Yankees fire hitting coach Dillon Lawson

Never before in his tenure as Yankees general manager, which began in 1998, had Brian Cashman fired a coach in-season.

He emphatically changed that early Sunday night, firing hitting coach Dillon Lawson, whom the Yankees promoted to that position to great organizational fanfare before the 2022 season.

“A very difficult decision, one I took a lot of time to make,” Cashman said via Zoom several hours after the Yankees closed out the first half with a 7-4 loss to the Cubs.

No replacement was named, but Cashman said whoever replaces Lawson, 38, definitely will come from “outside the organization” and will be in place by Friday, when the Yankees open the second half in Denver.

Cashman said assistant hitting coaches Casey Dykes and Brad Wilkerson  will remain in their current roles. Wilkerson, who played in the big leagues, is in his first year and already is popular with players.

Cashman, who said he received the “blessing” of owner Hal Steinbrenner on Saturday to make the move, informed manager Aaron Boone of the decision Sunday.

“I’m not comfortable doing [it] but feel I have to for the benefit of our operation on the offensive side as we move forward,” Cashman said. “I feel the operation is capable of a lot more than what we’ve produced to this point.”

After Sunday’s loss, the Yankees ranked third in the American League in home runs (129) but were ninth in the league in runs (400 in 91 games), 13th in batting average (.231), 11th in on-base percentage (.300) and eighth in OPS (.710). Those numbers have gotten worse in the absence of Aaron Judge, who last played June 3. Entering Sunday, in 30 games since then, the Yankees were hitting .216 with a .287 on-base percentage and .662 OPS.

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had consistently high levels of production [offensively],” Cashman said. “We’re not at that level right now we’re normally at. A lot of categories we’re pretty dominant in; this year’s been a completely different story . . . [It hasn’t been] that Yankee DNA we’re used to seeing.”

Cashman, who said he believes the Yankees will “be better served with a different messenger,” took pains not to blame Lawson completely for the offense’s failures, adding a couple of times that he thinks he can be a big-league hitting coach again down the line.

It should be pointed out that Lawson, the club’s minor-league hitting coordinator from 2019-21, has been implementing the organization’s overall hitting philosophy, which overwhelmingly focuses on exit velocity and home runs.

“When I watch their players take BP, it’s like they step in and say, ‘Let me hit as many fly balls as I can and hope several of them land over the fence,’ ” one rival American League scout, who comes more from the analytic side of things, said recently after watching the Yankees’ minor-league system top to bottom. “That’s not a hitting philosophy, that’s a softball philosophy.”

It will be fascinating to see whom Cashman brings in from the outside. First and foremost, will it be someone almost exclusively steeped in analytics, as the vast majority of the organization’s hires have been the last five-plus years, or will on-field experience be a consideration?  

Cashman would not tip his hand.

“Looking for a unique personality that can communicate with this group of players as we try to sprint in the second half,” he said. “Ultimately, I just think our players, if we can select the right person, can benefit from a change.”