The Verdict Is In: Judge Had Head Up Rear!

I want to kick this off with last night's game against Baltimore.  

I start with picking on our 29-year-old golden child as well.  I won't discuss Judge's actual production as much as the "head up the rear" way he played last night.   The Yankees approach at the plate is terrible.  They either don't have a plan or they execute it terribly.   Down 4-1 in the 8th inning, a new pitcher comes in and walks Frazier on 4 pitches.  That would tick me off if I am Baltimore, as a guy with a .495 OPS deserves to be lobbed strikes up 4-1 in the 8th rather than walking him.  That being said, the pitcher has to face 3 batters and he is struggling.  He then walks DJ on a 3-2 count.  Stanton is now up representing the tying run.  I am fine with an approach that he is looking for a certain pitch in a certain zone to swing here on the first pitch, but he swings at a breaking ball and was out in front of it and just missed it for a high fly to LF.  I would like to see more selectivity, but maybe he was looking for a breaking ball and just missed it?  

OK, so now Judge comes up (BTW, the pitcher is a lefty) and the pitcher misses on 3 pitches and is still all over the place.  He is mostly a fastball pitcher so with a 3-0 count I am fine with giving Judge the green light and he should be looking for a fastball.  He gets a fastball that is a foot inside and swings and misses on ball 4!  Where is even the slightest bit of plate discipline?   You know a guy is wild so you zone a certain pitch!  Hitting 101!  He does walk on the next pitch as the pitcher is all over the place, but still...  

Now Odor is up???  Yeah, why in the world would we have him bat 4th is beyond me (.593 OPS), but there he is and the first pitch is a fastball way outside for a ball.  He then reaches and slightly fouls off a slider well outside the zone.  Poor discipline.  He then gets a mistake slider that hangs inside and he fouls it off.  Huge opportunity there as he clearly has no control.  He then throws a slider so far outside that Odor couldn't even reach at and flails at it for strike 3.  Shaking my head even as I write this.  

Fortunately, Urshela comes through off their closer (brought in) hitting a ball down the line for a 2 run single.  However, for some bonehead reason Judge, with the play in front of him tries to go to 3rd with 2 outs and after a terrible slide is called out.  I am disgusted at this time.  This is a little league mental error at a very important time and we would have had 2 guys on base.  I also think a good side might have allowed him to be safe, but he slid as poorly as Paul Oneill always did and he was out.  BTW, Oneill was the worst "slider" I have ever seen.  Back to Judge's horrible decision...the ump ruled that Judge was out before DJ touched home so we only got one run.  This was the wrong decision and the umps did not allow Boone to review this.  This was just salt on wounds and it was a pathetic situation that was 100% caused by Judge's terrible decision.

Some quick points:

• The Yankees offense is 29th in OPS - that seems impossible and is clearly a statistical anomaly.  Not one of our starters is doing even close to what was expected and our highest starting OPS guy (Judge) is over 100 OPS points below his avg.  Urshela at a .756 OPS is not so bad 
• DJ has been pretty bad at the plate and keeps grounding weakly to the left side (.671 OPS)
• Gardner missed a ball in the OF the other day that he would have routinely made.   He still is above avg defensively in LF, but he is not the elite LF'r he was.  Offensively, he has the lowest OPS of his career so far (43 PA).  His age dictates a decline but like our entire team, he is far underperforming.  If he wasn't a lefty I doubt the Yankees would have resigned him.  That being said, Gardner has always been underrated and has been a very solid player who has only played with the Yankees (which is cool).
• I mentioned the approach of Judge and even Stanton above, but I have never been so surprised at the approach of the Yankees.  Letting fastballs right down the middle go by without a swing and then swinging on fastballs out of the zone.  This is different than the normal swinging at breaking balls out of the zone.  But, just not having a plan or an approach has been shocking.  I don't know what happened to Thames' coaching this year, but something is so far off it can't and won't continue.  

I know this is very negative, but we have been far underperforming and I was frustrated last night.  While we did show some signs of life in Cleveland, one of our long time readers sent me a note stating that if the Yankees go 2-2 or worse we will end April with a winning % that has not won a World Series in 40 years; that is 0 titles in 305 situations.  So we better either be the first team to do this or go 3-1...and then we have nothing to worry about :-)

The good news is that it really can't get worse.