July 15: Boston (ERod) @ New York (TBD)

[moonslav59]

So no 'dueling banjos?'

 

In my head, several times, only.

[Thunder]

With this Yankees line up, I'm licking my chops. 7 games the next two weeks without Judge and Urshela? We gotta take advantage.

 

We also get Cole tonight without his personal catcher Higashioka. Plus we lit him up last time.

[d-money]

With this Yankees line up, I'm licking my chops. 7 games the next two weeks without Judge and Urshela? We gotta take advantage.

 

We also get Cole tonight without his personal catcher Higashioka. Plus we lit him up last time.

 

It’s a weak lineup and yes we have to take advantage. Just hope the game gets played tonight. Might rain.

[Bellhorn04]

Should we just call them the Tampa Damn Rays?

 

Or the Tampa Plague.

[Maxbialystock]

Not everything is 'racist.' If I worked in France and was being paid millions of dollars, I personally would learn the language of the country that was paying me this ton of cash. Has nothing to do 'with the times.'

 

Funny thing about that. While the NBA does recruit a lot of players from Europe, American universities export a ton of college players every year who play all over the world. They all have agents, of course, which means that they rarely stay in one place for more than 1, 2, or 3 seasons. And my guess is that, when they play in Greece one year, China the next, and then in Israel, they probably don't learn the language.

 

It is probably still true today that English is the most common 2d language in the world, so a huge number of youngsters around the world are encouraged to learn it.

[Maxbialystock]

Granted, the Yankees have a weak lineup right now, as they have in fact had for the entire season despite buying some high-priced bats in the recent past.

 

Nevertheless, I was impressed with what Houck showed last night. He got 9 outs on 49 pitches (65% strikes), but only gave up the 1 single and 1 BB. And, while he certainly used his fastball, he did have a pretty good mix of pitches.

 

This was the first time I've watched him throw and I now see why many think he will be starter, very possibly this year.

 

Come mid-August or earlier, I think the rotation could well be Sale, Evoldi, Pivetta, E.Rodriguez, and Houck with Richards especially and maybe Perez in other roles or on other teams. The problem with shifting those last two is they are paid $8.5M and $4.5M.

[Maxbialystock]

ERod is not pitching like an 84, anymore.

 

With a 4 man rotation, we stack up a bit better than looking at their 7 starters.

 

Sale

Eovaldi

ERod

Pivetta/Perez/Houck

 

Our top 6-7 pen guys blow theirs away.

 

Our top 3 hitters are much better.

.930 JD

.924 Bogey

.911 Devers

 

We need to see continued growth from the rest of our line-up, and many are trending upwards:

.794 Arroyo (.857 since May 31, 80 PAs- not counting tonight)

.774 Renfroe (.860 since May 1st- 224 PAs, but has dropped, recently)

.761 Verdugo (downward trend)

.741 Kike (.999 since June 19th- 94 PAs)

.672 Dalbec (.830 since June 10th- 85 PAs- went up tonight, too)

.650 Vaz (.723 since June 24th- 57 PAs)

.582 Marwin (.798 since June 28th- 24 PAs)

 

OPS is updated after tonight, but trend does not include tonight's game.

 

As always, a terrific laydown. See above for my thoughts on the rotation.

 

Agree on the bullpen of course.

 

As for the hitting, that is vintage moonslav, who rarely can be accused of pessimism. But you have the OPS's to back up your upbeat look.

[moonslav59]

As always, a terrific laydown. See above for my thoughts on the rotation.

 

Agree on the bullpen of course.

 

As for the hitting, that is vintage moonslav, who rarely can be accused of pessimism. But you have the OPS's to back up your upbeat look.

 

To be fair, I cherry picked the hot streak sample sizes, but we have a lot of players trending back up to their norms and just Verdugo going the wrong way. That has to be positive. Duran could provide a big spark.

 

Houck could, too with Sale another huge boost in a few weeks.

[iortiz]

As I said since day one. My boy Tanner Houk will continue his 2020 performance. Sometimes you don’t need large samples to figure out that this kid here is very good since his stuff is great. To me he is RH Chris Sale. Seems he loves to pitch in the spotlights.

 

His performance yesterday was simply a marvelous.