SERIES OF QUERIES
THE opening series of a season is not even coming attractions, because coming attractions usually sprinkle in what happens during a whole movie.
Over time, I have learned you are better with more questions than answers at this time of year. Here are five with which I left the Yankees’ opening series:
1. Is Sonny Gray a version of Phil Hughes?
Even when he was at his best with the Yankees, Hughes could not translate excellent stuff into extended outings. There were too many long counts and foul balls.
Aaron Boone was protective of his starters in the opening series, not letting any go beyond the cleanup hitter the third time through the lineup. But for Gray, that translated into just four-plus innings in 89 pitches — 10 more pitches than Masahiro Tanaka needed to get six more outs.
Gray built his pitch count with lots of traffic on the bases and eight strikeouts, but also again bunches of foul balls and long counts (three balls on one-third of those he faced). The last two hitters, Josh Donaldson and Justin Smoak, saw 18 pitches and fouled off seven.
Gray pitched clutch against Toronto, but can he use his two-seamer, in particular, more to get some quick, groundball outs?
2. How good is shortstop in the AL?
The gold standard is Houston’s Carlos Correa and Cleveland’s Francisco Lindor. Now, Baltimore’s Manny Machado has moved back to short and reached base in seven of his first 13 plate appearances. Texas’ Elvis Andrus, off of his best season, got on 10 times in 16 plate appearances. The White Sox’s Tim Anderson, off of a disappointing sophomore campaign, homered twice in three games. Angels defensive genius Andrelton Simmons reached in eight of his first 16 plate appearances. Bos- ton’s Xander Bogaerts, off of a discouraging campaign, had six extrabase hits in 17 at-bats.
And I continue to wonder, with all the stars around him, if Didi Gregorius (four extra-base hits) is the most irreplaceable Yankee. He is one of my touchstones to be patient with this season. He was terrible in his first month with the Yankees in 2015, and I wrote the Yankees might have made a mistake giving up Shane Greene for him. Now, he represents what might be Brian Cashman’s best trade.
3. How good is Chad Green?
Green also might be in the conversation for Cashman’s best trade — turning Justin Wilson into Green and Luis Cessa.
Early in a season, one box you are looking to check is whether someone who broke out last year was a fluke. Green looks like a star, not a fluke. Heck, he continues to look like the earliest relief versions of Mariano Rivera — a righty who can economically give multiple innings by dominating with a fastball up in the zone.
Green faced 11 Blue Jays over three innings and whiffed seven of them. Green threw 35 fastballs in two outings, and Toronto hitters swung and missed at 12. Like Rivera, hitters generally know what is coming and can’t hit it anyway.
4. How good is Brandon Drury?
This is what the Yankees wanted to explore when they acquired him. Like Gregorius, Green and Aaron Hicks, the Yanks obtained Drury believing there was a ceiling not yet reached elsewhere.
No Yankee hit the ball as consis- tently hard at Rogers Centre. He had two hits on Sunday on 0-2 counts — including a homer with a 101.4-mph exit velocity — which actually was the fourth hardest-hit ball he had against the Jays.
Drury’s feet were not well coordinated on a couple of throws from third, but he reached base in eight of 16 plate appearances and got his Yankees tenure off well.
5. Is limiting catcher visits working?
Social scientists argue if Rudy Giuliani’s “Broken Windows” strategy really was central to reducing crime when he was mayor. The theory linked reducing minor disorder, such as unwanted squeegeeing of car windows, with the belief that would upgrade quality of life and decrease other crime.
I wonder if there is a version of this that will occur in the majors. Will limiting mound visits to six have a subconscious impact on speeding up the game? There were so many moments in the first four games when a Yankees catcher would have gone to the mound last year and didn’t in 2018. And it felt like that halted a bunch of meandering around the field by others that had become common. Professional athletes are great at adjusting to whatever the rules are, and they seemed to be doing it here.
The games were played in 2:51, 2:49, 2:37 and even Sunday’s higher-scoring, lots-ofbase-runners affair was 3:03 — two minutes under last year’s record average time of game.