J.A. Happ Shines In His Debut And Might Be Just What the Yankees Need Right Now

J.A. Happ debuted for the Yankees today and was every bit of what we were looking from him. When he was on the mound he was in total control. He pounded the zone and didn’t allow a ton of hard contact. Through his six innings he only allowed three hits and one walk as the Royals only run came on Salvador Perez’s solo shot in the sixth that barely squeaked over the right center field wall. Other than that he kept everything down and was very effective.

I thought it was big for Romine to be his catcher on his debut and you could see they rarely had a disagreement about what pitch to throw. Yes, this came against the Royals, but it was nice to not have to worry about a pitcher for once. You don’t want to give him too much credit and overreact to one start against the KC, but this was a nice beginning. Obviously his next start against the Red Sox against Nathan Eovaldi on Saturday will be a big test.

Offensively the Yankees jumped out quickly thanks to Aaron Hicks’ two shot, padding his current career total to 17 on the year. Everyone pretty much contributed and it was a stress-free win for the Yanks, which has not come often in this recent stretch. Sure am I concerned about Chad Green and Robertson a little? Yep, but I’m confident they’ll figure out what they’re going through in the short term. I was really hoping for a four game sweep of the Royals, but I’ll settle for three of four as long as they take care of business against the O’s on Tuesday and Wednesday. Of course the O’s offense has caught fire and has scored 37 runs over their last three games. Super. It’ll be Tanaka and Sonny’s job to hold them down.

Cashman the Cash God

After the game, the Yankees announced they had signed the number one international pitching prospect Osiel Rodriguez. Cashman used the international signing bonus pool money from last night’s Chasen Shreve deal to sign Rodriguez. So yes, Cashman turned Chasen Shreve into the number one international pitching prospect. He’s a wizard. Rodriguez is only 16 years old and has been clocked up to 97 mph so it’ll be fun to keep tabs on him as he grows into his body more and gets an even bigger arm.

Trade Deadline

The next 48 hours will certainly be interesting. The Nationals might be sellers? Who knows what the Giants do? All I know is that Brian Cashman will have the phones working and whenever that man wants to make a deal, he’s going to get his man. Chris Archer’s name has floated around, but I think the Rays are simply going to ask too much for him to be worth it. If Cash can steal him then that’s another story, but I genuinely think the rotation is perfectly fine right now, assuming Severino figures his shit out. Getting Happ on board, gave this rotation the stability it needed. We’ll have to wait and see what Cash has up his sleeve. #InCashmanWeTrust

We just recorded a new episode of The Short Porch. It’ll be out shortly. We got into everything that happened this weekend. Make sure to subscribe below and listen when it comes out in a bit.