Gump:
"It worked for a while.
The 2013 Yankees suffered a rash of injuries the likes of which the franchise had rarely seen … yet somehow made it work. New York somehow cobbled together a group of replacement killers that overachieved in a way no one thought possible. Lyle Overbay cranked eight homers and knocked in 28 runs in his first 46 games while slugging .484. Vernon Wells, the $21 million–a–year running joke who drove Angels fans to gin and despair, suddenly turned (back) into a world-beater, hitting .310/.394/.638 through his first 15 games and looking like the best and most unlikely reclamation project of the offseason. Travis Hafner owned a 1.104 OPS at the end of April. Spurred by these scrap-heap finds, along with a beefed-up bullpen, Hiroki Kuroda assuming the role of ace, and a few breaks, the Yanks blazed through the first few weeks of the season. That was long enough for the Bombers to stake their claim at or near the top of the AL East. By the time Curtis Granderson, Kevin Youkilis, and Mark Teixeira all returned to action, the Yankees' successful stand-ins figured to stand down, and a near-full-strength roster could carry forward the team's plan to surge back to the postseason.
Granderson and Youkilis are now back on the DL. Teixeira reinjured his wrist Saturday and has been ruled out for the next couple days, and maybe more. Overbay stopped hitting, as did Hafner, and Wells is hitting an unimaginably terrible .134/.141/.165 over the past month. The Yankees did snap a five-game losing streak Sunday, though just barely, turning a 6-0 ninth-inning lead into a 6-5 nail-biter. The low point came Thursday, when 5-6-7 hitters Hafner, Youkilis, and Wells combined to go 0-for-23 with nine strikeouts in an 18-inning loss to Oakland.
The Yankees are averaging just 3.9 runs per game, worse than any other AL team except the lowly Astros, Mariners, and White Sox. The last Yankees team to score fewer runs per game was the 1990 edition, a squad that averaged just 3.7 runs per contest. Much of that is related to the broader changes in the game over the past couple decades, with baseball seeing a surge in offense starting in the early-to-mid '90s that lasted about a decade and a half, leading to a significant downturn in the past few years. But even that is somewhat offset by the Yankees' move to the more hitter-friendly, new Yankee Stadium in 2009. Bottom line, this is a lineup stuffed with lousy hitters.
Fixing these kinds of mounting problems could pose a major challenge in the short term, given how many holes the lineup now has, how far the offense has sunk, and how few obvious in-house solutions exist. The latest report on Granderson has him potentially not returning until after the All-Star break as he rehabs a broken finger. Youkilis has had back problems for years and they are clearly getting worse. Even if he is healthy there's no way we should expect Youkilis to hit anywhere near as well as he did in his prime. Derek Jeter has resumed baseball activities but likely won't be back until the second half, since he'll need a while to get back up to game shape. Francisco Cervelli? Eduardo Nunez? Alex Rodriguez? They're all nowhere near returning and they might not be worth much even when they do. Cervelli and Rodriguez being named in the Biogenesis mess could complicate matters down the road, too. Per FanGraphs, the only Yankees position players on pace to post above-average seasons are Brett Gardner and Robinson Cano. And neither Wil Myers nor Oscar Taveras is walking through that door anytime soon.
What the Yankees do have is an impressive collection of young pitching, both on the major league roster and on the farm. Much of that talent is now toiling in the parent club's bullpen, which ranks fourth in baseball for Wins Above Replacement. As in any other season, many teams desperately need pitching, both now and for the future. And in an odd way, the sheer misery of the Yankees' offense works in the team's favor, since it's much easier to upgrade replacement-level talent like Wells, Overbay, or David Adams than it is to do so with actually competent talent. The gap between someone like Alex Rios and the Yankees' current offerings wouldn't be that much smaller than the difference between a just-below-elite All-Star and a league-average player.
The good news is that it could be a lot worse. With few truly elite teams in the American League this year, pitching, one or two stars, and a couple of trades could be enough to get the Yankees back to the playoffs for the 18th time in 19 years."