The Kids are Maybe Alright: 6-3 win leads to Series win in New York

Your moment of zen:

Buck Martinez: "Have you ever been to Yankee Stadium?"
Daniel Norris: "Umm...yeah, I pitched there last year."

Norris got his first career win last night. He looked a little shaky at times, but it was his first start of the season, it was cold and he is a wee child.  By the end of the fifth, he had given up four hits,  had five strikeouts, two walks, and had allowed just one run. The sixth was a little fraught with peril (pitches left up and launched into the night), but overall I thought Norris did just fine.

This might be a little Mr. Rogers of me, but I think a good policy with the kids is to not expect perfection but look at what they are doing well and watching how they adapt and grow into their next start/appearance. (Speaking of Mr. Rogers, have you watched him recently? It's pretty amazing. Stay tuned for the remix.)

ARod hit his first homer since 2013. I want Alex Rodriguez to be the only good Yankee this year. I want him to be a one man show. He's also the last pre-strike MLB player left.  The Yankees looked tight and a little tired last night, and made fundamental baseball errors in the series that were not characteristic. The Jays were one bad inning away from sweeping a series in the Bronx. That's just not heard of for them.

We have a catcher that can do this. He occasionally forgets how many outs there are, but I'll forgive him.

Bautista has looked a little rough, but it's been three games. As long as Encarnacion looks like this:

I think we can ride it out. 

The Jays roll in to Baltimore for the Orioles home opener. Buehrle takes the mound and the game is the free game of the day on MLB.tv.

I could listen to Pedro Martinez talk about pitching all day long.   Listening to him talk about Tanaka's mechanics is interesting, but I also liked hearing about the psychological toll it takes on a pitcher to pitch hurt. It's not mystical voodoo for Martinez, he did it so he knows of what he speaks. Both the toll of going to pitches you can no longer execute and also just the every day toll of being in pain are significant. It really makes me wonder what the Yankees are doing.

Speaking of pitching, MLB has teamed up with USA Baseball to develop PitchSmart, an initiative to help reduce injuries to young pitchers.  I hope the program spreads to Baseball Canada and also into Latin America.

Wendy Thurm, of the Oakland beat, wrote a piece in the New Yorker about national baseball celebrities in a post-Jeter world. All we need is Mike Trout to date a Kardashian, and it'll happen. Do it for baseball, kid.