From Bryan Hoch:
Carlos Rodón reached for the baseball, gesturing toward the first-base dugout for his manager to stay put. There were two outs in the sixth inning on Sunday afternoon, and the Yankees left-hander craved one more batter, aiming to empty the tank with a strikeout.
Aaron Boone nodded, holding his position near the top step. Rodón kept his word, pumping three high-90s pitches past Korey Lee for his sixth strikeout, wrapping another solid outing. The Yankees coasted to their seventh straight win, completing a sweep of the White Sox with a 7-2 victory at Yankee Stadium.
“I wanted that last one,” Rodón said. “I checked the dugout and gave him a little sign, like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this. This one’s mine.’ I’m glad he left me in.”
Across the Yanks’ win streak, their starting pitchers have posted a 7-0 record with an 0.80 ERA (four earned runs in 45 innings). Each starter has tossed at least six innings while permitting two runs or fewer, the first time New York has achieved that feat since July 4-11, 2010.
That 2010 team was probably the last time I felt that the Yankees were clearly a World Series contender heading into the playoffs (I thought 2012, 2017-20 had a legit chance, as well, but not as clearly as 2010). By the way, that stat isn’t even CORRECT. The Yankees only had SIX starts like that in that stretch. Phil Hughes gave up five earned runs on July 4th. Weird thing to get wrong.
In any event, this was another excellent win, with Rodon ending up pitching a heck of a game after a scary start. I decided to give him the featured image (a rare smile from Rodon after he caught a line drive by basically just instinctively putting his glove out and snaring the ball on the fly) even though you could really argue that Berti’s three-run homer merited the honor.
The Yankees host a pretty good Mariners team with an EXCELLENT rotation for four games, so this will be a major test for the Yankees’ offense.
Watched a “plays of the week” video on MLB, then went and watched “the catch” by Edmonds. Still laugh out loud when he comes down with it. Incredible.
I love that catch. That and the Ozzie Smith one where it takes bad hop as he dives and he still snags it are probably my two favorite plays.
I went yesterday. Looked like Carlos was fortunate to be facing Chicago. He didn’t seem to have his best command or rhythm. Who knows? Easy for a mook in 320A to criticize
Baseball makes it so hard for me to be a fan with their rabid celebration of the military. Especially the Yankees. Ugh. So gross.
https://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?players=10155,1008082
Mike Trout had a freakishly similar career to Mickey Mantle through age 28. Since then he’s had a relatively rough go of it. Sad to see.
It’s because he decided to play his whole career for the Angels.
Rodon’s smile is a little sinister, like he’s a stranger sitting next to you at a bar who strikes up an uncomfortable conversation, and there’s going to be violence–not directed at you, but it will suck you into its vortex.
Watched the first episode of the Peacock doc about the 1990 Yankees. So much I don’t remember. Mel Hall brought two cougars to the clubhouse and the prom photo of his 15 year old girlfriend in the yearbook. Pascual Perez. And of course George.
I know times were somewhat different but I don’t know how “underage girl” got simply ignored, especially by the tabloids
It was the Reagan 80s not the swinging 60s. Somehow Hall stayed here 4 years.
FG has the Yankees atop their power rankings, which means nothing, but interestingly they have the Yanks as 97.6% to make the playoffs
Fine. Cashman is smart, I’m stupid. Rodon is an Ace, I can’t even play beer league softball, Stanton is back, I shouldn’t have doubted him, etc.
It’s amazing the difference Soto brought to the team.
You have a lot of good attributes too though
Baseball reference pre season 71 win engine looking really stupid
(cautiously) It’s a long season
That engine was pretty obviously terrible from the outset. IIRC, instead of more heavily weighting recent games, they just limited the sample size to ~50 games. Just a bizarre decision.
Yeah, forget the projection itself, the entire setup was mind-bogglingly terrible. Like a true affront to everyone’s intelligence, and a blight on an otherwise wonderful website.
Weird move by the Yankees. Hamilton is on the COVID IL (the first player this season to go on the COVID IL), which hopefully explains his poor recent performances, so they cut Colby White, and are calling up Clayton Andrews, who they DFAed earlier in the season. When Kahnle returns on Wednesday, they’re going to have to DFA Andrews again, so, in effect, they’re going to lose two pitchers to add Kahnle, and that seems suboptimal (Obviously, they likely don’t think that they’re “losing” that much with both of those pitchers, but if you think Andrews is good enough to put on the active roster, shouldn’t you think enough of him to not want to lose him?).
The Yankees might be getting Matt Sauer back, as well, as the Royals cut him.