December 3, 2024

57 thoughts on “Yankees.com: Soto, Yanks’ ‘savage at-bats’ secure sweep, keep good times rolling”

  3. From a recent Fangraphs chat with Dan Szymborski, the creator of Zips:

    Dmytro: Volpe is 8th overall by WAR. Is this sustainable, can he really be a top 10 player in baseball going forward?

    Dan Szymborski: He’s playing Gold Glove level defense at short and a .800ish OPS line. You can wring out a lot of BABIP and he’s still awesome

    Top 10? That’s trickier as the competition is brutal

    But per 600 PA, ZIPS has him 14th in WAR for 2025, so it’s not preposterous

    1. Hitting is down across the league this year. It’s hard to notice with Judge and Soto on the team, but Volpe is a really good hitter, and like Z said, 800 OPS from a good shortstop is pretty great.

    2. It’s a crowded position with Henderson and Witt but Volpe is absolutely a young star

    4. Yankees passed on Gunnar and took T J Sikkema, because Cashman had to take some college arm he could trade. What a draft it could have been with Volpe and Henderson.

  4. Don’t the Yankees have an option for Weaver?

    Edit: yes, a 2.5M option. It has escalators, but based on IP, which he won’t hit as a reliever

    2. Awesome, I didn’t know that. Thanks for that! That’s a great job by Cash to get the option (and I have no idea why Weaver accepted an option).

    3. It has 3.5M in escalators if he pitches a bunch of innings. He hasn’t been good in years so arelatively reasonable option is a nice way to make another 2.5M+ more likely.

  5. RAB: “Just FYI, today is the deadline for the Yankees to activate Jasson Dominguez off the injured list. His 20-day rehab window is up. They’re almost certainly going to activate him and option him to the minors. He’s just got cleared to play CF in games last week.”

    Almost?

    2. I assume he’ll move to Scranton and stay there until/unless something forces them to bring him up. Barring an injury I presume he’s there until September.

    3. I think you’re correct. I don’t even think it’s necessarily the wrong move. It’s just a shame for him personally, as he clearly belongs to be in the Majors. I bet he’s on the playoff roster, though, as there’s no need to have, say, Jahmai Jones on the playoff roster.

    4. He could obviously replace grisham immediately, but then the Yankees would have to more evenly juggle the playing time of Verdugo and Stanton with Dominguez.

    5. If any one of those guys – Verdugo or Dominguez? – could play first, Dominguez could replace Rizzo in the line-up.

    6. It would be great if Stanton had another hot month and someone got tricked into thinking he’s kinda back and the yankees can get rid of him. Having a pure DH on the roster really hurts their flexibility.

      I’m not against a long term experiment with moving guys to first, doing it in the middle of a season is nuts though. First is not THAT easy to play, especially for an outfielder.

    7. You’d think – as a matter of psychology, at least – that first would be the position you’d pick up quickest, if only because you get so many reps per game. And you don’t need to wait until they’re Keith Hernandez, just until they’re decent, after which the reps (and the training, I’d hope) keep coming.

      I mean, Dominguez over Rizzo right now could be a major improvement in the lineup – and an improvement over what they already have is worth going for (another discussion, but we can have it, in theory). But maybe it really is crazy, impractical, impossible, I’m not ready to speak with assurance on the preparation arc.

    8. I think if you’re an infielder, 1B is not too hard to pick up, the game isn’t speeding up on you much and you’re already focused on footwork and agility, the big missing piece is flexibility, but that’s relatively minor overall (and can be developed in a pretty straight forward way).

      OF to 1B is tougher to predict because it involves a totally different set of athletic abilities/skills.

  6. Yankee single season OPS 1000+ post Mantle, pre Judge other than Arod: ONeill 1064 (inc), Giambi 1034, DJ 1011. Bernie 997 just missed.

  7. Historically, if Cashman likes his roster, he doesn’t fuck with it too much. What do you all think is the most likely move that Cashman makes at the trade deadline this year? Another reliever? A first base upgrade on Rizzo? A second base upgrade on Gleyber?

    Or do you think there’s just too much time left, and we won’t really know where their biggest area of need is until closer to the deadline?

    2. Based on absolutely nothing other than a gut feeling and A.J. Preller’s propensity for wheeling and dealing, I predict the Yankees will trade for HaSeong Kim.

    5. I’m hopeful a kopech deal gets done. a rhh platoon for rizzo or a promotion of rice

    1. You’d like to see Blake get a shot at any decent reliever, but I think they’d be better off hoping Lopez clears entirely, and then sign him to a minor league deal.

    1. they must have some sort of lucky charm, a ln older, balder, fatter, less successful version than the yankees’s

  12. Gil double dips in May, named AL pitcher of the month and AL rookie of the month. Gil is the first Yankees pitcher to win rookie of the month since the award began in 2001 (yikes!). And yeah, Judge AL player of the month for May, third straight May he’s won it.

    1. Gil’s BAA/BABIP suppression can’t last forever (I do believe it is a skill to some extent), but it’s quite fun while it lasts.

    3. I don’t know if he can sustain this low of a BAA, but it seems he hides the ball well (compared to someone like Severino) and it has some kind of late life. Batters seem genuinely confused when it gets to them.

    2. Dude bet 87k on parlays involving the Pirates and according to MLB won 4% of them.

      Oakland pitcher who got popped bet $99, got suspended for the season and forfeited 740k in salary.

      These guys are REALLY bad at ROI.

    3. And in the NBA Jontay Porter banned from NBA for violating league’s gaming rules
      A league investigation finds Porter violated league rules by disclosing confidential information to sports bettors and also bet on NBA games.

      Leigh Steinberg wrote an OP ED over the weekend on the subject before Marcano’s suspension was made public.

    5. To state the obvious: betting $99 threatens the integrity of baseball, the player lost (only) an entire season – case closed.
      Actually cheating in official MLB games – that is, directly and intentionally violating the integrity of actual MLB games – apparently that doesn’t threaten the integrity of baseball.

      That’s because the gambling taboo is a sacred cow, a historical icon of baseball history. It’s a traditional between-games ritual dance. What the Astros did (and yes, what the shot-around-the-world Giants did) is light years worse than anything Pete Rose did or tried to do, than any of the players we’re discussing did. Only actually throwing games for gamblers would make the gambling thing rise to that level. In short, it’s a anacronism, they don’t actually give even the slightest ghost of a f**k about the integrity of the game, or even pretending that they do.

    7. 231 bets. Which means he cashed 10 tickets. Guy had to be sending in around $500 parlays to be down 87k with 10 winners. He deserves to get banned for that alone. I always wish we got the details of the bet slips these guys were putting in. I want to know exactly how dumb the bets they made were.

      Career earnings of $1.7 mil. Negative WAR. Dude probably rightly surmised he could only wring another year or two of league minimum contracts out of the game. Wouldn’t be shocked if he thought his retirement plan was to pop a few 10-teamers.

    8. “Jontay Porter disclosed information to bettors.”

      Think about it, though – that attacks the integrity of gambling, not of baseball. It’s nowhere near as good a reason to ban a player as actual, direct in-game cheating.

    9. With the parlays that are offered you can in effect bet against yourself.

  18. If, as it seems, they believe the Marian is everything he appeared to be in his first appearance, can they really fail to find a way to bring him up? They’re really going to waste that in the minors? He’s already going to give us more than Stanton. Or Verdugo.

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