What is wrong with this team? It is frustrating for all of us to watch. Whether it's the inability to drive in a run or the inability to hold a lead, it is completely exasperating to fans like you and me. I know that it's only 13 games in, but I feel like that's an excuse that has an expiration date.
I am especially frustrated by the hitting. The Yankees scored 2 runs or less in 6 of their first 12 games. It's hard to win when your team doesn't score. When you look at some of the hitting stats, there are some patterns to which hitting coach Alan Cockrell better be paying attention. Against the backdrop of a team batting average of .249 , the Yankees are hitting a paltry .215 against left-handed pitchers. The switch hitters aren't helping here. Carlos Beltran is the only productive switch hitter in the lineup, leading the team in every major hitting category. The rest - Mark Teixeira, Chase Headley, and Aaron Hicks are hitting .173 combined. Hicks is especially dreadful, still looking for this second hit of the season. With a .059 average, forget the interstate - he's on dirt roads.
Then there is the situational hitting. With runners in scoring position, the Yankees are hitting .210. With 2 outs, the average drops to .119. They also seem to tail off at the end of games. In the 7th inning or later they are hitting .193 as a team. Again, with the team overall average being at .249, the rest of the stats are actually pretty decent. It's just when they have opportunities to score runs or need to score runs that they fall off the map.
I had high hopes earlier this year that Joe Girardi was going to crack the whip and not tolerate the kind of poor performance we are now seeing. I think we all expect more from this team. I understand that it's early and you don't want to make any knee-jerk reactions to a 12-game slump. But these are not cheap players, and it's not like we don't have other options. During spring training, we talked about how a lot of these kids would see time at the major league level. That may come sooner than expected.
--Ike Dimitriadis, BYB Senior Staff Writer
Twitter: @KingAgamemnon
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The sound of silence, from the batter's box, screams in the darkness. This bleat time will pass and we will, once again, hear the sweet crack of the Yankee bat and witness the Pinstripes dashing between bases.
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