As the Yankees head into October, every lineup spot matters a little more. They need bats that can catch fire and stay there, and George Lombard Jr. is giving them a reason to believe his timing might be lining up at exactly the right moment.
The 21-year-old shortstop of the future has started to find a rhythm over his last 12 games, when he has launched three home runs and logged three multi-hit efforts. The overall line still looks modest - 11-for-46, a .239 batting average - but the process underneath it is trending in the right direction. Lombard is chasing less and making more contact with pitches in the zone, and that’s showing up in the quality of his at-bats.
Before Tuesday’s first game of the doubleheader against the Tampa Bay Rays, Lombard had swung at 29.2% of pitches outside the strike zone this season and 65.5% of pitches in it. Over his previous 11 games, those numbers had shifted to 25.3% outside the zone and 69.6% on strikes. That’s not just a small tweak - it’s the kind of adjustment that can change how a young hitter looks at the plate.
And when Lombard has gotten better pitches to hit, he’s made them pay. That included a 424-foot blast against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday.
One of the reasons Lombard was such an intriguing prospect in the first place was his ability to adjust. At each minor league stop, he tended to start slowly before finding the right feel at the plate and climbing to the next level.
His Triple-A stretch was the clearest example. He opened with a .184 average over his first 27 games with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, then exploded over his next 31 games, hitting .358/.471/.679 with 20 extra-base hits and 22 walks against 29 strikeouts before getting the call to The Show.
The big leagues have brought their own learning curve, but Lombard has not looked nearly as overwhelmed as he did early in Triple-A. He’s held his own against established pitchers and, if the last few games are any indication, he’s still moving in the right direction.
That matters because the challenge now gets bigger. The Yankees are about to face the best pitching in the most unforgiving setting of the year, and Lombard will have to keep adjusting on the fly. The good news for New York is that he’s already been getting a taste of that kind of baseball over the past month, with games against the Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox, San Diego Padres, and Rays since his call-up.
The bracket gives the Yankees a clear path, too: they need to get past the Red Sox and Rays to reach the ALCS. Lombard has already appeared in three of four games against Boston and is getting his first look at Tampa Bay now. If the recent version of his swing holds up, he could end up being one of the quieter but more important reasons the Yankees’ offense has enough juice to keep going.
In Other News...
Yankees May Be Preparing A Playoff Infield Change Fans Saw Coming
The Yankees have spent enough time looking for answers at third base that Aaron Boone is now openly floating one of the cleaner possibilities. Boone said Anthony Volpe will probably get a look there sometime this week, a move that lines up with what the organization has seen before from the shortstop and with the modest offensive uptick he has shown compared with Ryan McMahon. With home-field advantage already locked in for the AL Wild Card Series, New York has a little breathing room to test whether a postseason adjustment can sharpen the infield before October starts in earnest.
Volpe has handled third base before in Triple-A, so this would not be a blind experiment so much as a practical shuffle with real stakes attached. The bigger question is how the Yankees want their best defensive and offensive alignment to look when the games begin to count, and whether this kind of late-week change is the first sign of a more aggressive playoff setup. Boone has not finalized anything yet, but the timing makes it clear the team is at least considering a different shape on the left side of the infield. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Just Entered An Ownership Era Fans Never Saw Coming
Major League Baseballs latest tweak to its ownership rules has given the Yankees a new kind of headline, one rooted less in the lineup card than in the boardroom. With private equity now allowed to own up to 20 percent of a club, up from 15 percent before, Apollo Global Capital moved quickly enough to buy a 16 percent minority stake in the Yankees for $2.6 billion, a deal that puts the franchises value above $12 billion.
For a team whose identity has long been tied to the Steinbrenner family, the bigger picture matters just as much as the price tag. The family still holds just over 60 percent of the club, keeping control in familiar hands even as outside capital becomes a bigger part of the modern baseball landscape. What this shift means for the Yankees day to day is still unfolding, but the sale alone shows how far the financial power structure around the sport has moved. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Triple-A Era Ended With A Twist Fans Never Saw Coming
The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders went out with a little bit of everything in their final game under that name, edging Jacksonville 6-5 in 10 innings on Sept. 19. In a fittingly strange finish for a longtime Yankees Triple-A affiliate, catcher Edinson Duran wound up taking on pitching duty and was credited with the win, giving the club one last memorable night before the name change.
The scheduled season finale the next day never got played, with rain and unplayable field conditions bringing the curtain down early on the RailRiders era. The franchise is set to rebrand for the 2027 season, which means the Yankees' top minor league stop has now closed one chapter before the next one officially begins. [Read more 🡒]