SSTN Mailbag: Bellinger, Arraez, And Base Stealing!

The Jekyll and Hyde Yankees of 2026 have continued their incredibly streaky ways. Right now, they're Mr. Hyde...and they're getting hurt to add injury to insult. Suddenly, a roster that looked very deep is looking thinner. A lot of that is due to players that were expected to perform well having a rough time out of the gate. Sure, we all expected Ryan McMahon to hit poorly, but even the most skeptical among us thought Chisholm and Grisham would at least be solid. Austin Wells has gone back to being a very patient hitter, but he's not doing any damage when he gets his pitch. Really, Judge, Rice, Goldschmidt, Caballero, and sometimes Bellinger have been the only consistently good Yankee hitters recently. That's a lot of dead weight to carry around - more than half of the roster, in fact!

Add in the recent injuries, and it's forced the Yankees to use their depth. That depth is a good thing to have, but not when it all has to be used at once. Some of these guys need to figure it out fast if the Yankees want to stop their current slide. I have some faith some of these guys can do it. Very quietly, Grisham is hitting .208/.316/.438, with a .753 OPS and 8 walks and strikeouts apiece since the last day of April. That's solid performance. We'd love the batting average to be higher, but I think that line pretty closely represents what Grisham's baseline performance should be, and that's a reasonably valuable player. I find it hard to imagine Chisholm continuing to play this poorly, but I have very real concerns, because it isn't early anymore. After those two, though? I think there are some real gaps.

To make a long story short, I think the Yankees are going to be looking for a hitter at the trade deadline. As good as Judge and Rice are, they need supporting actors to bring the team to the promised land. Until there's more performance throughout the lineup, the Yankees will continue their Jekyll and Hyde act.

As always, thanks for the great questions and keep them coming to SSTNReadermail@gmail.com. In this week's SSTN Mailbag, we'll talk about Bellinger's Home/Away splits, Luis Arraez, and the Yankees' base stealing performance! Let's get at it:

Michael G. asks: Cody Bellinger is basically Lou Gehrig at home this year and almost unplayable when he plays in someone else's ballpark. He had significant splits last year as well. Do you think this will even out, or is this who Belli is at this point?

I knew that he still had Home/Away splits this season as he did last year, but I don't think I fully realized just how stark the comparison looked until Michael asked this question. As of today, Bellinger has a 1.259 OPS at home and a .517 OPS on the road this season. We're closing in on 100 plate appearances for both situations, so it's not quite early season noise anymore. As Michael noted above, Bellinger had large splits last season as well, with a .909 OPS at home and a .715 OPS on the road, so we have enough data now to know that a split of some kind is for real.

I think the fact that these splits are a feature, not a bug, is a really interesting discussion point, because this was really part of the justification for acquiring Bellinger in the first place. Yankee Stadium was uniquely suited to Bellinger's strengths as a player - great reads as an outfielder to cover tons of ground in LF, and a high number of fly balls and line drives to RF as a hitter to make ample use of the short porch. We knew that Bellinger would hit better at home than he would on the road. The Yankees also got a good trade price on Bellinger on the initial trade because other teams stayed away from trade talks, knowing that Bellinger was a far better fit for the Yankees than he was elsewhere.

As much as all of the above remains true, I cannot picture Bellinger posting a .517 OPS all season on the road. If he does, it'll be time to consider other options when the Yankees are in an opposing stadium. I was not a huge fan of Bellinger's splits last season, and argued at one point that the Yankees should have dropped Bellinger in the lineup on the road. I still think that should be the case, even if/when he bounces back. This is who Bellinger is at this point, but I also think there will be some positive regression to the mean.

David B. asks: Paul has written about Luis Arraez in the past and it was brought up again on this site recently. He seems to play good defense at second base and Chisholm has been awful. The Giants don't seem to be heading anywhere this year. At some point, might Arraez become an option on the trade market? What might that look like?

Arraez proving to be adept at 2B after years of truly awful defensive performances all over the diamond (including 2B), is truly one of the most surprising occurrences on this year's MLB bingo card. Add that to solid baserunning (despite below average speed) and a high contact, low strikeout, good plate discipline offensive profile, and suddenly he appears to match this Yankees team quite well. Looking under the hood, Arraez has been more aggressive at the plate, swinging with much greater frequency which allows him to hit in fewer pitcher's counts. His contact profile has slipped by just a very little bit, making him more of a 75 Hit Tool instead of an 80, but we're splitting hairs. Arraez is among the best bargains out their this year on a 1-year deal.

I think we need to wait and see what happens with Jazz and the Giants. If Jazz wakes up, he is still a more valuable player compared to Luis Arraez, which is saying something. However, if Jazz continues his awful play into July and the Giants sink further away from contention, I do wonder if that's a viable trade path.

From a value perspective, does swapping Arraez and Jazz's expiring contracts while the Yankees attach someone like Hess/Cunningham/Wells work as a headliner with another lottery ticket attached? People would be shocked to see me list Austin Wells, but if Wells continues to struggle, I wonder if the Yankees would be willing to include him as a change-of-scenery candidate to a team in need?

I've been against acquiring Arraez in the past, but I admit that my interest is piqued. I'm not sure yet if it's realistic, but it's more realistic now than it has been in a long time.

Brian S. asks: The Yankees began the season as one of the best base-stealing teams in baseball and have been terrible at it for 3 weeks now. What gives?

Caballero has had a few off-days going back to even prior to the finger fracture. Jazz has hardly been on-base over those 3 weeks. Bellinger has had a burst of power, which prevents him from stealing bases. Dominguez got hurt after his call up. When you start adding up all of those factors, it's no wonder the Yankees have struggled to steal bases lately.

The real answer is that this wasn't an incredible base-stealing team, at least not as awesome as they appeared at the start of the season. I also don't think they're as bad as they've shown recently. With everyone healthy, I think they're an exciting baserunning team, with few truly bad baserunners. That's a huge improvement. Get Jazz on-base and Caballero healthy, and suddenly we could see some fireworks in the bottom-half of the lineup.