A few interesting stories worthy of debate and discussion today:
- The noble fangraphs dissects a few of Mariano’s crucial statistics from this year. The good news is that his K/9 and bb/9 is the same or better than he’s ever been. The bad news is that his homers and swings & misses are way out of whack. Fangraphs is concerned, I’m not. Mo is a freak of nature and everything (outside of his bad outing last week) so far this year can be attributed to an early season dead arm period. Basically, I’m sticking with Mo until there’s overwhelming evidence that he’s lost it. The guy is pure gold.
- As the defense goes, so go the Yankees? The errorless record coincided remarkably well with the Yankees huge winning streak. Now the Yanks have committed E’s in 10 of the last 13, with their record in those games a paltry 7-6. In good defensive news, however, like a fine wine, Derek Jeter’s defense seems to be getting better and better, as reported by Fox Sports’ John Paul Morosi. Jeter’s actually a +2 run value in the field this year. At a time when shortstops’ ranges should be declining, Jeter’s is somehow improving. Is it time for the blogosphere to take notice and stop mocking DJ’s d or is it still just a sample size issue?
- Some draft evaluation by long-time minor league expert, John Sickels is available, here. Sickels is nervous about the Yanks’ top two selections, but he likes some later picks like Sean Black, D’Angelo Mack, and Luke Merton. In fact, he likes Mack and Merton so much that he picked them up for his own shadow team in a mock draft.
All in all, some pretty interesting and discussable items today. I thought the Jeter and Rivera stories were particularly cool. How these guys age is pretty crucial to the future success of the Yankees. How long can Jeter stay at short? Should we re-sign him past his current deal for big money? How long can Rivera defy Father Time? Should the Yanks pick up a back up closer this off-season?
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2 Responses to Story Roundup for 6/17
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TIQ IQ
Your last sentence got me!
Mo is going to leave us, someday,what is the plan “B”? Well, it’s like this; why spend minor league players and $$$$$ for a guy that may not pan out when we have a couple of guys already? Ok, so they aren’t MO, so what…can they get the job done? I say yes! Let’s wait and see how our guys respond to things.
Don’t expect another MO, or whom ever…ain’t gonna happen!
True, I guess that there really is no possible plan B other than limiting the possible damage. I think at one point, the Yanks hoped that Humberto Sanchez would turn into a candidate but now it’s really just Melancon, unless you decide to try to convert a starter, which is always a possibility, but there’s no one close that has closer stuff except for Phil and Joba. We are really going to miss Mo when he finally does go into decline, but hopefully we get a couple more years out of him.