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Trade Deadline Rumors: Gausman, Britton, Straily, Gray, Abreu

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Greg Bird’s high school batterymate. (Scott Taetsch/Getty)

The 2018 non-waiver trade deadline is one week and one day away now. Already Manny Machado, Brad Hand, and Jeurys Familia have been moved. More deals are on the way and I am pretty certain the Yankees will trade for a starting pitcher at some point before next Tuesday. Just don’t ask me which starting pitcher. Anyway, here are the latest rumors.

Yankees have checked in on Gausman

The Yankees have checked in on Orioles right-hander Kevin Gausman, reports Roch Kubatko. With Machado gone, the O’s might as well hang a “For Sale” sign on the rest of the roster. No sense in keeping anyone because they probably won’t be around long enough to be part of the next contending Orioles team, including Gausman, who is under team control through 2020. Trade him. Trade them all.

The 27-year-old Gausman is having a very typical Kevin Gausman season, which means a 4.33 ERA (4.48 FIP) with okay-ish enough strikeout (20.0%), walk (5.6%), and grounder (46.7%) rates. We’ve seen enough of Gausman over the years to know that, when he’s on, he can dominate any lineup. A mid-90s fastball that still touches 99 mph combined with a good slider and a nasty splitter is quite the arsenal. I can’t help but feel like Gausman should be so much better than he currently is. Depending on the price, I’m totally on board with him as a change of scenery guy.

Yankees among several teams in on Britton

The Yankees are among several teams with interest in O’s closer Zach Britton, reports Jon Heyman and Jerry Crasnick. Britton is an impending free agent and he’s as good as gone before Tuesday’s deadline. There’s no doubt about that. Did the Familia trade set the market for Britton? Both are impending free agents and Familia has been healthier. The Mets basically salary dumped Familia for two fringe prospects and international bonus money.

Since coming back from his Achilles injury Britton has a 3.45 ERA (4.43 FIP) with a 64.1% ground ball rate in 15.2 innings. He’s been much, much better the last few times out as he continues to shake off the rust following a long layoff. Maybe Aroldis Chapman’s ongoing knee issues and near meltdown Saturday has me spooked, but I am totally cool with going after another high-end reliever. Chasen Shreve is easily replaceable, so even if Chapman stays healthy and effective the rest of the way, there’s still room in the bullpen for a guy like Britton.

Teams scouting Gray

Several teams are scouting — and have interest in — Sonny Gray, and, according to Heyman and Nick Cafardo, there is some belief the Yankees want to move him. Of course, the Yankees still want to add to their rotation, so trading Gray means they’d have to bring in two starters, not just one. Can’t say I’m surprised teams are interested in buying low on Gray, who has a strong track record, is under control next season, and has pitched well outside hitter friendly Yankee Stadium.

So far this season Sonny has a 5.34 ERA (4.41 FIP) and, while he’s pitched better his last two times out, I think we’re still a long way from saying he’s turned the corner. I need to see more. A lot more. If the Yankees can use Gray as part of a package to get a high-end starter with control beyond this season, then by all means do it. I wouldn’t trade him just to trade him though. That’s silly. Getting Sonny to right the ship is probably the single best rotation addition the Yankees can make the rest of the way.

Yankees, Marlins talked Straily

Straily. (Jennifer Stewart/Getty)

According to Heyman, the Yankees briefly spoke to the Marlins about right-hander Dan Straily, though the two sides are not close to a deal. If nothing else, Straily can’t become a free agent until the 2020-21 offseason, so he’s a controllable starter. The Marlins are terrible and presumably willing to trade anyone, including Straily. He’s available. This is a not a “they might not want to move him” situation.

Straily, 29, has a 4.02 ERA (5.27 FIP) with 18.9% strikeouts this season, and he continues to have a skill set poorly suited for Yankee Stadium. That means lots of walks (11.1%) and few ground balls (33.5%). He’s posted a 1.52 HR/9 and 13.5% HR/FB rate the last two seasons despite pitching his home games in spacious Marlins Park. Straily’s worth a phone call because why not? Never hurts to check in. He just seems like a real bad fit for Yankee Stadium and the AL East in general.

Giants have interest in Abreu

The Giants have interest in right-hander Albert Abreu, my No. 4 Yankees prospect, reports Brendan Kuty. Abreu is currently on the High-A Tampa disabled list with an elbow issue but is a midseason top 100 prospect according to MLB.com (60th) and Baseball America (79th). Abreu will be 23 in September and he’s thrown 129.1 total innings since Opening Day 2017 due to a variety of injuries. He is not a prospect worth hugging. Abreu should absolutely be available.

Here’s the thing though: What do the Giants have to offer the Yankees? Forget about Madison Bumgarner. They’re not trading him. It’s not realistic at all. Johnny Cueto? Jeff Samardzija? No and no. Too many injuries and too expensive. Perhaps lefty relievers Tony Watson and Will Smith make sense. The Yankees did try to sign Watson over the winter, remember. Watson and Smith have both been excellent this year and San Francisco needs to dump salary to get under the $197M luxury tax threshold, which is a goal. That’s why Austin Jackson was salary dumped earlier this month. Hmmm. Maybe Abreu for Watson or Smith works?

Yanks offered Drury for Machado; Padres wanted Andujar for Hand

According to Cafardo, the Yankees included Brandon Drury in their offer for Machado before he was traded to the Dodgers. Also, according to Andy Martino, the Padres requested Miguel Andujar during trade talks about Hand. Considering San Diego was able to pry elite prospect Francisco Mejia away from the Indians in the Hand trade, asking for Andujar wasn’t far-fetched at all.

Anyway, the Yankees have two Major League caliber third basemen in Andujar and Drury, so it only makes sense to make at least one of them available. That said, Drury is versatile enough to play elsewhere — the Yankees have started using him at first and second bases recently — so it’s not imperative they clear the logjam. There’s room for both guys on the roster. But, if one can net you a really good pitcher or a dude like Machado, go for it.

Post-All-Star, Pre-Deadline Thoughts

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(Presswire)

Greetings, readers. I hope you’re enjoying our return to baseball as we gear up for the trade deadline and the stretch run. Cliche as it is, I can’t believe we’re here already. It seems like just yesterday we were talking about shaking out a new lineup and anticipating Aaron Boone’s performance as a manager. The years really do seem to go faster and faster, don’t they? Anyway, here are some thoughts I’ve had about baseball and the Yankees, ranging from the All Star Game to the trade deadline, and a few places in between.

All-Star Awesomeness 

The main wish you have for your team’s All-Star participants is for them not to get hurt. Next, it’s for them to play well and have fun. It’s hard to argue with the latter two for the Yankees’ representatives at the ASG. Aaron Judge hit a home run and Luis Severino had a great inning, featuring a nasty strikeout of Bryce Harper. Additionally, Aroldis Chapman snapped a bunch of cool pictures and Gleyber Torres videoed Judge’s homer from the dugout. More stuff like that, please. The ASG is already an exhibition, so just go all out with it. Have bench players video everything. Mic up all the players–pitcher and catcher excluded–and play that audio for an inning. It’s unlikely that MLB switches up to a new format–East v. West; US v. World, etc.–so making the game as engaging as possible is the route to go. Will it attract a bunch of new eyes? Probably not. But it will give current fans a bit of a new look and that’s a welcome thought.

Dissing Mike Trout to Own the….????

I’m obviously last in line for this take, but this is what you get when you write on Sundays and stuff happens mid-week. I’ve been up front with my desire for MLB to do a better job of marketing its stars and young players, Mike Trout chief among them. Clearly, Mike Trout is fine with the exposure he already has and with doing things more behind the scenes. That’s great and good for him. Not everyone has to be outgoing. How bad of a look is it, then, for Rob Manfred to shovel the blame onto Trout? How many times is baseball going to keep shooting itself in the foot publicly? Aside from the NFL and its anthem-centric debacles, how could MLB have worse national PR this year? Between the griping about too many homers and walks and strikeouts and constantly digging up the ‘bad’ parts of the game to now calling out the best player in the game, Manfred is on a real streak here.

Trout is essentially the epitome of the “play the game the ‘right’ way and keep your head down” culture that MLB and its players foster from day one on. If that’s how he is, fine, but that doesn’t mean it should be a one size fits all thing. Baseball is starting to get that idea, but it’s not quite trickling down to the players. Letting players express themselves in-game will only help bring new eyes to the set. Hopefully, the players start to realize they have an interest in this, too, and beaning a guy for being happy about something is not the way to go anymore.

My Kingdom For a Pitcher

Remember all the way back to 2016 when the Yankees had that disaster series against the Rays and it was the impetus for trading away Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Carlos Beltran? Regardless of that series, the Yankees should’ve done it anyway, but the path showed itself there and the Yankees are better for having done it. Similarly, the Yankees have needed and will need to trade for a starting pitcher this year. The moment that made that even more abundantly clear was on Friday night when Domingo German let the Mets hang three on him in the first inning. Undoubtedly, the Yankees have been working on deals for starters behind the scenes before, during, and after that mess of an inning, but that was just a perfect reminder of what the Yankees will need to do to win the division. Sonny Gray has–luckily–had two good starts in a row (albeit against bad teams), so hopefully he’s beginning to build momentum. Even if he is, though, the Yankees still need a starter.

2018 Midseason Review: The Rotation

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Tanaka and Severino. (Mike Stobe/Getty)

It is kind of incredible how good the Yankees rotation has been despite a laundry list of injuries (spoiler alert: three of the starting pitchers discussed below are or were on the disabled list) and the usual off-season/pre-season question marks. They rank:

  • 5th in GB%
  • 5th in soft contact percentage
  • 6th in fWAR
  • 6th in park-adjusted FIP
  • 11th in K%
  • 12th in BB%
  • 12th in park-adjusted ERA

It’s not an elite group, to be sure – but it’s nonetheless a strength when a pitching staff is average across the board. And it’s especially nice to see for a team that purportedly tried and failed to improve throughout the off-season, and remains ever-vigilant as the trade deadline approaches.

Let’s take a look at how the individual parts measure-up.

Domingo German

(Tom Szczerbowski/Getty)

Midseason Grade: D

It would be easy to look at German’s numbers as a starter and settle on an ‘F’ for his grade. There are several ugly peripherals in those 63.1 IP, including a 5.97 ERA (6th worst among starters with at least 60 IP), 4.58 FIP, and 1.71 HR/9, and he has failed to make it out of the fifth in three of his last four starts. That’s not great, Bob.

But we’re grading relative to expectations here, and I don’t think the expectations for the team’s 6th or 7th starter were all that high. Moreover, there are a lot of positives hidden in German’s season, too. His 26.6% strikeout rate is well above-average, his 8.4% walk rate is right around average, and his 41.7% groundball rate is right there, too. He’s also authored five quality starts (in twelve chances), and had another two that were just shy of that not-so-lofty standard.

Does that make up for his five starts that ranged from “bad” to “awful?” Not at all. But I do think that the combination of his slot on the depth chart, strong peripherals, and fifty-fifty shot of giving the team an adequate outing brings him above the standard of a failure.

Going forward, there are two things to pay attention to with German. The first is simple: his velocity.

He has lost about 2 MPH off of his fastball from the beginning of the season, which isn’t too shocking as he spent the first month in the bullpen. At the same time, though, he’s lost just over 1 MPH since he first joined the rotation on May 6 – and fastball velocity tends to increase as the season goes on and the weather warms up. It’s not necessarily a concern at this point, but it’s there.

The other is German’s pitch use in general. Fastballs (his four-seamer and sinker) represented 40.6% of his offerings in May, 47.6% in June, and 55.9% so far in July. With his velocity backing up a bit and three of his last four starts being bad, German’s pitch selection may well be an issue.

Sonny Gray

(Mike Stobe/Getty)

Midseason Grade: F

I was excited when the Yankees swung their deal for Gray last July, as a long-term believer in his approach, stuff, and resume. And I was certain that he was going to come into 2018 looking more like the pitcher that they dealt for (that is, the guy we saw with the A’s in the first-half) than the nibbler that the Yankees received. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, and Gray is sitting on a 5.46 ERA (88th out of 92 pitchers with 90-plus IP).

There really isn’t a positive way to spin Gray’s season to-date, either. He has seven quality starts in eighteen outings, and has failed to make it out of the fifth seven times. He’s allowed four-plus runs eight times, and he’s just barely averaging 5 IP per start – both of which make him a larger drain on the bullpen than the other starters. Gray may not be the worst starter in the league right now, but he’s fairly close when you focus on pitchers who have been in the rotation the entire season.

If I had to hazard a guess at the cause of this, I would focus on his pitch selection. Or, perhaps more accurately, the anti-fastball approach of the Yankees in general.

Gray is throwing fewer four-seamers than ever before, and more curves and sliders. From 2014 through 2017, he averaged about 35% four-seamers and 30% breaking balls; in 2018, those numbers are 26.7% and 39%, respectively. That’s a fairly drastic change of approach, and that sequencing could undoubtedly cause issues.

At least he ended the first-half on a high note.

Jonathan Loaisiga

(Mike Stobe/Getty)

Midseason Grade: Incomplete

Loaisiga is one of the better stories of the Yankees season, having made his way back from multiple injuries to dominate four levels of the minors between 2017 and 2018, and making the jump from Double-A to the majors in mid-June. He has alternated good starts with bad so far, but the sum of his parts has been fantastic – he has a 28.4% strikeout rate, 60.0% groundball rate, 3.00 ERA, and 2.87 FIP. It’s only eighteen innings, but it’s encouraging. And, when you see the way his pitches move, it’s not surprising that folk haven’t been able to hit him with authority just yet. Just look at that change-up:

That’s a thing of beauty, isn’t it?

It was short-lived, though, as he had to have a cortisone shot in his shoulder, and is currently shut-down. We knew that he was on some manner of innings limit, considering that he didn’t pitch at all in 2014 or 2015 due to injuries, and tossed a combined 35.0 IP between 2016 and 2017 around Tommy John surgery – but seeing him go down with shoulder inflammation isn’t what you want.

Jordan Montgomery

(Elsa/Getty)

Midseason Grade: Incomplete

The Yankees were only able to enjoy six starts from Montgomery this year, as the 25-year-old underwent Tommy John surgery in June. Those six starts were 27.1 innings of 3.62 ERA ball, which is quite good … but that’s all that they’ll get from him until sometime next Summer.

If you’re looking for some semblance of a silver lining here, it is worth noting that Montgomery had no prior injury history of note, and they didn’t play the waiting game with rest and rehabilitation. Surgery isn’t great, to be sure, but if it’s a necessity, sooner is better than later.

CC Sabathia

(Al Bello/Getty)

Midseason Grade: A

Is an ‘A’ somewhat aggressive here? Maybe. But it’s difficult to be anything other than impressed by how successful Sabathia’s reinvention has been. His 3.51 ERA is his lowest since 2012, and he has held the opposition to three or fewer runs in 66% of his starts. With the exception of Luis Severino, no Yankees starter has kept the team in a better position to win than Sabathia.

Are there issues with Sabathia’s season? Sure. He spent two weeks on the disabled list in April, and he’s routinely shelled when he has to turn the lineup over for a third time (when opposing batters hit .359/.404/.644) – but his overall numbers speak for themselves. As does his pitch selection:

Sabathia has all but eliminated his four-seamer at this point in his career, and he’s also throwing his sinker far less often this season. As per Brooks Baseball, there have been eleven starts in which Sabathia hasn’t used a single four-seamer, including his last four outings. Cutters and sliders make up more than 70% of his offerings, and that mix was worked wonders thus far.

The All-Star break was well-timed for the soon to be 38-year-old, as he has scuffled in his last two starts. He’ll have nine days of rest by the time he gets the call, and he has thrived on extra rest this year, posting a 1.59 ERA in his six starts with six-plus days of rest. At his age, it would make sense for the Yankees to continue to give him as much extra rest as possible; whether or not they’re able to is the question.

Luis Severino

(Tom Szczerbowski/Getty)

Midseason Grade: A+

I’m going to present a series of MLB rankings for Severino, as I think that illustrates the greatness of his season better than any narrative can. He ranks:

  • 4th in ERA+
  • 5th in bWAR
  • 5th in FIP
  • 7th in fWAR
  • 7th in ERA
  • 7th in IP
  • 9th in WHIP
  • 10th in strikeouts
  • 10th in K-BB%
  • 11th in K%

In addition to those lofty placements, he has also completed at least five innings in all twenty starts, and has only allowed more than three runs twice. He’s a bona fide ace, through and through.

Severino did stumble into the break a bit, allowing 7 runs in his last two starts of the half, so he’ll almost certainly appreciate the extra rest afforded by the break. His next start isn’t until July 23, so he’ll have had ten days of rest (not including the All-Star game) when he takes the mound.

And, for what it’s worth, he had a fun All-Star game, catching Aaron Judge’s home run, and striking out Bryce Harper and Brandon Crawford:

I’m so glad that he’s a Yankee.

Masahiro Tanaka

(Jason Miller/Getty)

Midseason Grade: D

Last year was by far the worst of Tanaka’s short career, but it can be split up into manageable sample sizes. His ERA sat at 6.34 on Father’s Day last year, and fans were beginning to loudly wonder if the team would be better off with Tanaka opting out. And then a switch went on, and he was great the rest of the way. From June 23 through the end of the season, Tanaka pitched to a 3.54 ERA in 101.2 IP, with very good peripherals. That success carried over into the playoffs (and then some), as he posted a microscopic 0.90 ERA in 20 IP.

And then the calendar flipped to 2018, and the wheels fell right back off.

In addition to his 4.54 ERA (which is a tick below-average, translating into a 95 ERA+), Tanaka has bottomed-out in walk, ground ball, and home run rates, posting career-worsts across the board. His 4.90 FIP is the worst of his career, too. Now, to be fair, he’s not as bad as he was in the first half of 2017 – so there’s that.

The problem with Tanaka is easily identified – his propensity for home runs. He’s allowing more fly balls than ever this year, which means he’s allowing gopher balls at a career-worst pace of 1.94 per 9 innings. That’s the fifth-worst home run rate in the game, and that’s why he’s allowed 18 bombs in just 83.1 IP. And, for the sake of comparison, every pitcher that has allowed more has also thrown at least 18 additional innings.

One interesting note: Tanaka’s improvements last year seemingly coincided with more splitters and sliders, and sinkers being traded out in favor of four-seamers. That trend has continued to the extreme this season:

Could that have something to do with his gopheritis? Perhaps.

I was almost inclined to go with an ‘F’ for all of this, but Tanaka has at least given the Yankees some length in his starts, and he’s a league-average-ish starter. That’s not what you want from a pitcher on his contract, but he hasn’t been a straight-up dud like Gray.

Yankeemetrics: The Camden Yards rollercoaster (July 9-11)

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(AP)

Sabathia’s newest kryptonite
As exciting as this season has been for the Yankees, they hadn’t been able to beat up on the dreadful Orioles. Their frustrations against baseball’s cellar-dweller continued in the opener of Monday’s doubleheader as they blew a three-run lead and lost 5-4.

This was the fourth time this season the Yankees have blown a lead of three-or-more runs and lost against a team that entered the day with a win percentage below .400. That’s the most such losses of any team in the majors this season. And here’s an unfathomable stat to chew on: from 2011-17, they suffered only four such losses in those seven seasons combined.

CC Sabathia cruised through the first three innings, before getting into trouble in the fourth and then imploding in the sixth. This continued a string of awful starts against the Orioles, as he’s now winless with a 5.96 ERA in his last eight starts against them since mid-2016. And it’s somehow been even worse recently:

Should Aaron Boone have sent Sabathia out for the sixth inning, with the heart of the Orioles order coming to bat for the third time? The numbers say he’s really struggled in that situation this year:

CC Sabathia This Season
Batters Faced BA/OBP/SLG
1st PA 153 .213/.275/.305
2nd PA 152 .230/.3016/.393
3rd+ PA 102 .344/.382/.617

So, the third/fourth time through the order, he’s almost turned every batter into J.D. Martinez (.330/.393/.649) this season.

Hail, Gritty Gutty Brett Gardner
The Yankees avoided the ultimate embarrassment — getting swept by the worst team in baseball — and destroyed the Orioles, 10-2, in the nightcap of Monday’s doubleheader.

The bats finally woke up (17 hits) and came through in the clutch (7-for-15 with RISP) as they produced one of their best offensive games in Baltimore in more than a decade. Its the first time since a 10-2 win on September 2, 2009 that they scored double-digit runs and had more than 15 hits at Camden Yards.

And if you want to consider the power display — seven homers and two doubles — this game was nearly unprecedented. The only other time the Yankees scored at least 10 runs and had nine extra-base hits in a game in Baltimore was a 16-0 win over the Orioles on April 30, 1960!

(AP)

Brett Gardner sparked the offense, going 4-for-6 with a homer and three RBI. Dating back to the start of 2017 (and including the postseason), the Yankees are 22-3 when Gardy homers in a game. His awesome effort also earned him our coveted Obscure Yankeemetric of the Series: this is Gardner’s fourth career game with at least four hits and three RBI from the leadoff spot. That’s the most 4-hit, 3-RBI games by any leadoff batter in franchise history.

Luis Cessa delivered one of the best performances of his career, throwing six scoreless innings and getting his first win as a starter since August 26, 2016 against the Orioles. Gio Gallegos pitched the final three frames and converted the rare three-inning save, his first career major-league save. It also produced this cool note: Cessa and Gallegos are the first Mexican-born tandem to earn a win and save in the same game for the Yankees.

(AP)

Deja Vu All Over Again
The Yankees mediocre play against the Orioles reached dire levels on Tuesday night as they blew multiple leads and again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when the Orioles won it on a game-ending hit in the bottom of the ninth.

The fact that the Yankees have struggled to string together wins here in Baltimore is not surprising. They entered this series with a 13-25 (.342) record at Camden Yards over the last five seasons, easily their worst at any AL ballpark since 2014. In fact, its also by far the worst record at Camden Yards for any of the AL East teams in the span; the Rays, Blue Jays and Red Sox have each won at least 43 percent of their games there since 2014.

Masahiro Tanaka came off the DL to make his first start since June 8, and he was back to being the typical Tanaka, giving up the #Obligatoryhomerun. It was an 89-mph fastball perfectly placed in the meatball zone, ready for Manny Machado to crush 444 feet into the left-centerfield seats.

Tanaka has allowed 52 homers in 44 games (255 1/3 innings) since the start of 2017, tied with Ian Kennedy for the most in the majors over the last two seasons. His home run rate in 2018 is now 2.0 per 9 IP, which is on pace to be the worst ever for any Yankee pitcher with at least 20 starts in a season.

Machado delivered the biggest blows, tying the game twice with a solo homer in the fifth and a two-run shot in seventh. Those were his 19th and 20th homers against the Yankees since 2015, five more than any other player has hit in the last four seasons. It was also his fourth career multi-homer game versus the Yankees, the most of any player against them since his debut in 2012.

(AP)

Deja Vu All Over Again, Part II
Two down, two up for the Yankees as they routed the Orioles, 9-0, to split the four-game series. It was their largest shutout win ever at Camden Yards, and their largest against the Orioles in Baltimore since a 10-0 blanking on June 19, 1985 at Memorial Stadium. This was also the Yankees seventh shutout in 2018, matching their total from all of last year.

Greg Bird broke the game open when he went deep with the bases loaded in the third inning, belting his first career grand slam to give the Yankees a 5-0 lead. Bird was 1-for-14 with seven strikeouts in his career with the bases full before hitting that homer. He joined a sweet group of Yankee first baseman to hit a grand slam in Baltimore:

  • Tino Martinez May 1, 1996
  • Don Mattingly Sept. 25, 1987
  • Bill Skowron April 22, 1961 and April 14, 1959

It was also his second straight game with at least four RBI, the first Yankee to do that since Alfonso Soriano in 2013. And he also earned this #FunFact: Bird is the only player in franchise history to drive in at least four runs in back-to-back games against the Orioles (since the team changed its nickname and moved to Baltimore in 1954).

Giancarlo Stanton quietly had another huge game at the plate, going 4-for-5 with two RBI. His five games with at least four hits are the most in MLB — and the same number that the rest of the Yankees have combined this season.

Sonny Gray bounced back from his two worst starts as a Yankee to throw one of his best starts as a Yankee, holding the Orioles scoreless over six innings while striking out eight. In four starts against the Royals and Orioles this season he is 4-0 with a 1.73 ERA; against all other teams this season he is 2-7 with a 6.96 ERA.

If only he could pitch all his games at Camden Yards against the Orioles …

Yankeemetrics: Bombers snap Canadian Curse (July 6-8)

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(Getty)

Gray skies forever
The Yankees kicked of their 11-game, 10-day road trip with the type of loss that has become all too familiar for this team recently — a disaster outing by Sonny Gray, who was pummeled by the Blue Jays on Friday night.

If there was any team and/or place where Gray might finally show the Yankees he deserved a permanent spot in the rotation this summer, it would have been in Toronto against the Blue Jays. Over his previous six road starts, Gray had produced a 2.27 ERA. He also entered Friday’s matchup with a career 1.88 ERA in seven starts at the Rogers Centre, the third-best mark by any pitcher with that many starts at the ballpark; and in four starts there as a Yankee, his ERA was 1.50.

All of that historical, positive momentum was quickly obliterated as Gray was pounded early and often by the Blue Jays lineup. He gave up five runs on six hits, including a home run, before getting yanked after the second inning. He retired only six of the 15 batters he faced, as he also walked two batters and hit a guy — and don’t forget about the two wild pitches he threw. Congrats, Sonny, you get our Obscure Yankeemetric of the Series!

The list of Yankee starters that were able to cram all of that awfulness — five earned runs, nine baserunners, two wild pitches — into an out of two innings or fewer is short: Gray, Ivan Nova (Sept. 12, 2015) and Tommy John (May 25, 1980). Somehow, each of those three games were against the Blue Jays.

Yet, this might not have been Gray’s most embarrassing start in the past week. In his previous start against the Red Sox on June 30, he gave up six runs on seven hits while lasting one out into the third inning. And with those back-to-back ugly games, he joined this group of pinstriped anti-legends:

Through Friday, the Yankees were 7-10 in games started by Gray and 49-19 in games started by all other Yankee pitchers. He had started 20 percent of all Yankees games, but was the starter in 34.5 percent of their losses.

We’ll end with one highlight, Aaron Hicks hitting his 16th home run of 2018, the most he’s ever hit a single season. It was also his 10th homer in his last 19 games; the only other Yankee switch hitters to hit 10 homers in a span of fewer than 20 games were Mark Teixeira (2009) and Mickey Mantle (many times).

(USA Today)

Gardy Party, All Rise
The Yankees wasted no time in erasing the bad taste from Friday’s miserable loss. Brett Gardner cranked the very first pitch that J.A. Happ threw into the Rogers Centre seats, igniting the Yankees offense en route to a bounceback 8-5 win.

Judge followed Gardner’s shot with another home run, the second time this season that the Yankees opened a game with back-to-back homers (also on May 26 versus the Angels). The only other time in franchise they did that twice in one season was 2003.

For Gardner, it was his 14th career lead-off homer, tied with Frankie Crosetti for the sixth-most in franchise history:

Yankees Most Career Lead-off HR
Name HR
Derek Jeter 29
Rickey Henderson 24
Alfonso Soriano 21
Hank Bauer 17
Chuck Knoblauch 15
Brett Gardner 14
Frankie Crosetti 14

Judge’s blast was his 25th home run of the season, the second straight year he’s reached that milestone before the All-Star break. Since the first All-Star Game in 1933, the only other Yankee to hit 25-plus homers prior to the break in consecutive seasons was Roger Maris in 1960-61.

Miguel Andujar, an extra-base hit machine, recorded his 25th double of the season in the top of the ninth. The 23-year-old is the youngest Yankee ever to hit at least 25 doubles and 12 homers before the break (since 1933). The only other Yankees to do it at any age were Robinson Cano (2012), Hideki Matsui (2005), Alfonso Soriano (2002), Mel Hall (1992), Don Mattingly (1986) and Reggie Jackson (1977).

(Getty)

The Blue Jays worked Luis Severino hard from the start, and Severino clearly lacked his best stuff as he gave up three runs on five hits, including two homers, in five innings. Still, he was able to extend his streak of starts with three or fewer runs allowed to 16, the longest such streak by any major-league pitcher in 2018. It’s also the longest streak within a season by any pitcher in franchise history.

Finally, the win snapped their Canadian Curse, as they clinched their first .500 or better season at the Rogers Centre since 2009. The run of eight consecutive losing seasons there (2010-17) was the Yankees longest active drought at any ballpark.

(AP)

Two is enough
The Yankees capped off their trip north of the border with —shocking! — another series win, edging the Blue Jays 2-1 in 10 innings on Sunday. The Yankees are now 5-4 in extras this season, matching their win total from all of last year.

Coupled with their 13-inning victory in Toronto on June 6, this is the second time ever that the Yankees won multiple extra-inning games at the Rogers Centre in a single season. The other time it happened? Yup, 1998.

The Yankees also showed off their ability to win with smallball: their first run was scored on an RBI groundout, and the game-winning RBI single was set up with a hit by pitch (thanks Tyler Clippard!) and sacrifice bunt. They are now 8-10 when not hitting a homer, the same number of homerless wins they had the entire season last year (8-27). #toomanyhomers

Domingo German, who entered the game with the second-highest whiff rate (15.0%) in the AL among pitchers with at least 60 IP, dominated the Blue Jays with his typical swing-and-miss stuff — 16 swinging strikes among his 100 pitches (16%) — and allowed only one run over six strong innings. Twelve of the 16 whiffs came with his two-seam and four-seam fastball, the most he’s gotten with those pitches in a game this season.

Giancarlo Stanton chipped in with his team-leading 89th and 90th hits of the season, including a third-inning single he drilled into left field with an exit velocity of 120.3 mph. It was the fifth base-hit of at least 120 mph by any player since Statcast tracking began in 2015; Stanton has four of the five, and Judge has the other one.

(AP)

Brett Gardner was the hero, lacing an opposite-field single in the 10th to score Tyler Wade. It was his first extra-inning go-ahead hit this season and sixth of his career. That’s tied for the fifth-most by a Yankee outfielder since 1925; the only guys ahead of him are Mickey Mantle (14), Bernie Williams (8), Joe DiMaggio (7) and Charlie Keller (7).

Sonny Gray, Neil Walker, and Being Wrong

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(Getty)

Go back far enough into the archives of my posts–whether here, TYA/IIATMS, BBD, wherever–and you’ll find things that I was wrong about, probably a lot of things. If you’re a Twitter follower of mine (sorry about the private account, all), you’ll likely be able to find similarly wrong things…probably even more wrong things, given the volume of tweets. Such is life when you write on the internet. Such is life when you write about baseball on the internet, a sport that’s more humbling than just about any out there. What’s the old adage? You can fail seven out of ten times in baseball and still be one of the best.

Enumerating the things I’ve ‘failed’ on in the last ten years of online baseball writing and tweeting would probably take almost ten years. Between the hot takes, the proclamations, the recommendations, the analysis, the writing I haven’t liked in retrospect, I’ve hit a bunch of snags along the way. Two things I’ve gotten wrong in 2018, though, are Sonny Gray and Neil Walker.

I’ve long been a proponent of the Sonny Gray trade. It was a good price for a good pitcher and he helped down the stretch in 2017. Even now, it’s a trade I’ll defend. Dustin Fowler is playing better of late–up to a 99 OPS+–but Jorge Mateo has a .634 OPS…in AAA. James Kaprelian still hasn’t pitched for the A’s organization. This is a trade that made sense at the time and still makes sense now, even if Gray is, well, doing what he’s doing.

As an infield depth signing, Neil Walker’s made a ton of sense. He can play all around the infield and even the outfield in a pinch. He’s a switch hitter with some patience and some pop. To boot, he came on the cheap, thanks to the fouled up free agent market of this past winter. He is–or was–the perfect insurance policy. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

For reasons that get beyond the purpose of this post, both of these players are putting up the absolute worst seasons of their careers. Each has had moments, but consistently good play–on the mound or at the plate–has been elusive for Sonny Gray and Neil Walker. Luckily for the Yankees, just about everyone else has sustained high-quality play for most of the season and the team has ridden that to success; the Yankees are clearly one of the best teams in all of baseball.

The season isn’t over for either one of these players. Gray still has a track record to fall back on and has good enough stuff that he can recover. The Yankees have stuck by players going through troubles recently–Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, Dellin Betances–and those players didn’t cost what Gray cost. If they did it for them, they’ll do it for Gray. with Gleyber Torres being out, Neil Walker has a chance to step back into a role and re-elevate his play. No, he won’t be the second baseman as soon as Torres is healthy, but he can help buoy the position and the lineup spot (along with Brandon Drury and Tyler Wade).  With the season just past its halfway point, we haven’t quite hit the ‘seven out of ten’ failure mark for Gray and Walker; there’s still time for them to prove the first half of this season wrong and prove me right.

Yankeemetrics: Summer slam, Yanks beat Sox (June 29-July 1)

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(AP)

CC The Stoppah
The Yankees kicked off the Most Important Series of the Season with a cruise-control win, 8-1. It was the first time this season Boston lost a game by at least seven runs; prior to Friday, they were the only MLB team that hadn’t suffered a loss of more than six runs.

Gleyber Torres ignited the offense with a his first career triple to lead off the second inning. Congrats to him for being the youngest Yankee to hit a triple in a game against the Red Sox since a 20-year-old Mickey Mantle on September 25, 1952.

Miguel Andujar and Greg Bird turned the game into a rout, belting consecutive homers in the fourth inning to put the Yankees ahead 5-0. It was the sixth time this season the Yankees went back-to-back, tied with the A’s for the most in the majors (through Friday), and more than halfway to their 2017 total (11).

Bird’s dinger was a 392-foot rocket to left-center field, a rare type of homer for the pull-heavy lefty. It was just his second career opposite-field shot and the farthest left that he’s gone deep in his career.


Aaron Judge joined the dinger party in the seventh inning, muscling a chest-high fastball over the wall in right-center. It was his 50th longball at Yankee Stadium, as he became the fastest player in MLB history to hit 50 homers at home, doing so in his 259th career game.

CC Sabathia delivered a masterful performance, and it was no surprise that he was absolutely brilliant on the biggest stage. He is now …

  • 12-0 with a 2.47 ERA in 18 regular season starts following a Yankee loss since the start of 2017.
  • 3-0 with a 2.34 ERA in six starts this season against teams with a .500 record or better.
  • 6-0 with a 1.83 ERA in his last seven starts vs. the Red Sox dating back to September 2016.

Sabathia is the first Yankee to win six straight decisions against the Red Sox since Ron Guidry also went 6-0 in eight starts against them spanning the 1977-79 seasons.

(Newsday)

Nightmare on River Avenue
Twenty-four hours after celebrating one of their most satisfying wins of the season, the Yankees produced one of their most miserable losses on Saturday night.

They were blitzed, 11-0, tied for the worst shutout loss ever by the Yankees against the Red Sox in the Bronx (also lost 11-0 on Sept. 6, 2003). And the only other time that the Yankees suffered a worse shutout loss to the Red Sox was a 13-0 defeat on May 30, 1941. Saturday’s disaster was the Yankees fourth time being shut out this year (all of them since June 10!), one more than they had for the entire 2017 season.

Chris Sale plowed through the Yankees lineup, overpowering them and making them look silly with his fastball-slider combo. He gave up one single and struck out 11 over seven scoreless innings, nearly matching the 1-hit, 10-strikeout performance he had against them in 2014. Sale is the only pitcher in MLB history to have multiple career games with double-digit strikeouts and no more than one hit allowed against the Yankees.

While Sale was doing his best peak-Pedro impression, Sonny Gray was in full Carl Pavano/A.J. Burnett mode. He was destroyed early and often by the Red Sox, coughing up six runs on seven hits before getting pulled with one out in the third.

Given this matchup — at Yankee Stadium, against the Red Sox — Gray’s awful outing was hardly surprising. The gory details:

  • Gray is the first Yankee ever to pitch consecutive games versus the Red Sox allowing at least six earned runs and throwing no more than three innings (remember April 12?).
  • He is now 0-4 with a 9.35 ERA in four starts against the Red Sox as a Yankee. The only pitchers in franchise history to have a worse ERA in this rivalry (min. 4 starts) are Jose Contreras (16.43) and Andy Hawkins (14.44).
  • His ERA at Yankee Stadium this season ballooned to 8.25 in eight starts. That would be the highest ERA at home for any Yankee pitcher in a single season (min. 5 starts), ahead of Jaret Wright (7.86 in 2005) and Phil Hughes (7.83 in 2011).
  • Gray’s overall ERA is 5.44, putting him on pace to own the worst qualifying ERA in a non-strike season in Yankees history. The current record-holder is Bump Hadley (5.30 in 1937) followed by A.J. Burnett (5.26 in 2010).

Okay, that’s enough ugly stats, here’s something positive: The bullpen, despite allowing five runs in 6 2/3 innings, finished June with a 1.32 ERA. That was the lowest ERA (min. 40 IP) by a Yankee bullpen in any calendar month in the Divisional Era (since 1969).

Home Run Derby in the Bronx
One night after getting embarrassed by their rival, the Yankees got their revenge in style, routing the Red Sox 11-1 to improve to 54-27 at the midpoint of the season. Since the American League went to a 162-game schedule in 1961, this is just the second time that the Yankees have won at least 54 of their first 81 games. The other season was 1998, when they started 61-20.

(NJ.com)

Aaron Hicks was the star of the home run derby with a trio of longballs in the second, fourth and eighth innings. He is just the third Yankee to hit three homers in a game against the Red Sox, joining Mark Teixeira (May 8, 2010) and Lou Gehrig (June 23, 1927), and the first one to do it in the Bronx. Hicks also became the first Yankees leadoff batter ever to go deep three times in a game.

Gleyber Torres broke the game open with a three-run opposite field blast in the first inning to put the Yankees ahead 4-0, his 15th career homer. Playing in his 60th big-league game, he is the first AL player age 21 or younger to hit 15 home runs this early into his career. It was also his sixth homer with at least two men on base this season, the most of any player in MLB.

Kyle Higashioka crushed a homer in the fourth inning for his first career hit; he had been hitless in his first 22 MLB at-bats, the longest hitless streak to start a career by any Yankee to debut in the Live Ball Era (since 1920).

It was deja vu all over again for the Yankees against their perennial punching bag David Price, who allowed a career-high five homers and eight runs before getting the hook in the fourth inning. Let’s recap the cold, hard facts:

  • Price is the first Red Sox pitcher to surrender at least five longballs and eight or more runs at Yankee Stadium (old and new).
  • He is the only pitcher in MLB history to have three games against the Yankees of fewer than four innings pitched and at least eight earned runs allowed (he also did it in 2014 and 2015 with the Tigers).
  • Price’s ERA in nine starts against the Yankees since joining the Red Sox in 2016 is 8.43, easily the highest of any player with at least four starts against them in the last three seasons. And his 10.44 ERA in five starts at Yankee Stadium with the Red Sox is also the worst of any pitcher that has made more than one start there since 2016.
(NJ.com)

The Yankees had their ace on the mound and Luis Severino tossed a gem, allowing just two hits across 6 2/3 scoreless innings. He’s given up no more than three runs in 15 straight starts, matching the Yankees longest such streak in the Live Ball Era (since 1920), set by Ron Guidry during his 1978 Cy Young-winning campaign.

Since the start of 2017, he has allowed one run or fewer in more than half (25) of his 49 regular season starts.