The Heat Is On!

 

Hey kids, it may have been cold up in Detroit this week, but the Yankees' "Race to the Bottom"—the heart-stopping, pulse-racing, hives-generating competition to see who on the Bronx Mighty Winds can break the season record for strikeouts—started to really heat up!

Here are your standings thus far, complete with projections over the entire, 162-game season!

Stanton:        19  237

Donaldson:   17  212

Gallo:            16  199

Judge:            14  174

May I just say...WOW?  

Okay, so while "Irascible Old" Donaldson continues to hang tough, it still says here that he won't be in the race after his inevitable break down. 

The long-term staying power of Aaron Judge, now that he seems to have discovered an almost uncanny ability to hit one, weak groundball after another to shortstop, has also begun to worry us.

Joey "Ton of Value" Gallo got back in the race with a "golden sombrero" day in Detroit. But his level of play has now dropped SO low that I begin to wonder about his ability to stay in the lineup even on a Cashman team.

Which leaves the Big Swisher. 

Giancarlo Stanton, after an alarming, early tendency to make contact, has regained his "Mechanical Man" swing, whereby, with almost freakish consistency, he manages to take the exact same swing at the exact same level on every pitch, apparently assuming that every pitcher is an idiot.

What's more, this year Giancarlo—always looking to up his game—seems to have added a nearly supernatural ability to guess wrong, letting at least one flat, 92-mph fastball float across the plate on every at-bat, without offering at it.

Think of the heroic discipline this must require!

Stanton is now ahead of the pace needed to break the record of 223 K's. There are so many things that can derail our glass behemoth, of course. But who else possesses both the ability to whiff this much and also produce juuuust enough to stay in the lineup?