TAMPA — No matter what Ryan McMahon did with the bat, he would still make his impact felt on a daily basis with the way he locks down third base defensively.
But the Yankees still believe there is more they can get out of McMahon offensively, a mission that began shortly after their playoff exit last fall, when he was actually one of their best hitters.
Following a season in which his whiff rate was a career-high 35.2 percent, McMahon sat down with the Yankees’ hitting group for more than an hour and talked through areas they wanted him to focus on over the offseason, his first in the organization after a deadline trade from the Rockies.
The main goal was to shorten his stance, getting his feet closer together in the batter’s box, and getting his hips working better through his swing.
“Just things I’ve done in the past and things I kind of got away from,” McMahon said Thursday at Steinbrenner Field. “They pointed them out and we worked on them. … Trying to find a way to give myself basically the best chance every single time and be really consistent with it.”
In his stance last year, McMahon averaged 42.7 inches between his feet, according to Baseball Savant, which was the fourth-highest distance among major leaguers.
Almost all of the other hitters in the top 10 used open stances compared to McMahon, who averaged zero degrees for a straightaway stance.
Hitting coach James Rowson said he would be guessing when asked if the wide stance contributed directly to McMahon’s high swing-and-miss rates.
He just knows that what he is seeing so far this spring has been encouraging.
“He’s in a stronger position to drive the baseball more consistently,” Rowson said. “Obviously throughout a major league season, you’re going to have some fluctuation depending on how you feel. Sometimes that can vary, your width. But right now, with him being a little bit more narrow, he’s ending up in a good spot to drive the ball from. I like what I see.”
McMahon is something of an anomaly in the box.
He has a strong eye, as his 11.9 percent walk rate (89th percentile) last year would suggest, but he still struck out 32.3 percent (second percentile) of the time.
The 31-year-old generally swings at the right pitches, but too often fails to make contact with them.
His contact rate on pitches he swung at in the strike zone was 77.8 percent, per Statcast, which ranked fourth lowest among qualified hitters.
“When I’m going bad, I’m just missing good pitches to hit,” McMahon said. “When I’m going good, I don’t miss it. Just find a way to be in that spot where I don’t miss it.”
Because when McMahon does connect with the ball, he does so with as much impact as some of the game’s best — and that is not inflated by the Coors Field effect, his former home with the Rockies.
His 93.3 mph average exit velocity ranked 14th among qualified hitters, right behind Fernando Tatis Jr.
That has not always translated into offensive production, though, as his OPS-plus (adjusted for ballpark environments) has been below league average every year of his career.
“My career has been a lot of ups and downs,” said McMahon, an All-Star in 2024. “It’s just trying to find that middle line so I can stay there and be better more consistently.”
The Yankees may also platoon McMahon more often, having Amed Rosario play third base against lefties, which would allow him to mainly focus on crushing righties.
That said, it will be difficult to take McMahon’s glove out of the lineup, as his arrival last summer made a significant impact on the Yankees’ overall infield defense, with his presence alone looming large given Max Fried and Carlos Rodón’s propensity for generating ground balls to third base.
“That’s what I want it to look like,” said manager Aaron Boone, a former third baseman himself. “He was born to pick up a ground ball. Then that big arm, has that quarterback movement about him, side to side. He’s really good.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
