The Yankees Are Hard To Watch - But It Should Get Better!

This team is incredibly underperforming.  The overall pitching has been very good, but in key times it has let us down.  The hitting has been abysmal scoring 3.72 runs a game which is the worst performance since 1972.  We have the 6th fewest runs in baseball.  The stats/projections say we should be scoring 5.53 runs a game, but our subs have been as awful as our starters.  We walk enough and we hit the ball hard and we actually don't even have a high chase rate.  The worst thing offensively is that we have simply been very bad (worst in baseball) in scoring the guys we get on base.  Our 11.2% base runner scoring rate is the lowest in all of baseball.  These numbers are pretty close as 1st place is Boston at 16.1% (league avg is 14.1).  This is because our base running is terrible; we have had 28 guys thrown out on the bases (most in baseball) and no team has taken a lower rate of extra bases than the Yankees 30%.  Finally, our % of grounding into DP's is the worst in baseball (13.3%) with the league avg at 9.8%.  TB has the lowest at 6.5%.  

Outside of Urshela and Judge our defense has been bad.  

Our coaching and managing have not been very good either.  While all the baserunning issues have something to do with boneheaded running plays (Frazier and Sanchez leading the charge), clearly the coaching could be better.  Boone himself has made some very poor decisions in using pitchers and making out lineups in my view. Some very recent examples: 

• Saturday against the RedSox, the Yankees are up 2-0 and Tallion has been effective for 5 shutout innings but wasn't very sharp.  A good manager realizes that Boston hasn't swung as well and is watching the worst pitcher in your rotation (about a 5 ERA) go into the 6th for the first time this season.  While I probably would have taken him out, I can understand leaving him in if you feel he has a lot left in the tank.  He got the 1st out so that was good, but then allowed a single.  I am uneasy now as the pitches have been hittable, but Boone leaves him in there.  The next batter was Bogaerts, he had a meatball to hit but didn't get all of it.  The ball went back to the wall but Andujar didn't and he misplayed into a double.  Now it is 2nd and 3rd with their top hitter Devers up (they were without their other in JD Martinez and still swept us).  With an open base we could walk him, or we could bring in a lefty to face Devers in a key spot.  Devers has an OPS of .975 against righties and .754 against lefties.  There is no chance we should pitch to Devers in this spot unless you brought in a lefty.  Boone lets him to pitch to him and gives up the game tying single.  THEN, Boone takes him out.  It makes no sense.  if Tallion couldn't;t go on after this, what was the point in leaving that matchup?  Too many dumb decisions like this.  I hate leaving a guy in and then taking him out after he allows the 2 run HR.     
• Sunday, we are up 3-1 going into the 6th inning.  German has pitched very well, but after a 2 out walk, Devers was up and Boone might have learned his lesson so he brought in Luetge.    He strikes out Devers and left Boegarts at 2nd base (He advanced on a Wild pitch).  Hey, this can work if we use common sense.  Luetge isn't reliable as he hasn't pitched much in the past 4 years, but he has been respectable. Next mining, with the righties up, it is time to get Luetge out of there, but Boone leaves him in there and after allowing a walk on 4 straight pitches, I was pretty annoyed that it would take Boone that to pull him rather than have a sense of urgency to lock this game down.  But, I was still wrong as Boone left Luetge out there and he allowed a 2 run ZHR to tie the game.  
• The same lack of sense of urgency to win is the issue I have had with Boone resting his players against our key rivals TB, Boston and even Toronto.  Not having Judge in RF cost us as Frazier allowed DJ to misplay a ball by not taking control (DJ should have caught it, but it is far easier for a RF).  Further, we saw how poor Fraziers throws can be with his 5 step rainbow throws.  All year we have rested guys at odd times.  When you are playing Minnesota, you can rest guys, but not your division foes.  Three of those losses are 6 game swings later in the year and we can see we will need them.

And don't get me started on the Odor call that was a joke in extra innings.  Calls usually even out and overall they probably have, but recently we have lost games by the umps and the pitches haven't been close.

The positive is that we are 31-29 and we can be much better.  Can't expect much more from the pitching, but our base running, defense and most importantly or offense will get better.