Saturday, November 12, 2022

"This man is not your friend..."

 

There is a moment in the immortal, 1957 film, The Sweet Smell of Success—a moment in the scene depicted right here—when Burt Lancaster, as the vicious gossip columnist, J.J. Hunsecker, tells a U.S. senator (far right) about the acting agent (middle):

"This man is not your friend."

The senator ends up telling him, "Thank you, J.J., for what I consider good advice."

I offer this same advice to the legions of my Yankee fan brethren now on the internet, insisting that it will be just as well if Aaron Judge walks, that he sucked in the postseason, that he will only get worse as the years go by, that the team will never win a World Series with him, yadayadayada.

Now, it could be that this really Cooperstown Cashman going all Putin on us in manufacturing internet trolls. But I doubt it.

Instead, these seem to be real fans living in virtual reality where so many American reside nowadays. That is, a world where they believe they will always have a choice of their own devising.

Again and again, they tell us that it's ridiculous to give any player the money Judge will surely receive—that prices are already too high at Yankee Stadium.

They tell us that with Judge gone, his salary and the money he would have been paid can now be devoted to building the sort of winning team they would prefer, acquiring assorted pitchers and position players who will finally get the Yankees over the top before this window of opportunity to win, closes.

Folks, all I can do is quote J.J.. This man—this Hal Steinbrenner—is not your friend.

I know this may be shock to many people, but if Aaron Judge walks off this team tomorrow, Hal is not going to announce a "Judge Walks Discount On All Yankees Tickets!" Your cable bill is not going down. The usual rat dogs and Rancid Beer ("Mmmm Rancid! The beer for when you just don't care!") prices are not dropping by so much as a nickel.

As usual in capitalism, what the Yankees charge is determined by what the market will bear. That will not change.

Nor, for that matter, are Hal and Brian Cashman going to kick up their heels in glee, high-five, and screech in each other's faces, "Now we can finally build the great team we always wanted!"

For the last 15 years, free agents who could indeed have got the Yankees over the top have come and gone by the boatload. Some—such as Bryce Harper and Carlos Beltran—even came to New York talking about how they always wanted to be a Yankee, and hinting that they would give the home team a discount.

Hal and Cashman never budged. 

Now, there are no great free agents on the market, save for a couple of first-rate shortstops, who our front office will never sign because we have three GGGREAT shortstops all ready to bust into the majors—

—I wonder at times about how great those shortstops really are, having lived through Brian Cashman's Cavalcade of Can't-Miss Catchers, Gary Sanchez, J.R. Murphy, Austin Romine, and, uh, oh! Jesus—

—but never mind. There are no outfielders worth mentioning out there, certainly no one capable of approaching Aaron Judge's caliber. 

There is nobody to trade, from a farm system that was mediocre to start with and has now been stripped down to acquire the likes of Frankie Montas and Scott Effross. There is absolutely no evidence from his 25-year tenure as GM of the one major-league team consistently willing to spend big bucks that Brian Cashman can build a champion on his own.

That window of opportunity has already closed, people. Or rather, it's being held open just a sliver by our one, remaining superstar, Aaron Judge. You slide him out, and that window is going to slam shut for at least the next decade.

To close on the same line Lancaster uses in this scene, "Are we kids or what?" 

Letting Aaron Judge walk is not going to make a single thing better on the New York Yankees. Save for Hal Steinbrenner's portfolio, which doesn't need any help.







11 comments:

  1. Every time I see someone start on that road to damnation, that “he’s too old for a big contract”, I simply ask,” Ok, how would replace his offense? Not he’s record year but his average year”. They never have an answer, because there isn’t one. There is no one available either by trade or by signing. Trout is just as old, Ohtani didn’t want to come here in the first place and there is no team out there dumping talent for a rebuild. Judge may get 400 mil over 10 because there is no one else out there.

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  2. Exactly, Jaraxle. You have to think about how you're going to "rebuild" before you start tossing the old furniture out the window.

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  3. Brian is an idiot.
    Hal doesn't care.

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  4. "You can't step into the same river twice," said Heraclitus, but HE never met Brian and Hal.

    Groundhog Day.

    I look forward to seeing you all in 2023.

    Of course, I'll see you before then, as well, but the day begins ever year on Opening Day. The same day begins, as it now has for over 20 years.

    We know exactly what's going to happen.

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  5. Suppose Judge gets forty million a year. What does that even buy these days that would rebuild the team? A very good shortstop and a good left-fielder, more or less. Yet many people who would happily let Judge walk would jump all over Verlander for, say 3/100 million because, 'he says that he has five more years, and..." I've been a fan since the seventies, but if Hal goes the way of Cal Pohland I'm not going to waste a Hell of a lot of time following the Yankees. I was a rabid pro football fan, but over time watching thugs on the field, and listening to the giggling commentary in the booth...I found that I don't miss it at all.

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  6. Go about building a baseball team without worrying about money. Our team's weakness has been we seem to get out-pitched in every single important game.

    So focus on pitchers. Stock the bullpen with guys who routinely throw 98 MPH.

    I'm not sure our braintrust can do this.

    Baseball-reference.com shows G Cole, now age 32, has SIX MORE YEARS of $36m/year pay coming to him.

    Was he worth it in 2022? Who decided to bring him on-board at that kinda of weight? What is Hal gonna get for his $36M five years from now?

    - - - - -

    On the other hand, Nasty Nestor won't be a free agent until 2026. He was paid $727,000 for 2022. He threw 158 innings at an ERA of 2.44.

    So perhaps the solution is to get a lot of young pitchers and burn 'em out, paying them almost nothing in the process. We've seen a lot of arms go bad. So stock Scranton with 10-12 pitchers that are 22 to 25 years old. In addition to a bunch of cheap perhaps-talented guys in the Bronx.

    NOTE #1: Along these lines, JP Sears was a keeper. He's going to be 27 years old in February. He threw 70 innings, striking out 51. I'm not saying he was "the man" for a great future. However, give us 10 to 15 of these guys and maybe we'll have something...

    SIDE NOTE: I clearly remember that Nestor was left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft, was drafted by the Orioles -- who decided to let him go back to the Yankees. This proves, I guess, that the Yankees' braintrust can't recognize talent/potential when it's right in front of them.

    And neither could the geniuses in Bawlmore.

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  7. "I drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry,
    and the good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye singing,
    'this will be the day that I die.'"

    Don Mc, predicted this day for Yankee fans like us 50 years ago.
    My 60+ year old butt finally understands what this song means. Of course, so did my 17-year-old butt.

    I guess I will watch the Giants today. Is Fred Dryer playing?

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  8. NO , Horace....I won't have it!
    They aren't rat dogs and rancid beer.
    They're rubber, rat feces dogs and piss-warm beer!

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  9. It's getting to that busy time of the year again. I haven't been able to keep up with blogging here. End of year blues approaches, plus a whole lotta misery from the Yankees losing yet again, plus the ASS-stros winning it again.

    Hoss, you're dead on! If the Yankees lose Judge, there really ain't no Plan B that the assholes have in mind. And that was partly the reason that I said they should go for Soto at the trade deadline. 24 year old lefty hitting outfielder. Would've been perfect for us. Instead, we got Effross, Montas, Trivino, and Benintendi. And three of those four were potential injury magnets and, of course, you can't stop the laws of physics & the injuries happened.

    And now that they didn't bother to go for Soto, they really can't afford to lose out on Judge. Get better pitching & more lefty bats to surround Judge. Hope that Cabrera and Peraza develop.

    Chances are that HAL will get go Ebeneezer Scrooge on us and pull out empty pockets to show that he can't afford the greedy Judge. They'll sign or trade for a few more Josh Donaldsons in an effort to keep the payroll stable. Cashman will scour the dumpsters for another Nestor Cortes or Clay Holmes. And they'll hype up the new look Yankees turning the page on Aaron Judge.

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  10. I apologize, Carl Weitz! :)

    And excellent analyses, Kevin, Joe FOB, and Hammer!

    Pitching, pitching, pitching! And Cole's signing exemplifies how clueless they are. You only shell out that kind of money for a pitcher that age if you think you're going to win NOW. And if need to win NOW, you don't bring in Josh Donaldson and IKF to be the left side of your infield.

    What I suspect Cole really constituted, in the eyes of HAL, was the periodic, big signing necessary so he could say, "But we signed Gerrit Cole!"

    I'm hoping he at least decides the same about Judge. But I'm not confident!

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  11. Well written and on-point. I, too, am exhausted by the idiot-logical grousers who howl about ballplayer salaries. Does misery need company? (No wonder they live alone.)

    I challenge all the delusional Yankee fans who would rather see Judge walk than get a great pay-day: do you really think Yankee ticket/concession prices would drop a penny if the team were filled with minimum-wage scrubs?

    The answer is obviously no.

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