The problem: Next comes Clarke Schmidt. Behind him, they are 1-5.
Delete Cole's starts, and the Yanks are 6 games below .500 and a blue moon behind Tampa. Convert half of those games into losses, and that Death Star distress siren would be bellowing over the Bronx, over Prince Hal's frantic proclamations of fealty to the comedy team of Cash & Boonie.
Without Cole, we'd be witnessing the worst Yankee team in this millennium, and NY sports radio would be doing Alex Jones on the front office. Instead, on his daily fart-fest, Michael Kay yesterday defended Cooperstown Cashman. Kay said the injuries are nobody's fault, even if the GM blew up the farm system last July in a torrent of disastrous trades that now threaten to define his career.
Benintendi had been an injury magnet in Boston, the second coming of Jacoby. That's one of the reasons they punted on him.
Effross was among the NL league leaders in games pitched when the Yankees traded for him. The Cubs had pumped him dry.
Bader was already hurt, blowing the old maxim that you don't trade for injured players.
Montas' shoulder woes were known across baseball. He'd been on the IL just a month earlier.
Between 2021-22, Trivino appeared in 135 games, among the most in baseball. Did the Yankees think his arm was made of rubber?
Add Luis "Setback" Severino and Carlos Rodon, who dodged injuries last year for nearly the first time in his career, and it's hard to chalk this up to bad luck.
And then there is Cole. Without him, the Yankees would be facing a tabloid feeding frenzy. But Cole missed time last season, and he'll probably need a rest again.
So how do you avoid injuries bad luck? Well, maybe you use younger, ascending players, rather than the Donaldsons and the Hicks. Last night's win was led by Anthony Volpe, one of only three rising players in the lineup - the others being Oswald Peraza and Oswaldo Cabrera.
The Yankees cannot Willie Calhoun their way to a world series.
Soon, Cashman might punt on Oswaldo, a charismatic kid whom Yank fans have loved since his first bleacher roll call. He's not hitting, but his history shows him eventually blooming, if given the chance. Some team will. The question is, will it be the Yankees? Are we learning anything?
Schmidt tonight. Then Tampa this weekend. It doesn't get easier.
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32 comments:
Trivino, Tommy John. Rodon, continuing mysterious back ailment.
Every move Cashman has made in recent seasons has been an exploding cigar in all our faces. Yet sycophants like Kay continue to defend him and completely ignore the stupidity of all those trades, as if dispersing the next generation of Yankees around the majors for broken-down players was a brilliant move--if only the injuries hadn't happened!
So the bullshit chain continues to grow. Hal to Cashman to Boone to Kay. How's Jack Curry holding up? He's sucking up to Yankee greatness with his books and has been a little bit of an apologist for a long time. But I guess we can't expect much better from a guy who cashes YES paychecks.
JM - that is of course why it’s called YES.
Yes men and Yes women.
And Yes everyone in between.
They should just rename the team at this point.
Change it from the Yankees too . . .
The Yessies.
Even YES knows about it...7 GAMES IN 10 DAYS vs. the Rays. We could be looking at the end of the season in 10 days...and I'm usually the optimistic one here...
The Rays learned a long time ago that you don't sign players to long expensive contracts, or trade for them like Stanton, which take them well into their 30s as their skills slowly erode, see DJL. They either jettison them and take a draft pick or trade them.
Maybe they would have signed Hicks 5 years ago to something smaller than he got from ASSman, but he would have been gone at least 2 years ago.
The Yankees never learned. They think that the allure of the Pinstripes is a magic elixir.
Just have your scouts scout the Rays scouts and do what they do.
Boneheads .
Rodon yesterday:
“He’s just not moving how he needs to,” Boone said. “He’s a pretty dynamic, electric guy. That’s the hard thing. We have to make sure we’re getting as many eyes on it as we can to determine the best course of action.”
So he's electric? Maybe just unplug him and plug him back in?
Imagine signing LeMahieu, Hicks, Stanton, and Rodon to long-term deals. And then for extra sugar trading for Montas, Bader, Bortreveddtt, and Kahnle, guys who came pre-injured, and Jackie The Cackling Asshole who sucks up 7.5% of the payroll and sucks the life out of the team. How does that bald biscuit remain employed?
“The Yankees cannot Willie Calhoun their way to a world series.”
Hell, this team of has-beens and never-weres won’t even be able to Willie Calhoun their way to a wild card spot.
For future generations, that statement will always be emblematic of “The Cashman Era” in the same way we look back on an equally memorable time in Yankees history known as “The Horace Clarke Years.”
Here’s an neat idea for a stadium promotional giveaway:
IIHIIFIIC HYPE HANKY DAY in the Bronx. Sponsored by Jeep.
First 911 fans get an oversized, commemorative, 100% polyester, machine washable hype hanky to help wipe away all those 2023 tears.
Have it take place sometime in late August when we’re sitting 20 something games back.
El Duque - I’d be happy to offer up a couple of designs ideas.
To paraphrase Pluto Blutarsky when viewing this shit show,
"60 years of fandom down the drain. I should have joined the Peace Corp."
As the greatest GM What Ever Was liked to say: "Luck is the residue of design."
What was that show recently where people got their memories wiped for work? Apparently, that happened to Kay. The Yanks starting in 2018 have ALWAYS sustained massive injuries, EVERY year.
How can that be? Bad luck?
As our Peerless Leader notes, the Yanks are the residue of constantly acquiring and relying on aging, chronically injured players.
I suspect they are also the residue of letting or encouraging them to spend as much time in the weight room as possible, leaving them impossibly tight to last a full season.
Some years ago now, if you'll recall, Cashman promised a postseason "investigation" into the constant avalanche of Yankee injuries. Still waiting for that report. Yeah, Cashie is all about self-examination. But if he wants to really delve into what's eating up the Yankees, all he need do is look at how it was that Judge detached himself from the team's trainers and coaches, got himself back on the field, and ran up one of the greatest seasons in major-league history.
(Of course, he took himself off the field this year by trying to steal third, head first, with a 5-0 lead, but never mind. There's no helping stupid.)
And great point, Archie and Mildred.
Yes, the Yankees should have a much better farm system. No, they shouldn't sign guys who are so old or so constantly injured to big, long-term contracts.
BUT...the Yanks' huge money/market advantage should enable them to risk such deals and get away with them. As his innumerable sycophants like to point out, HAL does spend close to the spending limit cap, every year. But when things go wrong, he's unwilling to adjust.
"Hey, you break it, you bought it" seems to be his attitude toward people like Hicks...as if keeping people like Hicks on the roster doesn't hurt HIS team and HIS brand.
This is why our inheritance taxes need to be much, much larger.
After listening to Michael KAYYYYYYYYYY. Who is more in touch with reality, Kay or Joe Biden?
The Cashman and Hal regime---As the doctor shouted in the "Eye of the Beholder" Twilight Zone episode: "No change!, no change at all!"
Back to losing. They are going to get their asses royally kicked in Tampa.
Rather than go nuclear negative today, I’ll try to rationalize a bit.
With their unlimited financial resources, why is there so much mediocrity behind the scenes? Leave upper management aside (wish we could), coaching, scouting, medical, analytics, player development all seem to be lacking. We should be world class in all those fields. Archie mentioned above that we should imitate the Rays. I’ll go one better: we should be hiring people away from successful organizations to bring their knowledge here. The cost would be a pittance compared to what we piss away on aging, injured, underperforming players. AAA should be stocked with young players instead of other teams castoffs. There is no shame in hiring the best people. Our purported standard is excellence; instead, I see a second rate organization crippled by a lack of innovation and imagination that seems to refute critical thinking on every level and prefers hiring acolytes that are happy to merely tow the company line.
The great Leonard Cohen wrote: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”.
BTR - With all due respect to both you and the great Leonard Cohen - there are somethings that never see the light. Regardless of their number of cracks.
@btn999...we have not been in the position to get good draft choices because we get in the playoffs every year. This franchise will not embrace tanking because it costs too much money to tank...but we all know that this is the answer to the problem which is way overdue...
Ranger - That's true. That said, there are hundreds of players available in every draft. Granted we don't get the elite ones but not every good player in MLB was a first round pick. So they are out there you just have to identify them better.
Add international free agents etc. and there is plenty of opportunity to build a solid core.
Tampa hasn't tanked in ages, yet they're good every year. They keep the ball rollin' to 1st place finishes, not just wild card exits and trips to the bank.
It's obvious that the scouting and coaching in this organization is pitifully bad. Second rate? Nah, I'd say it's third rate or fourth rate. Close to about as bad as it can get.
The funniest part of all this is that guys like Sonny Gray and Joey Gallo are back in the black. So that says everything about our coaching.
Mildred, I wonder if the whole team is electric, like Rodon, and they all need a reboot. My IT specialist brother-in-law once pointed out to me that rebooting solves 90% of computer problems. Maybe an exaggeration, but basically correct.
So the thing we have to do is, turn off the entire team. Let them sit. Maybe sedated. Do nothing.
And then, a couple of days later, boot them up again.
If only we had saved the 98 Yanks to an external hard drive. Then we could reboot them to take the place of this collection of odds and ends.
Tampa Bay has been pretty good for the last 15 years. They find guys
ranger
It seems like in baseball only the first 3 or 4 picks each year are sure things. The Prospect Graveyard is full of 1st round picks. So unless you want to tank to a top 4 pick, it really isn't worth it.
Their failure, in may opinion is scouting. International signings have not been good considering our resource advantage and the rest of the scouting is middling at best.
Volpe is almost the exception, as was Judge. Going "against the book" and drafting talent PLUS character and work ethic worked with those two. Things not measured by analytics geeks.
They get cute with great arms that slid because of injury [Duh!!] and switching hitting HS catchers.
P.S. JUST FOLLOW THE RAYS SCOUTS EVERYWHERE THEY GO.
I think Tampa is consistently good because they're managed by humans instead of number-crunching ding dongs.
The more I see of the post-2000 Yankees and the more I read about how they're one of the most analytics-based organizations, the more I respect smart "baseball guys."
And while we're dumping on the coaching staff, the scouts, and the international contingent, let's not forget that Boone--who can only field the team he's given--keeps trotting Holmes out as a closer when he's clearly not a closer. When King, who was the closer heir apparent last year before that elbow fracture, is clearly the better pitcher and the better closer by light years.
There may be totally competent guys in the Yankees hierarchy somewhere, but they're not visible to us outsiders.
999, I've been saying that—literally—for years. Good organizations start with good management. Hire the guys who make it work. They'll be a helluva lot cheaper—and much surer bets—than the ballplayers Cashie keeps bringing in.
Instead of pissing away money on guys like Rondon, etc. I'd offer the TB head of scouts a blank check to come work for me.
Celerino, if Kay could produce a full-employment economy and support freedom in Ukraine, he could say what he likes, far as I'm concerned.
HC, I think you need another bud light
Now THAT'S the ultimate insult! Lite beer...AAAGH! :)
HC - have a double IPA on me.
@Archangel...I get your point, but, let's say the Yanks tank one year. They get top 4 pick in each of the rounds...take a look at Baltimore who got something like 6 picks in the first four rounds and tell me that would not turn around a franchise in 3 years...
https://www.baseballamerica.com/draft-history/mlb-draft-database/#/?Year=2022&Round=0&TeamId=1002&Position=&SchoolName=&FourYearSchoolType=false&JuniorCollegeType=false&HighSchoolType=false&OtherSchoolType=false&StateOrCountry=&Signed=&SigningBonusMin=0&SigningBonusMax=0&PlayerName=&OverallNumber=0
They need one of these years. Yanks have been drafting mostly pitchers recently because that's what is in demand...arms because they break down more frequently. And the Yanks are not going to get any good picks back because all they have to trade is damaged goods.
And that's what Tampa does...trades players at high value before their contracts expire and get young valued prospects or draft choices...but before we choose that model, how many championships Tampa has won? How many?....You know the answer....and that surprises folks who don't follow baseball...
Ranger, with a 200+ million dollars payroll for the past 20 years, the Yankees have won 1 more WS than TB, Oak, Pittsburg, the Red, Tigers, Padres, Colorado, Twin, etc. The Yankees model isn't working either. Tanking only helps if you have competent people drafting players.
@ ranger_lp, Tampa hasn't won anything yet, but ... they're working on it. They'll win one sooner or later. They came pretty close a few years ago. They only lost because of a dumb base running blunder, trying to steal home, by a guy with a beard the size of a pizza box. (If he'd been clean shaven, I swear I think he makes it. He was out by literally one inch. Maybe less than an inch. Clean shaved, he'd have made it due to less air resistance.) And I think smartass Kevin Cash might have made one pitching change blunder, but it was a big one.
The management, scouting, and coaching are what makes the difference. The Yankee organization has got to get its act together. It is rotten, putrified, petrified, thoroughly rusted out, crumbling into dust. Clean house and get people who know what they're doing. Until then, it's going to be the same old mess here.
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