It's deja Boone all over again

Last year, right around now, the Yankiverse was vomiting bile upon its players and management. Here's my rant from April 9, 2018 - reprinted as a reminder that, no matter how rotten we look, the only true April crisis is when you forget the bottle opener because you thought they were twist-offs. So, let's return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Hi-yo, Silver, away:

Well, it didn't take long, did it? One week, and I've seen enough. I officially hate this team. We can't manufacture a run. We can't hold a lead. We can't go a day without an injury. Boston looms on the deathly hell-red horizon, and it wouldn't surprise me if this team gets swept - no, I prefer it be humiliated, no!, I want this overpaid, swing-and-miss, cancerous excuse for a team to be hijacked to Scranton, NO! Nanticoke, because Scranton is too classy, and I hope they eat bad scrapple, or whatever people eat in Nanticoke, and throw up on the bus and have the driver refuse to pull over so players can breathe fresh air. I hate this team. Juju gods, do your worst! Send the IBS lady! Send John Bolton!

I'm starting to think what last month seemed impossible: 

That Aaron Boone is our Bobby Valentine. 

Remember 2012? The year after Boston fired Terry Francona, because they were eating fried chicken in the dugout and missed the playoffs by collapsing? They installed Bobby V to impose a new clubhouse discipline, and they spent the off-season congratulating themselves for building the super team, the AL East faves. Carl Crawford! Adrian Gonzalez! Jacoby Ellsbury! By July, they were dumping vets in garage sales. Sixty-nine wins. Last in the division. 

Listen: It can happen here.

Don't think otherwise.

Today, the only thing we have going for us is the sheer level of incompetence on display. It's borderline impossible. How can Giancarlo Stanton be THIS horrible? I mean, NOBODY can be THIS bad, right? it's almost superhuman bad. He's already invented a new sombrero - platinum - and done it twice. One more, and he'll have a golden sombrero of platinum sombreros, something that surely no other player in history has attained. He's already been openly dissed by an opposing manager - Buck walked Judge to pitch to him - and it worked. Can we actually be this bad? A week into the season, and our left fielder is Jace Peterson? Seriously? Seriously?

Boston is preparing to crush us, and part of me says, yeah, okay, bring it on! This team may have made the cardinal mistake of believing its press clippings (much of which is generated by team-owned sources.) A rookie manager does such things, and it's no longer a certainty that Aaron Boone will last to the all-star break. 

Everything about the 2018 Yankees was predicated on winning this year, not building down the road. Boone is pooh-poohing the doubts, saying everything is all right, and I suppose he has no other choice, but it can happen here, folks. You think there are safeguards. You think there are protections. You think sanity will win in the end. Think again IT CAN HAPPEN HERE. IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.

Okay, it's the Me of Now again. Somehow, that rant brings comfort. Those rotting, fetid, horrible 2018 Yankees still won 100. We're just a brief winning streak out of first. Take the Luger out of your mouth, and step away from the sink hole. There is no crisis, aside from the manufactured kind that autocrats use to seize power.    

That said, the Me of Now cannot see the 2019 Yankees without noticing glitches in the Matrix. Somehow, our brain trust convinced itself that Gary Sanchez (4 errors in 5 games) would ascend, that Luke Voit is for real, that Giancarlo Stanton can stay healthy and - here's the kicker - that Troy Tulowitzky could last three months at SS. The fans knew otherwise. Somehow, Cooperstown Cashman believed in his own mathematically induced hallucinations. 

He convinced himself of these notions because the owner held a Luger to his head. Hal Steinbrenner doesn't want to pay up, so the Dodgers and Redsocks are once again outspending us. That is not a crisis of April. It's the modern reality.  

Listen: We all know in our hearts that it's too early to panic. The thing that the Me of Now most fears is Cashman suddenly trading baskets of prospects for short-term relief. We don't have Jace Peterson in left. It's Mike Tauchman! And it's not Bobby V in the dugout. It's Aaron B. We have been here before. Put down the Luger.