This year's Yankees team is the Anti-Jeter squad

 When Derek Jeter retired, and Keith Olbermann and the stats folks rolled out Excel spreadsheets showing the Jeet's fWarOPQ+/~¿EIEIO ratio ranked his career equal to Wayne Tolleson, I made a comment on a post to say that those folks were missing the point. Jeter was about moments, and how he had a knack for being part of so many special plays and memories that you could not measure with whatever supercomputer you want to trot out.

This team is the anti-Jeter. The season is being defined not by the team's win-loss record, but by the ever-increasing number of "What the fuck just happened?" moments.

You look at the numbers, and Boone and Cashman will bring up their spreadsheets and say that this team is pretty good. Hey, it's 5 games OVER .500! It's still in the playoff chase! We're just a 42-year-old right-handed DH away from being a World Series contender.

But it's not the record. I've never seen a team blow so many games, so horrendously, with such maddening incompetence. Just when you think it can't get any worse, someone else steps up and says, "hold my fifth of tequila." 

The awful extra-inning blown-third-strike loss against the Red Sox. Chapman's implosions against the Mets and Angels. The debacle against the Astros. After each one, it was loudly proclaimed that the Yankees had "hit rock bottom."

Each time, we all thought "it couldn't possibly get any worse."

And then there was last night. The bunch of no-names was starting to generate some buzz, getting our hopes up that we would have something to root for. It was all a tease. Green blew the save, of course. (Where have you gone, Mariano?) The Yankees scored the "ghost runner" in spite of themselves, and Stanton had the worst at-bat in the history of baseball (swinging at two pitches that didn't come close to reaching the plate). Then Kriske's epic performance, throwing an incredible four wild pitches (all of which Stanton would have swung at). MLB's stats folks immediately noted that it was a record for most wild pitches in an extra inning in history. I assume it also set the record for most TV screens kicked in. Boone had the audacity in the presser to mention the "big strikeout" of Martinez that Kriske got.  

And again, it's said that the Yankees have "hit rock bottom." Eventually, you have to admit that this team hasn't hit rock bottom, it has set up camp there.

And so, the anti-Jeter season goes on. The YES Network folks will shake their heads sadly, but tell us that things will get better. By now, we know better. At this point, the only thing we can do is wonder what could possibly happen next. 

This is a team only a masochist could love.