2024 MLB Season Previews: New York Yankees
If you’re a Yankee-hater, then you ate pretty good last season. The New York Yankees have only missed the postseason five times since the turn of the century, and last season just so happened to be one of those five. With that being said, the Yankees are rarely ever mediocre-to-bad for a long period of time, and it seems likely that they're going to bounce back here in 2024.
Where were they in 2023?
The Yankees actually got off to a solid start last season, ending up eleven games over .500 as late as June 4, when they completed a series win at Dodger Stadium. However, that series at Chavez Ravine ended up being a major turning point for New York, since that was when they lost Aaron Judge for 42 games after he sprained his toe while crashing into the right field wall at Dodger Stadium to make a fantastic (but costly) running catch.
While Judge did eventually return by late July, things just weren’t the same for the Yankees after this series. Up until that point on June 2, the Yankees as a team hit .238/.308/.422 with a .315 team wOBA and a 101 team wRC+ — it wasn’t spectacular but it wasn’t terrible, either. From June 3 to the end of the season, New York went .220/.301/.383 with a .299 wOBA and a 90 wRC+. Anthony Rizzo had an injury-plagued off-year, Giancarlo Stanton had the worst season of his career, and Judge was unable to carry the load by himself when he was able to play. The offense took some serious hits from injury and basically died out down the stretch and their pitching was nowhere near good enough (with Carlos Rodón's first season in the Bronx being a hot mess, in particular) to compensate for the complete and utter power outage.
There was maybe a little bit of hope with a 7-3 stretch from late June into early July, which ended with the Yankees taking the first two of a four-game set from the Orioles... but then they lost the next two to split the series, finished July 10-15, and finished August 10-18. As a result the Yankees limped to an 82-80 record, which was their worst season since going 76-86 back in 1992. From the start of May, New York never got closer than six games to the top of the division and faded away with a whimper when it came to the Wild Card race. In fact, a good final month kept them from finishing under .500; they fell six games under .500 for the first time since 2016 in late August.
The funny thing is, this iteration of the Yankees was probably notably worse than 82-80. Both their Pythagorean Expectation and BaseRuns record were 78-84, which is befitting a team that finished tenth- or eleventh-worst in both position player and pitching production. Gerrit Cole and Judge were very good, Gleyber Torres was solid and posted a career-best xwOBA, and there was some great pitching by guys like Michael King, Ian Hamilton, and Clay Holmes... but there was also a ton of awful performance that kept getting playing time, like Oswaldo Cabrera and Jake Bauers combining for over -1.0 fWAR in under 600 PAs.
What did they do in the offseason?
The Yankees going 82-80 qualifies as an abject failure around those parts, so you knew that they were going to be busy in the offseason as a response to what happened in 2023. They made the splashiest trade of the offseason, bringing in Juan Soto from San Diego. Prior to that, they treated baseball world with an extremely rare Yankees-Red Sox trade that brought Alex Verdugo to the Bronx. New York's lineup needed some serious help and adding those two should help them reduce the reliance on Judge’s otherworldliness, while also taking some pressure off of Rizzo and Stanton to make their respective bouncebacks. Shoot, adding Soto alone could potentially be a game-changer for the Bronx Bombers heading into this season.
They also added some depth in the Soto trade, as Trent Grisham came along too. One of the main reasons why the Yankees suffered a severe downturn last season was due to the injury bug taking huge chunks out of their planned lineup and forcing them to play below-replacement level players for long stretches of the season. While their depth still isn't much to write home about, their offseason additions should at least help them stave of complete disaster if it really gets tested again in 2024.
On the pitching side of things, New York took a big swing on potentially signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto but ended up losing out to the Dodgers on that one and ended up "settling" for Marcus Stroman as their big free agency pitching acquisition. Assuming Gerrit Cole continues to be Gerrit Cole and Rodón can recapture the form that earned him a big money deal from the Yankees last season, Stroman should be a very solid option as the third starter for New York. Nestor Cortes is yet another Yankees player who is looking to return to form following an injury-plagued 2023, and the same goes for setup man Jonathan Loáisiga as well.
As of writing, Blake Snell is still a free agent and it seems like Snell and the Yankees have been a consistently connected to each other throughout the offseason and then there's Juan Soto angling for it as well. Still, Scott Boras is Snell's agent and it's been a pretty rocky offseason for Boras clients and the chances of Snell going to New York at this point are reportedly bleak, so New York may be hoping that internal options such as Clarke Schmidt can step up and give them what they need at the back end of their rotation.
Where are they hoping to go?
These are the Yankees we're talking about, so any time that they feel like they have a shot at making the postseason then that also means it's World Series or bust. It may actually be the case since Juan Soto is likely only going to be in the Bronx for a good time and not a long time. Assuming the Yankees stay healthy and the projections are true then this should be a team that can make the postseason and even win the division — FanGraphs currently has them as the favorites to win the AL East at a 39.2 percent chance and are also currently projected as the favorites to get the second bye in the AL side of the bracket with 88 wins. PECOTA actually loves how the Yankees are shaping up and has them winning 94 games this year and being a World Series favorite as one of only four teams with a double-digit percent chance of winning the title.
Their rosy projections aren’t just due to them having a productive offseason — it’s also due to the fact that nobody else in the American League — and the AL East in particular — really sought out to make multiple big improvements to their respective rosters in the offseason. The Red Sox didn’t do nearly enough to improve upon a team that finished fourth in the AL East last year, the Blue Jays appear to be staying in the same place that they were last year, the Orioles still aren’t getting aggressive in adding to their roster (outside of the Corbin Burnes trade), and the Rays are the Rays.
The Yankees at least made a very strong effort to boost their squad ahead of 2024. When you factor that in with the AL Central likely being underwhelming as a whole once again and the AL West having two pretty good teams in Texas, one team that might be good in Washington, one longshot in Southern California and one tire fire in Northern California and that means that the AL East should be getting multiple postseason spots once again. I’d say that based on their offseason work and the overall league picture, the Yankees should like their chances of being one of the AL East teams to get an October lottery ticket this season.
Looking up and down this roster, perhaps the more surprising thing is what happened in 2023 rather than their projections for 2024.
Braves 2023 Head to Head
Our Atlanta Braves ended up catching the Yankees at what was arguably their lowest point of the 2023 season. Atlanta essentially dominated New York for a three-game sweep, as the Yankees lineup was woefully impotent throughout the series and scored a grand total of three runs. The Braves sauntered to victory in the first two games with an 11-3 win in the opener and then a 5-0 win to clinch the series. Atlanta only scored two runs in the series finale but this also coincided with Charlie Morton saving two of his best performances for each of the New York teams. This time, Morton finished with six shutout innings including four hits allowed, one walk, and ten strikeouts. After this loss, FanGraphs had New York’s probability of making the Postseason at 2.4 percent, so the Braves essentially hit the 2023 Yankees with the death blow.
The Braves will be travelling to the Bronx from June 22-24 for a weekend series and here's hoping that Atlanta will be able to have a good time feasting upon the very cozy dimensions at Yankee Stadium.
