Game Thread: New York Yankees @ Arizona Diamondbacks 5/18

Ladies and gentleman it is now game time between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks as these two teams finish off their three-game set inside of Chase Field. It’s been an interesting series full of good pitching performances, timely hitting and pitchers who have no business hitting and it all comes to an end tonight in the finale. In the contest tonight the Yankees will send Nathan Eovaldi to the mound as he continues to “eovolve” while the Diamondbacks counter with Shelby Miller. The game will be played at 8:40 pm ET inside of Chase Field in Arizona and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV.

The Yankees head west to take on the Oakland Athletics for a three-game series before an off day and a travel day back to the Bronx and Yankee Stadium. Have your Yankees Tickets in hand for when the team comes back to New York by clicking the Yankees Tickets link at the top of the blog. Until then you can follow along and root for the home team from afar by heading over to Twitter and by giving @GreedyStripes a follow.

One more time and one more pitcher that we just need to hope strikes out every single at bat so he doesn’t have to run the bases. I hate interleague play, can you tell? Go Yankees!

Game Preview: New York Yankees @ Arizona Diamondbacks 5/18

The New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks have squared off twice already this week in the desert out west so what’s one more time, right? So for the third and final time in this series these two teams will square off head-to-head with the series and maybe some bragging rights on the line. In the finale the Yankees will send Nathan Eovaldi to the mound looking to once again harness all that good stuff and make up that we keep hearing all about while the Diamondbacks counter with a similar project of their own in Shelby Miller.

Eovaldi has an absolute cannon for an arm but velocity will only get you so far in MLB. Eovaldi throws an average fastball of 96.9 MPH but has still allowed more hits than someone of his caliber should leading the Yankees to add a splitter to his repertoire. The early results are encouraging, lots of strikeouts, and Eovaldi looks to keep the trend encouraging tonight in Arizona.

Miller was quietly one of the better pitchers in the National League last season for the Atlanta Braves but he has struggled a bit since joining the Diamondbacks this season. In his last start Miller allowed three runs on seven hits with a pair of walks and strikeouts each against the San Francisco Giants pitching just 5.2 innings.

The game will be played at 8:40 pm ET inside of Chase Field and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV. After the game the Yankees keep heading west to Oakland to face off with the Oakland Athletics in a three game set which should be good for New York. They can’t look ahead though because they face a hell of a pitcher tonight in Miller. Don’t look ahead, get a win. Go Yankees!

Game Thread: New York Yankees @ Arizona Diamondbacks 5/17

The New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks are finally set to kick off the second game of their three-game interleague series this week down in Arizona’s Chase Field. The Diamondbacks went into the deep end of the free agent pool this offseason bringing in tonight’s starter Zack Greinke while the usually generous Yankees did not sign a single free agent this winter instead relying on their young arms and farm system led by their starter tonight Michael Pineda. A tale of two teams going in completely opposite directions collide tonight inside Chase Field at 8:40 pm ET. Who wins? You’ll have to watch to find out that’s half of what is great about baseball.

The Yankees have one more game in the Arizona desert before traveling to Oakland Coliseum to face off with the Oakland Athletics. This gives you five more days to grab a pair of Yankees tickets off the blog before the team returns home to the Bronx and Yankee Stadium. All you have to do is click the Yankees tickets link at the top of the blog and pick your seats without having to pay an arm, a leg, any sort of fees or shipping costs through our partnership with Ticket Monster. Until then you can follow along on twitter by giving @GreedyStripes a follow while we navigate and live tweet each and every game every single season.

Jacoby and the Yankees are ready to wreak havoc and they have their hands full with a great pitcher in Zack Greinke. Let’s see how it turns out. Go Yankees!

Game Preview: New York Yankees @ Arizona Diamondbacks 5/17

The New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks will battle it out once again tonight in the desert as these two teams face off head-to-head in the second of their three game set. In the first game last night we watched as Chad Green made his MLB debut against this team and tonight we get to see someone a little more experienced in Michael Pineda. Opposing Little Mike tonight, because let’s face it he’s been far from Big Mike this season, will be the Diamondbacks shiny new (expensive) toy in Zack Greinke inside Chase Field.

Pineda will look to get out of the first inning tonight without a huge deficit like they have in many of Pineda’s starts this season. After the second inning Pineda is holding opposing batters to just a .202 average while the other team is hitting a whopping .437 in the first two innings of the contest.

Greinke has surprisingly not been the pitcher the Diamondbacks gave the biggest contract ever to but he has been coming around a bit as of late. In his last start Greinke allowed four runs on eight hits in six innings pitched against the San Francisco Giants. Along the way Greinke struck out four and walked three for Arizona.

The game will be played at 8:40 PM ET inside of Chase Field and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV. These starts actually work pretty well for me since I don’t get to watch the first inning or so of the game anyway. I won’t nearly see the end of it unfortunately but it allows me to get all my adulting done before chilling with you guys on Twitter. Hopefully I have good things to say when Pineda regains his “Big Mike” form tonight in the desert and keeps the Yankees rolling with a victory. 

Game Preview: New York Yankees @ Arizona Diamondbacks 5/16

The New York Yankees have traveled out west and for the first time this season the team will play in an Interleague game inside of a National League park. This time around the Yankees will travel to the desert to take on the Arizona Diamondbacks inside of Chase Field. In the first interleague matchup of the year and in a rematch of the 2001 World Series the New York Yankees will send Chad Green to the mound to face off against the Diamondbacks starter Robbie Ray.

Green will be making his MLB debut tonight in Arizona as the Yankees shake up their rotation a bit. This spot was normally that of Michael Pineda but since Luis Severino went down with an injury Green will take his spot and his turn tonight instead of Wednesday. Green has pitched well in 2016 posting a 1.22 ERA in seven Triple-A starts this season. 

Ray is coming into this start against the red-hot Yankees offense fresh off a not-so-great start last time out against the Colorado Rockies. In that start Ray had allowed five runs, three of them earned, on nine hits in 4.2 innings. In the no-decision Ray struck out nine and allowed three walks for the Diamondbacks. 

The game will be played at 8:40 pm ET inside of Chase Field and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV. The three pitchers the Yankees will send to the mound, and to the plate, this week are Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi and Chad Green while the Diamondbacks will send Robbie Ray, Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller. Of course they would send three of their best pitchers to the mound. Of course they would. Oh well, New York has done well against top competition here lately so maybe that's just what they need for another series win.

Go Yankees!

Ballpark Food: The Diamondbacks Cheeseburger Dog

Meet the latest #DbacksEats sensation, the Cheeseburger Dog, available at Chase Field this season. pic.twitter.com/iM8R7X9DPW

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) March 24, 2016

You guys knows me, I love food and I especially love ballpark food. Every year around this time new and creative inventions and dishes are released to hype up people like me, and for good reason because it works, and to garner attention and anticipation. The Arizona Diamondbacks did just that this week when they announced the release of their “Cheeseburger Dog.”

It’s self-explanatory but I’ll still explain nonetheless. It’s a hot dog, but it’s also a cheeseburger. The hamburgers are char-grilled and deep-fried with bacon, lettuce, tomato and a special sauce inside of a hot dog bun. The Cheeseburger Dog joins the Churro Dog, the MegaDog and the 16-inch fried D-Bat Dog at Chase Field this season.

Enjoy! Just don’t tell me about it because I’m already hungry!

Digging in the TGP Archive: Didi Gregorius, BIP Locations and Yankee Stadium

The original post can be seen HERE. If you ignore the fact that I mention Didi Gregorius as a potential 20 home run power bat in 2015 or shortly after the prediction and analysis is pretty spot on. That's my opinion anyway, what's yours?

Every time the New York Yankees acquire player or are reportedly linked to a player the first thing I look at are the BIP locations from the previous season. I think the BIP's, or ball in play locations, can tell you a lot about how a player will react and do in their new stadium. Of course there is neutralized batting stats and such, which I look at as well which by the way adds 11 points to Gregorius' average per Baseball Reference, but this visual look works better for me and a lot of others I've been told on Twitter. Let's take a look at what Gregorius' hits in Arizona would look like if he played 2014 in the Bronx.

As always we use this same chart with the same color scheme:

Line Outs
Fly Outs
Doubles
Triples
Home Runs

As you can see it looks like, again in a perfect world, that Didi will improve substantially inside Yankee Stadium. I know it's hard to differentiate on the picture between doubles, triples, and home runs so you may just have to take my word on it. The lightest colored dots in the outfield were doubles in Chase Field and both of them are home runs in New York. The darker blue dots that barely cleared the wall at the 385 mark and the 408 mark were actually triples which also turned into home runs in the Bronx. Didi hit three home runs last year in Arizona that would have been well out of New York as well which equals seven home runs before we even look at line outs and fly outs. Two fly outs easily clear the wall in New York and I like to at least consider balls that reached the warning track. With the difference in humidity and with the wind blowing at least two of those fly outs could have been home runs in New York while another six were at least in the discussion as home runs. Conceivably, and again in a bubble, Didi could have had 10 home runs or more in New York in just 80 games played just by switching to Yankee Stadium. Double that in 160 games and you have a guy with 20 home run power that we have for the next five seasons and all we had to give up was Shane Greene.... tell me again why you want Brian Cashman fired again?