From Bryan Hoch:
Whenever Aaron Judge and Juan Soto hit home runs in a game, good things happen for the Yankees. That was the case Wednesday night in a 7-3 victory over the Athletics at Yankee Stadium.
With the victory, the Yankees are 8-1 when either Judge or Soto hits a home run. It also marked the first time Judge and Soto hit a home run in the same game for the Bronx Bombers.
How does manager Aaron Boone feel when Judge and Soto are firing on all cylinders — and in the same game?
“I feel warm and fuzzy inside. Kind of like some hot chocolate on a cold day,” Boone joked after the game. “It was great. I don’t think it will be the last time those two will homer together.”
It’s amazing that it took this long for both of them to homer in the same game. Well, that was nice to see, even if Judge thought he struck out before he hit his homer (the featured image of Judge walking away, thinking he just struck out, is awesome).
Clarke Schmidt really is a five-inning wonder, right? There’s a lot of him out there, but boy, it is still frustrating. Luckily, Luke Weaver was rested enough to be used as a long man. As a long man, I really like Luke Weaver. He can basically go out and give you a second start on top of the first starter, and rest the rest of the bullpen. Good stuff.
I loved that they kept tacking on runs. Nice to see. This hopefully is what this lineup will do against mediocre-to-bad starters going forward.
Pitchers going 5 innings is kinda the new normal. Doesn’t really bother me. Cant really think of a way to stop it, either.
yea who cares
Well, I can’t guarantee it would work, but I can easily imagine a few things to try in order to fix it.
For example, once he was in a one-out, bases empty situation, get Schmidt used to pitching a bit longer, let him work through any 6th-inning hex, stretch him out a bit… rather than yanking him unnecessarily and reinforcing whatever psychological element there is to the 6th-inning struggles.
I don’t think he got pulled based on anything about Clarke Schmidt. I think it is based on statistical analyses of pitchers going 3 times through the order, pitching deep into games, past the 5th etc.
I’m fine with pulling Schmidt there, he was clearly losing command.
I don’t think Schmidt’s issue is with guys seeing him a 3rd time, it’s that he’s already at 80+ pitches in the 6th and is getting tired. I’d love to see him be able to get into the 7th, but you can’t put a win at risk to get him stretched out.
Also, as plank points out, 5 and fly is the current reality of the MLB for most pitchers, unless they are really cruising.
It’s not really five and fly that I have a problem with so much as five innings has become, like, the goal, and so they’re frequently not even getting THAT far!
Jonah Keri wrote an article in 2010 that does a great job of explaining where we are with starting pitcher workloads. If you have any interest in this at all I highly recommend it. It’s long and if you want to get to the main points skip to the last half.
https://jaegersports.com/a-not-so-brief-history-of-pitching-injuries-starring-nolan-ryan-and-the-texas-rangers/
Clay, if 80 pitches is too much, then he DOES need to be stretched out, right?
1 out, 0 on seems like some room to give him a chance to go farther. If you’re unwilling to do even that, then I guess send him to the bullpen to throw 25 more real pitches (as real as they can be).
At least try do achieve something to improve the situation!
Sure. Totally agree. You just can’t risk winning a game to stretch out a pitcher.
On board with the bp session.
If he hasn’t completely lost his command I’d also be in favor of keeping him in. But he was missing his spots a lot that inning.
thejadeape, interesting. But obviously it didn’t catch on. One wonders about the story behind why it didn’t.
Yeah, and if they really want to change it .. they need to make it less of a competitive advantage to pull the guy in the 5th. Same thing with velocity and injuries – if you want less injuries, make changes to the game that make velocity less important. I don’t know how you do that without changing the basic fabric of the game – maybe move the mound back or make it shorter – but it would change it overnight.
Wombaticus Finch: I am thinking it never caught on because of all of the reasons Keri writes about. The game is different now. I have read that human arms aren’t best designed to throw overhand without injury. With the max effort needed on every pitch these days it just takes its toll.
I have always thought that the next evolution in pitching might be an underhand/submarine style. It may tax the arm less, one could make up for less velocity with better movement and the new arm slot would be a little deceptive for a while.
I suppose it depends on how fast one can actually throw that way.
“Whenever Aaron Judge and Juan Soto hit home runs in a game, good things happen for the Yankees.”
…and that’s the kind of insightful, well-considered journalism our age so desperately needs.
In so many ways.
Add to the obvious his sample size of ONE. And that those ARE good things happening for the Yankees. And… (oh, just facepalm).
If we are going with baseball gripes that no one else cares about, I would go with the check swing. The rule that the bat can’t go past 90 degrees seems ridiculous. I think once the bat is anywhere close to that far into a swing, it is a swing.
I realize I am the only one who cares about this issue.
You could change that rule, of course. But ‘can you change it to “anywhere close to that far?” If you do want to change it, you need SOME criterion the umpires can apply. What would you prefer?
If the tip of the bat goes below the shoulder, it is a swing.
Or if the tip of the bat goes past the back of home plate.
That seems too early for my taste though I would like to sign up for your campaign to clarify the check swing rule, which is currently just vibes based. I like either of the tip of the bat passes the front of home plate (stricter) or the bat goes past parallel with the front of home plate (looser).
The problem is that both of these ideas would result in more called strikes and more strikeouts, which I don’t really want.
This is also something that could/should be easily automated with all of the tracking that’s being done.
This would seriously reduce offense.
When you watch those sport science videos about how MLB players are super human because they can hit an Arolid Chapman fastball that gets released 55 feet away from them and how long it takes the human brain to process visual information and how the flex time is less than a tenth of a second, it’s sort of bunk.
Most MLB hitters swings from when they start swinging (actually moving the bat) to when they make contact is like .3 seconds. That may sound fast but if you took a reasonable athletic adult male and had him swing a bat with a blast sensor on it the swing would be like .4 – .5 seconds.
What hitters are really doing is doing everything they need to do to swing before the ball is even thrown, so they only have that .35 second part to do when the ball is in the air. They take the approach that every pitch is a pitch they will hit and then just stop / turn it off when they don’t like it. Then you combine that with advanced scouting – they start to look for certain pitch types and/or locations.
So those two suggestions would basically make it impossible for a batter to hit anything over 95 mph without guessing.
Another gripe: baseball should be played in the rain.
I also agree. It’s already played in the rain when it’s a national game or a playoff game.
I gotta say, thank goodness that Waldo has been so decent at third base, because with DJ, and now Berti, hurt, that could have been a HUGE hole if it was, like, Kevin Smith playing there everyday.
Schmidt rarely gets shellacked. I think only twice last year (and not once yet in 2024) has he put the yanks in a disastrous situation.its annoying that he can’t get into the 7th, but if he keeps going 5.1 and giving up 2 runs, that’s pretty valuable.
Since 2023 he’s had 30 starts this f 3 runs or less, is that the most in mlb(?). Of course he likely also
Leads the league is starts that don’t get into the 7th: that’s the trade off.
But I’m assuming he can eventually learn to go longer. The skill of not getting bombed he’s got down!
Very fair point
Exactly. And if there’s anything short of sacrificing games the team can do to help him extend that even an inning farther into games, it should be done.
Warren with a second good effort in a row, 6ip 1r 2h 6k 1bb