Yankees Need Mark Teixeira to Turn on the Power

The Yankees have started to show some signs of life having won five of seven. The starting pitchers have been more consistent in providing quality innings, the bats have begun to awaken, and the late relief has been mostly spectacular. But still in last place, the team has a long way to go before everyone can feel comfortable with where it stands. The biggest key to unlocking this team’s full potential is Mark Teixeira. If the first baseman can’t get going, the Yankees will continue to battle periodic struggles.

Before Teixeira suffered the fractured shin on August 17 last year, he was enjoying a career resurgence. His “no-fun” gluten-free diet helped return him to All-Star form, and he was well on his way to another 35/100 season. He played just 111 games but his 3.8 WAR made him the team’s most valuable player. The Yankees, too, were enjoying a bit of a revival after having missed the playoffs in both 2013 and 2014. They were 65-52, good enough for a one game lead over Toronto in the AL East, and had one of the league’s best offenses.

Tex’s injury turned out to be a hit the Yankees couldn’t recover from. While he did appear in two games (August 25 and 26) after fouling the ball off his leg, the team went just 21-23 from August 17 onward. As a whole, they slugged just .394 in September, which was 14th in the AL. With one injury, the Yankees went from one of the league’s two highest powered offenses, to one that could hardly ever score.

Despite returning from the fracture in 2016, the 36-year-old has yet to get back to his level of play from a year ago. The team really hasn’t been right since, either. Counting the postseason, the Yankees are a combined 34-42 post-fracture. Through 30 games, Teixeira has slashed just .202/.325/.298. According to Baseball Reference, he’s been worth only 0.3 WAR. What’s worse is that he’s hit just three home runs and none since April 13. It’s hard not to draw some sort of correlation between Tex’s injury and poor play, and that win-loss record. On Tuesday we learned that Teixeira is day-to-day with neck spasms, so maybe that explains why his bat has been silent. Either way, until his play improves, the Yankees attempt to get back into contention can’t be sustained.

In last week’s edition of Sports Illustrated, Joe Sheehan delineated just how homer-dependent teams are in 2016. According to his story, through May 1, 38.2% of all runs scored have come via the home run. That would break the record of 37.3%, set in 2015. This stat is especially important for the Yankees because they have struggled to string rallies together. The most surefire way to score runs is by hitting the ball into the seats. In fact, the Yankees have hit at least one home run in all but four of their 13 wins. And two of those wins in particular came when Teixeira went deep. Tex is counted on, along with Alex Rodriguez, to be the team’s primary source of power. As it stands now, the Yankees’ 30 home runs are just 11th in the AL.

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Given where the Yankees are in the standings, the first goal must be to get to back to .500. If and when that materializes, they can then worry about truly being in contention. For that to happen, Teixeira is going to have to flick on the power switch.