From Bryan Hoch:
A convincing case can be made that Carlos Rodón needed a reset more than anyone in the Yankees’ clubhouse, aiming to flush the disappointments of his first season in pinstripes while reclaiming his confidence and swagger.
As Rodón carved through a punchless Marlins lineup on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, it was a clear reminder of the dominant performances the Yankees hoped to import. The lefty helped the Yanks become the first team this season to reach double-digit wins, as they won their fourth straight game in a 3-2 victory.
“It’s always important for any of us to start out on a good note,” Rodón said. “I think we’re playing really good baseball right now. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and trying to take a third one from them.”
Rodon left with the bases loaded and nobody out, so the shot of the fans giving him a standing ovation was hurt a bit by how upset he was over the game situation.
I’m definitely not ready to say that Rodon is back just yet, as the Marlins are terrible hitters, but damn, the dude certainly at the very least doesn’t look like a shell of his former self, which he did frequently last season. I would be THRILLED to be wrong, and that his back injury won’t derail his career but, well, I’m not ready to say I’m wrong just yet.
Still, his results were excellent, hurt only by some poor defense, and Ian Hamilton and Clay Holmes came in and were DOMINANT. If the Yankees could just add a third top level reliever, their bullpen would be SICK.
The offense blew a lot of opportunities, but hey, they scored enough to win. 10-2 is crazy.
Brian, FYI the “previous” link is to the prior recap post, not the game thread.
It looks like the “previous” tab sends you to the previous article in this category.
It would be awesome is Rodon is the good version of himself this year. He had a lost season last year, 2 great seasons before that, 2 lost seasons before that, and 4 okay seasons before that.
Getting a good or great season from Rodon really changes the shape of the rotation. Of course, I have no faith Cole will be back this year until I see him on the mound, so…
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rodonca01.shtml
I remain firmly entrenched on the rodon (and gil) train(s)
As I have been on the Nestor Express, to coin a phrase.
May we all be justified!
I’m waiting for my due with “Blake-e-otomy”
following up on my earlier post about a high spin high velo rp acquisition to offset the sinker profiles of Holmes and Hamilton, Michael kopech fits the bill although he’s a bit wild. 1+ years of control, affordable, on a crappy team, with injury concerns though
What happened to the old site, btw? For me, it was suddenly replaced by a nonfunctional old blogspot-ish site that never worked if I clicked on a link, then this Rolls Royce of a website showed up one day like a gift from above.
There was some weird issue with the URL where rlyw.net was janky but if you went to some other long, drawn-out address like host.temp.1080/rlyw or whatever it was, you could get to the site and have it function properly.
Early after the previous site died there were notices to update bookmarks, etc., but if you didn’t catch all that in the first week it did get kind of lost in the shuffle if you were banging your head against the regular domain.
I still think Replacementlevel.com was the perfect blog name. No idea what happened behind the scenes to move it over to rlyw.net instead. 15 years ago or whenever that was.
is Cairo dead?
The projection system? Perhaps. Miguel seems to be doing just fine.
Cairo was the only thing separating us from the apes!
I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I think life for SG has changed over the years as it has for all of us, and CAIRO was pretty time consuming for him.
boh, ok
I hope SG is doing well. And Larry Mahnken for that matter.
SG is great! Didn’t mean to imply otherwise. He lives in Buffalo so I see him from time to time. He’s just got a full life, unlike, er, me.
fudge ya
According to ESPN this is the 4th time the Yankees started 10-2. The other times they went to the WS.
So that ’92 team was just one win away.
While we are on the topic, does anyone know what is up with baseballthinkfactory.org?
Is it gone for good? It turned into a cesspool of Dons yelling right wing things at each other instead of being a fun baseball place a long time ago. A sad ending to what was once my entrance into a deeper understanding of baseball and the website which led me here, as well.
This was part of BTF before it seceded. Wiki: Baseball Think Factory shut down on December 15, 2023. A site for “refugees” of BBTF was established at https://hallofmerit.boards.net/
I got like 3 comments in and it’s a bitch fest at the expense of Jim furtado
but in all seriousness, id suggest we have a 3rd category of posts specifically for saber-y stuff
volpe leading off, Torres 6th
Berti and Trevi in
Man, I may have to go to an estate sale just to pick up the Post from the ’78 Series: https://picturescdn.estatesales.net/4027008/1-1/165fc3f5-4150-4e6f-a0ad-915e82a96207.jpg
I’m not at all saying I AGREE with this approach, and actually, I think it is patently embarrassing for them as a brand to continue doing this, but I almost admire the stubbornness of Baseball Reference sticking with its insanely bad prediction system.
“Yep, the Yankees’ best possible final record after starting the season 10-2 is 91-71. Their chances of winning at least one of the THREE Wild Card spots is 25%. This makes sense to us, and it is not a sign of an insanely flawed system.”
Funny!
What’s wild is it’s just blanket powered by their Simple Rating System (“with no adjustments for HFA and no capping of MOV” and that “weights all (runs) equally, and therefore ignores wins and losses.”
On top of that it only runs 1,000 sims, and is based on a team’s L100, with no weighting for the previous year’s teams/players.
Yanks come out DFL in the AL East. Says right the there in the system.
How often is this updated?
Also I’m willing to overlook weird shit like this, BR is a treasure and they should get the Nobel Prize for Baseball
It’s constantly updating, so the Yankees’ current 25% odds represents a dramatic INCREASE in their odds.
And yes, Baseball Reference is amazing, but, like, why launch a shitty postseason projection system at all? What was the point of it?
“fuck it, ship it!”
Elon Musk determined to cut costs and add features after his multi-billion-dollar purchase of BR
I cannot get over how many pitches Stroman wasted in that De La Cruz at-bat. It wasn’t like De La Cruz was battling, Stroman just threw garbage at him hoping he would swing for…reasons?