In case you’ve been living under a rock, the New York Yankees have been playing truly awful baseball for the last month-plus.
We can point fingers in several directions based on which way WFAN’s wind is blowing. Sal Licata might bash the pitching staff’s struggles on a Monday. Tiki Barber will lament general Brian Cashman’s efforts on a Tuesday. And on any given Wednesday, Evan Roberts will tear down the entire organization along with his beloved New York Mets, all while deciding which color he’ll dye his beard next.
We all know the words to the endless Yankees laments. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are the only reliable hitters. Everyone else ranges from inexperienced to streaky to just plain awful (Looking at you, DJ LeMahieu). Fire Brian Cashman, make Hal Steinbrenner sell, yeah yeah yeah, na-na-na-na, hey-hey, good-bye!
Rather, why don’t we go a different route and blame the one entity who can change not just the Yankees’ fortunes, but baseball entire: Major League Baseball herself.
As usual, this will be a piece with minimal numbers. Those who know the game can see, in Aaron Boone’s words, right in front of us. Moreover, we know that this Yankees lineup looks good on paper and, warts and all, is built to be a contender. What’s going on that a team who ranks 12th in baseball with a .247 collective batting average looks like a minor league team night in and night out?
The first reason is obvious crystal clear. Guys like LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres greatly benefitted from juiced baseball seasons in 2019, and maybe even a little bit into the shortened 2020 season. Since then, with deadened balls, the Yankees have looked either solid at the plate or completely lost.
Though frustrating, it’s hard to blame Brian Cashman for MLB’s course-correcting. Moreover, the juiced balls were getting ridiculous. Just look at the Twins mashing 307 team home runs in 2019. Only last year’s Braves have hit over 300 home runs as a team since, dwarfing the second-ranked Dodgers’ 249.
MLB clearly decided: Home runs are kings, not emperors.
Which brings us to the why of the juiced baseballs. Pitching has just gotten too good. It used to be that an arm who could regularly pump a fastball 96-98 mph was a unicorn, a secret weapon in the rotation or bullpen.
Today, a pitcher had better be a near-automatic strikeout or groundout machine if his natural velocity is anything less than 95.
And in turn, as pitching improves, hitting stays the same. The league batting average in 2004 was a healthy .266 with an above-average .763 OPS. Not at all bad for the time.
Today, however, hitters are only batting a collective .243 with a paltry .709 OPS. And even with enhanced balls in ’19, hitters still only hit .252, albeit with a .758 OPS. This was the last time hitters batted above. 250 for a season, and .260 hasn’t been accomplished since 2009.
Nobody wants to admit it, but we’re officially back to a point where batting above .300 makes one a special kind of elite. Guys like Steven Kwan and Bobby Witt Jr. are exceptions batting in that .340 area. That Shohei Ohtani, the hands-down best in the game, is leading the NL with a .314 mark is all the proof we need.
So what can be done? Should MLB adopt the universally-dimensioned baseballs used in Japan? It’s certainly possible, but there’s another simpler solution that can be instituted as soon as next season:
Lower and/or move the pitcher’s mound.
Purists will cry foul over keeping “the integrity of the game,” but what good is baseball’s image if she herself becomes unwatchable? It wasn’t that long ago that fans witnessed the 1968 season, “The Year of the Pitcher” in which Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski won the AL batting title.
The future Hall-of-Famer’s championship batting average was: a whopping .301. The runner-up? Oakland infielder Danny Cater and his greatly intimidating mark of .290. The NL side was full of exceptions that year, with Pete Rose leading the way at .335 with both Felipe and Matty Alou right behind him.
You know what MLB did that offseason, especially considering Yaz won the title at just .326 in ’67 and Frank Robinson at .316 in ’66? They lowered the mound from 15 inches high to a nice round 10.
Hear me loud and clear, dear readers: IT IS TIME TO DO THIS AGAIN.
Granted, that doesn’t mean Commissioner Rob Manfred should follow the same playbook and lower the mound to five inches. That’s practically flat ground and would officially turn baseball into alternative cricket. Something like seven or even seven-and-a-half inches is a nice compromise.
And since this is a matter of hitters’ ability to keep up with ever-improving pitching, the mound should be moved backwards from 60 feet, six inches. Make it 63 feet to start and hope that it’s enough to give batters that crucial extra second of reaction time.
None of this is rage at the Yankees’ latest grandiose stretch of poor play (Alright, fine, maybe 10% rage). Offense in baseball has been crippled to the point where even former Yankee Don Mattingly called the game “sometimes unwatchable.”
MLB tried to combat this by eliminating shifts, which was a great idea. What wasn’t anticipated was an era of power hitting running into a new influx of groundball pitchers, and groundouts simply replaced all the strikeouts.
All this to say, the Yankees should still make the playoffs despite all of these factors working not just against them, but all lineups. They’re only 1.5 games behind the equally struggling first-place Orioles when any other team would probably be near the bottom of the barrel. Just how the rest of baseball has caught up to “The Yankee Way,” pitching has caught up with hitting and is now pulling away.
New York’s problems are theirs alone and, in reality, only they can fix them. But with the odds stacked against the bats, any repairs are temporary.
This is an institutional problem. It is on MLB to fix it.
Commissioner Manfred, your move.
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