A little under 2 months ago I posed the question are pitchers afraid of the Yankees? Of course, it’s very hard to answer that question definitively. At that point in the season, we learned that the Yankees were being pitched to a certain way. We also learned that maybe they shouldn’t be.
Yankees hitters were seeing the most pitches outside of the zone by a noticeable margin, but they weren’t hitting like a team that should be pitched around. They were in the upper half of exit velocity and SLG% on pitches in and around the zone, but they weren’t blowing anyone away.