From Jackson Stone:
Aaron Judge’s home runs feel inevitable.
When he steps up to the plate, his teammates say they expect him to blast one out. He has lofty — plain unrealistic — expectations, but somehow, his past 41 games have absolutely blown those to shreds.
Judge crushed his Major League-leading 25th home run a Statcast-projected 436 feet on Tuesday night to stamp another multihit performance in the Yankees’ 10-1 win over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium. The former American League MVP and Rookie of the Year has added another chapter to his legacy during a 41-game stretch in which he has batted .401, hit 21 home runs and driven in 49 runs for the Bronx Bombers.
“I’m trying not to take that for granted … but I mean, it’s a lot of fun to witness and to watch what he’s doing on a nightly basis,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s pretty special.”
After Judge’s 2-for-4, three-RBI performance Tuesday, the slugger is tied with the Guardians’ José Ramírez for the Major League lead in RBIs (62) and leads MLB in on-base percentage (.437), slugging percentage (.712), OPS (1.149) and walks (55).
While Judge is obviously THE story (25 fucking home runs before mid-June, and that’s WITH him having a terrible first MONTH of the season), I think Austin Wells hitting a big three-run home run was very big. As a hit-first catcher, Wells hasn’t, you know, hit. So he really needs to turn that around.
Anthony Rizzo opened the game with three very hard hit balls (with the third one being over 100 MPH), but they were all on the ground, so they should have all been outs. Instead, two of the three were outs, and one of them was an error. Those were good signs. Then Rizzo had two terrible at-bats, including popping up against a position player pitching. Yuck. So there were SOME signs there, just not nearly enough. At least he made an amazing play in the field.
Marcus Stroman threw a good game. The fact that he allowed no runs will make it look better than it was, but it WAS a good game. So he gets the featured image, which is a shot of him celebrating Anthony Volpe making a nice play (Volpe dropped a hard hit one-hpper, but then picked it up and still managed to throw to first for the out).
Another great win.
I think there really has to be something to changed conditions – most likely a deader ball – in explaining the success of this pitching staff. I’d LIKE to believe that more of it was the pitching coach, but I suspect it’s more the ball. For a good long time now, strikeouts have been held as one of the most reliable predictors of a pitcher’s future success. And teams have focused more developing hard throwers; a league with lots of Moyers and Maddoxes seems a distant memory. But a deader ball mean more ground balls becoming outs and reduce home runs allowed… while having the least impact on hitters like Judge and Stanton, whose HRs don’t usually just slip over the wall. It fits Volpe’s trajectory from last year to this year, too, I think.
All of which makes me a bit uncomfortable, as I believe MLB has been known to “correct” the ball half-way through a season.
The dead ball is helping, but the rest of the MLB is also playing with a dead ball and few are pitching as well as the Yankees.
Since the MLB can fuck with the ball whenever they want and however they want, there’s not much teams can do about it, aside from chasing optimization of the 3 true outcomes.
Agree, and this (happily) doesn’t do much to explain the amazing breakout of Gil. But I do think this may be the kind of staff that will inordinately benefit from a deader ball.
Btw, jeff, I’d be open to an ootp league, not sure how many here have the game/are familiar though
Also I haven’t ever done an online league
Dodgers improve a position of weakness.
Whether he’s an improvement is up for grabs, no? But yes, definitely worth a shot for them.
Looks a little like a challenge trade to me
Jasson 1-5, Rice 2-5.
Think we should be concerned at all about the delay in the release of tonight’s lineup? I assumed Judge and Soto were just getting well-deserved rests at the end of a blowout, but perhaps something was actually wrong?
Phew, it was nothing like that.
Interesting new wrinkle. I like it.
SS A. Volpe R
RF Juan Soto L
CF Aaron Judge R
DH G. Stanton R
LF Alex Verdugo L
2B G. Torres R
1B A. Rizzo L
C Jose Trevino R
3B DJ LeMahieu R
Yes, that seems to make intuitive sense.
O’s winning 2-0, 4th inning.