It's April 27th, Let's Look At The New York Yankee Season So Far

  The 2021 baseball season is now well into a month of being played and the New York Yankees have yet to show their fans just how good they can be. A mix of frustration and concerns are growing within the Yankee universe as the major league Bronx baseball team closes out April by falling all the way to the bottom of the A.L East standing.

  It has been a total of four weeks into the new 162-game season and the team is sitting in last place in their division with a 9-13 record. Talk about frustrating and outright disappointing. They started 5-10 and have won four of their last seven games, including take three of four in Cleveland over the weekend.

  While this team looks to be terrible at the moment, there has also been some positives as well. Let's take a look at both the good and bad the Yankee have had come their way to start the season:

1. Ace Gerrit Cole Has Emphasized His Changeup As A More Dependable Pitching Asset

  Five starts into the season, Gerrit Cole has been as dominant as any pitcher in the sport and he has been everything that the Yankees needed from the No.1 spot of the pitching rotation. He leads all pitchers with a 1.9 FanGraphs WAR, and he's the first pitcher in franchise history to strike out 50 batters and issue no more than five walks in a five-start stretch. Talk about a true ace.

  Manager Aaron Boone had this to say about his ace after Cole outdueled reigning A.L Cy Young award winner Shane Bieber on Saturday to provide the Yanks a chance to hold on to a  (NYY 2, CLE 1) victory at Progressive Field:

  "I thought (Cole) was terrific in a game where we needed him to be really, really good, because we were up against a really good one as well...."

  According to MLB reporter  Mike Axisa of CBS Sports:

  "It's not easy to get better when you're as good as Cole, though he's found a way to improve early this season. Specifically, Cole is throwing his changeup more than at any other point in his career. He's already thrown more changeups this year (76 in 31 2/3 innings) than last year (67 in 73 innings), and his 14.8 percent changeup usage rate is easily a career high.

Cole famously reinvented himself after joining the Astros in 2018. He shelved the 'pitch at the knees and get quick ground ball outs' approach the Pirates employed under former pitching coach Ray Searage, and instead adopted a more north-south approach with elevated fastballs...."

  The addition has actually lead to Cole going on a changeup-happy mode on the mound. Axisa breaks it down in the chart below:

  Since pitching in 2018, Cole has made 92 starts , including pitching on the postseason stage and that includes  four of the top five (and five of the top 10) in changeup usage rate have come this season. An ace of Cole's caliber and with his mindset of wanting to be a perfectionist, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he added the changeup to his pitching arsenal. 

 "I think the opportunity is presenting itself," Cole told reporters, including Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News, when asked about his changeup earlier this month. 

   "We're just trying to always evolve and I think last year, when some other pitches weren't working, we were kind of forced to try to find opportunities to attack the strike zone with it. And I think we just kind of continued that mentality."-Gerrit Cole

  Like any true ace Cole still works primarily with his upper-90s fastball and wipeout slider and curveball, as that is his bread and butter but the changeup gives hitters something else to think about. With that said, the changeup has been very efficient thus far. Opponents are hitting .053 with a .105 slugging percentage against the pitch, and they've missed with 44.2 percent of their swings. To put it into perspective, the MLB average for changeups is 31.5 percent.

  When you talk about power ranking pitcher, Cole's name has to be included in the conversation. He is a 30-year-old pitcher that has set himself apart from other veteran starters by changing the scouting reports because the new pitch has made him a more unpredictable asset on the mound, as if the slider-fastball-curveball combo isn't already a filthy mix for batters to deal with.

  Just how effective is Cole's new pitch? Well, Cole has given hitters a reason to respect the changeup when he is on the mound and in turn he has collected 50 strikeouts and three walks over a span of five starts.

  On the other side of the spectrum, the Yankees' offensive has been uncharacteristic as of late. The bats have been off to a very slow start to begin the season in the batter's box.

2.  DJ-"The Machine" LeMahieu Has Yet To Find His A-Swing

  The 2021 Yankee lineup is jam packed with slugging monster on paper, but there has only been glimpses of true offensive production in the early goings for this roster.

   LeMahieu is an extreme contact hitter who has posted one of the lowest strikeout rates in baseball throughout his career, and hits the baseball to all parts of the baseball field. DJ just is impossible to combat with the shift when he is on the offensive side of the baseball . In an era of high-strikeout pull hitters, LeMahieu is a just a gritty- throwback type of player in tyhe batter's box.

  Unfortunately for the Yankees, early on this season, pretty much everyone in the Yankees lineup one through nine has struggled at the plate, which  LeMahieu's name was included in. He's sitting on a .250/.333/.338 bating line following an 0 for 3 with a walk in Monday night's series opener with the Orioles (BAL 4, NYY 2), and he's rolled over on a lot of pitches of late.

  Looking at his last 17 balls in play include:

• 8 ground balls to shortstop
• 3 ground balls to third base
• 2 line drives to left field
• 2 line drives to second base
• 1 fly ball to right field
• 1 popup to first base

  Breaking it down and analyzing those numbers, it comes out to LeMahieu hitting 11 ground balls to left side of the infield and 13 balls to the pull side in general. For a player that has become known as "The Machine" in the Yankee dugout, it is very uncharacteristic for him to be performing in the way he recently has been.

  Now more than ever, the Yankees and LeMahieu need offensive production. Can they find a way to turn the page as the baseball calendar will soon be turned to May?

  It is certainly worrisome when guys like Gary Sanchez and Giancarlo Stanton have holes in their swings that can be exploited, and others like Mike Ford and Rougned Odor wouldn't get regular at-bats when Luke Voit returns in a few weeks. It's scary for a fan base to see a player like LeMahieu go through a dry spell because when right, pitchers have to be close to perfect to retire. Unfortunately when the LeMahieus; Stantons; Judges and Sanchez aren't playing their best baseball, even the non-aces of baseball look like they are dominant when facing this offense.

  LeMahieu and others need to find their swing before the baseball months get away from them.

3. The Yankee Bullpen Has Been The Team's Strength

  So far this season, the Yankee universe has seen a struggling offense, defensive struggles and outside of Cole, the starting rotation has not been all that great. Cole has a 1.71 ERA and is averaging 6.33 innings per start. Everyone else has a 6.25 ERA and is averaging 4.23 innings per start. Forget about  Nick Nelson's intentional short one-inning "opener" outing last week, the bullpen still holds a 6.08 ERA and 4.44 innings per start.

  Since the season has started, the backend of the pitching pen has had to pick up the slack outside of Cole's phenom-like starts.

  According to  Mike Axisa:

  ".... The bullpen has had to pick up a lot of slack because of those short starts. Yankees relievers have thrown 92 1/3 innings this year, the third-most bullpen innings in baseball, and they rank among the most productive units in the sport. The bullpen rankings:

• ERA: 2.34 (2nd in MLB)
• WHIP: 0.97 (1st)
• FIP: 3.04 (2nd)
• Strikeout rate: 29.0 percent (2nd)
• Walk rate: 7.9 percent (5th)
• WAR: 1.9 (1st)
• Shutdowns: 27 (4th most)
• Meltdowns: 8 (5th fewest) "

    As Cole and the Yankee bullpen are the only part of this team that is powering through at this time, what will it take for this team to get out of this slump in the coming months?