From Byron Kerr:
Let’s just call them the comeback kids from the Bronx.
For the third game in a row, the Yankees took advantage of a big swing late to stun the Nationals. This time it was Ben Rice.
Rice cranked a two-out triple off the wall in left-center field to score two in the eighth inning, lifting the Yankees to their seventh sweep of the season in a 5-3 win at Nationals Park.
The slugger, playing first base for the first time this series, has reached base a season-high 12 games in a row after his third triple this season. The triple was scorched at 100.8 mph for a Statcast-projected 383 feet, to extend Rice’s hitting streak to eight games.
Even with all of that, Rice still did not think he got all of it.
“No, I didn’t think I got it quite right. But I saw it kept going, so I think wind must have been helping it just enough to make it tough wall ball play there,” Rice said. “I was happy that it didn’t get caught.”
Nationals center fielder Dylan Crews collided with the wall as the ball rolled away from left fielder Daylen Lile. Max Schuemann and Trent Grisham scored as the Yankees came back to take the lead after trailing 3-2, marking their 24th comeback win of the season and fourth in a row. The Bombers trailed after seven innings in each of the three games in the series.
The featured image is a weird one this time around. It’s Dylan Crews leaping to try to grab Ben Rice’ go-ahead two-run triple, and you can see just HOW close his glove came to making an amazing catch. If Jacob Young was playing center field, the catch probably gets made. Baseball really is a game of inches.
In any event, another awesome win, especially since David Bednar, Brent Headrick, and Fernando Cruz were ALL unavailable in this one. Luckily, Paul Blackburn was able to pick two rather dominant innings to lock things down. He has become such a valuable piece in this bullpen. I don’t think Boone will ever get to the point of trusting Blackburn in a true high leverage situation with other guys available (I think Boone still sees him as “just” a really good long man), but maybe he’ll get there. For $2 million, he’s been a hell of a signing.
The sad thing is that Tim Hill looks like he is about ready to be put out to pasture.
Will Warren and Ryan Weathers both had good games in this series against a really good offense. They weren’t AMAZING, but they were both good. One run in five innings for both. Less runs than Cam Schlittler allowed in his one game in the series (he went 6 2/3 innings, though).
I think they really need to still do a few things:
1. Send Anthony Volpe down and call up Spencer Jones. Max Schuemann has been too good to send down, and they really don’t need THREE shortstops. Especially not when they don’t have a really good pinch hitter off of the bench. That could be Jones, and Jones could also platoon a bit with Goldy. Jones would play center field or left while Dominguez DHs against righties, and Goldy can DH against lefties.
It really isn’t even a shot at Volpe. He’s FINE. If Caballero wasn’t here, I’d be fine with Volpe playing shortstop everyday. But Caballero IS here, and so it makes no sense to have two guys on the roster whose best use is as the starting shortstop. Volpe isn’t worth much as a backup shortstop who Boone feels he “has” to start every few days.
2. Demote Camilo Doval and call up Yovanny Cruz. Cruz has been so good, and Doval has been SO bad.
3. Demote Jake Bird when Carlos Rodon is activated. Angel Chivilli has shown enough to remain in the majors.
About the Author
I agree with all your suggestions. Sadly the arrogant past his prime thinks he knows better.
As do I.
So say (I’m pretty sure) we all!
But I also would be shocked if they did any of the things they should obviously have done long ago.
And even to the naked eye it looked like that ball was almost, and could have been caught.
I watched it and I was thinking about what counts as an error for an infielder vs. what counts as an error for an outfielder.
Reposting from previous thread, ICYMI:
Remember those heatmaps like 16 years ago that illustrated how awesome Mo was at pitch placement? What if there were something similar that illustrated how good Cam is at tunnelling his pitches?
Here’s a video that gets really interesting about 7 minutes in.
In addition to exploring how Schlittler’s stuff has improved this year vs last, the guy defines a couple new (admittedly kinda arbitrary) metrics that he argues show Schlittler is the best in MLB at tunnelling; and then he shows some animations of Schlittler’s average pitch trajectories to illustrate how similar Schlittler’s various pitches look up till the batter’s “decision point” at about 200ms from the plate, and how far the pitches then diverge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4qby_oRvtY
Damon Oppenheimer said the Yankees have already signed their first-round pick, Hunter Dietz. He doesn’t know if Dietz will pitch in the minors yet.