From Bryan Hoch:
April has never been Anthony Rizzo’s favorite month, with raw weather conditions and early-season rust historically making it tough to keep his swing in a good groove. Entering Tuesday’s game, he had a career .245/.364/.463 slash line in 261 regular-season games played in March and April. But he is no stranger to hot streaks, and his team sure could use one right now.
Rizzo cracked a two-run homer that capped a four-run first inning as the Yankees started their night with a bang, then held on for a 4-3 victory over the Athletics on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium.
“It’s nothing to write home about, but they do come in bunches,” Rizzo said. “I’ve just got to grind through it, and know that there’s a lot of baseball left to be played.”
I was expecting Paul Blackburn to dominate the Yankees. I was off by one inning, it appears, as they kicked his ass in the first inning, with Rizzo hitting a home run (breaking a long homer-less streak for him – you’ll notice I used a shot of him watching his home run for the feature image, as even he was like, “Wait, is that ball actually going out?,” and a long homer-less streak for the whole TEAM, as they are really not hitting for power this season at all), which is not a good sign for a pitcher. But then Blackburn DID dominate them from that point forward, and luckily, those four first inning runs were enough against a weak Oakland lineup.
Stroman wasn’t great, but he was fine. The bullpen was good, and Holmes continues his oddly strong start to the season. Cardiac Clay didn’t bring much drama this time, which was nice.
free rice
wells revamped swing looks much smoother
As much as I’m curious about seeing him pushed, but I think he’s going to be a classic Yankee AAAA guy who eventually gets traded to some place like Pittsburgh for a relief arm, pumps out a year or three of 1-3 WAR and then disappears as his price goes up while the Yankees pay $20 or $30m (or $40 if they put Judge there) a year for the same production from someone else who had a better pedigree.
lol, maybe
Rice is pretty much DH only, so he really needs to have any value until he does it at the ML level. The Yankees don’t have DH room, so there’s not much to do.
eh, he might stick at catcher. wells did, maybe rice can
possibly, to my understanding Wells was a much better defender than Rice though.
that is concerning
Rice didn’t play for a few years so he has room to grow defensively. Bad defense was Wells rap also.
ooo, stroman jr day
“The unorthodox ramp-up seemed to hamper Snell’s performance on the mound, as the 31-year-old left-hander ended up going 0-3 with an 11.57 ERA and a 1.97 WHIP in 11 2/3 innings over his first three starts of 2024.”
And now he’s hurt.
There’s no particular point I want to make by posting this (e.g., that getting him would have been a bad idea).
I think my “snell sucks” comments were a shade optimistic
I was legit shocked that they just threw Snell into the rotation to start the season.
The Yankees have their home grown version in Gil