Almost every pitch out of those whiffs was a nasty breaking ball with hellacious spin.

Actually this is not literally correct, because Yesavage’s bread and butter is a splitter, not exactly a high RPM breaking ball. I was aware of him because of his similarity to Mets prospect
Jonah Tong, who throws from a similar arm angle. Yesavage is particularly nasty because of his four seamer-splitter combo— the four seamer has the same induced vertical break that Tong gets, but he also throws that splitter that the bottom falls out of. That is truly a nasty combination of pitches.

I bet if you did a quality analysis of this, you’d find that the Yankees’ k rates and walks and SLG and other key stats have variance very similar to other teams in the postseason compared to the regular season across that timeframe. In general your numbers are gonna go down because you’re running into better pitchers. Maybe you get an outlier team here or there on either end of the spectrum because of the small sample sizes involved, but I’d be surprised if their numbers dipped significantly more than other teams over that period. I’d be curious to see a study like that.

Almost every pitch out of those whiffs was outside the strike zone

Fixed it for you.

The K’s are up. The walks are down. There aren’t many home runs.

It’s just been one outcome. And it’s been like that in every postseason for a very long time.

Don’t tell me the BB% of the regular season to counter. Do a side by side of every regular season vs postseason.

Probably 8 of those were filthy pitches. Yes, even the high fastball to Judge was nasty considering the way that guy was spinning the breaking stuff at the bottom of the zone.

That wasn’t “garbage” they were swinging at, that was filth they were swinging at.

Here’s a better argument I’ll make for you on your behalf: “the Yankees reliance on a TTO strategy when it comes to hitting hasn’t panned out well for them in the postseason.”

Yes, that’s literally the argument I’ve been making about Cashman since 2018.

The efficacy of TTO is greatly reduced when you adjust for the change in population of pitchers in the postseason.

Your counterargument is that they didn’t do that in the regular season.

That’s a lot better than “they’re a free swinging team that only walks against bad pitchers, as if other teams don’t also face bad pitchers,” which is a horrible argument.

They led the league in walks! This is insanity.

if you strike out a lot but were swinging at pitches that would have been strikes anyway, you can still be considered a disciplined hitter

You clearly haven’t been watching the last two games because nearly every K has been on a terrible pitch well outside the strike zone.

Here’s all 11 K’s:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1nz1ez9/highlight_all_11_strikeouts_from_trey_yesavage/

Two were in the zone.

If this ain’t free swinging, I don’t know what is.

I’m wrong about what? That it’s impossible to lead the league in walks and also to be a “free swinging” team?

Yes.

I don’t know what the hell this team did for 162 games to lead the league in BB%. My guess is they largely accumulated those stats against pitchers who don’t make it to October.

Through 5 postseason game they have been the very definition of free swinging.