1. Let's not dismiss the chance - flimsy as it may be - that the Deaf Star will re-sign Didi. The reality here: After his crappy 2019, you could argue he's not worth $17.8 million - a $5 million raise - to play one year with a foot out the door. The qualifying offer would have secured a draft pick, if he signed elsewhere. So, why didn't they do it? The brass must believe Didi would have accepted it. He likes NYC, and if the Yankees have a good relationship, they might snag him for, say, three years at $15 million per. I'm not saying this will happen. But Cashman is never predictable.
2. Assuming that Didi is gone - my guess is the Mets would swim the Hudson to sign him - the winner here is, gulp, Greg Bird, whom the Yanks yesterday, in agate print, reactivated from the injury list. Why Birdy? With Didi disappeared, Gleyber takes SS, LeMahieu takes 2B, and the Yankees need a good glove first-baseman who bats LH. That's Bird. Yeah, we all love Mike Ford - the Buick of Fords, and the second best Ford to ever play for the Yankees - but he's a DH, and so is Lovable Luke Voit, (who is actually more a linebacker.) Yeah, it's crazy to think Bird can salvage his lost career, but he turns only 27 on Saturday, and he's a solid spring training away from once again starting on opening day. If LeMahieu moves to 2B, Bird becomes the best fielding 1B on our roster. (Breaking News Update: In the Winter Dominican League, where he is rehabbing, Bird is 3-24 with no home runs and an RBI.)
3. The Yankee finagling on Didi means - SURPRISE! - Food Stamps Hal Steinbrenner is still calling every shot, and still reading the menu from right to left. I'm shocked, shocked. We've had 11 years to learn Hal's ways, which always around center his hatred for luxury taxes. Thus, he's killed the Yankees' one historical advantage - dough, lettuce, moolah, skrongraboo - while, coincidentally, padding the family wallet. Let's do ourselves a favor and stop imagining that this cheapskate will sign Cole, or Strasburg, or Bumgarner, or anybody above $20 million per. He won't. His dad taught him that money doesn't grow on trees, even when he's neck deep in it.
4. Expect a wild winter. With Hal clutching his penny purse, Cashman must trade for a starter - where he has a terrible history, from Jeff Weaver to Sonny Gray. Clint Frazier will almost surely go. Same with Miguel Andujar. I can't help but think that - despite claims to the contrary - Gary Sanchez might fly. (Remember: Nobody talks about the jailbreak until it happens.) But with Masahiro Tanaka undergoing surgery, the Yankees simply do not have a viable, pennant-winning rotation. Everybody will see this. Between now and April 1, shit's gonna fly.
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20 comments:
I hate the owners and management. The players are millionaires, or about to be. Why should I care what any of them do?
The Curse isn't about Boston and the Babe anymore. It's about the Yankees and their fans. We're cursed by our personal and maybe family history to care. Even though we hate them.
Is it possible to get the little girl from Sweden to get up in front of the U.N. and tell the world how Hal and HOF Brian Cashman are ruining baseball for millions. I'm 60 years old and the future looks bleak for another WS win.
THIS IS INSANE.
WE CAN'T GET ANY GOOD PITCHING, UNTIL WE RELEASE SOMEONE'S CONTRACT?
THAT IS OUR NEW M.O...
WE NEED PITCHING.
THERE IS PLENTY OF IT OUT THERE.
....BUT IT LOOKS LIKE WE ARE GOING TO WAIT AROUND, AND WATCH ONE BY ONE GET TAKEN BY HUNGRY TEAMS FIGHTING TO IMPROVE, WHILE WE FUCK AROUND TRYING TO MAKE TRADES AND RELEASE GOOD PLAYERS TO CLEAR SALARY SPACE.
WE ARE NOT THE NEW YORK YANKEES ANYMORE.
WE ARE THE MOTHERFUCKING....
OAKLAND A'S.
I KNOW IT SOUNDS CRAZY, BUT I RATHER NOT MAKE THE PLAYOFFS, THAN GET EMOTIONALLY CRUSHED LIKE THIS EVERY YEAR.
FUCK THIS SHIT.
Greg Bird as a good fielder? LOL!!!!!!!!! The only pro 1B I've ever seen that hits lefty but FIELDS righty. How did that happen growing up??!?
Sorry mates - Greg Bird is the fielding equal of Mike Ford, without the clutch hitting and health. Play Ford and leave Mr. Bird to intern in the Nicked Johnson School of Medicine.
Re: #2 and Greg Bird.
The Yankees had to put all of the IL guys back on the 40 man roster barbecue the season is over. It's just the rule.
Jacoby was activated as well. It doesn't mean they will play or are in their plans.
Doug K.
What does "reading the menu from right to left" mean?
And Bird, really?
And do you ever stop whining?
Clarification - prior comment was in response to - above in the original post:
"... and the Yankees need a good glove first-baseman who bats LH. That's Bird."
1 for 2. Bird does indeed bat left-handed, but he's very much a below average fielder, both to the naked eye, and to the stat boyz (defensive WAR, etc...).
I'm not sure if Ford grades out better, but from what last season he's at the very least comparable, and he actually manages to get out of bed in the morning without pulling every muscle in the vicinity of 162nd Street.
Right to left means price first.
It's not whining. It's speculative analysis.
Doug K.
And now...
Happy Yankee Thought #12 (Collect Em All)
Hal is sailing around the Cayman Islands on his way to visit his off- shore accounts.
The weather starts to get rough. The tiny ship is tough. If not for the courage of his fearless crew “The “Write Off” would be lost. The “Write Off” would be lost.
The ship's aground on the shore of this
uncharted desert isle
with R. Levine
and Cashman too.
Those millionaires, and their wives...
The manager…
Mike Stanton and G. Sanchez,
lost on Yankee Fan’s Isle…
And we never hear from them again!
Hank now owns the team. While searching for his brother at a casino in the Bahamas a coconut falls from a tree striking him in the head and bringing about two changes.
1) His teeth become a radio that only receives WFAN
and
2) He becomes possessed by the dybbuk of his father.
Ladies and Gentleman your 2021 New York Yankees
1B DJ (Re-signed)
2B Mookie Betts
SS Gleyber
3B Rendon
C Anyone named Molina.
RF Judge
CF Starling Marte/Hicks
LF The Red Menace
DH AnDUjar (Why even bother with the field. Let the kid hit!)
SP Cole
SP Strassburg
SP Big Maple
SP Tanaka
SP Severino
They win the next three World Series and STILL MAKE A TON OF MONEY
The End.
Doug K.
Celerino,
I think that's a great suggestion. However it reminds me of an old joke.
"The Swedish Girl", as you put it, is walking along the beach measuring how global warming is effecting ocean levels when she comes upon a magic lamp. She rubs it and a genie appears. It offers her one wish.
She wishes for an end to climate change. The genie looks at her and shakes his head, no. "Gretta, that's a very complex issue, requiring the restructuring of the entire world's economy. Do you have another wish?"
She frowns, thinks for a moment and says, "I wish that Hal Steinbrenner stop being so damn cheap and get the Yankees a couple of aces"
The genie looks at her and says, "Tell me more about this climate change thing."
Doug K.
Love it, Doug K.!
Anon, I'm betting you don't actually live in NYC. NO, WE DON'T EVER FUCKING STOP WHINING. ABOUT ANYTHING.
Anon, we're not rooting for dear old State here. We are, as JM noted, dealing with millionaires and billionaires, who between them like to extract money from us through every possible orifice...and then sit back and tell us we don't understand the game, or we take it too seriously, or whatever.
One day we will all stop taking it seriously, or even paying attention, and they'll wonder where all the money went.
There's a whole set of commentators and Fans—much like YOU, I suspect—who love to go around and say, "Oh, Yankees fans are spoiled!" Bullshit.
As many have noted here, this isn't Kansas City. We don't sit around swooning over the hope that maybe, just maybe, we can have that magical year once a generation or so.
We want SUSTAINED EXCELLENCE. Is that so wrong?
And while we are willing to say that, hey, the breaks might beat the boys sometimes—that pebble in Pittsburgh, the gnats in Cleveland, the shoe polish against Milwaukee—we don't accept falling short every season just because some already filthy rich family of unpleasant parasites from Cleveland wants to be richer still.
There. Does that explain it for you?
Ross Moschitto—I so wished that guy could have succeeded; imagine having a great player called "The Mosquito"?—I think you're right.
Bird was not so great a fielder. And Ford...can stay on the field! The first requirement of an athlete!
In his first real crack at the majors, he had an OPS of .909. Are you kidding me that that won't cut it? And great as the dream for Bird was—I feel ya, ALL-CAPS—he ain't comin' back.
Duque: deep breaths.
Yes, this off-season will be wild. And probably bad. But Andujar's inury may well protect him. I don't see how Coops gets even a Jeff Weaver simulacrum of a pitcher for a guy who has spent half of his young career on the DL.
Oh, and much as I love Mike Ford—who I fear is in much more danger than El Matador—he is, as yet, only the THIRD best Ford on the Yankees so far.
Russ Ford went 71-56 in 5 seasons with the Yanks, 1909-1913, before jumping to the Buffalo Buffeds in the Federal League. His best year was in 1910, when he went 26-6 with a 1.65 ERA, only 194 hits in 299 2/3 innings, 209 Ks and only 70 walks, 29 complete games, and 8 shutouts.
Sure, he died in 1960. But I'm thinking that if we dug him up and put him on the roster, he might still give us more innings than Paxton.
HC, Ed Whitson could give us more innings than Big Game James Paxton. I think the big signing this winter will be Eric Thames, because we need another DH type who strikes out 50% of the time. Someone has to replace EE.
What this country needs is a good 25 cent cigar.
That's about the only thing Hal might be willing to spring for. The price is right.
Here's something that really sums it all up.
MLB Rumors listed the top FIFTY free agents and predicts their destinations. The ONLY one that they have the Yankees signing, and again this is out of FIFTY, is Brett Gardner.
Doug K.
I love you all.
I hate these fucks.
The reason Cashman didn't give Didi the 17.8 million dollar tender is that Yankees (and they aren't alone) subscribe to a company that does analytics on what salary the players each grades out at and Didi's corresponding salary was tagged at 13.4 million.
What is this Bird of which you speak?
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
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