On Monday’s episode of The Bronx Pinstripes Show, co-host Andrew Rotondi spoke with Yankees beat reporter Bryan Hoch about the Yankees slow start, Gio Gonzalez, Aaron Boone, and more.
Hoch has been the Yankees beat reporter for MLB.com since 2007, and has seen the very best and worst of this team since then. In addition to his great insight and information about the current state of the team, Hoch told some great stories from his time covering the Yanks on the episode.
As of right now, however, the biggest issue regarding the Yankees is obviously their injuries. Despite the fact that basically half of the team is on the Injured List, Hoch isn’t overly concerned and predicts that some of the Yankees star players will return to the lineup sooner than later.
“The Yankees have been taking a lot of hits to the mouth lately, it’s like going up against Mike Tyson in the 1980’s. But like I said, it’s not going to be like this all year, and they’ll start to get some of these guys back. I think the Gary Sanchez thing will be short term, Giancarlo Stanton will be relatively short term… you get those two guys back and things start to look a little more formidable and a little more like what you thought it was going to be.”
Hoch gave further information and injury updates on Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino, Miguel Andujar, and Dellin Betances. Hicks’ injury is a bit of a mystery and his timetable is still in question. The Yankees are hopeful Severino and Betances will return, but they are weeks — probably months — away. Andujar is another issue. As Hoch says, it is a matter of how much the Yankees want Miggy’s bat in the lineup versus potentially jeopardizing next season if things don’t go well.
On the lighter side of things, Hoch told an awesome story from 2009 about former Yankee Nick Swisher and how he used to make Brett Gardner carry around a giant boom box so that the clubhouse always had music playing during the season. Listen to the entire story below:
Back in 2009 Nick Swisher made Brett Gardner lug around a huge boom box so the clubhouse could always have music.
That from @BryanHoch on today’s episode!
Listen here 👇
📲 https://t.co/Rlyd8IGjnq pic.twitter.com/O1woLlsGBv— The BP Show (@YankeesPodcast) April 15, 2019
Hoch also talked about:
- Gio Gonzalez’s upcoming opt-out day and what his plans could be
- What Jacoby Ellsbury‘s empty locker looked like and whether or not there was dust piling up
- “State of the team” quotes from Aaron Boone and Aaron Judge and why Judge is the go to guy
- The three types of “dad” managers the Yankees have had: the “cool” dad (Boone), “stern” dad (Girardi), and “good” dad (Torre)
The segment was a lot of fun to listen to but most importantly it was super informative, as Hoch is one of the smartest Yankees guys on the planet. Make sure to give it a listen here!
