jacksonianmarch

He now squarely falls into the Yankee purview, IMO

Fans would rather see power than putrid offense.

With medical breakthroughs, rest and rehab can take longer and have more deleterious results than operative repair and rehab

FYI, the new baseball is slightly lighter than prior. Testing is showing that it’s allowing the ball to spin more out of the hand and stay up in the zone at higher velocities, hence severely depressing offense. Manfred should be fired for pushing for this

Stanton was a 158 game warrior for 17-18. 19, he injured his bicep in ST and they decide to take care of his barking shoulder at the same time. They stir up a hornets nest in the shoulder and he goes out for awhile. Returns and in his first game back gets injured in a collision at 3rd which he rushes back from for the POs and pulls a quad. 2019 was a calamity made worse by the Yanks crack medical staff. 2020 he pulled a hammy which most seasons will cost you 3-4 weeks. In a 60 game sprint, it cost him almost half the season. I don’t doubt that he will make his way to the IL, but to this point he looks far less stuff out there. They revamped his offseason regimen to get more flexible, we shall see if it worked

It has nothing to do with your fanhood. It has everything to do with your expectation.

For the alternate site BS, I agree with you. You needed a second squad in case your first one came down with covid. With teams now mostly immunized, it's less of a need. Organizations will keep the AAAA fodder around for another month or so assuming no resistant variants arise and then I would expect them to be jettisoned for actual prospects. The Yanks AAA squad looks like the transactions section of the paper from years back. Every AAAA player who has been released at least twice is on the Yanks AAA team

It is absolutely time for the MLB to look into banning the shift or at least banning the humidors and returning to the rocket ball. The games right now are almost unwatchable. The shift is forcing good hitters to need to elevate their launch angle which is leading to more K's. MLB decided to pull back on the core of the ball which has led to less HRs. What you have is an unexciting product. It is one thing to watch a beautiful pitching duel in between a few badly pitched games. But in today's game, it seems every game is a pitcher's duel and it is more rare to see offense. I can enjoy the purity of a good pitching duel, but most fans cannot and it is killing the product. It is time for a rule where 2 infielders must be on the left side of 2nd and 2 infielders must be on the right side of 2nd. Therefore, if you want to truly shift, you have to pull an outfielder over which leaves a wide open outfield section and a far more enticing target for hitters and a far less enticing scenario for managers to utilize. This will allow the true big power hitters to also have high averages again

I would buy the low HR not being a fluke if his GB rate spiked. But the only thing that has happened is the FB's he has been allowing just aren't leaving the park. That isnt something that is sustainable

Judge has been in a miserable slump too. There are some players who may not pull out of their nosedive (Sanchez and Hicks). But the lineup gets longer on Tuesday. Yanks are dead last in the majors in OPS from their 1b's. .494. That's OPS. They get the reigning AL HR champ back next game. Torres finally broke through with a HR a day after having a couple clutch hits fall in. Sometimes that is all you need

I think everyone is seeing Pivetta as a smoke and mirrors kind of pitcher at this point. He cannot continue to win with the peripherals he is showing. 5.6BB/9IP, career high. His HR rate in his last full season was almost 2 per 9IP. This year, it's 0.29. His career HR/FB ratio is around 17%. This year, it's under 4%. Craziest thing is, he isnt generating any more ground balls than he has in year's past and he isnt striking out more than he has before either. So to recap, his walk rate has skyrocketed, his HR rate has plummeted yet he isnt getting more grounders and isnt K'ing more. The bloom will fall off the rose on this one without a major shift in his production

Cora's job is to downplay it. They said the same thing about Clarke Schmidt and he hasn't thrown a pitch in anger yet. If I were the sox, I would over-extend his rest if I knew his injury was not serious just to ensure he doesn't rehab and then return for a game as a precursor to TJS. Either fix it if it needs fixing or rest it til it's healed

To this point, Verdugo has a slightly higher WAR than Betts.

Next game

Low A Tampa lost 4-1 today, but Hauver hit his sixth HR in 5 games. Luis Medina threw 5 shutout innings in A+ ball today. In his 2 starts he has thrown 9 shutout innings with 2H, 4BB and 15K. His stuff is absolutely silly. If he is starting to locate it, he will fly through the system. Peraza went 4 for 6 to correct his average up to .269 (really slow start prior), but he stole 2 more bases. He has 7 steals in 5 games Florial his his 4th HR on the early season and has started to cut down on the K's and increase the walks in the early going. Luis Gil followed up a dominant opening day start with a clunker Voit hit his 3rd HR for AAA today in what will amount to his final game there. Gittens hit his second bomb to increase his bonkers OPS on the young season to 1.581. Gittens reminds me a lot of Voit. Later draft pick, enormous physical specimen with light tower power who has slowly plodded along through the system. I think he is the next in line once Voit progresses back to the bigs as I think the bloom is off the rose with Ford. The AAA team right now is essentially a bunch of washed up former big leaguers or AAAA guys who are throwaways. As the season progresses, I expect a lot of these guys to move on and the real prospects behind them to start moving forward

This team badly needs Luke Voit. Our opening day first baseman retired because he sucked so bad and his replacement was worse.

Arroyo to the IL. Houck has a flexor strain and has been shut down

Nah, Yanks are still division winners by end of year IMO. We shall see, but I love minor league baseball and not having it last year contributed to the depression of 2020. Tampa scored 12 yesterday. They’re 5-0 and have scored 77 runs in the first 5 games. Hauver took game 4 off, but came back and hit his fifth homer yesterday. He’s hitting .643 with an OPS over 2.500 in 4 games with 12RBI.

Hard to say if the Yankee bats sucked or Scherzer was just that good. Either way, yanks came back to take it. Don’t be fooled by Gleyber’s two clutch hits. The first was a dying quail that fell in behind the second baseman. The other was a swinging bunt. But I’ll take them.

Tampa has scored 25 runs today. Hauver didnt play. Volpe still dominating. Florial hit a couple bombs today

It's May 7th. If anything, the team has clearly showed improvement. The bats still need to wake up a bit, but they're coming out of their slumber and Voit returns in a couple days

And then a 3 run bomb. Yanks vaunted pen starting to show some fray

Yanks throwing the ball around

Taillon settling in after a really shaky first two innings. He didn’t miss many bats

Tampa put up 10. Hauver went deep again. 3 games, 8-10, 1 double, 4 homers, 6 walks. Volpe 3 for 5 with another double. That offense is banging. Andujar hit a couple homers as SWB put up 17, but Garcia was awful on the bump