Yankees: Luke Voit has become an absolute menace at the plate

Yankees first baseman Luke Voit has completely locked in after a weird opening week.

Of all the early-season Yankees narratives that don’t seem to hold water anymore, “Why did Luke Voit lose all that weight?” might be atop the list.

As we’re wont to do, many of us went completely knee-jerk with our reactions to his newfound physique.

After all, in the early series against the Nationals, Voit appeared to be overswinging, taking way-too-hefty cuts at otherwise hittable pitches. Surely, this meant he was somehow thrown off by dropping the bulk. Potentially, he just … wasn’t powerful anymore.

A few weeks later, Voit has homered in four straight games, and possesses the best HR-to-AB ratio in all of MLB. Suffice to say this discourse was extremely stupid.

Voit was already the Yankee most likely to make you, the fan, run through a brick wall.

Now, he’s lifting his teammates on his back when his presence is most necessary, picking up the slack of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and DJ LeMahieu.

Since this surge is such a departure from his early season, rhythm-less appearances, it would be easy to react too swiftly yet again and call it a short-term peak. In reality, this power production from Voit is far closer to his norm than what we watched for the latter half of 2019.

Voit’s core muscle injury, which behaved like a hernia but somehow seemed far worse, limited him drastically throughout his restricted second half, even when he professed to be recovered. Surgery came the very second the season ended in mid-October (very predictably), and the eyewitness accounts provided from Voit’s doctor visits sound like a bodily worst-case scenario.

Things that should never rip or shred absolutely did just that. Living through this, let alone playing through it, would not be for the faint of heart, something no one has ever accused Voit of being.

In 178 total games played with the Yankees, Voit now has 45 home runs. 40 of those games came last season, when the burly first baseman was attempting his ill-advised comeback; he hit just four homers during that stretch.

Four home runs in four days may be slight deviation from Voit’s expected averages, but … not by all that much. Not a fluke after 2018, and certainly not a mirage when his core snapped midway through an All-Star-level campaign in 2019, Voit is proving to be a mainstay, just a few weeks after his full-time role was questioned.

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