I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. There has never been a moment — not once — where I felt like I deserved the recognition or praise that came my way for RAB. I’m not oblivious to the site’s success and to this day I have a hard time wrapping my head around it, but I don’t feel I’ve earned it.

To me, I’m just a guy who had an internet connection and met the right people at the right time, has a love of dingers and Mariano Rivera frontdoor cutters …

… and has a curiosity about baseball. When we launched RAB, it started as a passion project, and I did my best to keep up with Joe and Ben. We’ve added writers over the years to reduce my workload and also to bring different perspectives to the site, and I felt the same way. I’ve just been trying to keep up.

I never expected RAB to become what it did or last as long as it did or lead to where it did, and I feel I played only a small part in that. RAB was at its best with multiple voices and different opinions, and I am only one person. Everyone here made me better. So did all the other baseball bloggers out there, Yankees or otherwise, though they may not know it.

No one pushed me to be better more than you folks though. Through mailbag questions, emails, social media, and our comments (RIP), RAB readers pushed me to be better. You helped me broaden my horizons, helped me come up with post ideas — I couldn’t possibly tell you how many topics I “stole” from the comments or random Twitter interactions over the years — and kept me on my toes.

The Yankees provide great subject matter and a dedicated fan base, and that made RAB all the more fun. More demanding, but also more fun. Building a successful blog is almost impossible nowadays. Building one in the New York media market about this team? I look back and wonder how we managed to do it, and I know I couldn’t have done it without everyone who read. Your passion pushed me.

RAB has led to some pretty cool things, including my current spot with CBS Sports. Eventually I became credentialed — I am forever grateful to Marc Carig for showing an overwhelmed blogger the ropes in a big league clubhouse (you can all Marc thank for talking me into keeping RAB alive as long as I did) — and now I’m in the BBWAA and halfway to a Hall of Fame vote. This was not the plan, but here I am.

The best part of RAB has been the friendships, both the new ones I’ve made and the existing ones that grew stronger. I’ve put a lot of time into RAB and the friendships make it all worth it. There are things I would change if we could go back and do it again — we were jerks to people unnecessarily in the early going, which I blame on youthful know-it-all-ness — but not that. I have friends for life because of RAB.

RAB started as a hobby and evolved into a life-changing journey. I’m sad the site is shutting down but I also know it’s time. Part of me is sad to see RAB go and the rest of me is excited to figure out what’s next. Whatever it is, I know it won’t be as rewarding. Even though I never met most of you, you were part of my life for 12 years, and you helped me get to where I am today.

Thank you for reading, thank you for the thank yous and the stories about what RAB meant to you, and thank you for pushing me to make RAB the best it could possibly be.

The post A Goodbye and a Thank You appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

In the three weeks since we announced RAB is shutting down, I’ve been overwhelmed by thank yous and people reaching out to tell me what RAB means to them. It means a lot to me (to us) and I thank everyone who reached out.

In those three weeks I’ve also been overwhelmed by folks asking where they can get their Yankees fix going forward. With no more RAB, people want to know where to go next, so I figured it was worth putting together this “guide to life after RAB” post. It feels presumptuous (who made me bloglord?), but people want it, so here it is.

Going forward, the RAB website will remain live so you can go back through the archives, though the site will not be updated. Our Twitter account @RiverAveBlues will remain active though. That’s easy enough. Here is everything I could cobble together for the post-RAB world. I hope this helps, and thank you again for reading.

“RAB Thoughts” Patreon

In our shutdown post I said I was considering a mailing list/newsletter type thing with a weekly “thoughts” style post. Posts like this. You’ve seen plenty of them even if you haven’t been reading RAB all that long. I’ve decided to go through with the once-a-week thoughts posts. I’m still going to have the itch to write (and fanboy and complain) about the Yankees, and one post a week shouldn’t be a burden.

These weekly thoughts posts won’t appear at RAB and they won’t be free. I’ve set up a $3 per month Patreon page called RAB Thoughts. Create a Patreon account (the account itself is free) if you don’t have one already, then click the “Become a Patron” button on the RAB Thoughts page, and you’re in. Weekly thoughts posts for the cost of one non-Starbucks cup of coffee a month. You’ll get an email each time a post goes live. There’s also a Patreon mobile app and you can received a notification for new posts. Easy peasy.

I am leaning toward Wednesday being thoughts post day. I definitely don’t want to do it Monday because it’ll hang over my head all weekend. Wednesday’s a good day right in the middle of the week. Maybe Thursday works better because it is typically the end of the previous series and start of the new series. I’ll see how it goes. For now, the first post will be Wednesday, May 8th. I’m taking the rest of this week off, so it’ll start up next week.

(Update: Just to be clear, the Patreon will be year-round, not just during the baseball season.)

Where you can find us

• Mike Axisa (Twitter: @mikeaxisa): CBS Sports
• Ben Kabak (@benyankee): Second Ave. Sagas
• Joe Pawlikowski (@joepawl)
• Jay Gordon (@jaydestro)
• Derek Albin (@derekalbin): Bronx Beat podcast (occasionally) and Baseball Prospectus
• Matt Imbrogno (@mimbro1): Locked on Yankees podcast (occasionally)
• Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim): FanGraphs, The Athletic
• Bob Montano (@mr_bobloblaw)
• Katie Sharp (@ktsharp): Talkin’ Yanks podcast
• Steven Tydings (@StevenTydings): YES Network

Yankees news and analysis

• Lindsey Adler at The Athletic (subscription site but well worth it)
• Bronx Pinstripes
• It is High! It is Far! It is … Caught.
• Pinstripe Alley
• Replacement Level Yankees Weblog
• Start Spreading the News
• Yanks Go Yard

I leave you with a smorgasbord. Try a little of everything and see what you like. Personally, I read everything Lindsey writes (no, The Athletic is not paying me to say that) and pretty much everything at RLYW. I enjoy the snark and the short, snappy posts.

Minor league daily updates and analysis

• Bronx Baseball Daily
• Pinstriped Prospects
• Prospect Pipeline (daily box scores in one place)
• The Bronx View

The Bronx View runs a daily update post similar to DotF. Pinstriped Prospects is the best independent source for farm system news and they provide lots of original reporting, including Extended Spring Training information that is impossible to get anywhere else.

Stats and other information

• Baseball Savant (Statcast data and the site has so many tools that it’s intimidating)
• Baseball Reference (my go-to for quick look-ups)
• Brooks Baseball (PitchFX data)
• Cot’s Baseball Contracts (in-depth contract information)
• FanGraphs (good for easily accessible batted ball and plate discipline stats, among other things)
• The Baseball Gauge (many neat tools, including Championship Probability Added)

FanGraphs has a bullpen workload page similar to ours, though it doesn’t include warm-ups or Triple-A pitchers. The individual player pages at Baseball Savant (here is CC Sabathia’s, for example) are incredibly useful. Traditional stats, Statcast, heat maps, the works. My best advice — my only advice, really — is to keep playing around with each site. There’s so much information and so many tools available these days that it can be overwhelming, I know. Give it time and you’ll learn your way around.

The post A Guide to Life After RAB appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

Contemplating the end of RAB, I thought of its origins. Why did the three of us come together to create this site?

Ben covered the basics in his own farewell post so apologies if I’m covering known ground. But this is the story as I remember and can document it.

In 2006 we were all writing on our own blogs — The Sporting Brews, Off The Facade, In George We Trust. At that stage in the evolution of blogging everyone read everyone else’s blogs, so we were all familiar with each other’s work. Ben and I both started new jobs in the second half of 2006 and were posting less frequently than we had previously. When Ben asked me to join him on Off The Facade, which was part of a network and much bigger than my puny operation, it was an easy yes. And so it began.

After a few months things were going well, but not exceptionally well. The network was having some technical issues. We felt a little stifled in terms of what we could write. On a Wednesday in mid-January, Ben emailed:

I’m getting really sick of all of this [network] server downtime and I am not against the idea of taking our writing elsewhere.

A few hours later in the same email thread, a name was born. Ben again:

I’ve always liked tying in River Avenue to a Yankees blog. It’s more out-of-the-box than Pinstripe Something or Bronx Anything. River Ave. Blues is what I had going…

Two weeks later Ben and I still hadn’t made a decision, but we’d talked more about setting off on our own. In the middle of an email thread about something completely different, I wrote:

Re: breaking off. We need to set a deadline on a decision for this. Say, by March 1. I’d actually like to get Mike A. on board…

That was February 2. It took maybe a day to get Mike on board. At that point it was all technical: how quickly could we buy web hosting, set up the site, and start publishing?

The answer was just over two weeks. On February 20, Mike kicked it all off. About an hour after he christened the site, he sent this in an email.

I’m not in the writing business, nor do I have any desire to enter into it, so it’s really up to you guys.

Good call, Mike.

Later in the week I was enthralled by how many people actually visited the site:

252 unique visitors yesterday, 242 today, 405 total — not too shabby for the first two days in the office.

The blog grew. It grew and it grew and it grew. It grew to levels we couldn’t even imagine when it launched. Had we kept at it, I daresay it would have continued growing. But that passion faded years ago, as anyone who’s been reading since the early days can tell you. If this farewell doesn’t seem very emotional, it’s because I moved on long ago.

And so I close the RAB chapter of my life with some gratitude:

Dad for basically everything: my Yankee fandom, encouragement of my writing pursuits, and constant readership. In those early days, when barely anyone read or commented, Dad was there to support us.

Ben, Mike, and Jay for friendships that extend far beyond River Ave. Blues. Y’all were at my wedding, we were all at Ben’s wedding, and it’s reassuring to know that we’ll see each other long after these doors close.

Jonah Keri and Jay Jaffe for using their relatively prominent positions to help spread the good work that independent bloggers were doing back in the day.

Keith Law, Rob Neyer, and Peter Gammons for the little praises that sent more readers our way.

JP, Steve H, James K, Stephen, Brock, Hannah, Larry, Moshe, Jamie, Eric, Matt W, Katie, Betsy, Sung-Min, Steven, Dom, Matt I, Bob, Ashley, Derek, and countless infrequent contributors for helping us maintain our high standards for content both in quantity and quality.

All of you who found us over the years. I’m fairly certain we would have kept this thing going through at least 2011 without the level of readership that we attained. But boy did y’all keep us motivated. Thanks for stopping by.

The post RAB: Origins appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

A lifetime ago, Joe and I were in charge of the Yankees site for the Most Valuable Network, a long-defunct sports blog network, when we decided we could do a better job on our own. We wanted Minor League content too and invited Mike along for the ride. We felt we could provide comprehensive Yankee coverage from a fan perspective and do a better job than anyone else out there. It was typical early 20s hubris from a bunch of kids with internet hookups, and somehow it all worked out.

Twelve years and over 28,000 posts later, we decided it was time to say good bye, but quitting is never easy. Beyond the ins and outs of the Yanks’ rocky 2010s, we’ve all been through a lot together – job changes, career changes, grad school, weddings, births. We started out as business partners and became fast friends, adding Jay a few years in to keep everything humming smoothly.

At some point, though, over the years for each of us, what started as a passion project becomes less fun and more of a burden. I couldn’t keep up with posting after law school ended and my current career began. Joe’s writing slowed down with the birth of his daughter. Mike, our Energizer bunny, kept going and going and going, but when a passion project isn’t a passion any longer, it’s time to hang up. We still love the Yanks, warts, frustrations, injuries and all; it’s just time to love the Yankees as fans again.

It’s a trite cliche to quote Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” in a farewell piece, but after 12 seasons, I think about Dylan’s lyrics a lot. Back in 2006 when the idea for RAB came together, I was so much older then. We’re all younger than that now. When we started RAB, the general tenor of online baseball writing focused around doing a better job. We all thought we could do a better job than our favorite team’s GM. We thought we could out-manage our favorite team’s manager. We thought we could out-coach our favorite’s team’s coach.

RAB came of age at a time when the volume of data about baseball was readily available and increasing dramatically. The statistical understanding of the game shifted from Bill James’ printed books to Baseball Prospectus’ annuals to daily WAR updates to wRC+ in the span of a barely a decade. With it, came a different approach to team-building that turned everyone into Moneyball accolades and led everyone to propose a budgetary-constrained approach to baseball team-building. As more online analysts were hired by teams, that approach shifted from the Internet to the game before we knew it, and now teams are underpaying players while the game is based more on an all-or-nothing understanding underpinned by batted ball profiles more than anything else.

This is not to say that River Ave. Blues was instrumental in changing the game of baseball any more or less than any other site, but as I reflect back on the past 12 seasons, I see shifts in the way baseball works that grew out of the idea that a bunch of kids knew more than anyone else. Today, I can see how baseball writers helped drive a hidden search for value, how we all helped shift understanding of the game, and how we had a role, even if slight, in whatever labor battles loom. I wouldn’t change RAB’s approach over the last 12 seasons for the world, but if we all knew then what we knew now, many of us would think twice about that Moneyball approach (and we sure as hell would’ve traded the Big Three).

As RAB comes to a close, I think about the friends we made along the way, the baseball friends I chat with every day on Twitter and the ones I see in real life. I think about the playoff games at Bleecker Heights Tavern, a World Series championship at Blondies, and I think about the babies born, the weddings, the parties, the games in the Bronx. I think about the fans and readers who have written to us lately talking about how we expanded their baseball horizons and their love and appreciate for the game. And I think about how we did it. Joe, Mike, Jay and I set out to build a better baseball blog, and we accidentally stumbled into a community of great people, lifelong friends and some amazing Yankee fans. I wouldn’t trade the world for it. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And as we go gently into that good night, just remember the 2-2 pitch to Tino was a ball and no, I’m still not going to eat the hat.

The post Our Back Pages: A Farewell To All This appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

In January 2017, the Yankees were doing the “Winter Warm-Up” series to introduce newer players to the fanbase through sandwich workshops, surprising ticketholders, going to museums, etc. At one point, they also had a presser at the Yankee Stadium. I was informed of the opportunity to cover it for River Avenue Blues and simply took it. I had dreamed of being a part of the press corp at the Yankee Stadium someday and it was happening.

While I was soaking it all in in the Yankee Stadium hallways, all by myself, I saw Brian Cashman walking from a distance. I would recognize that face from just about anywhere. I was wearing a University of Maryland jacket at the time. Cashman, who also went to a school in Washington, DC area (Catholic University of America), saw that. He said, “Maryland, huh?” We had a little conversation about DC area, the winter weather, the Yankees, etc. At some point, he looked at the credential card hanging below my neck and said this:

“River Avenue Blues! Love the website. I read it all the time.”

I’m not going to sugarcoat that comment too much. It’s obviously a weighty praise especially given the context. What I want to emphasize here more is how a website created by fan bloggers – out of labor of love, nonetheless – became so developed and established enough to get first-hand praise from the general manager of the New York Yankees, earn a commercial spot at the YES Network, get funding to pay the writers, etc. It just goes to show us, while it may be daunting to start something from scratch, the persistence and the love for it can lead it to something so impactful. This not only goes for baseball blogs but also for pretty much everything in our lifetime.

It’s been awhile since I wrote on this website. A lot of things have happened to me for the past half a year or so. I got hired by FanGraphs, I joined Baseball Prospectus to occasionally write about Korean baseball, I contributed for The Athletic, etc. It’s not easy to openly admit this but things shifted a bit for me in terms of my career opportunity and priority – but I always had River Avenue Blues in the back of my mind, because for me, this is where it all started.

Truth be told, this website is the foundation for all of what I’ve been able to do in the baseball media. As it is the case for many that are trying to find a footing in an industry they’re trying to enter, there was a time where I couldn’t get any publication’s attention to save my life. I was contacting basically every blog’s emails to give them my hand. At some point, I got Jay Gordon’s attention and wrote about a few Korean players for River Avenue Blues. Jay and Mike got back to me a few months later and asked me if I wanted to be a contributor for the site starting the 2015 season. As someone who was trying to find a footing somewhere writing about something I love, it was an offer I couldn’t pass.

I was a reader before I was a writer. I can’t exactly pinpoint when I started to read RAB, but it was around 2007 or 2008. River Avenue Blues was my main reading spot for Yankees information along with LoHud Yankees Blog. I was in high school at the time and had no idea what I was going to do with my life, so I never really saw myself ever writing for the site. Flashforward to junior year in college, I declared journalism and *kind of* saw myself writing about baseball in future. I tried taking essential reporting and journalistic writing classes and it turned out I was pretty trash at that (at least back then). I ended up switching to broadcast journalism and took up internships in sports radio and television. I thought my future was in working the radio control board, editing soundbytes on Adobe Audition, cutting video files and putting captions, etc. It wasn’t glamorous, but I would have been more than okay going that path.

Even doing all that, there was always a thing in back of my mind that I yelled at me about baseball writing. I took one sports writing class – and I did pretty okay in it – but my connection to the industry was pretty lacking. I had no sports writing internship, my school newspaper’s sports section was quite filled up, etc. yes, these are bunch of excuses, but having been in the industry for a bit by now, I learned that these things matter. I got my foundation of all these through River Avenue Blues.

Writing for RAB was a trip – I got a lot of the “real life work experience” moments through my first several blog posts. I was sloppy, lacked attention to detail, attracted some critical comments, etc. I felt like a pitcher who just got called up from minors who was too amped up to find a strike zone. Usually, writers get yelled at by editors or other higher-ups for such mistakes. But RAB people have been very gracious – they always had my back, they allowed me to improve by my own and most importantly, they never hesitated to give me a confidence boost. So many times, I’ve seen a lot of my peers from school get burnt out in writing industry for various reasons. For me, however, it was all joy. The more I wrote for RAB, the more I was enthralled with baseball writing.

I know I talked a lot about myself and my experience of the website but it’s much moreso about guys like Mike, Ben, Joe, Jay, Betsy and others who have laid the foundation for River Avenue Blues to be such a big part of many Yankee fans’ online fandom. It’s also about people like Derek, Steven, Matt, Bobby, Katie, Domenic and Ashley who contributed their time and effort to also make this blog much moreso than just a blog. This site was a community: where anyone could come in and get their daily dose of the New York Yankees.

Yankee fans are lucky that there isn’t exactly a shortage of Yankees contents around the web, but I can’t help but feel like it will leave a huge void in my mind knowing that there won’t be any newer RAB posts starting April 30. At the same time, it is what it is. As Mike said, River Avenue Blues lived about a billion years old for blog standards, and it would not have been possible without the love of everyone – especially you, the readers – involved. Whoever you are, thank you for reading this blog post and this website. I hope you are having a nice day.

The post A thank you to RAB, where it all started for me appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

I did not realize this at the time, but the ten-year anniversary of our Fan Confidence Poll was this past March 2nd. The big stories when we launched the Fan Confidence Poll? Alex Rodriguez needing hip surgery, Mark Teahen trade rumors, and CC Sabathia’s and A.J. Burnett’s Spring Training debuts. Feels like a lifetime ago.

Like pretty much everything else with RAB, I did not expect the Fan Confidence Poll to last as long as it did. I was hoping to capture a few months worth of data, maybe two or three years worth if everything went well, and now here we are a decade later. The idea is pretty self-explanatory: Take the pulse of the fanbase over a long stretch of time.

There has always been a lot of week-to-week noise in the Fan Confidence Poll. A good week will cause fan confidence to spike. Going 1-6 and getting swept by the Red Sox meant a tumble. Big trade? Series of injuries? They all have a short-term impact on fan confidence. Here’s an interactive Fan Confidence Graph and here’s an annotated version:

(1) The absolute peak of the Fan Confidence Poll is, of course, the 2009 World Series. The Yankees won the World Series on a Wednesday. The prior Monday they had a 3-1 series lead and the Fan Confidence Poll peaked at 9.27. The following week it was at 9.25. People were apparently more confident about winning the World Series before winning the World Series than after actually winning the World Series. Huh. It’s come close a few times, but fan confidence never again reached 9.00 after the 2009 World Series hangover faded away.

(2) Eyeballing it, I would’ve guessed that dip in mid-2010 was the Cliff Lee non-trade. Fan confidence went from 8.01 one week to 6.85 the next week. But nope, it was not the Lee non-trade. That came a few weeks later. That big dip came after … a series loss to the Mets? A series loss to the Mets. The Yankees dropped two of three in Citi Field to a pretty mediocre Mets squad that weekend and fans were Mad Online. Fan confidence actually increased from 8.01 to 8.48 following the Lee non-trade. It increased because fans were happy the Yankees held on to Jesus Montero. What a time to be alive. Also, Fan confidence dropped only slightly (6.99 to 6.67) when Lee signed with the Phillies that winter.

(3) The big sudden dip in 2011 (7.42 to 5.43) is one of the largest week-to-week drops in Fan Confidence Poll history and it was because the Yankees lost five in a row the previous week, including getting swept by the Red Sox over the weekend. Also, the Yankees were 3-10 in their previous 13 games at the time, and fan angst was on the rise.

(4) In the span of about an hour one January 2012 afternoon, the Yankees traded for Michael Pineda and signed Hiroki Kuroda. Questions about the rotation persisted for two straight years up to that point (remember when they went into 2011 with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia penciled into rotation spots?), then, in one fell swoop, the Yankees added a high-upside youngster and a quality veteran on a one-year contract. Fan confidence jumped from 7.06 to 8.41.

(5) About four months later, fan confidence dropped from 7.69 to 6.07 in the span of two weeks because we learned Pineda had a torn labrum and needed season-ending surgery, and also because Mariano Rivera blew out his knee on the Kauffman Stadium warning track during batting practice. That was not a good week.

(6) The single biggest week-to-week drop in Fan Confidence Poll history came during the 2012 ALCS. The Yankees beat the Orioles in Game Five of the ALDS and fan confidence sat at 7.98. The next week it was down to 4.41. The Yankees trailed the Tigers two games to none in the ALCS and Derek Jeter broke his ankle in Game One. Gloomy postseason series situation and the captain’s devastating injury led to a massive, massive drop in fan confidence.

(7) Despite a plethora of injuries, a good start to the season had fan confidence on the rise early in 2013. As the season played out and reality set in, fan confidence dipped and eventually bottomed out at 3.06 on September 23rd, 2013. The Yankees had been eliminated from the postseason race, the roster was old and expensive, and the farm system was unproductive. As a result, fan confidence was at its lowest point during the RAB era.

(8) A busy offseason (Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Masahiro Tanaka) and Tanaka’s early season dominance had fan confidence on the rise early in 2014. However, because things went so poorly the year before, the big increase only brought fan confidence back up into the 7.00 range. Fan confidence very rarely dipped below 7.00 from 2009-12. Now the Yankees were struggling to give their fans reason to get back up to that level.

(9) Aside from a few spikes at midseason, fans never really did buy into the 2015 Yankees. They faded badly in the second half and were quickly dispatched by Dallas Keuchel and the Astros in the AL Wild Card Game. By the middle of 2016, fans were as consistently low on the Yankees as at any point in Fan Confidence Poll history. They were bad, they sat just under .500 most of the first half, and there were no indications major change was coming …

(10) … and then major change did arrive. The Yankees traded veterans for prospects at the 2016 deadline, were universally praised for their moves, and fan confidence climbed from 3.51 to 6.02 in two weeks. Two weeks after that, it sat at 6.75. Gary Sanchez arrived soon thereafter and went on a two-month assault of American League pitching. Fan confidence steadily climbed starting with the 2016 trade deadline and continuing through the 2017 season and into early 2018.

(11) Last May 7th, fan confidence hit its highest point (8.71) since April 19th, 2010 (8.93). For all intents and purposes, that was the lifespan of the rebuild transition. The Yankees won the 2009 World Series, faded a bit from 2010-12, bottomed out from 2013-16, then rose back up in 2017 and 2018. Fan confidence slipped as last season progressed because the Red Sox ran away with the AL East, and it has slipped again early this year because there are so many injuries. Given how well the Yankees have played the last two weeks or so, I would’ve expected fan confidence to rise as the Yankees got healthy.

* * *

The week-to-week noise is inevitable. The overall trends in fan confidence across the last ten years are pretty easy to see in the graph though. Fans were feeling good about things from 2009-2012, then fan confidence really sank from 2013 to the middle of 2016. The climb from the 2016 trade deadline through 2017 is pretty neat. It is essentially a measurement of fans falling in love with Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, and all the other youngsters.

There will be no Fan Confidence Poll this week because there’s really no point with RAB shutting down today. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote over the years, even the trolls who voted “one” each week. I hoped this little spur of the moment project back in the day would help us take pulse of the fanbase, and I think it’s done that quite well. The injuries stink, but I’m glad we’re going out on a high note with a talented young homegrown core.

Update: I’ve had a few people ask about weekly voting sample sizes and whatnot, so here’s my Fan Confidence Poll spreadsheet.

The post Ten Years of the RAB Fan Confidence Poll appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

As RAB closes shop today, I personally wanted to thank everyone for their tremendous support of this website and my writing over the past four-plus years. It was truly an honor to contribute to this amazing site, to be able to write about my favorite team, and be a part of a really special and passionate community of fans. Keep following me on twitter @ktsharp for all my Yankees stats and analysis the rest of the season and more details on the future of Yankeemetrics.

April 26: When Gio Urshela is your cleanup hitter … all you do is win!
The Yankees got back in the win column on Friday night as they continued their road trip up the west coast to San Francisco and won their season-opening Interleague matchup, 7-3.

James Paxton ‘only’ struck out eight batters but still was solid in holding the Giants to five hits and three runs. Paxton has quietly been excellent this season in doing the things a pitcher can control on the mound (excluding his defense behind him) — strikeouts, walks and homers. After Friday’s start — among pitchers with at least 25 innings pitched — he led the AL in FIP (2.24), ranked third in strikeout rate (36.2%), was third in Strikeout-to-Walk ratio (5.1), and had allowed only three homers in 34 2/3 innings.

Luke Voit had another monster game, going 3-for-4 with 3 RBIs, including his eighth home run of the season. Voit’s dinger was a bomb over the center-field wall, another example of his ridiculous dead-center power.

And because there can never be too many #LukeVoitFacts, we’ve got this for you to enjoy: He is the first Yankee with at least three hits and three RBI in a game against the Giants since Joe DiMaggio in Game 5 of the 1951 World Series.

April 27: The Kraken is unleashed
Welcome back, El Gary! The Yankees won their second in row on Saturday, 6-4, thanks to the big bat of Gary Sanchez and the stellar arm of J.A. Happ. The victory clinched their fourth series win in a row (yeah, remember when they lost four of their first five series to start the season?).

Happ delivered his best start of the season (7 IP, 0 runs, 5 hits, 0 walks, 2 strikeouts), a performance that earned him his first win and our Obscure Yankeemetric of the Series: He joined Randy Johnson as the only Yankee lefthanders to pitch at least seven shutout innings, give up no more than five hits and walk zero batters in an Interleague game. Randy did it in 2005 against the Cardinals and 2006 against the Braves.

Sanchez had only one hit in this game but it was a HUGE one – literally and on the scoreboard. He came to the plate in the fifth inning with the bases full and clobbered a 91-mph fastball deep into the seats in left-center for his first career grand slam. The 467-foot blast was the longest grand slam hit in the majors since Statcast distance tracking began in 2015, and the third-longest home run hit at Oracle Park in that span.

Although he’d never before gone deep with the bases full, Sanchez has been a productive hitter over the last three seasons in those situations. Since 2017 (through Saturday), he was 13-for-29 with 29 RBI and just two strikeouts in 32 plate appearances, and his .448 bases-loaded batting average was the fourth-best in MLB (min. 30 PA) in that span.

Let’s give Sanchez some more love with our most-awesome #FunFact of the Series: He is the second Yankee catcher ever to hit a grand slam in a National League ballpark. The other? Yogi Berra against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Game 2 of the 1956 World Series.

April 28: Bay Area brooms
The Yankees capped off their third sweep of the season with a 11-5 win on Sunday afternoon, continuing their scorching-hot streak over the last couple weeks. Since bottoming out on April 12 with a loss to the White Sox that dropped them to 5-8, the Yankees have the best record in baseball (12-3). And in that span, they also put three players on the IL — Greg Bird, Aaron Judge, Clint Frazier — while getting one player back (Gary Sanchez). The Little Pinstriped Engine That Could keeps chugging along!

For the millionth time this season, the Yankees raced out to an early lead, scoring two runs in each of the first three frames. Actually, it was the 21st time this year that the Yankees scored first. They are the only MLB team in the last 15 seasons to score first that many times in their first 28 games.

Luke Voit paced the offense with three hits, two runs scored and two RBIs, the third time in the last four games he’s had three hits. That’s pretty remarkable, considering he had three-or-more hits in just five of his first 133 career games.

Gleyber Torres and Gary Sanchez put an exclamation point on the win with a pair of homers in the third and sixth innings. Torres’ blast was a two-run shot — 15 of his 29 career homers (52%) have come with men on base, a rate that is well above the MLB average of 39%.

Sanchez’s dinger was the 79th of his career, moving him into a tie for 50th place on the all-time franchise list (reminder, he has played only 279 career games). It was also his 59th longball since his first full season in 2017, five more than any other major-league catcher in that span. And we’ll end with a ridiculous fun note: Sanchez has eight homers in 15 games this season, an 86-homer pace over 162 games!

The post Yankeemetrics: Bombers coasting out west (April 26-28) appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

Two In The First, Two In The Second, Two In The Third
The Yankees have played a lot of bad teams in the early going this season. The Orioles, the Tigers, the White Sox, the Royals … the Yankees have played them all already. The Giants have more name value on their roster than those four teams combined, but gosh, they are every bit as bad based on what we saw this weekend. Every bit as bad on the field and way more expensive. San Francisco has some onerous contracts, for sure.

It did not take long for the Giants to show their badness on Sunday. DJ LeMahieu opened the game with a single to left, then righty Dereck Rodriguez nibbled the bases loaded. He walked Luke Voit on six pitches and Brett Gardner on five pitches, and only six of those eleven pitches were fastballs. Rodriguez kept trying to get Voit and Gardner to chase something soft and they wouldn’t do it. Three batters, three baserunners.

Gary Sanchez gave Rodriguez and the Giants the double play ball they needed. Tailor-made 6-4-3 double play ball. Instead, the usually sure-handed Brandon Crawford bobbled the grounder and zero outs were recorded. The Giants did turn the 4-6-3 double play on Gleyber Torres’ broken bat grounder, but another run scored to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. It’s nice being on the other end of those sloppy mistakes, isn’t it?

The second inning opened with two quick baserunners (Gio Urshela single, Tyler Wade walk) and two quick outs (Domingo German strikeout, LeMahieu fly out). For whatever reason, Giants catcher Erik Kratz tried to pick Urshela off second base with a snap throw, but no one was ready for it. Certainly not the infielder at second. The throw sailed into center, the runners moved up, and Voit brought them home with a single against the shift.

Two runs in the first after the botched double play, two runs in the second after Kratz’s ill-advised snap throw, and two runs in the third on a Gleyber homer. Rodriguez walked Sanchez to start the inning and Torres parked one in the left-center field seats. This is one of the few times the behind-the-plate camera angle is #ActuallyGood:

German Hits A Wall
As great as he’s been, Domingo German was not going to sustain a sub-2.00 ERA all season. That’s just not happening in Yankee Stadium and in the AL East in general. At some point the correction was coming. It came in the sixth inning Sunday and it came at a good time. If you’re going to give up four runs in one inning, the best time to do it is when your team has given you an 8-0 run cushion.

German cruised through the first five innings against an admittedly terrible Giants lineup. He retired 15 of the first 17 batters he faced and the two baserunners were a single by the opposing pitcher (Rodriguez) and a Voit error. Voit had more time than he realized when he rushed and airmailed a throw to German covering first base. Only three of those first 17 batters managed to hit the ball out of the infield. German made it look easy. Very easy.

The wheels kinda came off in that sixth inning. Tyler Austin worked a hard-fought ten-pitch leadoff walk, Cameron Maybin misread a ball off the wall in left field, German hung a two-strike breaking ball to Kevin Pillar … just not a lot went right in that sixth inning. After throwing 59 pitches in the first five innings, German needed 28 pitches to get through that sixth inning. His final line: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 4 K. Looks worse than it was.

Even after seemingly hitting a wall in that sixth inning, German owns a 2.56 ERA (2.79 FIP) with strong strikeout (25.8%) and walk (7.3%) rates through 32.1 innings. He walked five batters in five innings in his first start, remember. Only four walks in 27.1 innings since. I’m not sure the homer rate will last forever (0.57 HR/9 and 6.3% HR/FB), but gosh, German looks so confident right now. It really seems like something has clicked. Exciting!

Leftovers
Second homer in as many days for Sanchez, who hit a two-run shot deep into the left field bleachers in the sixth inning. Maybe a row or two from the concourse. It wasn’t as long (430 feet) as Saturday’s grand slam (467 feet), but it looked longer because it was closer to the line and nearly cleared the bleachers. Even after missing time with the calf injury, Gary still leads all catchers with eight home runs.

The Giants made some more mistakes in the ninth inning to help the Yankees score three more insurance runs. Maybin (one run) and Wade (two-run) both had run-scoring singles that inning. Three hits and a walk for Voit, who’s up to .283/.397/.538 (149 wRC+) on the season. Two hits and a walk for Torres, two hits for Urshela before getting hurt (hit-by-pitch in hand), and two hits for Thairo Estrada after coming off the bench to replace LeMahieu (knee inflammation).

Pretty easy afternoon for the bullpen, even after the Giants hung a four-spot on German in the sixth. Jonathan Holder went 1-2-3 in the seventh, Tommy Kahnle pitched around a walk in the eighth, and Joe Harvey allowed a garbage time solo homer in the ninth after the offense tacked on those insurance runs. Nice and easy game for the relief crew. Thanks for that.

And finally, make it a 39-game on-base streak for Voit. It is the longest active on-base streak in baseball — Freddie Freeman is second and he extended his streak to 28 games Sunday afternoon — and it is the longest streak by a Yankee since Mark Teixeira had a 42-gamer in 2010.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights and ESPN has the updated standings. Here’s our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
For RAB, one final day of posts. Tomorrow is the site’s final day. For the Yankees, it’s an off-day. They’ll spend Monday’s off-day in Phoenix before opening a quick two-game series with the Diamondbacks on Tuesday. CC Sabathia and righty Merrill Kelly are the scheduled starters for Tuesday night’s opener.

The post Yankees 11, Giants 5: Yankees close out RAB era with a sweep appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

The Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders were rained out. No word on the makeup date yet.

Double-A Trenton Thunder (4-2 win over Erie)

• SS Hoy Jun Park: 3-3, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 CS — 13-for-34 (.383) with five doubles and three triples in his last eight games
• LF Ben Ruta: 1-3, 1 2B, 2 RBI, 1 K — this game *lowers* his batting line to .403/.506/.582
• 1B Chris Gittens: 2-3, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 BB — 12-for-27 (.444) with three doubles, one triple, three homers, eight walks, and six strikeouts in his last eight games
• DH Brandon Wagner: 0-3, 1 BB
• RHP Rony Garcia: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 8 K, 1 HB, 3/1 GB/FB — 55 of 101 pitches were strikes (54%) … some control issues, but that’s a fine Double-A debut for the 21-year-old, who has been pressed into duty here because of all the injuries
  

High-A Tampa Tarpons (7-6 win over Clearwater)

• CF Pablo Olivares: 3-4, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 BB, 1 K, 2 SB — threw a runner out at second … 9-for-25 (.360) with doubles in his last six games
• SS Diego Castillo: 2-4, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 CS — 17-for-50 (.340) during his 13-game hitting streak
• 2B Oswaldo Cabrera: 2-5, 1 R, 2 K
• RF Steven Sensley: 0-2 — left the game for an unknown reason in the fifth inning
• 1B Dermis Garcia: 1-2, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K — replaced Sensley with utility man Max Burt going from first base to the outfield
• C Jason Lopez: 3-4, 1 R, 1 2B, 2 RBI, 1 K
• RHP Frank German: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 1 HR, 1 WP, 4/6 GB/FB — 60 of 91 pitches were strikes (66%) … last year’s fourth round pick has been a bit uneven three starts into his first full pro season
• RHP Matt Wivinis: 1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 1/1 GB/FB — 13 of 19 pitches were strikes (68%) … season debut for the spin rate specialist … he pitched well at three levels and in the Arizona Fall League last year, so I assume his 2019 debut was slowed by injury rather than a need for more development in Extended Spring Training

Low-A Charleston RiverDogs (3-0 win over Columbia)

• CF Brandon Lockridge: 0-4
• 3B Wilkerman Garcia: 2-4, 2 RBI — 8-for-25 (.320) in six games since being brought up from Extended Spring Training
• RF Isaiah Pasteur: 0-4, 2 K
• LF Canaan Smith: 1-2, 2 BB — he really struggled with Staten Island last year (.191/.281/.316), but he’s holding his own with Charleston this year
• RHP Alex Vizcaino: 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 WP, 1 HB, 11/5 GB/FB — 53 of 77 pitches were strikes (69%) … injuries opened a rotation spot for the 21-year-old and he’s taking advantage thus far

The Short Season Staten Island Yankees, Rookie Pulaski Yankees, and two Rookie Gulf Coast League Yankees teams begin play in June.

The post The Final DotF: Park, Gittens have big games in Trenton’s win appeared first on River Avenue Blues.

7:33pm ET: LeMahieu will get an MRI and see an orthopedist tomorrow, Aaron Boone announced following the game. It looks like a deep bruise but they want to make sure that’s it.

5:45pm ET: LeMahieu has right knee inflammation, the Yankees announced. X-rays came back negative. Hopefully he’ll be able to return to action following the off-day tomorrow.

5:06pm ET: DJ LeMahieu was removed from this afternoon’s game in the third inning with a possible injury. He walked off the field gingerly following the bottom of the second and was slow going down the dugout steps. LeMahieu fouled a pitch into his knee two days ago.

I’ve honestly lost count of how many Yankees are on the injured list right now. I think it’s 13? At least 12, I know that much. Among those injured Yankees are three infielders (Miguel Andujar, Didi Gregorius, Troy Tulowitzki), and three outfielders (Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton). Geez.

LeMahieu had a single and a fly out earlier in the game, not to mention several fairly routine defensive plays, and he seemed to be moving okay until the end of the second inning. With a sizeable lead and an off-day tomorrow, hopefully this is just precautionary. Stay tuned for updates.

Should LeMahieu miss time, the Yankees already have Thairo Estrada on the big league roster, and the recently signed Brad Miller in Triple-A as an obvious call-up candidate. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. We’ll see.

The post Update: DJ LeMahieu exits Sunday’s game with right knee inflammation appeared first on River Avenue Blues.