Game 47: White Sox (Keller) at Yankees (Gil) 1:05pm EDT

Ohtani does have an entire baseball made country behind him that has plenty of companies willing to hire him to endorse their products.

And he fits so perfectly in on the west coast, where Asian immigration has been naturally settling for many years…

Yanks move 1 1/2 up on the O's, at least until they play the middle game against the M's at Camden Yards, starting 5 minutes or so from now.
Rays and Jays still 0-0 in the 4th in Toronto. Yanks keep pace with the winner of that one, gain another game on the loser.
Sox are in St. Louis for their middle game tonight at about 7:15. I won't speculate on the standings after those game are over. Suffice it to say, the Yanks will wake up tomorrow for The Sunday Standings™ still in first place.

Yanks go for the sweep tomorrow at 1:37 pm on YES. Carlos Rodon 4-2 with a 3.31 ERA, and looking for his 3rd strong start in a row after the pasting he took from the O's in the 4th game at Camden Yards, pitches for the Yanks. Chris Flexen, who's been an up-and-down 3-3 with a 4.46 ERA, goes for the White Sox to try to avoid crashing out of their excellent play the last 3 weeks by getting swept at the Stadium.

Now going to check the remaining notifications I haven't seen yet.

I haven't "liked" all of these, but thanks for posting these HR memes, anthony.
I mean I haven't click them a "like", but I still like them.

Yep, changed pitch selection, location and eye level with solid command. Makes you wonder how he pitched so poorly in rotation.
But again, his stuff especially FB velocity, might be playing up in the bullpen, as with Luke Weaver.

Actually, looking at the list of top comps, it's actually nine out of ten in the hall, the lone exception being Tony Mullane, who did all of his pitching before 1900, so every 20th century pitcher on John's comp list is already in the Hall.

Taking a closer look at John's candidacy...

He fails 3 of the 4 Bill James measures for comparing players up for Hall membership to those that are already in, but one of the fails is a close fail, 44 on the Hall of Fame Standards for pitchers (50 or above is a "passing grade").

The best statistical argument against him is probably the Jaffee JAWS system, which has him as the 76th best starting pitcher of all-time, and of the pitchers around him on the list, 2 of the 10 above him are in the Hall, including Early Wynn, and just 3 of the 10 below him are in, including Whitey Ford. John was very good for a long time, and solid for a very long time, but simply doesn't have the "peak" of 5-10 great seasons usually associated with getting chosen for the Hall. His Jaws 7 number would be unusually low for a Hall of Famer, just 166th out of the top 500 pitchers on the list, the bottom 5 of which include Paul Splitorff,  Mike Flanagan and Bill Gulllickson. All good pitchers who each had a couple of top seasons, but clearly not Hall of Famers. John had a much better career than any of them, but not so much better as to force the voters to elect him.

It might take longer than I think for him to get in, but he has one unusual big factor in his favor: an unusual "innovator" credential: Frank Jobe invented ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery for Tommy, but it took the desperate courage of John to volunteer to allow himself to be the guinea pig, to get it successfully done, and the perseverance to work through the lengthy rehab process and rebuild his big league career. Even though he had to change his approach substantially, going from a power lefty to a junkballing sinkerballing lefty with elite control, he eventually was as good or better than he ever was.

As many careers of pitchers are still being crushed by arm injuries, and for as many of them who wind up needing that UCL reconstruction, some of them two or even three times, the attrition on major league starters because of the five and fly, throw as hard as you can for as long as you can, then turn it over to multiple relievers approach of the modern analytical game, the situation would be far worse without John's example. That's why the surgery has been informally named for Tommy John, and rightly so. That toughness, courage and perseverance changed the game forever, and for me, is decisive in terms of his Hall of Fame candidacy. I don't have a vote, but if I did, I'd vote Tommy John into the Hall, and I think somewhere down the road, some Veteran/Old Timers' Committee will eventually vote him in.  

While he didn't invent it, he was the test subject and his name has been mentioned now thousands and thousands of times whenever someone else gets TJ surgery.

A little like:

www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/cummica01.shtml

Who is in the HOF because he invented the curveball.