Great Response!

 This was an excellent response from an elimination game.  Montgomery worked through 6 runners in 4 innings with a lot of movement on his pitches.  I would have signed up for 2 runs 4 innings so an impressive job by Jordan.  Green followed with his best work in a long time with 2 clean innings and he hit his spots very well.  Britton was lights out and I would have let him finish the inning because he was throwing his 94-95 mph heavy sinker and they were barely ticking the top of it for 5 straight batters.  He struck out 3 of the 5 and the other two topped balls.  Zack had his nasty stuff but more importantly, he had excellent command.  Chapman closed us out working the final 1 1/3 only allowing a walk.  The bullpen went 5 innings of no hit ball, walking 1 and striking out 7!  

Some points from the game:

• Higgy made some excellent blocks and it was nice to not worry about balls in the dirt nearly as much as with Sanchez back there.  I didn't mention this in my other post but Sanchez had a passed ball but also had a curve that he just missed and it clanged off his helmet.  Higgy has earned the start over Sanchez and because it is Cole pitching he would have caught anyway.
• The lineup should be the same IMO.  I guess Boone read this as he swapped Voit and Stanton.  Voit did get a HR and Stanton only got a double (wasn't a huge success but hopefully Luke wakes up.  The HR was a very bad pitch so I don't feel like he is swinging better yet, but definitely better.  You know you are hot (Stanton) when it was a very disappointing game when you were 1-4 with double.
• Gardner couldn't catch up to a line drive over his head that he did not break hard for right away.  These are the plays he used to make routinely that he just steps off on now.  He should play over Frazier though as his defense is still a lot better and Gardner has hit better.  Frazier was 0-2 with 2 K's off of Glasnow in game 2.
• Speaking of Glasnow, all 4 of the runs against Glasnow came off the bat of Stanton, I would, especially with Judge looking awful and Voit still struggling.  
• Judge is now hitting .111 with an OPS of .428.  He is guessing wrong and just making all the classic mistakes.  After taking 2 balls he had the count in his favor at 2-0, but he went reaching for a low and outside breaking ball and pulled it slowly to 3rd base.  That shows how off he is.  Let's assume he was looking for the breaking ball, but why would you lunge and reach for an outside one?   He needs to sit on a pitch and get after it.  With 2 strikes he may want to have the same approach based on his poor he has been doing.  Time for Judge to make his own adjustments
• Big hit by Gleyber; he is getting going at a good time; I worry about his defense still
• Darling showed he doesn't watch a lot of Yankee games as he said that Chapman rarely throws the slider.  This year, he threw it more than he ever has.  He used to rarely throw it but the usage has gone up every year.  This year he threw it 33% of the time, last year it was 25%, in his previous seasons it was more in the 15% range.  It bothers me when announcers don't do their homework.  He even said that this was the first time he saw him throw over 100; which wasn't true either (well maybe it was true that it was the first time HE saw it)
• This was an awesome graphic.  This gives such a great visual picture of the difference of when you have to time your swing on a breaking ball compared to a FB, this was from Chapman.  This is a still and not that clear but look when the FB is on the plate where the breaking ball is.  I thought this was great to see.  The difference is 4.3 feet as well as the movement and why you see professional hitters waive weakly at some pitches.  It is very hard to pick up if a pitcher throws from the same arm slot and position.

For tonight's game, the plan needs to be Cole to Britton to Chapman and nobody else gets on the mound!

This is why we got Cole and he needs to make adjustments from his performance last time (3 runs in 6 innings) so that he gives us 6+ with 2 or fewer runs allowed.  I think the key for him is the command of his off-speed stuff and then locating the fastball off the middle of the plate.  I hope our stat department has shown what TB has been successful in hitting and we should feature fewer fastballs and a little more off-speed stuff against TB.  Time for Cole to earn his paycheck!