From Bryan Hoch:
With Luis Gil putting the finishing touches on a brilliant month and Anthony Volpe continuing to dazzle on both sides of the ball, the Yankees’ present and future appear brighter than ever.
Gil struck out nine over a career-high eight innings and Volpe extended his hitting streak to 21 games, helping lead the Yankees to a 2-1 victory over the Angels on Wednesday evening at Angel Stadium.
“Am I fully 100 percent surprised? I’m not,” Gil said through an interpreter. “The reason why is that it took a lot of dedication and a lot of work to get here. That’s something that I really wanted to do, to put myself in the best position possible coming in here. When you’re able to command pitches out there, really good things happen.”
Holy fucking shit, Luis Gil! Don’t get me wrong, we’re seeing a lower run-scoring environment this season, so we’re probably seeing SOME pitching performances that are out of line with how good the pitchers normally would be, but even WITH that taken into account, Gil has been absolutely outstanding. Just tremendous work from him, as the Yankees starters streak of at least five innings of two runs or less is now at its SIXTEENTH straight game. Just madness.
Clay Holmes let the first two guys reach base against him, but luckily, he got two groundballs after that, one for a double play, and one for the final out of the game.
Volpe has been tremendous recently. This hit streak nonsense is nonsense (don’t wake me up about a hitting streak until its at 30 games), but whether it is nonsense or not (and, again, it IS nonsense), the more important thing is that he has just been playing really well overall lately. I still think the team would be better off with him batting behind Judge, especially as he has some power, but whatever, I can’t complain too much about him at the leadoff spot when he’s hitting this well.
Gil had to have the featured image, but there was a cute bit where each Yankee fielder congratulated Gil, so I got to give Volpe a share in the featured image today.
Luis Gil was acquired for Jake Cave.
Sooooo…yeah.
The winning Lotto ticket. Also Jake Cave is still on a ML roster which almost as surprising.
There was a while there where, if Brian Cashman came calling for some little known reliever in your system, the best answer was to just hang up.
I’m not sure about moving Volpe to cleanup. He’ll start swinging for the fences and he’ll be the sub-220 hitter he was last year. He’s finally successful at hitting; leave him be.
Gil is amazing.
Gleyber and Rizzo not.
And Stanton is about to show us why he’s done. His hot streak is over .
he hit the ball hard last night but also seems to be chasing more again.
I almost kinda don’t want Cole to come back just yet.
I want Cole back. I think the Yankees would be best suited going to a 6-man rotation at least for a few weeks because we know someone else will get sore (looking at you Rodon). But I imagine Schmidt and Gil could rotate the extra day off between them. I don’t know how exactly it would work, but an October series with Cole, Gil, and Rodon/Cortes is very formidable exciting to think about.
That and Judge/Soto hitting. Please stay healthy.
I’m thinking he can be like Dave Cone in 1996….
I didn’t mean I didn’t want him back EVER, of course! Just wouldn’t touch what’s happening now. As soon as the magic begins to fail a bit – then immediately.
Jack Curry was adamant last night that the Yankees don’t plan on holding Gil to an innings limit. That was interesting.
I don’t believe it. Gil isn’t that young, but he’s also never pitched anything close to a full season’s load. Once Cole is back they’ll do some load management.
He was so insistent that I wonder if he actually has a source in the organization. He says they don’t do load management anymore, but instead do biometrics, and only rest guys if their biometrics show concern.
That’s still load management, just not the same inning/pitch limit.
There’s no way they end up with Gil throwing 180 innings.
Circling back to the Negro Leagues conversation, a question was asked about whether there was a dominant player in both leagues, or who spent parts of his prime in both leagues.
Larry Doby has always been on of my favorite ancient baseball players, he missed most of his age 20 season for an unspecified reason, and all of his age 21 season to military service (it was 1945 that year) but at age 19 he put up a 161 OPS+ in 127 PA, at age 22 he put up a (league leading) 186 OPS+ in 265 PA, and at age 23 he put up a 218 OPS+ in 132 PA, before he finished the season with Cleveland in the American League.
Doby then put up a 136 OPS+ in a HOF career in the AL, he was dominant through his age 34 season, after a down year at age 35 he was out of the game.
I don’t know any of the circumstances of why he stopped playing, but when I was a kid I used to look at his stats in the Baseball Encyclopedia and wonder why he didn’t have a ‘Johnny Mize like,’ swan song for his career as a pinch hitter for those early 60’s Yankee teams or some other winning team.
Mize was white, there was a roster spot for him on the Yankees from ages 36-40.
HBO had a doc about Doby 10 or so years ago.
Interesting. All together, though, he had less than a single full season of games in the Negro Leagues.
I think this negro league admission is just another screw job to keep schilling and mark lemme out of the hall…
Gil BAA 135. OPS against 474.
Volpe OBP 356 and I agree with Big Fan about keeping him at leadoff.
YC, if you really believed DJLM could be pre-injury excellent at that spot, would that change your thinking at all?
Maybe but Volpe is the future. Remember DJ’s excellence was only about 1/3 of his career. But sure and I don’t think it matters much at all.
Boone would probably bat Volpe 5th anyway because he prefers a LHB after Judge..
If the Yankees don’t do load management any more it doesn’t really show in their handling of the bullpen, unless their biometrics just happen to show that you shouldn’t pitch guys 3 days in a row or 4 of 5.
ChrisS, Volpe is now 8th among position players by BWAR at 2.7.
Gunnar Henderson is 3.7; he was drafted at #42. Volpe was drafted at #30. Yankees took T J Sikkema at #38.
In OTHER news
Prior to tonight’s game, the Yankees made the following roster moves:
•Placed RHP Clarke Schmidt on the 15-day injured list (retroactive to 5/27) with a right lat strain.
•Recalled RHP Cody Morris (#82) from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Cody who?
Don’t care for that news about Schmidt
RIP Schmidt
Well, we were waiting for the inevitable starting rotation injury. Hopefully it isn’t too bad of a strain. That ruins any chance Schmidt has of making the All-Star team, so I feel bad for him for that (he was probably already going to miss the team due to too many Yankees, but still).
Do Poteet and Morris both have options left? Can they shuffle them?
Morris is the guy they got for Florial. He has a very live arm, but is very injury-prone.
DJ at 1B tonight.
Greg Joyce Cody Poteet will start on Saturday. He had been dealing with a blister at Triple-A but Boone said he’s good to go. x.com/gjoyce9/status…
Stroman and Rodon just need to get the streak to Saturday so they can put the breaking of the streak all on Poteet.
Ooph, Schmidt to be shut down for 4-6 weeks. That hurts.
Luckily, Cole IS relatively close to returning.