Bill Madden: Yankees’ offense still home run or bust

With the 40-game quarter pole having just been passed, we are starting to get a good idea as to where this baseball season is headed.

Things are suddenly looking up in New York for Yankees and Mets. The Rays are good but maybe not as good as they’ve seemed. The rise of the Rangers in Texas looks real, the Padre malaise in San Diego is mystifying, and the balanced schedule has exposed the great divide between the good teams and the really bad ones in places like Oakland, Washington, Kansas City, Detroit, Colorado and Cincinnati.

Here’s our capsule assessment:

THE YANKEES ARE STILL FASHIONING THEIR (JUDGE) HOME RUN OR BUST OFFENSE BUT THEY’RE BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE THE SUPERIOR TEAM IN THE AL EAST

Taking three out of four from the Blue Jays in Toronto to move from last place to third was very encouraging especially since Luis Severino, Giancarlo Stanton and Carlos Rodon, counted on as three mainstays, have been on the sidelines. The gap between them and the frontrunning Rays figures to narrow in the waning days of May as the Yankees get healthy and the Rays grapple with pitching issues and a continuing schedule against teams with winning records (including the division leading Brewers and Dodgers) after playing 18 of their first 28 games against losing teams. Although Anthony Volpe has brought a welcome injection of speed and energy, it’s still the same story with the Yankees: If you want to beat them, you have to keep them in the ballpark and most teams still don’t seem to be able to do that. They are 26-11 in games they’ve homered, 9-1 in games Judge has homered, and 2-9 in games they haven’t homered.

There was a reason Billy Eppler presumably did nothing to improve the Mets lineup over the winter. He was waiting to eventually turn third base and DH over to the kids, Brett Baty and Mark Vientos. And for the first four weeks, after Omar Narvaez, counted on to handle the No. 1 catching duties, went down with an injury, Buck Showalter operated with essentially three automatic outs at the bottom of his lineup, along with the mysteriously impotent bat of Starling Marte at the top of it. Although Narvaez will be back in a couple of weeks, Eppler inexplicably brought in twice-released defensively-challenged Gary Sanchez on Friday, presumably to share the catching duties with Francisco Alvarez (who had seven bases stolen on him by the Rays Wednesday night). But what should really concern Eppler is the Mets’ starting pitching where neither Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander has pitched like $43 million aces and sorely missed is Chris Bassitt, who led the Mets in innings last year, but who was never even made an offer by Eppler before signing a very reasonable three-year/$63M contract with the Blue Jays. In case you missed it, Bassitt has amassed a streak of 23 scoreless innings in his last three starts for the Blue Jays. At the time, the hope was Jose Quintana, who Eppler signed for two years/$26M last winter, would adequately replace Bassitt, but he’s been felled by a rib fracture and isn’t expected to be able to join the rotation for at least another three weeks. As exhilarating as was Friday night’s 10-9 come-from-behind win over the Guardians — in which Pete Alonso, Alvarez and Baty all homered — it was tempered by the poor starting pitching performance of returning Carlos Carrasco.

As we said, the Rays’ sizzling start was at least partly the product of a cushy early schedule. That said, they’re a much better hitting team than they’ve been in recent years, presently leading the majors in homers, runs, hits, slugging and OPS. It is a credit to GM Jim Neander that so many of the Rays’ versatile young core, Randy Arozarena, Yandy Diaz, Jose Siri, Harold Ramirez, Isaac Paredes, Luke Raley, Christian Bethancourt and Manuel Margot, were acquired in under-the-radar trades from other teams that didn’t see their value as the Rays’ scouts did. All of them are coming into their own this year. Brilliant as Neander has been with his trades, however, he is probably regretting being so hasty to include right-hander Joe Ryan in that 2021 trading deadline deal with the Twins for Nelson Cruz. Ryan was regarded as one of the Rays’ top starting pitching prospects, near ready for the majors, and he has since blossomed into the Twins’ ace this year. At the same time the Rays have lost two of their top starting pitchers, Jeffrey Spriggs and Dennis Rasmussen, to elbow injuries and are currently scraping by using openers almost every other day, which has put a tremendous strain on their bullpen. They’re hoping to get a lift from former ace Tyler Glasnow, himself a Tommy John surgery recoveree who is on rehab assignment from an oblique injury. But in the meantime the overtaxed bullpen has been shaky and there is no light’s out closer.

After spending over a half billion dollars on three players, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Jon Gray and having nothing to show for it but a 94-loss season in 2022 for lack of frontline starting pitching, Rangers’ GM Chris Young went about rebuilding the Texas rotation from the top this winter, signing Jacob deGrom for $185M, Nathan Eovaldi for $34M, Martin Perez for $19.5M and Andrew Heaney for $25M. But perhaps Young’s most important sign was luring the 68-year-old Bruce Bochy (and his three world championship rings) out of retirement. Even with deGrom again temporarily felled by elbow soreness, Bochy has the Rangers’ rolling atop the AL West while the Astros have been besieged by injuries to Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley and three of their starting pitchers, Jose Urquidy, Lance McCullers and Luis Garcia (out for the year with Tommy John surgery). In deGrom’s absence, Eovaldi has stepped up as the Rangers’ ace (5-2, 2.83), while Bochy is getting exceptional seasons out of right fielder Adolis Garcia (leading the majors in RBI as of Friday), switch-hitting catcher Jonah Heim (.299/.362/496, 6 HR), and infielder Ezequiel Duran (who Young acquired from the Yankees in the Joey Gallo trade last year), hitting .307 with 6 HR and 21 RBI after filling in admirably for the injured Seager at shortstop.

Without a question, the Padres, with the third-highest payroll in baseball ($245.8M) and a 20-24 record going into the weekend, are the most disappointing team in baseball. According to one scout who’s been around the Padres, their hitting malaise can be traced to getting almost nothing from the predominant last three batters in their lineup, Trent Grisham, Austin Nola and Rougned Odor, all of whom hitting under .200. As a team, the Padres are hitting .196 with runners-in-scoring position which is historical. No team in baseball has ever hit under .200 with RISP. Another Padres insider also suggested there is a lot of uneasiness in the Padre clubhouse regarding Juan Soto, who is earning $23M this year with an eye still on a $400 million free agent payday in two years but hasn’t been near the player he was with Washington. Further ugliness to the Padres season was the classless gesture by someone operating their center field jumbotron May 5 depicting a morphed crying picture of the Dodgers Clayton Kershaw after they beat the Dodgers in their first meeting, Since then, they went 2-10 while the Dodgers went 9-2 to take command to the NL West.