Potpurri of Disgust

Tonight, I close my windows.

Even though it's 103% humidity and temps are in the high 80s and I live in a 139-year old house with no air conditioning, central or otherwise, I'm going to close my windows and bake and sweat until I have a shiny, inch-thick patina and generally look as miserable as CC did last night.

Why am I going to do this?  Because last night I screamed FUCK YOU at the television so many times, I think my neighbors have all started a Change.org petition to get me shit-canned from the 'hood.

[Sorry for all the harsh language but those guys pissed me off royally last night.]

A client of mine, who hails from Erie, PA is a big Pittsburgh Pirates fan.  At the time we sent him to the Pirates, Ivan Nova had proved himself to be another in a long line of frustrating Yankee pitchers to watch.  I warned my client: Nova will dazzle you at first.  He'll give you a few good starts and get your hopes up and just when you start to think you won the trade, he'll let you down.

It never happened.  Nova has performed passably well for the Pirates.  Why?  Because the Pirates have a pitching coach and we have Larry Rothschild.  Which brings us to Jonathan Holder.

I blame much of Holder's performance last night -- both in terms of getting batters out AND knowing something about baseball fundamentals, you know, like executing a rundown or knowing what to do when your opponent attempts to steal a base -- squarely on Boone and Rothschild.

Letting a pitcher give up seven runs on five hits without getting an out is inexcusable. Those two yutzes chewed their seeds and stared straight ahead and did nothing. I would have loved to see the dugout camera pan down the bench to catch every single player staring at Boone waiting for him to do something, anything.

When Holder saw Benintendi trying to steal second, I have to guess he never threw the ball because he assumed Boone was coming out to get him and that time had been called.  But it wasn't.

My client from Erie sent me an article from today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  In it, the Pirates' pitching coach, Ray Searage, talks about looking forward to working with Chris Archer and hopes he can be an "easy fix" the way Nova and Happ were:

J.A. Happ, that was an easy fix,” he said. “Nova coming over, that was an easy fix. You just see a little thing and it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s try this.’ And then it clicks, and then all of a sudden they just run with it...

Does that sound like any quote you've ever heard coming from Larry Rothschild?  Or from Aaron Boone for that matter?  The Pirates' coach is a guy talking about seeing a little thing, trying out some ideas, watching something click, and then enjoying his players "running with it".  He's talking like a professional coach who's good at what he does.

Our manager, by contrast, lets a guy give up 7 runs without getting an out and afterward says things like:

We have to do a better job, play a cleaner brand of baseball, especially when things are hard...

That's the sort of mush-mouthed bland-speak that doomed Jeb Bush in 2016 and it will ultimately spell the end of the NYY clubhouse when an all-enshrouding soporific malaise descends over everyone.  The players are all going to stare at runners trying to steal, waddle after passed balls, and lope back to the dugout after striking out.  As a fan, you can feel it coming like another dreary batch of this awful humidity.

As far as actually watching his players -- you know, with his actual eyeballs -- Boone appears to be watching something else ... or maybe just the back of his eyelids ... or maybe that chick A Rod was gawking at back in the day.  When asked about Gleyber Torres' lack of hustle last night, Boone was quoted in the NY Post as saying:

“I didn’t see that.”

Any outraged Yankee fan on the verge of a stress-induced heart attack (like, say, me) also remembers Boone's response when someone asked him to comment on Gary Sanchez' lack of hustle just last week.  You remember, Yankee fans, this was when Sanchez failed to run to first base with the Yankees down by a run in the ninth.  We all saw it.  Here's what Boone saw:

“I’d have to watch that,” Boone said.

When asked separately about Sanchez waddling up the third base line earlier in the same game to retrieve a passed ball and allowing a runner score, Boone said:

“It’s another thing I’ve got to look at.”

What game is this guy watching? 

KD said in a comment this morning that he believed this team-wide letdown is "all the result of the Sanchez Contagion which Boone let fester."

Yer durn tootin' it is.

Ok, this rant is over.  The game is starting soon.  I'm going to go grab a beer and close all my windows.  I've got Boone and Rothschild on a short leash tonight.  Unlike those two, I'm watching and I'll take action if I see professional players not doing their jobs.

Just ask my neighbors.