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Michael King’s successful entry into the rotation could be significant. Carlos Rodon has shown a peek of the All-Star of old. Oswald Peraza and Oswaldo Cabrera might be establishing themselves as major league players.
But it’s possible the Yankees’ most encouraging development in the second half of this season came from a 35-year-old infielder.
DJ LeMahieu is again hitting like DJ LeMahieu, which is crucial for a fixture in the lineup who will be owed $45 million over the next three seasons.
After he struggled in the first half and logged some of the worst offensive numbers in baseball, LeMahieu has been rejuvenated.
His rebound has arrived likely too late to matter this season for the Yankees, but it seems a lot easier to pencil him in to the 2024 lineup at a corner-infield spot.
When he was not hitting (he posted a .643 OPS in the first half that was the 10th-worst among all qualified hitters), LeMahieu did not question whether his best days were behind him.
“I knew there was nothing I wasn’t capable of,” LeMahieu said Tuesday before he went 1-for-3 with a walk in the Yankees’ 7-1 series-opening loss to the Blue Jays in The Bronx. “I just wasn’t doing it.”
He is now doing it.
He entered play with an .836 OPS in the second half, and if he has not been his vintage self, he has been awfully close.
LeMahieu credited a “little bit of everything” in helping him snap back into the invaluable, contact-hitting leadoff hitter in a lineup that has needed contact hitters.
Included in that “everything,” of course, is the hiring of Sean Casey, a hitting coach who better understands LeMahieu’s swing and has helped him tweak his lower half.
Casey said LeMahieu has been more disciplined at the plate.
“I think a big thing with DJ is just controlling the strike zone,” Casey said recently. “I think when he controls the strike zone well, that pitch that’s up and away, he can get his arms extended on. He does so well over there. When you see him driving the baseball to right field, you see that pull-side open up for him.
“I think that’s why he’s been one of the best hitters of the last six, seven, eight years in the big leagues.”
LeMahieu has elite bat-to-ball skills.
But through the first three months of this season, he chased more pitches out of the strike zone.
A player who struck out 13.1 percent of the time last season went down on strikes nearly double that, about 25 percent, through the end of June.
Entering Tuesday, LeMahieu was striking out 18 percent of the time in July, August and September, a much more typical rate for the 13-year veteran.
“The biggest thing for me is I’ve seen the walks that he’s putting up,” Casey said of LeMahieu. “He’s not chasing outside the zone. He’s getting his pitch to hit, and a lot of the time he’s hitting it hard.”
The quiet LeMahieu did not want to dive into specific changes, physical and mental, that have helped unlock him, but he has been unlocked.
He has reached base in 16 of 17 games and entered Tuesday having posted an .852 OPS since Aug. 4.
“I don’t think I was chasing terribly in the first half,” said LeMahieu, who again hit leadoff and played first base against Toronto’s Yusei Kikuchi. “I just don’t think I was squaring up balls like I should have. But it kind of goes hand in hand.”
There were times during the first few months of the season when it would have been logical for the Yankees to wonder what they could expect from an aging hitter who will be under contract until he is 38.
But in the final months of a dark season, LeMahieu has become a needed bright spot.
“It’s definitely nice to have some results,” LeMahieu said.
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