Major League Baseball

New York Yankees testing whether bigger is always better in baseball

Published Aug. 11, 2021 7:14 p.m. ET

By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

The 2021 New York Yankees are a sight to behold.

I mean that quite literally — look at them! They are enormous!

Aaron Judge’s arrival in 2017 launched the Large Yankee Era. They doubled down by acquiring Giancarlo Stanton going into 2018, and the Yankees NBA Jam jokes came in a flurry. Then came Luke Voit — not quite as tall but every bit as beefy — who promptly led MLB in homers in 2020.

The organization’s affinity for Large Gents Who Hit Ball Hard extend beyond the big-name stars. Chris Gittens (6-foot-4, 250 pounds), one of the few players on earth with anywhere close to as much raw power as Stanton and Judge, got some time earlier this season at 1B. The Yankees traded Mike Tauchman to the Giants for an enormous minor-league first baseman named Connor Cannon (6-foot-5, 240 pounds), who, you guessed it:

At this year’s trade deadline, it seemed like pitching would be the priority for the Yankees. Sure, their lineup looked like it could use another left-handed bat, but many smart people assumed that if New York wanted to make up some ground in the AL East race, adding an arm would be a far more prudent use of prospect capital in a potential trade.

Instead, Brain Cashman & Co. opted for more cowbell:

What I mean is: Most people casually watching the Yankees this season did not think, "you know, they could use another big, scary hitter." There was already a lot of cowbell going on. But rather than mixing in some other sounds and finding some balance, Bruce Dickinson walked into the studio and demanded even more. Lean all the way in.

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Yet the numbers told a slightly different story. The strangest thing about this Yankees season is that despite having Judge and Stanton largely healthy and productive, their overall offense has hovered around league average at best. Here are some of their ranks in baseball before the trade deadline: 14th in home runs, 15th in OPS, 22nd in ISO, 21st in SLG.

The Yankees' only elite offensive metric was a 10.8% walk-rate — tops in MLB — perhaps suggesting that the intimidation factor is still very much in play. Overall, though, it seems the lineup did actually need some more power injected into it.

Enter Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo. Now, when everyone is healthy (hopefully soon), the Yankees could run out a lineup that looks something like:

2B DJ LeMahieu
CF Judge
LF Gallo
RF Stanton
1B Rizzo
DH Voit
C Gary Sanchez
3B Gio Urshela
SS Gleyber Torres

I mean, wow.

But compare this lineup to some of the other star-studded ones across the league. There are big boppers on the other contenders, surely: Max Muncy in Los Angeles. Yordan Alvarez in Houston. Nelson Cruz in Tampa Bay. Jose Abreu in Chicago. Darin Ruf in San Francisco (I’m only half-kidding — look at his numbers).

But all of those teams’ position player groups also feature far more variety of shapes and sizes and skill sets. I'm talking Jose Altuve in Houston. Mookie Betts and Trea Turner in Los Angeles. Tim Anderson in Chicago. Jake Cronenworth in San Diego.

Granted, Judge and Gallo are both excellent outfield defenders with above-average speed. But aesthetically, this team is just one note. And that one note is a bunch of huge baseball players who will now try to recreate the Bugs Bunny Conga Line as the Gas House Gorillas:

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Let’s consider the Yankees’ staggering size in the context of where they’ll be playing Thursday night against the White Sox: the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa (6 p.m. ET, FOX). Let’s imagine this Bronx Bombers squad hopping in a time machine and zooming back to 1919, when star outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson was banished from the World Series for wearing the wrong-colored socks from the rest of his teammates (that’s what happened, right?). That is also the year when a large gentleman named Babe Ruth began to ascend to ridiculous levels of offensive dominance.

Considered a behemoth in his era, Ruth was listed at 6-foot-2, 215 pounds. DJ LeMahieu, hardly the first large Yankee you’d name, is listed at 6-foot-4, 225. In fact, only one hitter in the entire major leagues in 1919 was listed at 6-foot-4 (High Pockets Kelly), and only two others were listed at 6-foot-3 (Paul Carter and Baby Doll Jacobson). Zero were listed at 230 pounds or more.

The 2021 Yankees' position player group has seven players (Sanchez, LeMahieu, Rizzo, Voit, Gallo, Judge, Stanton) listed as at least the height and weight of Babe Ruth — who, again, was a giant in his day.

Now, I know that players have gotten bigger over time. That’s not breaking news. But this roster is pushing the upper boundaries of physical prowess in a baseball context. This is the team that walks off the bus in high school, and everyone on your team is like, "Those guys are our age?"

As a fan of one of the 29 other teams, there’s obviously a part of me that hopes this mad baseball experiment fails spectacularly. They’re still the Yankees! Boo, Yankees! And with so many injuries and a recent surge of COVID stints on the injured list, we have yet to see it come together. But as a baseball fan, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see this potential offensive juggernaut operating at maximum capacity at some point this season, and this gargantuan lineup is still looming.

With Tampa Bay and Boston still atop the AL East and Toronto heating up, there’s a lot of work to be done. But that said, there is more than enough time for this roster to prove to me that the more cowbell approach was the way to go. The best version of the Yankees' lineup, even before the additions of Gallo and Rizzo, was as intimidating as any, but now — once everyone is back on the field — it could and should be a modern-day murderers’ row.

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Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.