Who Are You, DJ LeMahieu?

By Andy Singer

June 10th, 2025

Photo Credit: Corey Sipkin, NY Post

While DJ LeMahieu produced a couple of truly outstanding seasons upon first signing with the Yankees, he has struggled to stay healthy and hit consistently since signing a 6-year, $90 million contract with the Yankees following the 2020 season. Most Yankee fans have been able to see that LeMahieu has turned into a shell of his former self for most of that 6-year contract. No one doubts LeMahieu's effort, but it is equally clear that a variety of injuries to his foot and hip keep him from reaching his former ceiling.

Coming into 2025, I think most fans would have preferred that the Yankees simply eat the remainder of LeMahieu's contract and give his playing time to younger players like Jorbit Vivas or Oswald Peraza. The team didn't have to worry about that until recently, as DJLM again spent the beginning of the season on the IL. None of the young guys who played in DJ's place distinguished themselves in a positive way.

While negativity persists regarding DJ LeMahieu's place on the roster, something interesting has happened since LeMahieu returned as a regular part of the lineup: he hasn't been terrible! In an admittedly small sample size of 69 plate appearances, DJ has hit .258/.333/.371, 99 OPS+, with 2 HR and 9 RBI. While that certainly won't remind people of the All-Star performances LeMahieu produced in 2019 and 2020, it was worlds better than the awful performances we've seen from guys not named Jazz Chisholm at 2B this season. Yankee 2B have been so bad this year that roughly average offensive performance and competent defense is a huge upgrade.

While the surface numbers and nice moments are fun, I am far more interested in what's happening under the hood. Looking at DJ LeMahieu's Statcast page brings a significant amount of surprise. If he had enough plate appearances for any of it to qualify, his performance sliders on his Statcast home page would display a surprising amount of red. While he's striking out more than he ever has (21.7% at the time of this article), his walk rate (10.1%) looks far more like the good version of DJ LeMahieu, as does his chase, whiff, and hard contact rates. His exit velocities, both average and peak, are higher than they've been in years, and DJ's expected stats indicate that if anything, he's been a bit unlucky with his batted ball performance so far. Also, DJ is lifting the ball more than he has in recent years, which means a lot more hard line drives and grounders as opposed to weak choppers.

There's more interesting information when we look at bat speed. DJ LeMahieu's bat speed was clearly declining. DJLM's bat speed fell from 68.2 MPH in 2023 to 67.3 MPH in 2024, when he was basically unplayable. When I saw DJ LeMahieu's only game this Spring, I noted that his bat could be timed with a calendar, and sure enough, Statcast notes that his swing speed in that game was 66.9 MPH, basically unplayable without elite contact skills like Luis Arraez.

That has changed this year. DJ's bat speed has spiked back up to 67.8 MPH this year, a number that has gradually fallen since his first games back. What is interesting to me though is how those swing speeds are distributed compared to the past:

Here, we see a much wider range of swing speeds than DJ LeMahieu normally produces, but we also see more swings at 75+ MPH than he's produced in recent years. I can't help but wonder if DJ LeMahieu has found a way to adapt to his current abilities in a way that's allowing him to put better swings on the ball when it counts the most.

What does all of this mean? I'm not sure, but it is clear that DJ is both a different guy this year, and one who is certainly better at the plate than the guy he's been recently. Given the declining bat speed I've noted over the last few weeks, I wonder how long he can keep it going, but it's something that bears watching. I still believe the Yankees need another right-handed bat, but a better DJ LeMahieu will help the Yankees immensely.