What To Make Of The Yankees' Early Troubles?

    If the New York Yankees have any hopes of winning their division in the A.L East or even keeping their hopes of winning another World Series alive, they have to play a better brand of baseball going forward in the 2021 season. It has not even been more than 20 games as yet to start the season, but the Yanks already have what can only be seen as serious competition from the Rays and the Jays, both of which have given the pinstriped squad a hard time at Yankees Stadium and on the road.

  Every year, it is the same issue for the Yankees and their lack of closing the door on their competition. The team now has a genuine ace in Gerrit Cole and going into game two against Toronto at TD Ballpark, they currently have the best bullpen in the American League . A pen in which had an ERA of 1.65 through 43.2 innings of work, had a .151 batting average against opponents, collected 9 out of 57 base-on-balls/strikeouts (BB/K), and only gave up 2 home runs in their time in games.

   Those things are great, but besides having an ace and a great bullpen, how does the team position themselves to win without your ace on the mound and get games to the middle innings to give the elite relievers a chance to close out games?

  First off, the Yankees needs to straighten out their starting rotation. Year after year, their bullpen has been their strengthen but with the exception of a few quality starting arms, their starter have never really been great after their ace of most given years. 2021 is no different, Gerrit Cole is an asset to this starting rotation, but so far Domingo German has been sent down after one start after lasting a couple innings in his 2021 debut; Corey Kluber has not shown much on a major league mound since signing with the team; and Jameson Taillon has yet to fully unlock his reinvented pitching arsenal.

  Aside from Cole, the struggles of the starting rotation is not the only issue, because need a clicking offense to put runs on the scoreboard. It is very frustrating to see that the batting order on paper look so good, but then on the field, the team can't put the ball in play to capitalize when they have runners-in-scoring-position (RISP). The organization has long been built on the home run ball, but we see time and time again, especially in recent years, the team is being beat by other baseball organizations that put the baseball in play to get the singles, doubles and even lay down a bunt.

  It is not the homers that win games, it small ball that put teams in the winning column. Simply put, the Yankees need to get quality starts from starters beyond their ace and focus on bringing their runners home. By having more quality at-bats, rather than just swinging for the bleachers, batters could put themselves and their teammates in a better position to win more games during the rest of the 162-games stretch of the 2021 season.