No hitters, Triple Plays, 1st Sweep Of a 3/4 game series and Judge Gets An Actual Walk Off

Obviously, the no hitter was exciting to watch, but I really enjoyed the Montgomery game against Rodon on Friday night.  We have faced some good pitchers this year (think Max Scherzer), but I thought Rodon pitched better against us than anyone so far this.  Not only was his stuff excellent, but he also hit spots really well.  His fastball started at 96 and got up to 99, but his breaking ball was at least as good as Klubers from the opposite side.  The movement was insane and while the Yankees haven't been hitting much, he made us look really bad. Montgomery matched him and according to STATS, it marked the first time in the modern era that both starting pitchers had 10 or more strikeouts (11 Montgomery and 13 for Rodon) while allowing no walks and no runs.

We entered the 7th with the score tied and Torres hit a solo HR to RF that gave us a 1-0 lead.

In the top of the 8th, we allowed our first run in 4 games when Loaisiga walked Eaton on a 3-2 pitch and then he went to 2nd on a "wild pitch" that was another that most of our competitor's catchers would block.  The runner ended up scoring on a single on a 1-2 pitch where the batter reached out and stuck out the bat (almost threw the bat) and dropped a hit into RF.  Tough way to break the streak, but the Yankees came back in the bottom of the 8th getting singles by Andujar and Gardner (both guys starting to make a little noise at the plate).  DJ was up in a key spot with 1st and 3rd (Tyler Wade pinch ran for Andujar) and unfortunately, DJ failed to come through again as Wade was gunned down at home.  The Yankees didn't score and then Chapman came in for the 9th as he was warmed up when we had 1st and 3rd with nobody out.  Chapman, like Loaisiga, walked the leadoff guy (see a bath theme?).  A bunt caused Chapman to hurry his pickup of the ball and fumbled it one too many times and the White Sox were in business with 1st and 2nd nobody out.  Then Chapman got them to hit the ball to Urshela who made such a smooth play to start a triple play that made me scream out "YEAH" at midnight!  

The Triple Play: Urshela starts to move toward 3rd before he fields the short hop so that as soon as he fields it he already is moving toward 3rd, he takes 4 quick steps and fires a strike to Odor, who turned it avg, but makes a strong throw to Voit, who had a good stretch and a pumped-up exclamation like I had.  Chapman also threw his fist in excitement!

Courtesy of MLB:

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-turn-triple-play-against-white-sox

The Yanks scored a run in the bottom of the 9th to win, but it was a great game regardless.

After Saturday's Yankees blowout win, the Yankees relievers allowed some runs on Sunday after Taillon pitched 5 scoreless innings.  Peralta walked a batter and allowed a HR in 1/3 of an inning and then Green allowed a HR.  Loaisiga pitched a solid 8th and hit 100 twice (he has looked very good).  Finally, with a one-run lead, even Chapman allowed his 1st run and blown save giving up a HR on a fastball down the middle.  He has not been throwing his splitter and I am not sure why?  

In the 9th, Frazier led off with his 3rd single and stole 2nd as Gardner K'd.  DJ was intentionally walked to have the lefty pitch to Wade and Tyler was able to beat out a dribbler that got past the pitcher.  That brought up Judge who was still looking for his first walk-off hit.  He didn't get it, but in this case, a walk was clearly as good as a hit as he did get his first walk-off walk as he took all 5 pitches.  Great 3 game sweep off of a very solid team.

Other Notes:

• Yanks starters have fired 35 consecutive scoreless innings -- tied for second-longest in franchise history, behind a 40-inning stretch in May 1932.
• It is good to see us get some production from guys like Gardner, Wade and Frazier.  While Wade may not hit better, he has helped out using his speed on the bases and OF and also added depth at 2nd base and SS.  Frazier could not play worse, so it was good to see him get some hits.
• Tampa has won 10 in a row.  Who would have thought the AL East would be the toughest division in the AL?  I thought Tampa lost too much pitching to be much over .500 and I thought Boston would be better than people thought, but they have hit better than I expected.  I felt Toronto would be our toughest competition, but they are in 4th (with a winning record).
• I was asked about why I thought the run-scoring was down so much.  My two main answers are that the defensive switches are really paying dividends.  Seeing the exact location of balls hit by players is allowing defensive shifts to take many hits away.  Odor caught a line drive the other day when he was playing short RF (rather than deep 2nd base) and that would have always been a hit.  The 2nd reason is spin rates.  As pitchers have started to understand this and track it, their balls are not necessarily going much faster (that trend has been going up based on mechanical improvements mostly), but they are getting greater movement which makes it harder to square up the pitches.

We all should be feeling much better about the team now!

Kluber Pitches First Yankee (road) No-Hitter Since 1923!

And we barely win as Tyler Wade supplies all of our offense with a triple knocking in a run and then scoring on a sac fly.  He also used his speed to catch a ball in RF that most decent RF's would catch, but a slow one probably wouldn't.  Wade has played so poorly this season that it is only a matter of time where some of these guys who have been awful, come through.  Hopefully this will get him to elevate his performance to mediocre (not asking for too much).  Actually, he is close now with a .715 OPS.

As for Kluber, he had an amazing slider going, it was like a whiffle ball.  He also mixed in a lot of changeups and enough fastballs/cutters located well to keep Texas off balance.   He grooved one pitch in the 9th, but it was fouled back; you need a little luck.  I liked the signing and it has really worked out so far, especially after a little bit of a slow start.

I want to bring up some of the things I saw over many of the previous games 

First, I had asked the question about what striking out 5 times in a game is called after Judge "accomplished" this.

The Golden Sombrero is striking out 4 times and a Platinum Sombrero is striking out 5 times (also called the Olympic Rings).  Judge struck out the next 2 times up for 7 straight k's.  I think the record is 9 straight (I may be wrong on this).  

Torres had a great running play more than a week ago.  As he rounded 2nd he realized the defensive shift left 3rd base open and he took off for 3rd, bringing the catcher to help try and cover 3rd base and then realized that home plate was uncovered and he out ran the catcher home and scored.  Very heads up play!

Going back to the Altuve (cheater) HR that Green allowed.  He should never have thrown a fastball to Altuve (cheater) because he was sitting FB based on the AB and the cuts he had on them.  You know it was the wrong pitch as he hit a ball well above the strike zone for a HR.  The curve was an obvious choice, so much so that the announcers even talked about it.

Judge has been playing pretty solid defense.  He made a very good play on a ball off the wall where he released the throw extremely quickly.  As you know this is a pet peeve of mine (when OF'rs take so many steps before throwing).  Wade ended up dropping the throw and the runner was originally called out.  

Frazier makes so many bonehead plays; he is just not a smart baseball player.  He gets tossed out on a pitch he complained about that was a strike, he makes outs on the base paths that are head scratching and he guesses at the plate with 2 strikes and watches a ton of called 3rd strikes on pitches down the middle.  I am pointing this out because he clearly has physical skills, but the mental part is an issue.  I also point this out because it shows how far off his game he is right now, even if we don't know what his game actually is.  It would not surprise me that his bat becomes a solid mid .800 bat and he made an outstanding catch the other day in RF, but he also dives way more than he needs to and will probably get injured and continue stupid plays to make him reliable.

It is almost impossible for Frazier (.582), Ford (.523), Gardner (.511), and Andujar (.312) to not raise their OPS'!  What happened to Andujar?  This guy was a raking machine a few years ago.  Anyway, these numbers are crazy low for the players and then you have very poor performers Odor (.659), Voit (.656), and Hicks at (.627).  That is not to mention guys who probably won't see the Yankees roster anymore; Ryan LaMarre 0-7 (I have no idea why this guy was even brought up?), Jay Bruce (.466), and Mike Tauchman (.552).  It is really anemic to have so many guys perform so terribly.  DJ has been poor as well with a .727 OPS.  Gio is holding his own with a what looks to be excellent .763 OPS, Higgy has a .822, all because of his 5 HR's, but I will take that all day and then Stanton at .882 and Judge at .972.  We really can't get worse offensively.  We need to get a lefty who has great righty splits.  When I get time, I will review candidates.

Some other things I noticed or want to comment on:

I understand this is a 162 game schedule, but when a team is really struggling at the plate, it is hard to bench the guys who are actually producing.  Some of the lineups we have put out are anemic based on the production this year.  The previous paragraph showed that in one game we had 5 total players with a sub .600 OPS with 1 sub .400 and one who never had a hit.  Another way of looking at it is to say only one guy above .800.  

Gio at SS was not as bad as I thought it would be.  His range may not be good and his turn isn't quick, but he has made every play that was hit near him and that is better than what Torres was giving us.  Of course, now that Torres is back he should play there, but it does give us another option, especially if Andujar would actually hit like he used to.  Torres has been better since he started to get rid of the ball with a sense of urgency, but I still think he is much better suited for 2nd base and with DJ not hitting well (I know he will do better, but how much better is the question), the decision to sign him long term does put us in a bind with Torres if he is not up for SS.  More on this subject as the season unfolds, but I did state the problems with signing DJ even though "everyone" said Cashman must pay DJ.  We are seeing the downside; hopefully we can see more of the upside as this is very early in the process.

The umpires behind home plate were better in the Texas games, but a 3 or 4 game stretch prior they were absolutely awful.  They didn't hurt or help us, but it was a coin flip on what they were going to call.  If they can fine tune the up and down for the players size, I do think we will see balls and strikes called by the machine even if the ump is still there and he gets pinged for the balls and strikes.

We have had so many issues with Sanchez defensively that we assume Higgy is the much better defensive catcher and while he is a better all around defensive catcher than Sanchez, he isn't very good at blocking balls and his receiving skills are avg at best.  Our pitches get a lot of wild pitches that should be blocks.  Think about how many bad pitches get routinely blocked by the opposing catchers and we have too many get away from us that should not.  Higgy has actually been poor of late.  If he can keep hitting HR's at the pace he has I could live with it, but I wanted to bring this up as a reality check (he also has a batting avg of .193 but a good reason why OPS is what I use because .193 sounds horrible by itself, but his walk and HR % is good and his OPS is a solid .822).  

People always talk about how much we strike out and that is the problem.  I have pushed back to say that striking out at least makes the pitcher work by throwing a minimum of 3 pitches.  But, I would rather a strike out than hitting into a DP.  This is something the Yankees have done 46 times this year.  So the next time someone says you have to put the ball in play...not necessarily.

Urshela's game winning 3 run HR many games ago was an excellent AB and huge hit for us.

Odor's weak defense still bothers me and he had a pick off throw from Sanchez (who threw a bullet) where he caught the ball in front rather than letting it travel and then reached for the body instead of snapping to the front of the bag and on instant replay the runner was ruled safe.  

Finally, I will leave you with this.  Many times I hear complaints about how the offense just strikes out too much and you can't win this way.  While there are some truths to not being able to move runners along at times and not getting the runner in from 3rd, remember that the pitcher has to work harder for a strikeout compared to a first pitch ball in play swing.  Also, when the ball is put in play, you can hit into a DP which is FAR worse than striking out.  The Yankees have hit into 46 DP's this year in 43 games.  Every one of them, I would rather a strikeout (yeah I know a scenario where we got a run out of it maybe worth it but by run scoring % charts it shouldn't be better).

Going For The Sweep Today

Very quick post today

Again we were tied at 3 and we pulled it out late

Stanton has been hot and is by far our best hitter this year.  After him dominating the playoffs at a level maybe never seen before, is it time to realize that we have a great hitter on our time?  I have never seen someone hit the ball so hard in my life and while that does not make him the best hitter, what we saw in the playoffs last year was awesome.  He wasn't a bad fielder either and ran pretty well, but this year he looks slower to me.

Wade has not proven to be able to hit at the major league level and I was always more critical of him than others (early on), but he has made a few good plays in the field and last night in the 9th charged a ball and made a nice throw that I don't think DJ could have made (there was a lot of ground to charge) and Odor definitely would not have made it.  His ability to pinch run and the fact many of our players are still not hitting, he may be able to help us if he can just give us a .700 OPS (boy, the bar is low now, but Frazier, Gardner and Hicks have been awful).

Judge had a terrible day going 0-5 with 5 K's.  Anyone know if that has a name?

Montgomery had no command all game as he was centering his pitches; we were fortunate he only allowed 3 runs in 6 innings.  The bullpen was excellent again and Chapman continues to be fun to watch while he dominates hitters.

Welcome Cheaters!

I was very interested in this game as I wanted to see how German pitched and see if his velocity got back to a more consistent 95 with some run and also that his change at 87-89 would have more of a difference.  I also was very interested to see how the fans reacted to Altuve and the cheating Astros who won and beat us because of cheating.  The worst part was the players didn't get into trouble.

I was immediately "feeling" baseball for the first time in a long time.  Altuve stepped to the plate and the crowd of 10k or (a guess) was roaring!  It was electric!  Boy, did they let Altuve have it and plenty of signs showed the displeasure of a possible title and an MVP for Judge that was taken away by crossing the line in cheating.  A big asterisk was on a bunch of signs...lol.   Judge deserved it more than Altuve even with his cheating.  Less informed people thought Altuve's .346  batting avg. outperformed Judges .284 BA even though Judge had 52 HR's and an OPS of 1.049 compared to Altuve's .957 OPS.  92 points of OPS is a lot.  For perspective, as crossing 1.000 may throw you off, it is the same point difference as a guy with a .750 OPS and one of .842.  To be fair, Altuve did steal 32 bases while being caught only 6 times (probably because he knew top run when a breaking ball was coming (nobody thinks about that) which would add about 30 points to his OPS, but 60 is still a lot.  Judge had 114 RBI's to 82 and 128 runs scored to Altuve's 112.  Playing 2nd base and getting that production is better, but Judge had a stellar defensive year so I would call that a wash.  The Jury says Judge wins!

On to the fun game:

• Unfortunately, German left a 93 MPH fastball over the heart of the plate and Bergman deposited it
• The Yankee came back on a hanging breaking ball to Stanton who got it over the fence on a high fly to give us a 2-1 lead.  His OPS is now .887 after this 4 hit game and his hot streak,
• The Yankees continued to get guys on base as Greinke was really struggling to throw strikes as Judge walked Gio singled and Torres walked (not even close on ball 4) to load the bases with nobody out and 2 runs in.  Fraizer steps to the plate and Greinke misses twice in the dirt. I literally said out loud to my wife (she rarely listens) they should give him a take sign to stop him from swinging.  Greinke throws ball 3 pretty far outside, but the seemingly low IQ Frazier swings at it.  2-1 count and Grienke throws another ball outside and high but Frazier swings and yanks it into a DP to kill the rally.  I don't think he is a smart player.  I want him to do well, but he really ticks me off.  Frazier and his OPS of .557 is followed by the equally pathetic Hicks (.579).  Hicks grounded out.  We had the chance to blow that game open.
• German left another 93 MPH ball on the inner part of the middle and Brantley crushed it for a long HR to make it 3-2.  After a single, Gurriel got a double off the top of the wall that Frazier actually overran and should have caught it.  He got to a farther spot and kind of reached back a little and the ball landed behind him off the top of the wall.  I was surprised none of the announcers caught the mistake.
• 3-3 in the 5th the Yankees correctly called a pitch out (have to give them credit as this is called from the bench and they have not called one all year (I don't think).  Great job by someone!  Higgy was a little slow getting to the spot but did get rid of it quickly and threw a strike.  However, despite Kay saying that odor made a great tag, Odor actually took the throw too far in front of the bag and then did catch and swing the tag fast.  But, you want to let the ball travel as far as you can in the best case is to have your glove moving with the ball as you catch it.  He might have been a little late but he made up for it with a quick tag and it was enough to show in replay that the runner was out.  
• There was a great 6-5-3 double play where the shift was on.  With Torres playing a 2nd base position shaded up the middle and Urshela playing SS a ball was hit up the middle and Torres came across quickly, fielded it sliding and flipped it to Urshela who caught it and did a pirouette and then threw to first to complete the sweet DP.
• And now one of the more weird plays you will see as there was a lot wrong with it.  Bases loaded and 2 outs with DJ up.  He took two strikes before swinging at a low ball and dribbled it to 3B where the fielder barehanded and threw low to 1b.  DJ would have been safe and one run should have scored, but the first baseman didn't smother the ball to make sure it didn't get by him.  The ball did get by him allowing the 2nd run to score and then threw home in plenty of time to get the 3rd runner, but the catcher didn't handle the low throw and went to tag Odor coming home and they collided after Odor stepped on home plate.  Both players were hurt on the play, but it was a terrible play by the catcher and also a cheap one.  The reason why they collided was the bat was in the way of Odor sliding, so he went in standing up.  There is no excuse for the bat to be there on such a long play.  The umpire should have cleared it and when I played the ump would ask me to sometimes, but someone should have cleared it as it is dangerous and could cause the bat to also hurt the catcher.  So many bad plays on one dribbler, but the outcome was a great one for us and led us to victory.  
• The umpire was really bad, he didn't hurt us, in fact, he might have helped us, but I never knew what he was going to call.  There were bad calls both ways and when you think about the bat, the ump had a bad game.

Enjoyable win, now lets keep it going!

Detroit Gets Us to .500

Playing the worst team in baseball can make you feel better than you really are.  This is true but it was still nice to see us get the offense clicking.  It started a little in Cleveland and Baltimore and it continued until Sunday, but thankfully the pitching bailed us out.  Seeing many pitches in the middle of the plate should get your offense going, but we still have some worries.

Thoughts:

• I did not like splitting with Baltimore.  We lost two close games to them and those are series' where you need to take 3 of 4.  
• I still hate the extra innings rule where you start with a runner on 2nd base.  I don't agree that a game can be lost (or won) by allowing a run to score without a hit, walk, balk, wild pitch or error!  Sac and sac fly should not take a game away from one team or win a game for another.  Isn't the idea to award a team for earning a victory and not just award one team a victory to end the game?  I don't see any harm in ending the game as a tie after 9 10 or 11 innings.  Do you think they would ever allow a playoff game to end that way?   I would doubt it because it doesn't make you earn your run or victory.   Some people say they love the excitement of it.  Then, why not start every inning the same way?  Shoot, why not start every inning with the bases loaded?  Why, because it is a bad idea and doesn't make you earn your runs.  Part of the beauty of baseball is that runs need to be earned (or given up by the poor fielding/pitching of the other team).  Finally, why in America are we so afraid of a tie, especially if the issue is that you don't want extra innings to go on for so many more innings?  If after 9 innings one team has not been better than the other, then a tie is fair.  If you want to limit it to 1, 2 or 3 extra innings, I am fine with that too, but don't artificially try and break the tie.   The only positive thing I will say is that it is fair, although being at home does give you a slight advantage to know what to play for.
• We really padded our stats on Detroit.  
• I like Stanton batting 2nd.  Outside of our slump, our lineup is really good, but it is not a great lineup for setting a lineup.  What I mean is that we don't have good righty lefty matchups that make it hard for another manager.  A righty who is tough on righties can slow us down.  We have been forced to bat Hicks higher than he should be because we don't have a lefty stud to place in between Judge and Stanton.   Putting Odor there is absurd to me.  We are really hoping he steps up, mostly because he is a lefty, but so far he has an OPS of .642 and that is only because he has 4 HR's.  This really needs to be a priority for us as it will transform our lineup.  The other part is playing 81 games with the RF porch is what we need and Cashman has failed at that.  Back to Stanton, just get your better hitters up more often.  This is why I never liked leading off a fast guy who wasn't a good hitter.  The idea is to get high on base guys in front of your power hitters (or better hitters).
• I have spoken about our hitting a lot because they have been putrid, but many of you have written saying that this team won't win anything with this team.  I don't agree and still think we will win the division.  Do we have some flaws, yes, but we are a good hitting team and we have hit terribly.  Detroit may make us feel better, but better pitching we still have not hit well and that is a concern, however, we should hit it and we will get better.
• I have not spoken much about pitching because of our issues hitting, but our pitching has been really good.  In fact, we have the lowest ERA in the AL (3.02) and why that doesn't tell the entire story of our weaker defense, when I look at other teams doing well in ERA our 12 unearned runs are in line with the other teams.  The stat is not readily available without doing it yourself but runs allowed per game (earned or not) or per 9 innings would be a good stat.  Of course, now with the silly extra-inning rule, more runs are scored than before...see how bad this is  :-)
• Chapman continues to be fantastic - in 10 innings he has allowed 2 hits, 3 walks and struck out 24 batters while not allowing a run and a perfect 6-6 in save situations
• Our bullpen has been great so far with only Nick Nelson getting lit up and our lefties Justin Wilson and Lucas Luetge being mediocre/weak.  
• Speaking of pen, I am not sure I liked the Tauchman trade for Wandy Peralta.  He has been better against lefties, but he hasn't been very good in his career and he is 29.  It is possible that he got better last year, but I have to see more of him before I decide, but with Gardner looking so old so quickly and Frazier just not getting it done, I felt we may need Tauchman.  Now Tauchman wasn't doing anything for us either in his very limited play, but He has always hit well in the minors and when he played a lot in 2019 he was really good (.865 OPS).  In the 2020 year in less than 100 AB's he was weak at a .648 OPS but he gave us solid defense.  It should be noted that Tauchman is 30 also.  I just think we need him more, but hopefully, Peralta has found himself.
• I like our starters, Cole, Kluber, German, Montgomery, Tallion and Garcia are fine by me.  

Bring on Houston!