Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: New York Yankees
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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New York Yankees Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 96.5
— World Series Odds: 6/1
— Key Additions: James Paxton, Troy Tulowitzki, DJ LeMahieu
— Lineup Update 3/17/2019: Sabathia and Severino won’t be ready, and we’ll likely see Domingo German and Luis Cessa in the rotation to start the season. There is also some speculation they may pursue free agent Gio Gonzalez.
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: DJ LeMahieu, Didi Gregorius (injured), Jacoby Ellsbury, Clint Frazier, Austin Romine, Jordan Montgomery (injured)
— Outlook: This lineup is a pitcher’s nightmare. The hitters to fear don’t stop pillar to post, and there isn’t going to be any relief on days when key players get a rest. Everybody in the top seven spots averaged over 60 in PlateIQ’s contact quality rating, and the two players that did not include five-time All-Star Troy Tulowitzki and 2015 All-Star Brett Gardner. Strikeouts may be an issue for Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gary Sanchez. However, any manager would happily accept three strikeouts in a game if the other plate appearance is a three-run bomb. They have a 96 projected win total, and it would be a surprise if they aren’t in that territory when it’s all said and done. This will be fun to watch, and terrifying to fade in DFS.
Speaking of terrifying to fade, the Yankees now have two aces in Luis Severino and James Paxton. Severino is a cut above Paxton, but clearly the former Mariners pitcher has otherworldly strikeout upside each time he takes the mound. Mashiro Tanaka has nasty swing-and-miss stuff, but the issue is what happens when the batter doesn’t miss. He allowed a .405 wOBA on his four-seam fastball last season and 25 total HRs in 27 games. Happ and Sabathia are skilled backend starters that most teams in the league would be happy to have. It does not appear we’ll be stacking against Yankee pitchers often in 2019, which is a shame given their incredible home ballpark.
— DFS Ownership Trends: The Yankees were the most popular team in DFS last season and that will surely be the case again this season. They own three of the top 10 most popular players to roster (Stanton, Judge, Sanchez). If you want to steer clear of some of that ownership, Gleyber Torres was just the 92nd-most popular play, and Miguel Andujar was ranked 119th.
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— Only six pitchers in MLB last season (min. 160 IP) combined a sub-3.00 SIERA with a 14 percent swinging strike rate: Scherzer, Corbin, Verlander, Cole, deGrom, and … James Paxton. Paxton ramped up the strikeouts in 2018, fanning 10+ on eight occasions; prior to 2017, he’d only reached that mark in three career games. The newly developed HR problem is a worry (Paxton’s 1.29 HR/9 was a career-high, and it’s not close), particularly with the move from the former SafeCo Field to Yankee Stadium. If he can limit the fly balls, though, he could put up ace-level production as long as he remains healthy.
— Last year, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge were responsible for almost one third of batted balls hit in the air at 115 MPH or greater (13 for Stanton, 7 for Judge, 64 in all of MLB). In an absolutely loaded lineup, these two are capable of going yard in any matchup (and that’s not to mention bounce-back candidate Gary Sanchez, or Luke Voit and his .350 ISO, or two guys who would’ve won AL Rookie of the Year in most years in Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres).
— In the months of August and September of last year, only one player – NL MVP Christian Yelich – had a higher ISO than the .356 mark posted by Luke Voit. Voit is a popular breakout candidate this season. PECOTA thinks he’ll be a star if given regular playing time (.501 slugging ranks 14th in their projection, sandwiched between Freddie Freeman and Trevor Story), and while Derek Carty’s THE BAT isn’t quite as high on Voit (.459 slugging), it does forecast a solid 114 wRC+. Voit absolutely smokes the ball, and his 93.0 MPH average exit velocity from August onward (eighth-highest in MLB) was just a tad below Giancarlo Stanton and his 93.8 MPH mark. He could represent a nice buying opportunity early in the year if the price is right.