We
are now seven games into the season, and the Yanks are coming off their third
win. They’ve looked so much better these past two days than they did the other
five games, which is a plus. There is no game tomorrow however, so I thought I
would share some of my thoughts heading into the third off day of the season.
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| Photo Credit: John Munson |
Aaron Judge looks so much better at the plate
than he did in 2016
Aaron
Judge homered off of Alex Cobb today in the fourth inning, a long fly
ball into the left field seats. It was his second home run of the season, and
second in as many days. I don’t know about you, but I think he looks much more
focused at the plate this year. He’s laying off of more pitches and working
good at-bats. He looked like he was trying to do way too much at the plate last
year, and this year he knows what he’s doing, even if he’s not hitting
everything. Obviously, he’s going to strike out. It’s hard not to when you’re
6’7”. But as long as he keeps this up, his strikeout numbers won't nearly be as
gaudy as they were last year.
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| Photo Credit: John Munson |
Brett Gardner is being much more aggressive on
the basepaths
Brett
Gardner has five stolen bases this year. He stole his fifth base on May 6th
last year. This is a very good sign. One knock on Gardner last year was that he
wasn’t attempting to steal many bases last year (he stole 16 in total) but his
aggression so far this year has been a nice change. Hopefully we will get to
see more of it as the season progresses.
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| Photo Credit: John Munson |
I have no idea what to think of Michael Pineda
Michael
Pineda has two starts this year. In one of them, he gave up four runs and
didn’t make it out of the fourth inning. In the other (today) he went
7.2 innings, gave up just two hits and one run, struck out eleven, and carried
a perfect game into the seventh inning. So, uh…. what? We’ve known for a while
that Big Mike possesses this type of potential, but to actually see it in
action is something else. The only other time he was this dominant was his 16
strikeout performance on Mother’s Day in 2015. Hopefully he starts looking like
this Pineda, and not the one we saw for most of last year, and last week.
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| Photo Credit: John Munson |
Jacoby Ellsbury and Chase Headley are actually hitting…?
Chase
Headley seems to have forgotten about his non-April success from last year and is on fire at the plate this year this year, which I’m happy about. Naturally, everyone will always hate him
for…reasons... but it’s good to see him living up to his contract somewhat.
Ellsbury is much of the same. If both of these guys can keep up their success
to an extent, the Yankees will have a much better offense this year. A lot of the
performance of the younger guys depends on the performance of the veterans. If
the vets are hitting, the Baby Bombers have less pressure on them to perform.
Let’s hope we see more of this.
Article
by: Alex Weir
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