RAB Thoughts

Mike Axisa is a CBS Sports baseball writer who previously ran a Yankees blog called River Avenue Blues. It shut down in 2019, but he’s been running a roughly-twice-per-week blog/newsletter via Patreon that I recently started reading, and it’s full of deep analysis and granular insights, like this:

Thursday’s game was not televised, but the Statcast data again suggests there’s something going on with Max Fried’s changeup. I mentioned it following his first spring start. About 2 mph less velocity (velocity on everything else is right in line with last year) and more horizontal movement. Matt Blake said they had some ideas to “tighten the screws” on Fried’s pitches, and it seems like they found a way to deaden his changeup.

It’s hard to find written Yankees coverage that isn’t just blog churn or surface-level news reporting. RAB Thoughts costs $3/mo and is worth it.

(Yankee baseball is pretty far afield from the geeky stuff I write about here, but it’s been a balm for me over the past year and I can’t wait for the regular season to get here.)