December 26, 2024

43 thoughts on “Yankees.com: Back in session: Judge blasts 1st HR of 2024 in wild win”

    1. Promote them and relegate the A’s.
      As a bonus, it’ll keep Holliday out of our division and stop them from manipulating his service time.

  6. I didn’t see the game, but some of the commentary was weird.
    After Rodon kept missing the zone – he grooved one and it was hit out. But how can you be on him for that? If he had missed again, we’d surely have been on him for THAT, and we’d say – your stuff is ridiculous, trust it, just get it in the zone and challenge them. He did, and he happened to lose; baseball’s a game of statistics, your best pitch sometimes gets hit, etc., etc., etc. I mean, of course you’d prefer him to paint the corners, but given that he’d just been missing by a lot, that’s an unreasonable ask – and he didn’t keep nibbling (in that at bat, anyway), he challenged them.
    Then there was something about “if your fastball has no movement, they’ll hit it,” and then ten minutes later something like “he’s got top-shelf ace level stuff,” which really doesn’t seem compatible with “fastball has no movement.”
    There’s probably hope he can work on the mechanics and improve his control, but if he ended the season with his current ERA I wouldn’t be upset.

    1. There’s stuff and there’s mechanics. Stuff means being able to throw high 90s fastballs. You can’t teach that. Mechanics is movement on your fastball. You CAN teach that, and that’s where Rodon was flopping. He was either missing spots badly, leading to the hitters being able to sit on the fastball in the zone and crushing it, or he was lacking movement on the fastball and getting crushed (luckily, a number of the crushed balls were right at fielders).

      What Rodon needs to do to be really successful is to go at guys with his great stuff but with much better control. That’s what he did in Chicago towards the end, and what he did in San Francisco. He had great control in 2021 and 2022, and it’s what made him so good. It also cut his home runs down, since he wasn’t falling behind in the count and being forced to hit spots where the hitters were waiting on him.

      The key stat to look at to see if Rodon really has it swings and misses. When he’s getting them, you’ll know his stuff and his movement are in sync. He barely got any swings and misses yesterday, but his stuff was luckily still good enough that he didn’t get dinged too badly.

    2. You do write fast!

      You don’t think movement is part of “stuff,” just sheer velocity? Not exactly how I’ve always understood it.

    3. I’ve also always thought of movement as part of “stuff”, along with velocity; and the other physical part of pitching is “command” over your stuff. I’ve thought of “command” as the ability to pitch the stuff you want where you want it.
      Both “stuff” and “command” come from mechanics – command requires consistent, controllable mechanics. Mechanics – and consistency in mechanics – can be taught, though can be limited by body habitus, injury, and/or the half-mental 90% of pitching…

    4. Consistent movement has to do with mechanics. How much pressure you get on what part of the ball, so it has to be repeatable or at least able to be controlled. Guys like Maddux who could throw the same pitch and get different action on it in 3-4 different ways; more break, less break, more down, more lateral, etc.

      At least how I’ve always thought about it since I was kid playing catch with my little brother and accidentally uncorking a wicked slider.

    5. Ive thought of it as command being spin rate and movement, control being accuracy. in that vein rodon was elite w his control w the White Sox and giants.

    6. I’m pretty sure some pitchers are thought to just naturally have movement (or not), it’s their stuff.

      I’m also pretty sure mechanics can affect ANY aspect of pitching, including whatever we include in “stuff”.

      If his stuff is great then, there’s some mechanics (learned or natural or each in part) behind that.

      In essence, maybe we can stay is that “stuff” is part of the result, mechanics is the process that gives you both stuff and command/control. Stuff is what makes a pitch hard to hit in general – add location, and you’ve got a great pitcher.

      So if he has great stuff, surely that’s not a fastball that’s easy to hit. We could mean that his stuff is SOMETIMES great, when his mechanics are right, but his stuff sucked that outing. (That was clearly what everyone was saying about control/command/whole other can of worms.) But it doesn’t sound like what was being said about how nasty the pitches were, which was more like “thank God his stuff is elite, otherwise with so little control he’d have been slaughtered.”

    7. I’m pretty sure some pitchers are thought to just naturally have movement (or not), it’s their stuff.

      I’m also pretty sure mechanics can affect ANY aspect of pitching, including whatever we include in “stuff”.

      If his stuff is great then, there’s some mechanics (learned or natural or each in part) behind that.

      In essence, maybe we can stay is that “stuff” is part of the result, mechanics is the process that gives you both stuff and command/control. Stuff is what makes a pitch hard to hit in general – add location, and you’ve got a great pitcher.

      So if he has great stuff, surely that’s not a fastball that’s easy to hit. We could mean that his stuff is SOMETIMES great, when his mechanics are right, but his stuff sucked that outing. (That was clearly what everyone was saying about control/command/whole other can of worms.) But it doesn’t sound like what was being said about how nasty the pitches were, which was more like “thank God his stuff is elite, otherwise with so little control he’d have been slaughtered.”

      It just sounds like there’s no consistent definition of stuff. So I’ll just say when I say “stuff,” I mean that a pitch is really good at being the ideal form of said pitch. You know, a really fast fastball, a curveball that curves really well, a slider with a huge break, or a splitter that drops out beautifully. Not a lot of pitchers have these ideal pitches, so they have to get by with command and/or craft. Rodon and Holmes both have excellent stuff, so they can get by without their command/craft (and neither guy is particularly crafty, so it’s pretty much just command), but it is very tricky, and they’re prone to just exploding at any moment.

      Cole has great stuff, but he’s also crafty AND he has excellent command, which is why he is a superstar. Schmidt has very good stuff, but still seems like he’s learning to pitch to Major League hitters on a consistent basis (when he was pitching short relief, he was really good, and he has struggled as he has to pace himself out more as a starter). Cortes is all about command and being crafty, and he’s struggled with both. Stroman is crafty (he had great stuff when he was younger, but he’s moved on as he’s gotten older. Still, his four-seam and his two-seam fastballs are both pretty darn good pitches, and he’s smart enough to mix them up nicely).

    2. Yankees are going to rack up 135 wins and that’s all due to rlyw.net’s return.

      Nice job Brian!

  8. On a scale of 1-to-Mets, where Mets is the Metsiest the Mets can get, and 1 is just a regular amount of Metsiness, how Metsy are we rating this Mets team?

    1. The Marlins beg to differ.

      But seriously – can you lose ’em all but one?

      It would be Amazin’!

    1. yeah. seems like beeter will be up sooner rather than later. stinks that lo isn’t more durable, was hoping he’d wrest the 9th from Clay sometime months and several blown saves ago.

    4. Cash was grieving the first loss of the season, so Boone cooked him a Loaisiga.

    1. Stanton is 1/14 career vs Kickuchi, so by the transitive property of shittiness…

  16. •Placed RHP Jonathan Loáisiga on the 60-day injured list (retroactive to 4/4) with a right flexor strain.
    •Signed RHP Dennis Santana (#53) to a Major League contract and selected him to the active roster.

    1. The good news is that it isn’t an arm thing. The bad news is that Lo is just cursed.

      I’m sure he’ll get healthy on his new team next season.

      Santana was excellent during Spring Training, and since he had an opt out, he WAS going to be called up at some point. I just was hoping it wasn’t for one of the good relievers.

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