It's too depressing, it offers little hope, and it requires a subscription (which is worth it)...
But it signals the start of the Fall Obituary League, where every Yankee fan in captivity will devote 5,000 words to what went wrong. (Together, at IT IS HIGH, we'll generate 5 million words.) Fun reading, if you're fishing under the sink for a Clorox cocktail. It'll worsen, as the astonishing depth of this sinkhole becomes more apparent.
Friedrich Nietzsche said that when you stare into the Abyss, the Abyss stares back. Get used to it. Throughout this oncoming wave of autopsies, one conclusion will continually surface...
This victim has been dead for a long time.
I believe the Yankees started flatlining in spring of 2021, when a dearth of LH bats begat the disastrous trade for Joey Gallo. Then, last winter, we sank into a coma, after Prince Hal signed Creaky Carlos Rodon, declared that the Yankees were not done! and then brought in - gulp - Franchy Cordero.
It's been a long, brutal journey to Tomato Can. To resurrect this barge will require a lot of time and money from an owner who, at his core, seems to prefer doing something, anything, else. Change happens quickly in modern sports, but the Mets and Redsocks seem to learn from their mistakes, while the Yankees stride deeper into the quicksand. We might be watching this shit show for three to five years. We might be in so deep that the next GM - whomever it is, assuming there is a change - can't pull us out. We could be entering one of the worst downturns in Yankee history, signaling the end of democracy and the fall of civilization, and that's just me being optimistic.
How bad is it? Let's ponder one of our biggest reasons for hope - The Martian, Jasson Dominguez. We want him to be the Next Big Thing, and maybe he will be. Hey, you never know. Here are his 2023 credentials:
At Double A Somerset, at age 20, he hit .254 with 15 HRs and 37 stolen bases. He moved up to Scranton, went 13 for 31 (.419 - small sample), then played 8 games for the Yankees, hitting .258 with 4 HRs. Sadly, as you know, he wrecked his elbow and will be out until mid-summer. It's not clear if he would be ready to join the team or spend most of next year in Scranton. It could be a wipeout season.
This happened while the Yankee hype machine ran at full bore, making Dominguez, at least in early September, one of the most famous 20-year-olds on the planet. Taylor Swift might be taken, but there are plenty of Kardashians and Hadids out there, waiting to land the next Mick.
Now, close your eyes and ponder what our opposition has coming.
Junior Caminero, SS-3B, age 20, Rays
He started this year at High A: .356 with 11 HRs. They bumped him to Double A: .309 with 20 HRs. For the year: .324 with 31 HRs. He's MLB's 6th ranked prospect.
Tampa can flip Wander Franco for multiple prospects and float this guy into the infield without missing a beat.
Jackson Holliday, SS/2B, age 19, Orioles
He started at Single A (.396), moved to High A (.314), then to Double A (.338) and then Triple A (.267). For the year, .323 with 12 HRs and 24 stolen bases. He draws walks. He's the consensus Number 1 prospect in baseball.
Brooks Robinson is dead - (RIP, Sir)- but Baltimore could have an all-star infield for the next five years. Listen, we got nuthin compared to these two, and Boston has a Top 5 farm system. Damn the autopsy. The Abyss is watching back.
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12 comments:
But the Yankees have Fraunchy Codero. He’s only 29 has great barrel% and great batted ball exit velocity!
And because rock salting gaping wounds can be a such a blast at the carnival of despair - allow me to point out that John Sterling did not manage a game this year.
Nor did he pitch
Or pilot the team Charter.
At this point it’s best that we not flip that burger on the grill.
Instead let’s let it burn.
Let’s let it char.
Put the lid back on top of your Weber, go back inside and stare out your backyard window and ponder what could have been.
What should have been.
He’s dead, Jim.
We’re Coming down fast - but we’re Miles above you.
Heartfelt thank youz go out to:
HAL
BRIAN
BOONE
#TheAudit
Brilliant, AA!
And Duque, yes, this is what Alphonso likes to say. Rookies gotta flash, and quick. Baseball is a young man's game, and if you're not dazzling in the minors, you probably ain't makin' it.
The Martian was playing hurt in his last game before the injury announcement. (He went 0 for 4.) He was probably playing hurt in the previous game, when he went 1 for 3. Ergo, the batting average up here during his short major league stint means nothing, absolutely nada. Hopefully, he will be back by next August at full effectiveness.
Austin Wells hit one out the other way yesterday. Really good looking swing. Hope he constantly works on hitting the other way.
I thought the Yankee demise began in the second half of 2017. How so, when they made it to the 7th game of the ALCS? Well, Cashman brought in Todd Frazier, who had some good moments for sure, but he was a right handed hitting strikeout machine. Something the team did NOT need. And the severe list to starboard dramatically increased after that in 2018.
The youth movement all around baseball has already come to fruition. That is why the Orioles, who used to be the official Yankee punching bag, is now the official bully who beats up the Yankees. Bruce Lee famously said "boards don't hit back", but this one has come alive and won't be going away anytime soon.
I'm sure the other teams have got loads of great talent that will develop soon. We're already seeing it with the Orioles. It's not so much that the Yankees got worse this year. It's that the other teams simply passed them by like the Yankees were standing still. Remember, at the beginning of the season, when everyone (me included) said that the other teams in baseball are so bad that it's hard to imagine the 2023 Yankees winning less than 90 games? Well, it turned out the other teams weren't so bad at all. And they will be better next year.
This blog had been predicting a total collapse sooner or later. It suddenly happened under everyone's noses, true. But, on the long horizon, we saw this coming for quite some time.
The Yankees could have been a contender if only Frankie goes to Montas wasn't injured.
Duque, it's not recommended to include Parson's lemon scented ammonia in the clorox cocktail. The colors are amazing, but hangover headache is a killer.
Hammer, there's hope for Wells. After all, he was the guy that recommended Volpe stop listening to hit strikes hardly chorus.
I believe the Yankees started flatlining in spring of 2021, when a dearth of LH bats begat the disastrous trade for Joey Gallo.
I agree with this. That's when we started flatlining. We were dead and buried when, for unknown reasons, we traded Jordan Montgomery, a solid #3, for a guy with plantar fasciitis.
After that, the minister took his shovel, sprinkled a little dirt on our corpse, and said "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
So many bad moves. Taking Cantrun over Martinez. Signing Rizzo over Freddie Freeman. Almost a steady litany of blunders, MOST OF WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED BY CONSULTING BASIC STATISTICS.
Great article by Joel Sherman in the NYPost. https://nypost.com/2023/09/25/yankees-in-dire-need-of-a-front-office-evolution/
All stuff that we've been talking about for years on this blog. Now, finally, in the Post! Joel Sherman, taking the chance of his life, roasting the Yankee front office.
Excerpt: "The absolutism locked them into philosophies that have disserved them in areas such as who they hire (they lead the league in charlatans), how they construct rosters, and what they teach and value. It was camouflaged in recent seasons by Judge, Gerrit Cole and deep/excellent bullpens helping the Yankees make the playoffs."
Leading the league in CHARLATANS!!!! Wow, I can hardly believe that he had the guts to write that. Good for him!
The Yankees have been dying since Bob Watson was replaced by an intern. But like cancer, it took a few years for the tumors to metastasize. By 2005, ARod had arrived and the tumors were starting to reveal themselves.
All that good work done by Gene and Bob gave the Intern enough talent to coast until 2009, but as that team aged out, all we had left was the legacies of the Intern's half-assed juggling routine and a lot of smoke and mirrors. This insured that the team was 'good enough' to spare the Intern the boot and with Hal's checkbook at the ready, he continued to fake it for another 14 years.
But now, 7 years after the 'fire sale of the century' and that great Broadway flop called 'The Baby Bombers' (except for Aaron), the smoke has cleared and the mirrors are broken.
We all now know that the Intern doesn't know how to assemble a team, measure talent, read a medical report, understand the value and limits of analytics or develop prospects. But he does know to break ballplayers like breadsticks, spend Hal's money like a drunk sailor, get suckered come trading time, whine like a pathetic man-baby to select baseball journalists and has a great fondness for broken, antique ballplayers.
May we see the end of the Era of the Intern this winter. May all his sycophants and minions in the Yankee organization get fired too. Then, hope for spring will keep us warm in the winter, instead of the dread of knowing he'll still be leading this team to ruin next year.
Amen, Doctor T!
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