Of course, you know by now that Aaron Judge removed himself from last night's game due to "right hip discomfort," rousing the potentials for a lost or degraded season.
Judge's magnificent 2022 came with a rare burst of health. His avoidance of the Injury List allowed him to chase Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. Today, we don't know the extent of his ailment - he, himself, may not know. But the Yanks, seeking to protect him through a long, grinding season, might put him on the Injury List. If there is something worse than missing Judge, it's playing him while compromised, flailing at pitches and maybe turning a short-term malady into a season-killer.
So, jeeze, holy shit, goddamm, I mean, WTF...? We all knew this could happen. Judge's tweakless 2022 always looked like an an anomaly. He was destined to get banged up, especially playing coast-to-coast in CF. Tonight offers a vision that, frankly, you might wish to avoid. We pitch Clarke Schmidt - who floundered until his last start, when Boone left him in too long. And we face Jacob deGrom, still infused with the Met stench of Citifield. Without Judge, we have two certified MLB hitters - DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Rizzo - surrounded by carbohydrates. It's a night for Woodstock on the Turner Movie Channel.
But I want to break from the usual doldrums and suggest - gasp - a bit of hope.
The Yankees are about to face their first absolute test of 2023. Throughout baseball history, great teams managed to rise to the occasion when great players went down. In this case, they are losing their captain. It's time for someone to step up, and if they cannot, maybe it will soon be time to start re-thinking the 2023 season.
Brian Cashman, still stunned from the magnitude of his disastrous 2022 trade deadline deals, cannot save us. But could Oswaldo Cabrera? Or Gleyber? Or Michael King? Could Estevan Florial?
Where have you gone Marinaccio, our bullpen turns its lonely eyes to you...
Here's a thought for the Yankees: Crunch Time has come early. We have lost almost everything, and maybe now our captain. Will this team sink like a stone, or is there something worth believing in, something we don't yet know? Or have I been watching too much Ted Lasso? May arrives Monday. By then, we might even have a read on the 2023 Yankees.
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17 comments:
You are correct.....great teams do rise to the occasion when adversity and injuries occur. Since the 2023 Yankees are far from a great team, I think the answer to your question is already known.
BTW, the Bloated Front Office must get rid of Hicks immediately as his presence on the field has become an error-prone folly. He fucked up a chance that other MLB left-fielders would have caught. The look on Gerrit Cole's face was exactly the same as Aaron Judge's face the night before when Hicks screwed up a very catchable fly ball. Of course, the excuse machine on YES went into auto mode when Ryan Ruocco and his broadcast partner, Major Jeff Nelson, tried to blame his botched attempt as being due to the ball "being caught up in the lights". What a crock!
1) "The look on Gerrit Cole's face was exactly the same as Aaron Judge's face the night before when Hicks screwed up a very catchable fly ball."
This x100
The players on the team want to win (obviously)and they know who doesn't belong there.
As far as the Judge thing goes...
2) Cheer up El Duque! It will be alr... Ahhhhhhhhhh. No it won't.
This is bad. The Yankees don't have the talent to compensate.
Unlike when Julius Randle went down the other night which allowed the offense to have better flow and give Obi Toppin more minutes, the Yankees bench was thin to begin with.
Hopefully the kids will step up and they might as well bring up Jake Bauers (Best known from the excellent Howard Hawks film "Bringing Up Bauers").
That said, we're screwed.
Get him out of fuckin CF and ban him from stealing
The fragility of the modern ballplayer continues.
TCM has been airing more and more movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I know, the old demographic is dying off, and when a movie is 30 or 50 years old, I guess it is a classic. But it's hard to think of them as such, at least for me. "Woodstock: The Director's Cut" might be an intriguing anthropological artifact from the days of peace and love, but I think I'd go with yet another rewatching of "John Wick" instead.
I'll wait for an actual classic in the meantime.
This team will sink like an anchor, sink like the Titanic.
You'd think that, after what seemed to be an injury or multiple injuries, or at least a bang up, they'd have rested Judge the first game of the Texas series and maybe even got him evaluated by a wrist doctor, hip doctor, and whatever other doctors are required. But noooooooooooo, Judge is paid 40 mill a year, he's the only scary hitter in the lineup, and he plays every single day.
What's to do, except wait for the inevitable doctor's prognostication that Judge will be out for "x" number of days. A-Rod had to retire because of hip problems, a bone cyst, something degenerative from swinging the bat too much. You certainly have to hope that Judge doesn't have the same kind of thing. Even if Judge is out for "only" four to six weeks, that's the end of the wild card hunt. Look out, Boston Red Sux, here come the Yankees for your cellar position!
Aaron says he's not too concerned about it...
“It was just a little grab in the hip area -- after that headfirst slide … the whole right side has been a little locked up,” Judge said. “The culmination of having that [slide] and a couple of swings today, I just really couldn’t get it loose.”
Why do I think he has a bone bruise?
When will we see Judge again? May Day? Mother's Day? Juneteenth? 4th of July? After All Star Game? Labor Day?
Watch out Chaim Bloom, Cashman's coming for you.
Why in Hell didn't Judge tell the trainers that he couldn't get loose??!! Yeah I know, silly human pride...
Maybe we'll get lucky and Golf LIV will make Hicks an offer he can't refuse.
That said, ditch the Woodstock and cue up The Godfather. I watched it again the other day and, even after seeing it maybe 15 or more times, it never gets old.
I watched Exorcist III: Legion last night. Very good horror movie, extremely underrated, perhaps due to the dive bomb by Exorcist II. They made a mistake naming it III. They should've just called it Legion. I heard George C. Scott almost got a Golden Raspberry award for it. I don't know why. I thought Scott sizzled. He carried it all the way through. It may have been the best movie of his career. Yeah, that's right, better than Patton. Some good laughs in it also.
Lost in the clamor of resigning Judge was his significant injury history, and his history of being a slow healer. It has nothing to do with playing CF, it’s the the physiology of that athletic type (see: Stanton Giancarlo). We’ve been hurtling towards disaster for some time now by building an aging, overpaid roster and now the results are upon us. You can’t blame the players for being what they are and accepting the money (who wouldn’t?) The best thing about this blog (besides the witty commentary) is the central core understanding that this franchise’s recent string of underachievement is mostly caused by inept, greedy, uncaring management who have no accountability and whose only fealty is to the almighty dollar. Maybe there should be term limits on baseball management, along with all politicians, that pope fella and the king of england. Kidding? Not kidding.
Is Boone a manager, a buffoon, or a baboon? He should've taken Judge aside at the start of the year and told him to take it easy on the basepaths and with diving catches in the outfield. Because the team needs him to stay healthy and provide the main thunder for the offense. Boone should've had Judge on the red light/green light system. And he should never have given the green light to run, except for the usual 3 ball 2 strike, 2 outs, runner at first situation or the merry go round with bases loaded and 2 out.
Rizzo and Torres also like to run. They should also be told to stay put, albeit for different reasons. Rizzo is not fast enough. Torres is not only not fast enough but he doesn't even know what the hell he's doing on the basepaths. Anyway, home run or nothing team, they don't need these guys giving away outs trying to steal bases.
So here is another glaring example of why Boone is a lousy manager. The Judge injury is on Boone. And not resting Judge yesterday? That's on Boone as well. And if it were up to me, I wouldn't even play Judge in CF. I'd keep him in RF and I wouldn't move him around.
Well, this is one way to answer the clamor to get Bauers up from SWB.
I'm waiting for Calhoun to get hurt and then they will convert Peraza to a RFer.
Where's Steve Whitaker or Roger Repoz when you need them?
Bill Robinson?
Yes, Hello, Cashman the '67 Yanks are calling.
Great comments all, guys. And to me, this speaks again to the boredom of the modern game.
First they came for the pitchers, then for the everyday players.
Complete games are now as rare as no-hitters. Hitters are constantly put out for weeks at a time after routine slides, catches, even swings. Stanton ruptured himself jogging into second.
The whole game is seriously out of whack—and becoming mind numbingly dull—all in the name of greater exit velocity, more torque, and a dozen other concepts that have more to do with the manufacture of airplanes than the game of baseball.
Hear hear, Hoss
@ Hammer....He's Aaron Buffoone!
@ Horace....Stanton gets hurt because he weight lifts and I'd give 10-1 odds he juices ( or has in the recent past). As A-Rod famously said, there's always a masking agent (In his case it was in his daily chewing gum. Have you seen a recent picture of Bazooka Joe? He's massive and muscle-bound!) to hide the steroid usage. I'd also bet a large number of players, if not a majority, still used PEDs.
Steroid use doesn't help the game, but it does add an entertaining new meaning to "small ball."
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