The New York Yankees have been shut out five times in June alone. That’s more than they managed in April and May combined, and it reveals why their 47-35 record tells only half the story.
The Yankees enter Sunday with baseball’s best run differential (tied with the Cubs at +106) and a 95% playoff probability per FanGraphs, but their June offensive collapse exposes a fatal flaw: The leadoff spot is broken, and it’s breaking everything else.
The numbers show the damage. Yankees leadoff hitters rank 22nd in hits, 23rd in batting average, 14th in on-base percentage and 13th in OPS. Manager Aaron Boone has rotated through Ben Rice, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt, but none have solved the equation.
Here’s what happens when your leadoff spot fails: Aaron Judge’s OPS dropped from 1.200-plus in March-April and May to .902 in June. Giancarlo Stanton hasn’t homered in 34 at-bats since returning from injury. Goldschmidt is hitting .148 this month.
The Yankees’ team OPS tells the complete story: fourth in April, tied for second in May, then plummeting to 20th in June. That’s not a slump. That’s a structural problem.
“We’ve put ourselves in a pretty good spot here through this first half with some of the ups and downs,” Boone said per SNY on Friday. “So, incomplete, but I feel confident that we have the chance to be a really good club.”
Confidence won’t fix lineup construction. The Yankees became MLB’s first team to lead off games with three straight home runs twice in one season, proving their early potential. But that was spring magic. June reality shows five shutouts in one month.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
