Because Trout hit the ball really far ... get it?

Mike Lupica is in Foul Territory:

"I can’t be sure of this, but I think that home run Mike Trout hit against the Royals on Friday night just landed."

Ha ha ha!

What other insightful baseball observations from the New York Metropolitan area's leading sports columnist?


"For all the hand-wringing about injuries to Yankee starters, tell me who among us, at the start of spring training, was expecting huge things this year from CC, or Nova, or Michael Pineda?"

Well, most of the initial hand-wringing is due to the fact that the Yankees lost 3 of their 5 starters. That means the team would have to use 8 starting pitchers, at a minimum. No team has that much depth at starting pitching. So a perceived Yankee strength suddenly became a weakness.


Whitley has been good so far; Phelps has been OK; Nuno not so good. In any case, the Yankees have evaded Starting Pitching disaster so far. But Nuno and Phelps could probably help from the bullpen. Maybe Whitley, too, or perhaps he has ascended to spot starter.


As for the expectations of the Yankee starters on the DL, Lupica used the world "or."

Did I expect CC or Nova or Pineda to have a big year? Yes. I expected probably 2 out of 3 to have "big years." Depending on what you mean by "big year." With this garbage offense and pitiful infield defense, a big year out of Nova might be 15-12, 4.25 ERA.

Pineda I think still has some upside potential, maybe even in 2014. If not a "big year," then certainly better than Nuno.

CC I think is shot forever.


So while I think it would be foolish to expect the undefined "big seasons" from all three, I think a lot of people expected big things from at least one of them.

But why am I even talking about this?

The Yankees' biggest problem is their garbage offense. Which is why nobody is complaining about the Replacement Starters.


"Brett Gardner is having a terrific season."

Officially.

Because Mike Lupica noticed.