Blowouts like yesterday shouldn't bother us... unless they awaken the front office

So, another Old-Timers Day - (politically correct name: Golden Citizenry Afternoon) - has now been flashed into our collective memory. Whitey couldn't make it. A-Rod and Clemens are still waiting. John Flaherty remains stuck behind the plate. And once again, the current Yankee team assumed a fantasy somnambulance and crapped the bedpan.

Last year, we lost to Tampa 3-1. The year before, we fell to Texas 7-6. Both games winnable. Yesterday, no way. We flat-out stank. In all three Golden Citizenry Afternoons, the Yankee Present was embarrassed, humiliated and left for dead in the presence of its glorious past.

I think it stems from prep. The Yankees watch the codgers shambling around, three gimlets past 11 a.m., and they see themselves in 20 years, hooked on boner pills and flirting unsuccessfully with the Early Bird Special waitresses at Denny's. Something happens inside them. The engines seize-up. Yesterday, from the opening pitch, we were dead squirrels on the side of the road. Verlander was laughing. He never had it so easy.

But blowout losses are a thing for the 2019 Yankees. Before yesterday, our last defeat came at the hands of the mighty White Sox: 10-2.) It's as if this team bundles three games worth of mistakes into the occasional abomination. If so, we might have to give Aaron Boone some credit. While we were screaming for him to remove JA Happ yesterday, maybe Boone foresaw the stinker coming, put the game on Cruise-Control, and left the Happster in until it was 8-0 - (56-0, if it were a football game.) 

Of the Yankees' nine losses in June, only two were nail-biters - to Toronto and the White Sox. Consider the margins of our last seven losses:

4-9
2-10
4-5
4-10
4-8
2-5
7-11

In six out of seven, the scores don't adequately convey the depth of the Yankee malignancies. We didn't just stink; we openly, pungently reeked. In five games, our starters blew up on the launch pad - three mulligans by Paxton, and one apiece for CC and Happ.

Listen: We are in first, Boston lost yesterday to Toronto, and we were freed to enjoy a sunny afternoon on our green-painted concrete lawns. I'd rather the 8-game streak end with a blowout than an 8th inning collapse that evokes the last days of Scott Proctor, preparing to burn his mitt at home plate. The streak wasn't going to last forever. Maybe it's good to be embarrassed at home in front of a sell-out crowd. (Unfortunately, it didn't do any good last year, or the year before.) 

But Happ's continual flops are becoming a thing. Were he a Nestor or a Chance, he'd be sent to Scranton to ponder those wisps of methane the scientists have found on Mars. As it is, he is a five-inning clunker and a bane to our bullpen. The Yankees cannot trade him. They can only hope he figures it out soon.

Because there is one lingering problem with the occasional stinker blowout loss. It ramps up the pressure on Brian Cashman to make a trade. Last year, he brought us Sonny Gray, who didn't even make our playoff roster. Now, we hear the daily drumbeat for Clint Frazier and Thairo Estrada to be bundled up - like the Yankee losses - go somewhere for another Happ. 

Like all of you, I want the Yankees to not just win this year, but two win two or three championships in a row. That's when the modern Yankees can effectively be compared to the Old-Timers from 1999 and 2000. To build a dynasty, the Yankees need young players like Frazier. What we don't need is another Happ. I wonder if anybody sees that?