English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Chinese (Simplified)
Hindi
Japanese
One item to monitor within the torpedo bat controversy is how the Yankees do against lefty pitching.
Because they did great over the weekend when the Brewers were trying to throw as many left-handed options as possible against them. Was that because of bat design? Was that because of sub-optimal lefty pitching, especially if Nestor Cortes was not fully built up? Or do the Yankees have a group that — against expectations — is going to perform well against southpaws?
Let’s set this up. The Yankees overall were statistically fine against lefty pitching last year, but that had much to do with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, who covered up so many of their sins in all areas. Judge’s 1.240 OPS was the best against lefty pitching in the majors. Soto’s .966 OPS was the second-best left vs. left in the majors behind 1.029 of Houston’s Yordan Alvarez. The next-best OPS vs. lefties on the 2024 Yankees was the .811 of Gleyber Torres, who, like Soto, is now gone.
New additions Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt perform well against lefties historically, but Bellinger is part of making the Yankees very left-handed in 2025. And with DJ LeMahieu faded and injured and Giancarlo Stanton out, that change has been exacerbated. So it was no surprise that the first two relievers the Yankees saw this season were both lefty — a change that Aaron Boone noted after seeing so many power righty penmen the past few years when the Yankees were overly right-handed.
