Last Night’s Game Was a Microcosm of…a Lot

Of course, last night’s game was only one out of 162, but there have been some several long-term themes around this team, many of which showed up last night. I know we all have plans today, so I’ll make this quick.

The Yankees ran into some good fortune early in the season: Jose Trevino, Alex Verdugo and Anthony Volpe all hit FAR above their paygrade, and Luis Gil, Nestor Cortes and Carlos Rodon dodged bullets despite consistently yielding hard contact.

To be clear – that’s not a condemnation. Baseball has far more randomness in it than most people realize, and as a result, there are going to be ebbs and flows. But you were deluding yourself if you believed things weren’t going to go the other way eventually.

Now with Giancarlo Stanton out and Gleyber Torres having an off first half, the lineup has become Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and who the heck knows. The starting rotation is reaping the penalties of constantly throwing pitches right down the middle of the plate, Clarke Schmidt is still out and Gerrit Cole can’t pitch every game.

Bottom line? Despite going 5-13 over their last 18 games, the Yankees are on pace for a 99-win season and a spot in the postseason.

And that’s great – there’s zero reason for doom and gloom.

Back to last night:

Bullet point one: Ben Rice, Austin Wells, and Trent Grisham need to be playing every day. The at bats from Rice and Wells are far better (last night and all season) than those of the players from whom they’d be taking PAs and Grisham is a plus, plus, defender at a premium position – this is very, very important to have when you have a staff prone to giving up hard hit fly balls. (And the difference between Grisham’s bat and anyone he’d be taking PAs from is negligible at best.)

Bullet point two: People loved Anthony Volpe’s RBI double last night, and I absolutely was one of those people. But many (most?) of the people who loved it are the same people who’ve been telling us all season about how Volpe changed his swing path to cut down on strikeouts and that was a good thing. Somewhat ironically (only somewhat because many people knew this) if he changed his swing in order to hit the ball hard and off the ground more often, we’d see a lot more of what happened last night.

Bullet point three: Rodon gave up two early home runs last night putting the Yankees in a hole. (Again – if you give up hard contact and fly balls, both of which Rodon does consistently, you’re going to give up a lot of bombs too.) Because he didn’t get obliterated thereafter many in Yankee land thought this was a good thing – it was not.

Giving up three runs in 5.1 innings, in the absence of bad defense, is the equivalent of 5.3 runs over nine innings. That would make the Yankees the worst team in baseball at preventing runs.

Another reminder: Again, runs in the second inning count just as much as runs in the ninth.

Bullet point four: That said, despite all the legitimate questions about lineup construction recently, Aaron Boone continues to excel at bullpen management, as he pushed the Michael Tonkin, Tommy Kahnle and Clay Holmes buttons resulting in 3.2 innings and only a single baserunner allowed. That was the largest bright spot of the game last night.

Holiday day baseball today folks, enjoy.

PS: Speaking of Judge, have you read “62”? With Judge being ahead of his ’22 home run pace, this book is starting to look more and more interesting.

As always, leave your thoughts below, or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.