Monday, June 1, 2015

The Jurassic Empire: Yankee fans are growing tired of the same summer movies

Every summer, we get the same blockbuster movie: Avengers: Age of Beltran.

The young, wise-cracking, impetuous - (but not cheap) - billionaire seeks to built an unbeatable Yankee team. His lovable, but flawed sidekick - the CashBot - trades several experimental life forms from the DNA pools in Trenton and Charleston. In exchange, Loki sends to the Yankees some veteran superheros, who've been frozen in ice for the last seventy years.

The Yankees YES-Bots quickly pronounce the deals as fantastical successes. The billionaire has done the impossible. He's brought to Gotham the mighty Berkman/Soriano/Ichiro et al  - and merely surrendered Mark Melancon and Jimmy Paredes, neither of whom will be missed. What a steal. It's highway robbery. They pulled one over on Loki. Does that guy even read the box scores?

Oh, but what's the deal with Berkman's waistline? Did he always have trouble bending over?

Insert sigh here.

We just lost three out of four to the worst team in the American League. Two shutouts.

You know what that means, comrades?

It's coming. The sequel movie we all feared: Summer of '14: Yankee Reboot. Already, Hal Steinbrenner has been eyeing the coming trade deadline like a frat party bus pulling up to a Chinese Buffet. Once again, the Yankees will trade young for old, cheap for expensive, the future for the past, and saddle next year's team with the dregs of this year's race to be the fifth best team in the league. The trades are coming. We are supposed to be excited.

What's wrong here? Why do we feel so tired?

Last year, as we all know, the Yankees obtained Stephen Drew for next to nothing. (Kelly Johnson, actually.) It was a steal, they all agreed. They brought him in with Martin Prado, Brandon McCarthy, Chase Headley, Chris Capuano and Chris Young - the Yankee Summer Class of '14. What did each player have in common? He came from a team that was quite willing to let him go. Most stayed Yankees. We missed the playoffs with them. We could have missed the playoffs without them.

The Yankees are a bus that makes two stops per year, summer and winter. A few guys get off, and a few guys climb on. The bus rumbles on. It's a tired, old movie that replays every season. Instead of trying young players, who will make mistakes and maybe learn from them, we will go back to old veterans - because we cannot learn from our own mistakes.

It's almost here: The sequel. Coming soon, to a stadium near you.

3 comments:

Parson Tom said...

And occasionally, we run people out of town for no particular reason. Perhaps we could have used this guy a couple of times in the past four years, but I believe the decision was that we had enough pitching:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2481897-aj-burnetts-rollercoaster-what-if-career-ending-on-very-high-note

el duque said...

I've been meaning to unload on this. One of these days...

Rufus said...

I was at that awful playoff game where Joe whatshisname left him in for a half inning too long.

Ruined him on the Yankees.