The Yankees were down 2-0 in a completely winnable game. Plus, our big boys were coming up. Leading off, Luke Voit singled to left. Then Aaron Hicks dribbled a single to right. Two on, nobody out, and the heart of the order! Calgon Bath Beads, here we go! I shouted, silently.
Suddenly, the TV telescoped into a billion fragments of reality bytes - (an underappreciated Winona Ryder movie, by the way.) Suddenly, it was Wednesday night in the fifth - NO, it was also Sunday night, NO, it was A HUNDRED nights in this horrible excuse for a season - all with the same wretched outcome.
I said to myself, No, deja vu can't be happening again...
But it did.
Giancarlo Stanton struck out on three pitches. Three. Fucking. Pitches. One, two, three. He missed the last one by a foot. Stanton's comeback season - remember that chestnut? - is shot. Even if he goes wild this weekend against Miami, he will finish with a handful of HRs and RBIs (he has 4 and 10, respectively) and a mediocre average (now .261.) To see the MVP slugger we hoped for, we need a time machine to 2017.
Gleyber Torres came up. On the first pitch, he hit a fly to right that advanced Voit to third. It wasn't one of those "Gee, that might have gone out in Yankee Stadium!" balls that the YES team oogles. It was a fly ball. Gleyber will finish 2020 with about 3 HRs, a dismal (.248) average, and a questionable future at SS. He entered 2020 as one of the game's rising stars. Next spring, where does he even play?
Finally, it was Gio Urshela. He's had a decent year - .317 with great defense. But it didn't matter. Grounder to second. Another scoring opportunity... shot to hell.
In the bottom of the inning, Toronto scored two - Adam Ottavino came in; don't get me started - and that's China Town, Jake. Michael Kay spent the last three innings citing the dire circumstances that could have the Yankees finishing 8th in the playoff seeds. It sounded like a eulogy to a squandered life.
Every other team in the AL East is full of ascending young stars - even Boston retooled - while the Yankees sat on their haunches, waiting for their stars of 2017 to return.
They are baseball's version of a Maroon 5 tribute band.
The year has been a complete washout for Gary Sanchez, Miguel Andujar, Mike Ford, Brett Gardner, Mike Tauchman, Aroldis Chapman, Hicks, Ottavino and the bullpen. Sanchez gives me PTSD. He will be lucky to hit .150. (He's currently at .140.) Last night, the YES men said - get this - Sanchez has more high exit velocity balls for outs than anybody else in baseball. I believe they were offering this as an excuse. In fact, it just shows how he hits directly into defensive over-shifts - he cannot adapt - another reason for his collapse.
Well, maybe this year was always doomed. Maybe Boston had it right - just tank from the git-go and think about 2021. We took it for granted that the Yankees would make the post-season - that nothing in September would matter. We didn't expect to be stuck in a space-and-time continuum, where east is west, and peanut butter is jelly.
But who expected this? Middling, pissy mediocrity. And I hope they don't even bother to fill the bases with nobody out. I can't take another worm hole.
The only run the Yanks will make in the postseason is the one like Chapman made at end of that game when he needed to use the facilities in a hurry...
ReplyDeleteDuque, I think your comment was a disservice to Maroon 5. (Who generally earned the Bugs Bunny epithet, "What a maroon.") This team wouldn't be good in 162 games or 1620. Not because the players to do it aren't there--minus the bullpen--but because of the Yankee way of management. Just like that season not so long ago when the kids, including Sanchez at the time, took over for a raft of injured "stars" and played like gangbusters. We won even without our two bullpen aces, traded away as rentals to legitimate contenders.
ReplyDeleteAnd then...and then...the "stars" came back from injury, and Bullethead Joe gave them their slots back. And we sucked. Really sucked.
It's like Groundhog Day, but unlike Bill Murray's character, the Yankees learn absolutely nothing from the repetition.
Yanks are 2 loses/1 win away from the .550 which I had predicted them to be at at the start of the season. Of course I had also expected them to play only 25 games, so oh well. I don't expect the playoffs to be anything impressive. Not even sure they'd make it past whomever they play first.
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be so bad if they went in as the eight seed. They would then have to play Tampa Bay, and we would see, right off, if there is anything at all to this postseason (Personally, I suspect it would be two and out.).
ReplyDeleteOh, this just gets better and better:
ReplyDeleteIf the Yankees have another run of injuries in the postseason, their fill-in options might not be who they’d prefer:
"Backup plans for their postseason roster are opting out, GM Brian Cashman said Sunday during an interview on SiriusXM MLB Network Radio."
Asked about the difficulties of coming up with a postseason roster, Cashman said, "Everybody’s doing the best they can, but I’d be lying to tell you it was not a significant challenge to walk through. We’ve been having to tell people they’re either in the alternate site or they’re out of the alternate side.
"We’ve even had offers for players to be in the alternate site in this taxi squad bubble moving forward and they’ve opted not to be a part of it because it could be six more weeks away from their family if you’re fortunate enough to advance the whole way and with no guarantee of either getting on (the big-league roster) or winning a prize at the end or getting voted a (playoffs) share.
“Some of them said, ‘You know what? I’m not doing it.’ So when you have those conversations, they’re disappointing, but you get it at the same time and just move on.”
What makes me think we'll end up playing our last postseason game with a 20-man roster?
I really wonder who he's talking about. On the other hand, who's in the alternate universe worth being concerned about aside from Miggy?
ReplyDeleteIf only half our bullpen would take that "hell no, I won't go" attitude. We might have a shot.
Not having Andujar here is stupid, just stupid. He's much more valuable than one of the bullpen lugnuts. One game into the postseason, there will be more injuries. And let's say that we somehow did advance past the first round. Who the hell are we going to play? Joe Schmo from the local beer league?
ReplyDeleteThe Hammer of God
Why is the happless Hicks batting third EVERY FUCKING DAY, and Frazier seventh or ninth? Clearly, it should be the opposite, but clearly Cashman is leaning in for some face-saving promotion of his prized stiff.
ReplyDeleteLet this be over with quickly. A guillotine would work just fine. Whoever is making the decision to continually bat Hicks third and Frazier at the bottom needs to be first in line. Heads need to roll.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that DJ couldn't even produce a tying run in that AB tells you all you need to know about this cursed season.
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