Yankees’ adversity provides room for growth

Every championship team will face adversity. That championship team will often express—immediately after winning—how much they had to endure to make it to the top. I find that cliché misleading because simply enduring hardship does not necessarily mean you will grow from it. Facing adversity is less about merely overcoming and more about discovery.

As the Yankees find themselves in a rough stretch, the temperature amongst the fanbase has risen drastically. The radio calls become more absurd, the boos in the stadium get louder, and the general uneasiness amongst fans regarding a team with one of the best records in baseball continues to increase. It is a cycle that we have seen many times over the years. Everything has come easy for the Yankees this season, and suddenly it is not. Injuries, a few bad outings by the starting staff, and a lackluster offense outside of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge have raised concerns.

But did anyone think this would be perfect?

This is where facing adversity can take two paths, and the one the Yankees end up traveling down will define how this stretch is viewed. Let’s take the 2022 Yankees as an example, a team that fans have pointed to as a cautionary tale about a hot start going sour. That team got to July 9th with the best record in baseball at 61-23. They faced a plethora of injuries and overall underperformance the remainder of the season, finishing with a 38-40 record. However, they were still able to win the AL East.

Would you define that team as being resilient enough to deal with adversity, or were they merely treading water as they continued to falter in the second half?

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I would tend to lean towards to latter, especially since they got a huge assist from Judge’s MVP-winning, 62-homer campaign. They attempted to address issues, such as trading for Andrew Benintendi and Frankie Montas, but they were not the right decisions. The 2022 Yankees are an extreme example of how facing adversity does not always make you stronger.

So how does a team take advantage of a slide? In an ideal world, your team will discover different ways to win, identify their weaknesses, and see what players step up to fill voids. A perfect example of that is the 2023 Texas Rangers. When Jacob deGrom went down for the season with an elbow injury the Rangers were looking for someone to step up—and Nathan Eovaldi did just that, becoming a stabilizing force in their rotation. As the season progressed, the Rangers also identified the need for reinforcements in that same rotation to properly compete with the AL West powerhouse Astros, being proactive and trading for Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery at the deadline.

Montgomery became an important piece in their World Series run. The Rangers’ bullpen was historically bad in the regular season, blowing 33 saves. But because the pitching depth was tested throughout the season, a variety of starters collected innings. When the postseason rolled around these same starters were moved into relief roles to elevate a struggling bullpen. Players like Andrew Heaney and Jon Gray stepped up when they needed it the most, filling voids in both the regular season and the postseason. The Rangers got to the ALCS, stared down those Astros, rallied from down 3-2 to beat them twice in Houston, and then won it all.

So where does that leave this Yankees team? For starters, weaknesses have come to the forefront. Pitching depth is an issue, particularly in the bullpen as injuries mount and Clay Holmes goes through a rough patch. Controlling the basepaths became a talking point in the Boston series and continues to be a problem. DJ LeMahieu is a shell of his former self as important pieces of the lineup continue to go down with injuries. None of this information is groundbreaking as I continue to state the obvious, but it is what the Yankees do with this information that will help them moving forward. It is better for the Yankees to face these problems now and they can hope that players will step up, and if they don’t, then those issues can be addressed at the Trade Deadline (or sooner). The Yankees will be watching to see if Michael Tonkin can be a viable option in big spots, if Gleyber Torres can turn his season around, and if Luis Gil bounces back from a few rough outings — just to name a few.

The Yankees will discover who they are in the coming weeks, and if they don’t like what they see, then there will be time to fix it. Adversity provides clarity. Facing adversity won’t automatically make you a better team, but if handled correctly, it can jumpstart the process of becoming the team you want to be.