YANKEES BELT BOSOX
Bombers take opener with three homers, strong start by Nuno:
Vidal Nuno, we’re sorry. You stood on a major league mound on Friday night — big crowd, big rivalry, defending champs as your opponents — shut out the Red Sox through 5.2 innings, and left to a standing ovation. This was truly not an easy thing to do, and an achievement for which you deserve praise.
But beyond the Yankees’ 6-0 victory were a pair of deeper truths, which did not shift or change: 1) The Red Sox are done, toasted, buried, terrible and 2) if the Yankees do not acquire a quality starting pitcher, they will eventually join their rivals.
Nuno is 2-4 with a 5.42 ERA and 1.40 WHIP, which are only a bit worse than his career numbers, and he carried a 7.09 (!) home ERA into this start. On Friday, he successfully kept his opponent buried in a dark place, but his track record of struggle is much longer, and it is what we should believe.
Forget Boston, which has lost six of its past eight games, is 13th in the American League in runs, and sits at eight games under .500. Joe Girardi seemed as bored as any of us when talking about the Sox, because these games have none of the intensity (or quality) of the golden age a decade ago; the division is simply no longer about them, not in 2014, anyway. The manager only truly came alive when he was asked about the rotation before the game.
“With the off day (Thursday), you probably could have skipped Nuno,” a reporter began, at which point Girardi emitted what you might call a laugh/sigh, as the question concluded.
The manager’s sharp response: “OK, who should I start?”
Well, Masahiro Tanaka is on regular rest, so instead of giving him the extra day, and starting him Saturday, you could have avoided the Nuno experience altogether . . .
“OK, OK,” Girardi said. “I’m going to say this the last time today. The last time, because I have answered this question 10 times. And I’m not irritated, but I don’t understand it.”
Sounding, well, irritated, he went on to explain that Tanaka was on pace to equal his career-high in innings, and accustomed to pitching on seven days’ rest in Japan; Chase Whitley had never thrown 100 innings in a season, meaning the Yanks will lose him to a shutdown or the bullpen at some point; and David Phelps was also new to the grind of a summer in the rotation.
Girardi was smiling by the end of his monologue, but after watching his little display, you were left with a new appreciation for why he might be feeling tense. Just listen to those names he raised, after Tanaka, and realize: A team with a Nuno, Whitley or Phelps in the rotation might make the playoffs, but a team with all three of them will not.
After the game, asked why he was so steadfast about staying on rotation despite these struggles, Girardi said, “We’re in a situation where, these are the five guys we have.” Indeed. That is why, when you talk to scouts and executives around MLB, there is an increasing skepticism that baseball will be played anywhere in New York City this October. Unlike their suddenly dull rivals (who bought themselves the right to have at least one bad season by winning the World Series last year), the Yanks are far from cooked — but they appear to know how challenging it will be to upgrade the pitching enough to launch them into a better class of teams.
CC Sabathia begins a rehab assignment Saturday, but his future usefulness is a mystery, and Michael Pineda has fallen back into the black hole of shoulder problems. Forget the farm system as a source of help in the short-term.
So Brian Cashman is working to make a trade as soon as possible, while competing with many other teams for Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel and the rest. (Padres ace Andrew Cashner would be a very appealing alternative, with all the turmoil in the San Diego front office — but one executive in touch with that team said plainly that Cashner “isn’t going anywhere. That is not happening.”)
Does Cashman have enough to acquire a season-saving starter? If the answer is no, forget this whole thing, because if Girardi has to keep running Nuno out there, he will find reasons to be testy again, and before very long.