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Post by kaybli on Jul 5, 2024 13:28:18 GMT -5
Starting tonight's game thread a little early for luck. Lineups to come.
Also congrats to inger for reaching 50,000 posts, our first poster to do so! Thanks for the laughs and all the baseball history and trivia. We all love you!
A little tribute:
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Post by desousa on Jul 5, 2024 13:39:48 GMT -5
Congrats to you, inger! I'm only 46,000 behind you.
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Post by Max on Jul 5, 2024 13:49:40 GMT -5
Wow! Inger knocked-out Sonny Liston and his sombrero didn't even fall. Impressive!
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Post by kaybli on Jul 5, 2024 13:54:15 GMT -5
Wow! Inger knocked-out Sonny Liston and his sombrero didn't even fall. Impressive!  |
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Post by desousa on Jul 5, 2024 14:15:14 GMT -5
Here's tonight's lineup. Looks like Wells is getting more playing time. Volpe down to 7th.
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Post by chiyankee on Jul 5, 2024 15:35:34 GMT -5
This is the time to break out of this nonsense.
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Post by inger on Jul 5, 2024 15:42:41 GMT -5
Wow! Inger knocked-out Sonny Liston and his sombrero didn't even fall. Impressive! That was back when I was a black man with a white head. I used to get a lot of looks from people… |
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Post by inger on Jul 5, 2024 15:45:46 GMT -5
Starting tonight's game thread a little early for luck. Lineups to come.
Also congrats to inger for reaching 50,000 posts, our first poster to do so! Thanks for the laughs and all the baseball history and trivia. We all love you!
A little tribute:
I didn’t even know I was there. Just kind of forgot about it, and it just happened. I would like to thank the three posters who regularly read the crap I post… even though I know Kaybli pays you to read it… |
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Post by kaybli on Jul 5, 2024 16:29:19 GMT -5
At least Trevino isn’t out there after last time’s embarrassment. Let’s see if Nestor and Wells can do a better job holding the run game.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jul 5, 2024 16:39:39 GMT -5
The Sox and Yanks meet for the second time this season with both teams' seasons having undergone violent reversals in the last 3 weeks. The Yanks took the first game of the series in Fenway three weeks ago. At that point, they were a season-high 28 games over .500 and 50-22, and the Sox had dropped back to .500 at 35-35, in 3rd and 14 games behind. Since then the Yanks have lost 13 of 17 while the Sox have won 12 of 16, and while they're still in 3rd, they've gained 8 1/2 games on the Yanks and come into this series just 5 1/2 games behind New York.
The Sox will have their current ace Tanner Houck open the series for them tonight. The Sox took Houck with the 24th pick of the 1st round in the 2017 draft (The Yanks took Clarke Schmidt 8 picks earlier), and he pitched 10 good games from them in low-A that season. He spent 2018 and 2019 in the rotation at High-A and AA and he pitched OK in both places, but when the Sox moved him to AAA in 2019, they put him into the bullpen there. He was moved back to the rotation at the Arizona Fall League and in developmental camp in the COVID season of 2020, rising to the majors late in the year to make three solid starts. He opened 2021 with Boston, making 2 starts and 1 relief appearance, then spent two months battling an arm injury, during which time he made one brief rehab start before being shut down a 2nd time. Back in AAA in late June, he spent 6 starts building his pitchcount. He made 10 starts and 5 relief appearances down the stretch and did OK. In 2022, he again spent most of his time in the pen, throwing just 60 innings, but pitching pretty well. His season was cut short in early August by a back injust that put him on IL for the rest of the year. In 2023, he opened in the Sox rotation and through 12 starts he was doing poorly: 3-6 with a 5.23 ERA. In a start against the Yankees, Kyle Higashioka led off the 5th smashing a line drive that hit Houck in the face, causing a facial fracture that put him out for 2 months. He returned in late August and pitched slightly better in 8 starts, going 3-4 with an ERA of 4.93. Before this season, Houck was 15-19 in his MLB career with an ERA of 3.81, but most of the good innings were as a reliever, with a few good starts sprinkled in among the mostly bad ones.
The Sox made some adjustments with their pitching staff up and down the rotation, and shocked the league the first 2-3 times through. After 13 games their starting pitcher ERA was 1.45. But Garrett Whitlock got hurt, and Brayan Bello and Nick Pivetta came back to earth. Kutter Crawford is still pitching well, and Houck has maintained his vast improvement and is one of the top 5 starters in the AL right now. He's just 7-6, but in 17 starts, he's pitched 107 2/3 innings (4th in the AL), allowing 91 hits, 41 runs, 32 earned, just 5 HR (3rd lowest among AL starters), and 19 BB, with 105 K's. He's 4th in the AL in WHIP, 2nd in HR per 9 innngs, 9th in K's, 5th in K/BB ratio and 8th in pitching bWAR. The Padres hammered him in his last start; before that, he briefly led the AL in ERA.
As with far too many pitchers in the East, Houck has made a punching bag out of the Yanks. His lifetime ERA against the rest of MLB is 3.70; against the Yanks, it's 2.07. He's made 7 starts and 5 relief appearances against New York, going 3-2 with 1 save. In 43 2/3 innings, he's allowed just 29 hits, 13 runs, 10 earned, and just 2 HR. He has walked 22 against them, but seems to have his control well under...uhh...control this year. He's struck out 40 in those games and his WHIP against the Yanks is 1.168. The Yankee team quadruple slash line against Houck is a meager .188/.309/.266/.576. His last game against them came after his reurn from the facial fracture last season, when he threw six shutout innings, alllowing 3 hits and 4 walks while striking out 7 and getting the W in a 5-0 win at Fenway in mid-September.
Repertoire: Houck is a tall 4-pitch righty. He used to have 5 pitches, but has junked his 4-seamer since last year, and now throws Sinker, slider, cutter and splitter. All four of his pitches get elite or near-elite downbreak, the slider has wipeout horizontal movment as well. The sinker velocity and spin are well below average, but if you want it to sink, you don't want a lot of spin to cause "rise". His extension is way below average as well, so he relies on the drop and break of the pitches themselves, and so far this year, it's working beautifully. By run values, the sinker and cutter are small minues, but the splitter is a big plus, and the wipeout slider has the highest plus run value in all of MLB to this point (tied with Chris Sale of the Braves) at +11. His batted ball profile is near MLB average across the board, including barrel and hard hit rates. (barrel rate is slightly better than average, hard hit rate slightly worse). He's gotten a bit lucky with his HR/Flyball rate and BABIP so far; his ERA simulators are somewhat higher than his current ERA, and his strand rate is slightly worse than average. The pitch mix so far this season: Slider 83 about 42% of the time, Sinker 93-4 about 31%, splitter 88 about 25% and cutter 87 about 2-3 times a start.
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Post by bigjeep on Jul 5, 2024 16:42:03 GMT -5
I want to be a Yankee Immortal like inger!  |
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jul 5, 2024 16:44:30 GMT -5
I want to be a Yankee Immortal like inger! Patience. The journey of a 10000 posts begins with a single reply. Or 10,000 of them. Or something. |
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jul 5, 2024 16:44:44 GMT -5
Playing the name game...Another boys' name gaining popularity in the last 30 years, there have been 9 Tanners in MLB history, none starting before 2010. Of these the best was Tanner Roark, a starting pitcher for 4 major league teams in the last 11 years who won 60 games for the Nats in his six years in Washington. Houck has a solid chance to become the most valuable of all of them, but so does Tanner Bibee, the Guardians starting pitcher. There are 2 playes with last name Tanner, Chuck and his son Bruce. Chuck is most famous for managing the "We Are Family" Pirates to the title in 1979.
Tanner is the 3rd and best of the MLB players named Houck. The other two are a pitcher, Bryce Houck, who scattered four seasons in the American and Federal Legaues in the 1910's, and the wonderfully named Sadie Houck, a shortstop who played eight seasons in the National League and American Association between 1879 and 1888. According to Wikipedia, Sadie got himself on some sort of "blacklist" in late 1881 and for all of 1882 for being a heavy drinker. I've been a baseball fan for 57 years now, and I don't remember ever hearing about an alcoholism blacklist in 19th century MLB. Baseball has had its share of alcoholics, (Ed Delahanty and Hack Wilson are supposedly two of them, and C.C. Sabathia checked himself into a rehab for alcoholics in 2015), but I never heard of an organized blacklisting of players for that offense/illness before. Maybe some of you have.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jul 5, 2024 16:46:24 GMT -5
Nestor Cortes goes for the Yanks, trying to stop the 3-game losing streak. Nestor has mostly been solid this season, but a streak of 3 solid starts was stopped when the Jays slapped him around a bit in Toronto last Saturday. On the season, Nestor is 4-7 with an ERA of 3.51. In 18 starts (tied for the AL lead), he's pitched 105 innings, allowed 97 hits, 42 runs, 41 earned, 14 HR and 19 BB, with 98 K's. His WHIP this year is a solid 1.105. He's 8th in the league in innings, 7th in fewest BB per 9 innings, and 10th in K/BB ratio.
Against the Sox, Nestor has made 4 starts and 6 relief appearances. He's 2-0 against, but with a terrible 5.59 ERA. In 29 innings, he's allowed 30 hits, 18 runs, all earned, 7 HR, and 10 BB with 34 K's. His WHIP against Boston is 1.379, and their team quadruple slash line against him is .256/.315/.504/.819. It's not good when a team slugs over .500 against a pitcher. He last pitched against the Sox in 2022. They knocked him out in the 4th, alllowing 8 hits, 2 HR and 4 runs in 3 2/3 in a game in June, but the Yanks came back to win that one 12-5. He then pitched two strong agames against them in September, pitching 3-hit, 1-run ball for 5 innings with 7 K's, in a 5-3 Yankees win at Fenway, and then even better 10 days later at the Stadium: 6 innings of 1-hit, shutout ball, leading the Yanks to a 2-0 win in his next-to-last start that season.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jul 5, 2024 16:49:56 GMT -5
Yankees lineup vs Houck:
Rice has never faced Houck before
Soto is 0-2 with 1 K
Judge is 3-9 with 1 BB and 2 K
Verdugo hasn't faced him
Torres is 5-18 with 2 doubles, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 HBP and 2 GIDP
Wells is 0-3 with 1 K
Volpe is 0-4 with 2 BB, 2 K and 1 GIDP
Grisham has never faced him
LeMahieu is 0-11 with 1 BB and 1 K
On the bench: Trevino is 1-3, and Jones is 0-1.
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Reds' lineup vs. Cortes:
1. Durran (CF) is 1-1
2. Refsnyder (RF) is 6-10 with 2 doubles
3. O'Neill (LF) is 0-2 with 1 K
4. Devers (3B) is 3-11 with 1 double, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 1 BB and 5 K
5. Wong (C) is 1-4 wth 1 double, 1 RBI and 2 K
6. Gonzalez (1B) has never faced him
Neither have 7. Yoshida (DH), 8. Valdez (2B) and 9. Rafaela (SS)
On the bench: McGuire is 1-4 with 2 K, and Smith is 1-3 with a double and a K.
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