Right now, a few of the Yankees are having a rough April at the plate which is making it so the team as a whole is also having a rough April. The Yankees are sitting in last place in the AL East, they can’t do anything with runners in scoring position and Wednesday night, you know what? What happened last night doesn’t need to be rehashed again. As a team the Yankees are batting .239/.319/.396 overall and they are abysmal with runners in scoring position batting a paltry .189/.301/.360 with an ISO of .171.
Look at those numbers again. They are positively dreadful and they are getting worse with each passing day. The Yankees have lost six out of their last seven games, and they have lost four out of their last five at home. If they want to turn things around and start a winning streak, they are going to need three guys to snap out of their funks at the plate soon.
Jacoby Ellsbury
Ellsbury is batting .220/.264/.320 with a tAV of .216. He has yet to hit a home run and of his 11 hits, four have been for extra bases—he led off Wednesday’s first inning with a double but ended up stranded at third. Last April, Ellsbury batted .321/.406/.381 with 27 hits. He only had one home run and three RBI last April, but he was doing a much better job at the plate.
This year, Ellsbury is actually making a lot of contact at the plate, but, so far, it has not yielded good results.
Sometimes when players are not hitting well, they’re going up to the plate and flailing at the ball, but that’s not the case with Ellsbury. He’s actually not whiffing a whole lot.
These are his overall whiff rates.
Ellsbury seems to be having an issue with off-speed pitches (lower part of the zone) more than hard pitches, and will occasionally chase outside pitches, but he doing well not being fooled by inside pitches.
Maybe everything will correct itself eventually for Ellsbury and some of those balls will fall in for hits. It’s obviously not hopeless for him, as long as he stays healthy this season, it may just be early.
Mark Teixeira
Teixeira is batting .182/.357/.386 with three home runs and eight RBIs. He has a tAV of .275. He only has eight hits overall—three homers and five singles. Teixeira has walked 12 times and struck out 13 times in 56 plate appearances. There is one positive about Teixeira’s performance so far; he’s one of the better Yankee hitters with runners in scoring position, batting .273/.500/.818. Two of his home runs and one of his singles occurred when there was a man on second.
Here’s his overall spray chart so far this season.
As you can see, it appears as though he’s being victimized a bit by defensive shifts when he’s up to bat. And, no, he will not make adjustments at the plate. He hasn’t the last few seasons and probably never will.
Now this could just be a typical Mark Teixeira April, but he just turned 36-years-old and we could be seeing what he is now, an all (home runs) or nothing player. There seems to be almost no in between with him anymore.
Alex Rodriguez
This year’s April is almost the complete opposite of last year’s April for Rodriguez. This season he’s hitting .163/.250/.302 with a tAV of .198 and he’s hit two home runs and has collected five RBIs. Last season, while his batting average wasn’t very high, his on base percentage and slugging percentage were much higher: .232/.369/.507 and he finished last April with five home runs and 13 RBI.
Here’s his spray chart by result, so far.
And here it is by hit type. As you can see, there are more line drives and fly balls than ground balls and pop ups. It could just be a matter of his timing at the plate.
Even more interesting is the same hit chart by pitch type. A lot of his outs are coming on sinkers and sliders, but he also hit one of his two home runs on a sinker. Again, it could be a timing/mechanical issue.
Last season, Rodriguez was playing for his job. If he had come out and been awful out of the gate, especially after his return from the year-long suspension, who knows how his 2015 season would have turned out. This year is different. He’s not playing for his job and if this bad start were transported into the middle of July, no one would be batting an eye.
You could probably say the same for Ellsbury and Teixeira as well, but it seems with this Yankee team that if those three guys are not playing well, the team isn’t playing well, and some hits will need to start falling in soon before things really fall apart.
Lead photo: Brad Penner/USA Today Sports