Tuesday, June 20, 2023

It's too early to start rooting for a Yankee meltdown. Soon, though, that could change...

Lemme be clear: It would be awful to watch the '23 Yankees - the Edmund Fitzgerald of baseball teams - collapse. All that talent, all that potential, all that - um - inherited money - pitched overboard, while the orcas celebrate. (They hate us; who can blame them?) No matter how jaded we've become, we cannot want such an outcome. 

Not yet, anyway. 

Thus far, if these Yankees were a movie, they would rank on Rotten Tomatoes between the Children of the Corn remake and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the river of plasma slasher fest. We crapped the mattress in Boston, and we are not contenders for the AL East, where Tampa and Baltimore might dominate for years. 

Of course, if Aaron Judge returns and hits 50 HRs, the Yankees could snag a wild card slot and, from there, who knows? Ted Lasso, right? 

It is too early to root for an orchestrated Yankee collapse, the kind Boston and Houston have used to build championship teams, while the Death Barge has maintained its also-ran status.

But July 4 is two weeks away, and the MLB trade deadline just six. It's time to ponder what could happen if the Yanks continue their sorry slide, and if the front office finally faces reality. (Big "if" there.) Would we not be better served by trading valuable veterans for youngsters who might someday win something?

In particular, let's consider three players.

1. Gleyber Torres. It feels like he's 30, but he's 26 - younger than Jake Bauers, Willie Calhoun and IKF - and his .256 batting average seems almost Ruthian in this banjo lineup. He's on course to hit 25 HRs, and you know what? He's not the next Jeter, or even the next Robbie, but he's not that bad. He's eligible for arbitration next winter. He could bring a few decent prospects, and Anthony Volpe - if he ever hits - might move to 2B anyway.

2. DJ LeMahieu. A respected veteran, a utility gold glove, a fine clutch hitter - he'd be perfect for a young team like Baltimore. The O's have a lush farm system, thanks to their 10-year institutional barf, and the Yankees could get younger. Any decent team should love to have LeMahieu. We have him for three more years. Where is he going to play?  

3. Luis Severino. He runs hot and cold. If by late July, he's on a roll, maybe the Yanks should drink some ice water and move him. He'll be a free agent this winter. Put him on the block and see what happens. Bidding war, maybe? It sure would be nice to get something before Setback Sevy's next tweak. And if we miss the guy, re-sign him in December!

Okay, before you get angry, let's mention the unmentionables: Jackie and Giancarlo. 

First, we'll get nuthin for neither. That's the reality. But but BUT... if a contender suddenly faced a hole at 3B, we might find a taker for Donaldson. It's obvious that he needs to get out of NY. A couple 18-year-olds, maybe? 

As for Stanton, you need hallucinogens to imagine anyone taking his contract, unless Hal Steinbrenner eats five years. But why not? Do the Yankees seriously expect him to be their everyday DH until 2031? Yikes. He already looks done. (He'll probably get hot soon; he can't be this bad, right?) At some point, Hal will be wolfing down Giancarlo's salary like Joey Chestnut at the Nathan's contest. Sooner the better.

But right now, it's too soon to root for a swoon. Save it for July.

28 comments:

  1. Why do we talk about this. They aren't trading people away. They will trade more prospects for 30+ pitchers or DH's to keep the playoff steak alive. There is no planning ahead for this team, they don't have anyone capable of doing that.

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  2. As usual, you rolled a strike. Trading Stanton is of course a huge stretch, as is DJ. That is a hell of a lot of money for Hal to swallow. I don't want Sevy back for any reason. But if he gets on a roll then the Dodgers might have something that we can use. GM Friedman said that they most likely will be hunting for pitching. I have complete confidence that OUR BRAIN will maneuver like Patton in Europe...

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  3. Like 5 O’clock - isn’t it July somewhere?

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  4. The mark of insanity..... expecting the Yanks to change.

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  5. The Archangel speaks truth to power. Well, us anyway.

    Unwavering positivity.

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  6. All those are great trade ideas...but they are being filed away in the fiction section...

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  7. Haiku Tuesday:

    Positivity

    Unwavering Once but Now

    Negativity

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  8. It is later than you think.

    Hold tight
    Wait 'til the party's over
    Hold tight
    We're in for nasty weather
    There has got to be a way
    Burning down the house

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  9. Does the idea that “It gets late early around here” hold any water?

    This might just be our year. Let the captain(s) go down with the ship.

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  10. @ DickAllen, "Hold tight/We're in for nasty weather"

    For a moment, I thought that was the Creedence Clearwater song Bad Moon Rising. Then saw "burning down the house" and knew it was Talking Heads.

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  11. The ship be sinkin'.

    A suggestion for a new anthem song for the New York Yankees: AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top, If You Want to Rock n Roll" should be tweaked into "It's a Long Way to the Bottom, If You Wanna Swallow Water". Comes complete with BIG, LOUD bagpipes section.

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  12. Yeah, but when everybody on the IL is back and we have our "real" team out there...

    God, I almost spit my coffee just typing that.

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  13. Cabrera sent down to Scranton. Donaldson considering retirement after this year.

    Too late, Jackie.

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  14. Hammer: A great idea for an exit song when the Yankees lose:

    Hope you got your things together
    Hope you are quite prepared to die
    Looks like we're in for nasty weather
    One eye is taken for an eye

    Well, don't go around tonight
    Well, it's bound to take your life
    There's a bad moon on the rise

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  15. "...if a contender suddenly faced a hole at 3B..."

    Or, if a contender suddenly needs an a-hole at 3B.

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  16. Anyone here ever have a dream where you take a dump in the toilet, but the shit keeps coming out of your caboose, until the toilet is overflowing, and then the whole house is filled up, and then the whole house explodes with shit?

    According to Erich Fromm's fabulous book "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness", that is a "necrophilic dream". A danger sign of a diseased mind that wants to destroy the world and turn it into a ball of exploding shit. There is a whole section on necrophilia in that book. I remember reading it back in high school, and I have been unable to forget about it. My mind has been seared with the image of the "necrophilic dream".

    What's this have to do with the New York Yankees? Well, it occurred to me to ask if you think Brian Cashman or HAL has this dream every night?

    Perhaps Erich Fromm can add the Yankees, Brian & HAL in a new section to a revised edition of his book. The New York Yankees: a case study in necrophilic madness, how the greatest sports franchise in the world turned into a mountain of dung.

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  17. Donaldson is Done

    Save those forks put them away

    Release him Today

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  18. DJ LeMahieu is turning 35 years old in a month, he's signed through 2026 at $15M a pop, and has hit a pathetic .227/.289/.354 (.643 OPS) in his last 100 games.

    No one is touching his contract, much less a Baltimore ownership that seems very unwilling to spend.

    The Yankees would have to pay in prospects to dump LeMahieu at this point.

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  20. Like I posted yesterday, time to punt is upon us. I vote for youth movement ASAP.

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  21. Would trade any of them in a heartbeat.

    But - if you were a rival GM who would you want? Nobody wants Donaldson, DJLM. Stanton. Why would they? Hicks got picked up because he was signed for the pro-rated minimum with no future obligations. We are still paying him, his salary counting against the salary cap for the next 3 seasons.

    Severino might have value if we some eat some of his contract since he is a FA after this season. Under no circumstances should he be re-signed.

    That leaves Torres, our only true tradable asset. His value declines every day as his team control decreases. He should be traded as soon as possible.

    The most astounding part of this? The incompetent underachiever who created all this, who succeeds only in swabbing the owners ass with his tongue, was recently given a 5 year extension and a ringing stamp of approval. Sadly, and I hope this is not true, some of us here will not see another Championship in our lifetimes.

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  23. “who succeeds only in swabbing the owners ass with his tongue”

    Golly gee Mr 999 :<—

    That’s a moment, that if I ever were to see in real life would absolutely guarantee that I wouldn’t be around long enough to see another championship in my lifetime.

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  24. On a sad note, and this is for real, nypost.com reports that former Yankee George Frazier has passed away. He was on the 1981 Yankee team that lost the World Series (that brings back bad memories). But it says he did go out a winner when he won the World Series with the 1987 Twins in his final year. And he was a Colorado broadcaster. I'm glad he got one! R.I.P. George Frazier.

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  25. The proposition of trading whatever valuable and underachieving veterans to playoff/WS contenders makes a whole lot of sense. But here's the Catch-22: Cashman will oversee this overhaul so he will once again get fleeced by other GMs and any rising star the Yankees are lucky enough to pluck will be stuck in Cashman's incompetent minor league system where future MLB talent goes to die. So, it makes no difference whether we stick with our veterans or retool with promising youngsters. The bottom line in all of this is that Yankees fans are fucked.

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  26. Fans always think that other teams' GMs will be dumb enough to want to acquire their team's aging garbage. Never fails this time of year.

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