Wednesday night, as Aroldis Chapman was self-immolating, I hit my wall.
As El Chapo stood there, wondering WTF, the cogs reversed. I started rooting for LA. Rabidly. I wanted the Angels to score 20 runs. If I had my way, they'd still be batting. I wanted pain and suffering - for Chapman, Cashman, Boone, the entire franchise down to the hookers - to feel my frustration.
I'm not over it.
This weekend, we'll be better off if the Mets win.
What would a Subway Series victory accomplish, other than to push the front office to chase the wild card, mortgaging the future for another aging bag of potatoes?
Look at the Wild Card race. It's not just the three losses in the column, it's the number of younger, ascending teams above of us.
It's 30 days to the trade deadline. If we continue to lose, Food Stamps Hal Steinbrenner says a sell-off would commence. The Yankees would tank.
I hate losing to the Mets. But being swept at home would send shockwaves through a front office that has traded its soul for algorithms, building a team that statistically could score runs, though it cannot perform fundamental tasks taught in Little League.
And now, as advertised...
THE TEN MOST TERRIFYING PHRASES IN THE YANKIVERSE..
10. "... Low and away, and Chapman walks the leadoff man."
9. "... And that brings up Clint Frazier..."
8. "... line drive to left, Andujar has a bead on it..."
7. "... Warming in the bullpen is Brooks Kriske..."
6. "... Batting third, to balance the righty lineup, is Rougned Odor..."
5. "... And it looks as though he may have pulled something...
4. "... Gleyber has a point: That strike three call was clearly outside..."
3. "... The Yankees should be all-in on any deal for Max Scherzer..."
2. "... This just in: Brian Cashman has done it again..."
1. "... AND THE YANKEES HAVE THE BASES LOADED WITH NOBODY OUT!"
And #11:
ReplyDelete“I believe in this team.”
" Anthony Volpe has been traded for Jake Arrieta.
ReplyDeleteHe has a lot of experience and he is old 35."
With respect to the Wednesday night/Thursday morning farrago, Foodstamps Hal has ventured into the Big Boys’ newspaper, the New York Times:
ReplyDelete“I’m aggravated, frustrated, angry,” he said. “But that’s not going to push me into a knee-jerk reaction to get rid of somebody that I believe the players respect, want to play for, want to win for and overall has done a good job keeping that clubhouse together through this difficult three months.”
Alphonso, I am with you. The only way any change is possible is to clean house from top to bottom, and obviously Hal thinks that game was just like any other normal day, with tourists flocking to the Bronx. I am now cringing on the (very rare) occasion there is a flash of the Yankees possibly winning a game.
We need to finish in fourth… fifth even… before any positive moves will be made. Even if that should happen, we may have to wait another year and have a total rerun of the current season before it registers in Hal's vacant skull that - oops! - we need some fresh meat.
Just to insert a touch of chaos into the Yankees’ calm lives, good ol’ AccuWeather forecasts thunderstorms (60%) right around the first (scheduled) pitch tonight, and showers (58%) starting at noon before tomorrow’s matinee.
What could possibly go wrong?
Jesus, it gets worse: he thinks we have a young team "in their prime". Are there people - family? - who can stage an intervention? Back to the NYT:
ReplyDeleteSteinbrenner does not have serious problems with Cashman, Boone or the coaches. He said that the team’s decision-making process was comprehensive and that he valued the opinions of scouts as well as data analysts. He dismissed the idea that the Yankees could be sellers at the trading deadline, as they were in 2016, the last time they finished fourth in their division.
“The difference is we had aging players, players who were kind of at the end of their careers, so we made some trades and got rid of some guys,” Steinbrenner said. “I just don’t see this as that situation. These players are in their prime. They’ve been incredible in very recent years and there’s no reason why they can’t be incredible again, offensively speaking.”
#12: “we’ll get better” or the “track record is there”.
ReplyDelete#13: Aaron Judge out with "lower body soreness".
We're doomed because they won't get rid of Cashman. Whether we tank by the trade deadline or over the winter, with that guy at the helm, we're doomed. For at least the next ten years, maybe the next twenty.
ReplyDeleteOur only hope is that Prince Hal wakes the fuck up and decides to clean house before the trade deadline.
Everyone, I suggest developing some other hobby to compensate during these difficult times. Check in on this blog frequently, but don't bother going to the Stadium or following this team too closely. Sucking can be infectious and you don't want to catch it.
The Hammer of God
I too am rooting for the Mets. Let them bottom out.
ReplyDelete#14 "German is Ready. (The batter) is ready... Let's do it!"
#15 "Tallion is ready. (The batter) is ready... Let's do it!"
# 16 "King is ready. (The batter) is ready... Let's do it!"
#17 Montgomery is ready. (The batter) is ready... Let's do it!"
Doug K.
Oh wait...
ReplyDelete#18 Cole is ready (The batter) is ready... Let's do it!"
Doug K.
HAL can't even remember 5 years back.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't trade "old guys." We traded Chappy and the lamented Andrew Miller for what was supposed to be the makings of the next dynasty—and turned out to be just more magic beans. (Looking at you, Gleyber and Clint!)
This has been a horrible season not because these Yankees suck, we've lived through that before. This season has been so horrible because ownership has no desire to be competitive and clearly has no plan going forward to establish the Yankees as a competitive ball club. Hal et al don't care about winning, so how can I care about these Yankees.
ReplyDeleteFuckers.
I never never never EVER imagined that I'd be writing this, but I'm also rooting for a sweep by the Mets,,,,, it's fucking come to this, URRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI've been rooting against the Yankees at least since the start of the Angels series. It was frustrating watching the terrible Anaheim pitching and their inability to capitalize on various NY blunders. Pulling for the Mets, on the other hand, might be difficult. If Mets do too well their fans will buy up tickets for the weekend and Hal still wins. The best result is rain on Friday & Saturday while splitting a double-header Sunday after Chapman blows another save. In any case, the disastrous Seattle/Houston road-trip will keep the ball rolling downhill.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Hal's comments yesterday prove nothing will be changing soon. HoraceClark66 has been warning for a while that this Cashman cycle still has years left.
- Melquíades
#19 - "They are not playing to the back of their baseball card"
ReplyDeleteReally tired of hearing this one...
The lousy performance by so many members of this team is mystifying to me. These guys have shown how good they can be, and yet they have so much trouble staying that way. It's not just inconsistency, it's "they look really good" to "they look like shit" in a matter of days. Or even a day. And when they look like shit, they keep at it until the next streak of looking good, which invariably ends for no reason.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird. You can't predict baseball, I guess.
#20 - "1-877-Kars4Kids"
ReplyDeleteRemember, no matter what we want and no matter what happens, Hal will never care and Brian will never make good baseball decisions. We are stuck with this situation until one of them drops dead or Brian retires or Hal sells the team. Until then, it's time to sit on the floor and hold our ass cheeks together to resist the daily sodomizing from this band of morons.
ReplyDelete@JM My theory is that the coaching staff is a puppet staff taking orders from the wanna-be number crunching morons at the top. This would explain why it took three years for them to fix Gary Sanchez's hitting mechanics. (It was a simple fix. Any other team would've done it in no more than a few weeks.)
ReplyDeleteNow we're seeing the same deal with Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier. Weird stances and complicated swings. I wonder where that came from? To fix it, I believe the coaching staff is required to send a memo upstairs to the number crunchers. It's an "Application to Change Batting Stance and Hitting Mechanics For Player 'X'". They review it, the front office reviews it, they have various other people who they trust review it. Then they reject it, saying that, in their opinion, and based on their complex computer algorithms and high level calculus equations, it's just an unlucky streak or "good pitching stops good hitting". 75 memos later, they finally give the go-ahead to the coaches to try a different stance.
It will take another two to three years before they fix Torres and Frazier.
The Hammer of God
They'll probably tell the coaches something like this: "Look, we know that you have no advanced degree in statistics. So we'll make it simple and put in into layman's terms. That 2 for 65 streak is just a statistical blip. The player faced a lot of high end pitching during that streak. We calculated that the average MLB hitter would have hit no better than 3 for 65 during that span, all other factors being held equal. The important thing is that the player's exit velocity stayed within the 95th percentile of all MLB hitters. And his launch angle was consistently within .025 degrees of his optimal swing. Therefore, your application to change his hitting mechanics is denied, rejected, declined, dismissed, repudiated, renounced, and we just wiped our collective asses with it."
ReplyDeleteThe Hammer of God
Mustang,
ReplyDeleteYes! Perhaps the most frightening of all!
Hammer
It's an "Application to Change Batting Stance and Hitting Mechanics For Player 'X'". Etc.
Excellent thought.
The Yankees front office is probably something out of the movie Brazil. Lots of vacuum tubes attached to Underwood Typewriters.
Doug K.
I've said it before and will say it again. As inconsequential as it is, I will not go to any Yankee games anytime soon. And when I watch (rarely lately) I will use my free t-mobile MLB TV account or venture into the malware-laden streamers. I'm not going to contribute one penny to this dumpster fire
ReplyDeletePlantoni,
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