So far so good. We've cooled off some of late but the Yankees have been even colder.
Unlike last season when we vastly underachieved relative to our Pythagorean record, we're slightly exceeding it this year. The offense is a juggernaut as has been well-chronicled of late and the bullpen has been fraying of late, letting down our fine starters. Thought we had it solved with
Josh Scanlon, but his injury kind of set us back to square one. The defense, as always with my saves, is atrocious.
Plenty to like here of course, so I'll point out a couple of disappointments.
William Contreras' lack of production (4 HR, 23 RBI) is jarring although he gets on base (.361 OBP) so it's tolerable.
Chris Gutierrez though is the biggest underachiever. He's been worth 3.8 and 4.1 WAR the last two seasons with Gold Glove-caliber D in CF and just enough hitting (.250-.260 with 35 2B/10 HR). This year he's giving us neither: the bat is a wet noodle and most disturbingly he's playing mediocre D with a -2.7 ZR after putting up ZRs of 11.2, 17.3 and 11.6 the last three seasons. If he's not going to give us good glovework there's no reason to keep him in the lineup and once
Orlando Tosado comes off the DL I'm going to stick him in center so
Joshua Baez can stay in the lineup as he'd been the odd OF out much of the year against righties.
DiCostanzo and Marlette are one of the best 1-2 combos in baseball and Morales has been decent as the #3 guy, leaving Mendes and Prosecky to provide passable back-end starting. Ah the pen that could have been with Scanlon and
Frankely Guzman, now it's mix and match and pray.