The Ron Marinaccio False Corollary and What’s Really Wrong with the Yankees

September 4, 2022 /

Another day, another loss. The Yankees dropped another game on Friday night–again one they should have won. Twitter continues to frenzy. However, it’s hard to place a finger exactly on what’s wrong with this team. Sure, having Ron Marinaccio instead of Albert Abreu makes them marginally better, but that’s not the reason they lost tonight, 3-2 to Boston. It’s not the reason they lost 1-0 in 13 innings on Tuesday night, or the reason they lost 12-9, 1-0, and 4-3 to St. Louis last weekend. 

The Yanks are 1-8 since they traded Joey Gal- er, I mean, since the trade deadline. I know their struggles started long before this stretch, but let’s zoom in to this recent pitfall to figure out why this team has bottomed out.

  • Has the offense faltered? Sometimes. Of the 9 games, the Yankees have been held to 3 runs or fewer 6 times. In this span, they’re 20th in runs scored, 16th in OPS, and 15th in wRC+. Perfectly…average. However, losing 1-0 twice during this stretch, going 1-24 with RISP in the last 3 games alone, and failing to score in 7 consecutive extra innings points a pretty clear finger to what has been part of the problem. More specifically, Gleyber Torres, Aaron Hicks, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa have consistently strung together non-competitive at-bats. In the second half of the season (the last 18 games), none of the aforementioned players have an OPS over .540 or a wRC+ over 54. Andrew Benintendi and Josh Donaldson haven’t helped either. Benintendi has a .595 OPS since putting on pinstripes, and Donaldson, while heating up, has been statistically league average in the second half. With Rizzo, Stanton and now Carpenter banged up, the Yankees lineup is effectively divided into thirds: productive, not productive, and liabilities. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.
  • Has the starting pitching faltered? Sometimes. While this aspect of the team has been relatively strong of late, the Yankees have seen 3 starts within this 9-game stretch put the game almost immediately out of reach (one from each of Taillon, Montas and Cole).
  • Has the bullpen faltered? Sometimes! Clay Holmes has blown 2 games during this stretch. Newly acquired Scott Effross gave up a 3-run home run that effectively ended a game in St. Louis. Albert Abreu surrendered a 2-run lead immediately after the Yankees broke their 19 consecutive scoreless innings. However, overall the pitching has largely done its job over this 9-game stretch, ranking 7th in ERA and 4th in FIP. Had Ron Marinaccio been on the team during this stretch, maybe the Yankees grab one extra win. But with the way the Yankees have failed to close games, even that isn’t a given. He makes the Yankees better, yes. But he doesn’t make the Yankees good enough to win right now. He doesn’t close in Clay Holmes’ chances. He doesn’t get at-bats with RISP. He doesn’t start at shortstop, or centerfield, or second base. He doesn’t start games against opposing staff aces.

While we scream and claw for Marinaccio (and Clarke Schmidt) to be on the roster, and use that as bulletin board material for managerial negligence, we’re missing the bigger picture. How does a team losing in so many different ways find true north again?

The answer is patience. How do we feel about a playoff lineup of Jose Trevino, Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, DJ LeMahieu, Andrew Benintendi, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Matt Carpenter, with Harrison Bader and Josh Donaldson (or potentially Torres) on the bench? How do we feel about Cole, Montas, Nestor, and Severino starting playoff games? How do we feel about a bullpen in which Boone will have his pick of the hottest arms between Holmes, Chapman, Loaisiga, Trivino, Effross, Peralta, Luetge, Marinaccio, Schmidt, Abreu, Castro, Britton, German, and Taillon.

This team needs better focus and a better sense of urgency. But above all else, it needs three things:

  1. To get healthy
  2. To figure out Clay Holmes’ recent struggles
  3. To get some good luck back

I can almost hear blinded Yankee fans screaming, “Luck has nothing to do with how these bums have played the last two weeks.” Well, again to focus on this 1-8 stretch, the Yankees are 11th in baseball in hard hit rate, a metric that strongly drives expected batting average. Yet, their BABIP is 23rd best, a perfect representation of the how the input doesn’t match the output right now. Baserunning outs have been frustrating as well, but not a consistent problem for this team. You could say the same thing about the defense. 

The bottom line is if you’re going to go 1-8, this is how you want to go 1-8. Having your all-star closer blow a save one game, then have your offense go scoreless in 13 innings the next, and then have your $300M ace give up 6 runs before the bottom half of the first inning aren’t sustainable ways to lose games. If there was one consistent issue during this stretch, we could start to worry about its implications over the next couple months. But this team, playing dead-last baseball for 2 weeks, and even below .500 baseball for a month and a half, has been average at worst offensively, and top 10 in pitching. At its worst!

Look, baseball is a big sample sport, played under a small sample microscope. The Yankees are a team built for October, and with another Toronto loss tonight, their division lead remains at 10 games. Give this team the time to get their best players back in the lineup. Give this team the grace to be on fortune’s side of a big hit or big out in a one run game. Once rosters expand in September, I expect to see a longer leash with some younger players, and our absolute confidence in unseen faces will be tested. But when the Yankees host Houston in the ALCS, nobody will remember who did what with a 10-game lead in the middle of August.