And if you still believe that Gary Sanchez needs to be our starting catcher - well, you obviously believe Greg Bird is our 1B, Sonny Gray should start Game Two, and Alex Jones is the future of journalism.
Look at these numbers and weep.
I suppose there are still fans out there, huddled in underground bunkers and eating freeze-dried Reggie bars, who think Sanchez will suddenly become the power-hitting catcher we once believed him to be. If he does start hitting, we can try to calculate the positives vs. the negatives of his defense, which remains amazingly bad. But if home run power was the factor that separated the two catchers, you can see in the numbers that Romine is almost there, and Sanchez simply hasn't produced enough to justify a starting gig.
Since returning from his groin injury, Sanchez is 3 for 18, batting .167. Hard to imagine, but he actually has done worse.
When you look at players like Sanchez and Bird, you shake your head. In a few years, they will probably be fine major league players. It just won't happen with the Yankees. Too bad. For one, they might be the type of ex-Yankee who torments us; there sure are enough of them. Secondarily, their time in pinstripes will always be a stain on their careers. They had a shot with the Yankees, and they couldn't cut it.
But it's getting to be time to call the cards on Gary Sanchez. The one game season is coming, and then winter, soon after. He's got two weeks to achieve redemption. Time is running out.
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25 comments:
what a shame. they both seemed like can't-miss all stars, at a minimum. perhaps sanchez was an all star last year. I can't remember, and i sure don't care to look it up. he's not a star now. no, he looks like a broken man. as does bird. at least one of them will have a career revival elsewhere. if they both do, I think the yankees need to take a hard look at how they handle young, talented players.
clearly, sanchez is not a major-league catcher, and maybe the yankees should have acknowledged that fact a while back as balls clanged off his glove game after game. but he could/should be a big bopper for somebody -- perhaps at 3B, 1B or DH. it is so frustrating to look at his historic first-full-year start, 2016-17, and then to cringe over his 2018 meltdown. so i ask, who or what drowned gary sanchez' talent? was it joey binders publicly shaming him in the press? how about the brawl with the tigers last year and the sucker punches he tried to get in on one of his heroes, fellow fat slugger miguel cabrera? more questions than answers here.
as for bird, the word is he won't fly for the yankees. he, too, burst on the scene with gusto, knocking the ball all over the place. people who knew him from little league said he never stopped hitting. he seemed so solid and stable. not a lot of strikeouts, capable of hitting to all fields, dangerous power. it had been a while since we had a real solid 1B. but the injuries got him. all of 2016. most of 2017. the start of 2018. now he can't catch up with fastballs, looks feeble. bad luck.
what a shame. the first phase of our youth movement is fizzling out. the yankees will now revert to the old standby for New York sports management: buy the most expensive guys available even though their best years are behind them.
we've been laughing at seattle because they are only halfway done paying for cano, who is no longer a galloping colt. i agree that gloating is fair game, but remember, we have suffered through the lingering death dance of many a bloated contract. A-Rod, Texiera, Giambi. even Jeter. and we have two more years of Ellsbury, don't forget. maybe they convinced Ellsbury to stay injured, but those other guys were getting paid so they played -- although Hal finally took pity on A-Rod and gave him $27MM to go away. (too bad he didn't give him another $27MM to shut the fuck up.)
5, 10 years from now, who will we be complaining about because he sucks and the yankees are sending him out on the field every day? Machado? Harper? i'm guessing that Stanton, even though he seems disciplined and works hard, is going to be quite the albatross before his ridiculous contract expires. what a shame. the future seemed so bright back when bird and sanchez were brimming with potential.
I wonder: Were you a GM for one of the other 29 clubs, what precisely would you trade in order to obtain Sanchez?
And that goes double for Bird!!
Saying "trade 'em" doesn't work if you get Zero Return for parting with a player (Sanchez, anyway) who might hit up a storm somewhere else.
My answer: Having seen how the Yankees handled these guys, the 29 other GMs would give up precisely nothing. Maybe a 29-year-old Single-A pitcher....if such a thing exists.
"Alex Jones is the future of journalism"
Sadly, that seems the more plausible of the ridiculous statements.
It also made me spit out my coffee.
I'll go clean it up now...
Sanchez seems like a Jesus Montero type to me. If we can get a Michael Pineda type pitcher from him, I'd be happy enough. Plus we'd have 5 more "intriguing" years of constant debate about which team got the better of the deal only to realize that both players were equally a disappointment.
Bird is becoming another Rob Refsnyder to me. It's becoming just what did we ever see in either player? I'd be just as happy to get another player with a cool name and nothing more. We got McBroom for Ref in case anyone had forgotten.
Ref's Durham Bulls will be taking on McBroom's Wilkes-Barre Scrantonians in the Governor's Cup final this week. Will Judge make an appearance?
Bird absolutely raked at every level on the minor leagues. Raked. All his failures are at the MLB level. That's why this is so frustrating with Bird. If not for the injuries? Well, you know the old saying yada yada yada what might have been.
Greg Bird is only 25. He had such a promising start in 2015. I could see parking Bird in the minors.
Whereas Sanchez could never catch. Hands of stone are hands of stone. Especially if you never apply yourself at getting better. I'm not even sure he can catch well enough to pay first base. 3rd? Never! DH is his natural position. Assuming he'll ever hit again. Which is a huge assumption ...
The Yankees will not trade either Bird or Sanchez. OK, maybe Bird, but I doubt it.
I mean, all that potential.
They won't give up on him until he puts together a full, healthy year and bats .190. Probably the same with Sanchez. Until then, 2018 will be considered a fluke in both cases.
My questions are, when do we see McBroom, and can Luke Voit overcome Shane Spenceritis or Kevin Massness?
You make a good, and sobering point, Joe FOB. I'm afraid the same probably goes for Sonny Gray, too.
Much as we would all love to see many of these flops dealt away, what would they bring us? We would, sadly, be better off trying to revive them, at least to some extent.
Bird is still trying. Who knows what Jesus "Joggy the Second" Sanchez is up to.
Have to disagree with some of the comments on Sanchez's catching.
I say, to the contrary: as a fielding catcher, Sanchez seemed to be almost there.
He has a cannon for an arm, and was —and, I think, still IS—gunning down baserunners at a much higher clip than Romine and many others.
He is actually quite good at framing pitches, a skill that has become more and more valuable as the umps keep failing to keep up with modern pitching speeds.
AND, through last year, anyway, the same pitchers both Romine and Sanchez caught had much lower ERAs with Sanchez.
The one thing he has difficulty doing is blocking pitches in the dirt. This is due in part because he's tall, in part because he's fat and lazy, and in part because the Yanks have a bunch of pitchers who, let's face it, love to bounce balls in the dirt—sometimes because they don't trust their stuff (we're looking at you, Sonny Gray).
This does not strike me as an insurmountable problem. Look how well Mike Piazza, always a much worse catcher than Sanchez, in fact one of the worst starting catchers I ever saw, did with the Mets.
Parson Tom, I agree with you about the long-term contracts—in theory.
Only thing is, I think that Cashman and Co. have reduced us to the point where we probably don't have much choice. Also, the advantage that Machado and Harper would have over an Ellsbury or a Jogginson is that both would be several years younger.
Thus, even with a ten-year deal, their exasperating years would only be starting by the time the deal was up—unlike Joggy (tee-hee).
Most of us, and I'm talking about humanity in general here, are able to suffer our failures in private. Those moments where a deal should have happened, a trial lost, a relationship pushed past the point of no return.
Even worse there are the moments of physical failure like when you realize that you can't lift furniture anymore or need a pill to just to urinate. We all fail. Privately.
For Bird, his decline appears to be a perfect storm of injury wrecking his swing and then his mind taking him the rest of the way down. For Sanchez it seems to be arrogance and, as I believe Duque once pointed out, the result of making a millionaire out of a sixteen year old. Let me add, in a place where one million dollars buys the entire town.
We are angry. More at Sanchez than Bird because his seems self- inflicted. We lambaste them. We exile them.
We wanted the youth movement to go perfectly. Nothing does.
We want Red Thunder back. But, if he is to go the way of Bird, a decline to irrelevance due to injury that can not be overcome, I hope the juju gods spare him the indignity and we can always remember the "what was and what could have been".
For now, if Bird or Sanchez wind up in Cincinnati or Seoul that will be preferable to them winding up hitting into a double play or striking out on a 92MPH "heater" with the bases loaded. They are done here.
We are angry.
The high price of public failure.
Doug K.
Hoss, you know I adore you love you need you respect you, but ... catcher ERA isn't really a thing. And if His Lordship Sir Joggy the Second hit like Mike Piazza we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It is far too late to hope and replicate a Montero for Pineda type of trade.
When that trade happened, the world still thought that Montero was" the goods," if not at catcher then at DH.
I think the world has seen Sanchez who, as you know, I believe to be worse than Jesus Montero.
Bird should go play winter ball in Venezuela and come back ( if he can survive ).
I think Luke has won the job.
Warbler, I agree that, yes, he has to hit like Piazza. And just yesterday, it seemed, he looked as if he might.
But if—as Sanchez was—a guy is throwing out more baserunners, framing pitches better, AND—however he did it—getting pitchers to throw better games...then he's a better defensive catcher, I would say, even if he struggles with passed balls.
The trouble is, all of Sanchez's other skills, not to mention his desire, seem to be fading this year. But after the revelation that Toonces has been bleeding like a stuck pig, I wonder if we ever get the full story...
We never get the full story. AJ Burnett shows up in 2010 with a punched in face and we get nothing. Dave Eiland goes missing for a few weeks that same year? Nothing! Pitching coach? What pitching coach?
They probably still have Scott Proctor's arm somewhere in the equipment room.
By the time he left, Proctor no longer had an arm. That thing in the training room is an incredible simulation, like Elvis' coat.
Betances sucks, bloody finger and all.
Very funny, Warbler!
Yeah, I'm a fuckin' laugh riot.
I just realized why I no longer read this blog. It's become one of the many where the "writer" displays the same baseball knowledge as the fan. None.
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