3 teams Yankees can blame for Astros’ sustained dominance

1. Los Angeles Dodgers

Chalk this up as the first bad trade Andrew Friedman made running the Los Angeles Dodgers … and of course it had to be with Houston.

Back in 2016, LA traded 19-year-old Yordan Alvarez for relief pitcher Josh Fields. At the time, the Dodgers needed bullpen help to keep a stranglehold on their contender status, and Fields was actually able to provide the necessary help through the 2018 season (2.61 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 115 strikeouts in 124 games). But after that year, he was out of baseball.

Meanwhile, Alvarez has developed into one of the best hitters in all of MLB. He won AL Rookie of the Year back in 2019 and is firmly in the AL MVP conversation this year (he leads the league in OPS and OPS+). Across 294 games with Houston, the 24-year-old is hitting .295 with a .972 OPS and 161 OPS+. He just signed a long-term extension to remain with the Astros, too.

Even worse? Alvarez loves to crush the Yankees. In 10 career games vs the Bombers, he’s hitting .310 with a 1.031 OPS, seven runs scored, five homers and nine RBI. The only silver lining here is that he won 2021 ALCS MVP after the Astros stomped the Red Sox.

Otherwise? The Yankees are stuck having to deal with Alvarez for the next six years. And all it cost was a solid relief pitcher that didn’t help the Dodgers win a World Series (in fact, Fields got TATTOOED against the Astros in the 2017 Fall Classic, which resulted in LA’s downfall).

3 players from the 2021 Yankees who are failing miserably elsewhere

These three New York Yankees players who got a lot of reps on the 2021 roster are failing in 2022, yet somehow...they were integral in '21.