Is The Offense Already Starting To Heat Up?

(That's a fine looking swing, Mr. Gardner.  Courtesy of The AP)

You've got Brett Gardner following through with 2 hands on his swing now and making line drive contact seemingly every game.  You've got Jeter putting multiple hits on the board and by all accounts looking better at the plate each game.  You've got The Horse looking trim, seeing the ball well, and absolutely mashing the crap out of everything right now.  You've got Cano hitting line drives, Teix looking sharper than he ever has this early, and even Russell Martin and his now 94.5738% healthy knee getting a couple of hits and stealing bases yesterday.  These are all good signs, right?

Before you roll your eyes and give me the "Spring Training doesn't mean anything" speech, notice that I didn't include anybody's stats anywhere in that previous paragraph.  I'm well aware that ST performance and statistics have little to no bearing on how a guy is going to play once the games start to count.  But it's the actions that are happening on the field that are encouraging, especially when it's geared towards the group of guys who are trying to come back from down years and injuries.

I've long held the belief that Brett Gardner could hit for a little more power if he wanted to and said that he should be looking to drive the ball into gaps.  He makes the adjustment to his swing, finishing with both hands on the bat, and suddenly there's more sting in his contact.  A-Rod gets into better shape this year, drops a few pounds to lessen the load on his older body and he's hitting the ball better than I can ever remember in ST since he joined the Yanks.  Teix put in more work in the offseason and he's off to a better spring start.

The point of this is not to try to prove that all these performances are going to lead to monster starts in April or monster years from these guys.  The point is to recognize that many Yankee hitters are having better springs than they have in the past with the bat.  They're ahead of the curve in terms of getting their timing and swing mechanics down, and that has to at least be an encouraging sign for them, their coaches, and us fans.  Think about it the other way; if Teix was still rocking on 0-for right now and popping the ball up all the time, we'd be sitting here saying "Here we go again.  Goddamn Teix is starting off cold."  So since he ISN'T doing that this spring, that should at least give us hope that he's going to carry this over in the regular season and, at the very least, not suck as badly in April as he has before.