Bad news, America: the Yankees are great again

Led by slugger Aaron Judge and surprise ace Nestor Cortes Jr, New York has the best record in baseball — which is a surprise after an off-season in which they did very little.

Yankees slugger Aaron Judge has already hit 24 home runs this season

The New York Yankees were criticised last northern winter for behaving much more like one of their chief rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays, than a team once led by free-spending owner George Steinbrenner.

While the rest of the major leagues committed more than $4bn on superbly talented free agents, the Yankees took an uncharacteristically austere approach and largely sat out the spending spree.

General manager Brian Cashman shrugged as potential targets such as Carlos Correa and Freddie Freeman signed elsewhere.

“We’re prepared to go with what we have here,” he insisted during spring training, echoing the sentiments of his boss – Hal Steinbrenner, the son of George – who previously described this version of the Yankees as “championship calibre”.

In March, those statements sounded hopelessly optimistic at best and downright clueless at worst. Now it seems like Steinbrenner and Cashman knew something nobody else did – because the Yankees are dominating Major League Baseball.

With more than a third of the season complete, nobody has a better record than the Yankees, who have emerged as a favourite to return to the World Series for the first time since 2009.

They are on pace for an absurd 119 wins, which would be the most in history.

After an emphatic weekend sweep of the Chicago Cubs, the Yankees entered Monday already holding an 8.5-game lead in their division over the Toronto Blue Jays, the American League betting favourite heading into opening day.

Their dominance is surprising because they didn’t do much in the off-season. They re-signed first baseman Anthony Rizzo and traded for 36-year-old third baseman Josh Donaldson – nice players but not moves that generate much attention.

It hasn’t mattered. Part of how the Yankees have accomplished this was predictable – their incumbent line-up of high-price stars is scoring a lot of runs.

They lead the majors in on-base-plus-slugging percentage and rank second in runs per game, punishing opposing pitchers with a barrage of homers.

Many of those blasts are coming from one person: outfielder Aaron Judge, who has been the best player in baseball thus far.

Judge is playing like he has something to prove. He raised eyebrows in April when he rejected the Yankees’ offer to extend him through 2029 for $330m.

Instead, the 30-year-old said he would test free agency, believing he could do better on the open market, whether with the Yankees or somebody else. That appeared to be unlikely given Judge’s age and propensity to land on the injured list. But Judge’s bet on himself has so far paid off.

He already has a whopping 24 home runs, giving him a chance to become the first player to hit 60 in a season since Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa did it in 2001 and the first American League player to reach that milestone since Roger Maris in 1961.

Judge has combined with Giancarlo Stanton and Rizzo to give the Yankees a dangerous line-up.

“It’s an honour. Any time you’ve got Yankees legends like that, getting a chance to be mentioned in the same sentence or category,” Judge said recently.

“But I’m not trying to be Maris. I’m not trying to be Ruth. I’m just trying to be the best Aaron Judge I can be.”

The Yankees aren’t where they are because of their offence, however. For that, they can thank their pitching, which has been nothing short of a revelation.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have led MLB in earned run average (ERA) – the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched – in each of the last three seasons.

Entering Monday, they ranked third this season. The Yankees were first. If the season ended today, New York’s ERA of 2.85 would be the best of any team in four decades. It’s a strength that few would have predicted.

After ace Gerrit Cole, the names in the Yankees’ starting rotation had limited track records and loads of question marks.

Nonetheless, they have been spectacular. Nestor Cortes Jr, a journeyman left-hander whose average fastball travels at about 145km/h, has been one of baseball’s top pitchers, compiling an ERA of 1.96 in his first 11 outings. Jameson Taillon, who returned in 2021 after missing nearly two full seasons as he recovered from his second elbow surgery, has a 2.93 ERA, finally living up to the promise that once made him the No.2 overall draft pick.

Luis Severino, who worked 18 total innings from 2019 through 2021 because of injuries, looks like the pitcher who was an All-Star with the Yankees in 2017 and 2018.

Yankees starters have also thrown more innings than any other American League team, preserving their bullpen for the long season ahead.

In one three-game stretch earlier this month, Taillon, Cole and Severino combined to allow five hits in 22 innings.

The bullpen has been just as strong. Clay Holmes has given up one earned run in just over 28 innings this season and could remain in the closer role even when the injured Aroldis Chapman comes back.

The result has been a team that scores a lot of runs and gives up very few. Teams that do that tend to go deep into October. For the Yankees, that’s still the stated goal, even though it hasn’t happened much lately.

The Yankees like to say that any season that doesn’t end with a championship is a failure, which means they have endured plenty of failure since 2009.

This wasn’t supposed to be the season to end that streak, not with the Rays and Blue Jays looming in the division.

But right now, the Yankees look unstoppable. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise in the first place.

The Wall Street Journal