By Ryan Bologna
May 17, 2022
New York Sports Nation

The Yan­kees are off to one of the best starts fans have ever seen at 26–9, the best record in baseball.

This might be sur­pris­ing to many because a team formed of essen­tial­ly the same ros­ter won 91 games and lost in the Wild Card game in 2021. They didn’t make the big moves that near­ly every­one want­ed like sign­ing Car­los Cor­rea or trad­ing for Matt Olson. They also did not add any­one to the start­ing rota­tion. So what is the dif­fer­ence with this year’s team? Why are they so dra­mat­i­cal­ly better?

It isn’t one sin­gu­lar aspect, but arguably the biggest dif­fer­ence between the 2021 and 2022 teams is the defense.

Here are the team defen­sive runs saved sta­tis­tics for 2021 and the 2022 sea­son so far.

2021: ‑41 DRS (29th in MLB)

2022: 8 DRA (15th in MLB)

Since DRS is a count­ing stat, it would be rea­son­able to expect the 2022 num­ber to keep going up through­out the season.

There is a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons for the Yan­kees dra­mat­i­cal­ly improv­ing defen­sive­ly this sea­son. Let’s start with the left side of the infield.

The Yan­kees’ big move of the off­sea­son was acquir­ing Josh Don­ald­son and Isi­ah Kin­er-Fale­fa from the Min­neso­ta Twins. Gley­ber Tor­res’ strug­gles were well-doc­u­ment­ed at short­stop, and while Kin­er-Fale­fa cur­rent­ly has 0 DRS and is not elite by any means, he is still a big upgrade from what the Yan­kees had at the posi­tion last year. Don­ald­son has been great at third with 4 DRS so far, and while Gio Urshela made flashy plays, he did not have the best range so the met­rics were not as high on him as the eye test.

Speak­ing of Tor­res, he has tran­si­tioned back to where he is com­fort­able at sec­ond base and it has improved his defense as well. He is at 4 DRS at sec­ond base right now, which is very good. Add in a full year of Antho­ny Riz­zo and DJ LeMahieu’s abil­i­ty to play sec­ond base and third base well and you get an infield that is way bet­ter than it was in 2021.

The out­field is bet­ter just sim­ply due to health. A rota­tion of Aaron Judge, Gian­car­lo Stan­ton, Joey Gal­lo and Aaron Hicks is a lot bet­ter than what the Yan­kees ran out there for the major­i­ty of 2021. Before the trade dead­line, the Yan­kees’ best line­up includ­ed Judge play­ing cen­ter field with Clint Fra­zier in right field and Miguel Andu­jar in left field. With all due respect to Fra­zier and Andu­jar, I was always ner­vous when a ball was hit in their direc­tion in 2021.

Last­ly, we have the catch­er posi­tion. I was a Gary Sanchez sup­port­er, but main­ly for his bat. The Yan­kees have sac­ri­ficed offense for defense at the catch­er posi­tion. Jose Trevi­no is first in the league for Fram­ing Runs at 3.0, while Higash­io­ka is at 0.9. Sanchez is at 0 still. So the catch­ers are steal­ing more strikes this year, which makes it eas­i­er for a pitch­ing staff that is one of the best in the league.

Part of the hot start has to do with bounce-backs from play­ers offen­sive­ly, the Yan­kees improve­ments on defense have been a huge part of their suc­cess so far in 2022.