Shame On Yankees For Continued Commitment To LeMahieu
The comedian Bill Burr isn’t for everyone, but he has this bit about the death of shame that I think is applicable to Major League Baseball.
I get that the game has evolved over my lifetime to the point where hitting is now all about the coalescing of exit velocity and launch angle. But getting put out on a regular basis, especially when a hitter too often fails to put a ball in play, should still be a concerning factor for those making lineup decisions.
I remember when the cliché about being a good hitter meant you made out seven times out of ten. Those that could only go 2-for-10 were ridiculed for hitting “below the Mendoza line”, a dig at 1970s shortstop Mario Mendoza, who registered a career .215 batting average. Those that couldn’t exceed that low bar rightfully felt shame, as did their clubs for not removing those players from their lineups.
That must no longer be the case in modern baseball, as “analytics” have convinced those that run teams to forgive low success rates in favor of periodic long balls. This season’s league-wide batting average, per baseball-reference.com, is .243, the lowest since the dead-ball 1968 season. The Mendoza line is no longer the point of entry into the world of shame. On Sunday, three of the Yankees’ nine starters versus visiting Tampa Bay finished the game, a 6-4 loss, with an average lower than .215.
None of those players was third baseman DJ LeMahieu, who got the day off after making out in 17 consecutive at-bats (with one walk) over his previous five starts. The slump dragged his average down to a deplorable .177 in 140 plate appearances.
You want to argue that batting average is a “boomer” stat? Fine, LeMahieu’s on-base percentage (.270) and slugging percentage (.202) don’t exactly bolster his cause. He has three extra base hits all season—all doubles. Per the Athletic, only four hitters in all of MLB with as many plate appearances sport a lower OPS.
More evidence as to LeMahieu’s dreadfulness: He strikes out on over 16% of his PAs and, more detrimentally, there were nine instances where Yankees fans wished he had struck out. LeMahieu’s 1.33% ground into double play rate nearly laps the field for those with at least 140 PAs—only two players have rates higher than 0.55%.
It’s an embarrassment, especially for a player with LeMahieu’s resume. He is a three-time All-Star and has won two MLB batting titles. The latter one in COVID-shortened 2020 came in a contract year, motivating the Yankees to extend him for six more seasons. Now 36 and battered by various injuries (he missed the first 55 games this season with a right foot fracture), he looks washed in the batter’s box, too often unable to discern what is and isn’t a strike until it’s too late. The contact he does make is often weak—Baseball Savant has recorded his average exit velocity at about 87.6 mph, which ranks 237th out of 333 MLB players with at least 100 PAs.
In other words, LeMahieu doesn’t seem to be hitting in bad luck. Yet Sunday was just the seventh time among New York’s last 46 games that LeMahieu didn’t see action. Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said on Saturday that “we got to keep running him out there.” Nothing to see here. Zero shame.
The Yankees are 18-21 in the games LeMahieu has played after starting the season 37-18. I’m not one of those “A followed B, so therefore B caused A” theorists. New York has a host of other problems—Mets pitcher Luis Severino may have been joking when he trolled the Yankees with his “they only have two good hitters” quote, but he’s not really wrong. And the Yankees’ own pitching, from the rotation to the bullpen, has had a severe regression to the mean, even with reigning Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole returning to the mound from an elbow issue last month. However, LeMahieu certainly isn’t helping, and neither is Boone by sticking with him through this terrible slump.
Boone seems loath to promote Oswaldo Cabrera to a full-time gig at any position, including at third base. Cabrerra boasts more pop at the plate, but he brings adventure to the infield. LeMahieu, meanwhile, has always been at worst an above-average fielder, working in at both first and third base this season. A four-time Gold Glove winner, he has been charged with only one error while credited by Baseball Savant with four “runs prevented”, the second-most among third basemen. Still, no one would mistake LeMahieu for prime Brooks Robinson at this point in his career.
Maybe Boone is thinking he can run out the clock on LeMahieu. Unfortunately, if Boone had hope that Jon Berti’s return from a left calf strain was the cure, he got bad news over the weekend. Berti, who hit for a respectable .273 average (.649 OPS) in 17 games earlier this season while LeMahieu was out, suffered a setback in his rehab and is looking at another PRP injection before he can ramp up his running.
And though It is assumed that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman is working the phones to bring in upgrades prior to the July 30 trade deadline, it would seem imprudent to expend the organization’s prime assets on a third baseman. Who’s up for an Isiah Kiner-Falefa reunion, as per one of The Athletic’s trade suggestions?
Whether it’s Berti, Cabrera, or unknown Player X at third base in ten days. what’s to become of LeMahieu? He has two more seasons at $15 million per year on his contract; when New York bought out third baseman Josh Donaldson last August 29, it cost the Yankees just $8 million for the 2024 portion—and that was considered steep.
So it seems like the Yankees are going to be stuck with LeMahieu for a bit more. But that doesn’t mean they have to keep playing him.