Hope and despair both wear the Yankee cap

Hope: Last night in the late innings, Todd Frazier made a great play, charging a slow roller, throwing off balance and getting the runner by half-a-step. The game was tied. Do or die. He made it. Give him credit. That's why the Yankees wanted a veteran 3B.

Despair: Frazier hasn't hit all season, and he won't start now. We don't need a .204 third baseman who homers every other week. Miguel Andujar is hitting .331 at Scranton. You cannot convince me that he could hit worse than Frazier... even if he doesn't make that great play. We need offense, and Frazier is horrible. Practically every other organization in baseball by now would have promoted Andujar and be playing him every day. We're stuck with .205. This is why salary dump veterans suck.

Hope: Aroldis Chapman somehow escaped in the ninth, avoiding a disastrous, spirit crushing defeat. He adjusted. He got the save. He's still a closer.

Despair: Watching it was horrible. The guy might give me PTSD. If not for Gardy, Torreyes and a ball slicing foul at the last moment, there goes the series, the comeback, maybe the AL East. I cannot adequately describe how soul-devouring that loss would have been, had not Gardy snared that ball. It's starting to look as though Chapman's contract will eventually rival Ellsbury's. Why are we continually doing this? 

Hope: There are rumors that Matt Holliday will go on the disabled list.

Despair: What difference does it make? Joe will write him back into the lineup, when he returns. What will have changed? The guy has Pronked.

Hope: Dellin Betances looks solid, and the bullpen overall is stocked with power arms.

Despair: At the rate he's using those power arms, Girardi will soon blow out that advantage. (And did you see that Nick Goody has become an effective reliever for Cleveland? Ben Gamel isn't the only one who got away.)

Hope: If we win today, we escape Cleveland still alive, dignity intact. Boston comes to town next week. Our house. Still alive.

Despair: We remain a team that cannot string together three consecutive hits. We cannot score a runner from third with no outs. Our runs come from homers, and most of them are solo shots. No team wins the World Series by stringing together solo shots.

Hope: Aaron Judge has had a few hits lately. How wrong we were last year, thinking he couldn't adjust?

Despair: Gary Sanchez, flailing at pitches in the dirt. How drunk were we last year, thinking he was a future MVP?