The New York Times - 30.07.2019

CALENDAR

Baseball 7:00 p.m. Arizona at Yankees YES 8:00 p.m. Mets at Chicago White Sox SNY 8:00 p.m. Chicago Cubs at St. Louis MLB Basketball / W.N.B.A. 7:00 p.m. Chicago at Connecticut NBA TV Tennis 1:00 p.m. Citi Open, men, women; Silicon Valley Classic, women, early rounds TENNIS 10:30 p.m. World Team, Washington at San Diego CBSSN

TV Highlights

HOME AWAY

WED 7/31

SUN 8/4

SAT 8/3

TUE 7/30

FRI 8/2

MON 8/5

THU 8/1

This Week *Doubleheader

METS

CHICAGO (A.L.) 8 p.m. SNY

CHICAGO (A.L.) 2 p.m. SNY

PITTSBURGH 7 p.m. SNY

PITTSBURGH 1:30 p.m. SNY

MIAMI 4 p.m. SNY

YANKEES

ARIZONA 7 p.m. YES

ARIZONA 1 p.m. YES

BOSTON 7 p.m. YES

BOSTON* 1 p.m. YES, FS1 7 p.m. YES

BOSTON 7 p.m. ESPN

BALTIMORE 7 p.m. YES

LIBERTY

DALLAS 8 p.m. NBA TV

CONN. 3 p.m. NBA TV, YES

REAL SALT LAKE N.Y.C.F.C. 10 P.M. SATURDAY YES

TORONTO RED BULLS 6 P.M. SATURDAY MSG

Source: Baseball-Reference.com

In the Market With Wednesday’s trade deadline approaching, here is a look at some of the Yankees’ notable midseason pitching acquisitions under General Manager Brian Cashman.

DENNY NEAGLE

JULY 12 Acquired from Cincinnati

with Mike Frank for Jackson Melian
(minors), Drew Henson, Brian Reith
and Ed Yarnall.

YANKEES RECORD 7-7, 5.81 E.R.A.

POSTSEASON 3 starts, 0-2, 4.30
E.R.A. in A.L.C.S. and World Series.

ESTEBAN LOAIZA

JULY 31 Acquired from the Chicago White Sox for Jose Contreras and cash.

YANKEES RECORD 1-2, 8.50 E.R.A.

POSTSEASON 3 games, 0-1, 1.08 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S. and A.L.C.S.

SIDNEY PONSON

JULY 14 Signed as a free agent.

YANKEES RECORD 0-1, 10.47 E.R.A. Released on Aug. 23, 2006. Yankees signed him again as a free agent on June 19, 2008. He went 4-4 with a 5.85 E.R.A.

JEFF WEAVER

JULY 5 Acquired as part of a three- team trade with Detroit.

YANKEES RECORD (2002) 5-3, 4.04 E.R.A.

POSTSEASON (2002) 2 games, 0-0, 6.75 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S.

POSTSEASON (2003) 1 game, 0-1, 9.00 E.R.A. (allowed game-winning home run in Game 4 of World Series).

SHAWN CHACON

JULY 28 Acquired from Colorado for Eduardo Sierra (minors) and Ramon Ramirez.

POSTSEASON 1 start, 0-0, 2.84 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S.

CORY LIDLE

JULY 30 Acquired from Philadelphia with Bobby Abreu for C.J. Henry (minors), Jesus Sanchez (minors), Carlos Monasterios and Matt Smith.

POSTSEASON 1 game, 0-0, 20.25 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S.

2000 2002 2004 2005 2006

BRANDON McCARTHY

JULY 6 Acquired from Arizona with

cash for Vidal Nuno III.

YANKEES RECORD 7-5, 2.89 E.R.A.

Yankees did not make postseason.

JAIME GARCIA

JULY 30 Acquired from Minnesota for Dietrich Enns and Zack Littell.

POSTSEASON 1 game, 0-0, 0.00 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S.

J.A. HAPP

JULY 26 Acquired from Toronto for Brandon Drury and Billy McKinney.

POSTSEASON (2018) 0-1, 22.50 E.R.A. (five earned runs in two innings vs. Boston in A.L.D.S.).

CHRIS CAPUANO

JULY 24 Purchased from Colorado.

YANKEES RECORD (2014) 2-3, 4.25 E.R.A. Yankees did not make postseason.

POSTSEASON (2015) Not on roster.

SONNY GRAY

JULY 31 Acquired from Oakland with international bonus slot money for James Kaprielian (minors), Jorge Mateo (minors) and Dustin Fowler.

POSTSEASON (2017) 2 starts, 0-1, 4.32 E.R.A. in A.L.D.S. and A.L.C.S.

POSTSEASON (2018) Not on roster.

LANCE LYNN

JULY 30 Acquired from Minnesota for Luis Rijo (minors) and Tyler Austin.

POSTSEASON 2 games, 0-0, 11.57 E.R.A. (3 earned runs in 2.1 innings vs. Boston in A.L.D.S.).

2014 2017 2018

TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: POOL PHOTO BY ANDREW SAVULICH, SCOTT MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS, SHANNON STAPLETON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES,FRANCIS SPECKER/ASSOCIATED PRESS, RAY STUBBLEBINE/ASSOCIATED PRESS, ELSA/ GETTY IMAGES. BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT: KATHY WILLENS/ASSOCIATED PRESS, KIYOSHI OTA/ EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY, CHRISTOPHER PASATIERI/GETTY IMAGES, ELSA/GETTY IMAGES, JIM MONE/ASSOCIATED PRESS, JUSTIN LANE/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK.

B8 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSTUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019

OLYMPICS

week.”
This week, the Red Sox will get
a shot at their direct division com-
petition, the Rays, while the Yan-
kees will host the Arizona Dia-
mondbacks. Eight more regular-
season games remain between
the Yankees and Red Sox, includ-
ing four this weekend in the
Bronx. The Rays began fading in
June, and the recent loss of their
ace Blake Snell, the 2018 A.L. Cy
Young Award winner, to elbow
surgery was a substantial blow. In
recent weeks, it has felt like the di-
vision race could come down to
the Yankees holding off the Red
Sox instead.
“We know they’re a great club
and capable of this kind of week-
end when you’re not playing at
your best,” Yankees Manager Aar-
on Boone said of the Red Sox after
his team’s 9-5 loss on Saturday
night, which took the Yankees’
record against Boston to 8-4 this
season.
Regardless of records, Yankees
relief pitcher Zack Britton noted
that the difference in any given
game has been the ability to play
fundamentally sound baseball. At
times, though, it has felt like the
winner would be whichever high-
scoring offense outlasts the other.
“If you want to be a World Se-

ries team, you’ve got to consistently do the little things,” Britton said. “And that’s what they did last year. That’s all facets of the game: not walking guys, getting ahead, making good pitches all the way through, moving guys over, playing good defense, not giving up ex- tra outs. “That’s the separator between us and them on a given night, and the team that consistently does that is going to be the team that season series-wise is the winner.” The Yankees hold the most de- cided edge over the Red Sox in the bullpen, even without the injured four-time All-Star Dellin Be- tances, thanks to relief pitchers like Aroldis Chapman, Adam Ot- tavino, Tommy Kahnle and Brit- ton. But the unit has sputtered more in recent weeks, perhaps a domino effect from the rotation’s regular inability to pitch deep into games. As a result, the Yankees have also been scouring the relief market, where there are more op- tions available. They recognize the importance of a dominant bullpen come October and hope Betances will have returned from his shoulder and latissimus dorsi injuries by then. While the postseason is still more than two months away, the lack of an ace has been apparent for the Yankees. Luis Severino,

the team’s best starting pitcher, hasn’t thrown a pitch all season because of a rotator cuff injury and a puzzling lat strain. (He re- cently resumed throwing and is racing against the calendar to build up his workload to return as a starting pitcher. If not, he might be an option in the bullpen.) Domingo German has pitched like the Yankees’ best option for an ace, particularly on Sunday. He allowed three runs and struck out nine batters over five and one- third innings to improve to 13-2 on the season. He was the first Yan- kees starting pitcher since July 20 to complete five innings and the only one with an adjusted E.R.A. above league average. The Red Sox have four such starters. “I felt like it was my responsibil- ity to go out there and put a stop” to the losses, German said. The Yankees’ biggest off-season acquisition for the rotation, James Paxton, has the talent to pitch like an ace despite past questions about his durability, and he has struggled to the tune of a 4.72 E.R.A. this season and dealt with a knee injury. Masahiro Tanaka (4.79 E.R.A.) and J.A. Happ (5.23 E.R.A.) have remained healthy but haven’t been consistent on the mound. The Yankees knew C. C. Sabathia (4.78 E.R.A.) would need to manage his chronically balky

right knee and, on Sunday, it landed him on the injured list for the third time this season. The lack of a front-line starting pitcher has very likely guided the Yankees’ interest in San Francis- co’s Madison Bumgarner (3.66 E.R.A.), one of the greatest postseason pitchers in history, and Cleveland’s Trevor Bauer (3.79 E.R.A.), who entered Monday with the most innings in the major leagues but questions about his behavior. But both of those teams are suddenly in the thick of the playoff race after recent surges, which has complicated the Yan- kees’ search for rotation help. The Yankees’ situation could have been quite different if they had been able to acquire some of the top available starting pitchers in recent seasons, such as Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Patrick Corbin — some of whom they pur- sued unsuccessfully. The Red Sox, on the other hand, have two standout starters capable of leading the rotation in a push for the playoffs. David Price, a 2018 World Series hero, leads the Red Sox rotation with a 3.66 E.R.A. Despite his six-run outing against the Yankees on Sunday, Sale (4.26 E.R.A.) rebounded from a rough start to the season and has been one of the most talented pitchers in baseball for years. The

team’s over all surge has co- incided with modest improve- ments in pitching and lots of runs from the lineup. The recent trade for starting pitcher Andrew Cash- ner may provide enough of a sta- bilizing force to allow their power- ful offense to carry the team.

Asked if his team still needed reinforcements, Red Sox Man- ager Alex Cora told reporters on Sunday night, “Every team does.” When they meet again, the Yan- kees and Red Sox could be slightly different teams. The race, howev- er, is still on.

A Familiar Old Brute Lumbers Up the Standings to Menace the Yankees

From First Sports Page

An 18-month Senate investiga-
tion has found that the United
States Olympic and Paralympic
Committee and U.S.A. Gymnas-
tics “knowingly concealed” the
sexual abuse of gymnasts by a
team doctor, and two leading sen-
ators have proposed greater con-
gressional oversight of Olympic-
related sports.
The investigation described
“alarming and dysfunctional sys-
tems” that allowed emotional,
physical and sexual abuse to per-
sist in sports like gymnastics,
swimming, figure skating and tae-
kwondo.
As a result of the investigation,
Senators Jerry Moran, Republi-
can of Kansas, and Richard Blu-
menthal, Democrat of Connecti-
cut, will introduce a bipartisan bill
on Tuesday that would hold the
Olympic committee and national
sports governing bodies to more
stringent legal accountability for
failing to protect athletes. The bill
is known as the Empowering

Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act of 2019. Should it become law, the bill would permit Congress to dissolve the board of directors of the Olympic committee and to decer- tify offending national governing bodies. It would also require the Olympic committee to provide greater oversight of sports federations and to establish clear pro- cedures to report abuse. Mr. Blumenthal described the bill as a “moment of reckoning” for the Olympic committee to demonstrate its willingness to create a “seismic cultural shift” in the protection of athletes from abuse. If the Olympic committee failed in its responsibilities, Mr. Blumenthal warned, it “will be disbanded” by Congress. In a conference call with reporters on Monday, he said that the Olympic committee had taken “baby steps” toward reform but had undergone “nowhere near the kind of major reforms that need to be done.” The introduction of the Senate bill comes after Congress dis-

played a lack of urgency in its mandated oversight of the Olympic committee until victims of Lawrence G. Nassar, a former gymnastics team doctor, came forward to make accusations against him to the news media and in legal proceedings. Dr. Nas- sar is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison after being ac-

cused of molesting hundreds of girls and women and being con- victed of sexual misconduct. On Monday, Mr. Blumenthal re- counted being told by one of Dr. Nassar’s victims that the Olympic committee and U.S.A. Gymnastics had failed the athletes. The athlete then pleaded with the senator, “Congress cannot fail us.”

For decades, the governing bodies of Olympic-related sports have acted with a large degree of autonomy and have been slow to report malfeasance. As details of Dr. Nassar’s abuse of scores of gymnasts became public begin- ning in 2016, the Olympic committee claimed it could do nothing to hold leaders of the gymnastics federation accountable because it was an independent body. The Senate bill would enhance the committee’s ability to discipline sports federations that did not protect athletes from sexual misconduct. The bill, Mr. Moran said, is also intended to counter the Olympic committee’s long-held argument that it was responsible for athletes only from the time they were named to Olympic teams through their competition in the Winter or Summer Games. That lack of oversight has left many athletes vulnerable to abuse. The Olympic committee’s re- sponsibility for the well-being of athletes lies “in a broader array of arenas and a wider time frame

than perhaps what some tried to indicate” during the gymnastics abuse case, Mr. Moran said. Among the most significant as- pects of the bill is that it would require the Olympic committee to pay the U.S. Center for SafeSport $20 million a year for operating costs, a nearly sevenfold increase from the current $3.1 million. SafeSport, an independent nonprofit organization, is charged with investigating and preventing sexual misconduct in Olympic sports, but it has acknowledged a backlog of cases because it is un- derfunded and understaffed. The government, along with the Olympic committee, has played a role in the inadequacy of Safe- Sport. A three-year grant from the Justice Department, worth $2.2 million, is intended for education and prevention programs and cannot be used to reduce the case backlog or hire investigators, a spokesman for SafeSport said this year. The Senate bill is also designed to give athletes a greater say by increasing their representation on

the Olympic committee’s board of directors to one-third from one- fifth. The Senate investigation fol- lows a blistering report, commis- sioned by the Olympic committee and issued last December, that accused two of the highest-ranking United States Olympic officials of doing nothing to investigate, report or stop Dr. Nassar despite learning in 2015 that he had been accused of sexual abuse. That was a year before the accusations became public in a newspaper investigation by The Indianapolis Star. One of those officials, Scott Blackmun, the Olympic committee’s chief executive, resigned under pressure in February 2018. Another official, Alan Ashley, the Olympic committee’s chief of sports performance, was fired in December 2018. This month, the Olympic committee received harsh rebukes from critics for paying Mr. Black- mun $2.4 million in severance. Mr. Blumenthal called the severance payment “inexplicable and inex- cusable.”

Senators Will Push for More Oversight After String of Abuse Cases

By JERÉ LONGMAN and JULIET MACUR

Funding would jump

for a nonprofit that

fights misconduct.

BASEBALL