Meanwhile, Oswaldo Cabrera will wait until someone tweaks another gonad.
Why speaketh such blaspheme?
Game after game, look who is playing LF?
This spring, Hicks and earnest placeholder Rafael Ortega have started three games there. Willie Calhoun and Estevan Florial have played two, and Oswaldo - who finished in LF last fall - started once.
Clearly, the Yankee brain trust wants Oswaldo to serve as a Ronco Kitchen Magician - he slices, dices, blends, purees; change the blade and he mows your lawn... Trouble is, he might just be the best Yankee LF on the roster, though the team is determined to squeeze playing time out of Hicks.
He'll get hot. (Two hits yesterday.) He'll hit a few HRs and draw a few walks, and the YES prom queens will quickly pronounce Brian Cashman a generational genius, telling us how lucky we are to have a front office so diligent and crafty.
And then Hicks will hurt himself.
He'll swing the bat, grimace, and disappear for six weeks, when we will repeat the cycle. It is sad. It is like a time-travel movie, where the protagonist has to let his girlfriend perish in order for Hitler to lose the war. I don't know what Hicks did to piss off God. But he has never been able to stay hot and healthy, and at 33, it looks like he never will. I'll never forget that game against Minnesota, when he dove full-out in CF to catch a liner, then homered to win the night. He's had moments. But he's too big, too muscular, and something always stretches too far. (This spring, he is 5-13 - .385 - so the injury could happen at any time.)
So, in LF, that leaves us with:
Ortega, 32, who two years ago hit .291 with 11 HRs for the Cubs. He is 3-for-9 this spring with 2 HRs.
Calhoun, 28, who is 8-for-14 with 1 HR and mucho speed. (Though considered to be a lousy defensive OF.)
Florial, 25, who is 3-14 with 5 strikeouts and 4 stolen bases. (Down to his final option, so if he doesn't make the team, he's gone.)
And Cabrera, 24, who leads the Yankees in RBIs this spring. (He is 5-17, spending most of his time at 3B. (In his career, he has only played 9 games in LF. It's not as if he can't use the extra seasoning, right?)
The Yankees think they can maximize Cabrera's value by playing him everywhere. I get it. They know more than I do. I just hope they don't screw him over.
Mr. Bean is doing what he is told. Have you ever seen a "manager" do absolutely nothing. The woman minor league manager they have has a bigger set of balls than this clown. They need Morris Buttermaker to manage this team.
ReplyDeleteDuque, why do you keep saying that the Yankees brain trust knows more than you do? I don't and never have believed that to be true. They're morons. They've shown repeatedly, consistently, doggedly how stupid they are and how stubbornly they stick to shitty ideas and player assessments.
ReplyDeleteYou don't. And you don't start from a position of stupid, anyway, like they do.
As I gleefully wait for another idiotic Cashman idea to become his latest exploding cigar, I ask that you amend future posts to read, "I sure as fuck know more than the Yankees brain trust..."
Facts is facts.
ReplyDeleteAh, but are you forgetting the "top secret hidden ball nothing-up-my-sleeve trick"? Judge moves to LF, Mr. Bader mans CF, and our man Big G, Man of Wood, goes in to play RF. Big G - stands like a statue, becomes part of the Yankee machine, stays healthy all season and rakes!, because he's not just a bat-swinger, he's a glove-donner as well. Or so we've been told.
I think by now it is safe to say that what the Yankees briantrust do best is screw players over.
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ReplyDeleteYankees ready to commit to Aaron Hicks while waiting on Bryan Reynolds
Story by Randy Miller, nj.com • 3h ago
TAMPA — The Yankees’ plan for left field at the start of the season has been decoded, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they seemingly want to do.
They want Aaron Hicks out there, not Oswaldo Cabrera or anyone else.
The Yankees plan on committing to Hicks in left early on even though he’s injury prone … even though he’s coming off three bad years in a row … even though he channeled last Sept. 9 at Yankee Stadium on Monday night by dropping another flyball during the Yankees’ 9-2 win over the Pirates at Steinbrenner Field.
If Hicks is going to lose the job to anyone in house, it’s going to be to Cabrera, whom the Yankees want in a super utility role.
“He’s competing on some level for (left field),” manager Aaron Boone said of Cabrera.
Some level?
That means Cabrera isn’t really competing. He’s a backup plan in case Hicks gets hurt or his game has a meltdown.
I’ve said from the beginning Hicks will be the starting LF. The team has all but anointed him as such. Will he still be there in September? I say not. The most likely scenario is a rotating cast of sub-prime characters, none of whom will be named Jason Dominguez.
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