Anyone with a pair of eyes could tell you that the Yankee offense has been a shell of its typical self to begin the 2021 season, but looking at the numbers, the narrative becomes even more grotesque.
The Bombers, who have been failing to live up to that nickname over the first three weeks of the season, labored through another lackluster effort in Wednesday night’s 4-1 loss to the Braves, where the team drew six walks but managed just five hits. The lone run came on an RBI single by Clint Frazier in the bottom of the ninth when the game was all but decided.
For the Yanks, that loss was the fifth game in a row where the team managed five hits or less, and according to Katie Sharp of Stathead, that has only happened twice within a season in franchise history, with the team going six games straight in 1908 and five straight in 1973. So, should the Yanks fail to eclipse the five-hit mark over the next two games, their offense will find itself alone atop the franchise record books for one of the least desirable records imaginable.
Wednesday’s lone run brought the season total to 59 for the Yanks, which according to Sharp, is the team’s fewest through the first 17 games of a season since 1984. New York finished 87-75 that year.
The typically homer-happy Yanks have been anything but so far this season, hitting 17 home runs in total, good for 23rd in the league. One of the teams behind them, the Mets, has played four fewer games.
Aaron Judge leads the Yankees in OPS, and is the lone Bomber with an OPS above .800. The team’s collective OPS is just .630, the lowest mark in all of baseball. The best? The Red Sox, currently in first place in the AL East, where the Yanks sit in the cellar. The Yankees are also near the bottom of the league with 59 runs scored, with only two teams posting a lower total so far. One of them is the Mets, who have struggled offensively but have played far fewer innings due to multiple postponements. The Yanks are also second-worst in the league in batting average, hitting just .205 as a group. Prior to the Atlanta series, their batting average was just .201, the worst mark through that span since 1968.
How uncharacteristic is this slump? The Yankees have been in the top five in the league in OPS in each of the last three full seasons, and were seventh last year, a drastically shortened season where Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, two of their biggest power producers, missed significant time.
It’s obvious that the Yankees have been a poor offensive team to begin the season. But comparing what has unfolded on the field with the actual numerical outputs, it’s even uglier.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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