Over the last two seasons Yankees manager Joe Girardi has stuck with veteran speedsters Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury atop the lineup. Those two have batted first and second in whatever order in 200 of 324 possible games the last two seasons.

Unfortunately for the Yankees, that arrangement hasn’t really worked. They rank eighth among the 15 AL teams in runs scored from 2015-16 despite playing in a hitter friendly home ballpark and in a division with three other hitter friendly ballparks. Obviously the issues extend behind Gardner and Ellsbury, but they absolutely share some of the blame. Gardner has a 98 OPS+ the last two years. Ellsbury? An 86 OPS+. Yikes.

Not surprisingly the Yankees and Girardi have discussed breaking up the Gardner-Ellsbury tandem atop the lineup this spring. Ellsbury is the bigger name, for sure, but Gardner has been the better hitter the last two years, especially in the on-base percentage department (.347 vs .324). If they’re going to drop one of them lower in the order, the numbers say it should be Ellsbury.

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Jacoby Ellsbury hasn’t given the Yankees much spark at the top of the lineup. USATSI

On Tuesday night, Girardi gave the first real indication he will change the top of the team’s lineup during the regular season. Here’s the lineup the Yankees used Tuesday night:

Ellsbury is not a traditional No. 5 hitter given his general lack of power -- he smacked nine home runs last season and 16 total the last two seasons -- but Girardi said he likes him there before of his success in RBI spots. Ellsbury did hit .298/.372/.442 (116 OPS+) with runners in scoring position last year, and I guess that’s what Girardi is referring to. (Ellsbury hit .262/.356/.321 for an 85 OPS+ with RISP in 2015, so who knows.)

Here’s what Ellsbury had to say about potentially hitting fifth this season, via Dan Martin of the New York Post:

“I talked to him about it before,” Ellsbury said at George M. Steinbrenner Field. “He asked me what I thought. [I said] whatever’s best for the team.”

“That’s the good things about it,” Ellsbury said. “It doesn’t really affect anything as far as [what I do].”

“You look at my homers, my numbers are right on par with my career,” Ellsbury said. “I’ll keep the same approach. No one’s asked me to do anything more.”

More interesting than Ellsbury hitting fifth is slugging catcher Gary Sanchez hitting second. Rather than shoehorn another bat control guy into the No. 2 spot (Starlin Castro? Ronald Torreyes?), Girardi simply bumped up his best hitter. He’s not the only manager doing that these days. Teams are getting away from traditional No. 2 type hitters and putting their best bats in the second spot of the lineup. 

Sabermetrics folks have long maintained the team’s best hitter should bat second because he’ll get more at-bats there than he would hitting third, and he’ll also bat with more men on base than he would hitting leadoff. The Yankees and Girardi, an analytically inclined team with a manager open to new ideas, seem to buy into that. Robinson Cano batted second for a period of time when he was with New York, after all.

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The more at-bats for Gary Sanchez, the better. USATSI

Over the long haul, as long as the manager doesn’t do something crazy like bat his best hitter ninth, lineup construction doesn’t mean a whole lot. The difference between the best and worst lineup is a few runs here and there during the full 162-game season. But, in one individual game, the lineup could mean everything. Batting Sanchez second could get him that one extra ninth inning at-bat, which could decide a game. That’s why managers are more open to batting their best hitter second nowadays. Every little bit helps.

Lineups are, of course, easily and often changed. If the Yankees come out of the gate and score five total runs in their first three games of the regular season, Girardi is going to change things up, and that could mean Ellsbury hitting second and Sanchez third again. For now, dropping Ellsbury down and giving Sanchez more at-bats seems like an obvious move that will help the Yankees score more runs in 2017.