Day Late, Column Short

Shank's Saturday column recaps the Thursday night usage of a 'foreign substance' by Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda:

NEW YORK — The problem is . . . everybody does it. Including the Red Sox. This is why Sox manager John Farrell was in no position to cry foul when the whole world saw the pine tar-stained hand of Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda in Thursday’s 4-1 victory over Boston.

Pineda was not “doctoring” the baseball. He was not using pine tar to make the ball do funny things. He was using pine tar to maintain his grip of a slippery baseball on a chilly night. Hitters actually don’t mind. There’s some comfort in knowing that a 6-foot-7-inch, 95-m.p.h.-throwing righthander has some control over where the ball is going.

Generally, you'd write about these things in a more timely manner, wouldn't you? Why not swap Friday's Ellsbury column with this one, or run the Ellsbury column before this series started? The Ellsbury column is one more suited to moving around, but the Pineda column looks to me like one you need to run sooner rather than later.