Yankees – Page 131 – Keefe To The City

Oct 1, 2019

2019 Yankees Over/Under Predictions Recap

The regular season is over and that means the over/under predictions for the Yankees are over as well. Before the postseason begins, let’s look back at my over/under predictions from the season and see where I went right and wrong.

The regular season is over and that means the over/under predictions for the Yankees are over as well. Before the postseason begins, let’s look back at my over/under predictions from the season and see where I went right and wrong.

Part of the write-up from March is italicized.
(This season’s win total in parentheses)

Gary Sanchez: Under 13.5 passed balls (7): WIN
Last season, Gary Sanchez led the majors with 18 passed balls despite only catching 76 games, 74 which were starts and 67 which were complete games. The year before, he led the league with 16 passed balls in 104 games caught, 99 which were starts and 91 which were complete games. Somehow, Sanchez increased his passed ball total despite appearing in 28 last games. No, that’s not ideal.

But I’m optimistic when it comes to Sanchez and think he will be better behind the plate in 2019, as long as he isn’t struggling offensively since I believed that affected his defensive work either. It would be nice to see him less, let’s say lazy, when he’s got his gear on and not letting fastballs go by him to advance base runners. Sanchez has to be better in 2019. I can’t go another season of listening to idiots call for Austin Romine to be the team’s starting catcher.

After leading the league in passed balls in back-to-back seasons, Sanchez only had seven this season. He caught 14 more games than he did in 2018 and 14 less than he did in 2017, but significantly cut down his passed ball total.

Miguel Andujar: .299 batting average (.143): LOSS
For a long time, having a .300 hitter on the Yankees wasn’t unusual, considering they had Derek Jeter for two decades and during his years also had some pretty good players. But since Jeter aged and Robinson Cano left, it’s been a while since you could look at the big screen in center field at the Stadium and see .300 next to a Yankee late in the season. Andujar’s rookie season and his contact ability are the perfect combination to believe that will change.

Technically, this is a loss, but I feel like it should go down as an incomplete. Andujar only played in 12 games, and played with a significant injury in nine of them, posting a .143 batting average (6-for-47).

It’s going to be interesting to see what the Yankees do at third base in 2019 when Andujar returns after Gio Urshela’s breakout season at the plate. Unfortunately, it’s a storyline that’s not going to go away this offseason or in spring training or in the regular season next year unless one of them is traded.

Aaron Hicks: Under 145 games played (59): WIN
Everything about the Aaron Hicks contract extension is great except that he could be playing center field for the Yankees as a 36-year-old in 2026, and I’m not about to go back to 2013-16. The good news is if he sucks then or really at any point in this deal, it’s not an overwhelming amount of money the Yankees owe him or would have to eat. At $10 million per season for a starting center fielder in this center field climate, it might be the best contract the Yankees have ever had on their payroll.

The biggest problem with Hicks is that he can’t stay healthy, which he is showing once again as he won’t be ready for Opening Day and probably not for more than a week into the regular season. Hicks needs to find a way to avoid his one to two injured list stints per seasons. It’s the last piece of the puzzle for a player who saved his career and was awarded life-changing money.

Hicks didn’t ended up missing the first series of the season or the first week, he ended up missing the first six-plus weeks. Then after coming back from the long and weird back injury, Hicks hurt his elbow in early August and hasn’t played since, finishing the season with 59 games played.

Hicks turns 30 tomorrow and the Yankees have him for six more seasons. For a player who never played a full season in the majors in his 20s, I don’t expect him to be healthier on the other side of 30. Thankfully, his contract won’t prevent the team from making necessary moves in the future.

Gleyber Torres: Over 25 home runs (38): WIN
The Yankees have Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and their best player in 2019 and possibly beyond might be Gleyber Torres. The 22-year-old middle infielder was an All-Star in his first season, carrying the Yankees for the first few weeks of his arrival before hitting a wall in the dog days of the season.

As excited as I am for this Yankees season and the first season in what was always expected to be the first season of this window of opportunity, I’m especially excited to see how Torres grows and adjusts to a league that will certainly have adjusted to him after what he did last year. A sophomore slump for Torres? I don’t see it.

Torres laughed at the idea of a sophomore slump or teh league adjusting to him as he batted .278/.337/.535 with 38 home runs and 90 RBIs, easily covering the home run total set here. Aaron Boone finalyl relized it wa s time to stop batitng TOres ninth and moved him up int othe top half othe order and there’s a chance he could be hitting as high as third in the postseason.

James Paxton: Under 160 1/3 innings (150 2/3 innings): WIN
When you look at James Paxton’s numbers, you see a pitcher with not a lot of miles on his arm and just 582 1/3 innings as a now 30-year-old. The reason there isn’t a lot of miles on his arm is because there’s other problems with his arm, and his shoulder and his back, and so on.

In theory, Paxton is a great fit as a power left-hander pitching half of his games in Yankee. The problem is Paxton’s career high for starts is 28 and innings is 160 1/3, and they both came last season. It would be a miracle if Paxton were to get through the 2019 unscathed to start 32 times and give the Yankees 200 innings. Until he has a season in which he’s able to avoid the injured list even once, it’s hard to believe it will happen.

Paxton finished the season at 150 2/3 innings, thanks to his annual injured-list trip, which came early in the season. Paxton was solid in his first season as a Yankee after a 10-game winning streak to end the season (minus his last start) saved his overall numbers. He had a 4.72 ERA at the end of July, but finished with a 3.82 and 15 wins in 29 starts.

There were great moments and awful moments, in a season which was really two seasons for the left-hander: Opening Day through the end of July and August through September. It was exactly the type of season I expected from an inconsistent left-hander with “great stuff”.

Aaron Judge: 118.5 walks (68): LOSS
The number most people care about when it comes to Aaron Judge is home runs. and rightfully so. But after that it should be walks.

Judge led the league with 127 walks in 2017 and was on a 110-walk pace last season if not for the broken wrist (he ended up with 76). When Judge is getting his walks, you know he’s going right, and he’s setting the table for the guys behind him and tiring the pitcher on the mound for Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez.

If were up to me, I would bat Judge leadoff. I get that Aaron Hicks is a solid leadoff candidate, but he’s not Judge. Judge has a .409 on-base percentage over the last two seasons and seems to always be in full counts. He’s not going to give away an at-bat or swing at the first pitch and ground out to short. I want the best hitter on the team to get the most at-bats over the course of a season and the best hitter on the team is Judge. It’s certainly not Brett Gardner.

You can’t plan for injuries and for the second straight season, Judge missed significant time, which caused this number to go under at 68. After last season’s broken wrist, Judge landed on the injured list for two months with an oblique injury. Judge missed the end of the 2016 season with a oblique injury, played through a shoulder injury in the second half of 2017, had the broken wrist in 2018 and then the oblique injury in 2019. Can we get a full healthy season of Judge? Especially with the current state of the baseballs.

Masahiro Tanaka: Over 13.5 wins (11): LOSS
Masahiro Tanaka has never thrown 200 innings in the regular season for the Yankees. He came within one out (199 2/3 innings) in 2016, but aside from that his best season was 178 1/3 in 2017.

Another thing Tanaka hasn’t done is win more than 14 games. He’s won 13, 12, 14, 13 and 12. And while I’m not big on pitcher’s win totals since it’s more of a team effort and a lot more is needed that the pitcher simply going at least five innings and pitching well, it’s definitely shocking Tanaka has been unable to reach even 15 wins in what has been a very good career in the majors (64-34 with a 3.59 ERA in 132 starts).

Tanaka needs to give the Yankees quality starts (and starts period), especially at the beginning of the season with two-thirds of the rotation out. If he does that, with this offense, against the crap teams they will see in April, Tanaka will be well on his way to crushing this win total.

When Tanaka had a 1.47 ERA through his first three starts I thought he was well on his way to crushing the over. Then he made a habit of blowing leads with a single crooked-number inning each start and the offense gave him little to no run support in other starts and he finished with 11 wins.

Tanaka received a decision in six starts in which he went at least six innings and gave up two earned runs or less, and that was the difference in him going over the win total. But as long as Tanaka pitches in October the way he has in five previous October starts, that’s all I care about.

Brett Gardner: Under .340 on-base percentage (.325): WIN
Gardner looked finish last season. He finished at .236/.322/.368, which are catcher-like numbers for a guy who was given the chance at the most at-bats by the team for the first five months of the season. I didn’t want Gardner back in 2019 and wanted the team to go in a different direction like Michael Brantley, who the Astros signed, and will undoubtedly have a big hit or hits against the Yankees in the postseason. Because Clint Frazier would need time to get back to playing baseball every day after losing most of the 2018 season, the Yankees couldn’t go into 2019 thinking he would be a full-time Major Leaguer. So they brought Gardner back on a one-year, $7.5 million deal, thinking his veteran leadership and clubhouse presence were needed and that his sharp decline last season wasn’t indicative of what he has left in the tank.

Gardner enjoyed a career resurgence with the new baseball, hitting an astonishing 28 home runs in season win which he wasn’t supposed to play every day and a season in which he started out looking like he was more than finished as a major leaguer. Now he’s most certainly going to be back with the team in 2020.

But even though Gardner experienced a power surge, he didn’t experience an on-base surge and was unable to return his old self when it comes to getting on base. Yes, his OPS went from .690 to .829, but his on-base only went from .322 to .325, the second-worst of his career. As long as Gardner continues to hit home runs, his on-base percentage dipping won’t matter, but if he regresses power-wise, he’ll turn back into the player who lost his leadoff spot and job completely in 2018.

Giancarlo Stanton: Under 200 strikeouts (24): WIN
Giancarlo Stanton was OK in his first season as Yankee. Yes, a .266/.343/.509 hitter with 38 home runs and 100 RBIs was just OK.

Here are the most common excuses from the Stanton fan club heard last season:

1. He’s with a new organization
2. He’s in a new league and has to learn new pitchers
3. He’s playing his home games in colder weather at the beginning and end of the season
4. He needs to get acclimated and adjusted to living in a new city

Maybe some or all of those are true, but they are no longer valid. Not in Year 2, not in 2019. Unfortunately, we can’t go back and redo what happened in October, we only know it can’t happen again. As a Marlin, Stanton would supposedly go to Europe during the MLB postseason since it was too painful to watch. Well, he better change his approach at the plate and with runners on or he’s going to being going to Europe a lot during the World Series as a Yankee.

If I’m going to take a chap loss on Andujar’s batting average, I’m going to take the cheap win on Stanton’s strikeout total. Stanton only played in 18 games, so it was impossible for him to not go under. In those 18 games, he struck out 24 times, so if he had kept that pace for 162 games, it would have translated to 216 strikeouts, but you have to figure he wouldn’t have played all 162 games. The number would have been close had Stanton been healthy all season, but I’ll gladly take the win here. Now it’s up to Stanton to redeem himself in the postseason for his forgettable 2018 postseason.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

Podcasts • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Sep 30, 2019

Yankees Podcast: Andrew Rotondi

Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about everything Yankees for the ALDS.

The regular season is over and for the first time in a long time, the regular season was just a formality for the Yankees. Now the real season begins and Game 1 of the ALDS is Friday night at Yankee Stadium.

Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the possibility of Brett Gardner or Didi Gregorius batting third in the playoffs, Luke Voit being left off the postseason roster, if Aaron Boone has learned from his past postseason mistakes, the biggest worries for October, why the Yankees should easily win the ALDS and why the ALCS is essentially the World Series.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

Sep 26, 2019

Off Day Dreaming: Yankees Draw Best Possible ALDS Opponent

This is it. The Yankees’ final off day of the 2019 regular season. The Yankees have three games remaining and then it’s the postseason. Growing up, this time of year was always a given as a Yankees fan, and for the third year in a row, it’s back to being a given.

This is it: the Yankees’ final off day of the 2019 regular season. The Yankees have three games remaining and then it’s the postseason. Growing up, this time of year was always a given as a Yankees fan, and for the third year in a row, it’s back to being a given.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The goal of being the 1-seed and having home-field advantage for the American League playoffs won’t be accomplished. The Yankees trail the Astros by three games in the loss column, which means four games overall for the 1-seed, and with the Yankees only having three games left, the Yankees will be the 2-seed in the AL. The Yankees also now trail the Dodgers by a 1/2 game for home-field in a potential World Series.

It’s still possible the Yankees could have home-field for both the ALCS and World Series. The Astros could get upset in the ALDS by the Rays, A’s or Indians (I wouldn’t count on it) and the Yankees could either finish with a better record than the Dodgers, or the Dodgers could get upset as well. But if the Yankees advance to the ALCS, plan on them playing the Astros.

I wanted the Yankees to have home-field in the event they reach the ALCS and play the Astros because I think they need it to win. The 2017 ALCS was completely lopsided in favor of the home team, the Astros have the best home record in baseball this season (60-21) and Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole have been nearly unhittable in Houston, though they have been nearly unhittable everywhere. The Yankees have had success against this Astros core in New York, and it was these Astros who admitted to being intimidated by the Yankee Stadium crowd in the postseason. The Yankees can beat the Astros, but it would have been easier to do so with the first two games, and four of the seven games of the ALCS at home.

Now the Yankees are either going to need to have an unlikely upset in the other ALDS or do something they have a lot of trouble doing in Houston: hitting, scoring and winning.

2. I’m scared of Verlander in the postseason, but I’m just as scared of Cole, who has better strikeouts numbers than Verlander, and who the Yankees have seen a lot less of in recent years.

I stayed up on Wednesday night to watch the Astros-Mariners game (because I had an Astros-A’s two-team parlay), and during the broadcast, there was a graphic shown about Cole and how for more than four months now he is first in every single pitching category in the league.

Cole was originally drafted by the Yankees, but chose to attend UCLA instead, and was later redrafted by the Pirates. The Yankees unsuccessfully tried to trade for him before the 2018 season, but the Astros landed him, and he helped lead them to the ALCS, before laying an egg, which helped the Red Sox advance to and win the World Series.

I can’t help but envision Cole shutting down the Yankees in the ALCS the way he was unable to shut down the Red Sox last season, and then watching the Yankees greatly overpay to sign him in the offseason only to have him come to New York and be more like the pitcher the Pirates dealt than the one the Astros acquired. That seems like something that would happen. Then again, the Yankees probably won’t sign him in the offseason, opting to once again shop from the starting pitching clearance rack.

3. The type of game we saw from the Yankees on Wednesday night against Charlie Morton and the Rays is the exact type of game that keeps me up at night for fear of it happening in the postseason. The Yankees’ right-handed heavy lineup (missing two more right-handed hitters in Gary Sanchez and Edwin Encarnacion) was completely shut down by Morton for six innings and the Rays’ bullpen for the final three. The Yankees were one-hit in the game and managed to score only one run in the 21 innings in the two-game series. For now, I’m going to chalk it up as just two games of 162 at a time when the Yankees are just trying to go through the motions and stay healthy against a team with everything to play for still.

Morton has owned the Yankees away from Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees have owned him in New York (like they did in Game 3 of the 2017 ALCS), only further proving how much better the Yankees are at home than on the road. Wednesday night’s game was essentially a duplicate performance of Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS for Morton. In that game, Morton shut out the Yankees for five innings, only allowing two hits, before Lance McCullers Jr. came in and threw 100 straight curveballs to finish the game.

The Yankees and Yankees fans should be extremely grateful Morton is no longer on the Astros. Outside of Verlander and Cole, he’s been arguably the best pitcher in the AL. It’s bad enough the Astros’ third starter is Zack Greinke, but if it were still Morton, the Yankees could pack up the bats and balls and try again next season.

4. It’s hard to put a lot of stock into how badly the Yankees have played recently, and they have played badly, going 7-7 since their unnecessary bullpen management loss in Detroit back on September 10, because they haven’t been using their best possible lineup and have been avoiding using their elite relievers.

I’m not worried about the team playing poorly at the end of the regular season because nothing that has happened this month and nothing that will happen in the last three games of the season this weekend will matter come next Friday night at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees could be on a 15-game winning streak or 15-game losing streak heading into October and it wouldn’t matter, and the team’s lack of hitting this week against the Rays, doesn’t worry me. I have long been worried about the offense disappearing in the postseason like it did in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS, and the last two games didn’t change that.

5. With each game the Yankees use a lineup that features Brett Gardner and Didi Gregorius breaking up the right-handed bats, the more nervous I get about this sort of lineup being used in the postseason. I don’t know who actually creates the lineup, and I highly doubt it’s Aaron Boone, but whoever it is, Gardner and Gregorius can’t be hitting anywhere other than the bottom third of the lineup. This isn’t the 2017 postseason when the Yankees had Jacoby Ellsbury, Chase Headley and Starlin Castro to hide. The lineup is too good, whether it’s right-handed heavy or not, to have those two batting anywhere higher than seventh.

If Gardner and Gregorius bat where they should, here’s a lineup I think we could see.

1. DJ LeMahieu, 1B
2. Aaron Judge, RF
3. Gleyber Torres, 2B
4. Giancarlo Stanton, LF
5. Edwin Encarnacion, DH
6. Gary Sanchez, C
7. Didi Gregorius, SS
8. Gio Urshela, 3B
9. Brett Gardner, CF

I don’t agree with Stanton batting ahead of Encarnacion or Sanchez, but the Yankees are going to hit Stanton at least fourth and possibly even third. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Gregorius bats ahead of Sanchez because the Yankees desperately like to hit inferior hitters ahead of superior hitters whenever they can.

6. This lineup doesn’t include Luke Voit, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to play. Between Voit, Encarnacion and Urshela, two of the three will play. I think you need Urshela in the lineup, not only because he’s earned it, but because he’s been so good at third base, that even if he were to stay in his current slump in October, his glove is enough to keep him in the lineup. That leaves the final lineup between Voit and Encarnacion.

Encarnacion will return to the lineup this weekend in Texas and try to get as many at-bats as he can in the three-game series (though I’m sure the Yankees won’t let him play in all three games) to get ready for the postseason. As long he shows he’s healthy, he’s going to play.

Voit, on the other hand, claims he’s healthy and over the hernia injury that landed him on the injured list twice, but he hasn’t hit since returning nearly a month ago. Voit is batting just .222/.341/.375 over 85 plate appearances with two home runs since the end of August and has looked overmatched most of the time. He still has a .383 on-base percentage and an .856 OPS on the season, but you have to go back to the end of July to find the last time he was truly a feared, middle-of-the-order presence. If Encarnacion is healthy, Voit is on the bench to begin the postseason.

7. It can be worrisome to be the 1-seed and have had nothing to play for in weeks and suddenly be playing a postseason game against a team that has been in Game 7 mode for as long as you have been coasting. The Twins are a lot like the Yankees in that they have known for a while they are going to the postseason, even if they didn’t officially clinch the AL Central until Wednesday. Now the Twins can sit back and relax, like the Yankees have been doing, and play spring training lineups and wait for next Friday.

Despite not being the 1-seed and not having home-field advantage no matter what and not getting to face the wild-card winner who will have had to play an extra game and burn their best starter to get to the ALDS, I think the Yankees ended up with the best possible first-round matchup.

I’m not scared of the Twins. Not at all. This doesn’t have to do with the Yankees historically owning the Twins and eliminating them in five postseasons since 2003. This has everything to do with the Twins having the weakest starting pitching in the AL postseason field. If the Yankees were to lose to them, it wouldn’t just be an upset, it would be an absolute disaster. The Yankees would claim it’s the result of a short series and small sample size and the MLB postseason being a crapshoot, but it can’t happen. The Yankees can’t lose in the ALDS.

8. The best chance the Yankees have of not seeing the Astros in a potential ALCS is if the A’s win the wild-card game. The Astros would steamroll both the Rays and Indians, but I could see an A’s upset of the Astros, and from a gambling perspective, there would be a lot of value in taking the A’s series money line.

The A’s took three of four from the Astros in Houston two weeks ago and have won six of the last eight against them. The two teams know each other the same way the Yankees and Red Sox do, and there wouldn’t be any surprises in a series between them.

A series which wouldn’t have been allowed prior to the five-team postseason format is the last thing the Astros want after earning the 1-seed. It’s the only real ALDS matchup which could end the Astros’ season early or at least screw up the order of their rotation for the ALCS.

9. The Yankees are going to finish the season with either 102, 103, 104 or 105 wins depending on how the weekend in Texas goes in what will also be the last three games ever at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

It’s been a fun six months and an enjoyable season, the third in a row, after the previous three out of four were miserable. But now the real season begins. Everything since March 29 has been to prepare for next Friday night in the Bronx and Game 1 of the ALDS, and if the season doesn’t end the way the last nine have failed to, nothing since March 29 will have mattered.

10. This was the 19th and final Off Day Dreaming of the regular season. There will be a similar blog after each postseason game this October as there has been in past postseasons.

Thank you for reading Off Day Dreaming throughout the regular season on the worst days of any Yankees season: off days. The next regular-season Off Day Dreaming will be on Friday, March 27, 2020.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

Sep 23, 2019

Off Day Dreaming: Yankees Set Postseason Rotation

Joe Torre always said he wanted his best starting pitcher going in the pivotal Game 2 of any postseason series. This postseason, the Yankees will have their best starting pitcher going in Game 2.

It’s the last week of the regular season. The last week! There are only five regular-season games remaining for the 2019 Yankees and then next Friday night they will open the postseason at Yankee Stadium.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The Yankees announced the upcoming end-of-the-season rotation and it goes James Paxton followed by Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka, which means that will be the order of starters in the ALDS. I recently wrote in the last edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Power Rankings that I wanted it to go Severino then Paxton then Tanaka, but I’m fine with the way they set it up.

It does worry me that everyone seems to have forgotten the Paxton we saw in March, April, May, June and July and seems to think the one we have seen in August and September is guaranteed to show up in Game 1. Those same people are likely the ones who think Severino can’t be trusted in Game 1 because he has only pitched nine innings this season, which to me, makes him more trustworthy. It’s essentially the end of spring training or the beginning of the season for Severino, and he’s not tired from a season’s worth of work. Look at how dominant he has been early in the season the last couple years and that’s the Severino we’re getting now. But with this setup, Severino is either going to have a chance to put the Yankees up 2-0 in the ALDS or avoid them going down 0-2 before leaving New York. Joe Torre always said he wanted his best pitcher in Game 2 and that’s why Andy Pettitte — the winningest pitcher in postseason history — would pitch that game. The Yankees have their best pitcher going in Game 2.

2. After the first edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Power Rankings, James Paxton went out and got rocked by the Red Sox (4 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 4 HR) and his ERA rose to 4.72 on the season. But since getting embarrassed in Boston, Paxton hasn’t lost, winning 10 straight for an undefeated August and September after the Yankees lost all five of his July starts.

Over this nine-game winning streak, opposing hitters are batting .167/.241/.273 against Paxton as he’s beaten the Red Sox twice, Indians and Dodgers along with the pesky offenses of the Rangers and Blue Jays twice. He’s looked like the pitcher I thought the Yankees traded for and not the pitcher who gave them four-plus months of mediocrity to begin the season.

In the first edition of the rankings, after he struggled through the first four months of the season, I wrote: He has two months to change my mind, and he has a lot to do in those two months to change it. Well, he’s changed it.

Earlier this season, YES showed an interview of Paxton talking about how he wants to be a Yankee and wants to pitch where he’s expected to win. He will now get that chance at the end of next week in Game 1 of the ALDS.

3. I really missed Severino this season and his return has made me realize how much I love everything about him. I love his demeanor and pace, his velocity and control, his command and attack of the strike zone. He throws a pitch the ball, gets the ball back and is immediately ready to throw the next pitch. He doesn’t waste time and puts each batter on defense for the entire at-bat. He’s a refreshing presence on the mound, and as close to a guaranteed win as you can get every five days for the Yankees.

In two starts this season, Severino has been dominant (9 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 13 K) and I would have trusted him starting a postseason game without these two performances, but now I trust him more than anyone.

Severino’s 2017 wild-card game disaster came in his first postseason start after throwing a career-high 193 1/3 innings. He bounced back to pitch well in that ALDS and ALCS and again in the 2018 wild-card game before the 2018 ALDS Game 3 disaster, in which he was late to warmup for reasons we will never know. But Severino has yet to really deliver that memorable postseason performance, and it’s likely because in both postseasons he has been a part of, he was coming off six months of career-high work. This time he will be the most rested and freshest starter of the entire postseason field, and has the chance to be the Yankees’ difference-maker in potential series against the Astros and Dodgers.

4. I like Tanaka getting the ball in Game 3. He won’t be scared into melting down on the road and he won’t let the crowd or non-Yankee Stadium mound affect him. He’s proven himself on the road in October with strong starts against the eventual champions in each of the last two seasons. In the hostile postseason environments of Houston (6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K) and Boston (5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), Tanaka delivered, and I trust him in Game 3 of the ALDS to either finish a potential sweep of the series, swing the series in the Yankees’ favor or save the season (like he did in Game 3 of the 2017 ALDS).

5. It seems like the Yankees are going to give the ball to J.A. Happ in Game 4 of the ALDS rather than go with an opener and I really hope they don’t. If Paxton is getting the ball in Game 1 because of what he did this season then there’s no way Happ should get the ball for a postseason game because of what he did this season. I don’t think Happ or CC Sabathia should be starting a playoff game based on their regular-season performances and not counting their postseason starts in the 2018 ALDS which were as bad as possible. Let Chad Green open Game 4 and piece together the remaining 21-24 outs. Don’t let Happ ruin a postseason game in the first inning.

6. I’m scared of three things in the postseason. One of them is the offense disappearing with an abundance of strikeouts, which is what happened in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS. That can’t be planned for or prevented and all you can do is pray a slump doesn’t occur at the worst possible time in a short. The other two can be planned for or prevented …

7. Didi Gregorius has no business batting third or fourth and Brett Gardner has no business batting anywhere other than ninth in the postseason. I don’t care that they bat left-handed and that they could be used to break up the right-handed bats. They will be the two weakest bats in the postseason lineup and they belong at the bottom of the order.

The Yankees constructed a right-handed heavy lineup, and they have to live with that. There’s no reason to bat either of them ahead of anyone on the Yankees, especially when the lineup is in some order made up of DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton, Luke Voit, Edwin Encarnacion and Gio Urshela. Gregorius eighth and Gardner ninth. Don’t build your lineup for some late-innings relief strategy which might not and most likely won’t happen.

8. The other thing which can be prevented is Aaron Boone’s managing. It’s great that the team has won 100-plus games in the first two seasons as manager, but none of it will matter this season like it didn’t last season if he manages this October like he did last October.

There’s no point of needing only 12 outs from your starting pitcher if your manager isn’t going to pull the starting pitcher at the right time and utilize the bullpen in the order it’s meant to be utilized. Boone ruined the ALDS last season when he left Severino in too long in Game 3 and Sabathia in Game 4. He then doubled-down on his egregious decisions to leave both starters in too long with the relievers he brought in to follow them.

I’m most scared of the Astros’ deep lineup and starting pitching and it will be the Yankees’ biggest obstacle to winning a championship this season. But after that, I’m scared of Boone managing the Yankees out of the playoffs. Until he shows he’s learned from his mistakes and is a capable postseason manager, it’s hard to think otherwise.

9. It seems like Yankees fans suddenly started caring about home-field advantage in the postseason after the Yankees clinched the division. They should have been worried about it all along. The division has never been a problem. I wrote back on July 1 that the Yankees clinched the division, following the two games in London. Even if it took them another two-and-a-half months to make it official, they were always going to win the division. Home-field has been the bigger issue these last two-plus months, and now it’s no longer an issue since the Astros are going to win it.

The Astros have a 1 1/2-game lead over the Yankees for home-field because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, and with only five games left to play for the Yankees, even if they won them all, they still might not win it. And it’s going to be hard to win them all since they said the Goof Troop of 40-man relievers would be doing the pitching in the two-game series in Tampa this week.

So if the Yankees and Astros meet in the ALCS, the first two games of the series will be in Houston as the Astros will get four of the seven games at home. The Yankees will have to figure out a way to beat Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole or Zack Greinke on the road, and also take care of business at home. Yankees fans will want to root as hard as they are for the Yankees in the postseason for the wild-card winner to win the other ALDS matchup.

10. My expected record for the Yankees in September is 15-10. They are currently 13-7, which means they have to finish at least 2-3 to meet expectations.

The Yankees have 102 wins and only need to win one of their remaining games to match the 2009 Yankees’ 103-59 record. But if the postseason doesn’t end with a win like it did for the 2009 Yankees, it won’t matter.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Sep 20, 2019

Yankees’ Postseason Rotation Power Rankings: Fourth Edition

The third edition of the power rankings was supposed to be the last edition to figure out the postseason rotation, but there needs to be a fourth edition because there needs to be a fourth starter.

The first edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Rotation Power Rankings was on July 23. The second edition was on September 3. I wrote that the third edition on September 18 would be the last edition, but there now needs to be a fourth edition because there needs to be a fourth starter.

Game 1: Number 40, Luis Severino, Number 40
I love everything about Luis Severino. I love his demeanor and pace, his velocity and control, his command and attack of the strike zone. He throws a pitch the ball, gets the ball back and is immediately ready to throw the next pitch. He doesn’t waste time and puts each batter on defense for the entire at-bat. He’s a refreshing presence on the mound, and as close to a guaranteed win as you can get every five days for the Yankees.

I saw all I needed to see from Severino on Tuesday night in his season debut (4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K) to give him the ball in Game 1 of the postseason. Everything was working for him over four shutout innings and it was the exact kind of start the Yankees are looking for from each of their starters in the postseason: two times through the order or 12 outs, whichever comes first.

It doesn’t matter to me that Severino was facing an inferior opponent with a losing record, and one he won’t see in October. It was his first time on a major league mound since Game 3 of the ALDS and he looked like he hadn’t missed the first five-plus months of the season. Pitching under a limit of about 75-or-so pitches, that limited will be extended the next time Severino pitches (likely on Sunday against the Blue Jays) and extended again in his final regular-season start (Game 162 against in Texas). That would line him up on to pitch Game 1 of the ALDS on Friday, Oct. 4 on normal rest.

Like David Cone said on YES during Tuesday’s game, the Yankees don’t need to have Severino stretched out for something crazy like 120 pitches. They only need him to get 12 outs or throw however many pitches it takes to go through the order twice. He was able to do that on 67 pitches against the Angels, and 12 of them came in the first at-bat of the game.

Most likely, the Yankees are thinking the way I am given the way the schedule and calendar plays out and why Severino was brought back to start on Tuesday night. Back on July 23, in the first edition of these rankings, I wrote: It would be a lot easier if Luis Severino would return this season and return as his 2019 first-half self. My wish was granted. Severino in Game 1.

Game 2: Number 65, James Paxton, Number 65
After the first edition of these rankings, James Paxton went out and got rocked by the Red Sox (4 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 4 HR) and his ERA rose to 4.72 on the season. But since getting embarrassed in Boston, Paxton hasn’t lost, winning nine straight for an undefeated August and September after the Yankees lost all five of his July starts.

Over this nine-game winning streak, opposing hitters are batting .170/.251/.282 against Paxton as he’s beaten the Red Sox twice, Indians and Dodgers along with the pesky offenses of the Rangers and Blue Jays. He’s looked like the pitcher I thought the Yankees traded for and not the pitcher who gave them four-plus months of mediocrity to begin the season.

In the first edition of the rankings, after he struggled through the first four months of the season, I wrote: He has two months to change my mind, and he has a lot to do in those two months to change it. Well, he’s changed it.

Earlier this season, YES showed an interview of Paxton talking about how he wants to be a Yankee and wants to pitch where he’s expected to win. He will have his chance to meet those expectations in Game 2.

Game 3: Number 19, Masahiro Tanaka, Number 19
Twice I wrote: Masahiro Tanaka could pitch to a 15.10 ERA for the rest of the season and I would still give him the ball in Game 1 of the ALDS. Tanaka has proven his worth in the postseason in three different postseasons now with the worst of his five starts being two earned runs over five innings in a game the Yankees were never going to score in let alone win (2015 AL Wild-Card Game against Dallas Keuchel). But that was before the return of Severino and Paxton pitching to his ability for an extended period of time as a Yankee.

That doesn’t mean Tanaka can’t start Game 1 or that I would be upset if he did. I still trust him explicitly, even if advanced metrics suggest he’s been the same pitcher in the postseason as the regular season, with a little more luck, while his postseason success has been attributed to a small sample size.

Tanaka won’t be scared into melting down on the road and he won’t let the crowd or non-Yankee Stadium mound affect him. He’s proven himself on the road in October with strong starts against the eventual champions in each of the last two seasons. In the hostile postseason environments of Houston (6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K) and Boston (5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), Tanaka delivered, and I trust him in Game 3 to either finish a potential sweep of the series, swing the series in the Yankees’ favor or save the season (like he did in Game 3 of the 2017 ALDS).

Game 4: Number 57, Chad Green, Number 57 Chad Green
The Yankees have no choice other than to go with an opener as a starter in Game 4. Do you really want CC Sabathia or J.A. Happ starting? Not unless you’re the team opposing the Yankees in the postseason. Unfortunately, I could see the Yankees going with Happ as a regular starter or going with Sabathia for two innings before I could see them going with Green and using their entire bullpen for a full game, which is essentially what they did in the 2017 wild-card game.

Aside from the egg Green laid on August 15 against Cleveland (0.1 IP, 4 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 2 HR), he’s been outstanding in the opener role. Only in three of his 14 “starts” has he allowed runs as the Yankees have gone 12-2 in games Green has opened.

My preference would be to have Green go one inning and maybe two innings depending on how he looked in the first inning. Then I would go right to the bullpen. Get 18-plus outs from Tommy Kahnle, Adam Ottavino, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. Worry about the next game when you get there.

This season, Green has either been dominant or a disaster with very little in between. He’s either looked like he did in 2017 or given up a crooked number while only getting an out or two. The opener plan with Green starting the game is far from a guarantee, but there’s no such thing as a guarantee in the postseason.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!