that y-d offense

Yarmouth-Dennis has rolled to a tremendous start this summer, sitting at 22-10-1 heading into Tuesday night’s games. A big part of the success stems from the offense, which is leading the league with a .273 average.

I dug into some of the archives on the Cape league’s web site to get some historical perspective on that number. Looking back through the last decade, the team with the best batting average is typically in the .250’s, occasionally in the .260’s and sometimes dipping into the .240’s. The only team that compares to what Y-D has done so far is the Chatham A’s of 2005, which had the three top average guys in the league. As a team, the A’s hit .274.

Y-D doesn’t have the same kind of presence on the leaderboard, which probably makes the average all the more impressive. Jason Castro’s .341 mark is second in the league, but only Gordon Beckham joins him in the top 10.

For the most part, the Red Sox have done it with balance. Every player but one in their typical every day lineup is hitting above .250. That’s something not a lot of teams can say. Here’s a player-by-player look at what the Sox have done, based on the lineup they put on the field most often (I’m listing four outfielders because there are some platoons there). Also, note the home run totals. Y-D can hit, and hit it far:

C – Buster Posey – .255, 2 HR
1B – Sean Ochinko – .295, 5 HR
2B – Joey Railey – .247, 1 HR
3B – Nich Romero – .248, 0 HR
SS – Gordon Beckham – .315, 8 HR
OF – Matt Long – .226, 0 HR
OF – Collin Cowgill -.301, 2 HR
OF – Johnny Ayers – .259, 0 HR
OF – Aaron Luna – .262, 3 HR

Two guys who always find their way into the lineup, at various spots:

Jason Castro – .341, 2 HR
Grant Green – .259, 3 HR

And some other contributors:

Diego Seastrunk – .308, 0 HR
Luke Stewart – .227, 2 HR
Mike Tamsin – .234, 1 HR

All in all, the Sox seem to hit up and down the lineup, which isn’t something you see every day in the Cape league.

The success speaks largely to the Y-D organization and the talented group of players it has assembled. But there’s also something to be said for luck, for having things work out as well as they could work.

That’s obviously a factor in all of baseball, and in any sport, for that matter. But in the Cape league, the importance of having things go right is a bit more magnified. I think there are a couple of reasons for this:

• The short season. There are a lot of games, yes but they’re squeezed into about eight weeks. So, if a player goes through a two-week slump, that means he’s slumping for one-fourth of the season. Getting every player in your lineup to avoid prolonged slumps can be tough. And if several players hit slumps at the same time, you can get buried quickly.
• The adjustment to wood. It can take awhile, and plenty of good players struggle with it.
• The grind. Players, for the most part, aren’t used to playing games every day of the week.
• The missing pieces. Be it Team USA invites, College World Series trips or injuries, plenty of players who are penciled in on Cape rosters never make it. When the rosters are coming together in the winter, it’s impossible to predict how things will shake out.

All those factors set the stage for teams to struggle, or at the very least, to be inconsistent. Across the board, with those factors as a backdrop, you never know what you’re getting.

For a team to do what Y-D has done, a lot of those factors have to play out the right way. Players have to stay out of slumps, or the team has to have enough depth to fill in when a player does hit a slide. The adjustment to wood has to go smoothly. The grind has to be overcome. Players have to show up.

And all of that is just to be a good team, the team you thought you’d be getting. To be very good — like Y-D, or Bourne, for that matter — things have to swing way into the positive direction, even unto the unexpectedly positive direction.

Who knew Castro would become one of the league’s best hitters after batting in the .100’s this spring for Stanford? Who knew Beckham would turn into the Cape’s premier power hitter? Who knew Cowgill would come off a spring he lost to injury and not miss a beat?

Those surprises are probably the real key, the one thing that separates a good team from a great team.

The Red Sox haven’t earned that label yet. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played. But you can say this: through 33 games, the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox — however they do it — have been pretty close to great.

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