From Zack Sweet:
Will Warren had spent the better part of two weeks searching for something that, in his mind, had quietly disappeared.
Not velocity. Not movement. Just the freedom to pitch.
By Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, it was back.
“I think I had fun today for the first time in a long time,” Warren said.
That freedom showed up everywhere. In the confidence to throw a career-high 24 changeups. In the willingness to attack the strike zone. In the pace that barely gave the Cubs a chance to settle in.
The result was one of the finest outings of Warren’s young career, leading the Yankees (62-48) to a crisp 2-0 victory over the Cubs and extending what has quietly become one of baseball’s most dominant stretches by a starting rotation.
That was EASILY the best we have seen Will Warren pitch as a Yankee. It was like he took every lesson he has OBVIOUSLY been told to do over the years by Matt Blake (be aggressive, throw strikes, don’t waste pitches) and actually mostly DID it (he still wasted a lot of pitches, but he did so well in the other at-bats that his pitch count remained really low until thing fell apart a bit in the seventh).
Warren typically falls apart in big spots, so I get pulling him with two men on in the seventh, but I really would have liked to have seen him try to get Hoerner. As it was, we got to see a bounceback from Paul Blackburn. I really think we need to reconsider that Antonaccci home run that Blackburn gave up. That was just SUCH a fluky home run. I don’t think we should really worry about that sort of thing from Blackburn going forward. The Murakami home run, well, sometimes good hitters make a good swing on a tough swing, and if Blackburn is facing, like, I dunno, Junior Caminero, I wouldn’t say that there is no chance for Caminero to hit a homer, but I’d say that against ANY Yankee pitcher.
Blackburn was excellent (although Volpe and Cabby made it close with a terrible play in Blackburn’s first batter faced with two outs and two men on in the seventh. Volpe half-assed a toss to Cabby at second with Happ busting his ass from first base to try to beat out the force play, and Cabby, for some fucking reason, didn’t have his foot on the second base bag BEFORE making the catch).
Spencer Jones blasted a home run against a lefty. If he could actually put his shit together, that’d be amazing.
The Dodgers decided to bizarrely punt a game against the Red Sox, which sucks, so the Yankees remain 3.5 up on Boston, but they gained a game on Tampa Bay, who lost to the White Sox. Honestly, though, just keep hanging in there until Tuesday, and reinforcements will likely arrive. The pitching has been so good that if Cashman can just add a few good hitters, this will be a very good team even WITHOUT Aaron Judge (but, well, you know, it sure would be better to have him back).
I’m intrigued with the idea of flipping Jazz to make room to trade for Arraez. You really don’t have room for both of them on the roster (they’re both lefties and I don’t think Jazz is a realistic option at third base), but Arraez has made himself a good second baseman somehow, so for this particular lineup, you’re probably better off with Arraez at second over Jazz, so if there is a National League contender that has use for Jazz, you could work out a deal where you trade Jazz in one deal and acquire Arraez in another. Cashman is obviously willing to trade veterans for upgrades if need be (like when he dealt from the Yankees MLB starting pitching depth in 2022 to acquire a centerfielder), so I wouldn’t rule it out (man, looking back at that 2022 trade deadline, Scott Effross was so fucking good in his short time as a Yankee, but then ended his career with an injury RIGHT BEFORE the playoffs started. It is such bullshit that Chapman was SO bad in 2022, and then won a World Series in 2023).
Hopefully Will Warren also helped make himself a trade asset. The featured image is him high-fiving his catcher.
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Doval traded to the Pirates for two prospects. Excellent news, especially with Cashman’s history of finding value in the prospects acquired in deals like this.
As I noted the other day, there was no way Doval was going to be on the team come Tuesday, but I thought he was going to be in the minors. I imagine that 40-man roster spots were a consideration, as well.
Must be mediocre prospects. One, Omar Alfonzo, is ranked #17 in the Pirates system. He’s a catcher and teams don’t usually trade a good catching prospect. Goodbye, Doval, is what matters.
From Reddit:
Probably nothing, but, again, Cashman’s best skill is clearly his ability to pick up interesting prospects from other teams in seemingly throwaway trades (seen recently with the guy they got for Oswald Peraza).
TJ Rumsfeld for Nick Nelson
Luis Gil for Jake Cave
Zach Littell for James Pazos
Michael King for Garrett Cooper and Caleb Smith
Chad Green and Luis Cessa for Justin Wilson (okay, that one was probably not really a throwaway trade. The others were!)
Brewers traded for Bo Naylor. I wonder if Gary Sanchez is available.
I’d trade for him in a heartbeat.
Next move recall Jake Bird???
It’ll be interesting to see who it is. I imagine whoever it is is someone they won’t mind burning an option on, because whoever it is is going to be sent right back down to the minors on Tuesday.
Next call, remove Jake Bird.
By the way, what ever happened to Oswaldo Cabrera (and Deanna Durbin, and that kind of thing)?
His ankle injury was career-altering, and he wasn’t that good to BEGIN with. He’s back to being okay enough in the minors. I imagine we’ll see a similar “throwaway” trade with him, as well. I dunno about Durbin. There was Chad Durbin. They traded him for the second-best closer in baseball who then came here and fucking sucked.
Brian, from Tom Lehrer’s spoken introduction to “What Ever Became of Humbert” (Hubert Humphrey, at the time Vice President of the United States”):
I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey.
He used to be a senator. From time to time you read something about him pinning a medal on somebody or making a speech or every now and then you read something in one of those ‘Where Are They Now’ columns — “Whatever Became of Deanna Durbin and Hubert Humphrey and so on…”
As someone once remarked to Max Schuemann, “Take me to your Lieder”.
I’d like to bring up the million articles we’ve seen about how Arraez is proof that a high batting average can actually correspond to very little value. Do we suddenly think that’s not true anymore?
…
Also, didn’t Jazz play a pretty damned good when he got traded to the Yankees? Why is that not realistic now?
Arraez was a terrible second baseman, so he had to play first base or DH, and his numbers aren’t good for a first baseman or a DH. Now that he’s learned how to play a good second base, his numbers are valuable.
Similarly, his batting average isn’t the important state, it’s his OBP and slugging. He’s getting on base at a .364 clip, with a slug over .400. He’s currently operating at roughly Jazz’s peak as a Yankee, but doing so in different ways, ways that the Yankees have less of right now (they have, like, NO OBP guys right now).
So even if Jazz were to revert to his peak Yankee form, I’d rather have Arraez’s specific skills (if he can play second base, that is, and apparently he has now learned to do so).
Arraez addressed the defense thing with good coaching. Not sure the Yankees could maintain that. But the knock that I’ve heard isn’t explicitly about a batting average not being valuable; it’s that his approach might not mesh with Yankee Stadium the way it does in a spacious park like San Francisco. That is, he’s more prone to the influence of ballpark on BABIP, because he puts so many more balls in play.
Now, it would seem to me that there’s plenty of room in LF, and that if he actually has the bat control to square things up the way he wants, then he might be able to adapt, and on a pull-only pitch he might even be able to elevate to the short porch now and then. As long as he doesn’t become a GIDP machine like Verdugo or late career Jeter then I think he’d be okay. To me, the greatest utility of Arraez in the Yankees’ lineup is not batting average per se, it’s his low strikeout rate, which could reduce the RISP fail. This would be especially useful when the pitching is better (playoffs, or against a closer) or in a regular-season extra-inning situation (as we saw a couple times this week).
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-myth-of-luis-arraez/
As for Jazz, I think it makes a huge difference whether he feels relaxed or pressured. When he arrived he may have felt like he could relax a bit, what with Judge and Soto being Judge and Soto. But he put a lot of pressure on himself early this year, and with injuries to Judge, Stanton, and now Bellinger, I don’t know if he feels like he has to do too much. It seems like a mental thing with him – not that there’s anything wrong with that, not that it’s his fault – but I’m not convinced that he’ll be able to fix it in a contract year, let alone in the Yankees’ environment.
They getting this game in tonight?
Pete, re: your question on historical defensive value, here’s a useful summary:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/total_zone.shtml
For a fuller description, Sean Smith has a book, which I haven’t read but which looks super interesting: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/220207031-war-in-pieces
Thanks!
I hope by 6 pm there will be some changes not just at catching but with Schumann, phenom, Rosario, and Cabby.
M Schuemann (R) LF best Yankees leadoff hitter since Rickey
P Goldschmidt (R) 1B
A Rosario (R) DH
J Domínguez (S) RF
J Chisholm Jr. (L) 2B
A Volpe (R) SS
S Jones (L) CF
A Sánchez (R) C
J Caballero (R) 3B
LF M. Schuemann R
1B P. Goldschmidt R
DH Amed Rosario R
RF J. Dominguez S
2B J. Chisholm L
SS A. Volpe R
CF S. Jones L
C Ali Sanchez R
3B J. Caballero R
I hope Ben Rice is just getting a breather.
Boone’s devotion to Schuemann feels pathological.
Also, what the fuck is up with them CONSTANTLY getting lefties?!
Boone confirms that it is, in fact, just a breather for Rice. No idea why they didn’t wait until after the trade deadline, but whatever. It’s fair to note that he HAS looked a bit gassed lately (all that hard work DHing).
Suzie says the tarp is off. At noon it was pouring, wind whipping, flood warnings, and no way there would be a game. The wind is still whipping in, don’t hit it in the air.
i remember when we got reinforcements last year and the yanks lost that game to the marlins they were up like ten runs first.
and gallo.
i think veggie jackson had the right idea in a previous post – we are only several players, a gm and a manager away.