Sunday, April 22, 2018

4-21-18 Game

Some notes on the Saturday win…

·         Gardner made a nice running catch that I would argue very few LF’rs make and he made it look fairly easy because of a great jump on the ball, the line he took and his speed.  Later in the broadcast, it stated he went 100’ for the catch and the catch probability was 43%.  I am not sure about 43% as I am fairly certain that less than 25% of the league would have caught that ball, but it is interesting anyway and why Gardner is so important.  He isn’t squaring up the ball so far this year, but I hope that will change soon.

·         Montgomery has a good starting pitcher repertoire of pitches.  His fastball is 90-91, but has a little life, he has a very good changeup that dips, has a good curve and throws the slider occasionally.  He is not overpowering, but when controlling the fastball on the inner half of the plate (on righties), he can be extremely effective and we have seen that so far.  Control and keeping batters off balance is key, but he is a pitcher (as opposed to a thrower). 


·         There were some good battles with Montgomery in the game and Cone does an excellent job of pointing those situations out.  Because I watch on video (after the fact without knowledge of the outcome) most of the time, I tend not to listen to the announcers because I fast forward in between pitches, but Cone is the best IMO.  Kay calls pitches wrong frequently and O'Neill does too, but in some ways that is part of the charm of O'Neill as long as Cone is there to balance him with common sense and statistics.

·         In my preseason blog, I stated how much “I love watching his stick come through the zone,” in regards to Miguel Andujar, and he has been showing that ability of late.  The 23-year-old still is too much a free swinger, but he showed last night what he could do when he doesn’t chase every pitch.  He fell behind 0-2 but then worked the count to 2-2 including fouling off a pitch and then got a 2-2 slider that he smoked over the LF’rs head to clear the bases.  In his last 4 games, he is hitting .438 with an absurd 1.533 OPS to get his overall OPS to a solid.795 (after an awful start)


·         Judge is swinging well (1.106 OPS).  Outside of his long HR on a low inside pitch, I was impressed that he was covering the outside pitch well but when needed he turned around an inside fastball at 97 for a ripped pulled single.  He may have to “cheat” his swing to do it but the fact he can cover both sides of the plate well is a huge reason why he is so effective (on top of his massive strength).


·         Stanton has been awful at Yankee stadium with an anemic OPS of .475 (.119 BA striking out 20x in 42 AB’s), but on the road, he has an OPS of 1.094 (BA .323).  Very odd, but one would think he could figure out why he isn’t seeing the ball well at home.  Hard to think it is pressure as he has been in pressure spots, although he may be trying to impress too much?  He will work it out, but we need another 160 points of OPS to get him .900.

   Not sure you are aware, but Sean Manaea of Oakland pitched a no-hitter against the Red Sox last night!


1 comment:

  1. A month's worth of stats is almost meaningless; so when there's less than a month of games, and we're looking at road/away splits in the instance of Stanton, it's extra meaningless. Maybe he's pressing a little extra at the stadium, but it's pretty much a week and a half's worth of games on each side of the ledger. It's not surprising that at least one Yankee has this much variance.

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