Yankees baseball thoughts minus the hysteria and stupidity. Jack Curry follows me, so you probably should too. Member of @MLB Fan Council.
Minnetonka, MN
Joined August 2020
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Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
This is what the Giants tried this year (and what the Rockies try every year)
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
Absolutely. Neither side is going to give us cheaper tickets, hats, jerseys. My costs will never go down. I just get to choose who gets my money: the players whom I enjoy watching, or the owners whom I never see? Easy choice. I'd rather Ben Rice gets paid than Hal Steinbrenner.
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
And in typical fashion, MLB’s website for Level the Playing Field looks like it was stripped out of 1997
One of the funniest parts of MLBs case for a salary cap is that they keep saying all the fans want one.
But they never once conducted an actual survey to prove that. They literally just quote a random online poll by @mlbtraderumors and use it as proof.
Fans may want a cap/floor. But it’s just so funny to me that a multi-billion dollar organization like MLB can’t even take the time to actually ask fans what they want before saying they know what fans want.
Also - Incredibly weird they created an X account to spread their propaganda during the lockout. They are gearing up for battle. Players better be ready.
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
"You can't let it speed up on you… Once it gets going a little bit and you let it slip out of our hands, that's whenever the game goes too fast for you."
I asked Yankees closer David Bednar about his impressions of the Rays this season, and what he's carrying over from his first postseason run last year.
#yankees
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
League wide walk rate 1970-1979: 8.65%
League wide walk rate 1980-1989: 8.45%
League wide walk rate 1990-1999: 8.86%
League wide walk rate 2000-2009: 8.66%
League wide walk rate 2010-2019: 8.16%
League wide walk rate 2020-2026: 8.6%
John, you are objectively wrong lol
HERE WE GO AGAIN WITH THE VELOCITY BULLSHIT.
And this time it’s right on MLB.com.
Travis Sawchik has a new article today telling us again how much nastier October pitching is, throwing Stuff+, wOBA, whiff rates and velocity numbers at everybody like we’ve suddenly entered some brand-new version of baseball.
LOOK AT THE VELOCITY.
LOOK HOW HARD EVERYBODY THROWS NOW.
LOOK AT ALL THESE NUMBERS.
Every year it’s another metric, another algorithm and another big number telling us the game has somehow been reinvented.
And once again, everybody blows right past PERCEIVED VELOCITY.
A guy throwing 96 can play at 98 or 99 because of extension, release point and where the hitter picks up the baseball.
Now remember something: we had starters in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s throwing 94, 95, 96, 97 and reaching 100.
So stop acting like today’s velocity is some alien shit baseball has never seen before.
Are there MORE guys throwing hard today?
YES.
I’ll give you that.
But here’s the other side nobody wants to put on the front page:
THE COMMAND AND CONTROL OF TODAY’S PITCHERS IS HORRIBLE.
You want to know why so many starting pitchers are sitting at 80 pitches in the fourth or fifth inning?
THIS SHIT.
Max effort on damn near every pitch.
Trying to light up the radar gun.
Missing spots.
Falling behind.
Running deep counts.
Fouling pitches off because nothing is being commanded.
And next thing you know, the starter is at 75, 80, 90 pitches before he can even get through five innings.
Watch enough games and you see it constantly.
These guys can barely get through five because too many of them are THROWING instead of PITCHING.
Velocity.
Spin.
Stuff+.
Max effort.
Great.
How about getting strike one?
How about putting the fastball where you want it?
How about changing speeds?
How about getting a hitter out in three or four pitches instead of throwing eight?
That’s pitching.
Give me 94–96 with command, control, location and the ability to change speeds over 99 with no idea where the hell it’s going.
Velocity is part of pitching.
IT IS NOT PITCHING.
And MLB needs to stop selling every new radar-gun number like we’ve never seen this shit before.
We have.
#MLB #Baseball #Pitching #Velocity #MLBPlayoffs #SheGone03 #TheHugeShow
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
i've been collecting funny ABS challenges over the course of the season (please note: april 27 may not be the exact dates, but are the days i added them to my folder). here are the results ⤵️
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
If Max Scherzer's daughter ran out there to get him he would probably start yelling at her to get off the field.
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
Leagues earn more revenue when big market teams with star players are on top, every bit of data supports this. They may make more profit with a cap, but that comes from being able to suppress salaries, not from creating a more desirable product for fans
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
I dug into Paul Skenes' velocity and Stuff+ (grading quality of his overall arsenal) trends in spring training, the WBC, and throughout the season. There is clear support for the idea the WBC impacted Skenes, or the WBC exposed an issue that would have occurred anyway later in the year. I lean towards the latter based on evidence in the reply to this post that overall, pitchers who pitched in the WBC this year had no drop-off in velocity or stuff vs 2025.
Skenes showed excellent stuff & velo in his first spring outing on Feb 25, pre-WBC. He then showed similar velocity, but a bit inferior pitch movement/shape (explaining lower Stuff+ score) during the WBC exhibition game and 2 WBC appearances. He then came back and pitched a spring training game with the Pirates on March 21, where his velocity & stuff was way down vs. his prior appearances.
His velo bounced back when the regular season started, but faded afterwards, and his stuff+ rating was never as good as it was pre-WBC or in 2025.
However, shown in the reply to this post, I also did an analysis of all pitchers who appeared in the WBC, and Skenes is an outlier, which supports the idea that the WBC itself was less the issue but perhaps exposed underlying physical issues w/ Skenes that would have appeared later in 2026 anyway.
Paul Skenes on the World Baseball Classic and its impact on his velocity and effectiveness this season, via @colin_beazley:
"There are a lot of other factors, so I don’t want to put everything on that. But I feel like that was kind of the root of it a little bit."
"It definitely affected the year. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm the only one."
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
Why are batting averages down in professional baseball? This is my son this summer hitting in High-A. Notice the mph of each pitch. Mind you, this wasn’t uncommon all summer for these hitters to see. I pitched professionally 25 years ago. This type of arm was 1/1,000,000🦄
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
The clip is knocking a cue almost nobody serious actually teaches.
Driveline and Williams both want a slight upward plane. Neither one gets there by dumping the back shoulder so the hitter can “get under it.”
Williams said hips lead, barrel matches the incoming pitch, don’t hitch. Driveline says bat speed, positive attack angle, hit it hard in the air.
Rear-shoulder collapse on every pitch is the cartoon version of that idea, and it’s what produces the long swings A-Rod is mocking.
A-Rod hit for average and power. His game swing already lived in the launch-angle window that’s in vogue now. His tee demo is a different swing from the one on his baseball card. So if the point is “teach this again,” the question is which “this”: the feel he’s selling, or the mechanics he used.
Don’t confuse a bad youth-coach shortcut with Williams or Driveline. That’s how this argument keeps talking past itself.
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
To put this in more reassuring terms, senior Anthropic staff think the chance AI kills all humans within the next decade is approximately the chance the New York Jets make the playoffs
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
Nick was signed by the Yankees this season out of the Mexican Baseball League. He goes on to say in this thread that:
- The Mexican League was about scoring runs and winning games; he implies the Yankees were not teaching guys this and were only teaching guys how to beat the analytics for themselves
- Says analytics doesn't value/instruct guys to go from 1B to 3B
Nick was released from the org on July 7th. On July 7th, the Somerset Patriots in the Eastern league Northeast division ranked:
🔹1st in runs scored by about 30 runs
🔹1st in run differential
🔹were 2.5 wins out of 1st place
and are now ranked (since I can't filter for these stats to the date I want):
🔹1st in HRs throughout ALL of AA
🔹1st in RBIs throughout ALL of AA and 1st in the Eastern league by over 40 RBIs.
🔹2nd in the Eastern League in AVG
🔹4th in ALL of AA in SLG
🔹1st in the Eastern League in OPS
In fact, the Yankees farm affiliates throughout the other levels have been pretty apt at "scoring runs" and "winning games":
🔹Tampa is 1st in the FSL in AVG, 2nd in OBP, 1st in SLG, 1st in OPS, 1st in Runs scored, 1st in RBIs, 2nd in SBs and will make the playoffs
🔹Scranton, in the huge 20 team International League, is 5th in OPS, 4th in AVG, 4th in SLG, 7th in Runs scored, 7th in RBIs, 8th in SBs. They are 1.5 GB of a playoff spot right now.
🔹Hudson Valley hasn't been anything special this year but they're middle of the pack in just about everything, above 500, and certainly aren't incapable of "scoring runs" and "winning games".
The reality is Nick struggled in AA after winning MVP in the Mexican League in 2025. He slashed just .241/.321/.315 (.636 OPS) with only 11 RBIs in 163 PAs. I also think that the nerds need to do a better job of listening and communicating with players, 100%. But I can't get behind a player spewing *verifiably* false nonsense such as "the only thing that matters is scoring runs" and you're playing for a team VERY good at scoring runs.
Perhaps Nick had a legitimately bad experience with someone from the Yankees org. That idea is completely possible for sure. But out of respect for your teammates and the kids trying to make it in the org, it's pretty shitty to try and paint them as selfish guys only padding their stats. Especially when in all likelihood, it's just your ego from going from MVP to hitting into a .636 OPS in AA making you say this stuff.
Rational Yankees Fan retweeted
We are going to have a lockout because these owners, who can sell their teams for upwards of $4 Billion, are too poor to pay their players.
It's going to be a horrible winter ahead. Don't you dare let the owners trick you into joining their side.
