The writers love the newly built Ben Rice, but will it translate into a lineup slot?

It's sorta creepy, when Gammonites gush over ballplayers' bods. 

"Best shape of his life!" 

"Added 10 pounds of muscle!"

"God, I'd do him! On home plate!"

On that note, Ben Rice is this year's swimsuit edition, the writers reacting like meat-market judges in a Bowen Yang SNL skit. He arrived in camp "noticeably bigger and more filled out through his chest and arms," said Mike Axisa (the greatest Yank blogger; subscribe to his Patreon.) Don't have new beautistics or a Speedo moment. We'll have to accept their admiring words.

Rice, himself, says he's hitting balls harder. And Saturday, he hit the hardest ball of his life - 113.3 mph, according to the Exit Velo thingy. Aaron Boone cooed, "He's added really good weight!" a line that the rest of us will never hear. 

Look, we all want Rice to succeed. He checks every box. He's 26. He bats LH. He graduated from Dartmouth. (His dad, Brown.) Degree in psychology. He grew up behind enemy lines - Massachusetts - a Yank fan. Last year, he hit 3 HRs in one game, first Yank rookie in history to do so. 

I'm not asking for The Incredible Hulk. If Rice can hit - say, 15 HRs and .270 - he could...

a. Be our lefty platoon DH
b. Be an occasional lefty platoon at 1B
c. Be a back-up catcher with pop
d. Save us from a month of Dominic Smith

Yeah, a cheap shot on Smith there. But really, on Opening Day, could anything be more hope-crushing than a lineup with Smith batting 4th? What's that? You say it can't happen? Look around, pal. 

These days, nothing cannot not happen. 

It's nice that Rice spent winter in the gym. But his problem last year - he hit .171 - was swinging and missing, especially big league curveballs. Bigger arms might send balls farther, but they won't necessarily help him make contact.

A vast, deep chasm separates Yankee teams with and without a solid-hitting Ben Rice. If he can breakout, the Yankees can probably survive the spring losses of Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu. But if Rice doesn't hit, it's a short pathway to Dom Smith and a weak bottom half of the order. It's night and day, muscles or not. 

Will April in Scranton beget a magical Brigadoon of Yankee hope?

An iron rule of March baseball: 

When you score 12 runs, check the names of the opposing pitchers. 

Yesterday, against the Phillies, that buttery list included Stashak, Suarez, Padillia, Vespi, Mercado, Aoyagi and - wait a minute: holy crap! - Zach Fucking Wheeler, who gave up 5 ERs in two innings. 

Zach Wheeler. Wow. The Yankees pounded a legitimate ace, even if it actually didn't count. 

Searching for meaning in a meaningless universe, right.

That said, today belongs to 23-year-old Spencer Jones, who  doubled off Wheeler, then later added a HR and a single - 4 RBIs. 

What should we make of Jones? He's a former first-rounder, an Aaron Judge prototype - 6'6", thinner and faster - who fans too often (6 Ks this spring) and has been a Yankee hype engine since the 2022 draft.  

This spring, he's 6-14 - that's .429, for you without calculators -  with 2 HRs and a SB. That would anoint Jones as this spring's breakout prospect, but for the presence of George Lombard Jr., a 19-year-old SS - another former first-rounder, high on the hype machine.  Lombard is 5-for-15 with 2 HRs. 

Add Jasson Dominguez - The Martian, who also homered yesterday - and you could close your eyes and argue that the Yankees actually have a Power Triad in their long-term future. If Anthony Volpe - still only 23 - learns to hit, dare I say it? 

A new Core Four?  

(No, I've not been drinking. Nor did Cashman buy me off with drugs and Sarasota hookers. Let's acknowledge The Martian's current fielding woes in left field, but listen: His career won't hinge on his glove. It's all about hitting. This spring, he's 4-for-20. Yesterday, he homered.) 

Barring injuries, Dominguez will play LF on opening day. The Yankee hype machine has invested too much into him. Jones, on the other hand, has no current path to that roster. He'll start in Scranton with 2B Jorbit Vivas, C Rafael Flores, 1b TJ Rumfield, LF Everson Peirera and the cast of Glee.

As for Lombard, his breakout spring - I suppose we can call it that - could elevate him to start the year in Double A, barely a hitting streak from Scranton. 

Let's not get damp over this. Compare the Yankee farm system to Baltimore and/or Boston, and our future looks sober, if not bleak. Both franchises have trios to match Dominguez, Lombard and Jones. (Oh my.) But close your eyes and imagine September: It's not hard to see them in our lineup. 

Hope is not a plan. But it sure beats hopelessness. And the Yankees have legitimate reasons for optimism. At least until the next injury.

An Above Average Haiku Tuesday ~ Please do us all a favor and CUT THE CHEESE, Fondue Edition!

CHEESY CASHMAN, EWW!

THAT'S SOMETHING NO ONE SHOULD CHEW

DUCK AND COVER, SPEW!

The real problem with Giancarlo? It's having nobody to replace him.

Apologies if this post offends big Everson Pereira fans out there. (You know who you are.) 

Ever "The Never" probably deserves better. I mean, he's only 23, he's currently hitting .333 with a HR, and right now, he and Uncle Ben Rice are the main obstructions to an opening day lineup centered around Dominic Smith.

On that note, let me apologize to big Dom Smith fans. I don't mean to single him out as evidence of Yankee malpractice but - well - there, I've done it. Sorry, Smithies. 

Right now, I'd say the odds look good that we will experience opening day with Dom the Bomb batting 5th, a touchstone for our growing sense of hopelessness. 

Dominic, Pereira and Rice... oh my.

Right now, in various permutations, they represent our depth chart at DH. You can toss in Trent Grisham and Oswaldo Cabrera - there's always room for Jell-O - but the moral of this withering story is simple: 

Hope is not a plan.

Apologies to everyone, to be flaring the Bat Signal for Giancarlo Stanton, and to pretend that anyone expected his hot October to roll over into 2025. Nobody thought such things. Yank fans know Giancarlo to be a walking tweak - in the postseason, he couldn't even run - and nobody, not even your Aunt Ginny - expected Stanton to suddenly experience health.  

Wait... I take that back. 

Apparently, Cooperstown Cashman did. Because the Yankees spent the winter penciling Giancarlo into their 2025 lineup, only to be shocked - SHOCKED! - when two tennis elbows derailed his spring. They're waiting for Stanton to return from NYC on "personal business," which I believe is:

a) He's in line, renewing his NYS drivers license.

b) Plastic surgery on the dimple.

c) Dictating his memoir to Meredith.

d) Launching a rap feud with Drake. 

Who knows? But let me go on record here in noting that the problem with Stanton is not his injuries, or his contract, or the way he shimmies after a swinging K: 

The problem with Stanton is that the Yankees have nobody to replace him, aside from three enormous leaps of faith, none of which will inspire optimism through the months of April and May, while Stanton is hitting off a tee. 

Dominic, Pereira and Rice... oh my.

Delete Stanton and paste in any name you wish... it's a deep, dark hole. And all those hopeful midwinter projections? They've been thrown into that crevice.

Luis Gil won't throw for six weeks. He'll be out for probably three months.

 He has a high lateral strain. 

See you in June? 

The Yankee 3B problem has become an official threat to 2025

Nobody wants to admit this - Boone and the courtiers of YES remain happily in denial - but DJ LeMahieu's latest tweak is threatening an entire winter of Yankee fantastical thinking. 

Let's be honest: We secretly hoped LeMahieu, at 36, would somehow recapture his famously honed fundamentals and deliver a comeback season, buying the franchise time for a long-term solution at 3B. He'd hit enough to spare us from the Oswald/Oswaldo conundrum, now entering Year IV with both players straddling their sell-by dates. 

Third base is a problem that deepens with each passing day. We can debate the precise order, but here's how Opening Day might look:

Jazz Chisolm 2B
Aaron Judge RF
Cody Bellinger CF
Paul Goldschmidt 1B
Austin Wells C
Jasson Dominguez LF
Anthony Volpe SS
Dominic Smith DH
Oswald/Oswaldo 3B  

Even if we dismiss Wells' final two months of 2024, and assume he becomes the hitter of last June, the bottom of the lineup remains a deep, dark gorge. And if Bellinger and Goldschmidt start slowly...?  

Welp, God help us. 

I don't wanna be Chicken Little; it's too early to run for the hills. But if Juan Soto is lighting up Citifield, and Clay Holmes is delivering quality starts, it's not hard to imagine an insanely cruel media and furious fan base picking over a Yankee carcass before Memorial Day has even arrived. 

In recent years, we've enjoyed hot Aprils, even if they led to meltdowns in Augusts. What if April goes sideways? Honestly, I don't wanna think about it.  

Of course, everything revolves around The Martian. If Dominguez hits, we can imagine anything. Trouble is, he was supposed to start 2025 by hitting deep in a circular lineup, full of pop. The impending loss of Giancarlo Stanton - and now with LeMahieu's barking calf - just blasted two holes in that fantasy. 

Also, I don't see how the Yankees can save themselves by spring trades. The farm system gasping for air. (By the way, there's a terrifying rumor going around that Boston will use its wellspring of prospects to pry Vlad Jr from Toronto.) Also, we're still clinging to the delirium that Stanton and/or Mahieu will surprise us. But one more tweak, one more lost soldier, and the '25 Yankees could be a team for the ages - not in a good way.

Stanton, Brubaker, Effross, Gil, LeMahieu, Vivas... For the Yankees, could this be one of those years?

This week, the generally joyful prophets of YES told us that...

1. Oft-injured Giancarlo Stanton will miss the month of April, if not more.

2. Oft-injured JT Brubaker broke three ribs on a comebacker. He's out.

3. Oft-injured Luis Gil would get an MRI for shoulder issues. Be afraid.

4. Oft-injured Scott Effross threw one pitch and hurt himself. Yep.

5. Oft-injured DJ LeMahieu tweaked a calf muscle. Uh-huh.

6. Oft-injured Jorbit Vivas is still Jorbit Vivas, and he's hurt. Vivas, Las Vegas! 

Insert fart here.

Look, fractured ribs come with the job, right? Google "Boston injuries," and you'll learn that Lucas Giolito, Connor Wong and Wilyer Abreu are all M.I.A, and that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are healing as a couple. Life happens, the world churns, time is a wheel, and when you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.  

But but BUT... fuck me. As Yank fans, who regularly suffer rosters of hobbled thirtysomethings, always with one toe on the Injured List, maybe - just maybe - it's time to ask some existential questions about 2025. 

1. Is this one of those years?

2. Is this team hopelessly entombed by bloated contracts?

3. Can this team win the AL East?

4. Does this team have the bench to survive injuries still to come? 

5. Should the Yankees start thinking of a backup plan?

6. Should we sit it out... or dance?

Let's cut to the chase. Right now, questions boil down to JD Martinez: 

To solve the Giancarlo crisis, should the Yankees spend $20 million on a 37-year-old free agent who hit .235 last year? Or do we really go with - gulp? - Dominic Smith? We can tell ourselves that Ben Rice is ready to break out. How much Kool-Aid do we guzzle? 

For 14 years, Martinez has killed us. In fact, we should ponder the Youkilis Scenario. The guy who kills you throughout his career finishes the job while wearing your uniform.  

Obviously, March 2 is too early to throw in a towel. Three weeks ago, the Gammonites were touting us to win the AL East. Now, blasted by MRIs and comeback liners, we're already penciling in Carlos Carrasco and resembling a team limping through August. 

Yesterday, the YES sirs bleated praise on the '25 Yankees. Judge was back! Jazz! The Martian didn't get hit by a liner. Lombard! Rice! Jones! Hooray.

In the late innings, the announcers talked about the death of a lifelong fan in East Rochester, a gentleman being buried with a Yankee cap. It was sweet. It brought home the notion that, in the end, Yank fans are one big family, and it's the struggle - not the outcome - that we must embrace. 

In any family, there has to be an Uncle Gary, the one who gets drunk and asks the tough questions. Here's one: As the tweaks keep piling up, how hard should the 2025 Yankees seek Band-Aids?  

Last year, around now - with Soto, Verdugo, et al -  we faced an all-or-nothing season. This year, for now, anyway, I'm not sure what we're doing.   

Gil, gone? Stroman, stay? And other primal questions across the Yankiverse.

Not sure I've ever felt "shoulder tightness." Generally, my shoulders feel like interlocked Leggos baked together on an Arizona driveway. At times, it's all they can do to raise a pint glass to the magical height that lets gravity work its magic. At that point, I often experience "brain tightness." 

So... Luis Gil has shoulder tightness. 

This is bad. This is really bad.

Yesterday, the Death Barge shut down Gil. Today, he'll get an MRI. They're saying nothing more, because  - why bother? - nobody believes a word anyway. And everybody knows the implications: Gil - 26 and the reigning Rookie of the Year - was supposed to be a bulwark of the rotation. You don't want your youngest starter to be having an MRI. This is a potential Cat-5. 

So... across the Yankiverse today, the name "Marcus Stroman" is going viral. That's because Stroman - assigned by Dean Wormer to Double-Secret Probation - is back to being our 5th starter. For the last six weeks, Cooperstown Cashman has shopped Stroman like a plate of bad liver, seeking to shred the $18 million contract that the Yankees lavished on him last year. Frankly, it's a wonder that two days ago, Cash didn't trade Stroman for some thirtysomething lug nut who peaked in 2019. He held on. I wonder what he knew...

Not much more to say about Gil and Stroman. But if anybody thought the Yankees, heading into spring training, had too many starters, they haven't watched this franchise very long. And if you think Gil will be the only starter to go down in March - Rodon? Schmidt? Cole? Fried? - you know nothing about reverse negative juju - of which the 1st Law states: Never predict anything positive about your team.  

Other matters from yesterday...

Cody Bellinger homered. Great. In 2023 he won Comeback Player of the Year. Is it realistic - or right - to hope that he wins another Comeback award? And what does it say that we'd have that conversation?

Also, as much as I like the guy, I cannot shake the fact that the Yankees obtained Bellinger in a straight up deal for Cody Poteet. Yeah, there was cash. But it was Cody for Cody.

Paul Goldschmidt is listed in yesterday's box score as "Goldschm..." WTF? They add a three dot ellipsis rather than finish his name? That ain't right. 

Jasson Dominguez didn't play yesterday. I wonder if somebody took him to a secret field and hit him 1,000 flies? More likely, he had the day off and went bowling. 

Since being allowed to grow meaningless beards, the Yankees are 3-3 in meaningless games.

The Martian is making left field into a place of terror and suspense.

There's a new streaming sci-fi flick, The Gorge, where Anya Taylor-Joy - (last year's IT girl) - plays a gritty military sniper sent to an obscure base and told to shoot whatever emerges from a deep dark canyon, because it threatens humankind. Haven't seen it, but I like the concept. 

It describes our situation in left field - because, right now, whatever emerges may threaten the future of Yankind. 

Why do I say this? Yesterday, Jasson Dominguez botched another fly. 

This one was a misdiagnosed liner to the track, a catchable ball turned into a double - the Martian's 4th defensive goof in four games. His woes in LF have begun to shade not only the 2025 lineup, but the balloon of hype that lifted Dominguez - aka "The Martian" - all winter.

Okay, let's step back. Before I play Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, let's acknowledge that:

1. It's still February - at least, for today.
2. We're only four games into spring training.
3. This is the time to make mistakes.
4. Dominguez is learning a new position, LF, (though it's not like he's donning a mask and cup.) 

Right now, our main problem is credibility. For years, the Yankee brain trust has hyped Dominguez as a rock-ribbed perfectionist, a tireless student of the game, with the work ethic of a team of huskies. He hungers for self-improvement, takes notes, remembers birthdays, a bone-crushing handshake, forever seeking to elevate the Yankee human condition. 

Unfortunately, over the winter, he does not seem to have worked on his defense in LF. 

Last September, he looked imperiled in left - so lost that the Yankees played a disappointing Alex Verdugo throughout the postseason. The October narrative went that Dominguez would catch flies all winter and report to Tampa with at least a clue. Something has gone wrong. Every fly ball is The Gorge. 

Having built their 2025 lineup around The Martian, the Yanks now seem to have few options, aside from sticking him in LF, closing their eyes and hoping for the best. Giancarlo Stanton's barking elbows might offer a solution:  Dominguez could become a fulltime DH. But, seriously, do we want our top prospect, age 22, without a position? Yikes.

Welp, the hype machine may giveth what it taketh away. Today, The Athletic devotes 800 words to the newest Yankee IT boy, Spencer Jones, who's having a nice spring - .286 with a HR. At 23, Jones could nicely fill the role of breakout OF prospect, if the Martian keeps flubbing flies. 

The problem: Jones last year fanned more than any 200 times, more than any Yankee farmhand in history.

We all know Jones. A former first rounder, who stands 6'6", he's been hyped for years. He'll surely start 2025 in Scranton. Last spring, the story goes, the Yankee brain trust saw a hole in his swing and began retooling his stance blah-blah-blah. That said, Spencer hit .444 in spring training last year - you can look it up - so he couldn't have looked too badly.

Welp, the Yankees have made their bed in LF, and Dominguez is sleeping in it. Whether he can wake up, that's the question. 

But if The Martian cannot play LF... holy crap, are we ever in trouble. I hope they have a sniper, because what emerges from left field could threaten everything. It won't be February for long. 

BAH - BAH - BAH - NANZA BOONIE !

 

Searching for meaning in a meaningless void... and finding the existential matter of Will Warren

 

I believe that we are all sick of hearing about William Harper Warren. Let's cut to the chase, send him to Wilkes Barre and call it chowder. 

I mean, liberty-biberty! the guy's no prospect. He's almost 26, and he's been rattling around the farm system since before Billie Eilish. Last year was supposed to be his breakout. Instead, he summoned the Babadook.  

In spring training, Warren battled Luis Gil for the final rotation spot. (Remember, Gerrit Cole was hurt.) Gil won the competition and became AL Rookie of the Year. Warren crashed like a self-driving Tesla. 

Over 22 MLB innings, he compiled an ERA of - this is not a typo - 10.32. 

Yes, he topped the magical "10." That's not easy; throw one scoreless inning, and you're down into single digits. Here's how his death march unfolded.

1. In July, against the Phillies, 5.1 innings and 4 ERs. (Austin Hays homered and was later hit by a Warren pitch, so there's that.)

2. In August, against the lowly Angels, 4.1 innings and 8 runs. (Zack Neto went deep.) 

3. August, against the horrible White Sox, 5 innings, 2 runs. (Gavin Sheets homered. Warren's ERA fell to 8.59 - Colter Bean territory.)

4. August, against Colorado: 3 innings, 5 ER. (No HR, just 7 hits and a walk.) 

5. August, against the Cardinals: 4 innings, 4 ER. 

He was done. They exiled him to Moosic, where he got further raked. In late September, they recalled him for a final, garbage inning, against Pittsburgh. He gave up 3 runs, including a HR by Nick Yorke. This boosted him over "10." 

I don't mean to rub Warren's nose into this. We're not a congressional hearing. We're a mirthful, fun time blog! I'm just explaining why, when I hear that Warren looked good yesterday, my good eye twitches. Will we buy another YES load a' crapola?  

Well, here's the case for hope: 

1. Technically, he's still 25. He turns in June.

2. In theory, he can forget last year and start over.

3. Yesterday, he threw 3 perfect innings, fanning 4.  

4. Supposedly, he's back to throwing his curve. (This, the current YES narrative, begs the question:  Why did he stop? Like characters in a time-travel movie, we're not supposed to dwell on such conundrums.) 

So, there it is: the Warren Report. Three innings? Fine. Wonderful. Hachacha! But if we expect nothing, we won't get burned. At least the guy knows what it's like to be dead and buried, and maybe get a last chance? Technically, that's more Dr. Phibes than the Babadook. But let's see...