Why I'm Not Buying the Yankees (at least, not yet)

It’s certainly true that they would have a much worse record to date if not for the barrage of HRs and that they can’t continue to hit them at the rate they have. But I think the way that they have won the games is really the fluke and not that they won the games. No, they (esp. Posada and Russell Martin) won’t continue to hit HRs like that over the course of the season. I’d also think it’s fair to assume that their inability to score except by HRs is also a bit of a small sample size fluke. Do you really think that Gardner is a .140 hitter and that they’ll continue playing him if he is? Jeter’s best days are behind him but I think it’s fair to say that his slow start is at least partly the result of his efforts to revamp his swing and that he’ll perform better once he gets his timing down. Swisher only has 2 extra base hits and can’t seem to hit lefthanded. Granderson is hitting lefties but not righties. Posada only has 7 hits. Tex has hit for power but had a week long terrible slump also. So yes, they will score less by homerun but also more by singles and doubles strung together. Also, their pitching has been killed by Phil Hughes and to a much lesser extent, Rafael Soriano. Even if you assume that Hughes won’t get his velocity back, his replacement won’t pitch as terribly as he did for 3 starts. I don’t think they look like a team that will make it far in the playoffs without better pitching but they will win a lot of regular season games based on great offense and decent pitching.

and they only got better this year, why on earth would they NOT be an elite team?

People are underrating this Yankee squad so hard it’s ridiculous.

Texeira just turned 31 last week. He’s still in his prime. Given that he OPS’ed .559 through the end of April and .694 in September while playing through a foot injury, I’d be shocked if he didn’t have a much better year. I get the age issues and Jeter hasn’t looked better this year either. But other than Jeter, Cano, Swisher and Gardner, the rest of the lineup is likely to hit better not worse than last year even given age issues. A-Rod looks the best he has since the hip injury. Granderson is hitting lefties. Posada should benefit from not catching. It would be very surprising if Tex didn’t hit better baring an injury. Chavez is also a big upgrade on the bench.

When you think about their pitching, remember that 68 games last year were started by Vasquez, AJ or Dustin Moseley. Vasquez and Burnett were terrible last year. Hughes wasn’t very good in the second half either. The rotation doesn’t look like a great playoff rotation but if Burnett is better and Hughes returns with increased veloclity and they add an arm at some point in the season, it is not hard to think that the pitching might be better than last year. Granted, we need to see more from Burnett to pronounce him fixed.

They also do have plenty of question marks still but also a deep farm system to make upgrades mid-season. I guess it all depends on what you mean by an elite team. They made the AL Championship series last year but I could probably accept an argument that they weren’t really an elite team because they just didn’t have enough starting pitching. If they were elite last year though, I’d say they are this year also.

But on the whole, the starting line-up for New York is pretty much on target for their pre-season projected wOBA. Fangraphs’ ZiPS’s projections (and I just averaged them both) had the team posting a .356 OBA, and thus far they’ve put up .355. There’s definitely a lot of weird stuff going into that .355—hot starts (A-Rod), cold starts (Gardner), weird starts (Posada), an unsustainably high HR/FB, an unsustainably low BABIP—but the end result is still roughly what was expected from the team.

So I think it’s tough to put too many question marks on their offensive production thus far, at least. The pitching is a different story, though that’s been a question mark since well before the season. Hughes’ production so far definitely throws more problems into the equation, but other than that, I don’t see how the performance so far changes the pre-season assessment. Granted, Hughes is a huge factor in this pitching rotation, but is he enough to bring the team down (or up)?

I guess I just don’t think NY’s performance so far has really been enough to change our pre-season assessment in either direction. If you didn’t think they were an elite team going into the season, and it doesn’t sound like you did, then I agree that their performance so far has not been enough to change your mind. But I think they’re basically performing as expected: a whopping offense that scores tons of runs, and a rotation just good enough to keep them in most games long enough to clobber out a win (and, of course, a bullpen that’ll hold far more wins than it gives away). Whether or not that adds up to an elite team is certainly up for debate, though.

Generally speaking, teams average about 7-8% for the year.

caught my attention. Isn’t the HR/FB% generally 10.5%?