Yankees Baseball, June 6, 2017

On June 6, when manager John Farrell went out to talk to Red Sox pitcher Drew Pomeranz in the fifth inning, with the Red Sox leading and the Yankees threatening, TV announcer Michael Kay said that it looked liked Farrell wanted to keep Pomeranz in order for him to get the win but Kay did not understand why, since "wins don't matter any more as a pitching statistic."  This is the kind of know-it-all pompousness that Kay spews on a regular basis.  His partner that night, former pitcher David Cone, was obviously startled by this pronouncement and gently disagreed.  We may never again see 30 wins in a season or 300 wins in a career (Bartolo Colon has 235 and CC Sabathia 230) but wins still matter, to the pitchers and the fans.  The day might even come (though I hope not) where a starting pitcher doesn't even need to go five innings to get a win.  The game is changing, eliminating platooning, for example, as teams have to use more and more pitchers; there were 11 pitchers used in the June 9th Mets game, which only went nine innings with a final score of 3-2!  But baseball goes in cycles -- when I was a kid Ty Cobb's 96 stolen bases was considered a season record that would never be broken but since Ricky Henderson stole 130 in 1982 stealing bases has again gone out of fashion -- so I am hopeful that we will again see starting pitchers who can use the finesse of the curve ball and slider to get people out and can go at least eight innings.

Meanwhile, over in the radio booth, announcer John Sterling was so busy doing cartwheels over Scooter Gennett's four home runs for Cincinnati that he forgot what was happening in the Yankee game he was supposed to be announcing! The steroid era is (supposedly) over so let's stop glorifying the home run and get back to announcing the ball game. One could, I suppose, watch the game on TV and turn the sound off, though at any given point we can only see a sliver of the field and have to depend on the announcers and replays to see what's going on (and most of the time the Yankee announcers, who have a view of the whole field, don't give us any details, such as when a shift is on).  The Mets announcers are a little better, especially Gary Cohen on TV (who is burdened by Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling talking endlessly about their own careers) and the poetic Josh Lewin and matter-of-fact Howie Rose on radio.