There Is Still Hope

The New York Yankees' approach to hitting reached its all-time nadir today when Brett Gardner, batting with two out, nobody on, and a 2-1 Yankees lead in the fifth inning, "showed bunt."

He didn't actually bunt the ball, of course.  He just showed bunt, and took strike one.  Then grounded out on a day when he went 0-3, with his 102nd strikeout of the season, lowering his average to .237 and his OPS to .689.

Why was Gardner offering bunt there?  This would have been, after all, the perfect place to go by "the Yankees Way" and swing for the fences.  Though a successful bunt, followed by a stolen base, might have been of use, too.

No can do.  Gardner was...trying to bring the infielders in.  Or something.

Or could it be that he, like most of his teammates, is now so utterly flummoxed by what he is supposed to be doing in any given at-bat that he goes to the plate with absolutely no plan in mind at all?

I had to shut off The Master an inning later, when he informed me that McCutcheon "swung out of his shoes" chasing a 3-2 pitch from Toronto rookie Thomas Pannone, who was reportedly unable to break the 89-mph mark on any of his pitches, and was throwing breaking balls at only 69-mph.

Pannone was not the sort of unknown quantity who always baffles the Yankees.  The team had seen him in Yankee Stadium just a month ago, when he failed to get out of the first inning, giving up 6 runs capped by a grand salami belted by Greg Bird.

Greg.  Bird.

Today, too, Pannone was pressed like a panini in the first, surrendering a leadoff homer to McCutcheon, and giving up another run.  But that was all she wrote.  What followed were six innings of one-hit, shutout baseball.

It was practically an instant replay of the day before, when the Yanks faced an even worse rookie they had also battered already this season.  Five innings, two hits, no runs.

In other words, the more the Yanks face even poor-to-mediocre, rookie pitching...the worse WE get, and the better THEY get.

The other side of their game is no more coherent.  Panicking like Capt. Queeg in a gale, Ma Boone yanked Lynn after just five, dominant three-hit innings and 80 pitches.  The rumored reason was that he didn't want Lynn facing the Toronto lineup—with its ferocious, .245 average and .740 OPS—for a third go round.

Look, I could go on about yet more failings by I.C.S. and Betances, and discuss who we do and do not bring back next year.

But what does it matter?

With the instruction and the approach to the game emanating from the management of this club, it's unimportant who we drop or pickup.  It is guaranteed that our new players, pitchers or hitter, rookies or veterans, will be worse than they were.  Probably much worse.

Far from building a dynasty, I think we could be witnessing the last winning Yankees team for quite some time.

Why anyone should want to see this team in a playoff game against a Boston team that managed to beat deGrom and the Mets today despite seeing their best all-around player leave the game with an injury, is beyond me.  There will be blood.  And it will be ours.

But there is still hope.  And I don't just mean a 5-1 loss in the Bud Selig Game out in Oakland.

There are still the Tampa Bay Rays.

Hear me out:  the Rays are just 8 games behind us in the loss column, with the Yanks having to play 4 games in Tampa.  Count those all as losses.

It is also a lead-pipe cinch that we will lose all 6 remaining games against the Red Sox, a team which actually still possesses people playing a game known as "baseball."

That is 10 losses down the stretch, GUARANTEED.

That only leaves three games against Buck's Orioles.  Heh-heh-heh.

I honestly think this Yankees team could easily close out the season 0-13.  Meaning that Tampa Bay would just have to finish 9-5 to tie us, and 10-4 to take it all.

Given their 4, GUARANTEED, automatic wins against us, that means that all they will have to do is go 6-4 or 5-5 against Toronto and Texas...and we will not have to endure watching Brian Cashman's Yankees team in the playoffs—probably ever again.

THERE IS HOPE, I TELLS YA!!