Yankees Scoring Through the First 40 Games

Yankees Scoring Through the First 40 Games

By Robert Malchman

May 13, 2025

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Through the first 40 games, the Yankees are a horrendous 4-8 (.333) in one-run games. If

they did that across 162 games, they’d finish 54-108. Although it is true that very good teams

have much better records in blowouts (5+ runs margin of victory), as the Yankees do (9-2, .818), losing two out of every three one-run games is the type of thing that prevents teams from winning championships. Fuster has asked where the problems in these games lie, and the short answer is with the hitting. There have been some bullpen failures along the way, but uneven,feast-or-famine run production by the line-up magnifies the problems in the closest games.

First, the Yankees have played no one-run games in which they have scored 5 or more

runs. Overall, they are 14-4 in such games – unsurprisingly, when the offense hits as it does in

45% of the games, the Yankees win at a nifty .778 clip.

When scoring exactly 4 runs, the Yankees are 7-4, which is a tribute to the pitching staff.

Three of those wins were in one-run games, a Leiter save against Detroit after a Williams

implosion, a Leiter win in relief of Schmidt against KC, and the Weaver-Williams bounce-back

nail-biter vs. SD. That accounts for 3 of the 4 one-run wins this year; the fourth was Rodon’s 1-0 gem against the Rays.

Scoring 0-3 runs represents a failure by the offense, which the Yankees have done 11

times this year or 27.5% of the time. They are 2-9 in those games. Three of those were 4-3

losses, two of which went to the starters, and the third was the combined Williams-Weaver 4-run 8th inning meltdown vs. the Padres.

When scoring 3 times, the Yankees are 1-3. They have lost 3-2 twice. Both were Leiter

losses (vs. Cleveland and Tampa Bay). In both, Leiter was charged with a Blown Save and the

Loss, in the former with 2 IRS and 1 R, and in the latter 2 R. These games, along with Williams’

repeated failures, may be the source of fuster’s impression that the bullpen has been the principal cause of one-run losses. But it really is the lack of hitting in those games.

The Yankees are averaging 5.875 runs per game, but the median score (that is, 50% at or

above, 50% at or below) is 4 runs; last year, it was 5. As noted above, at 7-4, the Yankees are

doing outstandingly in those games, again a credit to the pitching. Grossed up to 162, that is a

103-win season. But they cannot expect to continue to win at that rate with that level of run

production. Last year, they went 12-11 when scoring exactly 4 runs, which would project to 84.5 wins.

One piece of good news is that last year, even with the median at 5 runs, the team scored

3 or fewer runs in 35% of its games. So this year, both the offense and pitching have been better, with the team reducing its > 3 runs scored games by 7.5 percentage points, and increasing its winning percentage in 4-runs-scored games by .115 points.

Ultimately, however, I think they either need another hitter or more consistency from the

hitters they have. Although the average runs scored/game is 5.875 compared to last year’s 5.031, and there are fewer < 3-run games, the median for runs scored last year was 5 (higher than this year’s 4). That is the consistency gap right there.