The Yankees offense might be hanging on by their fingernails, but thanks to immaculate starting pitching, they come away from the road trip they just completed winning six of ten. They’ve scored two or fewer runs in each of the last four games in Chicago yet still snuck out of Wrigley with a series win. All of their offense in the rubber game boiled down to consecutive ABs in the third, Ryan McMahon and José Caballero winning the game with a pair of swings.
We join McMahon to lead off the third, expectations already low after Cubs starter Colin Rea struck out five of the first six Yankees he faced. McMahon has seen his playing time taper off in recent weeks as the Yankees have faced a host of left-handed pitchers, so what looked like the stirrings of an uptick in production at the plate in June were swiftly halted in their tracks.
Rea typically attacks lefty hitters with four-seamers and changeups, and that’s exactly the course of action he chooses against McMahon, starting with this first-pitch four-seamer at 94.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what McMahon is looking for here. This fastball exits Rea’s hand aimed right down the middle and only fades a bit toward the outer half, but McMahon takes it all the way for called strike one. One of the many things contributing to the Yankees lineup’s struggles has been this tendency to take very hittable pitches early in the count. Not only is that likely the best pitch you’re going to get in a given AB, but it effectively gifts the pitcher count leverage without having to do to much as the Yankees give a strike away.
After earning a called strike with the heater on the outer half, a logical followup pitch would be to tunnel a changeup along a similar aiming point before it fades down and away trying to get McMahon to chase.
Rea yanks this changeup into the zone and this time McMahon does swing at the meatball, lining it to right at 111 mph for a leadoff single.
Here’s the full AB:
Next up is Caballero. He was something of a revelation out of the gate, starting the season with league-average offense, league-leading defense at short, and typically elite base running. But Caballero like much of the Yankees offense fell into a deep slump in June and July, mustering an anemic 71 wRC+ with worsening defense in the those two months. As such, expectations are yet again not high that he can do something of note in this spot.
Rea tends to have a different approach against righties — instead of four-seamers, changeups, and curveballs, he tends to go sinker, sweeper, slider against same-handed batters. Indeed, the first pitch Caballero sees is a 93 mph sinker.
This is a really disciplined take from Caballero. This sinker looks like a strike for most of its path toward home, only ducking out of the strike zone down and in during the final 15 feet before reaching the batter.
Curiously, Rea opts for a four-seamer for his 1-0 pitch to Caballero. On one hand, it makes sense given Caballero has performed a lot worse against the four-seamer than the sinker. On the other, Caballero has chased pretty much every sweeper and slider out of the zone in recent weeks, so I was expecting a breaker rather than a heater in this spot.
Rea leaves this 94 mph four-seamer up and out over the plate and Caballero jumps all over it, crushing it 408 feet to left-center to open the scoring, 2-0. You can tell Caballero is sitting dead red and he certainly doesn’t miss it.
Here’s the full AB:
I’m not going to make any declarations that this pair of ABs from McMahon and Caballero are at all indicative of some sort of turnaround in form for either player. However, both are illustrative of something I’d like to see more from pretty much the entire Yankees lineup. I mentioned earlier how detrimental it was for Yankees hitters to be so passive against hittable first-pitch fastballs. Another thing that has really limited their production has been an inability to punish mistake pitches when they do swing, the Yankees seemingly fouling off a disproportionate number of meatballs over the summer. Both McMahon and Caballero made sure to punish the two mistakes that Rea offered up, and it resulted in them winning the game.
The coming weeks could be a time of upheaval for McMahon and Caballero. Even with Anthony Volpe and Max Schuemann optioned to Triple-A, the infield is pretty crowded right now. Luis García Jr. seems most likely to just play first and DH, though he has seen plenty of time at the keystone if the Yankees decide to go down that road at all (Aaron Boone seemed to indicate that this was unlikely). Monday night’s call-up for Yankees top overall prospect George Lombard Jr. means that Caballero’s days starting at short are numbered. And Amed Rosario’s presence still cuts into McMahon’s time at third as well. It’s not a bad thing to have options, and the possibility of moving McMahon and Caballero to the bench gives the Yankees flexibility to use the former as a late-inning defensive substitution and Caballero as the super utility player he was initially envisioned to be.
