Can We Talk?

Games like this evening's, a total waste in terms of things such as entertainment value, are invaluable as an x-ray of the team we actually have, as opposed to the team we would like to THINK we have.

I don't just mean the continuing degeneration of Sonny Gray, who has gone from:

—Pitcher who cannot pitch to Gary Sanchez, to

—Pitcher who cannot pitch at home, to

—Pitcher who cannot pitch to anyone, at home or on the road, anywhere, anytime.

Sonny is just one of those things that happens from time to time, on even the best of teams. He is the Kenny Rogers of this Yankees team, the Big Pus-sy Toad (as the NY Times kept styling it, lest we mistake a perfectly respectable oozing sore for a woman's sexual organ ooo, yuk, gross, eeek.)

Hey, the Sonny Grays of life happen. Just the way it goes.

What games like tonight's tell us is...quiet, hush-hush, shhhh...this team is not that good.

There, I said it!  I'm so sorry!

I know, I know.

It's one of the rare privileges of being a Yankees fan. You actually get to take a little look into heaven. You get a glimpse of what perfection might look like. That's what we thought we had here, a time or two in the last few years.

We thought we had lightning in a bottle.  An outfielder of rare and unusual talents. A first baseman with, well, limitless potential. A couple of amazing kid infielders. A catcher who seemed like Johnny Bench reincarnated.

One of the most astute baseball writers I know, a guy who is big into the new stats and also knows the old game, was still insisting just the other day that "the Yankees will have one of the great 1-2-3-4s in history" when Sanchez gets back into the lineup.

Yeah, I believed the same thing, dude.

I believed it because I was around to see the 1998 Dream Team, probably the best single club in major-league history. I believed it because I had seen the 1977-78 teams, and had read abut the great teams of 1961, and 1956, and 1953, and 1941, and 1936-39, and 1932, and 1927-28, and, oh, you know. That whole Yankee thing, where you get blinded, thinking that anything is possible.

Well, to quote Stephen Sondheim in Assassins, you got to forget about it. It's an illusion.

Let's take a look at the team that was actually on the field tonight, never mind The Gleyber—out with his second major injury in as many years—or Sanchez, whose groin and whose psyche seem to have failed him.

Let's even skip over Bird's Limitless Potential, awful as ever, or the slowly deteriorating Andujar.

Let's go straight to Aaron Judge, a supposedly Ruthian presence, who is now hitting .277, after an 0-5 performance with 3 strikeouts, to add to the 115 he already had on the season.

Let's to go Giancarlo, at all of .264, with another three whiffs, and 117 on the year.

A show of hands now: who would not trade these two for Paul O'Neill and Lou Piniella? I would. In a heartbeat.

They are not Roger Maris. They are not Bobby Murcer, at his best.  Hell, here is Norm Siebern, at his best, AFTER we traded him to KC:

.308/.412/,495/.907.  114 runs scored, 110 walks, 88 strikeouts.

Anyone think that Judge and Stanton are capable of that?

I didn't think so.

Look, this is a perfectly fine baseball team. But it's not vaguely capable of starting a new dynasty. If we go for it all this year, or don't...it doesn't matter.

Judge, a great story and apparently a great guy, and Stanton, seemingly a terrific human being, are not going to lead us to anything.

The horrible little truth is, we'd be better off with Norm Siebern.