October 8, 2024

16 thoughts on “Yankees.com: With Soto sidelined, Yanks drop 10th in 13 games

  1. The funny thing is – this same team was awesome, the best in the majors, for more than a third of the season.
    Then they become one of the worst. The only significant injury was Stanton (at least for now, getting Rizzo out of the line-up was a plus).
    It’s the same pitchers and the same hitters – only now instead of being great, they’re terrible.
    Not slightly worse – from best to (roughly speaking) worst. Not some improving and others tailing off, but the whole team – from best to (roughly speaking) worst.
    Well, okay, everybody except 2 of the 3 superstars.
    What the hell is that?

    Cole better be Cole.

    1. The only significant injury was Stanton (at least for now, getting Rizzo out of the line-up was a plus).

      Well, it’s worth noting that of the games that either Soto and Judge have missed, they’ve now lost 4 of the 5, so those guys missing ANY time is oddly significant! Also, I would consider the Clarke Schmidt and Martian injuries to be significant ones, as was the Loaisiga one, plus the Effross setback injury that kept him from being ready to start the season. Definitely The Martian, though. I think he was a key piece of their plan for this season, as the idea was likely to call him up if he forced his way on to the team, while also serving as a key replacement in case of inevitable injuries.

    2. I’d add Schmidt, agreed.
      (Obviously Dominguez is a big deal, but we can leave him out, as he wasn’t there being great and then there being wretched. He could have helped, and I can’t wait for that to actually happen, of course.)
      But Schmidt and Stanton didn’t make everyone performing well suddenly perform badly. It seem so unlikely.

    3. “unlikely”

      That it happened in 2022 can be read 2 ways: either we’ve seen it, so there’s some hidden logic to why that’s still relevant to this team, with a somewhat different roster, OR having it happen once was already crazy improbably, twice would be orders of magnitude more improbably.

      In 2022, didn’t they suddenly get a number of key injuries after a shocking, unyankee period of zero injuries in the first half?

    4. The offense sliding makes sense, as it was always pretty much Judge and Soto and hoping one other guy has a good day. But the pitching going from elite to putrid is really odd. And it’s not really injury related, everyone is experiencing the most brutal regression to the mean – yes, losing Schmidt/Poteet was an issue, but Cole is back and also sucking.

    5. As Don noted the other day, the second game back from an injury is usually the toughest, since you don’t have the adrenaline pumping from the first start. So I’m willing to give Cole a mulligan on his second start. If he sucks today, then, well, that will be concerning.

      And yes, everyone losing it all at once is just mind-boggling. I am now starting to be a bit suspicious about perhaps MLB fucking with the ball again. Look at some of the guys who had gotten off to great starts who have been rocked recently – Gil, of course, but also Tanner Houck, Seth Lugo, Grayson Rodriguez, Shota Imanaga. If you had told me before the season that all of those guys (plus Nestor and Rodon) would struggle, I would have said, “Okay, I can believe it” (which is why I wanted the Yankees to get another starter) so perhaps after deadening the ball, Manfred has decided to UNdeaden it, and these guys are reverting to what they would be like without a dead ball.

    6. Brian, that actually makes a lot of sense.
      Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure this pitching staff is built to adjust to that.

    7. I recall seeing something about balls in Cleveland traveling further than elsewhere, I wonder if they were the test park and the MLB put those balls into play.

      Or, perhaps even worse than the MLB fucking with the ball is the idea that they are not and just producing very inconsistent batches of balls. I’m honestly not sure which is worse.

  2. The Yankees had four catchers heading into this past offseason.

    Two of them are having good seasons. They’re not the two currently on the Yankees.

    Rortvedt 1.2 bWAR
    Higgy 1.0 bWAR
    Trevy 0.6 bWAR
    Wells 0.5 bWAR

  3. Juan Soto said he may get an MRI or CT scan on his right hand tomorrow. He felt pain and weakness while swinging in BP yesterday. Said it feels better today, though. The Yankees haven’t posted their lineup yet.

    1. One the one hand, yes. On the other hand, they seem to be possessed of a truly rare level of idiocy on matters of health (and not only), so who knows?

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