Two key takeaways from Yankees’ first 6 games of season

In 2020, a six-game stretch was 10% of the season. It carried real statistical heft! Now, as MLB attempts to normalize itself during the pandemic — Nationals notwithstanding — a 3-3 stretch like the Yankees’ isn’t a serious cause for concern and difficult to glean truly actionable advice.

But, it’s the start of the MLB season. Unless you were scouring Dominican Winter League or KBO (which you should!) American baseball fans barely got any baseball to savor all year. Besides, to our analog readers: look at all this newsprint in your hand. Who’s gonna fill that? We Newsers can’t blog about Kevin Durant all the time. So we’re gonna try our best to find something interesting to say about the Yankees before there’s anything real to know about them.

Emphasis on try.

THE YANKEES KNOW THEY NEED LEFTY POWER

No team trades for Rougned Odor, who’s average slash line is .215/.279/.418 since 2017, unless it is desperate for lefty power. But, one week in and the Bombers are already there.

So far, Yankees southpaws are six for 41 with one home run while batting against righties — all games played with Yankee Stadium’s right-field cheat code. Jay Bruce, acquired for his veteran pull pop, starting at first for the injured Luke Voit, is hitting .150 total. And who knows what Derek Dietrich is batting. The 31-year-old infielder and outfielder is still being evaluated at the alternate site. It’s telling the Yankees found an imperative to nab Odor, 27, under contract through 2022 which the Texas Rangers are nonetheless paying so he can play elsewhere. (Texas contributed the entirety of Odor’s $25 million left on his deal.)

This is an observation, not an alarm bell. The Yankees haven’t been incredible at the plate yet, but bank on some crooked numbers coming. Consider the Yankees bat Gary Sanchez (.278/.350/.667 early on) seventh on Wednesday, even with Aaron Judge and Voit both out of the lineup. When those bats return, there’s almost no pathway to Gary returning to the heart of the lineup barring a plague — but the recently vaccinated Bombers are immune to that. So yeah, runs will come.

However, with switch-hitting Aaron Hicks serving the team as the lone platoon advantage in the healthy lineup, the Yankees are slightly more susceptible to a power righty in key matchups — this was a major plot point during their close five-game loss to the Rays during last year’s Division Series.

The Yankees coaching staff has had success with activating the thunder in a few position players close in age to Odor (Voit, Hicks and Gio Urshela are shining examples). But until then, that friendly yellow foul pole seems so much further than 314 feet.

THE YANKEES HAVE PITCHING FOR DAYS

Cross your fingers for good health, but the Yankees, for upside over stability, look like it could work early on.

The Bombers are relying on two arms in Corey Kluber and Jameson Taillon who have not been healthy or pitched extensively in over two years, and both showed promise in their first turns through the rotation.

Kluber’s command was shaky — again, it’s been two years — but his stuff looked sharp enough in his first big league outing last Friday.

The Klubot was sitting 90 on the radar gun with his fastball, a notch below the two-time Cy Young winner’s Cleveland prime, but the movement was there, as he was at times, backdooring a vicious two-seamer against righty bats. With reduced velocity, Kluber will need his command to be elite to be good (or good to be decent), but he didn’t look injured, and that’s a huge win.

Meanwhile, Jameson Taillon threw his fastball into the mid-90s while painting the edge of the strike zone with all his pitches during his Wednesday match against the Orioles, his first in 707 days. (Read that twice, then once more just in case.)

Taillon flubbed a couple of locations in the fifth inning, leading to solo shots to Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander, but the seven strikeouts and zero walks speak to a man who was completely in control and had the look of a frontline starter.

But that’s not all: Gerrit Cole looked like the consensus best starter in the American League, and Jordan Montgomery flashed a nasty curveball in his outstanding first start. When Domingo German faltered, Mike King pitched six brilliant relief innings against a tough Toronto lineup — demonstrating why he deserves to be on the fifth starter bubble right alongside Deivi Garcia and Clarke Schmidt. And so far, despite missing Zack Britton in the early months, the bullpen’s worst enemy has been the new runner on second rule, one of many 2020-isms they would probably like to leave in the past.

Injury risk is real, but the Yankees flashed a deep stable of arms worthy of getting key outs in the playoffs.