How Domingo German pitches on different days of the week

Whether you speak the language or just took basic classes in high school, you may know that the Spanish word for Sunday is “domingo.” You probably also know that the Yankees currently have a pitcher with that word as a first name: Domingo German.

In his third season in the majors, German has found his groove and has been the Yankees’ best starting pitcher this season. He leads the major leagues in wins, and has generally been an above average to really good pitcher in a lot of areas.

As someone who once meticulously went through box scores to find out how Gleyber Torres did against orange teams, I have one major question about German. How does he do on different days of the week considering that his name is one?

We’ll get to the most important part of this in a little bit, but let’s start with the day of the week he’s the best on. Folks, he might as well be named Miércoles German, because he is excellent on Wednesday.

It is the day he’s pitched the least on innings wise, but Wednesday is far and away German’s best day. In 16 innings on hump day, he has a 1.13 ERA and 0.813 WHIP. His career strikeout to walk ratio is currently 3.59, but on Wednesday, it’s a massive 8.50. A lot can happen between now and then, but if the Yankees stay on rotation, his next start on Wednesday will be on September 4th. Watch out, Rangers.

As for the other side of the coin, his worst day has been Fridays. In 26.1 innings on Fridays, German has allowed 19 earned runs, which equates to a 6.49 ERA. It’s by far his worst day for walks, and he issued free passes for 13 batters. There are only two other days on which he’s allowed more, but in those cases, he’s thrown way more innings.

German is pretty good on Monday and Thursday, a bit below average on Saturday, and not great on Tuesday and Friday. That brings us to the most important part of this: how does German do on the day he is named after?

The sad news is: not great. German has thrown 53 innings on Sundays. In them, he’s allowed 30 home runs and a 5.09 ERA. He had that solid start to avoid a sweep in Boston a couple weeks ago, but things like that are cancelled out by the time he allowed seven runs in five innings to the Royals back in May.

He was actually pretty good on that day through about June of last year. Through his first five Sunday games, he had a 3.60 ERA and was striking out over 10 batters per nine. It is a bit of a weird thing that as he’s improved on the whole, his stats have gotten worse in this one very particular scenario.

To be serious, there isn’t really anything you can actually read into in these stats. It’s not as if all the days he’s good on is because of game start time, weather, or something along those lines. German has started afternoon games on Sunday and been good, weekday games and night and been good, and vice versa. However, when you have a player literally named a day of the week, you have to look into this stuff.