Stability doesn’t make headlines. It doesn’t sell books or newspapers. It’s silent and safe. It’s perfectly boring. Stability is wallpaper. You don’t even notice it until it suddenly isn’t there anymore.

From the moment George Steinbrenner purchased the New York Yankees in 1973, they were anything but stable. The team saw 21 managers hired and fired through the first 22 years of Steinbrenner’s stewardship. 21! Some years saw the team end up as champagne-soaked World Series champions, others as the literal worst team in the league. It didn’t matter. The one constant through it all was the dizzying turbulence of flying under King George.

Then, suddenly and inexplicably, it stopped. Like a plane finding a clear patch of blue sky after a two-decade-long lightning storm, the chaos and tumult that had become such a staple in the Bronx simply vanished. The Yankees became…stable. Since 1996, the team has won seven American League pennants, five championships and never had a losing season. They did all that under the management of just two men: Joe Torre and Joe Girardi.

That era came to an end on Thursday, as news broke that Girardi would not be returning to manage the team next season — this coming just days after he helped take the team to Game 7 of the ALCS, far exceeding even the wildest expectations any reasonable fan or pundit had for the 2017 roster. The news sent shockwaves through the baseball community, particularly as it became clear that it was the team and not Girardi who made the decision to move on after a decade-long relationship.

The transition from Torre to Girardi almost exactly ten years ago was not nearly as controversial. Despite his Hall of Fame managerial tenure, the writing was on the wall for Torre by the time the team made its third consecutive first-round playoff exit in 2007 — that sour run coming on the heels of the greatest collapse in the history of the sport in the 2004 ALCS. The cruelty of playoff variance aside though, it had become quite clear that Torre did not have the same magic touch with the mid-2000s incarnation of the team as he did with the group he led to glory in the late nineties. New blood was needed, and Girardi — after a brief but successful stint as manager of the Florida Marlins — was tabbed as the man for the job.

The decision proved prudent, and the transition was seamless. Girardi took the team back to the promise land in just his second year as manager, winning the 2009 World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. His teams would make the playoffs in each of the next three seasons, reaching two more ALCS but ultimately falling short of the Steinbrenner standard.

Beginning in 2013 though, things began to erode. Players that had served as the foundation of the team for the previous 20 years began to finally age out. Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte retired after the 2013 season, and Derek Jeter said his farewell a year later. Meanwhile, the Yankee front office let the logical successor, Robinson Cano, walk to Seattle in free agency, even as the mercenaries that made 2009 possible began to show their cracks. CC Sabathia seemed to be a shell of his former self. Mark Teixeira became injury-plagued and non-productive. Alex Rodriguez was a mix of the two, with a year-long suspension for PEDs thrown in for good measure. And so the homegrown stars of the nineties and free agent behemoths of the 2000s gave way to past-their-prime players like Lyle Overbay, Vernon Wells, Travis Hafner and Brian Roberts. This, by any logical measure, was the Yankees reaching the end of their life cycle. It was time to bottom out, as all teams do, then wipe the hard drive and reboot the system. It was time to rebuild.

Thing is, the Yankees never bottomed out. They won 85 games in 2013. Then they won 84. In 2015, they won 87 games and improbably earned a Wild Card spot. After the front office finally sold off assets at the 2016 trade deadline and embraced the rebuild, Girardi’s team immediately went 17-11 in August. They wound up with 84 wins. Over those four seasons, the Yankees out-produced their pythagorean record by 17 games and remained plausible playoff contenders deep into September without fail. And all that before this year — the first year in full-on rebuild mode — where the team won 91 games, beat Minnesota in the Wild Card game, overcame an 0-2 deficit to knock off the best team in the American League and took the other best team in the AL to the absolute brink of another pennant. Girardi has bore the brunt of what the general public perceived to be down seasons for the Yankees, but the truth is that he’s been overachieving with misfit rosters for years.

None of that is to say he’s perfect. I’ve been harsher on Girardi over the past month than ever before. His ALDS Game 2 replay debacle nearly derailed a magical season, and his bullpen management in the Houston series left something to be desired. There are perceptions that he’s too intense, that he’s too loyal to his binder of numbers. There’s evidence that he mistrusts his young players, particularly Gary Sanchez.

The problem is, there are bigger and uglier nits to pick with almost every other manager in baseball. Two other 2017 playoff teams were dissatisfied enough to dump their managers already, and if Joe Maddon’s bullpen management over the past two postseasons hasn’t made you throw things across your living room, it’s only because you’re not a Cub fan. Are there five managers in baseball that are clearly better than Joe Girardi? Are there three? It’s easy to look at Girardi’s flaws and assume the grass must be greener elsewhere, but the rest of baseball’s managerial landscape says that the Yankees have long had one of the nicest lawns in town. It will be hard to do better than Girardi. It will be much, much easier to do worse.

Sources: The recommendation of Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman to owner Hal Steinbrenner was to change managers.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 26, 2017

If that’s disconcerting to you as a Yankee fan though, then you should at least try to understand the opposite side. As additional reports leaked out Thursday, it began to feel like Girardi’s dismissal was ultimately Brian Cashman’s decision. If there’s solace to be found here, that’s it. Cashman is the architect of this team, and no one goes from rebuild-mode to ALCS Game 7 with arguably the brightest future in baseball over the span of one year without careful and meticulous planning. Cashman has earned more trust than anyone in the organization and perhaps anyone in baseball over his tenure as Yankees GM. If he recommended a new direction, it’s probably safe to say it’s because he believes it’s the best course for the team and not some personal grudge or haphazard Steinbrennian-decision resurrected from an era gone by.

We aren’t privy to the goings-on in the Yankee clubhouse. We don’t know what the atmosphere is. We don’t know how Sanchez feels about his (now former) skipper, or if Aroldis Chapman’s Instagram faux pas was really just an accident or something more. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that Girardi is not the right man for this team. You can believe that to be true while also acknowledging Girardi as one of the best managers in the game. The ideas are not mutually exclusive, and Cashman may be the only person in the Yankee organization trustworthy enough to make that determination.

Cashman certainly has a plan. He probably has a name or three in mind, and has for a while. Maybe it’s Rob Thomson or Tony Pena. Maybe it’s Dave Martinez, Raul Ibanez or even Jason Giambi. Maybe it’s none of those guys at all. Maybe whoever it is will be the Yankee manager for the next decade and stability will reign once more.

For at least a moment though, the New York Yankees are unstable. They haven’t been for a long while. Did you notice?

Lead photo: Thomas B. Shea / USA Today Sports

When the Yankees immediately marched back to tie last week’s wild card game with three runs in the first inning off Ervin Santana, I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that even if New York’s pitching continued to falter, they’d never be out of it. The bats were live that night, and no deficit felt too large to overcome. Hope reigned.

The flip-side of course, is that there are few feelings more helpless than watching your team get dominated offensively. You have to score to win, and great pitching can make you feel like that’s an impossibility. Watching batter after batter flail feebly at letter-high heat and tumbling curves can be torturous. Every opposing baserunner feels like doom. Every run they score feels like Everest.

Entering Saturday, the Yankees had faced Justin Verlander three times* in the playoffs. The first of those was way back in 2006, when Verlander was a 23-year-old on the verge of being named American League Rookie of the Year and making his first career October start. They wouldn’t see him again until he had evolved into peak-Verlander, the version that posted back-to-back 8-WARP seasons and captured an MVP and Cy Young award simultaneously.

He didn’t always dominate. He wasn’t particularly sharp in 2006 for instance, posting a 5.1/7/3/3/4/5 pitching line, but his Tigers picked up a pivotal 4-3 anyway. He posted a 8/6/4/4/3/11 line in 2011, and the Yankees fell 5-4. A year later, he took a three-hit, one-run gem into the ninth inning and helped Detroit to a 2-1 win in the third game of the ALCS. The Yankees lost all three games by a single run. They also lost all three series.

It had been a long, tumultuous five years for both parties, but Verlander and the Yankees found themselves squaring off again on Saturday, in Game 2 of the ALCS. Verlander wore new colors, and the Yankees wore new faces. Nothing about their October history portended anything about this game, but sometimes baseball is like poetry; in the case of Yankee fans, the kind of poetry that might make you pull your hair out and shout at your television.

It was apparent very early that Verlander had Hall of Fame-stuff. Four of the first six outs he recorded came via strikeout. He would wind up with 13. The Yankees didn’t muster a hit until there were two outs in the third inning — Brett Gardner ripped a ball down the right field line, but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple. New York would manage just four more hits for the rest of the day. Patience didn’t work either. Verlander issued just one walk, and the Astros threw pitch count to the wind, letting their ace’s climb to 124 in what turned out to be complete game, 2-1 victory — the fourth one-run October heartbreaker for the team against Verlander, and one that puts the Yankees in a two-games-to-none hole in the series.

The Yankees improbably matched Verlander through eight innings, if not in dominance then at least in results. Starter Luis Severino tossed four innings of one-run ball before being pulled out of the game after tweaking his throwing shoulder in the fourth inning. His lone blip came earlier in that very inning, when Carlos Correa shot a deep line drive into right field that just barely snuck over both the outstretched glove of Aaron Judge and the wall for a solo home run. Severino retired the next two batters to end the frame, but would not come back out for the fifth. After the game, he said he felt fine and manager Joe Girardi confirmed that the move was made as a precaution.

With two outs in the top of the fifth, the Yankees finally poked a hole in Verlander’s masterpiece after back-to-back doubles by Aaron Hicks and Todd Frazier knotted the score at one. Frazier’s hit was a bit of an oddity, as the ball became lodged in the wall in left-center field and was ruled a ground-rule double.

That’s where the score stayed for the next four innings, as Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson held the mighty Astros lineup to just a hit and a walk through the eighth. Verlander continued to make Yankee fans squirm, as he buckled down to allow just two baserunners, neither of whom got beyond first base, for the balance of the game.

As it did in the last series for New York, Game 2 came to an abrupt end. With Aroldis Chapman on in the bottom of the ninth, Jose Altuve ripped a first-pitch single to reach base with one out. After working a full count, Correa then punched a 99 mph fastball into the right-center field gap. Judge cut the ball off and fired it into Didi Gregorius at second base at the same time that Altuve, who was not running on the pitch, shockingly sped around third. Gregorius fired a throw to the plate that seemingly had Altuve beat by 20 feet, but caught catcher Gary Sanchez in-between hops. Altuve slid into home safely as the ball dribbled away from Sanchez’s glove, walking it off for the Astros and sending the home crowd into a frenzy.

A lot will be made about the play and about Sanchez’s defense as the teams travel to New York, but — like Game 1 and Dallas Keuchel — the story of Saturday begins and ends with Verlander. Through the first two games of the series, Houston pitching has made the Yankee lineup look utterly hapless, issuing 27 strikeouts while surrendering just two runs.

If you’re a Yankee fan looking for some optimism though, consider where we were one week ago. After a brutal Game 2 defeat that similarly put the team down two games to none (that in an even more dire best-of-five format), all anyone was talking about was whether a managerial blunder might cost Girardi the locker room and his job. The Yankees then proceeded to win three consecutive elimination games to upset the best team in the American League.

Things may feel equally bleak now, but it should surprise no one if the Yankees find success against Charlie Morton in Game 3 at Yankee Stadium on Monday, or against (presumably) Brad Peacock or Lance McCullers the following night. Things have turned on a dime before, and might still again. Or maybe this improbably fun run really is nearing the end of the line.

Either way, the one thing I’ve learned from watching this team is to stop doubting them and just enjoy the ride.

*Verlander had technically made four postseason starts against the Yankees from 2006-2012, but one of them was a one-inning outing that was suspended due to rain.

Lead photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today Sports

CC Sabathia had retired 12 of the last 13 men he faced. It was an impressive rebound for the 37-year-old veteran after an inauspicious start saw him allow three runs on three hits, two walks and a hit-by-pitch through the first two innings of Friday night’s ALDS Game 2. The Yankee bats came to play this night though, improbably chasing Indians ace Corey Kluber with six runs in just 2 and 2/3 innings. They tacked on another pair in the fifth when Greg Bird wrapped a Steve Clevinger pitch around the right field foul pole for a skyscraping two-run homer. An 8-3 lead was a big enough leash to let Sabathia work out his early issues, and the big lefty had done just that.

There were some gripes when Joe Girardi pulled Sabathia in the bottom of the sixth after just 77 pitches. Sabathia opened the inning with a four-pitch walk to Carlos Santana, his only blip in the previous three-plus innings, but subsequently retired Jay Bruce on a soft lineout to Didi Gregorius. Still, the Yanks were just ten outs away from evening the series at one game apiece and moving it back home to New York. Ten outs shouldn’t have been much to ask from the game’s deepest and most dominant bullpen, one that had successfully registered an absurd 26 outs just three nights earlier in Tuesday’s 8-4 Wild Card win over the Twins.

Chad Green, one of Tuesday’s heroes, relieved Sabathia and quickly notched the inning’s second out before Yan Gomes rocketed a double off the wall in left. Then, with two outs and runners on second and third, the game, season and possibly future of the Yankee organization shifted dramatically.

The Incident

With a chance to claw back into the game, Cleveland manager Terry Francona pinch-hit the lefty Lonnie Chisenhall for light-hitting Giovanny Urshela. Green got ahead quickly, blowing two fastballs by Chisenhall, and then went back to the well at 0-2. Chisenhall fouled it back. He did the same to the next pitch. And the next. And the next. Green’s seventh consecutive fastball rode too far inside and clipped Chisenhall’s hand. The umpire called for the hit-by-pitch, and the batter turned to take his base.

Problem was, the ball probably didn’t hit Chisenhall at all.

Gary Sanchez knew right away, and he said so. The ball seemed to have hit off the end of Chisenhall’s bat, not his hand. It was a foul tip, and because Sanchez held on, it should have been strike three and the end of the inning. Seconds ticked by as the broadcast examined the pitch from different angles. Girardi motioned from the dugout that he might issue a challenge. More seconds ticked by. Then…nothing.

Inexplicably, no challenge.

The entire sequence, from the instant the umpire called for the phantom hit-by-pitch to the moment Green dealt again and resigned Girardi to his decision, took 69 seconds. It would be only 25 more before Francisco Lindor crushed a grand slam high off the foul pole in right field to cut the score to 8-7. Two innings later, David Robertson (working his fifth inning over two appearances since Tuesday) gave up a game-tying solo shot to Bruce.

Baseball-Reference says the two Cleveland homers cut the Yankees’ win probability from 91 to 39 percent, but you’ll forgive Yankee fans for putting the true number at zero. The offense stranded runners in scoring position in the ninth and tenth before getting the leadoff man to second base to start the eleventh. Pinch-runner Ronald Torreyes was promptly picked off. It took until the bottom of the 13th for the Tribe to finally put an end to the misery, when Gomes lined pitch down the third base line to score Austin Jackson and give Cleveland a 9-8 win and commanding 2-0 lead in series.

The (Non) Decision

Every team starts the game with two Manager Challenges. Additionally, beginning in the eighth inning, managers with no remaining challenges can still request, but not insist, that the umpiring crew review a play (a request which they would almost assuredly oblige on any close call given the stakes and stage of the game).

Girardi issued his first challenge to escape the bottom of the first inning, getting Edwin Encarnacion called out at second base when he came off the bag following a gruesome ankle injury. Uncouth technicality or not, the overturned call meant Girardi kept both his challenges. He still held them at the time of the sixth-inning incident.

The possible outcomes then, as those seconds ticked by:

 Outcome A: Girardi challenges and wins

The best case scenario. The call is overturned, Chisenhall is called out on strikes and the inning and threat are both over. Cleveland’s run expectancy in the bottom of the sixth goes from .73 runs (bases loaded, two outs) to zero (end of inning). The Yankees come to bat in the seventh with an 8-3 lead still intact.

Outcome B: Girardi challenges and loses

If Girardi opts to challenge, the absolute worst-case scenario is that the umpires uphold the call or find the replay inconclusive. In that instance, Chisenhall goes to first, Lindor bats with the bases loaded, and Girardi has only one challenge remaining to navigate the next one and 1/3 innings (at which point the eighth inning request period comes into play). Cleveland’s sixth-inning run expectancy stays at .73 runs.

Outcome C: Don’t challenge

The absolute only difference between this and outcome B is that Girardi doesn’t risk losing one of his two challenges. And again, once the eighth inning arrives, any close call is probably getting reviewed regardless. In this scenario, Cleveland’s run expectancy remains at .73 runs. Of course, we know in retrospect that Lindor turned that .73 into an even 4.0.

There is no perceivable downside to challenging the play. The odds that multiple higher-leverage moments might occur in the next inning (or even the rest of the game) are incredibly remote. Even if those moments did arise, the odds that they’d be challengeable with a reasonable chance for overturn?

The Explanation

Girardi had seven innings to sit and stew on his inaction and the subsequent price his team paid for it. After the game, he explained:

“There was nothing that told us (Chisenhall) was not hit on the pitch. By the time we got the super slow-mo we were (at) a minute, probably beyond a minute. It was way too late. They tell us we have thirty seconds. They will take longer in replay, and probably, being a catcher, my thought is I never want to break a pitcher’s rhythm. You know, that’s how I think about it. There was nothing that said he was not hit.”

Girardi seemed unconvinced even in his own answers, bouncing between explanations. When pressed, he admitted that he was indeed the one who told the umpires that there wouldn’t be a challenge, and the umpiring crew never specifically ruled that too much time had elapsed.

Bafflingly, he then doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on his pitcher-rhythm explanation over the course of a five-minute press conference.

This is unreal. pic.twitter.com/e6O7kB3HkL

— Andrew Gargano (@andrewjgargano) October 7, 2017

Joe Girardi has taken a lot of grief over his tenure as Yankee manager, much of it undeserved. He has been and remains one of the better managers in baseball, and has routinely helped the team overperform peripherals and remain relevant in seasons in which they had no business contending. Even the best managers make mistakes, and mistakes can and usually should be forgiven, even on an October stage. If Chad Green makes a better pitch, after all, none of us are even talking about this.

That said…this is bad.

The on-field blunder is one thing. To offer up an incomprehensible explanation and take no accountability for it afterward is quite another. To say “there was nothing that said (Chisenhall) was not hit,” and blatantly disregard what his own catcher adamantly told him is another still.

In one fell swoop, Girardi displayed a complete mistrust of his players, an appeal to his own authority on matters of pitcher rhythm, and contempt for any logical accountability.

After the game, reports surfaced that Aroldis Chapman liked an Instagram post that referred to Girardi as ‘a complete imbecile.’ The stupidity of that action aside, it is now a real question as to whether Girardi still has the locker room. It is a real question as to whether Girardi can be trusted to not only be accountable for his mistakes, but to learn from them. It is a real question as to whether Girardi should continue to manage this team.

The season is not yet quite over, and we aren’t likely to get answers to any of those questions until it is. The Yankees and their manager can render them moot with an improbable comeback beginning Sunday night at Yankee Stadium. It doesn’t look promising.

Lead photo: Ken Blaze  / USA Today Sports

One of the few areas where we actually can begin to notice meaningful change early on is contact rate. According to research done by BP’s Russell Carleton, swing and contact percentage are among the very first statistics to stabilize, taking fewer than 40 plate appearances to do so. As luck would have it, the Yankees have a player whose contact prowess was of the utmost importance entering 2017, and that same player also happens to be hitting the cover off the ball through the season’s first eight games.

Aaron Judge will enter Thursday with a .308/.379/.692 batting line and three-game homer streak. The power shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — we’ve known that it’s real as long as we’ve known about Judge. The question as to whether the 25-year-old could stick as a big-league regular has always hinged on his ability to make enough contact to let that power shine. Those questions only got louder and more distressed after a 27-game major league stint last summer that saw him hit .179/.263/.345 and strike out in 44 percent of his plate appearances.

Judge made less contact than any player in baseball who saw a minimum of 300 pitches in 2016. He made less contact than Mike Zunino. He made less contact than Melvin Upton Jr. Single-season strikeout king Mark Reynolds had him beat by almost 12 percentage points. Jake Arrieta, Madison Bumgarner, Mike Leake, Kyle Hendricks, Tom Kohler and Robbie Ray were just some of the pitchers who made more consistent contact than Judge. He was bad. He was really bad.

He was also still relatively young and had already established a track record of adaptability. After all, Judge was similarly exposed upon his promotion to Triple-A in June of 2015. After destroying Double-A pitching for the first two and a half months of the season, Judge struggled to the tune of a .224/.308/.373 batting line at his new level, with a strikeout rate approaching 30 percent. It was his first real taste of failure after rapidly ascending the lower ranks of the Yankee farm system. When he returned to Scranton in 2016 though, Judge turned a corner. He cut his strikeout rate and regained his power stroke, hitting .270/.366/.489 with 19 homers in 93 games before arriving in the Bronx in mid-August.

Yankee fans hoped the big righty could turn another corner as the team broke camp this spring. The early returns say he may be doing just that.

Judge is swinging at more strikes and chasing fewer balls so far in 2017. They aren’t massive gains — just a few percentage points on each side, but it’s progress. Where Judge has seemingly made an enormous step forward though is in his ability to make contact with those pitches that cross the zone. He’s putting the bat on 91.3 percent of the strikes he sees, an increase of more than 20 percentage points over last year. Now, he’s giving some of those gains back by whiffing on more of the balls he chases, but so long as he continues to chase less his overall contact rate will continue to be impacted positively.

More promising still is that Judge hasn’t sacrificed any of his mammoth power in his quest to make more consistent contact. According to Statcast™, Judge has a 94.9 mph average exit velocity so far this year, and his name is peppered across the exit velocity leaderboard, highlighted by a 116.5 mph screamer from Tuesday’s game against Tampa, the hardest base hit of the season. Judge is still crushing the ball. Now he’s just doing it more consistently.

Now, I don’t mean to paint Judge as some bat-handling savant. He didn’t become Tony Gwynn or Ichiro overnight. His plate discipline numbers are still well below average, even after his gains, and — as you’re well aware — the season is still extremely young. But the one area in which early results actually can be indicative of real change happens to be the one area where Judge most-needed to improve. So far, he absolutely has.

Lead photo: Adam Hunger  / USA Today Sports

Your mileage may vary. For me, it was Oct. 13, 2012. The Yankees hosted the Tigers in Game 1 of the ALCS that night, a contest best-remembered for two diametric moments: Raul Ibanez lighting the Bronx on fire with another game-tying home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the funeral-like solemnity that extinguished that inferno when Derek Jeter collapsed in a heap three innings later.

In many ways, Jeter’s broken ankle that night signified the end of the Yankees’ reign of relevance. That might seem too-harsh a criticism for a team that still hasn’t had a losing season in 24 years, but it’s hard to have watched this team for the past four seasons and come away with a different conclusion. After nearly two decades of dominance, the team’s most successful campaign since the Detroit sweep resulted in just 87 wins and a one-and-done shutout loss in their lone playoff appearance. The team’s mediocrity transcended just their win total though, as the All-Star-laden rosters of the aughts abruptly gave way to the Lyle Overbays and Stephen Drews of the world. These were the seasons of clean-shaven Kevin Youkilis, Opening Day lineups featuring Jayson Nix and Ben Francisco, and the Brian Roberts and Travis Hafner experiments you had assuredly blocked from memory.

The Yankees had memorable moments during this timespan of course, but nearly every one was rooted in pure sentimentality…Mariano Rivera crying on Andy Pettitte’s shoulder, Jeter’s walk-off single in his final Yankee Stadium at-bat, the inexplicable redemption of Alex Rodriguez. Little of it served to push the Yankee story to new and unexplored territory, to establish a trajectory toward the next climax. The past four years served as a fine and fitting epilogue to the twenty years that preceded it, but that story is now finished. The lineage to the dynastic 90s died with Jeter’s farewell. CC Sabathia, entering the final year of his contract, remains the last true vestige of even the 2009 championship. There are no more farewell tours to be had, no more nostalgia to tide us over.

This is year zero in the next generation of Yankee baseball.

When Joe Girardi fills out his Opening Day lineup card in St. Petersburg on Sunday, it will be the youngest incarnation this team has produced since 1991. That’s a nice, neat attempt to capture the dramatic transformation this team has undergone, but it’s hard to pack the excitement Yankee fans feel right now into a fun fact. It’s hard to convey the electricity of Gary Sanchez digging into the box, the awe of watching Aaron Judge hit a ball off the scoreboard, the unbridled lunacy of Twitter ablaze with Greg Bird puns after he deposits another ball in the cheap seats. The Yankees are exciting again, and they’re exciting in a way we haven’t seen in a quarter-century.

In every new beginning, there is only promise. That can be nerve-racking. The Yankees are fun today, but fun is fleeting. If Sanchez turns into a pumpkin or Bird gets hurt or Judge is sporting a 40-percent strikeout rate on May 1st, the enthusiasm will waver. If Luis Severino tears a ligament or Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier don’t hit the ground running, the despair will be overwhelming. Promise is dangerous. Promise, particularly of the baseball variety, can break your heart.

Promise is also what makes this such an exciting time to be a fan, though. Every Chapter One could be the beginning of a literary masterpiece, every crackle and pop of the needle a potential harbinger of your new favorite band. Every new year brings the hope that you’ll finally get your shit together — you’ll get that promotion, you’ll lose 20 pounds, you’ll floss twice a day.

The Yankees rode their last wave of success for two decades. It was an incredible run, but the story had to end eventually. Now there’s an entirely new generation of fans eager to see the team begin at Chapter One for the first time in their lives. They’re off to a good start.

Lead photo: Kim Klement / USA Today Sports

Ok, so that last one isn’t real, but it could be, and that’s what’s great about What If.

March is the month for baseball what-ifs. The snow is melting, the slates are clean and hope is fully in bloom. Fans of every team, no matter Cubs-rich or Padres-poor, have something to dream on. What if everything goes right this season? What would that even look like? What if nothing goes right? Do we even want to know?

When Baseball Prospectus released their 2017 PECOTA projections a few weeks back, I used them to preview what the upcoming Yankee season might look like. The results were not exactly enthralling. At the time, PECOTA saw the Yankees as an 82-win team (since updated to 80), which is essentially what they’ve been for each of the past four seasons. It’s a boring projection, but it’s probably the right one. The Yankees’ win total landing somewhere in the low-to-mid eighties is the most likely scenario for 2017.

It’s March though, so why settle for what’s boring and likely? Why not ask…what if?

What if everything goes right?

What if Gary Sanchez hits 100 homers and Masahiro Tanaka throws ten perfect games and the Yankees never lose a—

Ok, so we need some parameters. We want something on the unlikely side of the scale, but we don’t want to break the scale altogether. Luckily, PECOTA can help. The team’s 80-win projection is the system’s average result, their 50th-percentile outlook. If we want a glimpse into a world where the Yankees have adamantium claws and wield the Infinity Gauntlet though, we can check their 90th-percentile projections.

One of the more interesting things here is that, even when viewed through the rosiest-colored glasses, the team is short on players with superstar-level ceilings. Sanchez and his 6.0 WARP figure (courtesy of 37 home runs and a .292/.359/.540 batting line) serves as the lone exception, with no other lineup member even breaking 4.5 wins.

The Yankees’ strength then is in its lack of weaknesses. Every non-Sanchez starter is worth more than three wins in our new, alternate universe. Youngsters like Aaron Judge and Greg Bird will understandably attract a lot of the notoriety with impressive stat lines, but the veterans do more than hold their own. Strong rebounds from Matt Holliday, Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury alone would represent a nine-win upgrade over what the same trio produced last season. Throw in a career-best season from Brett Gardner (.286/.366/.435) and double the baseline projection for the team’s middle-infield combo, and you’re left with an elite one-through-nine worth something like 36.4 WARP, more than twice their 50th-percentile projection of 17.5.

The pitching staff is a bit harder to parse, as open competition in the back-end of the rotation and constant shuffling in the bullpen make it hard to nail down the proper workload split. As one climbs the projection ladder, playing time increases right along with performance. Because each projection is done in a vacuum, we can’t be haphazard about adding up WARP totals. When PECOTA projects a random Yankee bullpen arm to throw 53 innings in his 90th-percentile projection, it isn’t considering that we’re taking every other bullpen arm at their 90th-percentile workload too, and in reality there just aren’t that many innings to go around. For that reason, let’s limit our scope to the team’s projected starting rotation and elite bullpen duo.

I touched briefly on PECOTA’s pessimism over the Yankee rotation in my preview piece, and it has only gotten gloomier as the projections have updated in recent weeks. Still, the Yankees do pretty well here, with Tanaka and Michael Pineda leading the pack with a combined 9.3 WARP. Of the two, Pineda’s projection is easily the harder to swallow, as he hasn’t come particularly close to this kind of output in his Yankee tenure. Tanaka, on the other hand, outdid his line just last year, and the notion that he’d fail to reach his strong 2016 totals even in his 90th-percentile outlook suggests that the system might be shortchanging him a bit.

PECOTA doesn’t view either Chad Green or Luis Severino as full-time starters, so even their top-end projections have limited innings upside. That said, their 4.9 WARP in 265 combined innings is strong enough that the Yankees would happily sign off even if we penciled in replacement-level innings to fill in the gaps. Combined with a virtual repeat of CC Sabathia’s solid 2016 season and the expected bullpen dominance, the souped-up staff would finish with an extra 11 WARP compared to their baseline projection.

So what does that mean for the team’s overall outlook?

If we consider only the values of the listed players (that is, the starting lineup, rotation and two relievers) and conservatively assume replacement-level play everywhere else, the Yankees would be worth something like 58 WARP, which would put them in the 108-win range. No team since the 2001 Mariners has won that many games in a season, but a closer comp might be the 2016 Cubs, a team that won 103 regular season games but owned a pythagorean win total of, you guessed it, 108.

What if nothing goes right?

Just as the thought of a 108-win Yankee team fills you with joy though, a cold chill rattles your bones. You look around and realize this is no longer the wondrous land of 90th-percentiles. The storm clouds have gathered overhead and the vibrant colors have washed away. You’re on a dark, barren planet populated with nothing but tears and Clint Frazier’s sheared hair.

Welcome to the fallen world of 10th-percentiles.

Oh. Oh no.

All of the veteran rebounds we were so excited about a few minutes ago are now dust. Ellsbury’s renaissance, Bird’s triumphant return, Judge’s heroic rookie campaign…all shattered. No member of the starting lineup cracks even half a win of value outside of Sanchez, who tumbles by nearly 5 WARP all by himself. Even including Sanchez’s 1.3 mark, the Yankee lineup is worth a grand total of 1.2 WARP.

And still, somehow, the pitching is worse. While Pineda mercifully still manages to be worth a win, every other rotation member is sub-replacement level in this terrible new existence, combining for -3.2 WARP. Dellin Betances joins Sanchez and Pineda as the only members of the Yankee roster to remain marginally effective, as even Aroldis Chapman fades into obscurity.

So, dare we ask?

For the sake of consistency, we again assume replacement-level play from all other members of the team. The total production of the listed Yankees is 0.4 WARP, giving them a win-expectancy of roughly 50 games. The last team to approach that level of ineptitude was the 2013 Astros, a team made famous for the perceived notion that they tanked for draft picks.

***

So, there you have it. The Yankees’ extreme upside is matched only by their soul-shattering downside. Based on that, we can boldly predict that the Yankees will win somewhere between 50 and 108 games this season.

Well, ok. Probably something like 80.

Lead photo: Butch Dill / USA Today Sports

Okay. So maybe the 2017 Yankees aren’t the Most Interesting Team in the World. They’ve won between 84 and 87 games in each of the past four seasons, and PECOTA thinks they’ll be roughly the same this upcoming season, projecting them for 82 wins.

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a shock. Not only have the Yankees refrained from adding major pieces to the roster over the last couple offseasons (save for Aroldis Chapman, twice), but they’re turning over more roster spots to unproven young players than at any point since the mid-90s. Some of those youngsters project to be among the best players on the team in 2017, but others PECOTA understandably views as more volatile. All in all it makes sense that the Yankees would again forecast as a team in no-man’s land…not bad enough to have a shot at a top draft pick, but also probably not quite good enough to challenge for anything other than a wild card spot even if things should break right.

Despite their projected win total lacking an exciting twist though, the method at which PECOTA estimates they’ll arrive at that total actually is pretty interesting. Last year pitching paved the road to 84 wins, with the top four Yankees by WARP coming way of the mound: Masahiro Tanaka (5.9), Michael Pineda (4.9), CC Sabathia (4.5) and Dellin Betances (3.0). In terms of position players, no one topped Brett Gardner’s solid-but-unspectacular 2.7 mark, and some veteran mainstays of the lineup were actually viewed as sub-replacement level by BP’s metrics, with Jacoby Ellsbury coming in a -0.4 and Mark Teixeira a grisly -1.9.

The good news is that PECOTA sees the Yankees taking several steps forward with the bats in 2017. The bad news is that they’re expected to give most of those gains back in the pitching department. Let’s wade into the projection waters and pick out some of the more interesting individual lines to see where the 2017 Yankees will differ most from last year’s version.

Gains

First Base

Arguably the biggest change to the 2017 lineup will come at first base, where Teixeira’s retirement makes way for the return of Greg Bird.

Bird quickly became a fan favorite upon his call up in 2015, slashing .261/.343/.529 in 178 plate appearances. A torn shoulder labrum kept him sidelined for the entirety of the 2016 regular season, but all systems seem to be go after a successful stint in the Arizona Fall League. Despite his strong showing in limited time two years ago though, PECOTA remains a bit bearish on him, pegging him for a .244/.328/.457 line and 1.1 WARP in roughly 500 plate appearances. Conservative as that might seem, it would still represent a three-win upgrade over Teixeira’s lousy 2016 campaign, and the biggest single positional gain on the team.

Center Field

The Ellsbury signing has not worked out quite as the Yankees had hoped, made more apparent than ever this past season when he bottomed out statistically. His True Average sunk below .250 for the second consecutive year, and his fielding metrics painted him as a bigger liability than ever in center field (-15.7 FRAA). In all, it was just the second time in his career that he posted a sub-replacement level season, with the only other instance coming in 2010, a season where he missed all but 18 games with broken ribs.

PECOTA thinks Ellsbury’s bat is what it is at this point, projecting him for a .247 TAv that isn’t markedly different than either of his past two efforts. It does, however, see a sizeable defensive improvement of about 14 runs. If that rebound comes to fruition, it would help swing Ellsbury back over the replacement-level line and make him worth 1.2 wins in 2017.

Right Field / Designated Hitter

These two positions went tandem last year, as the duo of Carlos Beltran and Alex Rodriguez, firmly entrenched to begin the season, eventually gave way to a game of musical chairs. A-Rod permanently lost his seat with a brutal performance through the season’s first few months (-1.2 WARP in 243 PA), eventually leading to his release in mid-August. Beltran, on the other hand, played well enough that the Yankees were able to ship him off to Texas during their summer firesale. Rookies Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin, along with Brian McCann, Aaron Hicks and Billy Butler, picked up most of the slack in the two vacant lineup spots, but their results were wanting.

Judge in particular struggled to adjust during his two-month cup of coffee, striking out 42 times in just 95 plate appearances and slashing .176/.263/.345. With an opportunity to establish himself as the team’s future in right field, he will have to get off to a stronger start this time around. PECOTA thinks he’ll accomplish that, forecasting a .235/.323/.434 batting line and 2 WARP in 465 plate appearances for the massive righty.

At DH, meanwhile, Beltran’s strong four months of production will be replaced by a full season of Matt Holliday, whom PECOTA tabs as an upgrade (.279 TAv and 2.3 WARP), and the newly-signed Chris Carter will likely serve in A-Rod’s stead as a secondary DH option and powerful bench bat. Even if you chop Carter’s one-win projection in half due to playing time concerns, he’d still project as a win and a half better than what A-Rod offered a year ago.

Losses

Starting Pitching

Not only is there not a single Yankee pitcher that projects to improve upon his 2016 output, but PECOTA doesn’t see any of the team’s key arms coming particularly close.

It’s not entirely clear why PECOTA holds such a strong grudge against Tanaka, but he projects to give back more than three WARP from his 2016 total. Some of that can be attributed to playing time; the Yankee ace is slated for 176 innings, about 20 fewer than last season. Given that Tanaka’s previous career-high was 154 and he pitches with a partially-torn UCL in his throwing arm, a more conservative workload is a reasonable assumption. It’s the regression almost everywhere else that feels a bit extreme, including career-worsts in walk rate and ground ball percentage, as well as a DRA almost a run and a half higher than his career average.

Pineda and Sabathia don’t fare much better, dropping more than two full runs of combined DRA and five total WARP. In all, the loss in projected production for the top half of the Yankee rotation negates nearly all of the gains made on the position player side, and the uncertainty in the back of the rotation won’t do much to alleviate the pressure if this regression comes to pass.

Catcher

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight Sanchez in an article about the team’s 2017 projections.

The Yankees essentially got full-time production from two catchers in 2016. McCann had a season typical of his Yankee career, posting a .256 TAv with above-average defensive numbers while serving as the team’s primary backstop through July before giving way to Sanchez, who was even more productive in half the playing time. Together the pair was worth approximately five wins, making the Yankees catcher spot one of the most productive in baseball (note that a portion of McCann’s value was accrued at DH after Sanchez took over).

In order for the team to improve on that production though, Sanchez would need to keep his torrid 2016 pace going through most of this season as well. PECOTA does like Sanchez quite a bit, but expecting a 50-homer sophomore campaign is probably a little too much to ask. While a slip in the Yankees’ overall production behind the plate feels inevitable, fans should feel encouraged by the 31-homer, .278 TAv, 3.9 WARP line that PECOTA fixes to Sanchez, projecting the 24-year-old as the most valuable player on the team.

Lead photo: Adam Hunger  / USA Today Sports

On the same day Petriello published those numbers, the Yankees opened a series in Kansas City. Entering that series, Sanchez had gunned down twice as many runners (6) as he had steals allowed (3). He had quickly developed a reputation as one of the most feared arms in the league, and now he was set to face the ultimate test: A Royals team coming off back-to-back pennants and a World Series championship largely built on pillars of speed and athleticism.

Sanchez caught every pitch of the three-game set, two of which pushed into extra innings. The Royals ran wild. The defending champs racked up eight stolen bases in the series, nearly half of the 19 steals Sanchez would allow all season. The Royals proved that the mighty Kraken could be slain.

I went back and watched the pertinent innings of that series to try to glean some insight. Why and how, after such a promising start, did those three nights go so wrong for Sanchez? The Royals’ speedy display revealed some hard truths. If you want to beat a world-class arm, you need a playbook, and each one of Kansas City’s steals taught a valuable lesson essential to that playbook.

So, you want to run on Gary Sanchez? Study up.

Lesson #1: Pick a slow pitcher.

Steals #1 and 2 (August 29): Jarrod Dyson/Lorenzo Cain, 1st inning

The Royals wasted no time in testing the young phenom, picking up their first two stolen bases in the opening inning of game one. Sanchez made two excellent throws, but both Royal runners were able to sneak in ahead of the tags. At first glance you might chalk it up to good baserunning and simply tip your cap. Another less-obvious factor was at play here though, and it came in the form of Michael Pineda.

Pineda allowed 16 stolen bases in 2016, not an outrageous amount but poor enough to put him among the ten worst offenders in the American League. Pineda has a fairly deliberate motion to home even from the stretch, eating up precious milliseconds that might have otherwise turned these steals into outs. When dueling with an arm like Sanchez’s, you want all the extra time you can get. In 2016, Pineda was a good bet to spot you that time.

 Lesson #2: Pick a slower pitcher. (Bonus: shoddy defense)

Steal #3 (August 30): Lorenzo Cain, 8th inning

If Pineda was poor at holding runners on, Dellin Betances was downright frightful. The Yankees’ relief ace somehow allowed 21 stolen bases in 2016, the fourth-most of any pitcher in the American League despite pitching just 73 innings. No other reliever in baseball came within seven of Betances’ total.

Maybe that was in the back of Sanchez’s mind when he hurriedly fired this ball down to second base on a short-hop, skipping it past the glove of Didi Gregorius and into center field. Even despite Betances’ drawn-out delivery, Sanchez’s throw still beat the speedy Lorenzo Cain by several feet. While a slightly more accurate throw would have assuredly nabbed Cain, niftier glovework by Didi on a challenging but eminently catchable ball would have done the same. Instead, all blame was laid at Sanchez’s feet as he picked up an E2 in addition to the charged stolen base. So it goes.

Lesson #3: Predict the future.

Steal #4 (August 30): Raul Mondesi, 10th inning

The absolute best way to steal a base against Sanchez is to ensure that the ball never leaves his hand in the first place. Better still, remove him from the equation entirely by running when his pitcher throws the ball right past him, as demonstrated here by rookie Ben Heller.

Pitching in just his third career game, Heller led off the inning by plunking Raul Mondesi before uncorking this 1-1 fastball that dove under Sanchez’s glove and ricocheted off the backstop. Mondesi, running on the pitch, was credited with the fourth steal of the series.

Divining pitch locations from the great beyond may not be the most practical approach for every team, but as the Royals demonstrated here, it’s a viable strategy if you’re able.

Lesson #4: Bribe the opposing manager and/or official scorer.

Steal #5 (August 30): Jarrod Dyson, 10th inning

Another way to discourage Sanchez from throwing the ball is to make sure no one is at second base to receive him.

In this instance, Yankee manager Joe Girardi has opted to move his infield in with the tying run at third, curiously conceding scoring position to the winning run with nobody out. Sanchez instinctively pops and cocks his arm, prepared to unleash another laser before quickly realizing he’s a man deserted. The runner strolls into second unopposed. Sanchez is sabotaged, first by his own manager’s overzealous tactical decisions and later by the hometown scorekeeper who marks it a stolen base. It is a lonely man who is forsaken even by defensive indifference.

Lesson #5: Literally be Jarrod Dyson.

Steal #6 (August 31): Jarrod Dyson, 2nd inning

If you must beat Gary Sanchez straight up, you’ll do yourself a huge favor by literally being Jarrod Dyson.

Among all players since integration with at least 200 stolen base attempts, Dyson’s 85.4 percent success rate ranks second all-time, trailing only Carlos Beltran. Dyson was responsible for three of the Kansas City’s eight swipes off Sanchez, the last of which came early in the series finale. Dyson is about as elite a base runner as exists in Major League Baseball today, and even he only narrowly snuck past Sanchez’s rocket arm on both of the rookie catcher’s attempts to cut him down.

Lesson #6: Break his will.

You’re Gary Sanchez. You’re in the middle of your 29th consecutive inning behind the plate. The Royals have run ragged on you for three straight nights. A combination of slow pitchers, poor fielding, errant fastballs, puzzling defensive alignments and questionable scorekeeping has helped spike your stolen bases-allowed by 200 percent.

Oh, would you look at that? There’s another man on first, and here comes Billy Burns to pinch-run.

Steal #7 (August 31): Billy Burns, 11th inning

There he goes, of course. You snatch a fastball out of the dirt and whip it desperately with all your might. The ball carries high and begins to tail. Didi leaps out into the baseline for it, and for a moment you think the power of the throw might send him careening off into the Kansas City night. He comes down unscathed, but Burns is safe. You’re physically exhausted and mentally dejected. Enough is enough.

“Screw this,” you think to yourself. “Go ahead and take third, Billy. I’m done.”

Burns obliges, and you no longer care. You decide there are more productive things to do with your time. Framing? That’s a thing now, right? You’re going to work on your framing.

Steal #8 (August 31): Billy Burns, 11th inning

Good for you, Gary. Good for you.

Lead photo: Adam Hunger  / USA Today Sports

In more bad news for Yankee fans, Jorge Posada became an unfortunate casualty of the five-percent rule, falling off of future ballots with just 3.8 percent of the vote in his debut. Posada’s case was marginal and probably comes up just short for even most ‘big-hall’ folks, but as one of the best offensive catchers in history, it’s a shame we won’t even be able to continue the debate.

In spite of the disappointment though, several more former Yankees are slated to make their ballot-debuts over the next few years. Some will be more obvious candidates than others, but it’s worth examining just how many future Yankee Hall of Famers may be lurking over the horizon.

On the ballot

• Roger Clemens (2013)

• Mike Mussina (2014)

Before fast-forwarding to 2018 and beyond, we should at least briefly make mention of the former Yankees already on the ballot. Both Clemens and Mussina cleared the 50 percent threshold for the first time this year, historically an excellent indicator of future-induction. Even if both do eventually find their way to the required 75 percent though, there’s some question as to what cap they’ll be immortalized under.

Clemens has made mention that, if inducted, he’d go in as a member of the Red Sox, and it’s hard to argue. His two championship rings in New York don’t come close to bridging the gap in production between the two teams.

Mussina’s case, on the other hand, is slightly more interesting. His 58.8 WARP with the Orioles still trumps his mark of 46.6 with the Yankees, but it’s nowhere near as stark a contrast as Clemens. If you factor in that both his World Series appearances and lone 20-win season came in the Bronx, and it’s at least conceivable that he could enter as a Yankee.

 Honorable Mention: Gary Sheffield (2015)

With the help of Baseball Reference, I’ve counted seven additional players (and a few honorable mentions) with reasonable Yankee credentials that will likely show up on the ballot between now and 2022. Instead of tackling them by year though, we’ll group them by strength of case.

Just happy to be here

• Hideki Matsui (2018)

• Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano (2020)

Some here will be more fondly remembered than others for their tenures in New York, but all have strong Yankee years on ballot-worthy résumés. It’s unlikely that any of them will get serious Hall consideration, but they are careers worthy of reflection regardless.

Soriano’s rise in New York was meteoric, beginning in the 2001 playoffs where his walk-off single cinched Game 5 of the World Series, and a go-ahead eighth-inning homer off Curt Schilling nearly made him a Game 7 hero as well. He became a star the following summer when he raced Vladimir Guerrero to the 40/40 club, though his Yankee career came to an abrupt end when he was dealt to Texas in the 2004 Alex Rodriguez blockbuster. Soriano was more pomp than substance throughout his career; lightning-quick wrists and athleticism on the basepaths made him a fantasy baseball dream while his lackluster defense and brutal plate discipline often tanked his real life value. Soriano doesn’t have much of a Cooperstown case, but he’ll be remembered fondly as a tremendously fun player who bookended his career in pinstripes.

Matsui and Giambi joined Soriano in New York during the team’s spend-crazy era following the 2001 World Series loss. Both arrived to massive fanfare, though only Matsui was ultimately able to win the crowd’s adoration. Initially billed as the Babe Ruth of Japan, Matsui’s bat instead quickly drew comparisons to that of previous fan-favorite Paul O’Neill. He posted an OPS of .850 or better in five of his seven years in the Bronx, and closed out his Yankee career with a 2009 World Series MVP award. With his rookie year not coming until age 29 however, Matsui’s Hall of Fame chances were likely cooked before he ever stepped foot in the States.

Giambi has arguably the strongest statistical case of this group with a .312 True Average and more than 50 career WARP, though his Yankee career was easily more turbulent than the others. After arriving as a free agent from Oakland, he posted back-to-back seasons worth five-plus wins before unraveling in a myriad of injuries and PED-revelations. Giambi was able to rebuild his image in his final few years before being lauded as a veteran mentor in places like Colorado and Cleveland, but his years in New York are still more often maligned for what could have been. 

Honorable Mention: Johnny Damon (2018), A.J. Burnett, Nick Swisher (2021)

If you squint real hard…

• Andy Pettitte (2019)

Like his longtime batterymate Posada, Andy Pettitte’s Hall of Fame case will likely be viewed as borderline at best. Most of his value was accrued by means of longevity as opposed to peak, a product of being very good for very long but never really a member of the league’s elite. He accumulated enough raw Wins Above Replacement to rank among the top 30 pitchers in baseball since World War II. His peak though, measured by his seven best seasons, lags behind middling names like Roy Oswalt, Carlos Zambrano, Tim Hudson and Mark Buehrle.

Johan Santana, also eligible in 2019, will be an interesting point of comparison for Pettitte. In many ways Santana is the flip-side of the coin, a player whose peak burned bright but career fizzled quickly. Jay Jaffe’s Hall of Fame rating metric, JAWS, rates the two pitchers nearly identically (48.1 for Santana, 47.4 for Pettitte), though neither comes particularly close to the average score for already-enshrined pitchers (62.1). Those factors won’t make Pettitte a darling of the stat-friendly community, but there is some reason to believe he could find support with more traditional voters.

Consider first his 256 career wins. Excluding Clemens and Mussina, only four other pitchers with more than 250 wins are not in the Hall of Fame, and three of them (Tommy John, Jim Kaat and Jamie Moyer) pitched into their mid-to-late 40s, even truer compilers than Pettitte. The fourth is Jack Morris, who maxed out at 67.7 percent of the vote before falling off the ballot after his 15th year, but stands a reasonable chance at getting in anyway via the Eras Committee.

With the 300-win pitcher closer than ever to extinction, it’s possible Pettitte’s total will be observed a bit more favorably by the old guard…particularly if you add his 19 postseason wins to the ledger, not only the highest total in history but four more than the second-place John Smoltz. Pettitte’s postseason experience adds more than a full season to his résumé (he’s also the all-time leader with 276 and 2/3 postseason innings and second in strikeouts with 183), and his five championships in eight Fall Classic appearances will undoubtedly earn him support. Despite some truly excellent playoff starts however, none will likely carry enough clout to push him toward induction the way Game 7 of the 1991 World Series did for Morris.

Honorable Mention: Mark Teixeira (2022)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Alex Rodriguez (2022)

There is little point in expounding on A-Rod’s statistical qualifications. With 696 home runs, a .309 career TAv and 106.6 career WARP, he is the very definition of an inner-circle Hall of Famer. The question, as it is for many these days, is how the voters will handle his history of PED usage. Rodriguez admitted to using during his years in Texas, a period before a testing policy had been implemented. That alone may have been enough to dissuade some voters, and then Alex was caught again after the Joint Drug Agreement was in place, implicated in the Biogenesis scandal that led to his year-long suspension in 2014.

Two other potential Hall of Famers that were caught doping post-JDA have appeared on the ballot, perhaps offering a glimpse of what’s to come for A-Rod. The first is Rafael Palmeiro, who maxed out at 12.6 percent of the vote before falling off in just his fourth year. The second is Manny Ramirez, who just received 23.8 percent in his ballot debut. Less than a quarter of the vote would seem to leave Manny’s future chances very much in doubt, though it will take time to know for sure. If Manny can gain some traction in the coming years, that will bode well for a much stronger statistical candidate in Rodriguez. If he fades the way Palmeiro did though, A-Rod’s prospects will likewise dim quite a bit.

Save the date

• Mariano Rivera (2019)

• Derek Jeter (2020)

Of course, if all else fails there’s these two. When it comes to Rivera and Jeter, respectively the greatest reliever of all-time and a candidate for one the five best shortstops in history, the question isn’t of if or when they’ll get in, but whether either has a shot at breaking Ken Griffey Jr.’s high-vote percentage mark of 99.3. Most have (probably rightfully) given up the notion that we might someday see a unanimous Hall of Fame selection, but the lifelong Yankees might be the last, best combination of statistical brilliance, team-loyalty, peer-respect and did-it-the-right-wayitude to at least make it interesting.

If they don’t, Yankee fans will simply have to settle for a pair of Cooperstown summer blowouts honoring two of the most beloved Yankees ever. Somehow I think that will be a fine consolation.

Lead photo: Adam Hunger / USA Today Sports

This being a Baseball Prospectus site, most readers will be familiar with the concept of Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). For the uninitiated, what this table denotes is that not only have the Yankees been surprisingly poor at turning their batted balls into hits, but that it’s actually been an issue for some time now. Over the past four seasons, only the Oakland A’s, notorious laggers in this area due to the expansive foul territory of the Oakland Coliseum, have been worse.

Here’s a thread that may be worth pulling.

At first glance, there are a lot of small things about the makeup of the 2013-2016 Yankees that might suggest a poor BABIP. For instance, the team hit the fourth-most infield flies in that time span. Infield flies are essentially automatic outs, so that would certainly have a negative effect on the team’s ability to generate hits. Similarly, we know that fly balls become hits less often than ground balls, and the Yankees of recent history have been more inclined to put the ball in the air than on the ground. In addition to that, the Yankees haven’t been a team especially designed for speed, which has helped make them below average at picking up both infield and bunt hits.

All those factors piled up might reasonably explain a below-average BABIP…a sort of ‘death by thousand paper cuts’ scenario. The Yankees haven’t just been below average though, they’ve consistently been one of the worst teams in the league at hitting ‘em where they ain’t. With a league-average line drive percentage it doesn’t appear that quality of contact is the culprit, and with four straight years of evidence we can’t just chalk it up to bad luck, either. Are defenses somehow just playing astoundingly well against them? As it turns out, yes…in a way.

No team in baseball has been shifted more than the Yankees over the past four years. In fact, the Yanks have seen 300 more shifts than the next-closest team. You might think that all those extra reps would help familiarize the team with non-traditional defenses, but in reality the exact opposite has been true.

For some context, let’s look at the Mariners, who have been the second-most shifted team in baseball over that same timespan. They’ve posted a .681 OPS in such situations. The A’s and Red Sox come next, and they’ve managed marks of .681 and .733, respectively. The Yankees’ OPS against the shift since 2013? 603. That’s not only the worst mark in baseball, but it’s nearly 30 points lower than the 29th-ranked Angels. In short, defenses have been right to shift the Yankees so much, as they’ve been downright atrocious at beating it.

Unfortunately for Yankee fans, the shift is almost certainly not going anywhere. In our four-year sample alone, the number of shifts in Major League Baseball has quadrupled from 8,545 in 2013 to 34,801 last season. If the Yankees are unable to adapt, defenses will continue to smother them with this tactic. The good news is that the team may have already fixed the problem while no one was noticing.

It’s hard to swim when you’re wearing cinder blocks for shoes, and for years those cinder blocks were named Brian McCann and Mark Teixeira. In many ways the duo is a microcosm of the very team struggles we noted earlier; no Yankees were shifted more often than McCann and Teix, and no one performed worse against it.

McCann alone amassed the third-most plate appearances in baseball versus the shift since 2013 (1,046), with three of those seasons coming in pinstripes (one in Atlanta). Teixeira, meanwhile, picked up 674 plate appearances of his own, good for 23rd in the league despite missing almost an entire season to injury. Combined, the two produced a .237/.234/.283 batting line, and by wRC+ were the two worst hitters in baseball in such situations (minimum 500 PA).

Both of those guys still managed to be above-average cogs in the Yankee lineup despite their deficiencies against the shift, so I don’t mean to overstate my case. The fact remains though that this is an area in which the Yankees have struggled mightily, due in no small part to those two players specifically. Of course, neither Teixeira nor McCann are Yankees any longer, with the former now retired and the latter having been dealt to Houston in mid-November. Perhaps, at least in terms of this one aspect, this will prove to be addition by subtraction.

Gary Sanchez and Greg Bird are expected to assume most of the freed-up plate appearances at catcher and first base in 2017. Both of them saw a fair share of shifts during their short major league stints, and like their predecessors, both struggled to beat them. Still, we’re talking about extremely small sample sizes for extremely young players, so it’s impossible to draw any kind of meaningful conclusions at this point. At the very least, McCann and Teixeira didn’t set a high bar for them to clear. Based on that, it would not be surprising if the Yankees’ BABIP fortunes finally began to turn this upcoming season.

Lead photo: Adam Hunger  / USA Today Sports