Scott Reinen of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about everything the Yankees need to figure out before the postseason.
There are only two weeks left in the regular season, but the Yankees still have a lot to figure out before the postseason. Between setting up the postseason rotation, sorting out the postseason roster and figuring out who will be in the postseason lineup, the final 16 regular-season games will be eventful.
Scott Reinen of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the Yankees’ recent lineups and bullpen management if they’re trying to win home-field advantage in the postseason, which ALDS opponent would be the easiest for the Yankees, the return of Luis Severino, Dellin Betances and Giancarlo, who should be in and out of the postseason lineup and what Yankees fans should be worried about the most heading into October.
***
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
The Yankees might have lost to the worst team in baseball, but they were able to rest some of their best players and pitchers, and to the Yankees, that is more important than winning home-field advantage.
When it was announced that Nestor Cortes would start (or open) for the Yankees on Tuesday and when the lineup against the Tigers was posted and DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge and Luke Voit weren’t in it, I shook my head in disbelief like Lee Trevino in Happy Gilmore. The Yankees were once again trying to erase a game on their schedule rather than trying to win home-field advantage for the postseason.
The Yankees have made it clear in recent weeks they aren’t going to go all out to win home-field advantage, but now they aren’t even trying to win. With an eight-game division lead and only 16 games remaining, the Yankees are being managed as if they have won everything when they haven’t won anything. It was bad enough when Boone managed the season finale against the A’s like a mid-March game in Florida, but Tuesday night’s managing took the Yankees’ late-season, huge-division-lead approach to a whole other level.
It began with the decision to start Cortes, a pitcher the 2018 47-win Orioles didn’t want, and someone who was bad when the Yankees called him up and somehow has gotten progressively worse. Entering Tuesday, Cortes had a 5.13 ERA and 1.468 WHIP this season and has managed to remain not just in the Yankees’ system all these months with those numbers, but on the major league roster. With an opportunity to sweep the worst team in baseball and put the pressure on the Astros to keep pace, the Yankees were giving the ball to Cortes for his major league start. Cortes lasted 2 1/3 innings and was pulled after he put seven batters on and turned a six-run lead into a two-run lead.
Next up was Luis Cessa, who entered Tuesday with a 3.80 ERA from 80 appearances in the lowest of low-leverage situations. He has somehow picked up quite the number of fans this season, who seem to have short memories when it comes to Cessa having any success and who seem to be OK with disregarding his career as a whole, only focusing on his ability to protect seven-run leads in the eighth and ninth innings or hold six-run deficits in the middle innings. Cessa, trying to hold a small lead on Tuesday, failed to do so like he has so many times in his career, and the Yankees’ early six-run lead was erased. (The lead might have been saved if not for a Gleyber Torres error, but could the pitching staff pick up their star middle infielder for once after all the times he has picked up the pitching staff this season? Instead, Torres would later pick himself up with a solo home run to retake the lead.)
After Cortes and Cessa made the six-run lead disappear like the magicians they are, Cory Gearrin was next out of Boone’s bullpen. Gearrin, who was let go by the 59-win Mariners, has become a Boone favorite, pitching just about every other day since becoming a Yankee in late August despite pitching to a 6.48 ERA. Gearrin faced three batters and two of them singled. With an 8-7 lead in the sixth and two on with one out, the situation called for a strikeout from one of the Yankees’ actual major league relievers. Or at least it would have if the Yankees were actually trying to win. Instead, Jonathan Loaisiga got the call.
Single, sacrifice fly, single, walk, walk is how Loaisiga’s night went. He allowed both inherited runners from Gearrin to score and one of his own for good measure. The Yankees had lost leads of 6-0 and 8-6 and Boone had seen enough. To stop the bleeding he went to the one and only Ryan Dull.
Dull came to the Yankees with this 2019 line: 9 IP, 19 H, 13 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 8 K, 4 HR. Throw in the one batter he hit and he put 24 baserunners on in nine innings before becoming a Yankee. Since his September 1 call-up, he had only appeared in one game for the Yankees (1 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 1 K), but here he was, the next in line in a long line of pitchers who don’t belong in a major league bullpen. I have always been for 40-man rosters in September, but this game changed my stance. Give me the 28-man September rosters next season, so the Yankees are forced to be managed to win.
After Dull miraculously recorded an out without allowing a baserunner, the Yankees took the lead back thanks to a two-run home run from Edwin Encarnacion. At 11-10, Boone decided he was going to try to win the game. He went to Adam Ottavino, but after a walk, passed ball and single, the game was once again tied.
Boone stayed with his major league relievers in the eighth, pitching Zack Britton, who had 1-2-3, nine-pitch inning. But then after proving he did in fact want to win the game, Boone went back to his pregame and early-game strategy of using the entire 40-man roster, calling on Chance Adams for the ninth inning. I expected the game to end with a ninth-inning, leadoff, walk-off home run off Adams, but it didn’t end until three batters into the inning. The Yankees might have lost 12-11 to the worst team in baseball, but to Boone and management it was a win: they didn’t pitch Ben Heller, Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle or Aroldis Chapman and they were able to give complete days off to LeMahieu and Judge, and that is more important than winning a game or winning home-field advantage for the postseason.
It’s clear the Yankees don’t care about having home-field advantage throughout the postseason. They don’t care to face the wild-card winner in the ALDS after that team will have already burned their best starting pitcher just to reach the ALDS the way the Yankees had to the last two years. They don’t care about facing Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole in Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS in Houston rather than New York and they don’t care about boarding a plane for a cross-country flight to Dodger Stadium for the first two games of a potential World Series to face the second-best home team in baseball. The Yankees are content with being the 2-seed in the American League. They are content with not having any and every edge they can obtain for October. They are content with taking the path in the postseason filled with “Go Back to Start” obstacles.
For a team which allows analytics to drive every decision, how could the Yankees not care about home-field advantage? How could they not remember the toll the wild-card game took on their rotation and bullpen the last two seasons and not want to face the wild-card winner in the ALDS? How could they not see the Astros’ 56-18 home record and feel it would be best to avoid playing the first two games of a series at MinuteMaid Park and an extra game in a series there as well? How could they not remember how the home team won every game of the 2017 ALCS and how could they forget that they scored three totals runs in the four losses in Houston in that series?
The Yankees are setting themselves up for their right-handed heavy lineup, which has a propensity to strike out excessively, to face the two best power pitchers in baseball, who sit 1 and 2 atop the strikeout leaderboard, and who also happen to be right-handed. They are setting themselves up to have to win at least one road game against Verlander, Cole, Verlander again or Zack Greinke. They are setting themselves up to have their entire season ruined because they took their foot off the gas for the final month of the season, playing as if they had clinched the best postseason possibilities when they hadn’t even clinched the division.
There’s certainly the chance the Astros could be upset in the ALDS and don’t reach the ALCS. There’s also the chance the Yankees could upset the Astros in the ALCS despite not having home-field advantage. But the odds of either happening aren’t likely and aren’t in the Yankees’ favor, and the Yankees’ entire organization is based on decisions made to put the odds in their favor. Why is it that the Yankees care about lefty-righty matchups in every situation and extreme defensive shifts tailored to probability percentages, yet when it comes to being the 1-seed in the postseason, something which will decide their season more than anything, they could care less?
The Yankees have determined days off are more important to achieving postseason success than home-field advantage. For a team which now holds the all-time record for the most players put on the injured list in a single season, you would think the players have had enough days off this season. If the Yankees are wrong in their decision to favor days off over home-field, their season will end early for the 10th straight year. At least then, the players can have more days in October off.
***
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
I miss this feeling. This feeling is the feeling of knowing September Yankees games are meaningless (aside from home-field advantage) and that the result ultimately doesn’t matter because of their enormous division lead.
After losing on Monday to the Rangers, the Yankees won on Tuesday and Wednesday to win the three-game series and continue their home series winning streak, which dates back to April. If you don’t think home-field advantage matters in the postseason, like the Yankees seem to think, you might want to rethink your stance on that.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.
1. I missed this feeling. This feeling is the feeling of knowing September Yankees games are meaningless (aside from home-field advantage) and that the result ultimately doesn’t matter because of their enormous division lead. For the four NFL Sundays in September, I can watch football and not be completely focused and worried about the Yankees. It’s been a while since Yankees fans have had this luxury and I forgot how good it felt. I won’t take it for granted.
2. The Yankees aren’t going to go all out to win home-field advantage. I think they need it to win the American League pennant and get past the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup, but clearly the Yankees don’t feel the same. Aaron Boone has shown us they don’t feel the same.
In Sunday’s game, Boone brought in reliever Ryan Dull with the game tied to start the seventh inning against the A’s. Dull had already been released by the A’s and Giants this season, found his way to the Yankees and somehow was a September 1 call-up. Why? Because he’s in the Top 20 percent in spin rate.
3. This is Dull’s line pre-Yankees this season: 9 IP, 19 H, 13 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 8 K, 4 HR. Throw in the one batter he hit and he put 24 baserunners on in nine innings. How is he on the Yankees’ 40-man roster and how did he get a September 1 call-up, and why is he pitching in the seventh inning of a 0-0 game? Dull was every bit as bad in that seventh inning as he was prior to joining the Yankees. His line: 1 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 1 K.
Later in that same game, Boone brought in Adam Ottavino with the Yankees trailing. So he goes to the shouldn’t-be-in-the-majors reliever when the game is tied and he goes to the elite, top-tier reliever with the team trailing. If you don’t think Boone’s logic and bullpen management is going to be a problem in October, you must have missed last October.
4. The Yankees came back to win the game 5-4, thanks to back-to-back home runs from Brett Gardner and Mike Ford in the bottom of the ninth off Liam Hendricks, who can’t seem to ever get the Yankees out. Because of the win, Boone was saved from being questioned about his nonsensical bullpen management as the postgame focus turned to the second walk-off win in as many days. But not for me. I was happy the Yankees won, but not happy about how they won because it’s decisions like pitching Ottavino when the team is losing and using a lesser reliever when the game is tied that will arise in the postseason. Boone was dealt a 15 with the dealer showing a 10. Boone inexplicably stayed. The dealer flipped over a 3, pulled a 2 and then a 10 to bust. Boone thinks he made the right decision because he won the hand.
This type of bullpen management happened last October after everyone spent the entire regular season under the idea Boone would manage differently in the postseason. If you’re not scared about Boone ruining this season, you should be.
5. I updated my Postseason Rotation Power Rankings on Tuesday, but didn’t really update them since I’m currently staying with Masahiro Tanaka in Game 1, Domingo German in Game 2, James Paxton in Game 3 and Chad Green as an opener in Game 4. If Luis Severino comes back then everything changes. Or if Paxton continues to pitch the way he has since the beginning of August.
After the Yankees lost all five of Paxton’s start in July, he has won seven straight. His line over those seven straight wins: 42.1 IP, 25 H, 14, 14 ER, 15 BB, 51 K, 5 HR, 2.98 ERA, 0.944 WHIP. That’s the Paxton the Yankees thought they were trading for with opposing hitters posting a .545 OPS against him.
6. Through all of his ups and downs over the last two seasons, I have never said, written or tweeted anything negative about Gary Sanchez. How could I as President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club? And after last year’s dismal season which ended with offseason surgery for Sanchez, he has repaid those who believed in him and ridiculed those who wanted Austin Romine to be the team’s starting catcher. (That will always be the most ridiculous Yankees storyline of all time.)
Sanchez homered twice on Tuesday night to give him 34 on the season, breaking his Yankees’ single-season home runs for a catcher record he set in 2017 with 33. After becoming the third fastest player ever to 100 home runs, Sanchez is the second fastest to 14 multi-home run games. He’s the best hitting catcher in baseball and the Yankees’ biggest advantage in the lineup because of his position as a middle-of-the-order bat.
Now I just need Sanchez to continue his record-setting slugging ways in October, where he already owns five postseason home runs in 18 games and 75 plate appearances.
7. Aaron Judge hit his 20th home run on Wednesday night and Sanchez said he thinks Judge can get to 30. That would be 10 more home runs in 21 games, most of which Judge won’t be playing the full game or playing at all since the Yankees will have clinched the division.
Judge isn’t going to get to 30 this season, but his 20 in 84 games is the equivalent to hitting 39 in 162 games. His 27 in 112 games last year was also the equivalent to hitting 39 in a full season.
Judge’s only full season so far has been his Rookie of the Year 2017 season, in which he hit 52 home runs and had a 1.049 OPS, finishing second for the AL MVP to Jose Altuve. It’s unlikely Judge will ever match his magical age-25 season, but it would be nice to see if he actually could by playing a full season in 2020. Can we please get one freak-injury- and oblique-injury-less season from Judge? Is that too much to ask?
8. If the Indians don’t blow their 3-1 lead to the Cubs in the 2016 World Series or finish off their remarkable comeback in Game 7 of that World Series then Aroldis Chapman for Gleyber Torres might be the worst trade of all time. A closer for a middle infielder with 40-home run ability? If not for the Cubs’ World Series comeback to end their 108-year championship drought, it would go down as the worst trade of all time.
Torres already has 58 home runs and an .855 OPS in 251 career games despite being 22 years old and playing two premium defensive positions. Judge and Sanchez might get all the attention now as this being their team, but it won’t last long with a superstar up the middle for the foreseeable future.
John Flaherty brought up a good point during Wednesday’s broadcast about looking forward to seeing how Torres performs in the postseason after he looked jumpy and not ready last October. I agree with Flaherty that Torres never looked like himself at the plate in the five postseason games last year, and I’m sure it had to do with the A’s and Red Sox’ planning for him as well as it being his first experience on that stage. Torres did manage to hit four singles in the postseason, but he was nowhere near the hitter he is now with the experience he has gained. Put Torres in the middle-of-the-order for good, Boone. It’s well overdue.
9. A year ago when the 2019 schedule came out, I figured this weekend’s four-game series against the Red Sox would cause me to finally purchase a respirator and quite possibly send me to the hospital. Thankfully, it means nothing other than for the Yankees to increase their odds at obtaining home-field advantage.
But it does mean something for the Red Sox who are clinging to the smallest of chances at a wild-card berth. The Red Sox are six games back in the loss column of the A’s and five games back in the loss column of the Rays and Indians with three weeks to play. The Yankees have a chance to go to Boston and officially eliminate the Red Sox from the division (the Red Sox’ division elimination number is 7), and also completely ruin the Red Sox’ chances at sneaking into the playoffs as a wild-card team. I want the Yankees to leave Boston with the Red Sox’ division elimination at 0 and their wild-card elimination greatly diminished (it’s 18 now).
10. My expected record for the Yankees in August (by expected record, I mean a record I would be content with them having) was 17-13. The Yankees finished the month 21-9, four games better than I would have been content with.
The Yankees are now 92-49 (my expected record for them in September is 15-10) and they have a 1 1/2-game lead over the Astros for the best record in the AL and a 1/2-game lead over the Dodgers for the best record in baseball. The Yankees only have to go 8-13 to win 100 games for the second straight season and 9-12 to beat last year’s 100-win total. It’s hard to know how the Yankees will play the final two-plus weeks of the season once the division is officially clinched, but they have a chance to win 105 games in a year in which they broke the record for the most players on the injured list a season. What a season it’s been.
***
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
The Yankees’ postseason rotation won’t be decided for a few weeks, but it’s time to figure out what it will look like with a month to go.
The first edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Rotation Power Rankings was on July 23. Back then, trading for Madison Bumgarner seemed more realistic than Luis Severino returning this season and finding anyone to follow Masahiro Tanaka and Domingo German in the rotation seemed impossible.
My postseason rotation hasn’t changed over the last six weeks, but it’s getting close to. James Paxton is pitching like the front-end starter the Yankees thought they traded for and Severino came out of his first rehab start in Triple-A without any issues. The third edition could see drastic changes depending on how the next two weeks go.
These power rankings will be updated frequently between now and the end of the regular season. They are based on a combination of personal preference, recent performance and historical performance. This rotation is based on the current 25-man roster and is created under the assumption the players on the injured list won’t be available for the postseason.
Game 1: Number 19, Masahiro Tanaka, Number 19 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).
Last October, Tanaka was the only Yankees starter to pitch well in the four games against the Red Sox (5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 K, 1 HR), and had he pitched Game 1, I might be writing about the Yankees looking to become the first team since 2000 to win back-to-back championships. In 2017, he allowed two earned runs in 13 innings in the ALCS to the eventual champion Astros and shut out the Indians over seven innings in Game 3 of the ALDS to save the season and kickstart the Yankees’ improbable comeback over the Indians.
Advanced metrics suggest Tanaka has 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. Well, the postseason is a small sample size. At most, a team could play 20 games, and in the Yankees’ case, the most games they could play this October is 19. Jobs, careers, salaries, memories and legacies are built on the small sample size of the postseason, and so far, Tanaka has been outstanding (30 IP, 17 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 7 BB, 25 K, 3 HR, 1.50 ERA, 0.800 WHIP). Same regular-season FIP or not, he’s getting the ball in Game 1.
Game 2: Number 55, Domingo German, Number 55 Do I trust Domingo German in a postseason start? Not particularly. But outside of Tanaka, it’s hard to trust any of the current available starting options. As of now, German’s going to get a postseason start and will be asked to get 12 outs, which makes things a lot easier to stomach. If he’s going to get a start, it has to be at home.
German at home: 61.1 IP, 44 H, 17 R, 16 R, 17 BB, 74K, 10 HR, 2.35 ERA, 0.995 WHIP
German on the road: 71 IP, 75 H, 47 R, 43 ER, 16 BB, 67 K, 19 HR, 5.45 ERA, 1.282 WHIP
There’s still the chance the Yankees shut down German as a starter for the rest of the season at some point or screw with his routine and off days to the point that it messes him up, the way they have with so many other young starters to try and prevent injuries that eventually happened anyway. If the Yankees allow German to pitch uninterrupted for the remainder of the season and they win the World Series and he never pitches again, he did his job. His job is to pitch for the New York Yankees. The Yankees’ job is to win the World Series. The goal isn’t to grow careers. The goal is to win. Sadly, the Yankees’ effort to achieve this goal for the last decade hasn’t been what it once was.
Game 3: Number 65, James Paxton, Number 65 After the first edition of these rankings, 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. But since getting embarrassed in Boston, Paxton hasn’t lost, winning six straight for an undefeated August after the Yankees lost all five of his July starts.
Over this six-game winning streak, opposing hitters are batting .192/.271/.344 against Paxton as he beat two wild-card race teams in the Red Sox and Indians and dominated the National League-best Dodgers on the road. 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.
I actually trust Paxton more than German right now, but since German is going to get a postseason start, it should be at home, which pushes Paxton to Game 3 on the road. Paxton has also been worse on the road than he has been at Yankee Stadium, but I trust him more to get comfortable, adapt and adjust wherever Game 3 is because I don’t have to.
Game 4: Number 57, Chad Green, Number 57 When Severino comes back and proves he’s healthy, the opener will fall off as a postseason starter. But until then, I’m giving the ball to Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, Adam Ottavino, Zack Britton, Aroldis Chapman, and hopefully Dellin Betances to piece together 27 outs. There’s absolutely no way CC Sabathia can start a postseason game, and it’s comical to think J.A. Happ is going to be on the postseason roster, let alone given the ball for an October game. That leaves the opener strategy as the only available option.
Green hasn’t opened a game since August 15 against the Indians (0.1 IP, 4 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 2 HR). He has worked strictly as a reliever since then, holding batters to a .394 OPS for 7 1/3 innings.
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. I don’t care that you’re asking the bullpen to possibly get 24 outs. 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 you could say that about all of the Yankees’ starting pitching options for the postseason.
***
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
If the Yankees ever get completely healthy, there’s going to be a lot of debate about the postseason roster, lineup and rotation. They’re going to have to win the World Series to avoid a litany of second-guessing.
The Yankees started their nine-game West Coast trip by getting swept by the A’s. They turned an 0-3 start into a 5-1 finish by taking two out of three from the Dodgers (and could have taken all three if not for an egregious umpiring decision) and sweeping the Mariners. The Yankees return home with the best record in baseball despite not having played a single game at full strength this season.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.
1. As much as I want the Yankees to win home-field advantage for the American League playoffs (and a potential World Series), and as much as I think they need to have home-field advantage to beat the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup, I don’t think they’re going to win home-field advantage. It’s not because they’re not good enough, it’s because their remaining schedule and the Astros’ remaining schedule suggest they won’t.
One-third of the Yankees’ remaining 27 games will be against teams fighting for a wild-card berth (Oakland, Boston and Tampa Bay), while the Astros’ only remaining games against any team with a real postseason chance is a four-game series against the A’s. Unfortunately, if the Yankees and Astros meet in the ALCS, the Yankees are going to have to win at least one game in Houston — something they were unable to do in the 2017 ALCS — and one game against either Justin Verlander (Game 1), Gerrit Cole (Games 2 and 6) or Zack Greinke (Game 7). If the Yankees are going to beat any of those three in the postseason, they’re most likely going to have to win the way they did in Los Angeles: with the home run.
2. The Yankees took two out of three from the Dodgers by hitting home runs against Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw. With the nearly impossible task of stringing together multiple base hits against elite pitching, the Yankees were able to use their home run prowess to defeat the NL All-Star Game starter and ERA leader on Friday and the best pitcher of his generation on Sunday. It’s part of the formula the Yankees are going to need to win in October: home runs + five innings from the starter + 12 outs from the bullpen.
I had a lot of Dodgers fans and in-laws in Los Angeles tell me how impressed they were by the Yankees since they don’t get to watch them much. The majority of those fans and in-laws also felt like the Yankees would beat the Dodgers if the two teams were to meet in the World Series. While that made me happy, it doesn’t mean anything other than to know Dodgers fans are petrified of having to play the Yankees and possibly lose a third straight World Series.
3. After dominating the Dodgers in the series opener and then beating the Mariners in Seattle without his best stuff, James Paxton has now recorded a win in six straight starts, finishing August a perfect 6-0 (after the Yankees lost all five of his starts in July) with this line: 35.1 IP, 24 H, 14 R, 14 ER, 14 BB, 39 K, 5 HR, 3.57 ERA, 1.076 WHIP.
In my yet-to-be-updated Postseason Rotation Power Rankings from July 23, I gave Paxton the Game 3 start in the ALDS with Masahiro Tanaka getting Game 1 and Domingo German getting Game 2. I think I’m ready to give Paxton at least Game 2.
But the reason I haven’t updated the rankings yet is because I have been waiting on more and more information on Luis Severino.
4. Severino is going to make his first rehab start of the season on Sunday in Triple-A. As long as he stays healthy and keeps progressing, we’ll likely see Severino pitching for the Yankees in mid-September, giving him a little more than two weeks of the regular season to get ready for October.
If Severino does stay healthy and returns as his usual self, it changes everything about the Postseason Rotation Power Rankings. He could be anywhere as high as the Game 1 starter to a long reliever to a middle reliever in the postseason. I want him back as a starter, but Severino in any role is better than no Severino at all.
5. It wasn’t even two weeks ago when Aaron Judge’s 2-spot in the order was being questioned. Over the last 11 games, Judge is hitting .383/.408/.872 with five doubles, six home runs and 10 RBIs, quieting all of his critics who wondered where his power and pull power went. It’s good to have one of the best players in the world back to being one of the best players in the world. It’s even better that he’s back entering the final month of the season.
6. Maybe Gary Sanchez was playing through an injury for a while which eventually led to his late-July/early-August injured-list stint. In 17 games since returning from IL, Sanchez has six home runs and 11 RBIs and a .917 OPS, hitting his 100th career home run and 30th home run in the process. I’m sure Sanchez will always provide us with frustrating moments and painful-to-watch slumps, but he’ll also always provide us with streaks like the one he’s currently on, and for that, he’s irreplaceable.
7. There was an article on MLB.com the other day citing a storyline to watch for each team over the last month of the season. The Yankees’ storyline was getting J.A. Happ back on track and the article said he might not get a postseason start as of now and would be pitching out of the bullpen in October. Clearly, the author rarely watches the Yankees.
No, J.A. Happ won’t be getting a postseason start, and there’s a better chance of David Cone pitching out of the bullpen in the postseason than there is Happ. It would take an abundance of injuries for Happ to even be on the postseason roster at this point. Some very worthy players who have helped the Yankees to the best record in baseball aren’t going to be on the postseason roster, let alone Happ, who has done very little to help the 2019 Yankees get to where they are and has done more harm than good. Happ has a month and say five-or-so starts of five innings and three earned runs or more left in his season.
8. This week the Yankees said they would “probably” call up Clint Frazier on September 1. “Probably”? If Frazier isn’t on the Yankees on September 1 then this whole thing will be taken to another level of ridiculous and the Yankees will no longer be able to hide behind the idea that he’s working on his defense in Triple-A or that he doesn’t fit on the current roster.
9. If the Yankees ever get completely healthy and get Severino, Dellin Betances, Luke Voit, Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks all back, there’s going to be a lot of debate about the postseason roster, the postseason lineup and the postseason rotation. It’s likely that if everyone is healthy, Gio Urshela could be on the bench in the postseason as well as Brett Gardner and either Luke Voit or Edwin Encarnacion. If the Yankees don’t win the World Series, there’s going to be a lot of room for second-guessing the lineup, rotation and roster decisions which were made.
10. In the Off Day Dreaming on August 1, I said my expected record for the Yankees for August (by expected record, I mean a record I would be content with them having) is 17-13. Well, as of today, they are 20-8, so at worst, they are going to finish the month three games better than my expected record.
My expected record for the Yankees in September is 15-10. If they win of the two remaining games in August against Oakland, and meet my expected record expectations for September, they would finish the season 104-58, four games better than their 2018 record.
Now this October just needs to go better than October 2018.
***
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
