You have to give the Mets a lot of credit: still right in the wild card mix despite the rash of injuries to their starting pitchers. Colon has been a rock despite throwing 86 mph and mostly fastballs. It shows that you can be effective without throwing 95 mph. Greg Maddox made a career of this by changing speeds and moving the ball in and out and up and down.
The Yankees are hanging around but their chances according to the folks that track probabilities for making the playoffs seem to hover around 5%. But at least their youngsters are playing in meaningful games in September. Aaron Judge is putting up scary strikeout numbers – he strikes out 50% of his at bats. Over a 600 at bat season, that is 300 strikeouts. But SU says it’s good that they keep running him out there. They may want to platoon him against lefties until he gets his confidence back. Give Refsnyder some at bats as he is a hot hitter. Tyler Austin is coming along – had 2 doubles yesterday. I have low expectations for this team – just want to see the young guys out there.
Jacoby Ellsbury actually hit a homerun yesterday – shocking. Gardner has a low average but his on base percentage is close to .350. Chase Headley is sprinting towards 50 rbis. SU suspects they will throw the ball out of play when he hits that milestone.
Uneven US Open so far. On the men’s side, there is still a large gap between the Big Four players and the next generation. Murray killed Dimitrov last night – it was actually embarrassing to watch. But this young Frenchman, Pouille, was electric in beating Nadal – great points in the last set. He could be the real deal. The Americans even have some teenagers who are starting to show potential – that would be nice although SU just does not focus on the US when it comes to tennis. I am a big time Djokovic fan. He is ailing physically but a final with Murray would be good stuff. The men’s quarterfinals are all great matches. SU is not as interested on the women’s side. It’s kind of Serena and everyone else and I don’t really like her.
Finally, great start to the college football season. Big upsets for Wisconsin over LSU, Texas over Notre Dame not to mention Oklahoma going down to Houston. SU much prefers the higher quality match ups in September vs. some of the cupcake U teams that we usually see. High scoring games and many plays that you will never see in the NFL.
SU’s fearless NFL predictions to come later this week. The research team is running various predictive models as we speak.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
Just watched the Yankees come from behind a couple of times and barely hold on at the end. One of the more exciting games of the season. Good pitching to start. Then lots of offense late. They hit HRs but also a sac fly and I think Headley’s been reading your blog.
Watching this game you just have to wonder where they’d be if they had Miller or Chapman. I was fine trading one but thought they should have kept Miller mostly because of a favorable contract but also because of games like tonight’s and a few others over the past few weeks where lack of bullpen depth has really hurt them. Over the past two nights they have asked pitchers we never heard of to come in and face the best hitters in one of baseball’s best lineups. The fact is that the exciting team they are putting on the field is the result of addition by subtraction and not the fruits of the trades they made. Clearing the lineup of Rodriguez and Beltran plus the willingness to give smaller roles to Tex and McCann has revitalized the offense. It will be years before we know what gains there are from the trade deadline moves. You have to wonder where they’d be if they had made the lineup changes but kept the bullpen strength.
Yankees are still looking good but we can’t expect them to win every game. With their tough schedule it’s hard to imagine them much above .500 or .600. What they really need, is to keep playing well and hope for a couple of the teams ahead of them to fall apart. (Since they play those teams so many times, they will have a role to play in that.) As well as the Mets have played lately, their progress in the Wild Card chase has really hinged on the Pirates and Marlins who have been playing dreadfully.