JA Happ making case for start in Wild Card series and we don’t know how to feel

Yankees starter JA Happ dismantled the Red Sox on Saturday night.

The reason the New York Yankees traded for JA Happ back in 2018 was because of his career track record against the Boston Red Sox. Though he wasn’t exactly lights out against them since arriving in the Bronx, he’s stupefied them this year, with the latest masterful outing coming on Saturday night.

In the Yankees’ 8-0 win, Happ tossed eight innings (four hits and nine strikeouts!) of scoreless ball, which lowered his ERA and WHIP to 3.25 and 1.18. He was locating his pitches very well and using his high fastball to throw off opposing batters, which generated a lot of swings and misses. The point is, the veteran left-hander is getting the job done and is no longer getting shelled in the first inning.

Though it hasn’t been against the greatest lineups (Red Sox twice, Orioles twice, Mets twice, Phillies and Blue Jays), he’s the only Yankees starter to make it past the seventh inning this year.

Right now, the Yankees are looking at a tough situation for their first playoff series. If they split the first two games, who pitches the do-or-die Game 3? Deivi Garcia has pitched well beyond his years in four starts to kick off his MLB career, but does manager Aaron Boone really want to throw the rookie in that kind of a situation? Maybe! We just don’t know for sure.

As for Happ, the veteran lefty is pitching with a vengeance down the stretch and possesses postseason experience, so those key factors should at least make Boone think harder about what he’d do.

What do the fans want? They probably want Garcia. In a perfect world, the Yankees would just win the first two games and not bother giving us this headache, but the rollercoaster 2020 campaign won’t allow that. We will suffer in some capacity and we will like it.

The fact of the matter is that such discussions will continue to be hot and cold. There’s not enough of a sample size in this shortened season to diagnose such a hypothetical scenario, especially given Happ’s tenure with the team.

He dominated in his first 11 starts back in 2018 after the trade, but then registered a 4.91 ERA in 31 games last year. Now, he seems to be gaining back to the form the Yankees traded for (eight starts, 3.25 ERA), and quite frankly we’re loving what we’re seeing. Could he be the postseason lefty arm Paxton was supposed to be? Probably not, but it’s fun to think about considering how he’s performing right now and with how unpredictable everything is at the moment.

It looks like maybe calling out the team was the right move on his part…

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