The pride of the Yankees...
The thin line between tragedy and farce.
Is this how 2018 ends... being outplayed, outclassed and humiliated by your arch-rivals... at home... in front of loyal fans who slogged through six months of bad omens?
Ah, the juju omens. We tried to ignore them. The horrible fielding. The collapsing bullpen. The lack of an ace. The stranded base-runners. The team built on home runs, which can't manufacture a hit when it matters.
There were times this season when the gulf between the Yankees and Redsocks seemed almost unfair. The Yankees didn't belong on the same field. Boston steals bases. Boston hits to contract. And last night, Boston used its bullpen effectively, rather than turning the game over to a second-tier starter with the bases loaded. Lance Lynn came in with the score 3-0. When he finished, it didn't matter. Aaron Boone had an arsenal of experienced relievers on hand; he didn't use it.
(And what was this talk about Luis Severino thinking the game started later and thus didn't arrive on time? WTF?)
And so it comes down to tonight. I'm not conceding defeat. If we win, we go to Boston with J.A. Happ and a burst of momentum. But it's hard to get hopeful about CC Sabathia, for whom 5 innings is the Boston Marathon. Suddenly, I feel like those people in the bleachers at the end. It's been a long, hard season, and I'm starting to think we were always doomed, a jinxed ship on the sea.
We started the year with the second best farm system in baseball. We traded a shitload of talent. We're now ranked in the middle. And for all that talent we traded away, all that long-range hope, all we received were two-month rentals.
Of course, 2018 will surely be remembered as a great success where it really counts. Our beloved owner managed to lower team payroll below the luxury tax.
Tonight... was it always predestined to be this?
No sleep for duque, eh? Thank you for this wonderful post but you failed to note that we are burdened with the absolute worst manager in MLB. Perhaps in the entire history of MLB. I was yelling and screaming that Sevy be pulled down 1-0. Became out of my mind when Sevy brought in for the 4th (right?) to0 load the bases with no outs. WTF? unbelievable managerial incompetence. Thank God I switched off the game to watch "Criminal Minds" reruns. I imagined the murder victims all to be Boone. It was satisfying.
ReplyDeleteBut HEY! you know what? Boston can have all their base hits and smart play. They can have Evoldi, who we could have snagged, but passed on.
Brothers! We are the 2018 Luxury Tax CHAMPIONS, BITCH! NOBODY can take that away from us. It's in the books!
Does Hal even go to games?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHow appropriate is it that the photo on the back page of the Daily News shows Boone looking down, blowing a big pink bubble gum bubble?
Pop went our season.
If Hal showed up Yankees fans would string him up by his scrotum. (I finally jumped in with the IIH word du jour. For JuJu…)
ReplyDeleteWhen it was 7-0 I smoked a massive joint, ate a Krispy Kreme and switched over to a bio on John Belushi. I fell asleep on the couch and woke at 2 am and stumbled to bed.
ReplyDeleteUpon waking at 7 am, before turning on the TV in my bedroom, I fantasized in bed about how guilty I’d feel and what a shitty Yankees fan I am *IF* they’d mounted some historic comeback and won.
But no. 16-1 with Romine on the mound to finish it.
I’ve promptly called out of work and plan to drink all day and black out. Fuck game 4.
And you know what - Fuck Sevy. An ace knows what time the game starts. An ace comes to the park prepared hours before.
They need a true ace if they are to go anywhere and compete
"The Boston Red Sox sent the capacity crowd into a downward spiral and an early exit, clubbing Yankees starter Luis Severino and taking advantage of Manager Aaron Boone’s indecisiveness to score seven runs in the fourth inning and blast the Yankees, 16-1, to take a two-games-to-one lead in the American League division series."
ReplyDeleteThe Times said it right.
I'm glad I watched Antiques Roadshow. Then Better Call Saul. Then Lodge 49.
There are five or six Burns and Allen shows recorded on the DVR. Great show. Maybe I'll start there tonight. I've got last night's Manifest, too.
As far as Sevvy goes, the big question is: drug problem or arm trouble? Or both?
ReplyDeleteIt was almost undoubtedly both for Doc Gooden back in 1986. For all of the deleterious effects of cocaine, one thing it does not do is reduce throwing ability.
Doc was drugging throughout '86, and even earlier, but after compiling an incredible 1.53 ERA in 1985, he got off to an even BETTER start in 1986, starting 5-0 with an even lower ERA. Then, suddenly, he declined sharply for the rest of the year, finishing with a still excellent 17-6 record. But he was just not the same pitcher.
Afterwards, when he missed the victory parade and he drug problem emerged, everything got blamed on that. But the Mets had badly overworked him in the minors and his first two major-league seasons, at a very young age. He was never the same pitcher again, on or off drugs.
For Sevvy, the late arrival speaks drug or alcohol abuse. But the bad pitching, for months, speaks arm trouble. Whether or not Sevvy gave himself enough time to warm up before the game, an inning of work or so should have done the trick, no?
No. And that spells trouble.
I knew we were fucked when I heard Sevy came late to the game because he didn't know the start time. Tell me how the fuck does that happen? (probably the same way he crosses up signs with Sanchez). Anonymous is correct. Sevy is no Ace. when I look at him now, I am reminded of Ivan Nova.
ReplyDeleteTonight we see if C.C. can be our stopper. He's done it before. I hope he can get through the line-up twice and then Boone pulls his head from his ass and actually manages. I do not feel hopeful on either count.
Another way in which the Yankees have been out managed:
ReplyDeleteWe pitched Happ for six innings in Boston, on the Friday of that last season. They threw Eovaldi for all of two innings on Saturday, and Sale did not make an appearance at all.
In other words, they once again saw everything that Happ had to throw, and made adjustments. We saw very little or nothing of their key starters. With a playoff series starting just a week later, that may have been crucial.
Sure, we "had" to do this to clinch the vital home playoff spot in the Wild Card. Which we would not have had to do if we had managed to win just one more game along the way...
They are not done yet, but the writing seems to be on the wall.
ReplyDeleteThey could mount a heroic comeback and win the next two, then win again and again. This would be a pleasant surprise, a thrill.
If they lose tonight or tomorrow, though, it really would not be a surprise at all, given the last two months of the season.
It's a long season and part of the skill a team and its support staff must demonstrate is pacing. These guys have no big picture view. The players are all focused on hot-dogging and the management thinks that we are entitled to win because we're the Yankees.
I like the comment that Hoss made in another thread, essentially about how New York City has become a ghost of its former self - I have witnessed this up close and personal over the past 15 years, especially - and that this team simply represents the rich, entitled, soulless new New York.
Sigh.
sometime around three hours before first pitch shouldn't someone have noticed that Sevy was MIA? couldn't someone have just given him a wake up call? told him to get his ass to the Stadium?
ReplyDeleteBoone: "Hey! anyone seen our Ace? oh, well, he'll get here when he's ready, I guess. when is first pitch, anyway?"
I'm so happy, joyous actually, that we traded for Lance Lynn as opposed to trading for Young Nathan. Now I can go to bed early for the rest of October.
ReplyDeleteGloom and darkness descends just as I need the Yankees most ...
So endeth ... aww, just fuck it ...
I object to your use of “we face” in this title. The fans have nothing to do with this situation.
ReplyDeleteBill White, while I appreciate your sentiment and agree that we have nothing to do with it - aside from our failure to summon enough Juju - the collective, third person plural voice is an acceptable usage in this situation. We are all in this together. Our job now is to rip them new assholes until they change. Do we have that power? Probably not, which only supports your point, but I'm going to keep running off my foul mouth, either way.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Winnie, we can get our lives back now, then read the Yankee propaganda machine's take on how we almost won it all. Then, we can sit back and watch a bunch of bone-headed trades and acquisitions - Cashman's long winter poker game - and dream our little dreams, overlooking the post-Dresden scorched earth of our farm system, our utter lack of solid pitching (Tanaka aside) and our continued inability to hit.
If Ma Boone stays, I may pull back even more and watch from a distance. He has been a googly-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights, unmitigated disaster all year. They should go beg Girardi to come back. Joe had his faults, but he was a better man and a real Yankee. Boone is a fraud and nobody respects him.
I'd bet the ranch that Larry Rothschild played a big part in the Sevarino start time fuck up.
ReplyDeleteHow the fuck do you not show up early to the stadium on game day? And where were the catchers who presumably work with the starting pitcher before the game? AND THE FUCKING MANAGAER!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAND THE FUCKING PITCHING COACH!!!
ReplyDeleteMebbs Mebbs Unacceptable!! Sevy should be fined at least $10K for being late. unless there was a traffic accident, there can be no excuse. even if his car broke down, he should have summoned an Uber and left his Tesla Model S on the side of the road. a price must be paid and Sevy must pay it. Besides, Hal could use the extra spare change.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, we will hear endless explanation/non-explanations on this.
ReplyDeleteSevvy was stuck in traffic. Sevvy was stuck on the subway. Sevvy stubbed his toe really badly. Sevvy took a nap in the trainer's room, and nobody could find him. Sevvy broke a shoelace like Tonya Harding, and collapsed into tears.
Eventually the truth will emerge, in some candid, post-retirement tell-all.
Sevvy was so fucked-up he only managed to stagger to the park at the last minute. Or, Rothschild and Boone had a "miscommunication" about telling Sevvy he was starting. Or as a gag, the guys decided to tell Sonny Gray he was starting, and Sevvy thought they were serious.
Whatever. It's bad, but again, it doesn't mean Sevvy wasn't "warmed up" after the first inning. He just plain stunk. And that's why I suspect the main problem is arm trouble.
ReplyDeleteLosing by 15 (15 BTW. Wow!) counts the same as losing by 1.
Momentum only lasts as long as the next days pitcher.
The score in Game Four is 0-0.
Now that I'm out of platitudes, I skipped the 4th inning last night as is my custom. I also skipped the 5th ,6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. Part of me wants to skip the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tonight.
But I won't. I'll sit there with my Trader Joe's Grand Slam (their version of Cracker Jacks) and give them one more shot. I'm a fan and after all...
Losing by 15 (15 BTW. Wow!) counts just as much as losing by 1.
Momentum only lasts as long as the next days pitcher.
The score in game four is 0-0.
Doug K.
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