Without being too “behind the curtain,” I can pretty confidently tell you I was the most enthusiastic PSA writer over the J.A. Happ trade. He’s a good pitcher, will eat up innings, and once he recovers from this strange New York outbreak of hand-foot-and-mouth disease, I think he’ll help the Yankees a lot down the stretch.
Watching him in the dugout last Saturday, though, made me think about another way he could help the Yankees. Happ seemed to strike an immediate rapport with Sonny Gray. It makes sense in a lot of ways, Happ grew up about halfway between Chicago and Gray’s hometown of Nashville, they both played college ball at prestigious schools in the middle of the country - Northwestern and Vanderbilt - , and both base their pitching styles around the fastball.