Bomber Bits: Road Warriors
Judge and Gio, Yankees saviors (AP).
Hello everyone, welcome to the third biweekly “thoughts” column about all things Yankee and baseball related! This column will run towards the end of each week and cover a variety of free flowing topics. This week, we look a surging and slumping pair of Yankees outfielders and revisit a turn in the spotlight for a journeyman pitcher.
State of the Stripes
In the last week and a half, the Yankees have continued their strong play, winning series against the Nationals, Rays and Orioles. They have gone 7-3 and while they sit in fourth place in the American League East, they are not that far out of it - only 1.5 games back of the division leading Red Sox. The offense has cooled off a bit but is largely performing at a league average level (which is much better than it was at the beginning of the year, let me tell you). It has been beset by some injuries, namely to Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks, but Aaron Judge and Gio Urshela have stepped up to carry most of the offensive load. Improvements from Gary Sanchez and DJ LeMahieu have also helped the lineup produce at a better clip. In their last five games, the Yankees have scored five or more runs in four of them, which is a big accomplishment for a team that could barely hit in April.
The Yankees pitching staff has continued its strong performance as well, although not quite at the level of its late April-early May peak. Gerrit Cole, who was on an unbelievable run, was knocked around by Texas, but has mostly been on another level this year. Domingo German and Corey Kluber have also continued to post quality start after quality start. Jordan Montgomery and Jameson Taillon have been more inconsistent, but this group has been overall a strength for this team. The main strength has been the bullpen, which seems to pitch flawlessly every day. Aroldis Chapman has yet to give up an earned run this year and he’s supported by Jonathan Loisaiga and Chad Green, who have been similarly spotless. The bullpen depth will be helped with the imminent return of Zack Britton, who can slot in as a setup man. Life has been good for the Yankees pitchers.
It has become clear that these Yankees will need some offensive help, which is rare for them. The outfield is a particular place where some supplementary players, particularly a left handed bat, would come in handy. Over the next two weeks, the Yankees will play some quality teams, including the AL Central leading White Sox and the Rays and Blue Jays, two teams above them in the standings. It will be a good test if the Yankees can continue their rise in the division or if their May success will be a mirage. They will have to hit better to succeed, but they certainly have the players capable of doing it. Only time will tell if their potential can be manifested into production.
Highlight Player of the Week
Aaron Judge has always had the weight of expectations upon him. Since he came up to the majors in 2017, he has been trying to live up to his tremendous rookie season, in which he hit 52 home runs and almost won the league MVP. From 2018-2020, he batted .274/.381/.536, but missed significant time each season with various injuries and never quite satisfied the fans who expected him to replicate 2017. In 2021, Judge may be returning to those MVP heights. Through the first month and a half, Judge is batting .298 with 12 home runs and 24 RBI, which all lead the Yankees. Judge’s 12 home runs lead the American League (tied with Shohei Ohtani and Mitch Haniger) and he has stayed relatively healthy while other key players in the lineup have gone down with injury. Judge batted an insane .571/.640/1.333 last week with five home runs to win the AL Player of the Week. Were you worried about Aaron Judge when he was slumping. Well…
So how has Judge been successful this year (aside from staying on the field)?Aaron Judge’s key to success this season has been continuing to hit the ball hard and walk a lot, but also strike out a lot less. Judge’s career has been so good, even though the games played numbers aren’t always the best, and his rate statistics are consistently good in each year of his career. This year, Judge’s numbers are in line with what he’s done throughout his time in the Majors. His career hard hit percentage is at 57.4% - this year it’s at 58.2%. His career average exit velocity is at 95.6 MPH - this year it’s at 96.6 MPH. His career walk rate is at 15.5% - this year it’s at 13.7%. The one notable difference from Judge’s career stats and his current stats is his strikeout rate. His career K rate is 31% and this year it is 26.1%. Those five percentage points might not seem like a lot, but it’s a huge difference from stranding runners on base to putting the ball in play - and when Judge puts the ball in play, then good things usually happen. Accordingly, Judge’s isolated power and batting average on balls in play are both above his career numbers, which means he’s putting the ball in play, getting more hits and more importantly, more extra base hits. A career .274 hitter is batting .298 this season and it’s not by accident.
Judge is, without question, the most important hitter in this Yankees lineup. Other players may have hot streaks, but none are consistently as good as Aaron Judge is on a day to day basis. For the Yankees to succeed this season, they need Aaron Judge to anchor this lineup and keep hitting balls like this to far away places in the park. Home runs win ball games and Aaron Judge has won quite a few ball games in his career. Here’s to winning a few more this season.
Lowlight Player of the Week
Brett Gardner has been the longest tenured Yankee ever since Alex Rodriguez retired. He has been the bridge between Yankee generations (him and Mike Harkey), from Jeter and Rivera to Judge and Torres. Gardner was a rookie when the Yankees won the World Series in 2009 and now he’s in likely the last year of his career trying to get one more chance at a ring. Gardner has been consistently excellent for the Yankees, never playing at a superstar level but posting a 3.0 WAR or higher season in nine of the last eleven years (exceptions were 2012 when he was hurt and 2020 because of the shortened season). However, this year Gardner has fallen off a bit offensively. He has batted .176/.261/.211 with no home runs and -0.6 WAR. Combined with his lack of arm strength in center field, it seems that the always valuable Gardner is not quite that for this year’s Yankees. In his age 37 season, is Brett Gardner done? Even with Monday night’s triple and two hit game, it’s a fair question to ask.
The first instinct is to say no, as we’ve seen this from Gardner before. In 2018, he posted a .690 OPS and rebounded to post an .812 OPS over the next two years. Gardner has shown an ability to bounce back from subpar performance in the past, but his underlying stats this year do not portend a similar return to form. Gardner has simply stopped hitting for any power. His line drive rate is 14.3%, well below his career mark, and his groundball rate is almost 50%. Gardner’s isolated power is .039 - he has not hit many extra base hits this year and that makes his .236 BABIP look worse, as most of his hits are weak singles. Gardner also has no stolen bases this year, which robs the Yankees of the speed element that he has often provided.
It’s been a tough year for Brett Gardner, but he will be more important than ever as Aaron Hicks and Giancarlo Stanton have both hit the IL. Along with Clint Frazier and Aaron Judge, Gardner will be manning the Yankees outfield for the foreseeable future and will need to provide more of an offensive impact than he has so far to help this lineup, especially from the left side. Let’s hope Brett Gardner has one more hot streak in him to get that second World Series ring and ride off into the sunset.
Around the League
A recurring feature of the thoughts column will be “Around the League”, where, in six bullet points, we check in on the happenings around the rest of the MLB.
AL East - The Red Sox have held steady here, but this division is a cluster of four teams all playing above average baseball. The Yankees, Rays, Red Sox, and Blue Jays are all within a few games of each other and it’s an open question who will take the lead and start to separate themselves from the rest of the division. And the Orioles also play in this division too.
AL Central - The Twins have fallen very far, even behind the Tigers to the worst record in the league. The White Sox, conversely, have the best record in the league. Cleveland isn’t too far back, but this is the White Sox’s division to lose.
AL West - Oakland and Houston are battling for the top spot, with surprising Seattle still within shouting distance (it’s a loud shout, but still). The hapless Angels and the Rangers are sharing the bottom of the AL West with each other. This division is trending about as expected so far (except why can’t the Angels ever be good?).
NL East - Another division where the top teams are all close, but this is because they’re all kinda bad (the division leading Mets would be last in the AL East). Somehow the Marlins are the only team without a negative run differential here and they are the team that’s least likely to make the playoffs.
NL Central - The Brewers have fallen off, allowing the Cardinals to jump into first place in this division. The Cubs have had a mini surge to jump into second place. No team is too far back, although the Pirates and Reds have all been mediocre after decent starts.
NL West - The MLB best Giants continue their surprising start, leading the Padres and Dodgers, albeit by slim margins. Colorado is well out of it and the Diamondbacks are falling off as well. This division is where the National League powerhouses are.
Let’s check in on our WAR leaderboard as well.
The pair of New York aces sit atop the leaderboard, although DeGrom has picked up some hitting WAR too, making Gerrit Cole the true best pitcher in baseball. Mike Trout and Byron Buxton are both injured, meaning that it could be Vlad Jr.’s time to shine. Some other new faces join the list, including Nolan Arenado, Zack Wheeler and Nick Castellanos.
Fun Baseball Facts - Stetson University Baseball
Stetson University holds a place near and dear to my heart - it’s where I spent four years of college training for the Tufts University crew team over our spring break. After practice, we would go to Melching Field to watch Stetson baseball play teams that ranged from Dartmouth and Yale to eventual NCAA College Baseball champion Florida. Stetson baseball may be relatively unknown, but they have produced some very talented players who are all making an impact at the Major League level this year. This week’s fun baseball facts look at the Stetson Hatters who are shining in the spotlight this season.
Jacob DeGrom - The best and most decorated player on this list, DeGrom, a DeLand native, played with Stetson from 2007-2010, starting as a hitter and then converting to a pitcher midway through his tenure there. He debuted with the Mets at age 26 in 2014, getting off to a late start in his career, but has blossomed since then. DeGrom won back to back Cy Young Awards from 2018-2019 and came in third last year. This year, he leads the National League with an astoundingly low 0.68 ERA, striking out almost 15 batters per 9 innings. DeGrom is the best or second best pitcher in baseball (go Gerrit Cole) and is the crown jewel of Hatters alumni.
Corey Kluber - If DeGrom is the most notable Stetson alumni, the Yankees’ own Corey Kluber comes in a close second. Kluber grew up in Alabama and pitched with Stetson from 2005-2007, unfortunately not overlapping with DeGrom. He was drafted by the Padres in 2007, traded to the Indians for Jake Westbrook and became a two time Cy Young Award winner of his own in 2014 and 2017. Kluber was one of the best pitchers in baseball from 2014-2018 before injuries derailed his career. He’s now with New York and rediscovering some of his old success, posting a 3.48 ERA thus far and throwing some gems like this one against Detroit.
Pat Mazeika - This next player, another New York Met, debuted this year and was instantly at the center of the baseball world for his early heroics. Mazeika is a Springfield, Massachusetts native who attended Stetson until 2015, when he was drafted in the eighth round. Mazeika was called up this season to replace an injured Brandon Nimmo and had two walk off RBI fielder’s choices in his first four games. He is the first player since 1920 with multiple walk-off RBI within his first four career games and he did it without even getting his first hit until a few days later.
Logan Gilbert - This last player is not a New York Yankee or Met, but rather a Seattle Mariner. Gilbert grew up in Florida and pitched for Stetson until he was drafted 14th overall in 2018 by the Mariners. Gilbert was the Mariners’ 2019 Minor League Pitcher of the Year and entered 2021 as the #28 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. He made his Major League debut last week against the Indians and looks to be a future fixture of the Seattle rotation.
Bonus Fun Fact: Although he did not attend Stetson, getting drafted first overall right from high school, another notable DeLand alumnus is Chipper Jones, MLB Hall of Famer and Braves legend. Although the larger colleges may produce more MLB players, there is a tiny school in Central Florida churning out multiple big leaguers over the last few years. Keep an eye on the Stetson Hatters for the next big prospect to come through some team’s farm system!
Remember Some Games
Each week, the “Remember Some Games” column will take a trip in the Wayback Machine to look at a game from ten years prior, in the season of 2011. This was a season right in the middle of the Yankees run of success from 2009-2012 and saw the Yankees win the AL East in a season where the Red Sox were considered by many to be the Greatest Team of All Time. This week’s game flashes back to a Yankees-Rangers game where an unlikely hero stepped up with a big time start against the defending AL champions.
Once upon a time, the Yankees-Rangers rivalry had some juice to it. Most of this stems from 2010, where the Yankees battled back and forth with Texas for American League supremacy, ultimately losing out on Cliff Lee at the trade deadline and a chance for a second straight pennant (and yes, I am still salty about that 11 years later). The Rangers beat the Yankees in six games in the 2010 ALCS mostly by having a decidedly strong starting pitching advantage and entered 2011 as one of the teams to beat. Boston had the superstar talent, but Texas had demonstrated their ability to put it together on the field with their World Series run. The Yankees were looking for revenge for last season’s loss and had already beaten the Rangers in each of the first two series they played in 2011. In their third series, the Yankees smoked the Rangers 12-4 in both the first and the second game. Side note: I love when baseball games have back to back scores of the same weird crooked numbers. The series finale was a midweek matinee game and the Rangers were throwing CJ Wilson, their ace. The Yankees answer? Just a man named Brian Gordon.
The 2011 Yankees had quite an interesting rotation, which, after CC Sabathia, featured an inconsistent AJ Burnett, an inconsistent Phil Hughes, an unproven Ivan Nova and both Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. This group performed surprisingly well given the circumstances, but the depth was spotty, to say the least. Brian Cashman was constantly on the hunt for depth options and a midseason Bartolo Colon injury brought one of them to the majors for a spot start. Brian Gordon was a minor league journeyman, drafted by the Angels as an outfielder and converted to a pitcher with the help of Nolan Ryan. He pitched as a September callup for the Rangers in 2008, but bounced around from team to team after that. Gordon started 2011 in the Phillies system, but was granted his release and signed a minor league deal with the Yankees, who were desperate for depth options. On June 16th, Gordon found himself on his way to New York to start against CJ Wilson and his old team. In his first Major League start ever against the defending AL Champions, Gordon pitched...pretty, pretty pretty good. He allowed just two runs in 5 and ⅓ innings, surprising many who had no idea who he was. "He has definitely evolved," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "I don't remember him being able to move the ball around like he did today." Gordon handled a lineup with relative ease that included reigning AL MVP Josh Hamilton, Michael Young and Ian Kinsler. It was an impressive display from a completely unknown quantity. When asked about his poaching of Gordon from Philadelphia, Cashman responded "Hey, they got Cliff Lee, I got Brian Gordon." (Nope, definitely still not salty about this.)
While Gordon bent, but didn’t break, the Yankees scratched off a few runs against CJ Wilson on a Russell Martin RBI single and a Jorge Posada RBI double. Fun times when these two were both on the team together (and by fun I mean super awkward and tense). Wilson threw 129 pitches, which is unthinkable ten years later, over eight innings and was relieved by Darren Oliver, who almost blew the game before Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira couldn’t cash in with the bases loaded. Mariano Rivera and Cory Wade pitched four combined scoreless innings to send the game into the bottom of the twelfth, where Brett Gardner sent the fans home happy and helped the Yankees become the first team in 2011 to sweep the Rangers.
The win was exciting, but for Gordon, who had achieved little success in his career to date, it was a milestone moment. "The last 24 hours, it was nuts," Gordon said. "Once I was on the field, I was comfortable. I had the ball in my hand, I knew what to do." When asked what he thought would come next, Gordon responded "Maybe stick around and help the Yankees. It sounds crazy saying that."
Spoiler alert - Gordon did not stick around and help the Yankees for much longer. He next pitched in Cincinnati, giving up four runs in five innings. That would be all for Gordon with New York, and, as it turned out, in the major leagues. He was designated for assignment when Bartolo Colon returned from the injured list and as quick as it came, Gordon’s MLB career was over. Gordon returned to Triple A and eventually headed to Asia to pursue baseball in the KBO. He returned to sign a minor league contract with the Yankees before the 2014 season, but never made it back to the big leagues. Although Gordon’s time in the majors was short, don’t fret - he technically was a Hall of Famer. How is this, you ask? Well, he became the first player in MLB history to wear a non leather glove, as he used a lightweight glove made of synthetic materials. The MLB Hall of Fame called and requested Gordon’s glove, so his brush with greatness will forever be immortalized in Cooperstown. Not bad at all, Brian.
Thanks for reading this edition of Bomber Bits - let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for the column, or if there’s a specific 2011 game you’d like me to remember in the future!
