Jersey Guy Sports

361 - Elite Yankees Pitching Meets A Broken Lineup

• Don Signorino

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0:00 | 12:13

The Yanks dysfunctional hitting is an embarrassment.  Groundhogs Day in the Bronx is what we get each and every game.  Great pitching, dog shit hitting.

Yankees fans, you’re not imagining it. Night after night we’re getting the kind of starting pitching you dream about, and then watching the bats turn it into a one or two run grind that feels the same no matter who the opponent is. I break down why the current New York Yankees offense looks so dysfunctional, why the games feel like a loop, and why it’s maddening to see pitchers do their job while the lineup can’t cash in.

I get into the stats that frame the problem: a near-bottom MLB team batting average, an OPS that doesn’t match the eye test, and the weird contradiction of being near the top of the league in home runs while still struggling to score consistently. I talk through how injuries to Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton create obvious gaps, why that still can’t explain the scale of the collapse, and how the club’s approach keeps producing empty innings even when stolen bases and athleticism show up.

There is some real hope, though, and it has a name: George Lombard Jr. I explain why his defense, speed, instincts, and early at-bats feel different, and why he’s become one of the only must-watch moments in the lineup right now. Then we pivot to the pitching health roller coaster, including Max Fried landing on the injured list again and Carlos Rodon returning, plus what it means for a rotation that can’t seem to stay intact.

If you’ve been yelling at the TV about Aaron Boone’s lineup choices, the lack of hot-hand trust, and the constant low-scoring coin flips, you’ll feel right at home here. Subscribe, share the show with a fellow Yankees fan, and leave a review with your fix for this offense.

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Welcome And The Big Complaint

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Jersey Guys Board, your sports talk home for the Yanks, the Giants, the Knicks, the Rangers, and the Rucker Scarlett Knights. And I'm your host, Don. Thanks for listening. And today me talking about how the New York Yankees pitchers deserve better than this friggin' dysfunctional mess that is called the New York Yankee hitters. Let's go ahead and get started. Well, it's been a bit since we got into the Yankee podcasting. So I wanted to take this time to talk about our New York Yankees. And honestly, if you stepped away for two or three weeks from watching Yankee games and came back and thought, what are they doing? Honestly, it's exactly the same as you've seen three weeks ago. And as a matter of fact, any Yankee fan that watches the Yankees on TV every night pretty much is experiencing Groundhog's Day because it is the same thing over and over. And so you probably didn't miss much.

Great Pitching And Dead Bats

SPEAKER_00

What you missed was pretty great starting pitching almost every single night. Better than expected relief pitching, much to my surprise, even though I don't think the Yanks have enough relievers to actually go far in the playoffs, should everything else somehow click. And then you've seen hitting that is beyond dysfunctional. It is a dysfunctional mess, a cornucopia of shit at the plate. Yankee hitters step up to the plate one after a number, one after another, and just fail to continue to get the job done. And this happens every single night. If you talk to any Yankee fan that watches them all the time, you can flip on any game over the last two weeks outside of one or two, and it's the same thing. You turn on the six inning, the Yankees have zero runs or one run. They have somewhere between zero and three hits. The Yankee starting pitcher is pitching a great game, has given up zero or one runs, and half the time the Yankees lose, and half the time the Yankees win. That's kind of how they've been, right, recently. You win some, you lose some, absolutely to no fault of the starting pitchers. But the hitting is about the biggest pile of dog shit you could possibly assemble at this point. Yes, we have people hurt. Aaron Judge has been hurt and now for a long time. That is unquestionably a giant hole in the New York Yankees lineup. You have Stanton, you know, the master of never being in the lineup, who guess what, is not in the lineup. You have Cody Bellinger finally coming back to the lineup really soon after being out four or five weeks, right? So it is clear, obvious, that there are holes in the lineup because of the injuries. That said, there's no excuse for the rest of the lineup to be hitting the way it is. Absolutely no excuse. I don't know what else you can say about the disaster, the giant black hole that we call the New York Yankees offense.

The Stats Behind The Mess

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Let's look at a little statistics here. The Yankees offense as a team this season, they are batting 229. That is 29th in baseball. Their OPS is 716. That's 17th in baseball. They do have the second most home runs in baseball, though. Ooh, great. That'll tell you how important home runs are. 171 homers, second in baseball. And yet they have the worst offense in baseball. Right? They have 120 stolen bases, which I really am happy about, and I think are a big part of winning ball games nowadays, especially. But a 229 batting average is just absolutely unacceptable. So you you you pair the 29th batting average offense in the majors with the top ERA in baseball, 3.26 ERA, third in opponent's batting average, fourth in whip, eighth in saves, sixth in wins, eighth in strikeouts. The pitching up and down the lineup outside of a few relievers has been really, really good. And the Yankee hitters should be embarrassed to take the same field as their pitchers this season. And it's the same thing over and over and over and over. And almost all of the Yankee hitters are in this mess. George Lombard Jr. has been an exception. I like the pickup, Louis Garcia Jr., he's been sort of a fresh pickup and seems to do pretty well. Outside of that, it's been pretty bad. This Heliot Ramos is an absolute dog shit pickup. What a disaster. His last 10 games, batting 094, no homers, no ribbies, batting 180, I mean slugging 188, batting 094. What are you gonna say about that? I mean, I don't know what you say. Even Ben Rice is slumping like you can't believe. His last 10 games, he's batting 132. His last 30 games, he's batting 179. So this is now a month of baseball where Ben Rice is batting 179. Two weeks of baseball where he's batting 132. You cannot have these kind of performances up and down the lineup if you're trying to substitute for the loss of the three big bats that are out of your lineup. Jazz Chisholm Jr. batting 216 for the entire year, 207 in his last 10 games, 192 over his last 30 games. So again, a month plus of baseball batting 192 for Jazz Chisholm. And again, you can go up and down this lineup and you can just talk about how terrible each of the players has been. And they all, except for a few, I think Caballero has done a few things in spots. He's actually hitting 300 in his last 10 games. There's a few others that have done okay, but up and down the lineup, the Yankees are just not good enough. And they don't scare anyone. Anyone at all. I mean, I like Garcia. I really like George Lombard Jr., which I'm gonna take a minute to talk about. But it's really hard to get excited if you're a Yankee fan. Turn on the game and say, ooh, XYZ is at the plate. If it's not Lombard, I don't even give a shit anymore because it's like, okay,

George Lombard Jr Brings Life

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I guess what's gonna happen here. In what has been the best move in many years for the Yankees, they called up George Lombard Jr., as I reported on my last podcast, and it has been electrifying as a Yankee fan. And if you don't like watching Lombard, you probably should not be watching the Yankees. He is a spectacular player. Uh he brings energy, youth, he runs the bases fast, he's got speed, he's quite athletic at shortstop. He has a rocket arm, he has good instincts, he is young, so he doesn't make certain mistakes, but he's got some power, he gets the bat on the ball. So far, he's not striking out a lot. That's been the dig on him, if there is one, is that as he moves up a level, AA, AA, AAA, you know, that his hitting takes a few weeks to a month to catch up. So I expected the first couple weeks of his major league performance to be not great at the plate and really good in the field. It's been really good in the field and pretty damn good at the plate as well. There isn't a lot you can say negative unless you're looking for something, you know, there isn't a whole lot you can say negative about, you know, George Lombard Jr. So as a Yankee fan, you really, really have to be pleased with, you know, the Yankees finally getting rid of that dog shit bile of my existence, you know, Anthony Volpe, you know, at least for now. God help us if they bring up again as a second baseman. But and getting rid of him and just moving on to George Lombard Jr., which he is so much more the prototypical shortstop than Anthony Volpe ever was. Lombard's hitting 270, you know, and and obviously, you know, that's pretty much his recent games too, since he's only played, you know, a few games. And he's done but he's done fine. He's got a couple homers, he hits the ball the other way. He has a really good range at shortstop, he has good instincts at shortstop. Everything you want in a young player, we have it. So that is one thing I certainly tune into Yankee games

Max Fried Hits The IL Again

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for. One person I am not going to be tuning into, unfortunately, for a long time, is Freed. Once again, Freed. Oh, God. The Yanks announced that Max Fried is on the I. So after they just announced that Carlos Rodon is returning from his IL stint. Matter of fact, Rodon is going to start tonight. I'm recording this on a Tuesday, the 18th. Carlos Rodon is starting tonight's game. He's been out for a while. So just after announcing that, they announced they're placing Max Fried on the 15th IL with a bone bruise in his left elbow. And for those that don't remember, that's the same friggin' injury that sidelined Freed for more than two months earlier this year. And that means we may not see Freed again this season. We don't know how this is going. We don't know if this is more mild, but you get an injury that keeps you out two months, and then you get the same damn injury. It's not good. It's not good, especially in the pitching elbow of a starting pitcher. That is just what do you say about that? I don't know, I don't know what you say. What we can expect is Carlos Rodan to join the starting lineup, and we'll see how we do. It seems like Warren and Weathers really have second, third, and fourth lives there. Every time we think we're going to have a full rotation and that one of those two will have to go to the bullpen, someone else gets hurt. So we're going to see how this works out this time. You can't have too much starting pitching. That's always been the saying in baseball, and it continues to be the mantra and continues to be a truism. What can we expect? We can expect probably good starting pitching, probably the Yankees getting four hits and one or two runs. You know, maybe they'll break out and hit a few homers, run into a few. But unfortunately, the Yankees continue to not believe in hot. And if anyone is actually hitting well, if there is a lefty or a righty, Boone must put the other, you know, if there's a righty, Boone must put a lefty. If there is a lefty, you must put a righty. You know, rarely, rarely does he sit so he finally sat Chisholm after about, you know, two straight months of disastrous hitting, finally sat him, you know, and put Caballero at second the other day, and he played really well and really was a driving force in the Yankees winning that final game of the series over the weekend. Matter of fact, we we beat Toronto and we beat Dylan Sees, which just never seems to happen,

What Help Is Actually Coming

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right? So the bottom line is what can the Yankees do? Not much at all here. There isn't a lot of help coming. Bellinger should be back soon. That should help everywhere. It will help defensively. He is probably one of the best left fielders in the major leagues. He is a good hitter, although sometimes he's streaky. He has good base running skills, he has a good arm. So that will help in all areas, right? And if we have to see less, hopefully, of Ramos out there, more power to us. That would be great. Anyway, we're gonna have to see how it goes. That is a very short podcast. Complaining been about the Yankee hitting. There isn't much more to say here about the New York Yankees this day these days. It's great starting pitching, it's terrible hitting, and it's a low scoring win or a low scoring loss. And it's Groundhog's Day and just rinse, repeat over and over again. This frigging team, God help us. Anyway, that's it. I'm gonna wrap up this very short podcast. I want to thank you for listening to Jersey Guys Sports. Please subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends all about it, and I'll be back soon with some more sports talk. Thanks. Have a good day.

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Don Signorino

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