There's no sugarcoating it: the Yankees have been one of the worst offenses in baseball for nearly two months. Dating back to June 18, they're dead last in batting average, on-base percentage, and wRC+, while also being in the bottom five in slugging percentage and fWAR.

While injuries to the likes of Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham along the way have certainly taken a toll on the depth of the lineup, they've also seen several of the bats they've relied on fall into deep slumps, largely due to a startling collapse in plate discipline. As a result, the Yankees have found themselves relying on guys that they never imagined they would be earlier this season.

The teamwide results still haven't returned to the levels they were in the first two months, but a look under the hood reveals that the team's biggest weakness over these past eight weeks might finally be starting to turn as the return of several key pieces nears, and the center of these positive changes is two rookies that the team is hoping can be foundational pieces for not just this year, but beyond.

The Yankees' struggles were tied to a massive drop in plate discipline

There are countless reasons why the Yankees' offense has regressed, from the injuries to the lack of pop in the healthy lineup to the disastrous RISP performances, but the No. 1 catalyst for the struggles has been the plate discipline collapsing across the board.

Before mid-June, the Yankees led the league in walk rate, powered by an elite chase rate. They still had their warts, whiffing more than almost anyone and being 20th in strikeout rate, but it was part of their identity to work counts, lay off pitches out of the zone, and do damage on bad pitches; things changed seemingly overnight.

All of a sudden, in the middle of a series against the Reds two weeks after Judge went down, the approach changed drastically. They stopped doing damage; they started chasing and stopped working counts. Over the next six weeks, the team's walk rate plummeted from the best in baseball to the worst, as did their chase rates. This comparison chart is just jarring.

When an offense is missing a lot of its best power bats and has never been one to string together hits, stuff like this is untenable. Guys like Cody Bellinger, who started the year with some of the most elite plate discipline metrics in the sport, doubled their strikeout rate on the back of chasing considerably more. It was the personification of pressing and something that the team just couldn't revert from.

At some point, though, it just had to flip. Inner workings behind the scenes, with a coaching staff that has much more data than we can access publicly, have likely seen a tweak in philosophy that has especially translated lately. While the results haven't quite followed yet, there's a pretty stark difference across the board in the way the Yankees are going about things offensively.

The team is still striking out too much and struggling to make contact in the zone, but they've reduced their whiff rate while making dramatic changes in how much they chase out of the strike zone. A bad habit they've fallen into all season is not swinging at enough pitches down the middle, but they've also gotten more aggressive there.

Those two trends, chasing less and doing damage on bad pitches more, are two things that a pair of rookies on this team embody. At least until the cavalry arrives, Spencer Jones and George Lombard Jr. are going to be a big part of the direction this offense will go.

Yankees' rookies powering change in approach

Let's start with the new kid on the block in Lombard, who, unlike Jones, will likely be entrenched at shortstop for this team in the postseason. His smooth glove and blazing speed already make him a positive contributor, but his mature approach at the plate has been impressive to watch.

Down in the minor leagues, Lombard excelled at two things: working counts and abusing left-handed pitching. He hasn't had much of an opportunity to do the latter, but he's been the definition of a professional at-bat every time he comes to the plate. Just look at what he was able to do against Chris Sale on Aug. 8:

Indeed, through 32 career plate appearances, Lombard is averaging 4.38 pitches per plate appearance, a mark that would be second in all of baseball if he qualified. He walked at a 16.7% clip in the minors this year, and while that rate will likely drop quite a bit against big-league pitching, his plate recognition is well beyond his years.

For a team that struggled considerably with seeing pitches, working at-bats, and making pitchers work, adding him has improved the at-bat quality across the board, but he's not the only one who's contributing to what should be a more productive approach.

Jones is one of the more divisive players in all of baseball, and it's not hard to see why. He's a freak athlete, a four-tool player who has light-tower power with good defense and incredible speed for a 6'7" individual. The only hang-up for him has been his ability to make contact, something that depressed his prospect stock in the minors while he was running a strikeout rate north of 35%.

High-strikeout guys can succeed in MLB. We have a lot of proof of that. Two recent examples of guys who work around big holes in their swing are Japanese phenom Munetaka Murakami and Nationals star James Wood, who both strike out and whiff at horrific rates. The difference between them and guys like Jones, who've let the strikeouts consume them, is elite chase and walk rates that make them harder to exploit.

While Jones isn't quite a savant of the strike zone, his gradual improvement has been inspiring. In each of his three big-league treks, he's improved in making contact, laying off breaking balls that spiral into the dirt, and doing damage on bad pitches. Once looking overwhelmed by the big-league game, he suddenly looks like a force to be reckoned with.

That isn't to say there won't still be pitfalls that await him, as players of his ilk are more risky and prone to deep slumps, but he's done something that few players (outside of Grisham in the past 10 days) have done since Judge went down: do damage. Just watch this at-bat against Bryce Miller on Wednesday. He fights off a bunch of well-located fastballs before finding the one he wants and spraying it for an opposite-field double.

A guy who, entering the year, seemed like he had the widest range of potential outcomes in the sport seems to have found a pretty solid floor as a capable fourth outfielder with plenty of upside, especially as he continues to gain experience. He probably won't see the field much in October, but the fact that we're talking about him as a positive contributor in mid-August is a major success for his career.

Until the Yankees actually put together a real stretch of offensive performance, all of these peripherals don't matter that much. At the end of the day, you have to go out there and score. In a game where the little things, like hitting with RISP, can matter so much, large-scale trends can sometimes lie to you.

But for those looking for something positive aside from the team's terrific starting pitching, the performance of several young bats lately (including third-year starter Austin Wells) is especially encouraging.

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