Agree with Thurm that Leland is crazy for letting Verlander go 131 pitches with a five run lead. who knows, maybe he’s another Ryan or Gibson, but its your very best guy with a lot of season left. seems like a big risk.

Thought Girardi might for once get someone up BEFORE a crisis. No, he doesn’t start the pen up until two runs in and more men on base.  Nova’s location was terrible. Don’t we have anyone watching the monitor in the dugout?

The use of Phelps since he was recalled defies explanation. I would have brought him in as soon as they tied score 2-2.

Think Yanks should put Nova in pen for a start or two and let Phelps have a chance. Give him some time to reevaluate and work on the side.
Yanks 17-17 over last 34. Most of the games are on offense and injuries but Girardi hasn’t exactly managed his best stretch. He seems very risk averse these days. Lots of station to station baserunning. Can Granderson bunt? I know he hits a lot of Hrs, but last night some contact would have been a good thing.

[2] what about AAA? Last time Nova went to AAA he came back considerably better.

[2] I could swear that I’ve seen Granderson lay down a perfect 3B side bunt.

On the verge?

[5] exactly.

Just like the video signal from the Mars thingy are 8 minutes in arears, so too our ability to observe our collapse has latency. In our case, about 2 weeks.

We are mid-collapse. Or maybe we’ve collapsed and are coming out of it, and just can’t see it yet.

Can we stretch Phelps back out so in the admittedly unlikely case Nova continues to, how can I say this,......suck we have an option.
.

[2],[5],[8] - What they said.

If we play .500 ball for the remainder of the season, that’s a 90 win team. That ought to snag one of the WC’s, no ?

I think it’s time to recognize we’re in a real race with BAL for the division. We’re not running away with this thing, and they are for real.

Too bad we traded AJ Burnett. And Ian Kennedy.

It is NOT too bad that we traded AJ Burnett.

Lots of station to station baserunning. Can Granderson bunt? I know he hits a lot of Hrs, but last night some contact would have been a good thing.

I’d prefer if Granderson not bunt.  I mean, occasionally as a suprise for a hit sure.  But overall he shouldn’t bunt. It may not be a bad idea to send Nova down or to the bullpen.  IDK how many pitches Phelps is good for right now…if it’s at least 60 I’d let him start in Nova’s place next time.

I think it’s time to recognize we’re in a real race with BAL for the division. We’re not running away with this thing, and they are for real.

Really Pin?  Really?

Last night Sterling said that the Pirates are 17-3 in games A.J. starts, and only 15 games over .500 overall (before last nights win).  So they are essentially a .500 when A.J. doesn’t pitch.

Last 28 days for Nova opponents are hitting 345 with an OBP of 391 and OPS 979 against which is 66 points higher then the best Yankee OPS (Cano) for the season.
For the season Nova’s OPS against is 863 which is 31 points higher then the Yankees second best OPS (Granderson).  So the average OPS of all the hitters who Nova faced this season would be the second most productive batter on the Yankees.
Nova’s OPS against is 168 points worse then the league average and 83 points worse then Fredo’s and on the Yankees only Cory Wade is worse.

I’ll leave to others to tell me if the stats I’m quoting are a fair indicator of his season.

So the average OPS of all the hitters who Nova faced this season would be the second most productive batter on the Yankees.

Since the Yankees are so terrible, this is obviously a good stat.

[16] Yeah for the most part Nova hasn’t been good this year.  I don’t think the, “league has figured him out”.  He just isn’t pitching well.  I don’t think a trip to the minors or the bullpen would hurt him at all right now.  And clearly, he isn’t helping the team at this point.  That said, next start could be the one he turns it around and starts pitching like he did in the 2nd half of last year, so…

[18] - I think he kept the K rate up from late last year but it came at the expense of GB.  I read somewhere that he is using the upper 1/3 of the strikezone more this year.  That was the reason for the more K’s at the expense of GB but an additional downside has been when he is up and he missed he gets hammered. 

We need a heatmap.

if the Oreos do better than 3rd or stay over .500 i’ll be very surprised…..

which is not to say that we might not be in a race given current levels of suck.

Baltimore is not for real.

11—has our bad luck/incompetence with young pitchers not been more or less balanced out by our ability to pull solid seasons from Colonesque vets?

certainlly the Towne fans i know view the latter as absolutely fundamental to recent Yankee successes….

[19]  Right, I’ve definitely heard that he seems to be leaving the slider up more.  If he’s also up with the FB, it could be intentional, or it could be a mechanical matter.  E.g. release point.  If it’s mechanical you hope that the change isn’t major, and he can get back to being more like last year.  How difficult is that to fix?  No idea, but IDK if they want to give him more than one or two starts to figure it out. 

A lot of how everything else happens will probably go a long way to determining how many more chances he gets.  E.g. if Yankees win next 9 games (Nova sucks but they win anyway) and get back to a 10 or 11 game lead, he’ll probably get lots more chances until Pettitte gets back.  If they lose a few more and only have a 3 or 4 game lead, he probably doesn’t get more than 2 shots.

if Yankees win next 9 games (Nova sucks but they win anyway) and get back to a 10 or 11 game lead

Hijacking this back to my context (having nothing to do with Nova, but re: the division, the O’s, etc.), if this comes to pass, I will retract [10].

The O’s may be succeeding/winning way over the head of their talent, but that’s something that seamingly started as soon as Buck arrived. I don’t know how much the O’s have benefited from strength of schedule or flukiness. We’re in August now, he’s got them in pretty good position, and he might be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat a few more times.

The Orioles’ run differential is -55.  The Royals’ differential is -62.

[24] Buck Showalter has 12 full seasons as a baseball manager, and 2 partial ones (2010 and this year).  In those 12 full seasons, his teams have exceeded their pythag 6 times, underachieved 5 times, and matched pythag once.  The most he’s overachieved pythag was 2 games.  Underachieved once 6 games, once 4 games, once 3 games (other times one or two games).  I’m not sure what the split is in 2010 - I know what Showalter’s record was and that the O’s beat pythag by 2 games but not how well they did when Showalter was there.

This year?  So far they’re NINE games better than pythag.  I really don’t think that’s sustainable.  If Showalter had shown a clear ability as a manager over the years to have teams do better than there run differential, maybe.  But he looks exactly like you’d expect; usually a couple of games + or minus but no pattern.  Last year they outpeformed by 2 games, so I don’t think he’s magically learned anything at this point, or that these players in particular are responding or anything.  It’s luck, pure and simple, and they’ll fade.  They may finish with a winning record, but they are NOT a playoff caliber team.

With Longoria coming back, I’m still more concerned with Tampa catching the Yankees than Baltimore overtaking them.

Honestly, should we be that upset with losing to the Tigers and A’s and O’s?  Doesn’t that just screw the Red Sox?

Some of us, which I’m guessing are a minority, could not possibly care less about Boston.  We just root for our team.

Hmm… I don’t think I’ve ever been told I’m not sarcastic enough before.  I actually don’t know what to say.

You need to up your game.

More sarcasm.  Check.  My wife will be so pleased!

[30] It’s not a common complaint, but you’re on RLYW the home of the uncommon complaint.

[32] You must have married a very different woman from me. Mine would not at all be pleased.

Unless you’re being sarcastic, but I couldn’t really tell. You might need to turn it up some more.