Author: Austin Yamada

The Yankees are in a tricky situation. They’ve just entered the start of their contention window, and now is the time to start making big moves. Brian Cashman accelerated the timeline with his deadline deals in July, and the offseason is an even better time to make improvements because of the larger number of avenues […]

Look, I’m not here to pile on Joe Girardi. My thoughts on him as a manager were succinctly put by Andrew Gargano in his article on the infamous non-challenge. Throughout his tenure in pinstripes, he’s been well above average in terms of win-loss results, and he’s been (seemingly) above average in terms of maintaining clubhouse […]

(Due to an oversight, this piece didn’t post at the time it was written. Even though it’s three weeks later, we felt it should still go up on the site since Austin worked so hard on it. -SG) It seems like the rumor mill had been predicting Sonny Gray to the Yankees for days leading […]

The Yankees just went shopping at Costco. Now that doesn’t sound especially optimistic at first, but let me explain. First of all, Costco is great. I’ve never walked away from a trip to Costco unhappy with my purchases. Maybe I didn’t get exactly what I came for, or maybe I got way more than what […]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Yankees’ offense has been pretty lucky so far this season. Some amount of regression is coming, but that’s alright. If the results had been just mediocre and lucky, that might be an issue, but the Yankees’ offense has been really, really good so far. In […]

At almost this exact time last season, I talked about how Luis Severino needed to widen the velocity gap between his fastball and at least one of his secondary pitches. And believe it or not, he actually has done just that — he softened the velocity on his slider last season, and then he’s done so […]

[Edit: This article was originally written after the second game of the season. Since then, Gary Sanchez has gotten injured, and Joe Girardi has deployed more lineup variations. Still, this article is more about building the optimal lineup with everyone healthy rather than an analysis of today or tomorrow’s lineup in particular.] Through the first two games […]

When I talk to any casual baseball fan about spring training results, they usually fall into one of two camps. The first camp has the people that overreact to spring stats, and if this is you, then please know that this isn’t a good camp to be a part of. Stop me if you’ve heard […]

Chris Carter is probably wondering what he did wrong. His job is to hit home runs, and hit home runs he did, tying for the league lead with 41 round-trippers last season. He’s not too old by any measure, coming off of his age-29 season. Yet he could barely find a major-league offer for much of this offseason, contemplating […]

When you think of Aaron Hicks, you probably think of speed and defense. There isn’t much to say about the offensive side of his game, as he slashed a meager .217/.281/.336 last season and .223/.299/.346 for his career. Heck, even his speed mostly manifests itself on the defensive end, as he doesn’t steal many bases […]