The good news for the New York Yankees—the last-place Yankees, the 1-in-3-playoff-odds Yankees, the mightily disappointing and second-most-expensive-team-in-baseball Yankees—is that Aaron Judge will probably return to the field on Friday, after missing almost two months due to a toe injury.
That’s no small matter. (And not just because Judge is so big and tall.) The reigning MVP hasn’t been quite as destructive at the plate in 2023 as he was last season, when he set an American League record with 62 home runs, but he’s still the best hitter in the majors when healthy: His 187 wRC+ this season leads all players with at least 200 plate appearances.
The Yankees are in desperate need of his offense. Since June 4, the first game Judge missed with his injury, the so-called Bronx Bombers are hitting just .220/.296/.374 as a team—but it’s not as if Judge’s teammates have gotten worse in his absence. Rather, over the full season, non-Judge Yankees are slashing a similarly sorry .227/.296/.390, much like the non-Judge Yankees slashed .223/.292/.360 after the 2022 All-Star break. The issue is that over the last two months, Judge hasn’t been around to carry the team all by himself.
But the worse news for the Yankees is that even Judge’s return can’t fix all that ails Aaron Boone’s squad as it seeks a seventh consecutive playoff berth. What, exactly, are the 2023 Yankees’ strengths as a team? They’re tied for 21st in the majors in overall performance at the plate (as measured by wRC+) and rank 29th in batting average, 26th in on-base percentage, and 18th in slugging percentage. They’re 28th in baserunning value and 30th in sprint speed. They’re 24th in starting pitcher WAR and tied for 13th in reliever WAR, according to FanGraphs.
If anything, they’re lucky to have even their middling 54-48 record, which puts them on an 86-win pace. The Yankees’ BaseRuns record, an estimate of their expected record based on underlying performance, is 49-53, meaning they’ve overperformed by five wins so far and are still in last place in the ultracompetitive AL East. As ex-skipper Joe Girardi would say, it’s not what you want—in this case, you refers to the Yankees, their fans, and both Boone and general manager Brian Cashman, whose jobs could be on the line.
As they contemplate how to approach Tuesday’s trade deadline, the Yankees hold just a 32 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, according to FanGraphs’ odds, both because of their own deficiencies as a team and because of all the competition they face for the AL’s wild-card berths.
Entering Friday’s games, the Yankees trail the second-place wild-card team, Houston, by 3.5 games and the third-place wild-card team, Toronto, by 2.5 games. So to make the playoffs, they’ll need to catch at least one of those talented rosters. They’ll also need to leapfrog the Red Sox (one game ahead) and hold off the Angels (0.5 games back), who have already upgraded at the deadline rather than trading Shohei Ohtani.
But other than minor upgrades—they’ve been linked to rental bats like Randal Grichuk and Jeimer Candelario—it’s difficult to see the Yankees doing much at the deadline. They don’t have the prospect depth to make a big splash, nor do they have especially desirable MLB players they could trade if they made the unlikely decision to pivot and sell. How did the sport’s most famous (and, historically, most successful) team get stuck in this no-man’s-land?
The problems start with the lineup, which had been dangerously dependent on Judge for years, then lost the big man for two months. “Given how much the rest of the lineup flatlined around MVP Aaron Judge last season, the Yankees are just one Judge injury away from real trouble,” I wrote in our preseason power rankings. Lo and behold, look what transpired when Judge got hurt—but even though this downside was readily apparent, and even though many of their starters have extensive injury histories, the Yankees entered the season with a shockingly shallow depth chart.
Even beyond that expectation, though, a host of the Yankees’ ostensibly more reliable players have underperformed. Out of their 10 most important position players, from a preseason vantage point, Judge is the only one who’s matched his projected batting line thus far. Some of New York’s injury fill-ins, like Billy McKinney and super–utility man Isiah Kiner-Falefa, have been better than expected, but it’s hard to meet championship-level expectations as a team when only one regular—an injured one, at that—does so on an individual level.
Yankees by wRC+, Actual Versus Projected
The Yankees’ much-awaited youth movement hasn’t paid dividends at the MLB level yet. Oswald Peraza has barely received big-league playing time, Oswaldo Cabrera has been a disaster, and top-10 prospect Anthony Volpe has looked like, well, a 22-year-old rookie adjusting to the best pitching in the world. Volpe hasn’t been bad, per se—his durability, baserunning, and solid defense mean he’s still a valuable player even with an inconsistent bat—but he hasn’t quite been the second coming of Derek Jeter, either. Even his ballyhooed “chicken parm” hot streak has abated in recent weeks.
But the larger problem for a team built around veterans is that the old guys have stopped producing too. This season is DJ LeMahieu’s worst at the plate since he became a Yankee. It’s Anthony Rizzo’s worst (not counting 2020) since he was a rookie for the Padres in 2011. It’s Josh Donaldson’s worst since he was a rookie catcher in 2010. And it’s Giancarlo Stanton’s worst in his MLB career.
Rizzo’s pace over the course of the season most aptly parallels the team’s trajectory. The veteran first baseman was hot most of the way through May, then went more than two months without a home run while hitting .182/.274/.218 over that span.
But Donaldson has suffered the weirdest season, which itself offers revelations about the team around him. Before being relegated to the 60-day injured list with a calf injury, the 37-year-old third baseman had only 15 hits in 106 at-bats this year, for a brutal .142 batting average. But 10 of those 15 hits were home runs, and an 11th was a double; Donaldson’s batting line looks so awful because he has a .076 BABIP. Yes, that stat starts with a zero; it’s bizarre. In fact, it’s the lowest BABIP for any player in any season since the start of the 20th century (minimum 100 plate appearances).
Under the hood, Donaldson had actually been making solid contact despite his dismal results. But among all players with at least 100 plate appearances this season, Donaldson has the second-worst performance compared to his expected batting line, according to Statcast calculations of batted-ball quality.
That stat connects to the Yankees’ broader issue. They rank 23rd in weighted on-base average but are tied for ninth in expected wOBA, per Statcast. Notably, the teams with the biggest gaps between expected and actual performance by this metric have all disappointed this season: Kansas City, Detroit, both New York teams, and Seattle.
To some extent, the Yankees’ lack of team speed helps explain their expected-versus-actual gap; on the other end of the spectrum, the biggest xwOBA overachievers are the speedy Diamondbacks, Reds, and Rays. But across the whole league, there’s only a small correlation between team sprint speed and expected-versus-actual performance this season.
Maybe, then, the Yankees have been somewhat unlucky at the plate. The results are grim regardless: Judge is the only Yankee with at least 100 plate appearances and a batting line at least 15 percent better than average. The only other teams with so few players meeting those criteria are the last-place Royals (also one) and Rockies (none). It’s no wonder Cashman chose to replace hitting coach Dillon Lawson with Sean Casey at the All-Star break, the first midseason coach firing of Cashman’s multi-decade career.
Or perhaps the Yankees’ pitching staff has hoarded the team’s ration of good luck for itself. New York has allowed the majors’ third-lowest BABIP and ranks seventh in strand rate, which has boosted the team to the ninth-best ERA despite having the 20th-best FIP.
Herein lie the answers to the earlier question about the team’s few strengths. With an up-the-middle combination of Harrison Bader, Volpe, and an elite catcher framing duo—though Jose Trevino is now out for the season with a wrist ligament tear—the Yankees rate as one of the best defensive teams in the majors.
Moreover, the Yankees can count on Gerrit Cole every fifth day, as their ace is the favorite to win the Cy Young award (which would be his first), according to FanDuel odds. Beyond Cole, New York’s highest-leverage bullpen options—Michael King, Wandy Peralta, Tommy Kahnle, and closer Clay Holmes—have all been solid, if not as flawless as Yankees fans still expect after two decades of Mariano Rivera.
But even the rotation hasn’t met the lofty expectations with which it entered the year. The Yankees hoped their rotation would comprise Cole, Carlos Rodón, Nestor Cortes Jr., Luis Severino, and Frankie Montas. But Rodón—who signed a six-year, $162 million deal as a free agent over the winter—suffered a forearm strain and then a back injury and didn’t make his Yankees debut until July. Cortes fell back to earth after his breakout 2022 campaign—his ERA rose from 2.44 to 5.16 as his batted-ball luck and strikeout, walk, and home run rates all worsened—and is now rehabbing from a shoulder injury. Severino imploded in his contract year en route to a 6.46 ERA and 6.30 FIP. And Montas might not pitch at all this season due to his own shoulder troubles.
In other words, the fearsome five-man unit is now Cole and a bunch of depth options. Clarke Schmidt has been decent as a full-time starter, and Domingo Germán threw a perfect game—amid an incredibly inconsistent season—but the overall outcome, as with the lineup, is a disappointment. The rotation projected before the season to lead the majors in WAR ranks just 24th near the end of July.
Other than Judge and Cole, two stars living up to their pedigree and historic contracts, what is the best on-field story for the Yankees this season? Is it Kahnle, who is once more accruing holds in his return to New York? Ian Hamilton, who’s parlayed a minor league contract into a 1.71 ERA in 31 2/3 innings? Scrap-heap pickups like McKinney and Jake Bauers, who are supplying cromulent offense?
It’s difficult to come up with an enthusiastic answer. Aesthetically, the 2023 Yankees aren’t very fun to watch, and statistically, they’ve devolved into a stars-and-scrubs outfit, with two award-worthy standouts and minimal support behind them. One example of this imbalance: The gap between the Yankee with the second-most WAR this season (Judge) and the Yankee with the third-most WAR (Gleyber Torres) is 1.2 WAR. That’s the largest such gap for any team. And among other AL playoff contenders, only the Angels—who, with Ohtani and Mike Trout, have spent years providing the perfect cautionary tale about stars-and-scrubs rosters in baseball—have a gap even half as large as the Yankees’.
Gaps Between Second- and Third-Best Players by WAR, Among AL Playoff Contenders
That sorry state of affairs isn’t necessarily destined to continue: The Yankees aren’t fully devoid of young talent, and the likes of Volpe or the promising pitchers powering through the minor leagues could provide a jolt. (Or maybe they’ll sign Ohtani with another record-setting contract in free agency this winter, despite his possible preference for the West Coast.) But for now, the overall roster looks old and ossified, reminiscent of the last Yankees team to miss the playoffs, back in 2016. This was the culmination of a period of malaise for the franchise, which also missed the postseason in 2013 and 2014 and only briefly took part in the playoffs in 2015, when the Astros pitched a shutout in the Bronx in the wild-card round.
Those Yankees, like the 2023 version, were far too dependent on post-prime veterans, and the franchise eventually emerged from those years of mediocrity in large part by turning toward youth. In 2016, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez played their final MLB games, while the Yankees traded away Carlos Beltrán and Brian McCann. Meanwhile, Judge debuted, Gary Sánchez finished second in Rookie of the Year voting despite playing just 53 games, and Severino established himself as a future rotation staple. Deadline trades—with the Yankees taking the unusual role of sellers—brought a young Torres into the fold.
The 2023 Yankees seem unlikely to shed veterans like they did in the middle of the last decade. Other than Donaldson, who’s subject to a mutual option for next season, all the key underperforming Yankees position players are under contract through 2024 or longer. What are the odds that Rizzo, LeMahieu, and Stanton will bounce back? And if they don’t, what are the odds that the Yankees will keep playing them every day anyway because of their hefty contracts? (To be fair, they did cut Aaron Hicks, whose contract extends to 2025, earlier this season. To be less fair, Hicks immediately surged upon signing with the Orioles.)
In the face of all that potential dead money, and with owner Hal Steinbrenner apparently reluctant to outspend rivals like his dad did (and confused about why his team’s fans are frustrated), the Yankees might end up doomed to depend heavily on the aging Judge and Cole next year and for years to come.
Every year that the roster fails to fully coalesce and every year that the franchise underachieves and falls short against the Astros in the playoffs is another year removed from their last World Series appearance, in 2009. On average, all else being equal, every MLB franchise “should” reach the World Series once every 15 years. Next year is year 15 without a pennant for the Yankees, who should make it much more often—and have, throughout their history—given all their resource advantages over the rest of the league.
In 2023, those resources haven’t managed to propel them out of last place, a position the team last sank to in 1990. (Although at least the Yankees—for the 31st consecutive season—have a winning record, unlike the Mets and Padres, who rank first and third in payroll, respectively.) As Judge’s absence ends, it’s fair to note that injuries have hurt the Yankees—but the warning signs about how this team was built were there all along.
