The Yankees celebrated their acquisition of Sonny Gray by rolling out the Clay Bellinger line up tonight. As predicted, Jacoby Ellsbury makes the line up batting lead off as Brett Gardner gets a night off and … wait for it, Tyler Wade is back at 2nd base. Scary. SU is sure Joe Girardi has his reasons but not sure why both Didi and Gardner need to sit out the same night.
There is tremendous pressure on Ellsbury to produce tonight. This is huge for him. Holliday no doubt is also feeling the heat but the bar is lower apparently for him to earn his playing time. SU believes 2 strikeouts and a weak grounder to short will guarantee he is in the line up for the next 2 weeks. SU would have put Cooper in tonight. At some point, you just have to sit Holliday down and believe me, we have reached that point.
Did you see that the Cubs awarded Steve Bartman a World Series ring? A nice touch and he sent them a very gracious note in response:
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20210036/chicago-cubs-giving-world-series-ring-steve-bartman
The guy has suffered for 14 years. I think he earned this.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
Yesteray’s lineup was a head scratcher but then they scored all those runs so who knows.
I’m fine with the Sonny Gray deal. Didn’t want them to give up too much for him and time will tell if they did. People have become very high on Mateo but it’s clear that the Yankees have a lot of middle infield talent and the pipeline may be a little clogged. Fowler also seems a little expendable as Clint Frazier has turned it up since his promotion. (I am a little concerned that without Fowler, the Yankees may do something stupid in the off-season with a big name free agent that I have no interest in.) They were desperate for a starter and it seems they’ve milked the organization dry so the deal makes some sense and maybe they can lock him up for a reasonable price if things go well this season.
You cannot fault the Yankees for choosing to go for it this season. The division seems winnable. This is akin to the Mets in 2015. The rebuilding plan is a bit ahead of schedule but that doesn’t mean you make yourself a slave to the schedule. Especially when you don’t know how the future will pan out.