Yankees Rumors and Gossip 9/21/15: Podcasting on Sabathia, Refsnyder, and Tanaka

It's a great pleasure to announce the launch of our new podcast, Out of Left Field, which is something that figuratively came out of left field as I struggled to come up with a name for the show. You may be familiar with the twice-weekly Rumors and Gossip roundup column that runs on the site—well now we're going positively atomic on it as we steal that format and inject it into your ears. It's a really exciting project and a fun journey we hope you'll join us on.

Stream the first episode below:

It was my great pleasure to welcome Tanya Bondurant, managing editor of Pinstripe Alley—which is this very website—onto the debut episode as my co-host. We hope Tanya will be able to join us for most episodes, but there may be some I handle alone; we're also aiming to have special guests on once in a while. Time to get booking!

Follow me on Twitter here, and follow Tanya on Twitter here.

We'll have iTunes and RSS feeds up soon. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment about the show or about the topics discussed below. If you have a news tip or a rumor tip for us, you can email it to feedback@outofleftfieldshow.com.

In today's show we discussed:

• CC Sabathia—Where was this new knee brace when he needed it months ago, and will it make him a force to be reckoned with in October?
• Masahiro Tanaka—Tanaka's hamstring is strung up with a Grade 1 strain. It's not nearly enough to make him immobile, but it is definitely sore, and the Yankees don't want to take any chances with their star pitcher. He'll skip his next start as they protect him for October. But that means Ivan Nova has to start in his place, and that'll be against the Toronto Blue Jays...
• The wild card game—Joe Girardi spoke out against the one-game wild card knockout format. Girardi suggested MLB should change to a best-of-three series, which he argues is both fairer to the teams and more punishing on the teams, depriving their players of rest they would otherwise have had.
• Rob Refsnyder—It looks increasingly likely Refsnyder's days with the team are numbered as the Yankees line up an offseason run at Ben Zobrist.