TAMPA — Can the Yankees be too left-handed?
Aaron Judge and Austin Wells both said “great question,” and Aaron Boone suggested yes, especially as he contemplated late-game matchups. Which is one reason that, despite a strong spring, Dominic Smith has a difficult lane to an Opening Day roster spot, especially if the Yankees successfully find an outside righty bat in the next week, as they are prioritizing.
Hitting coach James Rowson said the team’s current composition will force the leadership to “do more homework” to determine “what type of lefty [pitcher] with what type of stuff” do their lefty hitters best match up against because “you have to cook with the groceries you’ve got.”
That the Yankees would ever worry about a lineup recipe with too many lefties feels off due to history, both distant and recent. In the long view, no team is more associated with lefty power than the Yankees, a marriage that began a century-plus ago with Babe Ruth first on the short right field porch at the Polo Grounds and then at Yankee Stadium. So for 100-ish years it has mostly been the more, the merrier when it came to lefty bats
