Using an opener can really throw a spanner in the works though, guv. Announce Chad Green as your starter. Hope he goes two. Then bring in the lefty Happ. But maybe Oakland expects Severino since you don’t have to announce your first reliever. Then they have to mix and match right away.
I don’t think Boone would dare since the Yankees starters haven’t done it before.
Trading Sanchez now would make no sense at all. He’s the least valuable in a trade right now as he is ever likely to be and he’s not being paid much. It doesn’t make any sense to get rid of him unless there’s some behavioural issue none of us know about.
Giving up on a 25-year-old player who
… is how teams end up years later saying “God, what were we thinking?” The Yankees don’t have two other good catchers, so they might as well try Sanchez out for another year at least.
I am quite convinced Sanchez is still a good hitter; he still has power, still draws walks, and his BABIP is ludicrously low. If I am doing the math right, it’s .200. That is just stupid unlucky for a man who hits the ball that hard. His batting average will recover by 75 points or more next year if he plays regularly.
His defense, though, is a legitimate concern. He led the league in passed balls last year, too, and he surrenders an absolute assload of wild pitches - in judging a catcher’s skill at stopping pitches you have to look at WP, too, because the distinction is a thin one. Last year Sanchez allowed 69 balls to get by him (16 PB, 53 WP) in 98 full games, which isn’t good. This year he’s at 61 in 65 full games, which is awful - that’s at least twice normal, worse than any other catcher I can find, and it’s consistent with my honest observation of him, which is that he just isn’t quick to either side on an errant pitch. and you can’t blame his pitchers, because Austin Romine has allowed only 21 balls past him in about 65 full games.
The difference between Gary Sanchez and a good catcher in this regard is not, on the surface of it, a fatal problem. Forty or fifty base advances a year is not a small deal - it’s equivalent to giving up maybe 75 extra stolen bases without a single caught stealing, and I’ll explain why in a note below - but if he hits well he’d make up for it. It is, however, such a weird and dramatic fundamental flaw that I think the effect of it exceeds the surface cost. It plays on the pitcher’s willingness to throw breaking balls and pitches low in the zone with men in scoring position, plays on Sanchez’s own confidence in his abilities, and frankly I struggle to believe that if he’s that bad at one thing as a catcher, he’s good at everything else. WAR says he’s actually an okay defensive catcher but I simply do not believe it.
Given that New York has a first baseman batting .190, who to my eyes and any look at the numbers is not nearly as talented a hitter as Sanchez, there’s at least one possible solution. Hell, DH is a possible solution - once Gardner’s done, they’ll need someone to do that, since I presume Stanton is more valuable in the field.
Greg Bird may have had enough injuries and poor hitting at this point to no longer own the first base job next year anyway. Defensively he is the superior choice for the Yanks when he is on the field but how often will that be. Sanchez may get a chance to play a lot of first next year, could be. Could be Luke Voit is the main first baseman next season. I think he will be in the post season.
If they can fix Sanchez, he is an amazing valuable player as so few catches can hit the way we’ve seen him hit in 2016 & 2017. It is a lot more common for 1B.
Shame about Bird, he had a lot of potential and seemed to be excellent at actually knocking in the runs but so much time lost already.
Best news I’ve heard all day. He gone!
Thats insane barring some weird swinging at balls a foot outside the zone. He and the Yanks should be completely ignoring his batting average as long as he isnt up there playing cricket.
Unfortunately, that’s a problem too. It’s as though he’s lost his batting eye, or he’s too anxious. With two strikes he’s a dead duck, lunging and hacking at balls in the dirt or way off the plate. Sometimes I think every Yankee player has been instructed to swing from the heels on every offering. What’s happened to Greg Bird? He’s yet to play a full season so the samples are smaller, but his BAbip is .224 and last year it was .194. In his first season it was .319. It’s not the shift because defenses always shifted on Bird. I think the Yanks need a new hitting coach.
Excellent analysis of Sanchez, Rickjay. Indeed his BAbip this season is .194 after putting up .319 and .304 in his previous seasons. What’s your take on Miguel Andujar? A .300 hitter with 70 extra base hits who is also the worst defensive third baseman to ever play the game (according to a lot of hysterical Yankee fans.)
Miguel Andujar has improved as the year went along. He has a really strong arm and maybe will mature into a decent third baseman next year. I feel like he has the tools to do so. I’m not so sure about worst third baseman either, though he is truthfully pretty weak, just not as bad as he was to start the season.
Today Andújar gave up on a foul ball, thinking it was going into the stands. It didn’t. He could have caught it.
Sure, he is having a great rookie year. But this was embarrassing.
After the Dodgers swept the Rockies last week, I was starting to relax a little. Now, I’m anything but relaxed. I didn’t expect to see our magic number bigger than the number of games left this year. If we make it into, let alone through, the playoffs, it will be quite the feat.
It’s certainly very exciting watching the NL playoff races this year. Just when I think a team has it locked down, it loses a few games and allows a team like the Rockies or Cardinals back into it. Much more entertaining than the AL has been the last few weeks.
In other news—I didn’t see it mentioned here yet—the Astros’ new closer, Roberto Osuna, had his domestic violence charge in Canada withdrawn in exchange for Osuna agreeing to a “peace bond.” I’m not familiar with this, but it looks like something akin to deferred adjudication (DA): jump through these hoops and we’ll all agree that this never happened. Albeit I’m not sure with a peace bond and withdrawn charge if you can say that Osuna committed the crime in question, like you could if he had plead guilty to it in the States and was placed in a diversion program like DA. In any event, he’s pitching well for the Astros, and getting booed by the Blue Jays fans. Yay?
Still not going to get them past the Red Sox, IMHO, but it should be an interesting set of series. Boston v ?, (but let it please be NY), and the Astros v Indians.
I’ve only seen Andujar play maybe ten games this year but he looks bad to me, and statistically he is dreadful.
I mean, 23-year-old guys who bat almost .300 with power in the major leagues do not exactly grown on trees, so I would let the guy to to learn the position. Still, while I don’t have any numbers in front of me to prove, I think one will find that generally speaking, players don’t much improve in terms of how good they are at skill positions. If there are many infielders who started off as terrible defensive players and who got good, I quite honestly can’t think of any.
RickJay, if he’s that bad as a defender, why can’t the Yankees stick him at DH, or out in the outfield? Don’t poor outfielders, in the smallest part of the outfield, cost teams fewer FRAA than do poor infielders? I’m just thinking of how abysmal someone like Manny Ramirez was as an outfielder, but I guess he could do less damage in Fenway’s short left field, than he could if he were, say, at first?
Yanks actually have a crowded outfield already. Judge, Stanton, Hicks and Frazier plus an option on Gardner that I think they won’t pick up. DH is possible, though that might also be a landing spot for Sanchez if he can’t stop his defensive issues. But they like having the DH open actually to rotate the hitters through as a partial day off.
If Andujar doesn’t get better at third, he will most likely be moved to first. They had started that process a little in Spring training and AAA this year before he was pulled up.
I have a feeling the Cards will choke and give the WC to the Rockies.
You are absolutely correct. Brewers just defeated the Cards 2-1 to complete the 3-game sweep. Meanwhile, Colorado leads the Phillies 9-0 in the 5th.
With the win tonight, Milwaukee clinched a playoff berth.
So if I’m reading things right, the Cubs have clinched a spot in the post-season AND they’ve clinched home field advantage for either:
The Brewers are in the same spot, but reversed.
Am I reading that right?
You can’t say CC isn’t a team player. With several hundred thousand in bonus money just an inning away, he protected his teammates and hit an opponent and got ejected.
2 innings and $500k bonus.
It was a very team oriented thing he did, but I doubt he was going to get to pitch 2 more innings anyway. He has not pitched 7 innings in game that often this year and he got through 5 when he was tossed.
His last 7 inning game was June 15th, see here: CC Sabathia 2018 Pitching Game Logs | Baseball-Reference.com
Sure, but he was throwing a one hitter at the time. It’s not like Aaron Boone didn’t know about the bonus situation. Boone apparently said he wouldn’t rule out trying to squeeze the innings out over the weekend in Boston.
Well, as pointed out, the Yankees are not short of outfielders.
Ramirez was an atrocious outfielder but he was twice the hitter Andujar is. The thing is that different positions are harder to fill. Andujar’s hitting abilities are not as hard to find among left fielders as they are among third basemen. The Yankees face the same problem there as they do with Sanchez; Andujar WOULD be so, so much more valuable if only he could be a bit better with the glove, so there is a reason to keep trying him there.