The Yankees won a game last night. They crushed it, in fact, beating the Chicago White Sox 12-3. This is important because we’ve now seen the Yanks’ ostensible ace Masahiro Tanaka pitch two quality games in a row, a thing he’s not been much apt to do this year. At the same time, nearly half the Yankees’ starting roster has headed over to the Disable List (DL), leading the Bronx Bombers to field a team that looks more like last year’s AAA roster than last year’s roster from the Big League club. Seriously, the team right now is half rookies.
And yet, I am cautiously optimistic that the Yankees’ woes, which started with their disastrous West Coast road trip almost two weeks ago now, are coming to an end. Though the team is something like 4-14 over their previous eighteen starts, their run differential has remained positive throughout the skid, such that their predicted wins (P[wins]) score remained fully six games better than their real record over that same time period. To put this another way, the Yankees have never stopped hitting, and their starting pitching hasn’t slumped appreciably despite losing CC Sabathia to a hamstring injury during that fateful West Coast road trip. The Yanks’ bullpen has instead blown a bunch of close games late, but this isn’t necessarily a trend you expect to see continue over the long term.
At least, that is what the statistics suggest, assuming I’m reading them right.
#StartSpreadingTheNews Yankees win Great start By Tanaka⏱ nd 👹 1st mlbhit with 4rbis and 🕵🏻with 1st mlbhit and 1rbi .... WHAT A GAME!!— Sir Didi Gregorius (@DidiG18) June 29, 2017
And again, what does any of this have to do with my running 3 Things on a Thursday this week? Nothing at all.
