Should have asked him how bad he's going to be when his BABIP isn't .001.

Fricking Amazing. That could very well be the highlight of your trip. Its hard to compete with a little real-world conversation with the best pitcher in baseball (for the moment).

Adam: Yes, Lee's BABIP is unsustainably low (.211), but one can't dispute how well he has pitched thus far. He has only given up one home run while striking out 39 and walking 2 in 44 2/3 innings pitched. Believe in him or not, it's just too hard to ignore those stats.

Interestingly, half of the Yankees hits off him last night were more of the fluke variety. A poorly hit, slicing bloop single to shallow left field; a groundball that barely evaded Andy Marte at third base; and a bunt single that died just inside the third base foul line. Lee's fastball was 90-93 all night and he was mixing his pitches well, keeping hitters off balance most of the night.

I'm not trying to build a case for Lee maintaining his dominance for the rest of the year, but let's not minimize how well he has performed to date.

Lee has been dominant. It's not a fluke, but obviously nobody goes a whole season with an ERA under 1.

I was hoping the Yanks might be the first team to hit him, but alas it wasn't to be. With ARod and Posada out, they've got a real problem against lefties (no saying they win even with those guys, the way he pitched, of course).

how cool is that?
Im going to make my pilgrimage to the house Ruth built next month and see the Yankees take on the Royals.
If Grienke or Meche is standing next to me on the subway, I probably dont recognize them, but if I do, theres no way Im that subtle.
Likely it goes like this,
"Holy $#*& you're Zack Greinke!"

i almost forgot.
shame on you, Rich, for wearing a Yankees hat.

Just a hint for all of you travelers heading to NY to see some baseball. Usually the MLB teams, whether playing at Shea or THE Stadium stay at the Grand Hyatt near Grand Central Station. They usually have a bus to the stadium for the team, but if a player wants to get to either stadium early he will generally take the subway. For good player/groupie watching check out the Grand Hyatt either early before the game or late after the game.

Rich and Joe, keep on keepin' on. Sounds like a fantastic Father/Son adventure.

Adding to Rich's response to Adam ...

It's easy enough to estimate the effect of some good fortune on BIP.

Lee's ERA is 0.81, his RA is 1.01.

His FIP is 1.75. So if you want to give him absolutely no credit for having suppressed hits on BIP, he's still at 1.75. It is pretty reasonable to do this, in fact, since Lee's BABIP has sat right around league average for more or less his whole career until now, in his best and worst seasons.

His xFIP is 2.71. So if you want to give him absolutely no credit for having suppressed hits on balls in play, and also no credit for suppressing home runs on flyballs, he's still at 2.71. Lee incidentally deserves just a little benefit of the doubt on this, having not strayed too far from his career rate of 9.4% in any season, which is a somewhat better than what xFIP will assume.

Lee is leading the majors in both xFIP and FIP, the latter by about 3/4 of a run. The only thing not corrected for in those numbers is his increased GB rate and decreased FB rate, but further corrections are problematic.

For one thing, Lee's flyball rate is below his career norm, but not that much lower than it was in his earlier years, and the main point of correcting them would be to then apply a HR/F correction -- at which point, the corrections are starting to fall into pretty dubious territory.

In other words, you'd be saying, he's allowed 39% flyballs and only 2.4% have gone for home runs, but we're going to assume that without luck, he'd have allowed 45% flyballs and 9.4% should have gone for home runs. At some point you have to ask, doesn't his actual performance figure in here somehow, some way?

There are similar problems with groundballs, where a 12% spike must be seen as a fluke. And yet, this is accompanied by a jump in K rate, from 6.73 to 7.86, which suggests he's simply got better stuff and is locating better, which is further suggested by his walk rate, which has just vanished.

He presumably cannot maintain this high level of control, and his luck may return to earth sometime. Thing is, though, if his control really is that much better -- and that's what he says, by the way -- then he probably really is doing most of the BABIP and HR/F and FB/GB suppression himself right now.

The point being, you can't double- and triple-regress everything and expect to get a meaningful number. I think trying to luck-neutralize his ERA any further up than 2.50 is probably a foolish exercise, and that still makes him easily the best pitcher in the world over the last six weeks.

We don't say THE Stadium, it's just "the stadium." Not like "THE Ohio State University."

Some of us also say "the city". I still do it even though I live in Florida. Specifically, it means Manhattan, but it can refer to the 5 boroughs on occasion.

Good to hear from you guys. Yeah, I realize it's just "the stadium" or "the city." Capitalizing the word *the* was my way of emphasizing the lack of a more descriptive word like "Yankee" or "New York," as if, in the case of the former, it were the only stadium in the country or world. I'm told it was the first and only stadium for awhile so saying "the stadium" apparently grew out of that fact and was, at least at one time, a less pompous statement than it appears to be today.

Rich: You are THE MAN! Great trip from THE BEACH. With you two in the NE and Goydos in Florida...Long Beach hasn't had so much press in the last 10 years total...GO BEACH!