This year the Kentucky Derby is part of the best sports day of the year and maybe the best sports day ever.
Saturday might not just be the best sports day, it might be the best sports day ever. Rangers-Capitals into Yankees-Red Sox into the Kentucky Derby and then Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao to end the day.
WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Kentucky Derby, which horses to bet and which to avoid, which horses have the best value, who to pick and the best sports days of the year.
The Rangers’ five-game win over the Penguins in the first round felt easy despite the four one-goal wins, but things aren’t going to get harder against the Capitals.
Everything about the Rangers’ first-round series against the Penguins seemed easy. Despite winning all four games by a score of 2-1 with two of them going to overtime, it never felt like the Rangers were going to lose momentum or control of the series against the Penguins, even after their only loss of the series. Things aren’t going to be so easy in the second round for the Rangers against the Capitals.
Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter joined me to talk about the Rangers’ easy first round, the reaction to small sample sizes in the playoffs, the way to stop Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals’ power play and the confidence level of Rangers fans against the Capitals.
The Rangers have a huge advantage in the first two games of the series against the Capitals and they need to make sure they use their layoff and rest to win.
When the Rangers play the Capitals in Game 1 on Thursday night at MSG, it will have been six days since the Rangers eliminated the Penguins in Game 5 of the first round. A six-day layoff is always nice to have at this time of the year and with the Capitals having played two more games and needing to travel, Games 1 and 2 of the upcoming series seem to heavily favor the Rangers.
WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Rangers’ first-round series win over the Penguins, Rick Nash’s postseason performance, the level of confidence against the Capitals, the end of the Best Team in New York’s season and predictions for the second round.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm even though not everyone is a doctor or a surgeon.
Tuesday ended up being “that day”. “That day” is the day I have feared since Masahiro Tanaka returned from an elbow tear on Sept. 21. of last season. “That day” is the day Tanaka would land on the disabled list again.
I ranked Tanaka No. 1 on The 2015 Yankees Order of Importance and I said:
At the end of Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck’s character (Chuckie Sullivan) tells Matt Damon’s character (Will Hunting), “You know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door ’cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d knock on the door and you just wouldn’t be there. You just left.”
You know what the best part of my day is? Every day when I sign online or go on Twitter or turn on the TV or the radio or check my phone and I don’t hear bad news about Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm.
Tanaka and Pineda are the 2015 Yankees. The success of this season and making sure the Yankees don’t miss the playoffs for a third straight time lies in the health of those two. If they stay healthy, the Yankees have the best 1-2 punch in the AL East. If they don’t, the Yankees don’t have a season.
Well, April 28 ended up being the day when I heard the bad news about Tanaka, and now that he is out of the rotation for at least a month, the first-place Yankees are in trouble. Not as much as trouble as the 2014 Yankees were in without Tanaka because they couldn’t hit, but enough trouble that it’s to rely on Chase Whitley again.
This time it’s not an elbow issue, it’s a forearm one that Tanaka thought was a wrist one when he went to the doctor. His latest MRI didn’t show any new damage to his already-damaged right elbow, but it did show a forearm strain that may or may not be related to the tender wrist Tanaka also has.
The moment George King tweeted that there could be an issue with Tanaka, you could feel the smiles of the old guard, the lazy newspaper columnists in the city, grow bigger and their Grinch-like hearts enlarge at the idea of turmoil around the Yankees and their ace. And when Brian Cashman held a “press conference” with reporters at the Stadium, everyone quickly earned their medical degree and a lifetime of knowledge in orthopedic surgery.
I used to think you had to be really smart, get into a good college, do extremely well there, apply to med schools, get into one, do extremely well there, graduate and then do a residency to become a doctor. I didn’t know you could just write for the Daily News or Post to become one. There are a lot of doctors out there that could have saved a lot of time and money and who wouldn’t be paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans if they had only gotten a job on the copy desk with either of the two tabloids out of college and then worked their way to columnist to achieve their dream of being a doctor or surgeon.
If you have read the columns written by Dr. John Harper of the Daily News or Dr. Kevin Kernan of the Post, which both read like the flaming bag of dog crap that Billy Madison leaves on old man Clemens’ front steps, you would know they are clearly as qualified as someone like Dr. James Andrews or Dr. David Altchek to diagnose an elbow tear or even suggest Tommy John surgery. Dr. Harper and Dr. Kernan probably don’t know what MRI stands for let alone have the ability to read one or understand what goes on in a human elbow, but every chance they get, they’re quick to let you know that “Masahiro Tanaka should get Tommy John surgery!” and that he should have gotten it last July. Somehow they write under the impression that Tommy John surgery is a very simple procedure with a 100 percent recovery success rate.
On Wednesday in the Daily News, Dr. Harper had a column titled “Future of Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow could be doomed as Yankees’ ace head to disabled list” (the typo on “head” is there, so I left it in). In the opening sentence, Harper cites fellow doctor Pedro Martinez, who must have used the $146 million he made in his career to attend medical school after retiring in 2009 as a source for Tanaka needing surgery. Later on, he cites Dr. Curt Schilling, in trying to prove his point. And in between, he filled his word space with a timeline of Brian Cashman’s “press conference” and quotes from the Yankees general manager, who said he will follow the doctors’ orders. The real doctors. Not the newspaper ones.
Kernan’s “column” (if you consider 693 words of bad one-liners and quotes and tweets a column) on Wednesday in the Post was titled “Why Tanaka Needs Tommy John Surgery”. With a headline like that, I expected the byline to be of someone like Dr. Andrews or Dr. Altchek or someone who has performed the surgery or someone who is an expert on the surgery or someone with a medical degree. But nope, “By Kevin Kernan” was right there.
Tanaka is now on the 15-day disabled list. Brian Cashman said we likely won’t see him back in the rotation for a month. If everything goes right, Tanaka should be healthy and back to putting up zeroes by the end of May. But that’s if everything goes right, and when it comes to arm injuries, things rarely seem to go right.
If Tanaka ever gets Tommy John surgery, it will be because a real doctor decided he needs it and not someone who plays a doctor in the newspaper.
After nearly a month of baseball, every team in the AL East is in a battle for first place and that’s likely to continue for the entire season.
This season was supposed to be a down year for the AL East, but after three weeks, it’s been the best division in baseball. Two games separate the five teams and the Yankees and Rays are atop the division at 11-8 with a three-game series between the two teams starting on Monday.
With the Yankees and Rays meeting in the Bronx for the first time this season, Daniel Russell of DRaysBay joined me to talk about losing the Rays’ impressive start, Rays fans’ perspective of A-Rod, Chris Archer’s dominance of the Yankees and how the AL East will play out this summer now that both teams have seen every team in the division.
Keefe: Since the last series between the two teams, the Rays have gone 5-1, winning a series against the Red Sox and sweeping the Blue Jays. After their hot start, the Rays were recently 6-8 and I thought it might be the start of their decline with the roster turnover and injuries they are dealing with, but they have rebounded to share the lead in the division with the Yankees.
For a team that was expected to have to win a lot of 2-1 and 3-2 games this year, they have done that, but they have also had no trouble putting up big numbers here and there in the first month of the season.
Given the names in their lineup, the Rays’ offense was supposed to be the weak link for 2015, but it has managed to do just enough to win games with great pitching. I guess we should all just be used to that by now?
Russell: The Rays continue to be a team built off run prevention and just-enough offense, but you’re right, the offense has done well. Most of that comes from matching up well in the handedness department. Guys like David DeJesus, Tim Beckham, Brandon Guyer and Logan Forsythe have been critical.
For any team to find success, there needs to be a little luck involved, and the Rays have done particularly well in their pinch-hitting department. That’s remarkable, as the team topped out its disabled list at 12 guys on Wednesday among several other playing-hurt guys like Souza, Cabrera, and Jennings.
Now as the starters come back into the fold, it will certainly be interesting to see what the Rays do with the guys off the bench who’ve delivered.
A lot of that has to do with taking walks as well, which we are all well acquainted with in the division. The only three teams in the American League with 10 percent walk rates are the Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox, but it’s true the offense has been putting up strong numbers.
Tampa Bay chips away at their opponents, and it’s been paying off. Their 113 wRC+ is fifth in the American League, ahead of New York at sixth (107).
Keefe: Evan Longoria hasn’t really been a part of those big numbers. He’s hitting .306/.413/.468, but he also has just one home run and four RBIs, which puts him in the Jacoby Ellsbury Club (one home run, two RBIs) early this season.
Where has Longoria’s power been? Do you ever worry about him?
Russell: Longoria has been ridiculously productive this month, so it doesn’t bother me yet that he hasn’t homered since opening day. All 19 games of the season thus far have been played in domes or under roofs, so the longballs will come.
In the mean time, Longo has a 14.7 percent walk rate and a 14.7 percent strikeout rate, while batting a .306 AVG at a 152 wRC+. It’s too soon to panic.
Keefe: The Yankees went to Tampa as a bad baseball team. They couldn’t hit or pitch with any consistency and their defense and base running was atrocious. They were 3-6 before the first game of that three game series, but then everything changed on that Friday night. Everything changed when Alex Rodriguez took over the game.
A-Rod finished 3-for-4 with two home runs and four RBIs and hit the go-ahead single in the top of the eighth in the Yankees’ win. Since that night, the Yankees have gone 8-2 to climb to the top of the AL East.
Last night on Sunday Night Baseball against the Mets, A-Rod got the Yankees started with an opposite-field home run, his fifth of the season, just two weeks after saving the Yankees’ season on Sunday Night Baseball against the Red Sox with a first-inning, bases-clearing double.
I am a huge A-Rod fan and supported, mainly because he has been treated so much worse and differently than other PED users, but also because he helps the team win. From an outsider’s perspective and from someone who watched their team lose a game single-handedly because of him, what are you feelings on A-Rod?
Russell: I’m not all Rays fans, I’m sure the fan base hates him, but what I love about baseball – and sports in general – is entertainment and narrative. A-Rod getting clean, then coming back and being the dominant baseball player he always was supposed to be, is just pure entertainment.
The Yankees winning just makes me hate the Yankees more. That sort of passion is reserved to the laundry for me.
Keefe: For the second series this year, the Yankees will thankfully miss Chris Archer as he pitched the day before the start of both series.
In six career starts against the Yankees, Archer is 5-0 with 1.93 ERA. Outside of Felix Hernandez, I think Archer is the active pitcher with the most dominant performances against the Yankees. So of course I’m ecstatic we won’t see him again this week.
What makes Archer so special? Is he considered to be the ace of the staff with Cobb and Moore still out, and is he the ace even with them back?
Russell: Archer can thrive on two pitches two times through the lineup. Thanks to some added strength this off-season he’s pushing 98 with the fastball and has a wipe out slider. When the third time comes around, he introduces the change and no one knows what to do with it. It’s a joy to watch.
He’s also an intelligent kid, a big personality, and someone who constantly gives back to the community. He signed a longterm deal thankful for everything the club has done for him.
They don’t make ’em like Archer too often.
Keefe: The Yankees and Rays are tied atop the AL East at 11-8 with the entire division separated by two games. I have a feeling it’s going to be like that the entire season with all five teams in the race and no one really pulling away and riding and hiding for the summer with the division lead.
What are your early thoughts on the division now that you have seen the Rays play all the teams?
Russell: I’ll agree I expected the division to be pretty tight, I don’t really see any club pulling ahead. New York and Toronto are susceptible to injury, the Orioles and Red Sox to pitching problems and Tampa Bay to the offense slipping away.
The fact that the Rays have not only tread water in the division, but been able to pull ahead some of the other teams, has been really something. If this is what the Rays’ B-Team can do, I’m excited to see what happens when the injured players are re-introduced.