Rivals agree: Yankees as complete a team as there is
Aaron Judge celebrates a home run against the Detroit Tigers with teammate Anthony Rizzo at Yankee Stadium on June 4, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
MINNEAPOLIS — A little more than a month into this season, a bench coach from a rival American League team was posed this question:
Did he see any glaring weaknesses with the Yankees?
“Nothing glaring,” he said. “Nothing at all, honestly. Glaring or otherwise.”
He continued: “You can talk about the lack of [offensive] production from the catchers but, come on . . . [it’s] obviously not hurting them.”
Little has changed two-plus months into the season.
The Yankees, who start a three-game series against the AL Central-leading Twins at Target Field on Tuesday night, are an MLB-best 39-15 after a 6-0 homestand in which they swept the circling-the-drain Angels, then the already circled-the drain Tigers.
Quibble if you must about the caliber of those clubs, but a team can only play the schedule in front of it, and the Yankees so far have steamrolled theirs. Good teams dominate bad teams, something the Yankees did not do during last year’s wildly inconsistent campaign.
Said one rival AL executive: “Two things [stand out]: forget the offense and bullpen, you knew those were going to be good. But the defense is so much better than it’s been, and the starting pitching, obviously. I thought in the spring they had the makings of a better rotation than people were saying, but anyone who says they saw this kind of performance is lying. Including the Yankees.”
Indeed, the rotation.
Jordan Montgomery allowed two runs over 6 1/3 innings Sunday, which made it 10 straight starts by the rotation in which the starter lasted at least six innings. The rotation has an MLB-best 2.55 ERA.
Said one rival manager: “Going into this, you expected the bullpen to be good and your goal was to do about anything to get an early lead because you knew if you were behind in the seventh inning, or even the sixth, you could almost feel in your dugout [it was over]. None of those guys right now are letting anyone do that [get a lead].”
Longtime general manager Brian Cashman isn’t celebrating. He has a go-to saying, applicable especially during good times like these for his club: “You ready for the storm because the storm is coming.”
That storm typically takes the form of injuries, and the Yankees have been touched up a bit of late in that category— losing Chad Green for the season and other key bullpen pieces Jonathan Loaisiga and Aroldis Chapman are on the injured list. Compared with other teams, they’ve still managed to make it through relatively unscathed.
Most significant: There have been no injuries to the rotation or to Aaron Judge, an AL MVP favorite.
The lack of consistent offense from the catchers — Jose Trevino has been better in recent weeks — could become an issue. The Yankees pursuing a catcher before the trade deadline can’t be ruled out. Nor can their pursuit of an outfielder — the still-slumping Aaron Hicks and Joey Gallo could be moved — or the possibility of them adding an additional reliever or starter even. Still, barring an onslaught of injuries, “that’s a pretty complete team,” one NL scout said.
A word on Josh Donaldson:
The Yankees knew what they were getting, a tinderbox at times in past clubhouses he’s been in. But the “everyone disliked Donaldson in those clubhouses” narrative simply isn’t accurate.
Said a coach from one of his former teams: “There’s some maintenance with Josh, no question, but he’s generally a good teammate and certainly not going to be a problem in a strong clubhouse, which it seems the Yankees have. And he’s all about winning. He’s probably a fit in there for that reason alone."
Though plenty in the organization would have preferred Donaldson not dig in so much on his “I’ve called him ‘Jackie’ before,” defense in his apologies regarding the Tim Anderson incident, nonetheless polling from a cross-section of those in uniform and out of it can be summarized this way: Donaldson said something ill-advised, even dumb. And now on to the next game, the next series.
In this case, here in Minneapolis.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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