From Bryan Hoch:
The Yankees hope to keep Juan Soto in pinstripes for a very long time. And with performances like the one he enjoyed on Saturday afternoon, it’s not difficult to understand why.
Soto busted out of a mini-slump with his first multihomer performance as a Yankee, reaching base in all five trips to the plate as the Yankees won their sixth consecutive game, 6-1 over the White Sox at Yankee Stadium.
“It was a fun day,” Soto said. “I was definitely working on my swing, trying to find that feeling again where I was hitting the ball in the first month, getting that feeling back and getting that confidence back.”
Simply put, if every Yankee starter just gives up a run early and then dominates the rest of the game, they’ll probably end up winning a lot of games (even BBRef’s postseason projections now gives the Yankees a 90% chance of making the playoffs, even if they still think the Yankees will “just” win 91 games). After a shaky start to the game (which involved two fluky hits), Luis Gil then bore down and just DOMINATED the White Sox. His celebration of his FOURTEENTH strikeout is the featured image for today.
The offense was strong, as well, with Juan Soto’s monster game now pushing him ahead of Aaron Judge in OPS .975 to .973. If they could somehow post OPS over 1.000, that would pretty fucking cool. The last time the Yankees had two hitters have OPSes over 1.000 in the same season was all the way back in Joe DiMaggio’s second season in the Majors, when he and his veteran slugging teammate, Lou Gehrig, both surpassed 1.000 OPSes in 1937. 1937, people! Almost 90 years ago!
It speaks to how good Gil was today that Soto’s two home runs didn’t even merit him the featured image.
Stanton has 11 freakin’ home runs, and he’s not even really in the same conversation as Soto and Judge, that’s how good that duo has been this year! Crazy stuff.
How frustrating was it for years that almost never were Stanton and Judge on a tear at the same time. It was something we kept waiting for…
That’s how good Soto’s start was – Stanton and Judge WERE both on a tear over the past two weeks, together, finally… and it was hardly noticed.
Well, except for all the wins, of course.
Also, we’ve said little about the massive value to this team of Stanton not being the endless, queasily bottomless, pitch black hole I’m pretty sure we all expected him to be.
gaping, yawning
pawg
rodon day, hooray
Yeah if Soto, Judge and Stanton keep this up the Yanks will win a lot of games. Alas Stanton’s hot streaks get shorter and shorter with each passing season so I’m not betting on him at all.
Really glad we are getting some value out of LF. Verty has changed a negative gaping festering hole into a positive. That’s huge too.
I disagree–he had a hot start with the bat but is pretty cold now and his defense seems iffy.
91 wins would mean the Yankees would go 59-66 over the rest of the season, which we know is possible and perhaps even likely, but does BR have a “Yankees suck” variable in their model?
Their methodology is just silly. It still weighs last year’s Yankee team results more heavily than the first 47 games of this year. It’ll slowly shift over the next few weeks, and the Yankees will “suddenly” look a lot better.
Kahnle to return on Wednesday. I guess that’s the end of the line for Tonkin. Does Dennis Santana become the new long man?
Figure the bullpen hierarchy right now is:
Holmes
Weaver
Big gap
Hamilton
Gap
Burdi
Ferguson
Gonzalez
Santana
Gap
Tonkin
Don’t forget Marinaccio, who would be in an upper tier if he didn’t have options.