Harrison Bader is Yankees' most dangerous hitter right now
Yankees' Harrison Bader rounds the bases on his three-run home run against the Oakland Athletics during the first inning of an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Harrison Bader showing up to the Bronx wearing that orthodpedic boot feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?
General manager Brian Cashman took plenty of heat for swapping a perfectly healthy Jordan Montgomery for the hobbled Gold Glover last August, and it wasn’t until Bader’s Mr. October impression that the trade finally paid off from the Yankees’ perspective.
Now Bader is polishing what's looking like a 'W' for Cashman since returning from the IL, even after missing the first six weeks of the season because of an oblique strain. Granted, his track record health-wise hasn’t been perfect. Bader’s only played in 22 regular-season games since the trade. But his October heater has stretched into May, which makes Bader just what the doctor ordered as the banged-up Yankees look to rebound in the powerhouse AL East.
Entering Thursday night’s game with the Rays at the Stadium, Bader’s three homers since rejoining the club gave him eight in his past 17 games (counting the postseason). He also was hitting .429 (12-for-28) with two triples and the 11 RBIs were his most ever for a six-game stretch. As a point of reference, Bader has a career .734 OPS and hit five home runs in 86 games a year ago.
“Just the energy and professionalism he brings to the table every day,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Guys feed off him a little bit, too.”
Boone was hoping to just get a real centerfielder back rather than wearing out newbie Isiah Kiner-Falefa, a calculated risk at the largely unfamiliar position, as the Yankees also waited on Aaron Judge (activated on Tuesday). The manager was scraping together whatever he could find for the makeshift lineups, and writing in Bader nudged the Yankees a little closer to feeling whole again.
No one envisioned Bader becoming the engine of the Yankees’ offense, however. Typically that’s not who he is. But Bader evidently discovered something during last October’s power surge that goes beyond merely using the same model bat his buddy and former University of Florida teammate Pete Alonso has relied on (Bader got the idea from a bat Alonso gifted him years ago that was displayed at his home).
Fast forward to now, and Bader already has a pair of three-RBI games, one that included Wednesday’s homer in the Yankees’ 11-3 rout of the A’s. It didn’t hurt that Oakland’s franchise is mailing in this season before switching addresses to the Las Vegas strip, but the Bader Effect is real. Before Thursday’s series opener, the Yankees had scored at least seven runs in four straight games for the first time since 2019. They also have smacked 17 homers in the past nine games after hitting eight in the previous 13.
“I think we’re in a position where we’re game-planning really well,” Bader said. “We’re trusting ourselves and we’re taking confident at-bats. In the [A’s] series, we were just kind of staying in the pocket, taking good at-bats, and when the game presented situations for us to pounce, I think we delivered. Then we just really replicated that energy. through the entire series.”
The Yankees could use some of that against the division-leading Rays, and based on his wrecking-ball weekend at Tropicana Field, Bader should be a catalyst for more. He went 6-for-11 (.546) in that series with a pair of homers and seven RBIs. The Yankees dropped two of three, but were only outscored, 15-14, and blew a 6-0 lead in Sunday’s finale with ace Gerrit Cole on the mound. With margins that tight, Bader can be the difference this time around in the Bronx, whether doing damage or flashing stellar glovework.
“He’s a spark plug,” Judge said. “He’s a Gold Glove centerfielder that’s hustling around the bases. Just his at-bats, his approach at the plate. He goes up there with a plan and he executes it. It’s fun to see that. He brings that energy, man, and you need that when you’re playing 162. Things aren’t going your way, when you have a guy like that in the lineup that can ignite it with a big three-run homer, it’s special.”
That’s usually Judge’s job, or Giancarlo Stanton, or the No. 3 hitter Anthony Rizzo, guys that make up the primary run-producing segment of the batting order. But even with Stanton (hamstring) still on the shelf, Boone had Bader at seventh for Thursday night’s game, wedged between Jake Bauers (.154) and Jose Trevino (.218). That seems to be a strange place for the Yankees’ hottest hitter at the moment, unless you consider that moving him up would then make the bottom half of the lineup a virtual wasteland that allows the Rays’ pitchers to buzzsaw right through it.
Lately, Bader is the danger, and May has looked a lot like October for him. Now he’s giving pitchers the boot, a reversal of fortune that Cashman has to be relishing all these months later.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
