The Price of Genius

As if this postseason were not bad enough, the fact that people are even talking about signing up Neil "Quality At-Bats" Walker for another hitch in the Bronx fills me with a terrible ennui of the sort usually endured only by starving poets in Paris.

Let's take a look at the Indispensable Yankees' final stats for 2018—which, if you'll recall, actually got better as the days ticked by and the games got less and less meaningful:

398 plate appearances, 347 at-bats, 12 doubles, 1 triple, 11 homers, 46 RBI, 42 walks, 87 strikeouts.

A slash line of .219/ .309/ .354/ .664.

Irreplaceable, right?  Even the highly dubious WAR stat, which ranks practically nobody below replacement value, put Neil at a -0.1 WAR, including a +0.1 in hitting, and a -0.4 in fielding.  (Walker played many positions, none of them terribly well.)

Yeah, who could possibly replace old Neil "Quab" Walker?  Just about everyone, as it turns out.

But our future Hall of Famer, Brian Cashman, insisted on playing him last year—even after his other unnecessary pick-up, Brandon Drury, who does everything Walker does only better, had recovered from his migraines and was hitting quite well in Scranton.

Trouble is, this is far from the first Neil Walker who Coops has foisted on us, and it won't be the last.  To impress us with his genius last year, we had to endure 62 games from Chris Carter, the man who almost singlehandedly cost us the 2017 division title.  Get a load of his line:

208 plate appearances, 184 at-bats, 5 doubles, 1 triple, 8 homers, 26 RBI, 20 walks, 76 strikeouts.

A slash line of .201/ .284/ ,370/ .653 (don't ask me to explain these rounding-off figures).  And a -0.5 offensive WAR, a -0.5 defensive WAR (Carter, if you'll recall, was also a terrible fielder, even at first base), for a total -0.7 WAR (don't ask me to explain the inconsistencies in WAR, which is supposed to be cumulative).

Put them together, and you have pretty much an entire, full-time player over the past couple years, given normal rest and maybe a two-week stint on the DL for a hammy pull.  Here is our Quab Carter:

606 plate appearances, 531 at-bats, 17 doubles, 2 triples, 19 homers, 72 RBI, 62 walks, 163 strikeouts.

A slash line of .213/ .300/ .360/ .660.  And whatever the hell the WAR is, a performance well below replacement value.

This is what we've had to put up with, basically to gratify Mr. Cashman, even as the team battled for a championship.

And we're not even talking all the at-bats lost to the likes of Chase Headley (.262/ .339/ .387/ .727, as a Yankee), Stephen Drew (.187/ .257/ .382/ .609), or Brian Roberts (.237/ .300/ .360/ .659) in those lesser years when, even so, we darest not risk seeing how Jose Pirela, or Rob Refsnyder, or Yangervis Solarte might do in their place.

AND I won't even get into The Saga of the Young Power Arms, starring Jeff Weaver, Jared Wright, Carl Pavano,  Kyle Farnsworth, Nathan Eovaldi, Michael Pineda, Sonny Gray, etc., etc., etc.  

For two decades now, this team has been built around the whims and fancies of Brian Cashman.  And when he's wrong, the mistake is never admitted, but played and played until we are all thoroughly sick of him and he has cost us something important.

Genius!  I'm off to smoke a Gauloise.