Last week, when I was reading Sam’s piece about the messy state of much of the American League, I was struck by how many teams now mired in a rut were considered by many prognosticators to be contenders coming into the season. The AL East was supposed to be a four-horse race between New York, Boston, Baltimore and Toronto, with Tampa Bay bringing up the rear; instead, it’s been the Rays and Yankees vying for the lead, with the Orioles, Blue Jays and Red Sox still on a long march to .500 ball.
If we look over to the AL Central, the Tigers offer a harrowing picture of how fast baseball can come at you. Although they did fritter away a huge division lead to the Guardians last year, they exacted revenge on them in the Wild Card Series, and took the Mariners to Game 5 in a tightly contested ALDS. In the offseason, they declared their intent to claim the division title by signing Framber Valdez on February 4th. Four months later, they now find themselves nearly sharing the cellar with the Royals — themselves a preseason dark horse candidate — with a 26-38 record, 9.5 games out of first place.
The National League offers even more examples of unmet expectations. The Mets had a weird offseason resulting in many awkward fits on the roster, but the collection of talent was undeniable. No one would have batted an eye if they had brute-forced their way to a 90-win campaign this year. Instead, they’re last in the division, 14.5 games back of the first-place Braves, and 5.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot, trailing everyone in the Senior Circuit except for the Giants and Rockies. The Cubs haven’t collapsed to that extent, but compared to their preseason hype—FanGraphs gave them the highest playoff odds in their division—their 33-31 record is certainly underwhelming; they’ve been extremely streaky at best. And while the Phillies have done well to scrape their way back up the standings after a horrific start and the ousting of their manager, they’re still barely hanging on to a Wild Card spot under interim skipper Don Mattingly with a -20 run differential.
What does this all mean? The most obvious, and nonetheless true, answer, is that baseball is unpredictable. However, although it certainly has its fair share of random variance, that isn’t to say that teams have absolutely no control over how their seasons will play out. If that were the case, why even spend so much time and money trying? Even in a topsy-turvy season like this one, certain teams are making good on their preseason promise – think of the Dodgers, Braves, Brewers, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) the Guardians and Mariners.
Turning our focus to the Yankees specifically, why have they fared relatively well in a season where so many other would-be contenders have not? My view is that design and luck are equally involved; and cleanly separating the two is harder than you’d think.
First things first: I think the Yankees are, on the whole, a well-run organization. Shocking, I know. But with the sheer amount of criticism directed towards the front office, manager, and coaching staff every day, it’s easy to lose sight of this. By and large, the Yankees do things right. They’ve developed core talent (Schlittler, Rice) and solid role players (Warren, Schmidt, Volpe, Wells). They’ve shelled out for top-of-the-market talent when the opportunity arises (Judge, Cole, Fried, Rodón, Bellinger). They’ve made savvy trades for impact players (Chisholm, Bednar, Cruz) while retaining their most coveted prospects (Lombard Jr., Rodríguez, Kilby, Lagrange). They haven’t remained contenders for the better part of a decade now out of sheer luck; their success is deserved in many ways.
But while the Yankees have done a lot of things right, they’ve also had a lot of things go right for them (at least until Judge’s stress fracture). This becomes apparent when you consider the various pitfalls that befell other teams this year. Say, for example, you’re trying to build a contender on the backs of highly regarded young talent – that’s great! But consider the Orioles. Adley Rustchman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, and Samuel Basallo are definitely a fearsome foursome. But for a team with postseason aspirations, the trick is to have them all be good at the same time, and that hasn’t happened yet.
That isn’t a comment on the talent of the four youngsters; I fully expect all four to have productive careers. It’s a comment on the unpredictability and non-linear-ness of player development. Even the most highly regarded prospects can struggle at the MLB level, and even young stars can take a step back after a breakout year. The fact that both Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler have built on their strong showings last year and are posting elite numbers this year does suggest that the Yankees’ player dev is working well. But the fact that both young stars’ upward trajectories are so closely aligned, I think, is close to a miracle — at least, it’s not something that you can engineer, or count on.
Likewise, there is an element of luck with any aspect of roster-building. Marquee free agents or trade acquisitions can bomb (Bo Bichette) or get injured (Dylan Cease, Garrett Crochet); you can try to gauge which players are at risk, but you can’t predict them with 100% accuracy, and that’s where chance gets involved. And when you trade prospects for big-league pieces, there’s always the risk of the player you got underperforming while the prospects you traded away flourish (Caleb Durbin for Kyle Harrison; Dustin May for James Tibbs III). It’s easy to criticize these moves with the benefit of hindsight, but the reality is that there’s always risk involved, and the Yankees are not impervious to that.
So, when you consider the fact that the Yankees have managed to stay competitive for as long and as consistently as they have, it’s important to acknowledge the things they did right — and the things that went right for them. Hopefully, the Yankees’ brass themselves do so too. If they focus only on the former while paying no mind to the latter, that would lead to complacency and a false sense of security — something that they might already be guilty of.
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