Harrison Bader’s sizzling Yankees start continues with three more hits
Harrison Bader #HarrisonBader
It’s early May, so small sample sizes still rule the day in baseball.
That goes double for the Yankees’ Harrison Bader, who played just his seventh game of the season on Tuesday night after dealing with an oblique injury he suffered during spring training.
So it’s important not to get carried away when noting the discrepancies on Bader’s Statcast page that help explain his red-hot start.
He certainly won’t overreact.
Those stats, however, include a 13.4-degree rise in launch angle, a 95 percent rise in batting average on breaking balls and a 22.4 percent rise in how often Bader is hitting it to the opposite field.
It all adds up to a .381/.409/.857 slash line entering Tuesday.
But because it is such a small sample size, it means little in the bigger picture.
Until, that is, it starts to mean something.
And during the Yankees’ 10-5 win over the Athletics, Bader got one day closer to his hot start meaning something.
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He went 3-for-4 with three singles, one of them driving in a run during a five-run third inning.
It was solid, simple hitting on a night in which the Yankees got production up and down the lineup.
“I think experience breeds a lot of willingness to change and have confidence in some change as you formulate a plan on offense and position yourself on defense,” Bader told The Post before the game. “A lot of it has to do with just experience. Learning from other teammates and being around successful players. Just focusing the same way that they do. We’re all talented at this level — I think the separator is just remaining confident in who you are as a player. Going out and trusting it to show up, and I just prepare accordingly.”
That preparation showed up on Tuesday when Bader drove in a run with an 0-2 single to center in the third inning off Drew Rucinski.
In the seventh inning, against Spencer Patton and with the game largely in hand, Bader set up Jake Bauers’ insurance two-run home run with another single.
Bader, who is in his seventh full season in the major leagues and his first full season as a Yankee, has played more than 100 games in a season just three times.
To hear Bader tell it, he has gotten better at everything that goes into his plate appearances before he steps out of the dugout.
“You have to have a plan on all sides of the baseball,” Bader said. “Having a plan in my opinion means preparing for when you see something on the field take place. Offense, having a plan is studying the pitcher.
“Understanding what he does when he’s delivering to the plate. Understanding his headwork, his timing, all those things. Really, all comes down to having a plan and preparing accordingly.”