Never has there been a group of men so tired, so drained, so horny for a three-day break. For the Death Barge Yankees, Monday cannot arrive fast enough.
By then, they will likely have pissed away their second straight home series, and by next weekend, that once tiny spec in the rearview will be the Tampa Rays, recreating a race in the AL East.
As for last night? Jeeze. What can we say? Seriously, there are no words.
Worst loss of the season? Yeah, I suppose. (But they're getting hard to rank.) Worst example of managing? Worst cavalcade of lost opportunities? Yep, all of the above. Last night, after it ended, I lay in bed, counting fuck-ups instead of sheep. This was a game Boston seemed determined to kick away. But we out-botched them.
So.. where to start? Seriously. Where. Do. We. Start? When you see the avalanche coming, do you get out your phone or run for cover? And does it matter? Today, I stand in awe of the magnitude of this potential Yankee debacle. Last month, we were hailing this team as our greatest of the millennium. Now, it just might go down as a bigger collapse than 2004, and I didn't think such a thing was possible in my lifetime. So, yeah... where do we start?
1. Boone got himself thrown out over strike calls. Fine. Whatever. But whoever made the decisions in extra innings, he refused to call for a bunt, when all we needed was someone who could lay one down. We've seen Jose Trevino bunt successfully. When he came up with the bases loaded, no outs, and Boston's pitcher in a frazzle, I was shouting at the TV, "For god's sake, bunt." So he hit into DP. And an inning later, Gleyber Torres recreated the moment. Does this team practice bunts, at all?
One successful bunt, and we win.
We never tried.
3. With Trevino, the stagecoach seems to be turning back into a pumpkin. Love the guy, he's like a catcher version of Bartolo Colon, but I doubt I'll ever forget his comical lunge to tag Bogaerts at home plate - without the ball. Ridiculous.
4. More and more, Aroldis Chapman looks done. His fastball no longer intimidates, his slider gets hammered, and he can't throw either for strikes. Even if he restores himself for a few outings, we know it won't last. The Yankees will never again have confidence in him.
5. Joey Gallo is done. Last night, the cascade of boos after his second K... yikes. It's the stuff of Javier Vasquez and Carl Pavano. It's obvious that Gallo's time in Gotham is over. He'll go down as one of Brian Cashman's greatest mistakes. And if one of those four players we gave up for him ever becomes a star, well, it certainly should be mentioned on Cash's Hall of Fame plaque.
6. We have tumbled back into the Upside-Down world of the last decade: Nobody can drive in runs. The heart of the batting order shows numbers worse than Biden.
ReplyDeleteI am a major league ballplayer (not really).
They don't pay me to bunt.
They don't ask me to bunt.
I don't practice bunts.
I can't bunt.
That's why I don't practice, because I can't.
That's why they don't ask me to do it, because I can't.
I know they pay me for my abilities, unless I'm Joey Gallo.
But even he doesn't try to bunt.
SOLUTION: Reincarnate Phil Rizzuto.
ReplyDeleteIs there no such thing as situational hitting anymore? Can't there be Trevino taking on a 2-0 pitch with the bases loaded, nobody out, and a wild pitcher imploding before our very eyes? Is it possible for Judge to hit a low outside pitch THE OTHER WAY to, I don't know, maybe move the Manfred Man over? Is anyone capable of hitting a sacrifice fly?
Shit.
I feel bad for Gallo. He stinks, and worse, he knows he stinks. I just hope Combover Cashman didn't ruin him for good, just for New York. For the benefit of both parties (hopefully) they have to get him the hell out of here.
ReplyDeleteAll of that very seriously valid stuff, Boss. The team is disintegrating before our very eyes.
Booooone's inadequacies are being exposed in direct proportion to Judge's descent below the Gallo line. The Mendoza line is no longer an accurate gauge of ineptitude.
And how Gallo is still a thing is beyond any words I'm capable of saying - which is saying something.
That was one painful game to listen to last night.
ReplyDeleteJudge batting stats for July: Yikes!!
Donaldson: Right there with ya' buddy!
Speaking of Donaldson...
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget batting him (with a bad hand) against a righty when they had a switch hitter in Marwin already due up and a single ties the game.
Terrible. I don't think I'm going to watch today. First time in a while. Somewhere, somehow there is better use of my time. Or at least some activity that doesn't leave me feeling like crap when it's over.
I'm with you, Doug. I'll watch something else and check the game once in a while on the phone. If--and it's an unlikely if--the Yanks looks like they have something going on, I'll probably tune in, even if I'm bitterly disappointed by the end.
ReplyDeleteIt's just so hard to watch these guys when they can't do basic things that would win the game. It's painful.
That was a brutal game to listen to last night, I'm with you Doug, I'll be skipping it tonight,,,, so much for Nope Week!
ReplyDeleteDuque....I was screaming "bunt" on last night's blog while it was in real time. You don't have to be a genius to realize that just a slow roller on the ground would win the game. At the very least, keep out of a double-play. Last night was a clusterfuck from top to bottom!
ReplyDeleteBases loaded, nobody out in the ninth. Couldn't do it.
ReplyDeleteBases loaded, one out in the tenth. Couldn't do it.
In 56 years of watching this team, I don't believe I have ever seen that particular combination of ineptitude.
Here's another frightening stat: in his 132 games with your New York Yankees, Joey Gallo has actually lowered his LIFETIME batting average by 9 points.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, he must feel terrible about it. But the booing MUST continue. Only WE can drive this guy out of the lineup and off the roster.
Brian Cashman WILL NOT get rid of Gallo on his own, no matter what depths he hits.
Boone and his bubble gum:
ReplyDeletechew - chew - bubble - burst - repeat
chew - chew - bubble - burst - repeat
remove - inspect - reinsert
chew - chew - bubble - burst - repeat
I was imagining last night near the end of the game just prior to his ejection what would happen, how the world would react, how it would make all of US here feel if someone, somehow could replace the bazooka that Boone masticates with some kind of gum that you'd find in the upside down. You know, something that Vecna would enjoy.
So when he saliva'd up the wad well enough and blew his first Boone-balloon, much to his shock and horror it would continue to inflate, getting larger and larger until it suddenly engulfed his entire head. Then compressing and getting smaller and smaller until there was nothing left. Boone's melon consumed by some kind of intergalactic, SuperElasticBubblePlastic (thanks, WHAM-O!)
Then at least they would have called the game and it would have ended in a tie, which in my opinion would have been a better outcome than we all had to endure . . .
I know I sometimes go on too much about "the good old days" in baseball. Which, in many ways, were not so good at all.
ReplyDeleteBut one good thing about them: ballplayers did not dare talk about how "tired" they were.
On those rare occasions when they did, they got booed to the rafters by fans, who did things like dig coal, or work 12-hour shifts in steel mills for a living. When Duke Snider once complained about how tough he had it, they nearly booed him off the field. In BROOKLYN.
Back in the day, Babe Ruth's version of air conditioning was to wear a cabbage leaf under his cap. True story! There's a famous account of how DiMaggio was so exhausted after the first game of a doubleheader one day, he had to be helped off the field to the locker room.
There he noticed that a young Yogi Berra was not going to be playing the second game, and reamed him out.
Berra played the second game. He led the AL in games caught 8 years in a row. He caught over 140 in 5 years out of 6.
There aren't so many fans working 12 hours in a steel mill these days. But there are a helluva lot of single parents, working three different lousy, part-time, minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. And most of THEM aren't even at the games, because they can't afford what the steelworker could afford 85 years ago.
They don't want to hear about how tired major-league ballplayers are. They don't want to hear that they can't bunt. Hell, the other day, the YES dingbats were amazed that the Cincinnati Reds had actually taken infield practice that day:
'Wow, you never see that anymore!'
No, you don't. You don't see half the things you used to see on a ballfield. But you get to hear all about how tough it is for these guys. Enough.
Wonderfully said Hoss!
ReplyDeleteI don’t think I could stomach another game like the last few either. Our “offense” consisted of one swing of the bat
and a Red Sox throwing error. Trevino’s AB in the 9th was especially egregious, he was pulling off and flailing at the ball
like a JV scrub. The bloom is off that rose and his consideration as an All Star is a joke. We await to see which of our triumvirate of MiLB catchers (Siegler, Wells, Breaux) will survive the T/D and ultimately replace him. Unfortunately, they are all 1-2 years away.
It is wrong to blame our current demise on the umpiring, but the sorry state of MLB umpiring has never been so evident. I am fairly sure that I am the most anti-umpire of anyone here, and would be glad to drag them out of the stadium by their jug ears and toss them onto River Ave. But the lousy, incomprehensible approach of our “hitters” is beyond belief. Their narcissistic, ego driven approach seems fully baked in and there is no changing it. We can only hope the next gen of players will be incrementally better.
Saving the best (read: worst) for last we have the absolute hands down worst. fucking. manager in the bigs. His callow, gutless corporatist approach and astoundingly ignorant in-game decisions have left me apoplectic. You would think he would learn proper technique after all this time at the helm, but no. He is as clueless now as he was that bemoaned day he was hired.
So: of course we can still regroup to the point that we sleaze into the playoffs, but we are going nowhere in Oct. NOWHERE!
Kay mentioned in the 9th inning yesterday that Gallo , over the past 22 games , was hitting under .060! God knows how many whiffs in those games. Probably 60 % at least.
ReplyDeleteThe guy never adapts. Always the same long, looping swing where he ends up on one knee. I have never seen a person making less contact since I watched the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin.
Ba-Boone, the great cosmonaut, pressing blinking buttons on the rocket ship's control console ... we're about to crash land somewhere in the Yucatan penisula, making a crater bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. This collapse will be studied by baseball fans and stat geeks for more than a 100 years into the future.
ReplyDelete@Hoss...why use fundamentals when you have analytics?
ReplyDelete