The Yankees’ Biggest Strength May Be Their Greatest Weakness
New York’s power-hitting duo, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge, have set high marks in both homers and strikeouts—underscoring one of baseball’s most pressing issues.
On the opening day of the season, Giancarlo Stanton—who last year hit 59 home runs en route to the National League MVP award before a December trade brought him to the New York Yankees—muscled two homers out of Toronto’s Rogers Centre. The first came on a low fastball that he shot to right. MLB’s Statcast measured it as the hardest-hit opposite-field blast since the system’s inception in 2015. The second went to straightaway center and landed well up into the second deck; no advanced numbers were needed to appreciate it. For Yankees fans who had spent the winter envisioning how Stanton would pair with Aaron Judge, who in a 2017 Rookie of the Year campaign hit 52 homers of his own, the 6–1 win doubled as a
