May has been a hit-or-miss month for the Yankees, and so has this series. They dominated the Athletics on Friday, only to lose behind a trio of homers last night. With Will Warren on the hill, they stand the chance today to win a game, win a key series, and hopefully put the messiness of the last 30 days behind them.
The soon-to-be 27-year-old Warren has taken a step forward so far this year, with a solid 3.55 ERA and very impressive 3.27 FIP, built upon significant cuts to his walk and home run rate.
The strikeouts are still there, to be sure, but Warren’s progress has been buoyed by him making fewer mistakes. Warren is for now the No. 5 starter in the rotation, but he’s top 40 by ERA and 27th in all of baseball. If that’s the way the supposed weakest link in your rotation is going, you’re eating pretty good. For what it’s worth, Warren had his career-best outing by Game Score last May in this very ballpark, dominating the A’s with 7.1 innings of four-hit, one-run ball with seven strikeouts.
Jacob Lopez goes for “Sacremento,” and he is exactly the kind of pitcher the Yankees should feast on. He gives up 2+ HR/9 while walking 13.5 percent of batters faced, while seeing a BABIP that’s not quite league average but isn’t far off. He’s not a victim of bad luck — he struggles to find the strike zone and when he does its hittable. That should appeal greatly to a team trained to attack mistakes and let border pitches go, but then again we’ve seen more than one 5+ ERA hurler toss blanks against this team in previous seasons.
We have a couple changes to the ordinary lineup today, with José Caballero batting fifth (and I triple-checked) and manning the hot corner, while Max Schuemann gets the start at second while he’ll hit eighth. Paul Goldschmidt is once again penciled in for a start, leading us off in front of the familiar Ben Rice-Aaron Judge-Cody Bellinger trio.
Yes, we have one more afternoon start to endure.
How to watch:
Location: Sutter Health Park — West Sacramento, CA
First pitch: 4:05 pm EDT
TV Broadcast: YES Network (NYY) | NBCSCA (ATH)
Radio Broadcast: WFAN 660/101.9 FM, WADO 1280 (NYY) | Talk 650 KSTE, KVMX 92.1/105.5, A’s Cast (ATH)
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