28 straight games hitting a HR is
now the new team record. This team should hit a HR every game and I hope
we blow the record away.
Before
I get into some of the play on the field, I would like to address the All-Star
Game. I would like you to vote every Red Sox, TB, Houston and Minnesota
player in you can! Yes, you read that correctly. Here is my
view. We talk about getting guys rest all the time, so why when we could
get rest, do we want them to fly around and play more in games that for the
most part don't mean anything? Many times, the guys who played the AS
game needed a game rest after the festivities. Why do we want them to do
anything but rest? And, don't get me started on HR derby in the middle of
the season. That is ridiculous to have OUR guy try and jack HR's on so
many pitches! No way do I want the Yankees to be part of HR derby.
We can either rest or play meaningless games and we can either rest or swing
for the fences on hundreds of swings where players have developed blisters and
where they have blamed the HR derby on poor 2nd halves. Here is one stat
that says a lot, "70 percent of participants in the derby have their home run
rates decline after the All-Star break.” To be
fair, this could be due to a lot of reasons (such as regression to the mean),
but the one thing that can't be argued is that the players are altering their
swings for HR derby a little and they aren't resting. Without getting
into all the stats one thing can't be ignored and that is resting and healing
up is better than playing and that can't be refuted. If that was not the
case, why would we ever rest anyone? I can tell you that one of the
reasons catchers are not usually the greatest hitters is that you get banged up
all the time. Foul tips off body parts and fingers, blocking balls with
every part of your body and we used to get run over once in a while (thankfully
not much anymore)...Do you really want Judge and Stanton who just came back
(Stanton may be hurt anyway) to participate in HR derby? Judge just came
back from an oblique strain and I don’t want him swinging...DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY
YANKEES, LET THEM REST!
As
for the past games…Ten comments:
- Yes, it is concerning that Happ was lit up and his ERA is now 5.23, the 2nd highest of his career. However, what is more likely, that he is done at the age of 36 (not young) or the guy who has had a career ERA of 3.97 has been the victim of some bad luck and some bad pitches at key times? His FIP (which measure the effectiveness of a pitcher in terms of the things he controls such as HR, walks, HBP and K's) is by far the highest of his career at 5.49. He wasn't even above 4 since 2014, which does indicate he has pitched lousy, but I am not a believer that players just lose it overnight; they usually gradually lose their ability, even if sometimes it is a steeper grade for some players. However, the idea that a guy who has had an OPS against of .680 over the past 3 years all of a sudden has an OPS against of .808 is not logical. I would expect he pitches more toward an ERA of 4 than an ERA of 5.23 the rest of the way. We also have a financial commitment of 17 mil for this year and next that is based on the expectation of much better pitching.
- I am annoyed that Stanton hurt his knee by banging it into the ground instead of sliding normally, but that DP was created by a great stop by Guerrero Jr (20 yrs old) to get Urshela at 1B and then Stanton stupidly tried to get to 3rd.
- I was going to compliment our 3rd base coach the other day as he has done a very solid job over at 3rd base. Of course, he then made his worst decision in 2 years by sending Voit home on a tag play and Voit was out by 3 steps. That was a bad decision, but he has done a good job over there and those of you veteran blog readers know that I have had some sleepless nights over the awful job Robby Thomson did at 3rd base. He was the worst 3rd base coach I have witnessed as he would get guys thrown out at home with less than 2 outs at an alarming rate. Then his answer was always that he is aggressive and that won't change. That set me off as I think you should learn from your mistakes instead of stating that "I am stubborn and I will continue to make dumb decisions no matter how bad it is for the Yankees." OK, I will move to point 4 otherwise this blog will be too long.
- Edwin E has been pretty bad so far for us; even after his very important tag on run, his OPS is only .553. But, I am not concerned as I think he will be fine. I like his batting approach and that if we can grind pitches we can get to the middle relief of teams and tee off. He also looked good at 1B defensively and I would definitely play him over Luke from what I have seen so far (Luke would DH or mix them up)
- Gardner caught a ball while the runner was tagging form 3rd base and Gardner made a good throw home but the runner was just safe. Gardner took 5 steps (even short ones) before he threw teh ball. This is another one of my pet peeves; OF'rs take too long to get rid of the ball. Just imagine if a catcher did that; no runner would ever be thrown out at 2nd base. The same applies to the OF yet people used to talk about how great an arm Ichiro had, but he would take 3 steps and then crow hop to throw home. He took forever to make that good, hard accurate throw and his overall time to get the ball to the base was MUCH longer than others with weaker arms. There is a reason why the catchers have pop time tracked because it is all about getting the ball to the bag as fast as possible and with accuracy.
- Sticking with pop time which is the time taken from the instant a pitch hits a catchers glove to the moment it strikes the glove of teh middle infielder at 2nd base. Sanchez has averaged the highest velocity of catchers at 87.9 MPH and there are 3 catchers who are tied for 3rd with a pop time to 2nd base at 1.93 seconds, the best is 1.88 by the Pittsburgh catcher JT Realmuto.
- Urshela made a great backhanded stab to end the game Monday night against Toronto. He got rid of the ball so fast and had a lot on the accurate throw, it was a pleasure to watch. He has been slowing down with less steady play, but I think Boone is doing the right thing mixing the players in and getting rest (good concept)
- Holder was correctly sent down. I had written a few times about him as I am not a big fan. His stuff is pedestrian and I wrote many times that I didn't understand him being put into leveraged spots. That being said, I saw his interview (I usually miss those) and he was as stand up as you could possibly be and he impressed me...that being said, he is a guy that could pitch in the NL and I would expect us to get his value up and trade him.
- Friday we play two games in London against the Red Sox
- The Yankees have a 96.2% chance of making the playoffs - yep there are stats for everything.
IF YOU ARE A TRUE YANKEE FAN, THEN VOTE FOR OTHER PLAYERS TO GO TO THE ALL STAR GAME!
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