The Biggest Problem With The Yankees New Ballpark/Bandbox

The Yankees biggest problem with their park may not be the home runs they give up, but the home runs they hit. Sounds strange? Let me explain. The problem with hitting so many home runs is that teams get homer happy, especially when they fall behind. The Yankees thus far this season have seemed to live and die on the big hits. And if they want to win going forward, it can't continue. Sure, they can use the big blast from their powerful lineup every once in a while, but the problem is that when they've gotten behind this season, you can see the batters all aiming for the fences and not working at-bats like they do so well.

This also seems to happen against bad/inexperienced pitchers. Through 5 innings against J.A. Happ today, the Yankees only mustered one run and only made Happ throw 60 pitches.

The Yankees during their winning streak were hitting a fair share of homeruns, but were working in walks, singles, doubles, and even triples. They moved over runners and did the little things they needed to do to win. They didn't jump out of their skin every time up and the patient at bats not only meant they drew walks, but it also meant they got into the weak bellies of the opposing bullpens early in the game where they did serious damage. To win, the Yankees need to continue to do that.

Buster Olney seemed to echo my thoughts this morning:

• I mentioned in Friday's blog that while the Yankees certainly don't want their park to play like a bandbox in future years, the way the park plays might actually be in the Yankees' favor this year, because generally speaking, the staff has power pitchers and the team's lineup is powerful. But you do wonder if the Yankees' lineup will become so accustomed to generating runs via home runs that it will grow stagnant on the road, the way the Red Sox teams of the late '70s seemed to; when the home runs stopped coming for those Boston teams, their one-dimensional offense seemed to sputter.

Let's hope the Yankees don't become a one-dimensional offense.