September 24, 2024

34 thoughts on “Yankees.com: Three Yankees HRs, including Judge’s 55th, seal sweep in Oakland”

  1. I know it’s true, but I find it extremely difficult to accept that playing the outfield would wear you down. Most of the time you just stand there. Occasionally you sprint for a bit.
    I look at Nadal-Djokovic five setters – it’s bat-shit insane.
    Much as I could care less about the NBA, and much as I love baseball, look at any NBA game.
    Most of the time, outfielders just stand there. If Nadal and Federer can do THAT into their late 30s, how can what outfielders do be a big deal for a professional athlete?

    In short, I have a hard time believing that’s Judge’s problem. I really think it’s something else. But I also have hope that maybe he’s coming out of whatever it is (preferably – was).

    1. Having never played high level athletics of any kind (it got in the way of my not having any girlfriends) I have no idea why an outfielder would get worn down. I did a quick search for it, but didn’t turn anything up.

      I often wonder about this. It may be as much mental as physical. The grind of competing at the highest level with the intense concentration that hitting requires might just be the bigger issue. That and the fact that it’s hard to get any lengthy rest. Managers are forever talking about how “banged up” players are at this time of year.

      I don’t get it, but I tend to accept it because everyone around baseball talks about it.

    2. I agree, even without the sprinting there is mental fatigue from maintaining hyperfocus for an hour and a half in the field every day over 6 months, particularly when it gets really hot outside. There’s a reason amphetamines were so widespread in 20th century MLB…

    4. I think it’s a *little* more than you’re giving it credit for. They’re moving around to reposition for every hitter, they go into some level of motion on every ball in play, they may have to run in to back up plays, etc.

      Or put it another way, they have several sprints at whatever their top speed is per game. Sprinters don’t do more than what, 3-4 sprints per day in a match? We don’t think of sprinters as having an easy sport.

      I agree that a 5-setter at Wimbledon is more grueling, but most tennis matches are three sets and they usually go 6-1, 6-0 or whatever. They’re not all tests of fitness.

    5. See, and I think you’re overplaying it. After a 3-set match players are often drenched with sweat. They can run more in one long point than an outfielder moves over some (some!) entire games.
      Basketball is the same. Hockey’s got to be right up there. They sweat like pigs. (Okay, I haven’t done the pig study, but you get the point.)
      Baseball players usually come out of a game without sweating at all, at least visibly. Repositioning yourself is not an effort. A bit of running here and there is nothing like those other sports.
      It’s not a knock. I like baseball BETTER than those other sports. But – I mean, come on. Whatever I love baseball for, it’s not for the grueling physical toll it takes on the players.
      (Pitchers’ arms being the obvious exception.)

  2. Also, Gil didn’t get clubbed today. This is as bad as he’s been in a long while, and it was pretty good. The inherited runner rule is ridiculous, we don’t have to credit it. How many Yankee starters have a better ERA for the year?
    I wouldn’t think of dropping Gil from the rotation, and I don’t think they are thinking of it.
    Cole, Schmidt, Gil, Rodon, in whatever order (but probably in that order, if I were doing the choosing). Who else would you even consider?

  3. Big Fan Rules for inherited runner:
    If the guy is on first and there are one or two outs and he scores, count it against the relief pitcher.
    Man on second 2 outs counts again relief pitcher.
    Everything else counts against the starter.

    1. I don’t know. Man on 3rd, no outs – even then, the relief pitcher actually let the run in. How about giving him a third of the responsibility for that run? Or a quarter of that run? But not NOTHING.

  4. Top 5 Hitters, career wRC+, minimum 4,000 PAs:
    1) Babe Ruth, 194
    2) Ted Williams, 187
    3) Aaron Judge, 173 (tie)
    3) Turkey Stearnes, 173 (tie)
    3) Barry Bonds, 173 (tie)

  6. So at this point in his career, Judge is tied with Barry Bonds for the highest wRC+ of anyone who played entirely post-integration. Wow. Please let him stay healthy.

    Also, if you mix up the last two names on that list, it kinda sounds like Bear Stearns Turkey Bonds, which I’m told may have been an underappreciated contributor to the financial crisis of 2008.

    1. See the problem was the way they sold pieces of the turkeys in tranches. Higher price lower risk for the drumstick, low price high risk for the kidneys. Totally decoupled from the value of the underlying bird.

    1. Then you never had bear turkey prepared properly. There’s a little place in the Great Smoky Mountains …

  8. Wait a second with this talk of “silliness”. If you’re going to recognize pre-integration AL/NL stats, then you ought also to recognize verified Negro Leagues stats, as a matter of historical record. Methodology is discussed here: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/
    If it’s “silliness” to compare current MLB players’ stats to those of Negro Leagues players, then it’s equal silliness to compare current players to pre-integration AL/NL statistics. If you are willing to ignore the records of Turkey Stearnes, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Smokey Williams, etc., then you should also be willing to ignore the records of Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Cobb, Anson, Lajoie, Speaker, etc, not to mention Young, Mathewson, and Walter Johnson; and the entire pre-1947 careers of legends such as DiMaggio, Williams, Feller, etc.

    Now, I don’t like throwing out data, and I don’t want to discard any of the historical record; and I’m not interested in whether Judge is better than Ruth. It’s not a useful exercise. Nobody is offering Babe Ruth a contract (though I’m sure Cashman would want the Babe’s cachectic, cancer-ridden corpse ahead of Dominguez on the depth chart). Instead, the joy of these kinds of comparisons is to help appreciate how awesome Judge is while I can still watch him play; and one of the things that helps to appreciate this is to note that in an integrated league (indeed, one with the most access ever to talented players from around the world), he’s as dominant as legendary players from 100 years ago when the leagues were divided and variance in performance was a lot greater.

    3. They’re using ridiculously small samples from the NeL. The NeL were always known for being pitching poor, with the best study I’ve seen saying they were AAA level, and sometimes worse. So the impact black pitchers had in MLB post 1947 was very minimum, immeasurably so I would suggest, thus that is a dead end argument of any impact on pre-1947 hitters.

    4. The problem with including the Negro league is that baseball reference has turned certain statistics into a joke. Lowest single season ERA? Some guy you never heard of who supposedly threw 28 innings of 0.63 in 1944. (Career ERA of over 4.) 28 innings? Is that all he pitched or did they miss all the box scores of games he gave up multiple runs?

      Second, I think it’s pretty well established that it was a hitters league. Much like we know Chuck Kline wasn’t as good as his basic numbers, we need to do something similar to those.

      Of course satchel Paige clearly an awesome pitcher – possibly the best of all time based on what he did in MLB as an old man. And I have no doubt that Josh Gibson and others would have been stars. I just can’t compare stats to mlb that had much better score keeping.

      And while you are right that pre-integration can’t be compared to post, 8 teams can’t be compared to 15, and day games to night games, and travel only on the East coast fo cross country trips, and better medical care to whatever they were doing back then. They didn’t even have penicillin!

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