Four Thoughts on the Yankees As Summer Winds Down
- E.J. Fagan
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
By EJ Fagan
August 2026
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The following post comes from EJ Fagan's Substack, Baseball Is Life. It is shared with permission.
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On Monday, classes begin at my university. As far as I’m concerned, the beginning of the semester marks the end of summer. The Hawaiian will shirts go away and the stretch run will begin. Let’s check in on the Yankees.
The Yankees Survived the Low Offense Summer
As you know, the Yankees offense has been abysmal since the beginning of June. But with just a few players coming out of their slumps, the team is scoring runs again. Since the beginning of the Braves series on August 7th, the Yankees have scored 3.5 runs per game. While that’s a full run worse than league average, it has been enough to go 9-4 (at the time of this writing) given that their pitching staff has been the best in baseball.
That improvement is almost entirely caused by three players: Trent Grisham, Spencer Jones and George Lombard Jr. Grisham has a .306/.370/.694 batting line during the stretch. More on the others later.
And after all of that, the Yankees are just 3 games behind the Rays. Boston has come back down to Earth. No one else in the American League is any good. Fangraphs still gives the Yankees only a 30% chance of winning the division, but I have more hope.
The Yankees schedule over the last month of the season is ridiculously easy. They play the Red Sox for four games next weekend in New York. They make a road trip to San Diego for three games a week later and a brief trip to Arizona soon after. And they play a very high stakes four games at home against Tampa at the end of the month.
Every other series is against sub-.500 teams. They get to face the Mets, Angels, Rockies, Orioles, Twins, Astros and Blue Jays. The Rays have the hardest remaining strength of schedule in the American League.
I’m looking forward to that last four game series against the Rays with a fully operational Aaron Judge Death Star.
Luis Durango is the New Hot Prospect
Durango came to the Yankees as a footnote during the minor league Rule V draft. He started the season at Low-A, but has now made it all the way up to Double-A. He’s hitting .338/.396/.411 during that time with zero home runs and 43 stolen bases in 75 games. Durango is listed at 5’10” and 135 (!) lbs.
Durango is one of the most unusual players in the minor leagues. Check out this swing:
Who holds a bat that like that?! Whatever he is doing, it’s working. I can’t find a single scouting report on Durango, but he sure looks blazing fast. We’ll have to wait for the offseason. But the Yankees might have their own Chandler Simpson on their hands.
Spencer Jones Should Play When Everyone is Healthy
Jones has been playing every day by necessity. It’s working out well enough. His strikeout rate since August 7th is inching up at 34%, but he’s still managed the be the second best hitter on the team by OPS, wOBA and xwOBA during that period. He looks like a major league player.
The problem is that OF/DH playing time is about to get a lot more competitive. Trent Grisham is hot. Cody Bellinger returns this weekend. Giancarlo Stanton is looming. And of course, Aaron Judge is finally swinging a bat.
My guess is that the plan is to platoon Jones with Heliot Ramos when Bellinger returns. That’s probably fine—Ramos has exposed against a ton of right-handed starters since the deadline but should be better than Jones against lefties. Jones can come in to pinch hit and for defense.
But what about when Stanton and Judge return? You’re not sitting Judge for anyone, and I don’t really see them sitting Grisham or Bellinger much. I definitely don’t want them to send Jones to Triple-A, where he has little left to learn.
My guess is that they’ll give everyone a little bit of extra rest and find 3-4 games per week to start Jones against right-handers. The extra rest should pay off for everyone else, and hopefully Jones can stay fresh. He’ll be a strong weapon off the bench.
George Lombard Jr. Has Some Growing Pains
While he has posted a .768 OPS, the Statcast numbers for Lombard are much less pretty:
Yikes. We expected growing pains, so I’m not surprised. But Lombard has some hard regression coming if he doesn’t get better quickly. His defense has been so good that he’s still a winning player with a .303 xwOBA.
But I have some optimism. Lombard may be able to get through the adjustment period before the playoffs. He only needed a few weeks at Triple-A before settling in. He’s also way faster than I expected. He’ll get some extra hits off ground balls. But most importantly: Lombard has only had six plate appearances against left-handed pitchers. He was good enough against righties in the minors (.816 OPS) but destroyed lefties (1.124 OPS).
Wait. Lombard's Statcast numbers are... bad?
If you ran a baseball team, and there was a guy with those numbers - and an unproven guy at that - and brand new to the big leagues, and who batted only .248 in his entire minor league career...
Would you bat him 5th and expect him to help carry the offense?
I think everyone knows, EJ and I often have very different takes on the Yankees.
Statcast doesn't have a take, they just show numbers.
Still, EJ's analysis and the Stacast numbers seem to clearly indicate, outside of the fact that a young kid should not be rushed and placed in high leverage situations, that George Lombard should be batting far away…
Lombard Jr.'s glove alone has made this team better, While Anthony Volpe had as a SS the same range to get to balls, his arm made too many of those plays impossible to complete.
So it looks like Stanton is fine for the year with some more leg issues. Hey, at least Luis Rojas never gets to make the bonehead midtske if sending Stanton to get thrown out by a country mile.
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