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Thursday, June 13, 2019

Tick, tick, tick...

I remain amazed that James Paxton has not been returned to the DL yet.

Instead, Kremlin-on-the-Hudson has turned on the disinformation machine again, about why he had his second straight, wretched outing:

https://nypost.com/2019/06/12/james-paxton-wont-use-knee-as-excuse-after-getting-booed-off-mound/

https://www.nj.com/yankees/2019/06/how-yankees-james-paxton-explained-struggles-in-loss-to-mets.html

I think my favorite was this "explanation" from Boone:

I thought he started fatiguing and kind of lose his command a little bit and they were able to tack on.  [But] I think the stuff’s really, really good. The combination of the four-seam fastball, curveball, slider, and when he’s really locked in and command his fastball, and then there’s going to be times when that velocity really takes up, and he can overwhelm you. So I think it’s as simple as that.”

It IS simple, right?  Our own pitching expert, Prof. Julius Kelp is here to explain it to you in layman's terms:

"You see he just needs to throw this pitch and that other pitch, and then the pitch that's really good, and increases the velocity and decreases the deceleration and the unfatiguing AND HEY LADY!"

I particularly loved Boone's explanation in light of the fact that Paxton's very first pitch was ripped for a double down the line, and the Mets scored 3 runs with their first 3 batters.  I guess he was fatigued by his warm-ups.

Let's face it: in yet another instance of his remarkable self-deception whenever it comes to a power pitcher—even a moderate power pitcher—Coops convinced himself that a 30-year-old, 6-year, MLB veteran who has never gone more than 160 innings in a season could suddenly become his staff ace.

Well, he can't—and he won't hit 160 innings this year, either.  And now Coops and his crack staff of lunatics has decided to tell us that, as a power pitcher, it doesn't matter that his knee is barking.

Uh-huh.

We can predict easily enough what lies ahead:  the usual array of choice excuses from Larry Rothschild—"He was tipping his pitches!  He had a gnat in his eye!  He was very upset about Trump's tariff policies!"—the announcement that he has done something else entirely different to himself ("lat strain" seem to be the Yankees' pitching injury du mode these days, although "calf strain" is nearly as popular), the announcement that he is back on the DL for the next 10 days, the announcement that he is back on the DL for the next 60 days, the announcement that he is forgoing an operation in favor of blood transfusions and a special eye-of-newt remedy, and the announcement that he is having a major knee/shoulder/elbow/all-of-the-above operation, but will be back better than ever in 2020.

Followed by the announcement that he has hurt something else ENTIRELY DIFFERENT during his rehab, but will be lights out in 2021, or maybe 2022 or 2023.

Yup, sure glad we didn't sign Keuchel.











12 comments:

Platoni said...

Our pitching is just fine, you guys. And that's definitely NOT an example of 1984 in 2019. Shut up, 'cause it isn't

JM said...

It's almost Miller time. Just one or two infielder injuries. And more trade bait, of course.

Don't the Orioles need Morales? Somebody. The IL stint is only 10 days.

Anonymous said...

MY FRIENDS...

THAT GAME TONIGHT, MADE ME FUCKING SICK.

4 RUN LEAD.

WE CURRENTLY HAVE 0 STARTERS THAT CAN GO 5 FULL INNINGS WITHOUT IMPLODING.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Not only no starters, ALL-CAPS—more crap from Happ!—but once again, a refusal to use the bullpen aggressively...when 40 percent of your team is bullpen.

The Greatest Bullpen Whatever Was is now 22-25, according to my patented CollBull W/L measure.

But let's not forget that none of the Yankees' first 4 hitters in the lineup managed so much as a hit—and only 1 walk—despite facing 2 different pitchers with ERAs over 6.

That's 0-16 with 1 walk and 8 strikeouts. Amazing.

Anonymous said...

It's like watching the same game over and over and over.

Yankees take lead (big)
Starter blows lead in the 4th or 5th.
Bullpen gives up additional runs.
sometimes the Yankees score again. Sometimes they don't.

Terrible.

Doug K.

HoraceClarke66 said...

I know that Ma Boone's options are limited—what happens when both your starting rotation AND your pen fall apart?—but for this team to have any chance to do something, he has to get more imaginative about using his relievers.

Happ looked to have nothing, right from the start—and just WHAT DOES Larry Rothschild have to do to get fired already?—and barely got out of the 4th.

At that point Boone HAS to realize this is not 1970, and Sudden Sam McDowell is not going to turn it around once he gets past that and pitch a complete game. Happ was already up around 80 pitches by the end of the 4th.

What Boone HAS to do there is have the pen up and ready, and stick someone in at the first sign of trouble.

This is the thing: even if Happ somehow has a terrific 5th, he's probably coming out in the 6th anyway, due to pitch count. And you know that it's much more likely he's going to plunge into trouble again.

If you give him the quick hook and get out of the 5th with a lead, then you can use the 45 relievers you have out there to maybe get to a win without anyone being overworked.

If your first guy in gets slugged, and you fall behind anyway, well, then you can make it a Cessa/Holder night. But you have to try to stop the big inning when it's looming, not hold onto guys you might never even get to use.

What Boone did today was the worst of both worlds. He ended up needing 3 innings and 62 pitches from 3 relievers while losing anyway.

He's got to stop pretending his starters can regularly go 7 innings. They can't. They have enough trouble going 5 or 6.

Anonymous said...

Hey Resident Genius HC66--Think maybe it would be a good idea to look at Keuchel's numbers at the end of the season before judging whether it was right not to overpay for him? DUH.

Anonymous said...

The problem with tonight's game was Boone. It was obvious that Happ was losing it fast in the fifth inning as he began his third go-round through the lineup. As the line drives piled up, I thought, "Why isn't he out of the game already?" Boone, like Girardi before him, seems to adhere to the philosophy that you cannot give offense to frail ego of a veteran pitcher by removing him from a game until he has done catastrophic, irreversible damage--no preventive removal is allowed. Then, and only then, after it is already far too late, is it polite to take the ball from The Veteran.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Agreed. As somebody said—probably Capt. Hook himself, the great Sparky Anderson—anybody can change the pitcher after he's lost the lead.

When teams first started using relievers on a regular basis, the idea was to try to get your starters to go 7 or more, then bring in your big ace to slam the door.

LaRussa, of course, made this considerably more involved, using a number of different relievers for different situations.

Most managers, though, still stuck with the idea of at least saving the closer for when you had a lead in the ninth.

Hey, I dunno: maybe that works best, psychologically, for all concerned.

But with the others, at least, you have to be more flexible. If you're going to put 9-10 relievers on your staff, as the Yanks have been doing this year, then you have to be ready to throw some in.

As many have pointed out, there are certain, key moments in most games that you have to get through. If the crisis comes in the 5th, why are you saving your no. 2 reliever, say, for the 8th? You should at least consider slotting him—or even your closer—in there to kill the rally. If you get by that, then you can start worrying about the 8th.

This is all very much a judgement call, I know, and it won't always work out. But right now, the way Boone is doing it is how to lose by the book.

TheWinWarblist said...

Lose by the book. That could be the masthead for the rest of the season.

Anonymous said...

HC66--You're quite right about this. But Boone's mismanaging inflicts a double burden on the team: not only failing to use his best relievers in high-leverage situations, but failing to use them at all if it might ruffle a few ego feathers of his leading staff prima donnas.

Also--to give credit where it's due: the idea of using the team's best relievers in high-leverage situations, regardless of the inning, originated in the analytics community.

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