Back in the acid-flashback 60s, the lowly Washington Senators had a Gold Glove SS named Ed Brinkman, called "Steady Eddie" for his heroic defense. Guy lasted 15 seasons, including a curtain call with the Yanks. (The era of Elliot Maddux, No-Neck Williams, and Ron Blomberg .) Brinkman was your classic good field/no hit. The famed batting coach, Charlie Lau - who advanced the now unfashionable strategy of putting balls into play- made Brinkman a project. So did Ted Williams, perhaps the smartest hitter in history. Neither succeeded. Brinkman simply couldn't hit.
His career batting average: a dreadful, horrible, terrible .224.
On today's Yanks, that could have him batting 5th, 30 points above our current SS.
Take away Aaron Judge, and we're a lineup of Ed Brinkmans.
Yeesh. Look at those rancid averages from last night. DON'T TURN AWAY! LOOK AT THEM, DAMMIT! After the first three hitters - none of whom did diddly - the numbers provoke Jean Paul Sartre-level nausea: .185, .191, .234, .223, .213, .227... When did the existential bottoms start falling out on Yankee teams?
Last night, we glimpsed the next two weeks without Judge, and it was like watching your grandmother cross her legs in a miniskirt: You can never unsee it. We faced a pitcher having a disastrous season who had been regularly bombed by the Yankees, and if not for a high pitch count - the downside to all those Ks - he might have thrown a no-hitter.
How did we lose? Let us count the ways...
1. With Judge apparently headed toward the 10-day Injured List, the Yankees stuck Willie Calhoun, the kewpie doll, in RF. Is this going to be a thing? Guy's a DH. Last night, Chicago's first HR plopped down in the first row of the bleachers. Judge could have grabbed it. Willie barely got close enough to watch. Are we so empty of LH bats that Calhoun and Jake Bauer are the plan? Their track records don't exactly inspire hope.
2. In the eighth, our best chance came with a line single to RF, when our baserunner, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, was held at third base because of - gulp - Clint Frazier's rifle arm? Sorry, but I don't recall Frazier as a defensive guru. Maybe he's gotten better. If so, good for him! But the Yankees desperately needed that run, and they chose not to challenge Frazier, and they lost by one, and wow, I dunno...
3. Clarke Schmidt has quietly strung together three decent starts. Last night, six innings, three runs - enough to maintain his presence in the rotation. Of course, it doesn't matter. With Nestor Cortez going on the IL - maybe a month? - and Luis Severino still smarting from his recent debacle, we have no other options. The big question is what our rotation will look like on July 31, when the trade deadline crashes. It's quite possible that Cooperstown Cashman will blow up the team and start over.
4. So, who replaces Judge? Franchy Cordero? Yikes. Maybe - just maybe - it's time to promote Oswald Peraza? Yeah, he's an IF with no place to play (other than benching Anthony Volpe, which I still believe would be a disaster.) But IKF and Oswaldo Cabrera can both play OF, and since the front office won't promote Estevan Florial, so what if the infield is clogged? Peraza has been our best bat at Scranton. We need hitters.
5. Okay, let's suck it up and give credit: Jackie Donaldson - the official rented mule of IT IS HIGH - was the our best player last night. A homer - third in three games - and a highlight reel play at 3B. Can Donaldson find redemption? Dunno. There's still no place for him in the everyday lineup, unless DJ or Gleyber disappear.
We're stuck with an all infielder, all RH batting order, with batting averages hovering around .224. Without Judge, we're a team of Ed Brinkmans. And Boston is coming.
I’d like to compare these guys to Jerry Kenney or Jim Lyttle than Eddie Brinkman, but I guess that’s just splitting hairs
ReplyDelete"and it was like watching your grandmother cross her legs in a miniskirt: You can never unsee it. "
ReplyDeleteAnd yet... not as bad as seeing your grandfather cross his legs in a miniskirt.
As an aside...
ReplyDeleteI once saw my grandfather's left testicle. It bore a striking resemblance to Telly Sevalas.
I'm still traumatized.
All these somber details careening toward the inevitable conclusion.
ReplyDeleteAnother wasted season brought to us by the turds at the helm.
I'd much rather watch either of my grandparents cross their legs in a miniskirt.
Maybe expecting injury-prone players to NOT get injured and building a 2nd string from guys that have been cut by multiple clubs is just not a winning formula.
ReplyDeleteWho would have thunk it!
With any luck they will cancel tonight's game because guys can't breathe and we can skip our 5th starter [Not that he is demonstratively worse than our 3rd or 4th currently. Although perhaps the W.Sox, having never seen him before, could help.]
What's even worse is that most years we would be clamoring for the likes of Volpe and Cabrera to be brought up. We that ship is already sailing and it's not making these games any more bearable to watch.
ReplyDeleteYankees offense with and without Aaron Judge, if my math is correct:
ReplyDelete244 runs in 49 games with Judge (5.0 RS/G)
45 runs in 13 games without Judge (3.5 RS/G)
5.0 runs per game would rank 7th overall
3.5 runs per game would rank 30th overall
We go from the Braves lineup to the Athletics lineup, essentially.
The only bit of hope I can offer is that Stanton also missed 11/13 of those same games. So theoretically if Stanton could get hot, he would help our run production with Judge out. But my confidence in Stanton's ability to hit well and hit consistently is waning.
We keep circling back to the same thing: poor roster construction and the inadequate allocation of our resources, i.e. MONEY. The failure here is enormous and reflects squarely on Cashman. Yet Cashman was rewarded with spanking new 5 year contract and will be here to torment us for years. Even the simplest, most logical move (promoting Florial) seems to elude him. The coaching seems to be non-existent; there was one lousy approach after another last night. And whatever happened to protecting the plate with 2 strikes? Too many called third strikes.
ReplyDeleteJudge and Cortes on the IL. Contusion and ligament sprain for Judge, strained shoulder (whatever that means) for Cortes. So probably 2-3 weeks for Judge (there is hope it could be less) but at least a month for Cortes. Any illusions about making a run at the Rays may be filed in the appropriate receptacle.
2nd Wild Card or bust!
Clarke Schmidt pitched pretty well, and that loss is on the offense. But still, he made the dumbest mistake of the game in the 5th. You could tell it was going to happen. Two outs and a guy gets on with a single. Then the #9 hitter up, who had already homered earlier. Schmidt with a cutter right over the middle of the plate.
ReplyDeleteThat was pure lack of concentration. He had two outs in the 5th with the #9 hitter up and threw a stupid cookie. Anyone with a bat can kill you, even if he is the #9 hitter. Gotta pitch to the score. Does Schmidt even know that? On the short end of a 1-0 score, with your team getting no hit, you cannot make that kind of pitch, if you want to be a winner. They might have come back from a 1-0 deficit, but 3-0 was too big a mountain to climb.
Last year, and earlier this year, Schmidt had no idea what the hell he was doing. Schmidt appears to be getting smarter, but he's still got a long ways to go, as that game last night showed.
I have to agree about Stanton, Zach. There were some terrible pitches that he swung at last night, way out of the zone outside and/or low. He's a pitch guesser. Instead of watching the ball come out of the pitcher's hand, picking up the spin, and reacting to the pitch, he tries to guess what's coming before it's thrown. And sometimes that really makes him look bad.
ReplyDeleteNever understood guys who did that.
@ btr999, I was thinking the same thing, about the called third strikes.
ReplyDeleteJoe Torre had a great piece of hitting advice. He used to say that, whenever you have two strikes on you, you should try to never make out with a pitch on the outside corner. That is simply a good hitter's approach: to protect the outside corner with two strikes. Because it's almost impossible to protect both the inside and outside corners. So with two strikes, you figure that most of the time the pitcher will go outside corner, and you do your best to protect that corner.
So whenever a hitter takes a called strike three on the outside corner, that is by definition a bad at-bat. No matter how good the pitch, you have to try to foul it off, spoil it with an emergency swing. You might strike out swinging, but you can't be taking strike three on the outside corner. And we certainly saw some of that last night. Unprofessional at bats.
I did once see my grandfather in a miniskirt but that was after a half-bottle of 100-proof, 75-year-old Slivovitz. He, not me. Very similar to seeing a bagpiper with no underwear on at a St Patrick's Day parade. But that's another story.
ReplyDeleteEverything is relative so admiring Schmidt pitch into the sixth inning should be tempered by his mediocre talent. As far as Stanton is concerned, he hits the ball hard....when he hits it. Which is too inconsistently. He's a stupid hitter. Reminds me a lot of Vlad G. Sr. who often looked more like a swordsman at the plate than an MLB hitter.
One more thing, about Schmidt in the 5th inning. As the home run hitter was coming up with the runner on 1st, it would've been a good time for the pitching coach to go out and remind Schmidt that this guy hit one out before so stay out of the middle of the plate, no mistakes, stay sharp, go and get him out. I could sense that Schmidt was going to make a stupid mistake, but our pitching coach? Sitting on his ass because he has zero feel for the game.
ReplyDeleteDoug, how did you feel after your traumatic experience with your Grandfather anytime he looked you in the eyes and said, "Who Loves you . . . Dougy?"
ReplyDelete@ AA.... Concerning your reply above to Doug, my other grandfather never wore a miniskirt or was involved in cross-dressing. However, he constantly told me, as a little boy, how much he loved me. He always said, " Carl, I love you so much that when it's my time I die, I want you to be sitting in my lap."
ReplyDeleteIt was only later that I found out that he was scheduled to be executed in the electric chair!
Hilarious—and brilliant—all a youse. Why AREN'T we in charge of the Yankees? We could not do worse than this. And yes, EVERY season.
ReplyDeleteThough I gotta point out, Carl Weitz, that Vladdy, Sr., was a HOF, .318 hitter with power, who also played a decent right field.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of how people used to call out Stan Musial and Al Simmons for standing in the bucket, or Willie Mays for making basket catches. Technique ain't a problem if you can do it anyway. Or if you can at least stay on the !#@ field!
Ed Brinkman, a poor hitter from the past. The smell of Genius Cashman. An order of stiffs on the Yankees. Tissue Mon Stanton looks like he will take his usual one month vacation at the plate.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the “TBD” tonight will be Randy Vazquez, who was sorta decent in a spot start last month, but has been…not good at SWB this season. With all the scrap heap droppings cashman has picked it’s amazing how dry the well is for pitching depth. At least
ReplyDeleteWe have Clayton Beeter to look forward to…in the year 2525, if man can still survive. No worries though, cashman will still be GM then.
From Jon Morosi on Twitter:
ReplyDeleteUPDATE: @MLB officials are tracking environmental conditions in New York ahead of the Yankees-White Sox game. League officials are in communication with medical and weather experts. As of now, first pitch remains scheduled for just after 7 pm ET on @MLBNetwork.
—————————-
It was mentioned last night that MLB makes the decision on whether the game is played or not…
Beeter has gone16.1 scoreless innings in his last thee starts.
ReplyDelete1hit- 11k last night- 6inns.
Might be time to move him to Scranton.
red flag is his number of walks.
It looks like Soylent Green out there. Yellow air, hazy light, throat irritation similar to post-9/11.
ReplyDeleteI went out for about an hour wearing an N95 mask. It helped, but once I got home, the air inside is still not fantastic. And we've had all the windows closed since yesterday and the air purifiers cranked up in practically every room.
This is decidedly weird.
Has smelled like burnt rubber for two days here in. . .well, you know where I live!
ReplyDeleteWait, now, don't tell me. Is it....Swordfish?
ReplyDeleteSoylent Green is made out of people! It’s people!
ReplyDeleteNever saw a sky like this
Please check on the elderly, and don’t forget your pets
JM - I sincerely hope that the air quality improves ASAP
ReplyDeleteFor the short term - I've updated my avatar to a selfie from a few years back wearing a custom/modified n95 mask (cap was optional).
This was during some of the recent wild fires here in Northern California.
Looking at some earthcams in NYC - not many folks are masked up.
That's a choice
Horrible. I've lived in New York since 1976, and I've never seen it look like this. Just bizarre, almost a Covid quiet outside. How they have not already canceled the game is beyond me. NYC has canceled all outdoor activities for schoolchildren.
ReplyDeleteThis will lead to the next big HAL idea: "Obviously, New York has to buy us a new, free, DOMED stadium!"
All of the air purifiers we have in our apartment, bought when we still smoked cigs, are not quite able to handle this. Though I'm sure it would be a lot worse without them.
ReplyDeletePer Joel Sherman…game is postponed…
ReplyDeleteMore…Judge to IL. Billy McKinney called up. Weber to 60-day IL.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow straight doubleheader starting at 4:05 PM…
ReplyDeleteWhy would benching Volpe be a disaster? He's an overhyped FAILURE at this point. Both his offensive and defensive numbers are dismal. His promotion to the big club was premature. He is overmatched in the majors. He needs more time to develop. He should probably be at AA, not even AAA. Peraza would be a better player. The front office has a responsibility to put its best players on the field, something they are not doing as long as Volpe is is playing instead of Peraza, and Calhoun and IKF are roaming the outfield instead of Florial.
ReplyDelete@ Horace....I didn't mean to compare Vlad, Sr. and Stanton talent-wise. Just at their comparable hitting styles. Indeed, Yogi chased more balls out of the strike zone than most. And yet he made hard contact a lot. So, batting styles aren't an issue....until they become an issue. Perhaps Stanton one day will make it into the HOF and if he does it will be due to hitting 500 HR. He is not a good hitter.
ReplyDeleteBTW,I remember Musial once claimed that he never went hitless for more than 10 or 12 AB. Can't remember the exact number but it was shockingly low.
Florial is not on 40 man roster…the only thing to do with him is package him in a trade…
ReplyDeleteFlorial could be put on the 40 man roster easily enough. But McKinney is much WHITER.
ReplyDelete