Last night, the Yankees looked like a boxer who leapfrogs two weight classes, then gets dropped in the 1st round. Frankly, were this a fight, they'd have stopped it.
So goes the mire.
We can tell ourselves that Tampa is merely what the Yankees were last May, when we had ringside seats to the looming collapse. We watched the heroes of YES go from MLB's best to a sorry, .500 collection of stooges, who swing the bat like Dianne Feinstein. And let's be real: This isn't 1927, and the Rays don't have Ruth and Gehrig. They can't continue at a 30-9 pace. Right? They can't. Right? I mean, seriously. They can't... right?
But but BUT... we won't catch 'em.
Nope. It may only be mid-May, but that miracle season ship has sailed. We have no impact player at Triple A, Jasson Dominguez has looked - let's say it out loud - awful at Somerset, and who knows when Carlos Rodon will return? and what he will bring? We've seen complete duds, who come to Gotham and pee themselves. Rodon is hardly unique. He might be another washout.
Last week, Cooperstown Cashman went on Talk Radio to preach hope, and - yeah, okay - I get it: The 2023 season is barely a quarter done. A lotta shit will fly by October, and Tampa will stumble.
But we aint catching the Rays. Nope. Nossir. Notta gonna hoppen.
Our problem? We haven't changed strategy in 20 years, and it's always the same sad, soggy, sorry, stumbling hand: Our owner shoots money out of a firehose to pay players for what they did last year. We are baseball's assisted-living home, for seniors facing their twilight years but are not ready to retire.
Meanwhile, Tampa finds young stars, enjoys their primes, then peddles their asses before the sell-by date. They get new ones. It's a discipline the Yankees simply do not possess. It's a strategy they will never play, because it requires them to do something they absolutely refuse to do: Rebuild the system.
It becomes cringeworthy when the Yankees face a rising team like Tampa. (As it will against Toronto and Baltimore, as well, so get ready to work those cringe muscles.)
Last night saw the last decade compressed into nine tortuous innings. We faced a 27-year-old pitcher - whom the Rays obtained two years ago from Milwaukee, when they dealt away Willy Adames - who becomes Sandy Koufax against us. Batting second was Cuban-born Randy Arozarena - whom they obtained from St. Louis in 2020 - who regularly crushes us. Tampa's ability to gauge rising talent is terrifying. Last July, our inability to do so cost us another season - and put us where we are now, in the mire.
Yank fans love to gloat over Tampa's inability to draw fans. When we come to the Trop, it's half-filled with loud Yankee fans. Our games are broadcast in Tampa, pissing off the Rays. Maybe somebody should televise Rays games in NYC, see what happens. They'd certainly be more fun to watch, eh? Maybe piss off the Yankee organization a bit?
Nope, we're not catching Tampa. The bigger question is whether we can beat Baltimore, Toronto, Boston, Texas, Minnesota and Houston. The game's fathers cannot expand their postseason far enough to make the Yanks a certainty. That wild card chase looks more daunting than ever. Wow. What a letdown...
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42 comments:
And what of Sabean and Minaya?
How are the keeping busy?
How are they helping?
Sabean may be too distracted with real estate to make a impact just yet:
https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/brian-sabean-selling-scottsdale-home/
Truth Fearless Leader.
The sad thing is that you came probably just re-post this every May until we take the Eternal Nap.
You can interchange Rays with O's and/or Jays.
I got the MLB Package back in 2019 so that I would still get Yankee games, and well, I never "unsubscribe" so I get it every year.
Now I watch almost as many O's games as Yanks cuz they are fun .
Also watch Dodgers and Mets to remind me that other heavy weight spenders suck too.
Also , Just from an analytical perspective, I am looking forward to the 2026-2027 seasons to see how decrepit Judge and Stanton are as they wheel them out. Also Cole and Rodon will be interesting too.
Postgame May 12, 2027, Boone will explain that Hicks is just hitting his stride, Sevy has progressed to long toss and Rortveld will make his Yankee debut around June 1.
I was looking at the box score and it hit me--the solution to our often woeful RISP performances.
The trick is, just don't get any runners in scoring position! Simple and obvious, but so easy to overlook.
Last night, we were 1-4 with RISP, which isn't completely horrible because, come one, 4 runners in scoring position throughout the whole game? 1-4 ain't great but it's not as bad as we can be a lot of times.
Here we were, tearing our hair out because we can't knock guys in, when the answer was staring us in the face the whole time.
I expect a bonus check from Cashman.
Duque, you just said it all. I can only add what myself and others have said many times here - that ownership’s profit-first, non fan approach is what has caused our current malaise. (I get that some franchise’s fans, if not their owners, would kill for such a malaise) Yankee ownership and management seems very insulated, with few new voices or even the hope of a new approach. Those more recently invited into the inner circle, such as Boone, are those who are happy to ape the company line and will never rock the boat. We have been outclassed and de-pantsed by a smaller franchise but go about the same old same old as if it never happened. Here’s my most unpopular take which if I posted on any other forum I would be branded a heretic, the Yankee logo ripped from cap as I’m drummed out the fanbase like Chuck Connors in “Branded”: we never should have re-signed Judge, especially to such a millstone contract. In a few short years he will be playing First Base, hitting 20 homers a year while still striking our 150 times. (at his current pace, he will hit 24 homers this season) Don’t misunderstand: I like Judge, a very good all around player who plays hard and conducts himself with class and professionalism. But not extending him would have been the perfect beginning to reset the franchise. Instead we’re trapped in an endless cycle of repetition, of 30+ fading, overpaid stars supplemented by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of underperforming spare parts. Unless several of our minor leaguers take giant steps forward, I see no hope for the immediate future.
But but but...
Let's look at the bright side: THIS COULD BE OUR YEAR!!!
We finally have something to cheer about: the Yankees could finally hit bottom, like an alcoholic drinking his way to his last bender. The basement awaits! A top ten draft pick!
And best of all, the potential for the final sighting of The Intern and Babooooone! (mind you, it's only potential, like a Gary Sanchez AAA at-bat). We keep hoping for better days, but surrender only happens when the house comes crashing down on our heads, and it looks like that is about to happen!
The Intern built the team he'd been begging for and it reached it's high water (or gin, bourbon, or scotch) mark back in 2017 and we are now in the midst of the longest hangover in Yankees history. (Let us never forget that he grew up rooting for the Dodgers - need I say more about him?) He keeps spending money hoping to disguise the problem, but we can no longer fool ourselves into thinking Harold is going to sober up and enter a rehab one day, taking both of those incompetent turds with him.
So, start cheering! Root for the demise of it all! Root for ongoing YES camera sightings of Giancarlo Stanton staring forlornly out of the Yankees dugout. Root for the next setback in Sevy's return. Scan the internet for Jackie sightings.
WE MUST SUMMON THE STRENGTH TO HAVE AN INTERVENTION!! PRAY TO THE JUJU GODS FOR THE CELLAR (unless by doing so the gods screw us all and take this AAAA team to the world series). CHEER FOR THE SWEEP WE ALL FEAR IS COMING THIS WEEKEND!
WE MUST LOSE AND LOSE BIG!!! IT'S THE ONLY WAY WE CAN EVER HOLD OUR HEADS HIGH AND LORD IT OVER THE REST OF THE BASEBALL WORLD IN A WAY THAT WE ARE ENTITLED TO!
JM, are you sure that you don't work for the death barge's ANALytical department?
Dick,
Your post reminds me of the definition of (successful) third marriages -- the triumph of hope over experience. Much like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football.
While it would make me happy, I fear it is just to good to hope for.
I am torn between the Yanks doing well and the Yanks getting embarrassed...
JM, right now we would pick 18th next year, according to Talkathon.
We can't even suck well!
[Ah, but it's still early there are 60 or so more games to put in the loss column.]
@ DickAllen, Yep, we've gotta have something to hope for, right?
El Duque, the Yankees won't rebuild a talented and flourishing farm system like they had in years gone by. Because it takes what Tampa has and we do not-competency and effort.
The difference in their strategy is analogous to the US and, say, a small NATO ally. In America, with a very bloated defense budget, the way we plan to procure a top-notch jet fighter with cutting edge technology is to throw money at it. No real planning. We just pay the defense industry to build 5 different jets and hope that one works without blowing up the grandstand where the military brass watch the takeoff and landing. Not so with a small ally. With limited resources, one must apply sound planning and careful vetting of any project.
Which brings back to baseball. The Yankees organization and front office are bloated, fat and lethargic, whereas the Rays work on a shoe-string budget and can only survive as contenders by finding great executive talent. They give them a career start and those people eventually move on to other organizations much like their players. It works. How many new faces do they Yankees poach from other teams? Pretty much none-except this year when they hired Sabean and Minaya and they were jobless. Only in the Yankees organization can the executives treat their jobs as a no-show positions and, as Above Average posted up top, sell real estate on the side.
@ BTR999, It's true that Judge will become another millstone contract, but I like that they re-signed him, if only because he's the only thing to watch here, as Hoss says. Anyway, they could've gotten rid of a bunch of other millstones last winter, but no can do. They refuse to to it, I should say. They keep collecting millstones here. One guy with a huge contract is okay, especially when he's still producing right now. But it's the other millstones that are sucking the life out.
And your prediction that there's no hope unless some of the minor leaguers suddenly develop, yeah, I thought the same thing. And there is really no reason why they shouldn't cut or trade some of the millstones here and bring up the best kids right fucking now. Well, we know the reason: this is the Brian Cashman Yankee show, a team full of millstone contracts and half ass lineup and roster put together with patches and duct tape. Cashman never brings up minor league kids because they're not yet "finished". He only brings up the fringe guys who are 29 years old and hit .120.
What would help the Yankees is if MLB went to the tier system that the English Soccer league uses. Then they could drop down and annihilate OAK, KC, Pittsburgh, etc and win a championship!
What really pisses me off about this team is the constant use of these retreads, Jack Bauer, Raunchy Fraunchy, Haystacks Calhoun and if they happen to hit a HR, then the media jumps on it and how Ca$hman is a genius for finding these guys.
Why not bring up Florial, Chaparro and Periera and give them a chance. I just don't understand Do they think we are are really that stupid or do they just have NO desire to put in the effort to build a championship team?
@ JM, Yeah, we do that long enough, and Cashman will say we have a good hitting team with RISP. Stats are just a tool to help analyze. They are subject to varying interpretations. They can be twisted and misused. I don't know what people Cashman has working in his "analytics department" but they're probably college intern bozos who flunked math. He probably does the same thing with the analytics as with the coaching and scouting. He hires incompetents who come cheap or nepotizing rich schmucks who need sinecures. The organization's management and support staff is rotten from the head all the way to the bottom.
And who fosters the same old boring, tired strategy. Nerd, Geek, clueless, Genius Cashman!
@ Celerino, I think it's both. The fans keep filling the seats. So they figure the charade is working. And why rock the boat, when everything (financially speaking) is going great? They have no desire to win. I have said it before and I'll say it again. They have zero desire to win.
If they bring up a bunch of kids, they figure that might cut into ticket sales. They also don't want to trade a bunch of high salaries and bring up kids. Because suddenly lowering their costs might cause short term profits to skyrocket, which would cause suddenly higher taxes for all these rich parasite part owners like HAL. So instead, they bring in retreads from elsewhere, play them until they stop producing, then bring in another retread. It ain't about winning. It's all about their goddamned finances.
Two things I saw on Reddit
1) From Katie Sharps Twitter:
"Yankees have scored 4 or fewer runs in 15 of their last 17 games against teams not named the Oakland A's
9:50 PM · May 11, 2023"
That's just insanely bad
2) Not sure who this is from but...
Jasson Dominguez: Last 12 Games (.317/.462, 1.096 OPS)
youtu.be/C_mXr4...
@ Doug K., The Martian got off to a terrible start in the minors, something like 0 for 30 or 1 for 30. Because he was swinging at everything and trying to hit everything out so he could get back to the majors. We expected him to get back on track and it looks like he is.
I think it was a bad decision not to just stick him in LF with the Yankees. Now, a quarter season has gone by and Yanks have been treading water. Would they have been any worse with Jasson in LF? He would already have major league experience. Probably would've learned more in this short time than playing a full year of minor leagues. When the bar is Hicks, what the hell have the Yankees to lose? Jasson would only need to play better than Hicks. I don't care if The Martian is still green. Half asleep, he is going to be a thousand times better than Hicks.
If he continues to get better, they should bring him up soon. DFA Hicks. Trade a couple of fringe players.
I also heard Austin Wells is swinging the bat great. Why not carry three catchers? Wells can DH most of the time, while learning the position and getting used to the pitching staff here.
999, I hear what you're saying about the Judge contract. But it's not like the saved money is going to go anywhere of use.
The Yanks SHOULD have made a decision on Judge during or even BEFORE the 2021 season (when, incidentally, he would have been much, much cheaper to re-sign). Same thing as with LeMahieu, a multi-talented player I love to watch...who was also probably not worth his big contract extension.
But the Yankees just let these decisions hang fire, until they are not really "decisions" at all. I don't know what they are waiting to see. Are they hoping/worrying that Judge or LeMahieu will sustain some career-killing injury, quit baseball to join a monastery, or...somethin'?
I dunno. But what I do know is that the money saved therein will never go to any useful end, because—as Carl Weitz notes—our front office is bloated and lethargic. I would add incompetent and arrogant...
...So, as a fan, I would rather watch Judge have another few amazing seasons—maybe—than see him save HAL money that will only end up being spent on the Franchy Corderos or the Drew Hensons of the world.
We always have these debates, and they're always much better, smarter debates than anything to be found in the media (another way in which the Yankees, as 999 notes, manage to insulate themselves from failure).
But it always comes down to the same thing: Brian Cashman is not capable of building a world championship by himself, and HAL, for whatever reason, is not capable of firing him.
So here we are.
I have not seen anyone address the following paradox: there is incessant disparaging of analytics on this site. Yet the Rays are the most rigorously analytics-oriented team in the game--and they constently excel on a payrall one quarter that of the Yankees. So perhaps the problem is not analytics but the fact that Cashman and his management team are too dumb to handle the theory and practice of analytics? The mere fact that Cashman maintains a separate analytics ghetto department signals that he does not give advanced analysis full priority. The Rays do not have an analytics department--the entire front office is the analytics department. So analytics can't be both what's propelling the Rays AND sabotaging the Yankees. The problem is that that Cashman lacks the smarts to apply analytics creatively and effectively. I could give countless examples--but the mere fact that he has freighted the team with so many long-term contracts for thirty-somethings in their declining years tells you that the guy is DUMB and has no clue about analytics or anything else that requires above-average cognitive skills.
HA! I just saw tonight's lineup, and Volpe has finally been ousted from the leadoff spot in favor of Torres, who has a much more respectable--if not stellar--OBP. Volpe is batting seventh. This is precisely the lineup shakeup I recommended in my post on this subject of yesterday, which I will reproduce below as unequivocal proof that Cashman reads this blog and follows our advice closely--so expect him to resign any day now.
From yesterday:
Given Volpe's history in the minors and his performance so far this year--all of which show a meh OBP in significant sample sizes at upper levels of competition--he should be demoted to sixth or seventh in the batting order, and someone with a better track record should lead off. The pickings aren't great, but LeMahieu, Bader (at least during this hot streak--his OBP history is impoverished), even Torres would make more sense. For now Volpe's BA is south of the Mendoza line, and his OPB is lousy as well--.292 is well below league average of .320--which is a low bar, given that OBP operates on a different scale than BA. Volpe's persistent placement in the leadoff spot is more about merchandising and star-making machinery than sound baseball judgment.
May 11, 2023 at 11:30 PM
Rasmussen goes on 60 day DL. Proof that the tampons hate the Yankees.
A sweep would give the Rays a 12-game lead over the .500 Yankees on May 14.
Do you think that would instigate changes? Boone out? Cashman kicked upstairs? Hicks just kicked?
"Rasmussen goes on 60 day DL." Pitch clock injury?
Did anyone hear if they gave a reason John isn't there? His absence from a home game is concerning...
Cashman is an executive with a 115 IQ in an industry full of executives with 135 IQ.
Oh, I now see that John iwas out yesterday, too.
Publius, you give Ca$hole waaaaaaaaaaay too much credit.
Mustang, Get very concerned if the Yankees' corporate stooges say he's day to day.
Rufus: Har!
So there are no right answers with this team. No leads that are safe. No great plays rewarded. No proper pitching changes. They only know how to lose now.
Unbelievable.
How does Cashman sleep at night? I mean besides his highest in MLB guaranteed $5 Million a year with no ramifications for a track record of near misses, full misses, and god awful what was he thinking misses? No matter the outcome Brian is Steinbrenner's Golden Boy.
Oh, and it seems that Boone is right next to Cashman in the Golden Boy department.
The price of the Rizzo bobblehead just went way up.
Yankees Win!!!
I can't believe what I'm seeing. We won. Wow.
That was a big win!
That was FUN> All Hail The Mandalorian!
A true hometown win: on a pop fly that would be a homerun in no other MLB park. This team is going nowhere.
The ghost of George Lucas (and his goiter) too the rescue
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