Yankees: Is Gary Sanchez almost an afterthought in the lineup?

The Yankees, and it seems like years ago now, opened Spring Training with most of the talk surrounding a young catcher who had put an exclamation point on the team’s shift to a young and more athletic team. What’s happened in the interim?

The Yankees will have no issues with Gary Sanchez if he turns out to be Jorge Posada instead of Johnny Bench or Yogi Berra. That much is a given. But at the same time, it’s almost like Sanchez has become an afterthought in the Yankees lineup that will take the field this afternoon to defend their first-place standing in the American League East.

Gary Sanchez lived a dream at the end of the 2016 season when he put up numbers that were gaudy and unbelievable. Like all of us, the Yankees may have been swept away with the tide in having found a new hero who would replace Derek Jeter as the face of their new team.

And throughout the offseason, the team grasped every chance they could to ensure that Sanchez was at the forefront of nearly all of their marketing efforts to raise interest and sell tickets.

The Yankees will almost assuredly take Posada like numbers of .270, 27, 85 every year for the next ten seasons from Sanchez.

In one well-covered photo op, the Yankees sent Sanchez to a deli in the Bronx where he donned an apron to make sandwiches for the startled customers who had stopped in for their usual ham on rye, heavy on the mustard.

On Memorial Day 2017, Sanchez is batting .256 with only four home runs and eleven runs batted in. In terms of production, that’s what he accomplished in a week last season. To his credit, he owns an on-base percentage that is 100 points higher than his average, which demonstrates he’s not overanxious and swinging at anything.

To add perspective though, Austin Romine, the backup catcher for Sanchez, has half the home runs of Sanchez and an almost equal number of RBI, with ten.

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None of this is to say that Sanchez is not helping the team. His position alone signifies his value as the man in the middle of everything when his team is on the field.

His presence in the lineup, whether he is smashing the ball or not, counts too as at least a distraction for any pitcher facing him. This, in much the same way that Alex Rodriguez was a presence in the lineup right down to the bitter end of his career.

But for those who had hoped for more, it’s not there (yet!). And it would be unfair to define Sanchez by his stats last year or this year.

He’s a work in progress who did not have much success when he played in the minor leagues and happened to burst on the scene last season when all the stars were aligned.

And the wrist injury he suffered earlier in the season was probably more of a blessing than a curse as it gave him a chance to take a deep breath following all of the hooplas during the offseason and Spring Training when he, not Aaron Judge, was the star attraction.

Down the road, the Yankees may or may not build a “Catcher’s Box” seating area behind home plate for Gary Sanchez to rival his teammate in right field.

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But at the same time, the Yankees will almost assuredly take Posada like numbers of .270, 27, 85 every year for the next ten seasons from Sanchez.

And much like Posada, Sanchez can be that afterthought in the Yankees lineup who has a claim to multiple World Series titles.

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