With 22 regular season games remaining, the Yankees Wild Card Clinching Magic Number - a once-hideous concept that we reluctantly have come to embrace - stands at 14. Fourteen wins by us, or losses by sickly Seattle, and the Yankees can pop the cheapo champagne and celebrate having cliched the one-game, all-or-nothing nightmare. (For home field advantage, the magic # is 19!)
The whole season... for this. Sort of makes you sick, eh?
But at least we should not get sucked into the YES team's ratings-hyping false drama. It's not worth staying up until 3 a.m., watching our fly balls die at the wall and our pitches fly to the backstop, because a bad DH is catching. It... just... doesn't... matter.
Let's do some fifth grade math. Let's imagine that this Yankee team slips a disk, spits the bit and shits the bed; it's not hard. I mean, this barge has been listing for the last month, ever since the Meltdown in Beantown - no ace, no closer, no catcher, no clutch hits, no nothing - so let's say we do a Met-like re-enactment of 2007 under the fearless Willie Randolph. That year, the Mets went 5-12 to close out the season, blowing a seven-game lead with only 17 to go.
Okay, let's say we go 7-15. (I gotta believe we win a few; I mean, we have nine again Minnesota, Baltimore and Toronto.) And let's say we no longer give a crap about home field advantage. We can just say the grapes are sour, and we don't care where we play. Home field would be nice, but when this team decides to suck, no bleacher bums will make a difference. We either play well - the battery could be Happ and Romine - or the fall-foliage excursions start early.
So, we go 7-15. For Seattle to tie us, they need to go 16-6. That includes three games against Houston and three against Oakland. To overtake us, they'd have to win at a staggering 17-5 pace, something they haven't done all year. Hell, I wonder if they've ever done that in the entire Jogginson Cano era.
And that's if we can only muster 7 wins the rest of the way.
So all we need this weekend is one victory in Seattle. Win tonight, and they're toast. They won't say it. They'll claim otherwise. But they'll be toast. We don't need to bring a broom. A butter knife will suffice.
And if we lose all three - I'm prepared for the worst - well, we can scream about Cashman and burn Gary Sanchez' jersey in effigy, but it just doesn't matter. All that matters now is the nine-inning truth-test to be held one night in early October. All else is waiting. And waiting just... doesn't... matter.
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15 comments:
Thank you for making me feel batter about my 10PM bedtime.
Nothing about this team is worth losing sleep over. Every bright light of April and May has dimmed. Every hope has been squashed by a panicky front office. Every dream destroyed by the incompetent dugout staff.
But hey, Norm MacDonald has a new show on Netflix. And Elon Mush smoked dope on an online video show.
Entertainment lies elsewhere. We just have to look for it.
Sounds right. The Yanks were a lock for that wild card back in June and common sense predicted how many games they would win though the rest of the year. During the All Star break, I had the Yanks down for winning two during the A's/M's trip and I considered even that to be lucky.
In our 2018 guess how many wins the Yanks will have, I said 92 which is now winning only 5 more games. The way they are going, I could be right but I'm now hoping for at least 97 wins. They should be able to manage ten more wins.
100 is probably pushing it as I think they'll just rest everyone and lose mightily by the time they have to play the Red Sox. They need to have a lineup that has some shot against the A's. Man, winning 97 games and still considered to be the worse playoff team of them all (aside from the Indians)...wow!
It just doesn't matter... Even if they play so far over their heads that their noses bleed for a week to ten days... Even if they employ all the latest training techniques from East and West Germany and the newest Olympic power - Trinidad and Tobago... I tell you it just doesn't matter because all the really good looking girls will still root for the Red Socks 'cause they spent all the money. It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose.
"All the good looking girls will still root for the Red Sox" is not my concern.
I only really need 5 or 6 good-looking women. The rest can watch the Sox for all I care (or read Elon Musk's tweets).
Love that Bill Murray. How many movies was he in that would have been totally worthless otherwise?
Duque, don't give up yet! This Yankees team is perfectly able to do worse than 7-15 and avoid another Beantown Beatdown!
We'll beat Toronto? Not when Billy "Late Bloomer" McKinney runs amok on us! And just think how motivated Tyler Austin will be with the Twins. I say it's even money that he gets into a brawl which permanently disables Luis Severino's arm (something I joke about because, obviously, his arm is already done).
7-15 you say? Pshaw!
To some teams, much is given. From other teams, much is expected. THIS Yankees team is easily capable of going 3-19 down the stretch!
C'mon, let's give that wonderful entity known as MLB the ratings bonanza it deserves: a Seattle-Oakland, one-game playoff.
This could easily be followed by...an Oakland-Boston series, then an Oakland-Cleveland ALCS. And who knows? Maybe an Oakland-Milwaukee World Series.
Hey, I can dream, can't I?
It is amazing what one can do with a little simple arithmetic and probability theory.
We can rest easy.
No matter what we do, we are going to get into a game that can propel us into the playoffs or into the trash.
Paying at home no longer matters, because;
1. Sonny Gray can pitch
2. Giancarlo can strike out anywhere.
3. Judge can hit off a tee anywhere.
4. Sanchez can pretend he is catching Tim Wakefield anywhere.
5. Greg Bird can pop up anywhere.
6. Neal walker can terrify pitchers nowhere ( same as anywhere, only in revers ).
7. Gardy can continue to wear out anywhere.
8. Boone can drown us with meaningless rhetoric anywhere.
9. Cashman can deal away our future sitting at home.
So we can all relax, sit back, put our feet up and enjoy a Ballantine Beer.
This I remember from my misspent youth in Middleport, NY..
Make a ring
and then another rig
and then another ring
and then you've got three rings
Ballantine!
and now it's premium
it's a very special glass of beer
funny how this crap can stay with you for 50+ years. Those Madison Ave. types are evil.
KD,
Yes evil, but the real question is did you even drink a Ballentine?
But what do I know... my beer is Rhinegold the dry beer I buy Rhinegold when ever I buy beer.
As long as we are on this subject...
How come Jenny Cream Ale never had a memorable jingle? The only thing memorable about it are the hangovers it caused. When I was in college they had 4 for $1 Nights. WTF were they/we thinking?
Doug K.
Icily light
Precisely right
Beautiful, beautiful Ballantine ale....
And whatever happened to "Knickerbocker natural..."?
Hi Doug, I never did have a Ballentine. my family moved south (almost every place is south of Middleport) when I was around 12, where Ballentine was unheard of. But on second thought, maybe it was Ballentine that my Dad let me occasionally sip back in the day. he used to drink beer in an odd, midwestern fashion: with a raw egg and pepper. the egg slid to the bottom of the glass and was there for the last gulp. "You have to be careful not to catch the yolk on your teeth, or else you might have a mess." I remember him telling me that before I was even tall enough to look over the counter.
thanks for allowing me this nostalgic diversion.
IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!
Hey KD - as long as we're walking down memory beer lane - we had $1 pitcher nights of Genny Cream Ale back at SUNY Potsdam in the "70s. What were we thinking indeed.
But my greatest memory was of my father saying to a bartender "Give me a female". He actually said "Cream Ale" but it sounded like female to my teenaged ears (I thought he was referring to Genny herself, the buxom wench) and I thought he was the coolest Dad ever.
Statesman, Suny Brockport. And then we'd steal the Pitcher. Schmucks.
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