Forget the Soft Soap. It's YANKOPOLYSE NOW!!!

 

It’s happening!  It’s actually happening!

Brethren, we have entered the Final Days. The Yankopolypse is at hand!

I know that some of you still labor under the delusion that there is a master plan being hatched by HAL (as depicted here) and the Brain. 

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

There is no plan! 

Oh, I’m sure you heard them talking about what a great lineup we’re going to have next year.

As a renowned baseball expert (see below) has put it:

One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t win a World Series, you can’t win a pennant without, like, you know, uh, with fractions. What are you going to score, one-quarter run, three-eighths of a run? What are you going to do when you go from here to Tampa or something? That’s dialectic physics, man!

But I digress.

You can see there’s no plan. HAL and the Brain, they’re more like those kings and wizards frozen with fear and despair from looking into the all-seeing eye of Sauron. 

Nobody ever mistook that pair for a king or a wizard, to be sure. But you can see they’re just staring big-eyed and speechless, frozen in terror while everyone else in baseball is scurrying around nailing down every player they can get their hands on.  

Threadbare as the Yanks’ staff was last year, now they’ve lost Kluber, meager hope though he was. Now the Mets have signed Max Scherzer, the biggest pitcher on the free-agent market, and an outfielder the Yanks’ could have used. Now Robbie Ray and Kevin Gaussman are gone.

The Greatest Free Agent Class of Shortstops, Ev-ah—has started to sign on with other clubs. The Rangers—the Texas Rangers!—have signed two of them!  

What’s next? A new commitment to Luke Voit, as Rizzo and Freeman go elsewhere? Jose Peraza or Didi filling in at short while we wait for the next crop of can’t-miss infield prospects…to miss? 

Sanchez, the Seven-Bellied Beast, at catcher…FOREVER?

It’s easy enough to suss out what Cooperstown Cashman was thinking—mostly because he’s always thinking the same thing and operating in the same way, year after endless year. 

He was going to lay low through all the confusion and the chaos over the new baseball agreement. Swoop in late, maybe just before spring training, and snatch up those great bargains that he is always sure will be there (and never really are).

But even by Cashman standards, he miscalculated. The avenging Angels—and Rays and Mets and Rangers and Mariners (yes, the Mariners)—have already opened up the Seven Bowls of Affliction and begun to dump them on our heads.

(Our merry band, left.)

The Yanks aren’t tanking and they aren’t making a serious run at the whole enchilada. Which in MLB terms means you’re living in a permanent Time of Tribulation, pounded by better teams, envying worse ones. Competing only for the soon-to-be Seventh Playoff Spot, the Wild Card of the Damned.

Like Capt. Willard, I don’t see any method at all. Just…the horror. The horror.