The Yankees entered their recent series against the Royals needing a serious shift in momentum. They were 2-7 in their previous nine games — a stretch which saw them get one-hit by the Rays, fail to score for 17 straight innings, and surrender 13 home runs and 32 runs total in four games against the Angels. In the final series of the home stand, it became imperative that they turn their ship around before heading out on the road.
That’s just what transpired, the Yankees sweeping the Royals in a much needed laugher series to reduce stress levels and restore confidence. It could have been a different story, Camilo Doval squandering the Yankees’ 2-1 lead by giving up the game-tying home run in the top of the eighth inning of the series opener. That left the Bombers looking for heroics from the impotent bottom of their batting order, somehow finding themselves in the situation of needing to call on Ryan McMahon as a pinch-hitter with two outs — a man whose bat had gone so cold that he was benched for Amed Rosario despite the right-handed Michael Wacha having made the start for the Royals.
We join McMahon with two outs in the eighth, Aaron Boone having inserted him into the game as a defensive replacement for Rosario in the top half of the inning. Ben Rice is on first after his two-out single kept the inning alive against hard-throwing reliever Alex Lange. Lange was once one of the hottest commodities on the reliever market in his first few seasons with the Tigers before injuries sapped his effectiveness and eventually led to his DFA. His fastball used to touch triple digits, and while it has fallen off from those heights, he can still dial it up to the upper-90s. He begins this encounter with a four-seamer at 96 mph.
This is a well-executed heater on the corner up and away. McMahon takes it for called strike one and it’s a good thing he did. As we’ll discuss below, McMahon has a very narrow range of pitch locations that he’s able to make solid contact. Up and away is most certainly not one of those areas, so despite this pitch being in the zone, it is absolutely not one McMahon should be swinging at first pitch.
After watching McMahon take the previous pitch, Lange looks to tunnel a knuckle curve down a similar chute, hoping to either steal another called strike low and away or maybe even induce a chase and whiff.
Once again, McMahon is taking all the way. The pitch is a ball out of Lange’s hand and never looks like a strike during its path to home, making for a pretty straightforward but still decent take from McMahon considering it lands just inches from the corner.
Now that he has shown McMahon two straight pitches away, Lange has him set up to potentially chase a changeup off the plate down and away.
Instead, he spikes this pitch into the dirt on the other side of home plate than he was intending. In a sense, he lets McMahon off the hook here with this automatic take.
Despite showing McMahon the movement profile of the changeup on a non-competitive pitch, Lange makes the curious decision to double up on the pitch.
McMahon gets the off-speed mistake right in his wheelhouse and doesn’t miss, sending it to the opposite field just over the wall in left for the go-ahead, two-run home run, the first extra-base hit of his season. It’s a bizarre pitch selection — McMahon has serious contact issues against high-velocity elevated fastballs and breaking balls below the zone, so he’s certainly not complaining about getting just about the only pitch he can hit in this situation.
It’s no secret how much McMahon has struggled to begin the year. Among all hitters with at least 50 plate appearances entering play Monday, McMahon’s .130 average ranked third worst, while his 53 wRC+, 32.1-percent strikeout rate, and and 34-percent whiff rate all rank him well into the bottom 15-percent league-wide. I fear that without fundamental changes to his swing mechanics, we can expect more of the same going forward, McMahon under contract this season and next at $16 million a year.
His extreme uppercut swing is aimed toward pulling the ball in the air. However, those mechanics mean he is only able to make contact with pitches below belt-level — the irony being that while his goal is to lift the ball, the only pitches he can hit are the hardest to lift in the air! There’s a very narrow sweet-spot about thigh-high and middle of the plate where he can do damage, and fortunately Lange threw him a pitch exactly in that area. The goal therefore for McMahon is to maximize damage on the few occasions when he sees a pitch like the one Lange threw, and fortunately for the Yankees, McMahon didn’t miss this time.