Yankees Paul Goldschmidt hitting like DJ LeMahieu did in his prime

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.Have the Yankees unearthed prime DJ LeMahieu?While the actual LeMahieu is checking off boxes during a rehab assignment, the Yankees have received the same type of production — line drives smacked to all fields, few strikeouts and the second-most singles in baseball entering play — from an unlikely source.Paul Goldschmidt, who led the National League in home runs in 2013 and who crushed 35 homers as recently as 2022, might be reinventing himself.Emphasis on might because the sample size still is small enough to qualify as a blip in a long career, and perhaps the trends begin to change as the season wears on.

But through about a month of play, the numbers themselves — the highest line-drive rate in baseball and using the opposite field as he never has before — paint the picture of a “professional hitter,” as hitting coach James Rowson called him, adjusting for his age-37 season.“He’s a guy who evolves as a hitter,” Rowson said before having a rare off night (0-or-5) in the Yankees’ 4-2 series-opening loss to the Blue Jays in The Bronx on Friday.“He’s a guy who takes what the game gives him.

And I think what he looks at is the quality of his at-bat — he wants to put a good swing on a good pitch.”According to Goldschmidt himself, the approach has not changed.“I just try to hit the ball and just kind of let it do what it’s going to do,” Goldschmidt said.“But yeah, it’s been a little bit different, results-wise, but I haven’t really tried to do anything different.”Entering play, Goldschmidt owned a .383 batting average that only trailed Aaron Judge in MLB.

He was first in the majors in multi-hit games (12).Before Friday’s 0-fer that dropped his average to a still-impressive .364, he had an eight-game hitting streak that consisted of 12 singles, two doubles and zero triples or home runs...