We made it to another Monday.
The big story coming out of yesterday’s game is that Max Scherzer was tipping pitches. From the Athletic:
The Yankees put their pitch-tipping expertise into motion after Cody Bellinger, who hit third in the lineup, reached first base on a single. With Aaron Judge on second base, Bellinger alerted the Yankees captain by motioning his arms up and down, signaling a changeup from Scherzer was coming. Judge then repeated the motion before Scherzer delivered a changeup, allowing
Rice to know that the pitch was coming.
“That is correct. That’s what was happening,” Bellinger said after the Yankees’ series-clinching 4-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. “We talk about it pregame, and you just go out there and look for it. If you see it, then you obviously do what you can.”
As Joe and Caleb said, back in ‘the day’, batters would get knocked down (or worse) for that sort of thing, but it is likely best we don’t do that anymore.
Apparently, Scherzer knew of an issue and though he thought he had addressed it:
“That’s something we’re aware of,” Scherzer said. “You can you get my changeup out of my glove from first base. Something we’ve known. It’s not just the Yankees. We know across the league guys can do that. I’ve had multiple people tell me that so I thought I had addressed it, thought I had made the proper adjustment to get my glove in front of my face. But, clearly, I hadn’t.”
It gives the team and Max stuff to work on before his next start.
Beyond that, one would think the Yankees would have a more subtle signal than flappling arms. Why the team wouldn’t notice that and stop things quickly is a separate question.
Cito Gaston was excellent at picking out pitchers’ tipping pitches. He could figure out the other team’s pitchers’ tells, and he was excellent at watching for his pitchers tipping pitches. I have a feeling that if someone was flapping their arms at second base, he would have yelled time and gone out to the mound.
Of course, he’d likely have ordered the pitcher to knock down the batter, too.
Jim Wolf had a rough day. Jim Wolf seems to have a rough day every time he comes around to be the plate umpire. The usual thing is so for the trailing team to get the edge. And, of course, Kirk is good at framing pitches.
What is interesting is the number of terrible misses.
Anyway, what we need now is to win the next series. I’m worried that Bo might be out for a few games. The team hasn’t said anything about him. I always take that as a bad sign. But it is an off-day, and news comes slowly on off-days.
