This just in: the Red Sox are cheating.
Yep, there's no doubt about it. Tyler Kepner's column in the Times today reveals all!
Are they stealing signs again? Corking their bats? Spiking the Yanks' after-game artichoke salads with saltpeter?
Oh, much, much worse than any of that!
Get this:
"The Yankees lead the majors in homers, but Boston ranked sixth of the 30 teams, while also leading everyone in stolen bases and ranking just 25th in strikeouts."
That's right! Why, Kepner even notes that the Sox have struck out just 7 times in this series so far, while "the Yankees fanned 11 times in five innings against the fill-in starter Brian Johnson and that was without the injured (and whiff-prone) Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. They fanned nine times against Porcello on Friday, and ranked eighth in the majors in strikeouts at game time."
It gets worse!
Kepner reminds us that Alex Cora was bench coach for the Astros last year, "whose hitters pulled off the nearly impossible feat of leading the majors in slugging percentage while ranking last in strikeouts."
Get this—it seems that he has brought these cheating ways to Boston, where he is "encouraging players to hunt pitches to drive early in counts, and at least make contact with two strikes."
My emphasis. Because I want to ask you...WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???
This isn't the New Baseball at all! What about swinging for the fences on every at bat? What about "daring to take a called third strike"??
Why, Cora even CONFESSES it:
"In an era that guys swing and miss at a high rate, it you put the ball in play with two strikes and men in scoring position, it's very important. With the defensive alignments, there's a lot of guys in other spots. With two strikes, you spread out, put the ball in play, you might beat a shift or put pressure on the defense."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
What the hell is he doing, using strategy to adjust to strategy?? What does he mean, picking back up tactics that have worked in baseball for the past 150 years???
Just keep telling yourself to breathe, breathe now, and keep repeating: "algorithms, algorithms, algorithms."
THIS IS A GOLDEN POST HOSS.
ReplyDeleteI FIND IT HILARIOUS THAT MOST SABER-MANIACS INSIST THAT THE GAME HAS CHANGED.
IT IS THE SAME GAME IT'S ALWAYS BEEN.
TO PLAY THE GAME THE "RIGHT WAY", IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE.
MAKE CONTACT.
ADVANCE RUNNERS.
SCORE RUNS.
TODAY'S GAME PROMOTES HOME RUNS, WHICH PROMOTES STRIKEOUTS, WHICH PROMOTES MUCH LESS CONTACT.
THE BROADENED SHIFT IS EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE LEAGUE WIDE....BUT THE SHIFT IS NOTHING NEW.
THE WAY TO CRACK THE SHIFT?...SIMPLE.....
MAKE CONTACT. HIT IT WHERE THEY AINT....IF PLAYERS CHOOSE NOT TO DO THAT, WELL, THAT'S ON THE PLAYER AND I BELIEVE, THE MANAGER.
WHAT WOULD BILLY MARTIN DO WITH THESE SHIFTS TODAY?
HE WOULD INSIST PLAYERS DROP THE BALL DOWN WHERE THERE IS NO INFIELDER. [AND THEY WOULD LISTEN].
We hired the wrong guy!! Who hired Boone?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI grind my teeth at night, while asleep. I have to put a plastic "mouth guard" in my mouth to prevent me from further damaging myself.
Why is this relevant? The unconscious grinding began when Teixeira refused to go to left-field against the shift.
He's - no doubt - responsible. I've tried forwarding my dental bills to him, but thus far no response. My dentist is getting impatient.....
ReplyDeleteJust keep telling yourself to breathe, breathe now, and keep repeating: "algorithms, algorithms, algorithms."
I tried doing this right as the game started but, before I got to the second "algorithms", the Red Sox were ahead 2-0 in the top of the first.
Sigh.
I'm listening to the game today on ESPN radio through a laptop in far Western Germany.
ReplyDeleteI am completely confused at the way the Yankees have played since the All Star Game. They suck.
Drinking yet another bottle of wine may not be enough. I know the in-laws have a bottle of schnapps somewhere, but raiding that will only cause trouble.
Problems no matter where I turn.
Why didn't we put together everyone we traded and get Eovaldi? Asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteSo one of the clowns on ESPN just said that the Red Sox have a lot of injuries, too, so the Yankees can't say they're down a Sanchez and a Judge. Judge is the franchise in more ways than Sale and Pedroia, who's too old to be that important any more. We also have Happ missing his start today. And Robinson is playing because Frazier banged a gong.
ReplyDeleteESPN continues to be full of crap. But at least it's not Joe Buck.
Praise the Lord, my mlb.com radio sub still works even though it was cancelled. So I can listen to John and Suzyn.
ReplyDeleteThose ESPN guys are boring as hell. And kind of stupid.
One thing you can say about the Master: he's not dumb. That's pretty rare in sportscasting these days.
Suzyn was noting that Boone said the team had hit a "bump in the road," when in fact they're 18-18 in the last 36 games. And John mentioned that that's four games short of a quarter of the season.
ReplyDeleteSo, Ma...no bump. No bump. You're the bump.
I hereby file a petition for protest to the powers at be for a national Yankee "Moon BOONE day". Let him And and the rest of The Good ol Boyz know how we really feel about this pathetic display of "baseball".they're putting on this weekend
ReplyDeleteBoone mooon...
ReplyDeleteYou saw me standing alooone...
Without a dream in my heart....
Without a team of my ownnnnn...
This team has gone to Suckland really fast.
ReplyDeleteTo follow up with one more Elvis tune:
ReplyDeleteI'm left
You're right
They're go-o-ne
Thanks, ALL-CAPS!
ReplyDeleteAnd what does it say about human nature that the one team NOT playing by the rules of the New Baseball is winning at a record pace...and nobody imitates them?
Oh, wait, that's not so. The Astros do it that way, too. Hmm...
I know it looks bad. Just keep repeating that it's August 4th not October 4th. Joe Davis told us the campfire story about how the Yanks were 8 and one half games out of first place one year. I felt the same way that year as today. But we all know what happened after that. Boston can easily hit that blip in the road. But not this weekend.
ReplyDeleteHere's an alcohol induced dream...Judge and Sanchez gets back to the lineup. The whole team starts hitting. Doesn't matter what pitcher we have on the mound. We outscore the opposition every day. 6-5. 15-14. I think I'll go back to the IPA for awhile.
Sorry, but Sterling is surpassingly dumb. What's dumber than a framework of analysis that amounts to comments like, "The Yankees need to get a couple of men on base here"--that sort of bilge, constantly. What's dumber than "You can't predict baseball" in response to every minor variance from the norm--so that if a pitcher batting .100 gets a hit, then you can't predict ANYTHING about baseball EVER--even to the extent of saying that this pitcher will always be a lousy hitter, even though he just got one hit. This is the kind of dumb that can't distinguish between probability and certainty and declares it a stroke of genius. This is the kind of dumb in which the use of English is a supposed prerequisite of his trade, yet he constantly makes middlebrow flubs like "He gave a lovely gift to Suzyn and I," the kind of dumb that weirdly elides the possessive "s" in instances where there is no conceivable justification for it, such as that was "Judge 20th homerun," not "Judge's 20th homerun." The kind of dumb that constantly erects strawmen against whom to direct surly rants on the air, such as, "For all those who don't see that Didi is a great defensive shortstop, you're just not watching the game." I could go on, but this man is surpassingly dumb and mean-spirited and, above all, INCOMPETENT, failing to give the basic descriptive details of each pitch and play that distinguish a first-rate radio craftsman from a bloated megalomaniac. That kind of dumb.
ReplyDeleteHere's what Chance Adams's performance showed today: he's a very promising, talented young pitcher--promising and talented enough that trading valuable pieces for the likes of Happ and Lynn is just inexplicable. Promoting both Adams and Sheffield would have given better results at far less cost to the organization's future and its current morale. But Cashman has these dumabss quotas: an arbitrary ceiling on how many rookies are allowed to play in Yankee Stadium, and an arbtrary minimum on how many washed-up veteran castoffs from other teams must be put in pinstripes. For the latter quota we have this year's winner of the Chase Headley Mediocrity Medal, Neil Walker that thirty-something declining castoof most likely to act as an anchor on the team's offense and defense throughout the course of a long season in which no amount of extended failure will be sufficient to admit that Cashman has made a mistake.
ReplyDeleteAdd to the mix the insistence on hiring a doofus manager who repeatedly and clearly costs the team victories with amateurish blunders, who has worn out its number-one starter by needlessly extending his pitch count in nearly every outing, who obviously hasn't bothered even to acquaint himself with the decades-old data on sacrifice bunting and run expectancy--and you have the picture of an organizational incompetence, from top to bottom, that leads precisely to these kinds of mid-season tailspins.
Sterling is no doubt certain that Cashman is a genius and that the Yankees are a cinch for the first wild card--those are the moments when he forgets that there are some aspects of baseball that you really can predict: not least among them, the unerring instinct for disaster at work among Cashman, Levine, and company.
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