The Yankees spent yesterday’s off-day in Cleveland, which seems like an appropriate punishment after getting swept at home by the Blue Jays. The AL East lead has been trimmed from six games to 1.5 games in 12 days, though the Yankees are still three games up on Toronto in the loss column. That sounds a little better. Anyway, I have some thoughts.
1. As ugly as that series was against the Blue Jays, it is worth remembering the pitching staff held Toronto’s high-powered offense to ten runs in three games. I would have signed up for that in a heartbeat heading into the series. One game was decided by one run, another by two runs. That’s nothing. The offense just went into a miserable slump at a bad time and the pitching staff received no support. The offensive slump won’t last forever, in fact I bet it’ll end very soon, and when it does we’ll all feel better about things. The Blue Jays deserve all the credit in the world for the sweep. But let’s not act like the three games were an accurate representation of the 2015 Yankees either. The pitching staff did a fine job against that offense and when the Yankees start hitting again, things won’t look so lopsided.
2. The lack of trade deadline activity is already starting to come back to bite the Yankees. They were looking to add a right-handed reliever, didn’t, and there was Branden Pinder in the tenth inning Friday night. They kept an eye out for a second baseman, didn’t get one, and Stephen Drew has predictably been invisible since the deadline. Starting pitcher? They wanted one of those too but didn’t land one. Now they’re breaking in Luis Severino in the middle of a postseason race, which might turn out fine, except calling up Severino was something they could have done anyway, even if they had made a trade. (Unless they traded him for David Price, of course.) The Dustin Ackley trade is insignificant, it’s unlikely he would have had any impact had he not gotten hurt, so the roster right now is basically the same roster that got them through the first half of the season.
3. The current second base situation — again, literally Drew and Brendan Ryan — says a lot about what the Yankees think of Rob Refsnyder, doesn’t it? They can say whatever they want about liking him long-term, but actions speak louder than words. The second base situation has become so untenable that if they believed Refsnyder could help, he’d be up here. (Longer than four games, I mean.) They’ve been very aggressive with their prospects this year, whether it was the outfielders or the relievers or Severino, yet there is Refsnyder stuck in Triple-A. They must really not believe his defense is ready or simply do not expect him to hit much. The Yankees are pretty good at evaluating their own prospects — yes, they do miss on some, that’s inevitable, but when’s the last time they traded away a young player they truly regret? — so calling them stupid would be sorta silly. Refsnyder’s prospect stock was always more stats than scouting report, and the stats this year haven’t been knocked your socks off (131 wRC+). That’s not enough for a bat first guy in Triple-A. I wish they’d call Refsnyder up just because I’m sick of watching Drew pop up three times a game, but I’m guessing there’s also a pretty good reason Refsnyder has not gotten an extended trial.
4. Based on this weekend, Pinder seems to be getting an opportunity to work his way into the Circle of Trustâ„¢. He’s been up and down a whole bunch of times this year — I count five different call-ups — and Joe Girardi used him against the top of that Blue Jays lineup not once, but twice. Either the scouting reports have been wrong (possible!) or Pinder has been throwing harder than ever before, averaging 97.2 mph and topping out at 98.4 mph with his fastball in his last three outings. That’s some serious gas. His slider is pretty sharp too:
That’s a nice looking slidepiece, though of course they don’t all look like that, just some. Adam Warren is stuck in low-leverage mop-up man purgatory, partly because he can throw three innings at time, and it seems like Pinder is at the front of the line among the relievers going up and down all season. Giving a young reliever high-leverage work for the first time can be a little scary — it did come back to bite the Yankees on Friday, after all — but everyone has to start somewhere, and I get the sense Pinder is being given an chance to show he deserves to stick and not ride the Triple-A shuttle.
5. All things considered, this has been a pretty great development year for the Yankees, don’t you think? Nathan Eovaldi and Didi Gregorius in particular have made tremendous strides since the start of the season, especially Eovaldi with his sporkball. I mentioned last week that pitching coach Larry Rothschild had Eovaldi start with a forkball grip to get used to it before shortening up to a splitter grip, and I was able to dig up some better photos of the grips. The photo on the left is from April and the photo on the right is from Eovaldi’s start Friday against the Blue Jays:
Eovaldi’s fingers were split far apart with his fingertips on the white of the baseball back in April. Now his fingers are on the seams. Also note the location of the “horseshoe” of the seams. In April it was between his fingers, right at the knuckles. Now it’s outside his fingers and closer to his thumb. Maybe I’m the only one who finds this interesting. As for Gregorius, his defense is much improved — does he not play a beautiful shortstop when he’s not making boneheaded decisions? his defensive tools are ridiculous — and so is his offense because he stopping pulling almost everything in mid-May (via Texas Leaguers):
Eovaldi and Gregorius are the most notable examples of development at the MLB level this year, but in the minors we’ve also seen Ben Gamel turn into a legitimate prospect, and Gary Sanchez take his game to the next level offensively, and Jorge Mateo handle an aggressive promotion to Low-A Charleston, so on and so forth. It’s not all good — Tyler Austin went backwards, for example — but most of it has been positive. I’ve always felt the Yankees were really good at identifying and acquiring talent. Their knack for finding useful pitchers in the double digit rounds of the draft year after year is not dumb luck at this point, for example. The problem has been developing that talent, and so far this year a lot of development has been positive, including Eovaldi and Didi at the big league level.
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