Remember your crazy uncle's remedy for a throbbing back molar? Don't take a pill. Don't smoke a doobie (though that's what he secretly did.) Just whack your hand with a ballpeen hammer and - presto! - no more toothache!
Last night, the strategy worked! We stopped fretting over LF, where converted SS Isiah Kiner-Falefa was preparing to pitch. (He has now appeared in four games with an ERA of 2.25, ranking 6th on the team behind, among others, Josh Donaldson. In innings pitched, he ranks 21st, ahead of Jonathan Loaisiga and Matt Krook.) Nobody bothered to care that IKF went 0-3, or that his replacement - converted 2B Oswaldo Cabrera - is hitting .204. Or that Donaldson is batting .144, or that DJ LeMahieu is rocking a steady .219. Nope. Nobody cared.
That's because the hammer blow - Luis Severino - was so abundantly awful, so perfectly putrid, that all our brushfires were briefly overwhelmed by Sevy's criminal, Spinal Tap drummer-level, self-immolation.
Nope. Forget our mini-woes. Minor disasters no longer matter. What we must start worrying about is Cooperstown Cashman and his army of algorithms, who will seek to remake this sorry team on August 1 by trading what's left of the franchise's heirloom seed corn. Now, that's worth fearing. Is there a Chris Carter out there, waiting to be traded?
As for Sevy - who didn't escape the third, leaving Orioles fans to lurk in the rafters in an otherwise empty stadium - we can spend the next five days awaiting his next start, wondering how much of his Future Hall-of-Famer fame was a YES Channel mirage.
It's been five years since Severino last looked like The Future. Five years... 2018. Trump was flirting with Kim Jong-Un and avoiding Stormy Daniels. Sevy looked like the next Pedro. His first half ERA was 2.61, with a 14-2 record. He made the All-Star team. Then something happened: he faltered... a second half 5.57 ERA and a losing record.
Then came the strained tweaks and the tweaked strains, the anticipatory build-ups and the sad endings, and a gargantuan contract that gets lugged into every Severino story like a suitcase full of smelly laundry. And here he is - the Yankees' version of Noah Syndergaard, except instead of trading him, we've held onto the guy, hugging him tighter as we both go down.
Sevy's last two starts were out-of-body death experiences, whacked by disappointing St. Louis and then Baltimore, the young upstarts we were supposed to school. The worst part: Sevy's solid outing against Texas, which means he'll get the month of July, if not August, to renovate himself, before the Yankees inevitably shut him down, citing a discomfort or a dislocation, whatever. It's always something. They never suggest the most common ailment: That a guy who was once really good just no longer has it.
Meanwhile...
Who decided it was time to thrust Anthony Volpe back in the leadoff spot? The poor kid was just getting traction, rising each game and - boom - suddenly he's back in the bullseye. If he were a kite, they would have yanked him into a tree. Maybe that's why the call themselves the Yankees?
Call them the Yank-ees because kashman is a jackoff
ReplyDelete20 hits seems like an awful lot. But maybe that's just in comparison with These Our 2023 New York Yankees.
ReplyDelete"Unwavering positivity."
Nothing to worry about. It will be the same old shit, with little done to improve the situation. The Hal, Genius Cashman way!
ReplyDeleteFlashback - Oakland - Wednesday June 28th, 2023
ReplyDeleteNow forever known as the German Perfecto.
However, earlier in the game - around the third inning, somewhere in the seats above the third base side, a fan of the home team belted out a short lived chant that didn’t catch on.
Filtered by what sounded like a finely masticated paste that use to be a brat and a beer, the fan yelled:
STANK - EEZ SUCK!! STANK - EEZ SUCK!!! STANK - EEZ SUCK!!!!
This morning after last night’s game I’m thinking that he may have had a point.
Little Tony was just getting going. Then he winds up in the leadoff spot? How easy it is to mess with the kid's head. I imagine his eyes got a little wide when he saw that lineup card.
ReplyDeleteI always thought somebody in the Yankees organization knew something about baseball, or even a little bit about sports psychology.
On another note:
Baltimore, Miami, and Texas all with 51 wins so far. Cincinnati with 49.
If you live in this world, you're feeling the change of the guard.
Yanks are now getting regularly blown out on a once-a-week basis, as their pitching starts to crumble:
ReplyDelete6/16: 5-15, in Fenway
6/22: 2-10, at home against Seattle
7/1: 4-11, in St. Louis, Louis
7/6: 1-14, at home against Baltimore
A stat circulating yesterday on line and TV was that the Yankees have now had more position players pitch THIS SEASON, than they did from 2016-2022.
Oh, and 999, I was wrong on the last post: apparently there was a $15 million team option on Sevvy for this year. And they took it.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Seemed like a necessary idea at the time. But that's the Yankees. They paint themselves into a corner and then do what "has" to be done. Always.
Yeah, HC, but what's another 15MM among friends?
ReplyDeleteSeverino is another one they should trade before the deadline. He will probably pitch much better somewhere else, maybe even become an ace. He won't ever become an ace here. I think they could get a few prospects for him. He still has a 98 mph fastball, still has nasty stuff, once in a while.
ReplyDeleteDitto with Torres. Get a few prospects for him.
They should just exorcise Arch Stanton, Jackie Donaldson, and sad to say, DJL. Bring up Austin Wells, Jasson Dominquez, and Florial. Let these guys develop up here. They won't be any worse than Stanton, Donaldson and DJL are right now, and next year, it might be a much better team.
Oh, and clean out all the coaching here. Boone has to go, along with the coaching staff.
It goes without saying that Cashman has to go, but that really is a pipe dream. That bastard ain't going anywhere until a hearse with his name on it arrives. Unfortunately for us fans, that happy moment won't be for another twenty years.
My cousin's husband, who passed away from cancer, was a funny, intelligent, Red Sox fan, who complained about the same things we complain about, but regarding the Sox.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, he called us "the Yank-me's," which still makes me laugh and seems very apropos.
Every time someone suggests Cashman make a trade, I shudder and hide the family jewels. He's like a crackhead scouring the house for something he can hock to feed his habit (or save his job). Invariably, he'll trade young and promising for old and busted, paying heavily in prospects and getting nothing but contract bloat in return.
ReplyDeleteDo the Yankee roster need an overhaul? Yeah, they do. Can Cashman be trusted to do the job right? Yeah, right, exactly. I'll wait until you stop laughing before I conclude.
Yankees need a competent GM even more desperately than they need players with a BA above .220. He needs to be fired BEFORE any rebuild or triage.
"Cooperstown Cashman and his army of algorithms"--sorry, but this is nothing but a variant on the Big Lie technique--a formulaic, grossly uninformed aspersion on analytics, a quick microwaved treat for the blog audience that feasts on regular servings of this Swanson's frozen red herring.
ReplyDeleteLet's be clear once and for all: the Yankee fron office does NOT operate consistently or even mostly by the precepts of analytics, which is why the team sucks. Tampa Bay is the model of a team that is steeped in analytics--hence Tampa Bay is at the top of the MLB heap, and the Yankees are gasping for life. It is the Yankees who have an outfield full of former infielders, not Tampa Bay; it is the Yankees who think it's smart to recycle thrice-failed-scrap-heap MLB nonentities, not Tampa Bay; it is the Yankees who supersitiously believe that simply swapping out uniforms on recidivist washouts will transform them into superheroes, not Tampa Bay; it is the Yankees whose roster and payroll is freighted with expensive, long-term contracts for mid-thirties, declining and/or crashing veterans who should never have been signed to begin with, not Tampa Bay.
Inverting this reality to make it appear that it is the floundering Yankees, not the high-flying Rays, who are steeped in analytics, is an easy, off-the-shelf, through-the-looking glass, K-rations mode of analysis that makes for a quick ready-to-serve critical hash, an ersatz, pompous denigration of a mode of strategic baseball thinking that duque evidently knows nothing about. If duque would finally take the time to read a book on the subject rather than trafficking in hand-me-down cliches and misconceptions from the hack sportswriters he routinely and snidely dismisses as "Gammonites," maybe he would finally write something worth reading on that subject.
Wow!
ReplyDeleteThe yank-me's got two whole fucking hits tonight!
Ca$hole must be ecstatic about the (non-existent) launch angles, (non-existent) exit velo's and how hard they missed strikes HARD!
I wish Ca$hole would kill John Wick's dog, so he'll be removed from our dystopian reality.