Bernie Williams and Willie Randolph, both guests on Moose & Maggie on Thursday, represent a different era in baseball, and a golden age for the Yankees.
Both contributed to multiple World Series titles, one as a player and one as a coach, and both believe that the mentality of their era still has a place in the modern game, but it has been buried underneath piles of numbers.
The frequent use of defensive shifts is one of the banners of modern baseball, one that has been called into question and could potentially be done away with in the coming years, and Williams believes if a shift was deployed on him as a player, he would have won more than one batting title.
“I’d be hitting .1000, probably,” Williams said. “I was a player who liked to spread the ball, so I don’t I think they would have a shift on me. I think players that refuse to make an adjustment, depending on where they’re being pitched also, that also makes a strong determination. I just refuse not being able to take that left side of the field and try to make something happen. I think we were as successful as we were, not because of the fact that we had a couple people that could hit a bunch of home runs. We were successful because we were able to work the count and work the pitchers to the fifth or sixth inning and try to get into that bullpen early in the game.”
Williams won the batting title in 1998 as part of the winningest Yankee team of all time, an award no Bronx Bomber won again until DJ LeMahieu did last season. LeMahieu, a hitter to all fields that offers a callback to past Yankees like Williams, is what the former Yankee great would like to see more of in today’s game, as would Randolph.
“I would love to hit nowadays,” Randolph said. “I was a straight-up hitter, but you have to take advantage of what they give you, and I see too many situations where you throw analytics out the window and just play the game, the feel of the game, what’s in front of you.”
Randolph and Williams’ comments represent many players from previous eras who have spoken out against the overuse of analytics, while others, like David Cone in the YES Network booth, have embraced it. But Randolph would at least like to see a more happy marriage between the two.
“You have to take advantage of the situation of the game,” Randolph said. “If you have a tying run on third base and all you need is a base hit, you have to take advantage of that. I was watching the Cubs game last night, and Rizzo is a big guy…and he won the game by taking the ball the other way. He hit a ground ball in the hole and won the game…To me, it’s not all about home runs. They’re sexy, they’re great, but every once in a while you have to take what they give you and attack the defense.”
Many of the classic Yankee rallies from Williams and Randolph’s era didn’t involve the long ball, like the third inning of game six of the 1996 World Series, or the eighth inning of game seven of the 2003 ALCS. But as pitchers have begun to throw harder than ever with more break than ever on their offspeed pitches, it’s become tougher to string together multiple balls in play. But Williams, a pillar of the last Yankee dynasty and a successful contact hitter, believes he would thrive if defenses dared to shift on him.
“I think it’s a little bit of a shift in mentality,” Williams said. “Shifts would work for me though. I would have been a much better hitter if they shifted on me.”
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