Sometimes you just have to tip your cap and call those sidemouthed, krill-swallowing, bat-clawed aquatic freaks your daddy.

By HoraceClarke66

 

As many here already know, I despise the Tampa Bay Rays’ style of play. I think their endless succession of anonymous, interchangeable pitchers and even position players will ultimately be the end of the game as we know and love it, removing as it does all the individualism from baseball.

 

But at least the Rays know what they are. That is, a franchise focused on maximizing profits while minimizing payroll. They do this very, very well, and they will no doubt go on doing it until they wear the good people of Tampa and St. Petersburg down to the point where they will build them a sparkling new, multi-billion-dollar stadium, replete with luxury suites.

 

Or until somebody else does. Las Vegas Rays, anybody?

 

Your New York Yankees, by contrast, have no good idea of what they are. Is the team seeking to win it all, every year, as it always claims? Or just to contend enough to keep the big bucks flowing?

 

Does Hal Steinbrenner think of himself as his father’s son? An international soccer mogul?  What?

 

Whatever the case, once again his Yankees—our Yankees—have fallen short of even reaching the World Series. This is not a surprise. What eases the sting of this defeat at least a little is the fact that all of us know they were just as likely to lose to the Cheatros in the ALCS. There was only a ghost of a chance that they would beat a team as good as the Dodgers in the World Series.

 

This year marks the 8^th straight season in which the Yankees played in the postseason without winning the Series, all under the guidance of Brian Cashman. The previous franchise record of 7 straight playoff seasons with no ring was set under…Brian Cashman.

 

We can bitch about this or that player, or this or that move by Ma Boone. But the core problem is depressingly familiar: Brian Cashman has failed to provide the team with enough pitching. 

 

It’s always the same problem. In 1998, Cashman inherited the deepest pitching staff in baseball. At first he enhanced that staff, making a bold trade for Roger Clemens in 1999, and signing Mike Mussina for the 2001 season.

 

But even by 2001, he’d begun to seriously mismanage or neglect the most important part of a baseball team. Letting Jeff Nelson go to Seattle probably cost NYY the 2001 World Series. Letting over 700 career wins, in the form of Pettitte, Clemens, and Wells, walk off the team with nothing in return after 2003, cost the Bombers the 2004 pennant, and maybe several flags after that. 

 

And on and on and on. Even in their last championship year, the Yanks were reduced to throwing their starters on short rest in the World Series, as Cashman had passed on signing Pedro Martinez for peanuts to prop up the staff. 

 

At first, this incompetence was evident mostly in the postseason. But it has slowly but surely eroded the team’s overall standing even in the regular season.

 

Since 2009, the Yankees have won just three division titles. Their average number of wins—disregarding this season—has dropped from 100 a year, 1996-2001, to 92 a year, 2010-2019.

 

This slow decline is likely to continue under Mr. Cashman. Why would it not?

 

Oh, don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere soon. 2020 provided the perfect year for him. He can claim any number of excuses for not reaching the World Series—again. The whole crazy season, the whacky, nightly playoff set-up in San Diego.

 

He will point to how well Giancarlo Stanton did in the postseason, and how stoutly his big free-agent acquisition, Gerrit Cole, pitched. He’ll point out well his deals for LeMahieu and Voit and Gio have worked out, and didn’t Torres look terrific in the seven playoff games the Yankees managed?

 

He will tell us how next year this team is finally set it up to put it all together.

 

Don’t believe it. There will be less pitching than ever.