Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Life After Nathan


After having read about the injury to Nathan Eovaldi, I was doing what I always do and trying to find the silver lining. After all, perhaps the Yankees can simply score enough runs to overcome the drop from Eovaldi to his replacement?

I started by taking a look at what Eovaldi has done recently. Was he really that good? Well, ever since his atrocious start against the Miami Marlins on June 20th, Nathan has an ERA of 3.43 and a triple-slash against of .244/.310/.297.

Yeah...

So what if he was the Yankees best starter, by far (his fWAR in the past 30 days is 1.0, which is 0.6 wins higher than second best Masahiro Tanaka and Luis Severino) over the past 30 days? The Yankees have managed to win plenty of games without ace-like performances from their starters, thanks to a great bullpen and/or good hitting. So they can weather this storm? Right?

While Nathan's elbow takes a couple of weeks off, his replacement will be the returning CC Sabathia.

Yes, even the babies of Yankees fans are crying about this bit of news.

It's true that Sabathia was better over his last four starts before landing on the DL. However, I wouldn't get too excited if I were you. Sure, CC's ERA in those four games was a pretty good 3.80. Unfortunately, opposing hitters were still able to put up a batting line of .269/.367/.372. A couple of timely hits and that ERA of Sabathia's in those four games would be a wee bit higher.

And if you don't buy into small sample sizes, and you shouldn't, I'm afraid to tell you that during the same time Nathan Eovaldi put up that 3.43 ERA and .244/.310/.297 triple-slash against, Mr. Sabathia had an ERA of 5.20 and triple-slash against of .288/.358/.470.

So even though I'm normally optimistic about the Yankees, in this case it's pretty darn hard. See, I won't so much be hoping that CC Sabathia can replicate what Eovaldi has done for the team. No. I'm going to be hoping that the Toronto Blue Jays come crashing down to Earth, instead of having a winning percentage of .758 like they've had since August 1st.

"Please, Lord."

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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)