The New York Yankees, are currently well into their offseason, so let’s take a look at how their shortstop performed this past year.
With the New York Yankees, most if not all the positions had reliable backups for that single position. Shortstop, on the other hand, was handled a little different. When Didi Gregorius went down with an injury during the 2018 season, it wasn’t a backup shortstop to step up and take the reigns but the second baseman, Gleyber Torres.
Now I could grade Ronald Torreyes in this article, but as I said previously, players like him and Neil Walker will be covered in a different article grading the utility players. With all that being said Didi “The King of End Game Tweets” Gregorius gets a special in-depth grading all to himself.
Didi Gregorius
To open up the 2018 season in April, Didi Gregorius had one of the best months in baseball. He would put a .330 batting average, send ten long balls out of the park and bat in thirty runs. Didi looked to be unstoppable, winning the AL player of the month with relative ease. All signs pointed at Gregorius being an infield leader for the Yankees, then came May. In May, Didi came crashing back down to earth, here’s a comparison of the first two months.
April
Games: 28
Batting average: .327
On-base percentage: .421
Slugging average: .735
Home runs: 10
RBI: 30
Runs: 24
May
Games: 12
Batting average: .118
On-base percentage: .167
Slugging average: .157
Home runs: 0
RBI: 1
With his numbers on the downswing, people began to wonder what Didi was actually made of. June and July, Didi would rise his stats back to the near .300 level, but the home runs dried up. Didi would not hit 10 home runs in a month again or in any two month spans combined. Is that what defines Didi? No, Didi’s job is to get the ball in play and have the big bats of Staton and Judge be the hammer in the coffin.
Gregorius would end his season with a respectable .268 average, a career-high twenty-seven home runs and eighty-six Runs batted in, all the while battling injuries throughout the season. Other then Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius is my favorite New York Yankee on the roster. A man that smiles through the bad times to keep his team upbeat and some of the best tweets in the business.
Recently there have been talks of extending Didi Gregorius’s contract with the Yankees and I welcome it with open arms. There are not many Shortstops better than Didi, even the dirtiest player in the game Manny Machado could learn a few things from Sir Didi himself.
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