A few items to discuss

Sanchez:  It is impossible for me to know what the truth is.  As someone who is dumb enough to play through injuries, at the age of 51 in softball, where I am literally hopping to first on a bad leg and an arm that required major surgery after the season, I get that you may not be at 100% and why risk it in a situation that you think won't matter.  However, the entire point of hustling is that you don't know for certain who bobbles a ball or if the 1st baseman drops the throw only to pick it up in time because you didn't hustle.  Remember Timo Perez in the World Series against the Yankees (2000)?  He thought the hit was a HR so he didn't run all out and then ended up getting thrown out at home.  It is simply not acceptable at the Major League level to allow that to happen...in the WS no less.  You can't run all out for about 5 seconds until you find out if it truly is a HR?  Anyway, Sanchez might have been cruising to protect himself and then when he saw he needed to turn it on, he did...BUT, he has not earned my respect based on his previous laziness for me to give him the benefit of the doubt.  perhaps the Yankees threw him a life preserver?  Maybe they said, you do this again and you will find yourself playing for another team, but we will put you on the DL so that others don't think you are a lazy sack of manure...We won't know the truth other than he has the ability to be an excellent hitting catcher who has a great arm and is a bad receiver who doesn't block balls well because he is lazy.  BTW, contrast that with the catcher in the Tampa game last night where he made a few great blocks that probably saved the game.

Britton:  The best single pitch ever in the Major Leagues was Mariano Rivera's cutter.  He threw it every time (he did run it sometimes later in his career) to every batter.  They knew it was coming and they still couldn't hit it.  Think about it, how many pitchers throw the same speed and get away with it on every pitch?  The answer is none.  Rivera was also consistently at the top of the league for a crazy amount of time.  Usually, relievers have 1- 3 years of greatness and that is it.  I bring this up not to explain again why I named my blog after Rivera, but because Britton has the closest thing to one amazing pitch.  He basically throws a 95 MPH, 12-6 curve ball, but it is an amazing sinker.  He used to throw closer to 97 but seems to have lost a few MPH.  He was banged up but has righted the ship of late and he is a quality arm if healthy.  Quality doesn't do him justice as he was amazing in 2016 (and really good in 14 and 15).  In 2016 his OPS against was an absurd .430 (I didn't look it up but this has to be one of the lowest OPS against ever for a full season player) and he saved 47 out of 47 with an ERA of 0.54.

So the question I have received is do I like the move?  My take is that an ace starter is needed more, but when the price is crazy, you don't make a move just to make a move, you look long-term and give yourself a chance to compete every year (which we have now).  I would rather wait and get an ace and pay for that ace than pay for an arm that is slightly better than we have.  I don't know the guys we gave up, but an important point people forget is that we only have a 40 man roster and anyone not on that roster can be grabbed and given a major league contract and we lose them.  Therefore, you want the best 40 you can have and this upgrades us (and we have a 40 man roster issue with a lot on the bubble).  Based on this, I like the move; it gives us depth in case Chapman goes down and in the playoffs we can make our starter go 4-5 innings and close it out from there.  I just hope Britton has returned to form (8 IP with 3 hits, 4 walks and 6 k's with 0 runs).  I don't like the walk/K ratio there, but if healthy he will help.  He is not better against lefties, he is pretty equal (as is Chapman - who including his last debacle has still been outstanding this year for us).

Some notes:

• The Yankees are 46-20 with Torres on the roster and 18-16 without him this year
• Loved to see the bunt by Bird with the big shift on.  I don't know why that isn't practiced more to help neutralize it.  Great job by Bird, now if he could stop swinging at bad pitches he will start to be very productive.
• Speaking of swinging at bad pitches...Stanton amazes me at how he swings at pitches that are not even close.  Michael Kay went off a few weeks ago on why pitchers throw such bad waste pitches that end up being truly a waste and while I understand what he means, he only has to look at Stanton to understand why (and sometimes Sanchez too).  Sometimes these guys just swing no matter what.
• Betances has really been good over the past 2 months.  In his last 22 IP he has allowed only 1 run 6 hits, 13 walks 38 K's.  Still too many walks but if you flipped walks and hits, I would still be happy.  
• Remember at the start of the year there was talk about pitchers going more than one inning...that has changed a lot as Betances is the example of a guy who can go more as an ex starter but only goes one inning.
• Great start from Tanaka with a 3 hot shutout!  His splitter was excellent and he had great control within and outside the strike zone.  Even when he made a mistake it had enough bite where they had trouble centering it.
• Good start by Cessa, he just hung a changeup over the middle of the plate and that put a bad taste on the outing.  Overall, though it was positive showing 3 decent pitches (FB, slider and change).  2 runs in 5.1 innings is something I will take all day long with an offense who SHOULD make that work and a bullpen who should only allow 1 or maybe 2 runs the rest of the way.