Why Yankees fans should always be optimistic heading into the second half

It’s very easy to get discouraged about the 2021 Yankees. They sit third in the AL East, have a +1 point differential and only have a 41% chance of making the playoffs. They’ve had crushing losses to the Angels, Mets and Astros … but they’re also coming out of the all-star break by winning six of their last eight games and watching a four-game streak with the Red Sox that could tear them apart. back in the division race.

At the start of the season, the consensus opinion of the New York Yankees was that they were returning a great lineup and betting on the starting pitcher. They had Gerrit Cole, then six or seven different guys who could all play a part in the starting rotation, and the roster should hit enough to give the club time to establish a rotation.

Instead, for the first six or eight weeks of the season, the Yankees boasted of being some of the best pitchers in the game, while the offense struggled to get anything started. For a while there, it looked like the Bronx Bombers were going to be at gunpoint for the season. Since June 1, however, this has been reversed. In April and May, the Yankees managed a 92 wRC + squad – exactly the league’s median – averaging 4.12 points per game.

As the weather warmed up so did the sticks, with the club handling a 111 wRC + and 4.8 running a game. Those two ratings are slightly lower than the first three offenses the team have consistently posted over the past two seasons, but the positive trends are there. The power is there, with the club gaining 60 ISO points there in April / May. They hit less and, above all, make the ball fly much more.

The Yankees’ GB / FB rate at the start of the year was 1.33, the eighth worst in baseball. At 1.22 since June 1, they are back to the league average. There’s still a way to go for this offense – clubs like Boston and the Dodgers are around 1: 1 Groundball: flyball, for example – but they look a lot more like the offense we thought we had, one that could surpass a personal pitch tremor.

Additionally, while the staff have had a terrible June and appear to have caught a glaring wart, they are doing just fine:

The more predictive underlying metrics such as FIP and xFIP have remained fairly stable throughout the season. June was a bit bumpier, but overall and in July the pitch was average to slightly better. Combine that with an above average attack, and you have several ways to beat an opponent, the key to landing big weeks.

That’s not to say that there are still no issues with this team. The major pieces that are expected to contribute to the offense are doing worse than expected, with DJ LeMahieu, Gio Urshela and Luke Sees all around the league average, and despite a recent week of bullish batting data, Gleyber Torres did still hasn’t been an MLB-caliber Bat. The Yankees may not need all four to make a second-half comeback, but they probably need three to hit their career average.

There is also instability in the rotation. Jameson Taillon had a few good starts and Jordan Montgomery is a solid, if unspectacular, full back on the swing arm. The team still need a legitimate No.2 behind Gerrit Cole – who himself has to prove his full shutout against the Astros was no fluke, after trending down the previous five starts – and probably doesn’t have time to wait for Luis Severino or Corey Kluber to return.

And then, of course, there is Aroldis Chapman. The Yankees pay a man $ 17 million to close games, then don’t trust him to close games. Their setbacks against the Mets and Angels cost the team two wins they can’t really spare at this point in the season. Now, dips like these aren’t exactly unknown to Chappy, in fact he has about one a year:

This dip happened to be by far the worst of his career. Whether it’s caused by lack of tack, nail issues, mechanical issues or whatever, the Yankees need an efficient Chapman to lead their field. Again, being optimistic, he was able to come out of this kind of blackout before.

The Yankees have a high hill to climb and only 73 games to do so. But we have spent the season preparing for the worst possible result. The team hits much better. The pitch appears to have stabilized after a difficult June. With the right addition and a correction in the performance of a certain closer, I think there is a real chance that the best is yet to come for the second half.