Baseball is such a peculiar sport. The Chicago White Sox just swept the Toronto Blue Jays, and that\u2019s indicative of exactly diddly squat about those two teams. What we know for a fact is that no matter the campaign the Blue Jays will have had at the end of the year, it\u2019ll be possible to look back at this one series and see the dent it caused. Across short samples (specific series), a lot of wild stuff can happen, and over a period shorter than two full weeks, there are still major discrepancies about players\u2019 productions and their expectations.<\/p>\n
The Yankees will host the Athletics for a three-game set this week, a team that has won three of its first nine games, but that record doesn\u2019t really matter for the purposes of this conversation. We\u2019re focused on the individual production, or lack thereof \u2014 at least prior to Sunday\u2019s games \u2014 of Brent Rooker and Nick Kurtz, two outstanding hitters who are supposed to anchor this lineup. Said anchoring has been left primarily to Shea Langelieres, one of the better-hitting catchers in the game, but not expected to be the star of the show for this team. The production of Rooker and Kurtz has been so poor that even with Rooker\u2019s massive two-homer game that included a walk-off shot on Sunday, the A\u2019s DH still has an OPS of .609.<\/p>\n
As a fan, it\u2019s a question each of us must ask ourselves: how do we feel when coming up against undeniably great players in the middle of a rut or a slow start or whatever else you want to call it? Sure, Nick Kurtz has some questions to answer about how much of that phenomenal rookie campaign he is set to match long-term \u2014 even for the skeptical side of the room regarding his skill set, a .120 average is a bit much. On the flip side, Brent Rooker may not be as spectacular as Kurtz was at his best, but his quality has been well-established over the past few seasons \u2014 and he happens to be the only other A\u2019s regular to be matching Kurtz\u2019s struggles at the plate.<\/p>\n
In many respects, without diving too deep into the reasons why these players are struggling, if there are any \u2014 usually there aren\u2019t \u2014 the question being asked here is, are you an inherently positive person, or do you find yourself more often than not landing on the negative side of things? For me, personally, the latter is more often true, and thus it can be an extra concern, the fear that those guys will burst through.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible to talk yourself into both sides of the argument. On one hand, the Yankees\u2019 staff is as well-equipped as any to take advantage of these early scuffles and hold down Rooker and Kurtz for a bit longer. On the other hand, isn\u2019t that initial burst more and more inevitable the longer it is put off? Rooker already stuck his head out above water on Sunday \u2014 is that a sign of things to come in the near future?<\/p>\n
This being a two-way street, A\u2019s fans are probably pondering similar questions regarding a player like Jazz Chisholm Jr., who has yet to provide any offensive juice this season. These are mainly theoretical questions without a right or wrong answer. The more tangible impact of these points and what evidently separates these two teams is that, through the struggles of Kurtz and Rooker \u2014 even with ungodly numbers from Langeliers \u2014 the A\u2019s offense cannot flourish, hence their poor record. Yes, the A\u2019s had a couple of big games against the Astros, but as a whole, their offense has underwhelmed more often than not in these first few games. Meanwhile, the Yankees have been on a roll, even with one of their key hitters yet to do anything.<\/p>\n
Whatever Kurtz and Rooker end up doing or not doing, the Yankees have a reasonable path towards keeping that offense from exploding, particularly facing it outside of their home park, a hitter\u2019s paradise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baseball is such a peculiar sport. The Chicago White Sox just swept the Toronto Blue Jays, and that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,4,3226,3537],"class_list":{"0":"post-666768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-mlb-athletics","12":"tag-mlb-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116358957265541987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}