August 23rd, 2019: RISP, Sanchez, Happ, Severino, Deivi, Roster Crunch, Mailbag

Everyone ready for the World Series preview in Los Angeles this weekend? It's Players Weekend too. Gonna be a lot of fun (I hope). Here are today's thoughts as the annual nightmare West Coast trip moves to Tinseltown.

1. RISP woes. It took four months, but the Yankees are finally having what is really their first bad week with runners in scoring position this season. It was bound to happen. That it didn't happen until mid-August is wild. Since the start of the Indians series last week, the Yankees are hitting .245/.281/.283 (49 wRC+) with men in scoring position. They put 26 runners on base in the first two games of the Athletics series and scored six runs total, including three on solo home runs. They had chances to tie the game or even take the lead in the late innings Tuesday and Wednesday, but could not get The Big Hit. So it goes. The Yankees are still hitting .302/.375/.523 (130 wRC+) as a team with runners in scoring position, which is bonkers. They're on pace to become the first team to hit .300 with runners in scoring position in a full season since the 2013 Cardinals put up a .330(!)/.402/.463 (137 wRC+) batting line in those situations. The batting average with runners in scoring position leaderboard is something else:

1. Charlie Blackmon: .422
2. Miguel Cabrera: .413
3. DJ LeMahieu: .406
4. Gio Urshela: .379
5. Bryce Harper: .379
6. Jeff McNeil: .378
7. Gleyber Torres: .370

Three Yankees in the top seven! Last season Torres led the Yankees with a .308 AVG with runners in scoring position, which was the 31st highest in baseball. Now the Yankees have three of the top seven. Pretty great. I don't believe hitting with runners in scoring position is truly a skill -- LeMahieu hit .278/.303/.389 (66 wRC+) with runners in scoring position last year and is hitting .229/.317/.314 (70 wRC+) in those spots since July 1st, but his talent level didn't change -- it's hitting that is the skill. Good hitters will hit well in all situations, assuming they get enough at-bats for their true talent to come out, which isn't often the case with runners in scoring position. The Yankees are hitting well with runners in scoring position this year because they have a lot of really good hitters. Period. It's not some super special clutch gene. Anyway, those key hits aren't falling in right now. I'm not worried about it, it's just part of the game, but it is annoying in the moment. Even while shorthanded due to injury, the Yankees have pretty much the perfect offense because they can score in so many ways (homers, bunch together hits, two-out rallies, etc.) and have dangerous hitters up and down the lineup. “I thought (we had) a lot of good at-bats. Just not that big hit tonight to really break through or have that huge inning. But I thought the quality of at-bat, the guys kind of grinding and fighting through obviously good pitching over there and them really matching up and treating it obviously like an important game, like it is  … was pretty good," Aaron Boone told Ken Davidoff following Wednesday's loss.

2. Gary's return. Gary Sanchez was mired in an ugly month-long slump when he hit the injured list last month, but, since coming back two weeks ago, he's looked like the hitter he was earlier this season, when he was a smashing homers every other day. Sanchez is 11-for-40 (.275) since returning with four home runs in eleven games. He hit four home runs in the 30 games immediately prior to the injured list stint. Whenever Gary slumps, he tends to try to snap out of it with one big swing, which creates other problems. His plate discipline suffers and, as much as anything, his timing is thrown out of whack. The result is often weak contact and ground balls, and Sanchez hit a lot of ground balls when he was slumping. Some numbers:

Sample sample size, for sure, but it's all we have right now. The early returns back from the injured list are promising. Sanchez is elevating the ball again and he's hitting it hard. Last year Gary played through the shoulder injury no one knew about -- Brian Cashman dropped the surgery bomb during the GM Meetings in November -- and it could've contributed to his down season. Likely did. I don't think this year's groin injury contributed to his slump though. To me, Sanchez looked out of sorts at the plate for a few weeks before he hurt himself running down to first base. I don't think he would have played as much as he did had he been nursing a groin injury all that time. Catchers can't hide nagging leg injuries. Guys fall out of sync at the plate. It happens. Sanchez has gotten himself back together since the injury -- his at-bats in general look so much better -- and I'm glad. Gary is a game-changer when he's on at the plate. The Yankees have the advantage at the catcher position every time he is in the lineup.

3. Happ's struggles. J.A. Happ is an unmitigated disaster. I didn't have high expectations for him this year but I thought he would be a serviceable back-end starter -- "Happ is fine if not underwhelming. It’s fine," I wrote after the signing -- but I don't think anyone expected him to be this bad.  He has been the worst regular starting pitcher in baseball and that is not hyperbole. His 2.16 HR/9 is the highest among qualified starters, and both his 5.58 ERA and 5.68 FIP are second highest (Aaron Sanchez has a 5.89 ERA and Yusei Kikuchi has a 5.71 FIP) -- and the Yankees can't even demote him to the bullpen a la Sonny Gray because they have no obviously superior candidate to replace him. Happ stubbornly shaking off Gary Sanchez all night and getting tagged for five runs and two homers in four innings the other day was my favorite dumb moment of the season. The guy's been getting lit up all year but dammit, he is sticking to his plan, not the plan the Yankees developed and Sanchez is relaying. It was quite the juxtaposition watching Happ get knocked around with his 92-93 mph fastball while Mike Fiers carved the Yankees up with his 88 mph heater. It works for Fiers because he throws his fastball 50% of the time and keeps hitters off-balance with curveballs, changeups, and cutters. Happ is still out there throwing roughly 70% fastballs, 25 starts and 31 home runs into his season.

As terrible as Happ has been this year, the fact the Yankees don't have anyone to replace him in the rotation is more damning. They have two starters on the injured list in Luis Severino and Jordan Montgomery, and those guys have been out a long time, the same way Happ has been struggling for a long time. The injuries and Happ's crumminess didn't sneak up on anyone, and yet a team with World Series aspirations blamed the market for their inability to address a glaring weakness at the trade deadline. The complacency is real. "We have five starters right now in a stretch of games in a row. Yeah, he'll be back out there," Aaron Boone told Brendan Kuty when asked whether Happ would make his next start following Wednesday's disaster, and that's about as little confidence as Boone will show in one of his players publicly. There is no saving Happ's season now. The Yankees built a big AL East lead despite him, and the best thing he can do is chew up innings the rest of the way to save the bullpen for October. "Struggling to keep the ball in the park for whatever reason. It’s not for lack of trying to figure it out ...  We’re trying to figure out tunneling, pitch selection, delivery, tinkering with grips. We’re trying to do what we can," Happ told Erik Boland and Bryan Hoch following Wednesday's start.

4. Severino's timetable. It is August 23rd and Luis Severino faced hitters for the first time yesterday. It wasn't a minor league rehab game. Just a two-inning simulated game in Tampa. Severino will throw a longer simulated game early next week, and if that goes well, he could pitch in a minor league rehab game soon thereafter. “Assuming everything goes well with him bouncing back, he will be on that five-day rotation. He will throw another side in between and have a more extensive sim game his next time out, in five days. Hopefully if that goes well, probably the next time out would be maybe in some game action," Aaron Boone told George King. It's great Severino is making progress, but, at this point, there is little chance the Yankees will be able to stretch him out to even 80 pitches before the regular season ends. I'm not even sure he'll be a September 1st call-up at this rate. The Yankees could -- and should -- give Severino a few minor league rehab starts to shake off the rust. You don't want him pitching with big league adrenaline so soon after the injuries and without being built up properly. That's a recipe for another setback and another setback ends his season. There is no more hitting pause now. The Yankees could keep Severino in the minors through the end of the postseason -- Double-A Trenton has already clinched a postseason spot and Triple-A Scranton is in good position to do the same -- then summon him to the big leagues the final three weeks or so. Not ideal, but I'm not sure what else they're supposed to do at this point. The priority is not getting Severino back to the Yankees as soon as possible. The priority is getting him ready for October. Considering he just threw his first simulated game yesterday, I think activating Severino on September 1st would be very risky. It could be too much, too soon. Give him a few minor league rehab outings to get back into the swing of things, then ask him to get MLB hitters out. Treating big league games as rehab games is not ideal. It's necessary sometimes, but if you can avoid it, avoid it. The less the Yankees ask Severino to treat his MLB games as rehab games, the better. If that means he makes a few Triple-A postseason starts and returns September 12th rather than September 1st, so be it. Severino is too important to rush things. They Yankees are counting on him way too much to mishandle his rehab again. (This all applies to Dellin Betances too, by the way. Betances hasn't even faced hitters yet.)

5. Deivi's role change. The Yankees shifted top pitching prospect Deivi Garcia to the bullpen earlier this week -- he struck out five in two innings last night -- and that is in no way surprising. For starters, it is a way to control his workload. Garcia is up to 105.2 innings this season, a healthy increase from the 74 innings he threw last year, his previous career high. It's time to pull back on the reins. Secondly, the Yankees have openly discussed Garcia as a September call-up candidate -- "We’ve got to finish his development off. If he does help here this year, it’ll be out of the bullpen," Brian Cashman said during a radio interview earlier this month -- and this is a way to prepare him for that bullpen role. The Yankees moved Justus Sheffield (and Chance Adams) to the bullpen last August to prepare him for a September bullpen role. They moved Joba Chamberlain to the bullpen in Triple-A before calling him up back in the day. This is standard operating procedure. Garcia has never worked as a reliever before, so use whatever Triple-A time he has remaining to get him comfortable. You'd rather him not have to learn a new warmup routine and whatnot on the fly in the big leagues, you know? "It’s a couple different reasons. One, just to preserve pitches and that kind of stuff. But they also want to see if he’s an option in New York in September. So, we’ll see what happens there," RailRiders manager Jay Bell told Conor Foley. Interestingly enough, Brendan Kuty says the Yankees had Garcia use the MLB baseball during his between starts bullpen work in Double-A, so that adjustment is well underway. Doesn't mean he's comfortable with the big league ball yet, but he has been working with it for a good while now. My hunch is the Yankees will call Garcia up in September and give him a legitimate look without throwing him into the fire. Similar to what they did with Stephen Tarpley last year, basically. Don't expect him to get high-leverage outs but give him a chance to make an impression. I don't believe a call-up is a guarantee though. The Yankees have a 40-man roster crunch coming (more on that in a bit) and there could be workload issues. They could decide to pull the plug on Garcia's season if he starts showing signs of fatigue. If the Yankees do call him up, I'm curious to see whether Deivi uses all four pitches in relief, or consolidates his repertoire and goes with his two top pitches. That's a question for another time. The shift to the bullpen is exciting because it could mean he's coming up once rosters expand. I also think it would've been more telling if the Yankees didn't move Garcia to the bullpen at some point. This is what they do with their pitching prospects. "I’ve watched tape of him but it’s hard for me to tell (what Garcia's biggest developmental priority is) without seeing him, where he is with stuff and seeing him out of the bullpen, which we haven’t," pitching coach Larry Rothschild told Kuty. 

6. 40-man roster situation. The Yankees currently have 49 players on the 40-man roster, including nine players on the 60-day injured list: Miguel Andujar (shoulder), Jake Barrett (elbow), Dellin Betances (shoulder), Greg Bird (foot), Jacoby Ellsbury (hip), Ben Heller (elbow), Jordan Montgomery (elbow), Luis Severino (shoulder, lat), and Giancarlo Stanton (knee). We can reasonably expect Betances, Heller, Severino, and Stanton back in September. We know Andujar is done for the year. Ellsbury is a giant insurance scam at this point, so forget him. As of the last update, Bird was still in recovery mode and had not yet started baseball activities, so he's probably a non-option. I saw Barrett playing catch before a game during the last homestand, so I guess he's on the way back? Montgomery has a chance to be activated in September. He faced hitters in a simulated game last week and Brian Cashman was quick to note Montgomery is ahead of Severino with his rehab. Rehabbing a new elbow ligament is different than rehabbing a shoulder and lat though. The Yankees might not want to push Montgomery back to the show in September. For now, let's assume Betances, Heller, Severino, and Stanton are coming back in September and the Yankees will need to clear four 40-man roster spots. I suspect the chopping block looks like this at the moment:

1. Ryan Dull
2. Adonis Rosa
3. Breyvic Valera
4. Mike Ford
5. Domingo Acevedo

Dull and Rosa are essentially 1A and 1B. I'd be fine with flipping them. Valera is a competent utility infielder in an organization loaded with competent infielders. The Yankees would still have Thairo Estrada and Tyler Wade as infield depth pieces, hence Valera on the chopping block. Ford is everything Yankees fans complained about three or four years ago. He's a lefty batter who pulls everything into the shift, he's slow, he's a poor defender, and he has no versatility (other than pitching in blowouts). Once Luke Voit and/or Edwin Encarnacion return, there's no reason to keep Ford around. (I believe his at-bats should be going to Clint Frazier right now, but I've lost that fight.) Acevedo has not had a good year and he seems to have stalled developmentally. I think he's a candidate to lose his 40-man roster spot, but, right now, there are a few guys ahead of him on the chopping block. Voit, Encarnacion, Jonathan Holder, and Stephen Tarpley could become 60-day injured list candidates depending on their progress, which would create more 40-man flexibility. Keep in mind though, it's not just Betances, Heller, Severino, and Stanton coming back. It might be Montgomery too, and Deivi Garcia could get called up. So too could pinch-runner extraordinaire Terrance Gore. Come the offseason, the 40-man logjam will clear out because the Yankees have a bunch of dudes scheduled to become free agents. In September though, things could be real tight. Prepare for a flurry of roster moves these next two or three weeks.

Mailbag Question of the Week

Mike asks: I recall last season with how impressed you were that the Yankees got 20 home runs out of every lineup position. Since they are on pace to hit even more home runs this year and have gotten so much production throughout the lineup, I was wondering where they stand this season as far as potentially repeating.  I have to imagine that the Twins have a good chance of doing it as well.

Yeah, getting at least 20 home runs from all nine lineup spots last season was insane. One of my all-time favorite stats. The Yankees are on pace to hit 293 home runs this year, which would shatter last year's all-time record (267). It is only August 23rd and the Yankees are already very close to receiving 20 home runs from each lineup spot. Look at this:

1. 26
2. 29
3. 32
4. 25
5. 29
6. 25
7. 27
8. 21
9. 18

Two more home runs from the No. 9 spot and the Yankees will do it again. Could happen before the end of the road trip! Heck, the Yankees have a chance to get 25 homers from each lineup spot this year because there are so many games remaining. That is pretty nuts.

The Twins are on pace to hit 311 homers, which would obviously obliterate the all-time home run record the Yankees set last season. Minnesota does have a deep lineup -- they already have eleven players with double-digit homers -- and they have a chance to get 20 homers from each lineup spot, though they're well short in two spots:

1. 39
2. 30
3. 41
4. 26
5. 30
6. 13
7. 21
8. 31
9. 13

It's doable, but the Twins need their No. 6 and No. 9 hitters (nice) to pick up the pace these last five weeks. I wish there was an easy way to look this up historically. I can't imagine many teams have received at least 20 homers from all nine lineup spots through the years.

Bonus Mailbag Question of the Week

Laura asks: Do you think Judge's off year and injuries are going to save the Yankees money in arbitration?

Yes, undoubtedly. Aaron Judge has played 184 of 291 possible games since Opening Day 2018 and the missed time alone will take a bite out of his earning potential. Also, he's having a down year by his standards -- you have to be a helluva ballplayer for .264/.384/.460 (123 wRC+) and +3.1 WAR to be considered a down year -- which will limit his raise as well.

That said, Judge is still going to go into arbitration with a Rookie of the Year award, an MVP runner-up, two All-Star Game selections, a home run title, close to +20 WAR, and more than 100 career home runs (he's at 96 now). That's going to get him paid. Four players have received $10M+ in their first year of arbitration eligibility:

Judge stacks up pretty well with those guys. Had he stayed healthy these last two years and put up big numbers -- not necessarily 2017 numbers, just big numbers in general -- it's likely Judge would've broken Bryant's first year salary arbitration record. Now he'll probably have to settle -- "settle" -- for $9M or so rather than possibly $11M or more. 

(Send your mailbag questions to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)