All things considered, the Yankees really have no business sitting only two games behind the Rays in the AL East. New York has 12 players on the injured list, including three starting outfielders (Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton) and their two best starting pitchers (James Paxton, Luis Severino). They are missing a lot of key players.
Rather than wilt, the Yankees have won 13 of their last 17 games. Tuesday night the Yankees stunned the Mariners with a three-run ninth inning rally (NYY 5, SEA 4). DJ LeMahieu provided the walk-off single. Before that, fill-in third baseman Gio Urshela swatted a game-tying two-run home run to dead center field against Anthony Swarzak. Here's the video:
The Yankees have stayed afloat because so many of their injury replacements have played well these last few weeks. Former top prospect Clint Frazier has broken out as a long-term piece. Outfielder Mike Tauchman has chipped in some timely home runs. Mike Ford posted a .378 on-base percentage as a fill-in DH. Righty Domingo German has been a rotation godsend.
The biggest surprise producer is Urshela, who replaced Miguel Andujar at third base when Andujar went down with a shoulder injury. Urshela is hitting .360/.424/.547 with only 11 strikeouts through 85 plate appearances, plus he's playing his typical standout defense at third base. Monday night he made two stellar defensive plays, including this barehanded pickup:
Urshela has always been regarded as a standout hot corner defender, dating back to his time in the Indians' farm system. The offense has been far better than expected this year though -- Urshela came into 2019 as a career .224/.274/.315 (57 OPS+) hitter in 499 big-league plate appearances -- and there are reasons to believe it is not a complete fluke either.
Last season, after joining the Yankees in a minor August trade with the Blue Jays, Urshela worked to get into his legs better so he could really drive the ball. Here's what hitting coach Marcus Thames told NJ.com's Brendan Kuty recently:
"In spring training, he had some really good at-bats," Thames said. "Since last year when we got him, he really focused on staying in his legs a little bit more. He did that work with (hitting coach) Phil Plantier at Triple-A and he brought it into winter ball and into the spring. He hasn't skipped a beat, man. And he plays a hell of a third base. What we're getting out of the bat right now is great.
"When I saw him in spring training, he hit a couple long home runs, but his BP is gap-to-gap and I never really saw it like that. You can hear that. It's a different sound."
Going into Tuesday night Urshela's average exit velocity (89.7 mph) was up nearly three full miles an hour from 2015-18 (86.8 mph) and his hard-hit rate had jumped from 31.7 percent to 37.7 percent. As a result, Statcast has Urshela's expected batted average at .341. That is in the 98th percentile. His expected slugging percentage (.465) and expected weighted on-base average (.384) are both much better than the league averages as well (.408 and .318, respectively).
A graph is worth a thousand words:
This is not the same Urshela who authored a 57 OPS+ the last four seasons. The current version of Urshela is hitting the ball much harder than at any other point in his career -- at 107.8 mph, Tuesday's game-tying homer was the third hardest hit ball of Urshela's career -- and whatever mechanical adjustments he made late last year and in spring training indicate suggest this isn't a total fluke. There was a tangible change and we're now seeing the results.
Also, Urshela will play the entire regular season at age 27, and that's an age when many players have a career year, or at least enter their prime. He's at an age where breakouts often happen. And the Yankees have earned the benefit of the doubt too. Their payroll gets a lot of attention and understandably so, but they've excelled at digging up low-cost impact players like Hicks, Luke Voit, and Didi Gregorius in recent years. Urshela wouldn't be their first out of nowhere success story.
Even with elite hard contact rates, will Urshela continue to hit .397 on balls in play? Almost certainly not. No one is a true talent .397 BABIP hitter. Urshela's numbers will come back down to Earth at some point, at least somewhat. The question is how much? Can he be a league average hitter rather than a 57 OPS+ hitter? If the answer is yes thanks to these mechanical adjustments, then Urshela will be awfully valuable when you factor in his glove. That's two-way impact.
The Yankees are starting to get healthy -- Andujar, Frazier, and Gary Sanchez all returned from the injured list recently and Hicks is out on a minor-league rehab assignment -- yet Urshela remains in the lineup. He's at third base with Andujar at DH for the time being. Urshela's been too good to sit. The Yankees are thriving despite their injuries because the replacements have been so good. In Urshela's case, this just might be sustainable given the swing adjustments.
