Some of the guys are a little bit more station to station than the others, but we do have speed and we can do some things.”
It’s not that the Yankees haven’t hit homers yet this year, they have hit three, but they haven’t been the driving factor in their offense.
Of course, a big part of the Yankees offense has been their ability to draw walks, putting lots of runners on base. Once they get the runners, they have quite a few players to drive them in with the long ball, like Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson. They also have speed in Brett Gardner and Eduardo Nunez as well as a guy like Derek Jeter who is very good at situation hitting and is capable of laying down a bunt when needed.
Hopefully it continues this way because when they have the ability to score runs in a number of different ways it’s easier to avoid prolonged offensive slumps. Something they haven’t had to worry about early as they have scored six runs in three of their first four games.
Related Stories- February 25, 2012 -- A look at the Yankees potential Opening Day roster
- April 5, 2012 -- A look at the Yankees defense in 2012
- March 26, 2012 -- Lineup Optimization: the Yankees’ 2012 Lineup
- February 9, 2011 -- Yankees Hitting Coach Says Best Lineup in Baseball Can Do Better
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April 09, 2012
