Air McMahon

What's up with Ryan McMahon?

Ryan McMahon confounds me.

Here is a player signed to a relatively expensive contract for what he is, a player who never managed a league average season at Coors Field. yet the Yankees traded for him because third base has been a black hole ever since Alex Rodriguez abruptly retired in 2016 (with respect to Gio Urshela for that one year, a most happy fella). Since then, McMahon has hit .208/.301.334/.635 for the Yankees, a 76 OPS+. To his credit, he did hit an ALDS Game 4 homer and, this early season notwithstanding, has played stellar defense at the hot corner. The theory behind the trade made some sense in that third base was, typically, a mess in 2025 and the Yankees thought they could unlock something in McMahon; maybe they could get him to pull the ball in the air and some home runs would follow, especially in Yankee Stadium. Well, it hasn’t happened that way, has it?

But here’s the confounding part. It kinda has happened? Sort of?

After Randy and Chris briefly talked about McMahon on the Monday episode of the podcast (go subscribe!), I dug into some of McMahon’s batted ball numbers (accurate as of Thursday morning at about 11:00) to see what was up. At first glance, I saw some good things: 86th percentile average exit velo; 66th percentile barrel rate; 94th percentile hard hit rate. In some capacity, McMahon is hitting the ball hard, never a bad thing.

The conversation Randy and Chris had centered around McMahon and pulling the ball, or his lack thereof. So when I went to dig deeper, I expected to find relatively poor pull numbers. I didn’t.

First, McMahon has the second highest AIR percentage (FB+LD+PU) of his career. His pull AIR% is up to 17.2, the highest in his career. Both of these paired with the other numbers, indicate that, process wise, McMahon is doing what we think he should be doing: hitting the ball hard, hitting it in the air, and hitting it to the pull side. So what gives? Where is the pull power?

The opposite field, it seems. Four of McMahon’s five extra base hits this year are to left field. His oppo AIR percentage is the highest he’s had since 2022. Additionally, his weak contact per statcast is slightly above his career average. He’s also getting under pitches at the second highest rate of his career. And remember that first glance i took? Another number popped out: 31st percentile launch angle sweet spot percentage.

It seems, then, that McMahon is trying and somewhat succeeding at pulling the ball in the air. But the results haven’t quite followed. Is there a correction coming? Maybe. But the numbers here seem to indicate that even when McMahon does the right thing in trying to pull the ball in the air, he’s getting under the pitch too often and is possibly not getting the good part of the bat on the ball. Whatever the ultimate issue is, McMahon and the Yankees need to fix it or the black hole of third base in the Bronx will keep going strong.