It’s early, but hitting, scoring woes linger

BALTIMORE — It’s like deja vu all over again. The Yankees offense, built on power, modified to be more balanced and under new leadership, is still waiting to see results. Eight games into the season and the questions about scoring and hits with runners in scoring position are already starting after a brutal 2-1, 11-inning loss to the Orioles on Friday night.

Aaron Boone tried to cut the comparison to last season off at the pass.

“I just think we’re better. I think we’re better overall,” the Yankees manager said when asked about the team falling back into bad habits. “And I think that’s going to manifest itself. Obviously, we want to be better than 2-for-11, but that wasn’t the problem [Friday night].

“We didn’t get enough of anything tonight. That’s 11 innings, seven hits, maybe. I don’t know how many walks we had. So, it was just that we didn’t have a very good offensive night. That’s what we got to turn the page from. I’m confident in our guys that we will get it rolling.”

The Yankees’ major moves this offseason were to shake up the coaching staff. In particular, the Bombers let go long-time hitting coaches Marcus Thames and P.J. Pilittere to promote minor league hitting coordinator Dillon Lawson after the offense was inconsistent and unproductive. The Yankees were built on power hitters and to overwhelm their opponents with offense, but finished seventh in the American League in OPS (.729), 10th in runs scored (711) and were fourth in strikeouts (1,482) last season.

Lawson has instituted an organizational philosophy of “hit strikes hard,” from the bottom (rookie ball) now all the way to the top (big leagues).

“If you peel that back, just one layer. It’s not that complicated,” Lawson explained after he was

promoted. “When we swing, we want to swing to hit strikes. When we swing at strikes we’re likely to make more contact. When we make more contact, we’re likely to hit the ball harder.

“The last little thing would be that when we make hard contact, if we can we would like to hit it over the infield. Sometimes we’d like to hit it over the outfield fence … all of that works,” Lawson continued. “But that would be the next layer.”

So far that has not translated to the Yankees offense.

The Yankees went into Saturday night’s game against the Orioles at Camden Yards ranked second in the big leagues in average exit velocity and hard hit percentage, but are still below the league average in OPS (.684), OPS+ (99) and slugging (.376).

More to the point, however, is that the Yankees went into Saturday night’s game ranked 26th out of 30 in runs scored per game. Their 3.12 runs per game is only better than the Brewers, Diamondbacks and Orioles. They’ve had the sixth most runners left on base with 59 this season and ranked the fifth worst with runners in scoring position, hitting .180. They have the third worst run-scoring percentage in the big leagues, meaning only 20% of their runners who reach base eventually score a run — they are better only than the Orioles and Diamondbacks.

Another trend that seems to have carried over from last season is their penchant for grounding into double plays, they are second in the majors with nine so far. Last season, the Yankees were second in the big leagues with 154 GDPs, the most in the American League.

The Bombers did not make major personnel changes to their lineup. They are more balanced than they were at the start of the 2021 season and the addition of lefty Anthony Rizzo has been one clear improvement (slashing .214/.389/.571 with three homers and seven RBI). DJ LeMahieu is healthy after an off 2021 in which he tried to play through a sports hernia and looks headed to a bounceback season (.280/ .379/.480 with two doubles and a home run).

Both Rizzo and LeMahieu dismissed the comparisons to last season and emphasized that eight games is such a small sample size in a 162-game season.

“I know the 2021 stuff, but this is the week, just eight games into a whole new journey. So we’re gonna have ups and downs throughout the year and it’s just it’s just the ebbs and flow of the season,” Rizzo said.