Oil Check

Now desperately searching for something to do—the Mets' first inning went, two walks, three strikeouts—I thought I would take advantage of the rain to look at our first-third of the season ledger.

Most importantly, of course, the Yanks were first past the century mark in their furious struggle with Soccer—though Soccer is, as predicted, coming on strong with the World Cup looming.

Right now, it stands Yankees 100, The World's Game 92.

Now, for the obvious:

The team of our desire is on a pace to win 111 games, which would be their most since 1998, and to score 933 runs, which would be their most since 2007. We are leading the league in home runs, and on a pace for 270, which would break the major-league record of 264.

All good, especially since the team does not even seem to be hitting on all its, well, hitting cylinders yet.

The big worry, of course, is pitching, and even here, the statistical news is far from bad. The Yanks are fourth in the AL in ERA, at 3.80—though of course it is far from reassuring that two of the three teams ahead of us are Houston and Boston.

As you may recall, I have been tracing how many innings we're getting from our starters and our relievers. The fear is that we will get to a situation where the overworked pen cracks, much as it did in the notorious 2004 season.

The good news is that, though it may not seem like it, there Yankees' starters are slowly extending their outings. Right now, they are at 299 2/3 innings, which projects to 899 innings over the season—still considerably below what they have done in the last four championship seasons, but considerably ABOVE the lousy 833 they were projecting after one-tenth of a season:

1998: 1,036
1999:    984 2/3
2000:    946 2/3
2009:    937
2018:    899

Meanwhile, the Yanks' top five relievers are at 122 2/3 innings, and their top six are at 141. This is also something of an improvement, projecting to 368 and 423 innings over a full season, as opposed to the 383 and 456 totals they were projecting to after just one-tenth of a season.  Though the figures are still far above those from the championship seasons:

1998: 260 1/3   311 2/3
1999: 316 2/3   366
2000: 329 2/3   354 2/3
2009: 301 2/3   340 2/3
2018: 368         423

All figures, of course, courtesy of the lovely folks at baseballreference.com.