00:00It's a drive by Derry Dawson, Charles Chisholm goes deep.
00:09The rosters were announced for the wild card series, the best of three, Yankees, Red Sox.
00:15And I would say the Yankees in the end were tactical, practical, but also emotional.
00:19Nobody, Aaron Judge didn't make the roster.
00:23I think it was practical, and I'm sure it was emotional.
00:27He's the captain of the team. He's the best player on the team.
00:31He badly wanted to play. He understands. He talked about it in the day before the series was to begin.
00:37He's played for 10 years. The team hasn't won a championship while he's there.
00:42How precious it is to play this time of year.
00:45But the reality is he took batting practice in front of the world in a little simulated situation on Monday.
00:54And it was telling that after that round, Trent Grisham and Giancarlo Stanton, who were also on the injured list
01:03and trying to get back in time, ran on the field.
01:06The player who did not run on the field was Aaron Judge, who had said before the workout the only
01:13running he had done was on an anti-gravity machine.
01:16And the Yankees have to protect Aaron Judge from Aaron Judge.
01:21He has a strained calf. I've covered baseball for a long time. I've never seen anyone come back from a
01:27strained calf in less than three weeks.
01:29The Yankees did not describe this as the mildness.
01:33Everyone agreed it was in his soleus, which is the lower part that attaches to the Achilles.
01:38The Yankees, to try to do this in under three weeks, there's a delusion players need to play great.
01:45And I think Aaron Judge has that. And I'm not saying that pejoratively.
01:49To be able to do something like he does in front of 50,000 people live and millions more and
01:54folks caring this much and the other teams as talented as they are.
01:58You have to have a certain delusion that you can do what people say you can't do.
02:01And I think Aaron Judge has it at the highest level.
02:04But ultimately, the Yankees just can't put a compromised player on the field.
02:10It's not good for them. And it's not good for him if he were to do some serious damage there.
02:16And suddenly you're talking about not just missing the rest of these playoffs, but maybe a part of next year.
02:22Now, maybe do you gamble? Because who knows how much baseball we're playing next year with a lockout due on
02:27December 1st.
02:28And some real concerns about when the season might start or if it will be played at all.
02:33But ultimately, Judge didn't make it back to this roster.
02:39I even say it's a big question if he can make it back.
02:43If the Yankees advance for a division series, the first two games and possibly three and five games would be
02:49played on the turf in St. Petersburg against the Rays.
02:52And that is not a forgiving surface. And it still is not the typical healing period.
02:59You could hope, you could pray, you could wish.
03:02But the body is the body.
03:04It is the body of a 6'7", 270-plus pound man who does things with great force.
03:11And as much as he wants to play, as much as the fan base wants him to play, and I'm
03:16sure as much as the Yankees want him to play, the body is saying certain things here.
03:23Conversely, the Yankees did put Grisham and Stanton on the roster.
03:28They didn't put Ryan Weathers on.
03:30I think, again, we got to tell on Monday during this simulated period.
03:35Weathers faced Stanton and Judge, and my thought was if he's pitching on Monday, it means he can't pitch on
03:43Tuesday, probably not on Wednesday.
03:44The series maximum goes to Thursday if a game three is needed.
03:48But I think by being on the mound and pitching, if the Yankees advance, I think Weathers becomes a part
03:55of the roster for the next round without any setbacks.
03:59What I would look at in this series is the Yankees put Stanton on, who hasn't played since April 24th.
04:07The Red Sox put Garrett Crochet on, who hasn't pitched since April 25th.
04:12If you'd like to know how long ago that was, April 25th was Game 4 of the first round of
04:16the NBA playoffs.
04:17The Knicks beat the Hawks to tie the series, went on a 13-game winning streak that would take them
04:23towards an NBA championship.
04:25The Knicks opened camp yesterday for a new season.
04:28That's how long it's been since Stanton and Crochet played.
04:31Why are they on this roster?
04:33Well, they're incredibly talented.
04:34Crochet finished second for the AL Cy Young last year.
04:37But he's left-handed.
04:39The Red Sox are taking six lefties on their staff.
04:43Two of them will start games if it goes three games.
04:46Peyton Tolley is starting the opener.
04:49And Ranger Suarez would start Game 3.
04:52They're going to throw a ton of lefty pitching against the Yankees.
04:55The Yankees lean lefty.
04:57They did decide to go with 16 position players.
05:01I think at the end, that came down to taking an 11th pitcher or Ahmad Rosario.
05:06And I think they decided Rosario's right-hand bat to pinch hit or maybe even open at third base against
05:13a guy like Tolley was more valuable than the 11th pitcher.
05:17And Stanton sitting on the bench, it's a roll of the dice.
05:21He's a high strikeout, high swing and miss guy in the best of the times.
05:25Here he is.
05:26He hasn't taken a competitive at bat since late April.
05:31But he's Giancarlo Stanton.
05:32You look down the bench.
05:33When they bring in one of these lefties, I think he's going to get two or three targeted plate appearances
05:38in this series where Aaron Boone knows for sure it will be against the lefty.
05:43And he'll try to do it.
05:45Grisham is on the roster because, again, there is some value to the left-handed bat when righties come in.
05:53And also, at the moment, to end the season, Jose Caballero was their fourth outfielder.
05:58And as problematic as Grisham might be in center field, I think you'll see him, if the Yankees are leading
06:03late, Grisham in center and Spencer Jones in right and Elio Ramos off the field.
06:10Because Ramos is still the worst defender of that trio.
06:12And they'll try to play defense that way.
06:15But I would just concentrate a lot on with who's here for both teams.
06:20This is going to be a lot of Boone trying to get favorable righty-lefty matchups.
06:27But the Yankee lefty hitters, you know, Rice is not going to be pinch hit for.
06:32And Bellinger is not going to be pinch hit for.
06:34And so they're going to have to do some damage.
06:36He's not going to want to pinch hit for Austin Wells because the downgrade is to Ali Sanchez being in
06:41the game.
06:42And so some of their lefty hitters are going to have to do left-on-left damage in this series.
06:47I think it's a big part of this series.
06:49But where he can, he will try to get the right-on-left-at-bat for Stanton.
06:54Obviously, he would have loved to have some right-on-left-at-bats for the guy who, you know,
06:58who has built a career around hitting a lot of people, including lefties, really well.
07:03And that's Aaron Judge.
07:04But Judge isn't going to be part of this series.
07:06And let's see if the Yankees advance and ever could get to the point where they could get Judge onto
07:10a roster.
Comments