City of Stars

 

"This is New York City. Fans want the stars."

So pronounced our Maximum Leader, HAL, the other day. 

This isn't true, of course. Mostly, it's just another salvo in Yankees management's endless propaganda barrage, designed to establish that we the fans are the real problem, never allowing the crack Bronx braintrust to scrape this sinking ship to the gunwales, and embark on the stem-to-stern rebuilding program they have just been dying to get started on.

Bologna.

As one of us pointed out, New Yorkers don't care so much about stars as they do winning. (And I suspect that we have this in common with, oh...all fans everywhere.)

One of the most delightful seasons in my memory was 1976, when the Yanks swept to a pennant with a minimum of actual stars (Munson, Hunter, and maybe Nettles or Randolph? Sparky?) and our mercurial manager sucking up most of the oxygen. This would later prove to be a problem but oh, it was fun while it lasted!

Another great year was 1996—again, with a team mostly devoid of guys who were considered stars yet—and one in which we went all the way, with what was also one of the most likable Yankees teams ever assembled.

But as the estimable Neil Keefe, author of the keefetothecity blog that is the only Yankees blog approaching (or even exceeding!) ours in pith and wisdom points out, the only "stars" on the 2023 Yanks are Aaron Judge and (maybe) Gerrit Cole (Though I have my doubts as to whether a No. 1 starter who can never get past the 6th inning is really a "star.").

Everyone else on the roster is a wannabe-star or a supernova, exploded long, long ago, in a galaxy far away—though only now does our management pick up traces of their demise on their franchise Hubbell telescope (named, of course, for King Carl Hubbell).

My friend James, who is far and away the most fervent Yankees fan on the West Coast, sends these statistics for our "stars" since the one real star has been occluded:

Anthony Rizzo:  .038/.167/.038

"Big G" Stanton: .091/.231/.227

Donaldson:          .091/.222/.364

The Gleyber:       .200/.310/.440

DJ:                       .217/.250.391

Various excuses can be offered for this. LeMahieu and Rizzo are obviously injured (Somehow, our cracking training staff, which cannot figure out how to get a player back on the field with a sprained toe ligament, has yet to figure out that Rizzo was obviously concussed, or is suffering from some even worse neck/head problem.).  

But Donaldson and "Big G," as noted here yesterday, are likely washed-up. The Estimable Keefe pointed out that—even before his 1 (single)-for-12, 1 walk, 6 strikeout performance in Boston, that Stanton is at .213/.295/.468 for his last 132 games.  

These guys are not stars. They are more like red dwarves—sorry, red little stars. Which are dead—than anything else, and it's time to sweep them into the Black Hole of baseball oblivion. New York fans, who are not idiots, recognize this.

The trouble is, as Keefe also points out—Maureen Dowd-style, I have decided to let others do most of the work on this post—our Five Caballeros are being paid $95.7 million between them this season, or more than the payrolls of the TB Rays, Orioles, Reds, Guardians, Royals, Nationals, and Athletics (a depressing number of which have better records than our slugabeds.).

This is not going to change anytime soon. If ever. But remember: it's all your fault. HAL has told us so.