Thursday, September 12, 2019

Wither goest Tyler Wade, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

Now and then, I must remind myself that Tyler Wade is only 24: He was in kindergarten when the Towers fell. Twenty four. Had he gone to college, instead of signing with the Yankees in the fourth round of the 2013 draft, he would probably be bumping around Trenton, instead of sitting on his third fragmented year in Gotham.

Wade so seriously so crapped the bed in 2017 (.155) and 2018 (.167) that many of us punted on his prospect rankings, assuming him trade fodder status within the bowels of the Death Star's roster sheets. Clearly, the only reason he hadn't been traded was that nobody wanted him, right? Not only was the poor guy landlocked behind Didi, Gleyber, DJ and Gio, but Thairo Estrada was rising from the lower depths, and Kyle Holder couldn't be stashed in Trenton forever. 

Wade had contracted what was once known as Bernie Williams Disease. That's when a prospect is so excessively hyped at early ages that, by the time he reaches the majors, fans are sick of hearing about him, and it's assumed that he'll fail. The Yankees do that a lot. For more information on this terrible affliction, Google the name "Clint Frazier." 

Well, over the next two weeks, Tyler Wade might be the most important Yankee on our roster. 

He is now the closest we have to a back-up CF, with our main man having turned 36. If and when Brett Gardner goes down, Wade could find himself in the post-season, handling the traditional Yankee marque position.  

There is no one else. (I suppose DJ LeMahiue can play anywhere, but would we dare attempt such a move?) Nope, in a year of revolving doors and cruel dealings by the juju gods, our next man up in centerfield is Wade. 

But I am not saying this to provoke terror. In fact, if you approach his career on the Tauchman/Voit Scale of Minor League Production, there is hope. Here are his numbers throughout the minors.


A few things here: 

1. The guy can run. In recent springs, he was listed as the fastest Yankee on the 40-man roster. There was a good chance that, no matter how bloodied this team is with injuries, Wade would make the October roster as a pinch runner.

2. The last three years should include an asterisk for Wade's mental health. Each season, he seemingly made the team in spring training, then botched his chances in the majors (in very limited appearances), to be jettisoned to Scranton in a burlap sack of depression and disillusionment. In each case, he became a forgotten man... and battled back. That's good. 

3. But here's the problem: In the last three years, he has played 16 games in centerfield. Sixteen. In those games, he has made 31 plays, recording one assist and one error. Sixteen games. Ouch.

Today, the Yankees play two. I gotta believe we'll see Wade manning center in one of them. If not, I dunno... the injured Cameron Maybin? Hmm. 

On another matter... Boston lost again last night, 8-0 to Toronto. They achieved two hits. Obviously, their backs were broken at Fenway this weekend. Or maybe something else is happening. 

They are already tanking, throwing in the towel for next year. That's what Boston has done over the last two decades: Once they're out of it, play to lose. 

Don't be surprised if they clean house this winter, finish last in the AL East next year, draft high and deal all their sludge for young prospects, and make a concerted resurgence in 2021. That's what they do. In this sad age of teams who don't even bother to try, it's a smart-but-cynical plan. Boston will do it. Maybe they're already starting.

23 comments:

  1. Tippecanoe and Tyler too.

    That could be our postseason motto. I have no idea what it means, but neither did William Henry Harrison, who never had a catchy tagline. Unlike "Don't change Dicks in the middle of a screw, vote for Nixon in '72."

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  2. Clint has played centerfield. I think that might have been his original position. Have we really written him off completely?

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  3. JM,

    William Henry Harrison (My favorite president BTW - So much so that I carry the WHH coin from the "Mr.President Coin Game (At Shell)" in my wallet.) catchy slogan was,

    "Tippecanoe And Tyler Too"

    and so catchy you just used it.

    Harrison was the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, which apparently was a big deal. So it's like kind of an "I like Ike." thing.

    I don't know as much about Tyler. I think his first name was Toby and he won a race in Holland with some Silver Skates. But I could be wrong about that.

    Doug K.

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    Replies
    1. Toby Tyler is a circus act whereas Hans Brinkers is the real deal with the silver skates and the finger in the dyke and so forth.

      This story was written obviously before it became very #metoo and improper never to stick your finger in a dyke.

      Times change.

      Delete

  4. Wait that was Hans Brinker. Toby Tyler joined the circus. Sorry. I'm having a rough morning.

    Doug K.


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  5. Thanks Urban, I kept trying to post the correction but was having trouble with the little grainy photos on the capcha thing. Like I said, rough AM.

    Doug K.

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  6. I remember 2 other Nixon sayings circa 1972. "Nixon-pullout like your old man should have". And "Dick Nixon before he Dicks you"!

    Doug...here's a tip that will let you bypass the Captcha crap: As soon as you check mark the "I am not a robot" square, immediately click the "Publish Your Comment". If you do that quickly enough, it bypasses the picture selection BS.

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  7. Austria's Only Baseball FanSeptember 12, 2019 at 12:44 PM

    I’m not exactly up to date on all of your presidents, but I do recall two slogans from when Walter “Fritz” Mondale ran for the office with Geraldine Ferraro, the first female to be a nominee for a White House office:

    Fritz and Tits

    and

    Wally and The Beaver

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  8. Tippecanoe WAS a big deal. It broke the back of the Indian resistance in the Midwest.

    Harrison was considered a war hero, AND to have done a good job administering the vast Northwest Territory.

    Only trouble was, Tippecanoe was fought in 1811, and Harrison didn't win until 1840. It's as if Ike had been elected in 1976 (which would have been difficult, since he died in 1969). He would be the oldest president ever elected until Reagan, and made the mistake of giving an extended, outdoor inaugural address in Washington in March. Without an overcoat. A month later he was dead of pneumonia.

    People weren't even really sure how the succession system was supposed to work. Was Tyler just president until a new election could be called?

    What everyone agreed on was that they hated the guy, a former Democrat who had jumped to the Whigs. He wasn't even renominated in 1844.

    The big events of his presidency? Well, his first wife died in 1842, having born him 8 children (not all at once, which would kill anyone). Then, Tyler and his friend David Gardiner—of the Gardiner's Island Gardiners—went to inspect a huge new naval cannon called "The Peacemaker," aboard the frigate Princeton.

    It blew up when fired—killing Gardiner and six other people. Tyler was so consoling to Gardiner's 21-year-old daughter, Julia, that she married him. (Boy, would the conspiracy theorists have had a blast with THAT one.)

    But then, Julia always was a wild one, having to flee to Europe as a teen because she had scandalized NY society by letting her image be reproduced in a newspaper ad for a department store (I swear, I'm not making this up).

    They retired to Tyler's estate, Sherwood Forest (I swear! It's all true!) and had another 7 kids, making Tyler the all-time record holder amongst presidential fathers. At last look, they still had living grandkids.

    A Virginia slaveholder, Tyler not only backed the Confederacy but was elected to its Congress before finally dropping dead in 1862.

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  9. Oh, and you're right, Rufus. Polk was amazingly effective, and he gets a lot of credit from historians. But some of the stuff he did—such as taking most of Mexico's North American empire away from it, and extending slaveholding territory—is not looked upon so nicely these days.

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  10. Back to serious discussion here, folks. Can't we just put a remote-controlled cattle prod up Clint's ass and trot him out to center. He'll learn fast if he gets a little shock every once in a while.

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  11. Stanton is coming back next week. Kill me now. Between him and CC, it's like tossing a brick onto a model boat and then watching ti slowly sink under the waters of the pond while the geese shit green wasabi on your feet and you start to cry. That's what happens when you don't use punctuation, folks. That's what happens. Fuck this post-punctuation generation.

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  12. I hear ya, 13bit. But John Tyler, not a serious subject? Is NOTHING sacred?

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  13. It's 2019, Hoss. Nothing is sacred anymore. That could be the motto for this century.

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  14. Hoss,

    You left out his constant visiting of the ailing Harrison.

    He always brought a tureen of his homemade soup, "MinnaStrontium"

    Doug K.

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  15. I appreciate all of the history lessons. I'm not that clear on a lot of the 1800s. Used to be, but it hasn't come up in conversation in years, and I forgot a lot.

    McKinley was a real loss, if I recall. We he died we got Teddy, right? Mixed bag there. There's a great book that covers the incompetence of the doctor who basically killed McKinley because he didn't believe in new fangled stuff like washing his hands before sticking his finger into the bullet wound and poking around. He didn't cotton to all that microbial idiocy. Just a diaster, although Tesla worked like a madman to rig a fluoroscopic contraption that finally revealed where the slug had travelled. Which was nowhere near the wound. The old pig of a doctor caused an infection that was the actual cause of death because he kept probing for it where he thought it should be.

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  16. Great concept, Rufus, those Polonium pork sandwiches. Made my day.

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  17. Posts of the week, Rufus and Doug K. And 13bit? Next thing you know, you'll be running down James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

    And JM: exactly. Not on Teddy—he was a man of his time, but overall I think he was a great president.

    But in terms of the care McKinley got...yeah. It was a total shitshow—and pretty much the same thing that poor Garfield went through. It's really amazing how little changed.

    Garfield was also killed by idiot doctors, who ignored or misapplied a bullet-detecing advice that an earlier genius, Alexander Graham Bell, worked like hell to invent. Constance Millard wrote a pretty good book about it.

    Basically, if you had just let Garfield stay on the floor of the Washington train station where he was shot, got him enough water and food and some warm blankets, he would have had a much better chance of surviving than what actually happened.

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