So much for the defensive over-shift ban lifting offense.
I don't mean to carp, because
a) the Yankees won
b) the Redsocks lost
c) the Mets' Justin Verlander tweaked something, and
d) Aaron Judge homered.
Still, 32 Ks. That's more than an hour of watching pitchers and catchers. The millennial bartender who served Stang and me told us how little he cared about baseball, seeing how boring and lifeless it looked. And 32 Ks would not change his mind.
(As for Stang and me, we were stunned by the dizzying pace of play - so fast that we often could not catch our breaths, and nearly passed out, trying to keep pace. It was like trying to watch a nuclear reaction, so swiftly and simultaneously did everything happen. Fortunately, our hearts did not explode, trying to keep up with the frantic speed.)
Both teams contributed 16. The Yankees were led by Oswaldo Cabrera (coming off a great spring) with a Golden Sombrero, DJ LeMahiue (who is supposed to almost never fan) with three, and Jose Trevino and Jackie Donaldson with two apiece.
(Idea for Bruce Springsteen, who I'm told reads this blog and comments regularly under the name "Doug K:" In your ongoing tour, change your iconic song "Forty One Shots" to "Thirty Two Ks.")
More money-making observations:
1. Gleyber Torres, who we figured was a goner in a trade, turned out to be yesterday's star. This is his contract year, and the fulcrum point to possibly being a career Yankee. (I view him as such, even though he came from the Cubs as a dirt leaguer.) But something has to give. The Yanks have too many infielders - how strange, Gleyber as DH? If he reverts to a 35-HR hitter, it could save him in NYC and dramatically change the dynamics of this team.
2. Today, as the Yankees rest, the eyes of the Yankiverse turn to Scranton, where the Railriders open against the Whogivesafuck Isuredonts. Everyone is pondering the same unponderable: Did The Martian - nicknamed "Jasson Dominguez" - make the Triple A roster? Odds are he'll start in Somerset, which launches next week. But the Yankees have challenged him in the past. Would they dare start him in Scranton? We'll know soon.
3. Wandy Peralta looked shaky in the seventh, as he looked all spring. Not ready to sound alarms, but The Wand was the only LH in our bullpen yesterday, and if he has a problem, we have a problem.
What isn't a problem? The lefty who is gone. How wonderful - a bullpen without Aroldis Chapman, the Human Waterfall! How soothing it was to know Boone would not call on El Chapo in the ninth, endangering the five-run lead. With old Mr. Sweatstream, no lead was ever safe. I don't wish bad things for him - (he didn't pitch for KC yesterday) - but the Yankees kept him for two years beyond his sell-by date, and last October's diva-like meltdown can never be forgotten. No more Chappy fanning the first two batters, then walking the next five. I'll never miss that.
Finally, here's the diff yesterday between NYC's teams.
The Yankees
As we mentioned yesterday, that ump’s strike zone was wider than Kim Kardasian’s ass…
ReplyDeleteLet’s be honest, you can tweak the rules all you want, but until MLB hitters improve the quality of their at bats, high strikeout games are here to stay…
Was Colton Brewer the pitching addition boone promised? Guy couldn’t crack the Royal’s roster. But say it with me, HE WAS CHEAP!
I just want to bask in yesterday’s victory for a while. Who knows what tomorrow’s game will bring? Clark Schmidt ain’t exactly Gerrit Cole
RailRiders host Buffalo's Bisons tonight in Bidentown. And as we all know, Cashgivesafuck.
ReplyDeletePersonally I loved the pace of yesterday's game. I did not miss the extra half hour of pitchers walking around the mound and batters re-adjusting their batting gloves and fiddling with their cups. And YES did a good job keeping the pitch clock mostly hidden so we weren't distracted by it.
ReplyDeleteLaz Diaz is a joke of an umpire, and Gerrit Cole and Logan Webb are excellent pitchers. So I'm not going to complain too much about the strikeouts just yet. But I'm not sure how to get rid of them in general, outside of lowering the mound/moving the mound back.
Miss Strikes Hard!
ReplyDeleteTwerk the Rules!
Cashmans’ Bald!
I Buried Paul!
Faster games make all the strikeouts more bearable. But not exactly truly bearable. I got bored, as often happens, and started nosing around other channels during commercial breaks, not always getting back in time. It didn't matter. I saw the HRs, Volpe's stolen base and DP, and more strikeouts than I needed.
ReplyDeleteThank God it was at least over fairly quickly.
1) "In your ongoing tour, change your iconic song "Forty One Shots" to "Thirty Two Ks."
ReplyDeleteNo problem I can add "If I Should Fall Behind (In the count)" and "River Avenue Pick Off" as well.
Plus my homage to Josh Donaldson and Giancarlo Stanton, "Gramps like us, baby we were born to not run."
While we are on the subject...
Bruce Springstone's Take Me Out To The Ballgame remains one of my favorites covers of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D3PqhHx5eM
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2) The Pace
I'll admit that I do prefer the pace overall but...
a) This game was a walk in the park. No tension at all. So the situation I suspect I will have issues with didn't occur.
b) I'm still waiting for pitcher's arms to fall off. This could take a month.
--
3) " Wandy Peralta looked shaky in the seventh, as he looked all spring. "
They showed him in the dugout and, I'm not kidding, he looked like he was 47 years old.
It was both an odd and a scary sight.
---
4 "How wonderful - a bullpen without Aroldis Chapman, the Human Waterfall!"
This X100!
I, for one, always love bartenders who rudely sneer at the reason my friends and I are at their bar in the first place. I call them, "People who need to find another profession."
ReplyDeleteTwo many K's from Yankees hitters. Same oold story!
ReplyDeleteIt looked like being "amped up" and lASS Diaz was the cause of most of the Ks as opposed to something we'll have to worry about outside the usual k culprits
ReplyDeleteVolpe has a very long swing, seemed easily beaten on fastballs up and in. Anyone else sense a possible issue here?
ReplyDelete@EDB Yankee coaching: exit velocity, launch angle, moonshots, stat cast distance measurements. That's all they care about, so that's why long swings are in these days. Florial has a long swing too, does he not? I don't even remember. I've hardly seen him take an at-bat.
ReplyDelete@Duque, Martian won't make the AAA roster. He'll be in single A all of this year. Then next year AA. Then the year after AAA. That's how Yankee management works. Tediously. Wasting precious time. He'll be at least 25 or 26 by the time he comes up to the majors. By that time, he'll be starting to get old. Won't get around on the fastball like he does now. He'll bounce up and down from the majors to AAA until he's 29. When they'll end up releasing him.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good win. Any win is a good win. But wow that's a lot of strikeouts. Home run derby, as usual. Thank goodness only the Yankees got the memo.
ReplyDeleteI still get pissed every time Judge hits a first inning home run as the #2 hitter, with nobody on base. The thought that instantly comes into my head is that could've been a two run homer if he'd been the #3 hitter. Call me a sourpuss. I guess we should be glad he wasn't the leadoff hitter. I wouldn't be surprised to see him lead off half the games this year.
Hammer -- It's much more likely that Judge would miss an opportunity to bat in crucial situation late in the game because he's batting third instead of second. And what guarantee is there that there will be someone on base ahead of him in subsequent innings, when the lineup gets scrambled anyway? Gazllions of simulations show that you win more games when your best hitter gets more plate appearances. This evidence-based approach also conforms to common sense, if not to ingrained habits of baseball tradition or first-inning fixations.
ReplyDelete@EDB, We've had this discussion before multiple times, but I still don't buy this idea that "simulations" show that you win more games when your best hitter gets more plate appearances. Common sense would dictate that you put two guys in front of your best power hitter, so that you don't end up with all these solo shots.
ReplyDeleteWe've gone over the probability and percentage calculations ad infinitum: with two guys who have an on base % of .300 and Judge hitting #3, the chances that Judge comes up with at least one guy on base in the 1st inning is 51%. And if he hits #2, it's only 30%. In a game of percentages, that's pretty big.
Some other nuances to consider are that you know who the other team's pitcher is in the 1st inning. So the batters are better prepared to face that pitcher. In later innings, when the starter is gone, you're facing some guy throwing 100 mph and a wipeout slider from the bullpen.
A lot of starting pitchers will struggle in the 1st inning. It might be the only real chance to score off a great pitcher.
You can crunch all the numbers you want, but we all know things might work out completely differently. But there is one 100% sure thing. If Judge hits #2, then you've given up the possibility of him hitting a 3 run homer in the 1st inning. Plus, you've also greatly reduced his chances of hitting a two run homer in the 1st inning, because if the leadoff man makes out, then it's impossible to hit a two run homer.
In an ideal world, if you have a lot of good hitters, hitting Judge #2 might make a lot of sense. But in a lineup like the Yankees currently have, where they only score when they hit home runs, I think it's even more of a reason to put two guys in front of Judge.
ReplyDeleteIt usually becomes more difficult to hit home runs later in the game in today's baseball. You're up against some bullpen guy with electric stuff. And it was always more difficult to hit home runs after the 6th or 7th innings, in close games, or when you were on the losing end of the score. I remember Tony LaRussa going lefty righty out of the bullpen, things like that. The number of times that someone came through with a big hit or a big home run in the later third of the game, you could count on your fingers over a full season.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Hammer--There is no more value to a run scored in the first inning than a run scored at any other time of the game. Moreover, I've never seen any study demonstrating that you are more likely to score in the first inning--or any other inning--with your best hitter in the three hole rather than the two hole. You seem to think that common sense indicates that giving your best hitter dozens of fewer PAs over the course of a season is beneficial--that thought may be common, but it doesn't make sense. Finally, you completely ignore the greater likelihood that your best hitter will fail to come to the plate late in the game in a clutch situation with the game on the line because he is lower in the batting order. Your argument about the likelihood of facing a tougher pitcher later in the game also makes no sense: first of all, ALL pitchter throw hard nowadays--a starter is just as likely to throw 95-plus as a reliever; second, who would you rather have facing a tough reliever in the late innings with the game on the line--your best hitter or a lesser hitter? None of your points on this issue are supported by any kind of empirical evidence or logic.
ReplyDelete@EDB, Sorry I missed your reply last night.
ReplyDeleteLet's go through your points:
You say "There is no more value to a run scored in the first inning than a run scored at any other time of the game."
I think a lot of people would beg to differ about this. If you score first, there is usually an advantage to taking the lead. Playing from behind is tougher. I'm sure there are empirical studies of this.
You say that the best hitter will fail to come up late in the game because he's hitting #3 and so that this will prevent a clutch at bat and over the course of a season, rob him or many at bats.
I think you've said that this accounts for about 50 at bats over the course of a season. Let's assume that's correct. So, roughly speaking, this would occur in about 1/3 (one-third) of the games. There is no guarantee that Judge comes up an extra time in every game. He only comes up an extra time in 1/3 of the games.
And there is no guarantee that he would come up in a clutch situation in those 50 games. Some of those games will be lopsided, one way or the other.
And finally, my friend, you keep saying that there is no empirical evidence or common sense reason to hit your best batter #3. Yet, there is. You're ignoring the logic of probability in the 1st inning: in my example above, 51% versus 30%.
But your splatter of irrelevsnt stats do not correlate with any known empirical demonstration that batting your best hitter third is more likely to produce a run in the first or any other inning. You are making a strained conjecture or inference, but I have seen any statistical evidence to support your conjecture
DeleteNow, there are two reasons that I can think of in favor of your position. And maybe that's why the Yankees continue to hit Judge #2.
ReplyDeleteIf Judge hits #3, there is the possibility of a double play ball by the #2 hitter. So even if the #1 hitter got on, the #2 hitter erased him and the bases are empty.
And hitting Judge #3 would have the possibility of him coming up with 2 outs, and nobody on base. I think this would increase the chances of the pitcher walking him, because there are two outs and nobody on.
The probability of 2 outs and nobody on base would be 49 % in my example. I'd still rather take the chance that Judge comes up with somebody on base, which would be 51% that at least one man is on base, with the first two hitters having .300 on base percentage.
In my view, there is no right or wrong position to this argument. You're taking the extra at bats over the season and giving up the higher probability of a runner on base in the 1st inning. I'm taking the higher probability of a runner on base in the 1st inning and giving up the extra at bats over the course of a season.
For certain teams and certain games, I might even put Judge #2. But, for the most part, I think that I much prefer Judge hitting #3 with this Yankee lineup.
No, I am taking the evidence based position and you are patching together fragments of conjecture to form a tattered thesis that lacks any empirical support. You feel subjectively more comfortable with a traditional strategy whose effectiveness has been disproved by the availability of statistical evidence that was not available to Connie Mack or Casey Stengel. Same thing goes for sacrifice bunting, hit and run plays, etc. This is all analytics is: evidence-based conclusions now that the evidence is available.
DeleteSometimes I feel ... Sometimes I feel ... like I've been tied to the whipping post, tied to the whipping post....
ReplyDeleteCalculating probabilities, the chances of someone coming up with guys on base, is not merely "conjecture". If you look at the "simulations" that you're referring to, I'm sure that they are based upon calculating probabilities.
Look, it's not that complicated, when you hit your best hitter #2, you are reducing the possibility of him hitting with one or more guys on base. In return, you're getting the increased possibility of an extra at bat for that hitter.
Actually, all of the data is there from last year, the year before and so forth. All you need to do is go through every game and see if hitting Judge #2 made a difference in that game. I venture to say that hitting Judge #2 made a (positive) difference in less than a handful of games where he got one extra at bat. But what of all of the other games where you lost the possibility of a bigger inning in the first inning? You can do a probability based calculation using the data. I don't know the answer; I haven't done the number crunching.
The common sense approach all through history is to have your best hitter hitting 3 or 4. This way, guys get on base ahead of your best hitter, and he (hopefully) drives them in. And it's based on simple logic. There is a much higher probability of someone being on base for your best hitter.
To say that there is no "empirical demonstration that batting your best hitter third is more likely to produce a run in the first ... inning" completely defies all logic and common sense.
Imagine a thought experiment: you have a must win game and it is only ONE INNING. Who do you have hitting in the first three slots? I would put DJ, Rizzo, then Judge. If you have Judge hitting two, then your chances of Judge hitting with DJ are pretty slim. It's whatever DJ's on base percentage is. Don't you want Judge to hit with somebody on base? Wouldn't having your best hitter up with somebody on base increase the chances of scoring that inning? Of course it does.
It's the same thing through all baseball history. They didn't lead off with Mickey Mantle. I don't think he hit #2 most of the time either. The only time they led off Mantle was when they wanted him to go for some record, so that he'd get as many at bats as possible.