The 2018 Yankees Dubious Achievements Awards, Part the First-o

With all apologies to Esquire magazine, what this wretched year really needs is a Dubious Achievements Awards for the Yankees.  So here we go.

Feel free to chime in with your own suggestions, shout-downs, or alternate realities!

Gloat of the Year:  This has to go to Joe Girardi.  Last season he came within one game of reaching the World Series with a team no one expected to be a contender—only to be fired for committing a major blunder in the playoffs (failing to challenge that call in Cleveland) that ultimately cost the Yankees nothing, and for allegedly failing to handle the kids well.

So who is he replaced with?  Why, Ma Boone, who promptly left the Yankees a good six wins why of the Fall Classic by committing a major blunder in the playoffs (failing to bat his best hitter even after falling behind the Sox by four runs), a move that cost the Yanks everything, and for failing to motivate the kids even to do things like chase passed balls or show up on time for their warm-ups in a playoff start.

Joe must have been chortling all through his amazing workout sessions.

Goat of the Year:  Who is 2018's major flop?  The candidates are legion:  Giancarlo Stanton, Sonny Gray, Greg Bird, ICS—maybe even Luis Severino.

I have to say that, as disappointing as Stanton's season was, his hitting did at least carry the team for about a month when we were all out of outfielders.  Severino's failure to show up on time for a playoff game, and his whole second half of ill-suppressed hysteria remain inexplicable, as well as unforgivable (I still think it will end up involving drugs, and not the performance-enhancing kind), but he did have that lights-out first half.

Sonny's Stadium choking was pretty awful...but then, how much did we really expect out of him?  And Bird's awful season might be put down to injuries—or maybe us overrating him to begin with.

To be sure, Sanchez was injured, too.  But his season was so completely dreadful—a complete shambles in the field, the worst meltdown at the plate (considering what he showed himself to be capable of) of any major-leaguer in 50 years...oh, and then there was the Montero-like dedication to the game!

This guy went from looking like a young Johnny Bench to an old Rick Cerone in about six seconds flat.  Gary "ICS" Sanchez, you are not only our Goat of 2018, but a strong candidate to repeat next season!

Worst Managerial Decision of the Year:  I think it was, once again, Ma's crazy-ass decision not to put Andujar in even after the Yanks got down four runs in a do-or-die playoff game against the Red Sox that they ended up losing by one run.

This convinced me that that Boone was either so attached to a discredited philosophy of baseball on his own, or so beholden to Brian Cashman, that he could be replaced in the dugout with a mannequin.    (My apologies to any mannequins who may be offended by that.)

Worst Cashman Decision of the Year:  This one really is a puzzler, especially since we don't really know what all of his options were.

I guess I can forgive the Stanton deal—hey, it opened up a spot for Torres, and we seem to have surrendered nothing of value—and not pulling the trigger on Gerrit Cole.  The Pirates seem to have wanted too much from us and anyway, you know, I know, and the American people know that Cole was never going to make that huge career u-turn with OUR instructional team.

A much worse moment was his getting rid of all of our back-up outfielders just before Aaron Judge got hurt—and then after he got hurt.  But hey, at least they don't look like they'll be world beaters elsewhere.

I guess for me that leaves his having such a terrible instructional team on the ground in the first place, Boone and all his coaches.  Not to mention whatever dimwits are now running the farm system.

But then, so much of THEIR abysmality probably stems from Cashman's own, typically fatuous desire to adopt the Baseball Fashion du Jour—Throw fastballs for two innings, swing for the fences always—without really understanding the analytics behind it.

In other words, Cashman's worst decision was...being Brian Cashman.

More to come, you lucky dogs!  And Happy Halloween!