The Yankees have been a little lucky over the past few years.
The New York Yankees And The Cruel Month Of May
Wait, wait. Step away from the caps-lock key. That isn’t “lucky” in the way it’s often used -- an epithet that attempts to diminish on-field accomplishments. The Yankees won the 2009 World Series and the AL Wild Card last year because they were a very good team. Calling them lucky at the same time doesn’t take away from that.
They weren’t lucky with bloops and broken-bat hits or blown calls or anything like that.
They were lucky in that a substantial part of their team was aging like wine (the good stuff) while the rest of the league had to make do with players who aged like milk. Someone in Chicago left a cup of Alfonso Soriano on the radiator, even. But the Yankees kept motoring along. Consider:
- It isn’t necessarily luck that the Yankees were able to develop Mariano Rivera and his cutter, but Rivera has been the best closer in baseball for about 15 seasons now. He’s 41, and the last time he went on the disabled list is 2003. At no point have the Yankees had to scramble through a morass of temporary replacements, trying out someone like Ryan Franklin for a month or three.
- History is littered with catchers who could hit until the position broke them. Usually it happens right around the age of 30. Jorge Posada was a fantastic hitter when the Yankees won in 2009. He was 37, which made him something like the Jamie Moyer of catchers.
- Actually, the whole team has been freaky. In 2009, the Yankees had four hitters in their lineup who were a) 35 or older, and b) able to produce 2.5 WAR or more. It’s not that rare for a 35-year-old to produce at a high level -- 469 hitters have done it -- but it’s pretty rare for two players on the same team to be good, old, and healthy like that. Four players? Unheard of. Amazing.
Maybe it wasn’t luck -- maybe it was a medical and training staff that was really ahead of the curve. Call it what you will ... but if it’s not luck, it’s certainly really, really unusual. Every year the Yankees would count on old-timers, and the old-timers would come through.
Now the Yankees are 5-9 in May. They were just swept at home by the Red Sox, which followed a series loss at home against the Kansas City Royals. They’re still in second place, but confidence isn’t exactly at an all-time high for Yankees fans. So is this the age-related chasm that we’ve been expecting for years?
It's way too early to say. Every team goes through a losing patch, and it’s easy to freak out about them. Remember, the Rays were mathematically eliminated during the first week of the season. You know, before they took over first place. The Yankees still have one of the best first basemen in the game. Ditto for second base. The outfielders are defensive assets, and if Nick Swisher starts to hit again, they’ll all be offensive assets too. The pitching, which was supposed to be the real liability, has been surprisingly solid. Also, Mariano Rivera is a robot.
But the Yankees should be worried that Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada look like liabilities, and that Alex Rodriguez looks like a complementary piece to a good lineup rather than a middle-of-the-order force. They have enough talent to withstand declines like that, but it’s hard for any team to take that kind of hit to a lineup. And if Russell Martin and Curtis Granderson come down to previous levels while Jeter and Posada continue to struggle, it could be a long summer.
It’s early. Half a month doesn’t prove a thing, and a lot of teams would be thrilled to be 20-18, still in good position to contend. If a bunch of players pushing 40 decided to stop hitting, though, it wouldn’t be unusual at all. The only thing that would make it unusual would be that they’re stopping while the Yankees are counting on them.
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