What a bizarre run for my '26-27 Yankees team. I'm sure by now, everybody knows how bad Wilcy Moore has been and how poorly this supposed juggernaut team has performed. There were playing .500 ball for much of the season. On October 2, a.m., this team hit it's low point of the season. They were sitting at 64-72 after a 3-12 run.
I decided to stop using Moore as my main setup guy / closer. Instead, I went with a SP1 (Lyons), SP2 (Hoyt) and Tandem 3A/3B (Pennock, Moore). My team went of a 15-5 run. In the games that Moore didn't pitch, the team is 12-2. In the three games Moore did pitch, the team is 3-3, but believe it or not, he's pitched great. In those 6 games, he's thrown 4,1. 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 4.0, 4.0 innings and allowed 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0 runs. He has lowered his season ERA from 5.23 to 4.62. Ironically, he got a win in the game he allowed 3 runs, as we had a a big lead early. In the three losses, we got down early and didn't catch up despite Moore shutting down the opponents.
Maybe Moore can't handle the stress of pitching in back to back games (he was always at 100%), Maybe a regular schedule of once every three games is the answer. What's even more surprising is that in the games started by the other pitchers (Lyons, Hoyt), the pitchers coming in to pitch in relief are statistically way worse than Moore, but have pitched better than Moore has done in those same situations.
I can't explain it, but somehow it's working. Upcoming: A big 4-game series vs DougDawgs '23-24 Giants for the division title.