LeMahieu leads the Yankees makeover
BOSTON — By the time the New York Yankees finally made it to Fenway Park this season, on Thursday night, the American League East race was all but over. The Yankees brought Major League Baseball’s best record, 66-35, into this four-game visit. Every other team on the Green Monster’s standings board was at least 10 games behind.
The Red Sox went on to win the game by a whopping 19-3, but that was just a small dent in the Yankees’ armour.
“Right now, they’re the best team in baseball,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said, and, to emphasize the point, the Yankees started the series with the American League’s leading hitter, D.J. LeMahieu, at the plate in the top of the first inning.
As the all-star manager this month, Cora had LeMahieu batting second, behind the Houston Astros’ George Springer. But he credited LeMahieu with reinventing the Yankees’ offence.
“This guy, he puts the ball in play, he hits the ball the other way, he grinds out at-bats, and he’s doing an outstanding job with men in scoring position,” Cora said before the game Thursday. “You look at the last two World Series champions, they did an outstanding job of putting the ball in play with men in scoring position, not striking out in certain situations.”
Cora would know. He was the bench coach for the Astros in 2017, when they won the Series, and managed the Red Sox to the championship last year. He sees the same kind of sophisticated offensive approach from these Yankees.
“You have the big guys going the other way, going against the shift,” Cora said. “I think, offensively, there’s a difference. There were a lot of swings and misses the last few years.”
To be sure, several Yankees still strike out prodigiously. But the offence has indeed cut its strikeout rate and is now roughly at the league average in that category. Entering Thursday’s games, 22.9 per cent of the Yankees’ plate appearances had resulted in a strikeout; the major-league average was 22.8 per cent. LeMahieu has set the example.
Signed as a free agent in January for two years and $24 million, he arrived at Fenway on Thursday with 15 home runs, 70 RBIs and that AL-best .336 average. Reliever Adam Ottavino, a former Colorado Rockies teammate of LeMahieu’s, had a feeling he would make an impact.
“He’s always been the type of player that the other players love the most,” Ottavino said. “After a little while, he’s everybody’s favourite player. So I knew that would be the same here. He’s a pretty good guy to watch play every day, and it’s pretty inspiring to see a guy play that type of pure baseball so well.”
Only 13.8 per cent of LeMahieu’s plate appearances have ended with a strikeout. His aggressive, opportunistic strategy has paid off, with a .476 average on the first pitch and a .430 mark with runners in scoring position. But LeMahieu played down his effect on teammates.
“We just have a lot of really good hitters on the team,” LeMahieu said. “We have a lot of hitters that are just really good hitters that hit for power, rather than just power hitters. It’s just a deep lineup.”
Hitters do talk, though, and with LeMahieu, they usually ask about his swing — the kind another Yankees infielder, Derek Jeter, once used so effectively.
“Most guys ask me, just: ‘How do you stay inside the ball, how do you hit the ball to right field so consistently?’ ” LeMahieu said. “But for me, that’s kind of how I’ve always been. I don’t try to do anything other than try to hit the ball really hard.”
In watching the post-season the past two years, LeMahieu said, he has noticed which teams win.
“I think it’s the teams that just put a lot of really good at-bats together in a row, guys that don’t strike out a whole lot, guys that are just tough outs,” LeMahieu said. “It seems like those kind of lineups, pitchers never want to face that — and in the playoffs, for sure.”
Forecasting October will become the primary topic of conversation around the Yankees for the next two months.
But those standings in the left-field corner at Fenway tell the story: 10 games up on Tampa Bay before Thursday, 11 games up on the Red Sox.
Let Boston fret about the wildcard race. The Yankees will take the front door into the post-season, and LeMahieu will be the first one through.