How Not to Learn From Experience

Flashback to June 29, 2017. Thanks to the wonderful people who run MLB, it's decided that the Yanks have to play a game in Chicago despite a three-hour rain delay.

Dustin Fowler, a promising young centerfielder, is starting his first major-league game. But because it's a soaking wet field, and because Jacoby Ellsbury is coming back from an injury, Manager Joe Girardi decides that he will move Fowler over to right, just to make sure that Ellsbury doesn't run into anything because, y'know, we don't want old Jacoby getting hurt (hahahaha).

Well, Fowler, the rookie, trying to show just what he can do, goes out there and runs into the tool box the White Sox have brilliantly decided to attach to the railing of their stands. The rest is history—that is, the whole history of Dustin Fowler's career as a Yankee.

So what do we do today? Why, shift Aaron Judge to center, so we can give Brett Gardner a day off. Billy McKinney, our promising rookie this year, goes into right, and...

Enough already.

Let's face it: lovely individuals though they may be—highly paid though they may be—Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury are as sure to miss at least a third of any given season as the sun is to rise in the east and set in the west.

Both are declining ballplayers who are marginal at best to the future success of this franchise. To do ANYTHING to accommodate either one of them is only to invite more of the nonsense we saw today.