Archive for Yankees

NEW YORK — Lefty? Righty? The platoon-heavy Yankees will beat your frontline starter regardless of handedness, and their frontline starter will shut your offense down. That was the case, at least, in this year’s Wild Card Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. After fireballing righty Cam Schlittler overwhelmed Boston in Tuesday night’s opener, lefty Max Fried stifled the Sox for six innings on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a lineup stacked with eight lefty hitters — and again, no Aaron Judge — pressed Red Sox manager Chad Tracy to pull starter Sonny Gray after just 70 pitches, trailing 1-0. As on Tuesday night, the Yankees broke the game open against Boston’s lefty relievers. New York cruised to a 9-2 victory and a series sweep.

As he did in Game 1 of the 2025 Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, Fried pitched brilliantly. He held Boston scoreless through the first five innings on just two hits before allowing a solo home run to Willson Contreras with two outs in the sixth. It wasn’t just Boston’s first home run of the series, it was the team’s first run in a playoff game since the sixth inning of Game 2 of last year’s series, a span of 26 2/3 innings. Fried struck out six while walking one; though he got just nine whiffs (18.8%) and a 23.5% called strike and whiff rate, he allowed just three hard-hit balls and an average exit velocity of 85.3 mph. He threw 98 pitches, and when the Yankees broke through for six runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, it was an easy call for manager Aaron Boone to go to his bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

Big league front offices are, for the most part, populated by cowards. They say they want to win, but what they want most of all is to keep their jobs and not get yelled at. OK, maybe I came on too strong. That’s not cowardice, that’s just life under capitalism. A clever observer might note that one of the major sources of “getting yelled at” for major league GMs is the media — i.e., people like me. Maybe I should be nicer.

Two decades after the sabermetrics revolution shook up baseball’s norms, 30 GMs and/or Ps of BO have converged on a new conventional wisdom: You can never have enough pitchers.

During the regular season, sure. The 162-game slate is a siege by design. Teams play six times a week for six months, and most of the innings of most of those games are pretty pointless. Let’s say the average team plays about 55 defensive innings per week; the team’s top three starters and top two relievers might combine to throw, what, 25 of those innings? Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice may be Massachusetts natives, but the two Yankee stars did nothing to help the Red Sox during Tuesday night’s Wild Card Series opener against their archrivals. In a start reminiscent of his performance in last year’s do-or-die Game 3 between the two teams, Schlittler, the fireballing 25-year-old righty from Walpole, dominated the Red Sox hitters, throwing 6 1/3 shutout innings and striking out 10 while allowing just two hits. Rice, the 27-year-old slugger from Cohasset, picked up the slack for the injured Aaron Judge by going 4-for-5 with two homers and six runs batted in as the Yankees waited out Red Sox ace Payton Tolle, then broke the game open against the bullpen en route to a 9-0 romp.

This was the sixth time in 363 days that Schlittler faced the Red Sox, dating back to the aforementioned Game 3 of the 2025 Wild Card Series. At that point, the baby-faced rookie — a seventh-round pick in 2022 out of Northeastern University with just 14 major league starts under his belt — turned in eight brilliant shutout innings, striking out 12 without a walk and allowing just five hits, all singles. In his first full season, while leading the league in ERA (1.95) and WAR (6.2) and making an overwhelming case for the AL Cy Young Award, Schlittler started four times against the Red Sox, putting up a 0.74 ERA in 24 1/3 innings while striking out 27. Those numbers conceal a few minor blemishes; he did allow four unearned runs in five innings in a loss on June 25, the only time in those six starts that the Yankees were defeated, and he walked five in 5 2/3 shutout innings on August 28. But so far, the Sox have yet to solve him.

They certainly didn’t on Tuesday night, though they did make Schlittler work hard enough to run up his pitch count early and to throw a career-high 117 pitches. Though Schlittler struck out three in the first inning, he needed 22 pitches to complete the frame thanks to a 10-pitch at-bat by Adley Rutschman that culminated in a soft single to left-center. His next three innings were spotless and included five more stirkeouts, but he needed 44 pitches for those, then another 23 for a fifth inning in which he yielded a two-out, seven-pitch walk to Jarren Duran, and 18 for a 1-2-3 sixth that included two more strikeouts. The pesky Red Sox fouled off 24 of his pitches in all, including 14 with two strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Credit the Phillies for trying. When I highlighted the worst defenses among contending teams in early July, they were the poster boys, scoring worse than any team besides the decidedly non-contending Rockies in the multi-metric methodology I’ve used for the past four seasons. But when the August 3 trade deadline arrived, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski took a step to improve that shoddy defense, acquiring second baseman Luis Arraez from the Giants and setting off a game of musical chairs that sent incumbent second baseman Bryson Stott to third base, third baseman Alec Bohm to first, and first baseman Bryce Harper to right field. The defense at those spots mostly improved, but last Thursday, with the Phillies in the midst of what would become a 2-6 skid that nearly cost them a Wild Card berth, Arraez sprained his left ankle while trying to avoid a tag at first base. On Monday, interim manager Don Mattingly announced that the 29-year-old infielder will be left off the roster for the team’s Wild Card Series against the Braves.

How Mattingly will proceed with his lineup is unclear. In the three games Arraez missed — including Sunday’s playoff berth-clinching win over the Rays — Edmundo Sosa started at third base twice while Stott returned to second, while in the other game, Bohm and Harper moved back to their original positions as well; they lost that one 12-1.

Below I’ll take a closer look at the metrics underlying the Phillies’ defensive configurations, but long story short, they rate as the playoff team with the worst defense, as they did last year and in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second season in a row, the American League East’s top rivals will square off in a best-of-three Wild Card Series in the Bronx. This matchup, though, is hardly a carbon copy of the last one, when the Yankees advanced thanks to rookie Cam Schlittler’s dominant Game 3 performance. For one thing, both the Yankees (93-68) and Red Sox (87-75) have experienced some turnover, and each may be without one of their biggest superstars. At this writing, the Yankees are expected to go without Aaron Judge, who played in just seven games between returning from a stress fracture in his right first rib that cost him all of June, July, and August, and a right calf strain that sent him back to the injured list retroactive to September 17. The Red Sox are still evaluating whether 2025 AL Cy Young runner-up Garrett Crochet will be part of their bullpen; he hasn’t pitched in a competitive game since April 25 due to shoulder capsule inflammation and a subsequent lat strain, and did not have time to rebuild to a starter’s pitch count.

Beyond that intrigue, these are hardly the offensive juggernauts of yesteryear. Last October’s matchup pitted the AL’s highest-scoring team (the Yankees, 5.24 runs per game) against the third-highest scoring (the Red Sox, 4.85 runs per games), but this year’s pair respectively ranks second (4.59 runs per game, 101 wRC+) and 10th (4.25 runs per game, 99 wRC+). Instead, these are the league’s top two teams in terms of run prevention, with the Yankees allowing 3.73 runs per game and the Red Sox 3.77.

For both teams, this was a tale of two seasons. After the Red Sox skidded to a 10-17 start, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow fired manager Alex Cora — who guided the Red Sox past the Yankees during the 2018 and ’21 postseasons, with a championship in the first of those years — and shook up the coaching staff. Under interim manager Chad Tracy, the Red Sox reached the season’s halfway point with a 35-46 record before climbing above .500 during a franchise record-tying 15-game winning streak from July 3–22. Though they went just 12-12 in September amid injuries, Tracy was rewarded last week with a three-year contract and the removal of the interim tag from his title. The team has gone 77-58 on his watch. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees had to make do without Aaron Judge for all of June, July and August due to a stress fracture in his right first rib. With the days on the calendar dwindling and the AL East title still in play — which is no longer the case after the Rays clinched on Tuesday night — Judge bypassed a rehab assignment, but once he returned, he played in just seven games before landing back on the injured list due to a right calf strain. Both the slugger and the team took great pains to avoid discussing the injury’s specificity and timeline for recovery until Tuesday, when manager Aaron Boone revealed that Judge has a “moderate grade” strain, received a platelet-poor plasma injection, and isn’t expected to be available for the team’s Wild Card Series rematch against the Red Sox.

While deadline acquisition Heliot Ramos has heated up after a very slow start to his pinstriped career, the Yankees’ right field situation is one of the more glaring potential trouble spots among American League contenders. As the playoffs approach, teams no longer have a chance to upgrade from outside their organizations and instead must make do with the talent on hand. What follows here is a look at the most vulnerable teams at each position — something of a companion to my annual pre-deadline Replacement Level Killers series, with a focus on the teams that still have a chance to make the playoffs. For the AL, that means the Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox — all of whom have clinched spots — plus the Guardians, White Sox, Rangers, and Astros, who are battling for the other two division titles and the third Wild Card spot. I’ve taken the Blue Jays out of consideration, as their Playoff Odds now start with a zero in front of the decimal. While full-season performances play a significant part here, I’m more concerned with who’s worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Each position has a headliner (or two, if it’s a job share), but at several positions, I’ve noted other teams with concerns. A companion National League piece will follow. Read the rest of this entry »

When Aaron Judge is healthy, he’s the most dangerous hitter in baseball. Sometimes I get alarmed at how uncontroversial a statement that is; ours is a sport that so frequently humiliates those who make such sweeping, unequivocal judgments as those.

But the empirical evidence is what it is. Judge has played 150 or more games in a season four times in his career. In those four seasons, he’s led all position players in WAR four times and led the league in wRC+ three times. He’s been named AL MVP three times and finished second once, ahead of some real doozies: Cal Raleigh’s 60-homer year, Bobby Witt Jr.’s 10.5-WAR campaign in 2024, Shohei Ohtani’s best pitching season — in fact, a healthy Judge is the only thing that’s ever trumped a healthy Ohtani in an MVP race.

So again, it’s not uncontroversial to say that when Judge is healthy he’s the best hitter in the world. He has not, however, always been healthy. Least of all this season, when he missed three months with a broken rib. And now, the single-season AL home run king is back on the IL with a calf strain. The timing could not be worse. Read the rest of this entry »

With one week to go in the regular season, the playoff field is nearly set in the National League, though it’s anything but settled in the American League, with two of the three division leaders — two different ones since I last checked in — ahead by just one game and those races spilling over into the battle for the third and final Wild Card spot. We’re not going to get any tiebreaker games due to the fun police and the playoff format change put into effect by the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, but it’s entirely possible a playoff spot — and perhaps even a division title — will be decided on the basis of MLB’s tiebreaker procedures.

Since the situation is simpler in the NL, I’ll start there. The Brewers (98-58) lead the Dodgers (96-60) in the race for the top seed, and own the tiebreaker there on the basis of a 4-3 season series advantage. According to our Playoff Odds, as of Monday at 9 AM, the Braves (92-64) have just a 0.9% chance of bypassing either Milwaukee or Los Angeles. The Brewers — who have a magic number of one to clinch a first-round bye — finish out with a visit to the Phillies (86-70) before coming home to face the Cardinals (76-80), while the Dodgers host the Padres (87-69) for three and then travel to the Giants (62-90), with the Braves hosting the Reds (72-84) and then visiting the Marlins (76-80).

The Padres have taken advantage of a soft spot in their schedule — series against the sub-.500 Nationals, Giants, Rockies, and Marlins, after taking two out of three from the Yankees — to win 13 out of their last 14 games. Not only did that push them past the Diamondbacks (now 82-74), whom they trailed by half a game before the start of the surge, but they’ve tied the Cubs (87-69) for the top NL Wild Card spot, with the Phillies a game behind them. The Phils have been phlailing lately, going 8-10 in September and failing to win a series since beating the Diamondbacks at the start of the month. Their slide gave the Braves enough room to clinch the NL East title on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

Reacher needs our help. Reacher is in trouble, and only we baseball nerds can provide the assistance he needs. Wait, I should back up.

Reacher is the eponymous protagonist of the television show Reacher, based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. He’s an enormous former military policeman and current drifter who wanders across America maiming, torturing, and murdering people – but, like, in a good way. It’s another in a long line of entertainments based on the simple premise that it’s perfectly fine to enjoy watching somebody commit horrific acts of violence so long as they visit that violence on people who deserve it. It’s also a baseball show. Reacher likes baseball. Most of the characters like baseball. They tie themselves in knots wedging baseball into conversations where it absolutely does not belong, and for that I not only salute them. I want to help.

Trouble always finds Reacher. He visits Georgia to pay his respects to a legendary blues singer and stumbles onto the world’s largest counterfeiting operation. He visits Philadelphia to watch an unnamed Phillies pitcher who touches 105 mph and winds up entangled in a plot to auction off chemical weapons to the highest bidder. He visits Maine for lobster and just happens to run into a man he once marched to the edge of a cliff, shot in the head, and left for dead. (Just to clarify once more: In this world, the guy who got shot in the head and fell off the cliff is the bad guy; the shooter is the good guy.)

Because trouble always seems to find him, Reacher takes precautions. He stays off the grid. He travels by bus. He checks into fleabag motels under false names. And because he’s a baseball fan, he always uses the names of Yankees second basemen. We’re going to help him do a better job of that, because, well, he sucks at it. Read the rest of this entry »

Cam Schlittler brought his A-game on Sunday. Facing the Mets in the rubber game of the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees’ fireballer was nearly untouchable over the course of six scoreless innings, striking out eight while allowing just one hit, a fifth-inning double by Brett Baty. Meanwhile in Baltimore, the Blue Jays’ Dylan Cease worked around five walks to allow just one run over five innings while striking out nine. The two righties are engaged in an intriguing race for the AL Cy Young Award, one that could go down to the wire. The NL race is a tight one as well, with the Brewers’ Jacob Misiorowski the favorite but hardly the only one under consideration.

The 25-year-old Schlittler and 24-year-old Misiorowski are undeniably the frontrunners in their respective leagues, from both statistical and narrative standpoints. They lead in our Tom Tango-modeled Cy Young projections, and as of mid-August, they dominated polls taken by MLB.com. Nonetheless, the statistical races that can influence both our perceptions and voter behavior aren’t entirely decided, and with less than two weeks to go in the regular season, the races are worth a closer look.

The 6-foot-7 Misiorowski and 6-foot-6 Schlittler share similarities beyond their impressive heights. Both are in their first full major league seasons, after arriving in mid-2025 and helping their teams to the playoffs while showing poise beyond their years; this October, they’ll be seasoned postseason veterans. They’re the majors’ two hardest-throwing starters, with Misiorowski breaking velocity records all over the place. His average four-seam velocity — a mind-blowing 100.6 mph — not only leads the majors, but it’s also the fastest single-season velocity by a starter in the pitch-tracking era (from 2008 onward), hardly surprising given that he owns the (scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) 117 fastest pitches by a starter in pitch-tracking history — including a record-setting 105.5-mph heater to the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong on June 26 — and 353 of the 394 pitches of at least 102 mph thrown by a starter. Hunter Greene is the only other one in double digits (12). Schlittler merely ranks second among all starters this year, with an average velocity of 98.0 mph, which is still good for fifth in the pitch-tracking era. Read the rest of this entry »