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).