Yesterday, the Death Barge added another disaster to its shoebox collection of soul-crushing losses. It handed a winnable game to the miserable Cubs, as players began decamping to homes and halfway houses for four days of barbecue and microdosing.
The team's lone presence at the All Star festivities will be Gerrit Cole wasting an outing for AL - that is, unless Cooperstown Cashman uses the occasion to jettison another scapegoat.
Soon, according to past moon phases, Cashman will trade a bundle of minor league prospects, who - we will be assured - never really fit into the team's plans. They were illusions, craftily pumped up as trade bait, and we will have hoodwinked some small market bumpkin GM into giving up a Joey Gallo, or a Scott Effross, or a Frankie Montas, or an Andrew Benintendi, or an INSERT YOUR NAME HERE - whatever - does it matter? Whoever it is, he'll tweak a gonad within three weeks.
Okay, this is the part where a hopeful blogger starts yapping up potential Yank trade targets - you know - like Shohei Ohtani (!) or Juan Soto (!), neither of which will ever play for us until they're 39 and shitting their knickers. Sorry. I cannot do this. I just cannot. I am torn between hoping for a miracle resurrection of a few oldsters - DJ, Stanton, Sevy - and rooting for a complete collapse, utter destruction, which would mean starting over next year with Aaron Judge and some kids. We must wonder: Can the planet survive five more years, until the Yankees rebuild?
Right now, it doesn't matter. We are stuck in a revolving door of aging stars with dead contracts, and - sadly - looking to acquire a few more. You never have too many Josh Donaldsons, right?
So, about yesterday...
 |
| Courtesy of Above Average |
1. We fired batting coach Dillon Lawson, a de facto admission that this year has been a total disaster. Until now, Cashman never fired a coach during a season. There's always a first.
Obviously, Lawson wasn't the problem. Those ex-stars who aren't hitting their weights? They won't take advice from a guy whose highest playing level was Transylvania University. (BTW, that's no joke. He was a college catcher at TU, never played pro.) Whoever gets hired as his replacement: Good luck, madam or sir. I hope your plaque is already in the Hall. You won't get there by coaching Yankee hitters.
2. Adorably, late in Sunday's game, Michael Kay noted that the real shame of the loss to Chicago was that - somewhere out there, beneath the pale moon light - Tampa won. Thus, the Yankees lost ground in the AL East.
This was a wonderful, treasurable moment of fantasy pretend. I doff my cap to Kay. It's gotta be hard, conjuring up a pennant race from thin air. Whatever drugs he's taking, I want some.
3. After all the adversity and disappointment that seemed to embody their spring, Boston is a game behind us.
Worst Yankee team since Hal took over? We got a chance.
to answer the question;
ReplyDeleteYes
They are going to have to come up with more bobblehead giveaway games to lure the non-corporate fans to the games.
ReplyDeleteAny suggestions?
Maybe a Cashman dartboard?
The real danger for Yanks management is when they can't sell all the luxury boxes and seats and packages because even corporate d bags won't want to go to games.
2024 sales this winter could be real interesting.
This has to be one of the biggest implosions of a major market team. You have a team made up of has beens, who haven't hit in 3 years (Rizzo, Jackie D, Iron Man Stanton, Dj). Then you have a group of players who have never hit in the majors, period (Bauers, Rauncy Frauncy, Rich McKinney's brother). But the answer to this problem is to fire the hitting coach.
ReplyDeleteThat like firing the first mate on the Titanic for not seeing the Iceberg. Yet, the Ca$hman sycopants will applaud this move, because Ca$h have never made a move like this before, so now he's serious. The truth is Ca$h has never made a great or good trade, that's the problem.
The Red Sox who are trying to lose are 1 game back.
If this is not the final nail in the coffin, then as Jon Snow said "Winter is coming" and it will be bleak.
Unfortunately 2023 is playing out EXACTLY like you all predicted at the beginning of the year, another death by bazillion papercuts of a season, Urggggg!
ReplyDeleteI’ll still hold to my pre-season projection: 89 wins, we ooze into the final wold card, with a quick exit. Does that make me an optimist? Lawson was actually in the org as a roving instruction for 3 years before becoming hitting coach. While he should never have been hired in the first place (like Boone), it’s a very fair point that narcissistic, egotistical MLB. hitters will probably ignore the HC. However, as Judge proved last year, hiring your own coaches can be beneficial, though it should be an embarrassment to the team, but apparently they have no shame. Lawson will not missed.
ReplyDeleteActually, Kay almost had a point, with TB slumping we had a shot to get back in the race this week if we put together a hot streak. Instead all we got were more losses, excuses, and numbing justifications from Boone.
On the bright side, we did draft another RH hitting SS, can’t have too many of those!
BTW Archie, love the cashman dartboard idea!
ReplyDeleteNo amount of adrenochrome will fix this team...
ReplyDeleteThis may or may not be the worst team in the Hal Steinbrenner era, but it's easily the dullest. No questions asked.
ReplyDeleteI've had trouble focusing on games this year since this collection of position players is incredibly un-entertaining.
I love Aaron Judge. He's a blast to watch. Haven't seen him in more than a month. Anthony Volpe from time to time will show sparks of what his talent could allow him to become.
But man. The rest of these guys are old, washed up, unathletic, and fundamentally blunt. It just melts the mind. Innings and games just blur together.
We could all hope for a collapse, but what we're going to get instead is mediocrity. Of course, Hal and company wouldn't know what to do with the draft picks yielded by a total collapse, anyway, so there's that, as the kids say.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Lombard, Jr., 999. Yeah, there's a name to conjure with.
ReplyDeleteWait, it gets better! This is from the various reports on George Junior, including our friends at SB Nation:
"There’s a bit of swing and miss in his game...
"Lombard might not stick at shortstop in particular, but he certainly has an interesting bat to follow, with a possible above-average hit tool. The Yankees place a premium on up-the-middle athletes in the draft, and Lombard fits that profile, while perhaps his infield actions give the scouting department some comfort that he could move to third base if his 6-foot-3, 190-pound frame fills out and moves him off of short. There is not a concern about his ability to play short, but his physical development could make him a better fit at another position."
Ah, yes! The usual, complete mental confusion of the Cashman front office: the Yankees "place a premium on up-the-middle-athletes" but Jr. might be too big to stick at short, and have to move to third. Or, somewhere.
He's a swell hitter...but "there's a bit of swing and miss in his game." Oh, good! That will save the Yanks' hitting instructors so much time!
Dillon Lawson getting fired is putting a band-aid on an elephant's butt. I think he should never have been hired in the first place, and his firing was long overdue. When Judge and Volpe went to other sources for help, that tells you something, no? I've never heard Lawson instructing his hitters, so I've no idea if the hitters listen to him or not or what Lawson teaches them. But the results were always putrid, with the swinging for the fences and the lack of contact, along with the aforesaid Judge and Volpe sourcing help elsewhere. And you can also look at a long list of failures and retrogression, like Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres. Guys who looked like they were going to be superstars and then fell off a cliff.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone will be crying over this firing. I heard Lawson is only 38 years old? Wow, that makes him younger than some of the old players, or almost the same age. How much of his instruction was his own thing, and how much of it was dictated by the Cashman analytics wing of incompetent college interns?
It is a fair assumption that their next coach hiring will be just as bad. They've shown total incompetence in hiring coaches and management. We can safely assume that the scouting, including the analytics, is just as incompetent.
I think the Yankees should have a combination giveaway. A Cashman bobblehead that rests in a guillotine. Just pull the peg and let the blade do the rest!
ReplyDeleteI/I \😫/
They found a way to trash that game yesterday, led by Torres and Boone. Yanking German, who'd only thrown 74 pitches, given up one freaking hit. Then allowing the game to get out of control, aided by the Torres double play error. Torres seems to make an incredible number of errors, don't you think? If we were to add up all the errors that were not scored as errors, all the mistakes that did not result in a base runner advancing, how many would there be in a full season? 60? 80? And that's just on defense. Not even counting his base running mistakes. And crazy at-bats. He got a couple of hits yesterday, plus a stolen base, and damned if I didn't say to myself, uh oh, that means he's probably going to give it all back with a big mistake late in the game. Gleyber giveth, and Gleyber taketh away.
ReplyDelete"The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it there is great significance to passage of time".
ReplyDeleteI think that this could be re-worked by the Yankees PR people into something, well, "Significant".
Sean Casey will fix everything. He was a .300 hitter. Everyone will listen to and respect him and regain the form of their prime playing years. And the young guys and never-was's will marvel at his wisdom.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're still gonna suck.
"Croaker" is what William Burroughs and his junkie friends called doctors in that seminal piece of fine literature, "JUNKY."
ReplyDeleteIf we must be alliterative, I'd suggest something more like "Cashman's Cruellers" or "Cashman's Crumpets" or "Cashman's Crusties..."
Just saying...