The saga begins with the (now disastrous) trade of Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela to Minnesota for IKF, hurt locker Ben Rortvedt and ascending pariah Josh Donaldson. Everybody cried.
The deal - Minnesota's greatest victory over NY in a decade - allowed the Twins to sign Carlos Correa to a one-year pact, while committing the Yankees to eat $50 million (over two seasons) with Donaldson, who swung a hologram bat in October and was not invited to Heidi Klum's Halloween bash. But back then, he was an upgrade.
After Aaron Judge, the critical Yankee question for 2023 - nine years after Jeter's farewell - is who will play SS? Update your resume.
I'm sure Joel Sherman if off of Cashman's xmas card list. But after this story, just one of many stupid decisions, the narrative is still that the Yankees will be lost without Cashman. Unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteTo throw some more gasoline on that fire, the Yanks made that move knowing it left DjL without a starting position. They could’ve put him at third and played any fill in scrub at short until Peraza was ready. They didn’t because they have no faith in the kid and have been looking to trade him as soon as he had value
ReplyDeleteWhat really galls me is that this shell of a team won 99 games. With a few - just a few - better decisions, we coulda been a contender. Now we have to put up with the same shit next season when The Intern falls in love with another player or two he remembers as being "championship caliber" sometime in the past.
ReplyDeletePeraza should be the everyday SS. According to teammate Oswaldo Cabrerra, Peraza is an elite SS. And we've seen some of that defense. We can live with whatever he provides offensively.
ReplyDeleteI would trade Gleyber Torres. And DJ can play 2B/3B. Cabrera can play 2B/LF.
Seeing the crop of free agent outfielders, they should make a strong bid to re-sign Judge. I don't see any viable free agent replacements. Since Chapman, Britton, Taillon are coming off, this should free up enough money to get it done.
I would not bring back Taillon. They should try to get an ace starter. But they won't.
They should replace the hitting coach and pitching coach. But they won't.
They badly need to bring in consultants to replace their analytics department. But they won't.
And Boone should be replaced, but you heard it straight from HAL that Boone is staying.
Cashman bitching about HAL gives some hope that maybe they're finally starting to irritate each other. But I wouldn't count on a new GM.
Boone's decision to go back to IKF for the last game was a killer. Once Peraza came up, Peraza should've been the starting SS for all the games. IKF should'be been playing 3B. Donaldson should've been benched.
ReplyDeleteThey need to move Donaldson. If there are no takers, they need to cut him loose.
They should try to trade Stanton. (The same old story, year after year. He put up a halfway decent year in 2021, I think, but they hung on to him. He hit more than 30 homers this year in limited playing time. Instead of trading him, they'll probably hang on to him until his contract expires.)
It's going to be an unusually bad horror show this winter.
The initial thinking behind getting IKF as a stopgap for Peraza made some sense but...
ReplyDeleteOnce the price included taking on Donaldson that should have been a deal killer.
But, continuing to play him AFTER Peraza was brought up, especially since IKF proved himself to be not good at SS and Peraza showed he was capable, was both inexplicable and inexcusable.
The Yankees repeatedly refuse to adjust. We saw it with keeping two black holes in the middle of their line up. We saw it with their approach to the plate and again, we saw it with "IKF plays this year next year Peraza."
Stupid is as stupid does.
@Hammer...this is not Matt Blake's fault. He was given damaged pitchers through trade and was expected to make Lemon Cheesecake out of lemons...
ReplyDeleteStanton is untradeable because of his contract. They are pretty much stuck with him...
@Doug...they expected more from Donaldson and he couldn't produce. There's a video somewhere of all the strikeouts he made this year. It's hard to watch...
Reacquaintaing oneself with the particulars of the IKF/Sanchez trade is a good remedy against complacency. "One GM's as good as another, right?" "Tough to do that job, maybe he's as good as it can get". No no. Cashman is catastrophically bad at his job. The Twins signed Correa with the money the Yankees took with Donaldson. Jaw dropping ineptitude. A professional humiliation. He's a laughingstock.
ReplyDeleteYour fine post Duque, just reiterates what an inept GM Genius Cashman is.
ReplyDeletewe won most of those 99 games due to good pitching, NOT due to good hitting.
ReplyDeletenot saying we don't have pitching problems, especially now, but we had a few things going well for us for the first few months.
with the amount to money that "I don't care about baseball" Hal has given to "I don't know about baseball" Brian, we should be a lot better.
Brian serves at Hal's whim.
We will never win again until Brian is gone and/or Hal starts to give a shit. What are the odds of THAT happening?
Because all NYC sportswriters apparently have taken a blood oath not to criticize Cashman by name, Sherman fails to mention that Coops Cashman didn't simply "improvise" Gleyber at short for a couple seasons. That was the plan all along.
ReplyDeleteGleyber was supposed to be his Jeter, the shortstop of da future. Frazier, acquired in the same trade, if I recall correctly, was going to be a 15-year OF star.
It was a terrible misjudgment of character and talent. But having made that—as mentioned here—several alternatives were available. If the Yanks didn't think Peraza was ready, the obvious choice was to keep maybe Velazquez and Wade on the roster as stopgaps, as I suggested at the time, and keep Gio at third. Urshela had always played above expectations, and outplayed Donaldson and IKF by a wide margin this season.
And...they got lucky: with Correa unsigned, he could've been the one-year stopgap.
But no, Cashman needed to do the super-duper Cashie trade, to make his genius manifest to one and all. Sanchez could've simply been dumped for whatever—but instead was traded for Biceptvedt, who I saw from one photo was never going to play regularly for us.
And then, Donaldson.
All of this came, though, through Cashman's initial, disastrous assessment of Gleyber.
Oh, and note to Joel Sherman and editors: the Yankees didn't "rightfully" decide that Didi was losing range. It wasn't a moral decision. They "rightly" decided it. Though knowing the Yankees, it was probably wrongly.
ReplyDeleteAnd apropos of nothing, why was it again that all the playoff series had to be rushed through...just to give the winners four days off for the World Series? Which now threatens to extend to Thanksgiving?
ReplyDeleteI feel like if we had better hitting coach LOKE ERIC FUCKIN CHAVEZ oh wait.... Torres would be much better
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ReplyDeleteWe fans of the NYYs will be better off if what happens before/in the 2023 season is --
-- Judge walks.
-- They trade Peraza for a can of green beans.
-- Aaron Hicks starts 120 games.
-- Stanton plays 81 games in the OF
-- Ben R fully recovers, plays 100 games behind the plate, and hits .187
-- The bullpen blows up some time around April 22nd, 2023
The season will suck. Everyone here will start to follow professional pickleball.
But 2024 will be better, maybe. Maybe Cashman and Boone will find jobs driving Hal's car and chasing down his missing dry cleaning.
I honestly hope that I live that long!
@Joe of AZ, There's no question about that. But there is zero accountability here for the coaching staff. Everyone stays until their contracts expire.
ReplyDeleteWe've heard that Torres gets "his upper and body out of sync". Not sure that I've ever heard of such a thing. I've heard of lunging, being out in front, being behind the fastball. But upper and lower body out of sync? And it's true, Torres has my personal all time record for the worst swing ever by a major league hitter. He once took a weak half hearted swing, and his front foot was still in the air!
So the hitting coach can't seem to get the best out of Torres. But the hitting coach ain't going anywhere. Something's got to give.
@ranger_lp, No, the pitching coach has to share a lot of the blame. Sure, they brought in damaged goods. But that's not his fault. I'm talking about the healthy guys who suck.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that Cole pitches like a raw rookie most of the time? Why were they unable to get the most out of Chapman? Why does Clarke Schmidt, albeit a raw rookie, keep making the same mistakes? Most of the staff makes rookie mistakes. That's why they can't beat the good teams.
I've heard that Matt Blake is good at viewing video and then getting these guys to throw harder and with more spin. And that's good. But that's only part of pitching. He's not getting them to execute on fundamentals. This guy should've been only an assistant pitching coach, not the pitching coach. He can't help them when they're struggling on the mound during games. I don't think they even pay attention to what he says on the mound.
@Hammer...maybe because the starters are not that good....
ReplyDeleteThe problems that I'm alluding to have nothing to do with talent levels. They don't do those fundamental things that other good teams do. Cole keeps making mistakes over the middle of the plate. Schmidt fails to pitch inside. Chapman can't get his head straight. You can go through a lot of the pitchers, starters and relievers, and you see things that indicate a failure to emphasize fundamentals.
ReplyDeleteThey need to throw inside more, especially with two strikes. They need to move the ball around the strike zone more. Not keep throwing low and away sliders until the hitter works a walk or gets a hit on a bad slider. John Smoltz on FOX saw the same things. I'm not even a pitching coach and I saw it. So why is it that our vaunted pitching coach can't make these guys understand? Answer: he probably doesn't teach fundamentals. He only teaches them how to throw harder, with more spin, and which pitches they should throw based on percentage calculations from the stats.
The whole regular season is nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the playoffs. A team that only won 86 or 87 games can win the World Series, if their players have been sharpening their skills all season. They just need to reach peak effectiveness come playoff time. This doesn't happen by accident or by chance. It happens as a result of good coaching and talent and hard work over the course of the whole year.
I did find it amazing to see how bad their fundamentals were, come this October.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think it's not a good sign when your best hitter, Judge, has found a way to hit better AND stay healthier by going OUTSIDE your team coaching and training staffs.
To a front office that gave a damn, that would be a warning sign, right there.
That's right, Hoss, Judge did seek out a personal hitting coach. I read about that somewhere. That would partly explain his success this year. I think they worked on shortening his swing and going the other way on breaking pitches away. The work he put in certainly showed.
ReplyDeleteWho knows, even Chapman might very well go somewhere else and pitch well again. He still has a 99mph fastball. Why isn't that enough to get guys out? His running away was terrible, but it could be that the coaching just wasn't up to par. So maybe it wasn't all his fault.
And we've been tough on Cole for the sticky stuff. But maybe it was more than the sticky stuff that made him good in Houston. Based on what I've seen during his time as a Yankee, the coaching here is partly to blame for his struggles. They're not maximizing his talent. His pitch selection has been poor. Locating the fastball has been poor. And he doesn't pitch inside enough to keep hitters honest. This year, a lot of mistakes right down the middle in excusable counts and situations. By merely pitching smarter, he'd be more effective.
Here’s something worth reading:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/sabermetrics-analytics-ruined-baseball-sports-music-film/671924/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
seems as if Trevino and DJ won gold gloves
ReplyDelete---> woot woot woot for the home team <---
Dick,
ReplyDeleteYou are quite correct.
Thank Yahweh that the Yankees have Mike "Glassman" Stanton and not that Harper guy they could have had for less money.
Oh, and Ca$hole is a genius.
YES! Saw that Atlantic piece yesterday! Spot on! And applicable to all kinds of other things, too.
ReplyDeletePhilly beating the stuffing out of Houston just now.
ReplyDeleteYou love to see it....coached by a former Yankee coach no less....damn
DeleteBrian Cashman preferred Giancarlo Stanton to Bryce Harper.
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ReplyDeleteFunny. Phillies, 87 win team, knocking the dogshit out of the Azztros. I realize it's not over but christ, couldn't we win a damn game?
ReplyDeleteNick Damn Nelson for the love of god
Why bother about the Yankees? It's a second-rate organization run by dunces. Nothing is going to change with Hal at the helm.
ReplyDeleteFor more than a decade, Yankee management has stopped trying to win. Will be going on a decade and a half soon.
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