The first Boston/NY battle of 2026 - our forever war - brings old and new realities. Here are 10...
1. Thursday, we'll glimpse the true Cam Schlitter. His start in Fenway, the lions' den, will attract every taunt, every threat, known to humanity and its offshoot species. It will be his second start against Boston, since strangling them in last year's playoffs. Schlittler looks like a future Yankee ace, a bedrock arm, an all-star starter. Thursday night, we will know.
2. Okay, sorry if I just heaped another payload of fertilizer onto Schlittler's shoulders, but fukkit: Pressure is the oxygen of this rivalry, and nobody gets out alive. No matter how the first two games go, Schlitter's appearance will be the Coachilla moment when Sabrina Carpenter introduces Madonna - enough raw chlamydia to douse the planet. Nobody escapes.
3. Wait: One person did escape: Redsock revenge darling Sonny Gray tweaked a hammy and is out for two weeks. Too bad. Just in time.
4. Redsocks will start two lefties, forcing Aaron Boone to gag on the Ben Rice conundrum. The Yankiverse wants Rice at 1B, but our manager is the Gene Mauch of Bobby Valentines. Gotta believe he'll go with Paul Goldschmidt. Let's hope Goldy is up to it. He chose to play in NY. He knew what he was doing. As Bugs and Daffy would sing, "This is it, the night of nights..."
5. In the lost, fun-time years of the Curse, also known as the 90s, the mighty Yankees often lost their first series against Boston. This magnified our enjoyment when September arrived, and we beat their pasty asses. Those joyful days ended 20 years ago. In this millennium, it's the Yankees who need to prove themselves. And if we get blown out this week, April meant nothing, and they have the better team.
6. Luis Gil, the weakest link in our rotation, starts tonight. You couldn't write a worse scenario, in terms of heaping pressure on Schlittler.
7. Breathe. Even if they're swept, the Yankees will still lead Boston.
8. A Redsock victory will put, as they say in the Red Bull commercials, "wings on their feet." It could also rescue Caleb Durbin, thus far, a huge disappointment.
9. This series also offers potential Yankee resets. Giancarlo Stanton can start over, with Ryan McMahon and Jazz Chisholm.
10. MLB schedulers screwed the Yankees by playing Thursday at night. No afternoon getaway. We won't see Boston again until June 5. Missing the entire month of May. By then, Cole and Rodon. And a new tweak by Sonny. Such a different world?
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12 comments:
"...our manager is the Gene Mauch of Bobby Valentines."
Bless you, Duque...
PS - the Knicks reverted to asshole form yet again.
I've a bad feeling about this series. I think we'd do well to lose only 2 of 3. Gil tonight? Come on, ya gotta be kiddin'! Feels like a loss tonite, fuhr shure.
It's such a damned shame about Luis Gil. Tremendous talent, put up a great rookie year, had the best stuff on the staff, for a while anyway. Then, became increasingly ineffective, injuries, downward spiral, now fallen & can't get up. The effects of Yankee coaching, no doubt: no adjustments, poor fundamentals, zero intelligence, injuries.
Gil was so promising. Once. Now, at best, he's Gil Gerard.
Now that’s an interesting construct….
The AA machine is now on simmAH
So they beat up on the lowly K.C. Royals, who are back to doing their tax shelter thing for ownership. Not only that, but they appear to be in a hideous offensive slump. HURRAH!!!, HURRAH!!! ... uh ... hurrah?
Let's re-visit a clip from Alain Delon's "Zorro" (1975, I believe). Tyrant-in-Chief Colonel Huerta (played by Stanley Baker) has just shot a priest to death in front of an angry, rebellious crowd:
ZORRO: The murder of Brother Francisco releases me from the promise I made to another man of peace, who you butchered. It's easy to kill saints, Colonel! Now let's see how you do against a sinner. (Draws his rapier.) Defend yourself!
Huerta: I'll have that mask off you, even if I have to chase you hell for it.
(Then, without any further words, but with a very smug expression on his sneering face, Huerta takes off his jacket and hands it to an attending soldier, puts on white leather dueling gloves, draws his rapier from its scabbard, and haughtily throws the scabbard far over Zorro's left shoulder in acceptance of the challenge.)
Luis Gil experienced a significant decline in his swing-and-miss effectiveness between his 2024 Rookie of the Year campaign and his injury-shortened 2025 season. His overall whiff rate plummeted from 29.0% in 2024 to 21.5% in 2025.
They say this drop was largely driven by a loss in velocity following a high-grade lat strain, which saw his four-seam fastball average fall from 96.6 mph to 95.3 mph. Whatever the reason, he didn't seem to challenge the hitters, walked too many batters, and threw too many pitches. He also became more erratic with wild pitches and hit batters, so maybe the lat strain was the main reason.
Here's a year-to-year swing & miss comparison:
2024 Season 2025 Season
Overall Whiff Rate 29.0% 21.5%
SwStr% (Swinging Strike)13.2% 9.5%
Strikeout Rate (K%) 26.8% 16.8%
Fastball Whiff Rate 28.5% 18.8%
Changeup Whiff Rate 27.0% 16.1%
According to Pinstripe Alley, Gil's four-seamer went from "an elite 'put-away' pitch in 2024 to a much more vulnerable offering in 2025, losing nearly 10 percentage points in whiff rate. Hitters became much more patient against him. His chase rate dropped to the 1st percentile leaguewide in 2025, as batters no longer feared his reduced velocity and were less likely to swing at pitches outside the zone."
The 2026 season shows his whiff rate hovering around 25.4% through his first two starts, a slight recovery from 2025 but still below his peak.
While we are complaining...I saw this:
https://x.com/i/status/2046295272435920933
"Losing is part of the fun". A true classic.
Yeah, I loved the YES boys in the booth (Kay and O'Neill) gushing over how great the Yankees were during that sweep, and what promising signs it showed for all our ne'er do wells. And all the while, I'm yelling at the TV, "It's the fucking Royals, guys! Get a grip!"
That's pretty funny. My big hope for Boston is that the juju gods, having just finished mugging the Mets down a dark alley, are now too busy kicking and beating the Knicks with a nail-studded board, as they lie in a fetal position in the gutter. Maybe they won't get to us until October...
I love Schlittler, but I have to say, somebody in his family should have changed that name long ago. He will never be a star with a name like that.
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