Yankees in April: 5 things we've learned
Aaron Judge greets Ben Rice after his solo home run against the Kansas City Royals on April 14, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
After the Yankees dropped two of three to the Orioles, whose disastrous starting pitching has them in last place in the AL East, manager Aaron Boone made a prediction.
“We’re going to be really good,” Boone said in Baltimore late Wednesday. “We’ve got a really good club. We have to keep getting better, and I’m confident we will.”
Even with the series loss, the Yankees entered Thursday’s off day at 18-13 and leading the AL East in what is shaping up as a significantly down year for the typically powerful division.
What to make of the Yankees with the season’s first month in the books?
On Opening Day, Boone called what was to come “the week of overreaction,” meaning everything happening in that stretch — positively or negatively — would be unduly magnified.
The same can be said when it comes to the season’s first month. The sample size remains small, but some, though certainly not all, elements of a team can come into focus during that time. An early look at five things we’ve learned about the Yankees through April:
AARON JUDGE IS PRIMED TO MAKE A RUN AT THE TRIPLE CROWN . . . AGAIN
The reigning AL MVP and two-time winner of the award is off to the best start of his career. He ended the month with hard-to-fathom numbers, slashing .427/.521/.761 with 10 homers, 32 RBIs and a 1.282 OPS, and leads the majors in just about every offensive category of consequence. In his first MVP season (2022), when he hit an AL-record 62 homers and drove in 131 runs, Judge finished second in batting average to Minnesota’s Luis Arraez, .316 to .311. Last season, when he hit 58 homers and added 144 RBIs, Judge hit .322, third in the AL to Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. (.332) and Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.323). Judge will go into the inevitable slump, as every big-leaguer does at some point in a season. But the outfielder’s behind-the-scenes obsession with the craft of hitting and the overall lack of quality pitching depth in the sport make it difficult to envision Judge not going into September with a chance to win the AL’s first Triple Crown since Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera in 2012.
STARTING PITCHING REMAINS AN ONGOING CONCERN
This was an organizational worry in spring training, and that was before Gerrit Cole was lost for the season (Tommy John surgery) and Luis Gil was sidelined for at least the first three months with a right lat strain. Max Fried has been the exception and Carlos Rodon has come on of late, but there have been too many starts of less than five innings by the rest of the rotation. Another injury or two to the group would be potentially devastating because the organizational pitching depth is close to zero.
BULLPEN HAS BEEN AS ADVERTISED, BUT FOR HOW LONG?
It won’t take long for the unit to show some wear and tear if Boone has to keep dipping into it in the fourth and fifth innings. Luke Weaver’s excellence has helped mitigate Devin Williams’ struggles, and the latter’s last two outings since his demotion have been encouraging. Fernando Cruz has been the strikeout machine the Yankees hoped he’d be and Ryan Yarbrough has been an unsung hero.
BEN RICE APPEARS TO BE THE REAL DEAL
Rice, who added 10 to 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason, keeps hitting the ball hard, even as his average has dipped. The lefty DH has eight homers, which is tied for second on the club with Trent Grisham, and a .958 OPS. It will be fascinating to see how the Yankees handle him when Giancarlo Stanton returns, but there are no signs that that is imminent, and as former manager Joe Girardi used to say: “We’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.”
TALK OF “TORPEDO BATS” TAKING OVER THE SPORT WAS WILDLY OVERBLOWN
Haven’t heard nearly as much about them lately, have you? After the Yankees hit 15 home runs in their season-opening sweep of the Brewers, the torpedo bats were all the rage. The conjecture made it sound as if the entire Yankees clubhouse was using them, or soon would be. But the same five Yankees using the bats at the start — Jazz Chisholm Jr., Anthony Volpe, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Austin Wells — are still the only ones using them, with Goldschmidt the only one of the five hitting consistently the whole month. The club’s top three in homers — Judge, Rice and Grisham — aren’t using them and won’t be switching anytime soon.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
