This month, I suspect Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman will avoid the nonstop rain of slashers, demons and monsters; they'll remind him too much of the MLB playoffs.
Imagine the torture Cash felt last night, watching Jordan Montgomery throw 6.1 shutout innings against the team that swept us last October? Or watching Aroldis Chapman - the Human Waterfall - toss a scoreless frame? (Fun Fact: His gopher ball died at the left field wall and became a DP because Li'l Jose Altuve screwed up on the base paths.) Wherever he was, Cashman must have felt like Hans Gruber, plummeting from Nakatomi Plaza.
This follows two weeks of watching Bryce Harper claim the distinction of baseball's greatest October slugger. He's the guy Cashman ran from, screaming, when Harper came to NYC, seeking the chance to fulfill his childhood dream of wearing pinstripes. Bad decision, ya think?
Tonight, Cash gets to watch Nathan Eovaldi, another former Yank, who has already cemented his reputation as a gamer. The Rangers signed him for four years at a fraction of what the Death Star will pay Carlos Rodon through 2028. But, hey, we do have those cool Starr Insurance uniform patches to help pay for it.
Every night, the Yankee fan base finds new reasons to rage over front office malfeasance, and the primal screams reach a crescendo with the reminder that Cash, Hal, Randy and Boonie - the whole criminal gang - will likely all return next season for more mirth and mayhem.
Yeah, I wonder what Cash watched last night? The Giants, tanking against Buffalo? Nah, too many Yank vibes. "The Wonderful World of Disney 100th Anniversary Special" on ABC? Maybe. When in doubt, there's always Goofy. Or "Yellowstone," the cowboy soap opera starring Ray Kinsella from Field of Dreams.
Whatever. As Yank fans, we've reached that numb point of nausea, where you embrace the humiliation simply because they must be watching it, too. Yes, Hal, Cash and the cast of Knots Landing - they must be feeling it, too. Of course, they won't suffer enough. They're rich, and they'll forever milk the fan base, and nothing will change that.
Still, it must hurt to be a laughingstock, a punch line, and for now, that's our Yankee heritage. In Cashman's case, I get the feeling that this is it - this will be his final legacy - stuck in the crypt, and the zombies have escaped. Every night, for us, it's almost sorta cleansing. For them, though, game after game, night after night... it's gotta be hell. We can only hope.
Chapman serves up a lollipop and somehow it turns into a double play. He's still the same guy, just got lucky on that one.
ReplyDeleteIt is great to see Monty get a lot of recognition. We can try to get him back and pay him five or ten times what we used to pay him. That would be great, since money is all the goofballs upstairs seem to care about.
Montas and Rodon were both terrible ideas (the latest of many). As has been the case with Cashman, we would've been better off just standing pat. But if he does that, he doesn't get the attention he wants and can't be a wheeling and dealing genius.
Schmuck.
I know most of you are probably Giants fans, but I was given the gift that you can't re-gift: I became a Jets fan way back in the stone age when Joe Namath sold his soul to the devil. In exchange, the devil made sure the Jets would suck forever. And they have.
ReplyDeleteBut last night was a shocking joy for me, watching them beat Philadelphia. I can live on that like a guy shooting 130 can live on sinking a 20-foot putt.
My joy, however, was short-lived when I booted up the headlines on all the sports pages I read every morning telling me that Montgomery is on a roll.
Thanks a lot Cashman, you despicable, no-talent little rodent. May you have diarrhea with no bathroom in sight.
Are you wishing Cashman both diarrhea and blindness, DickA?
ReplyDeleteJust seeking clarity
And I have to be subjected to Yankee articles in my FuckBook feed about the Yanks trying to sign Montgomery in the off season....jeez...
ReplyDeleteCashman, sucks!
ReplyDeleteI watched that Rangers-ASS-stros game last night. Montgomery was throwing a lot more fastballs, both two seamers and four seamers, pitching much more aggressively than he ever did with the Yankees. Basically, he threw quality strikes with the fastball, then led the hitters out of the zone with curveballs. To mix it up, he threw some off speed on first pitch, but that wasn't that often. Sometimes, he threw the fastball with two strikes, going right after the hitters. He even got Altuve to pop up a high fastball. He was dealing.
ReplyDeleteThe one inning that he really got in trouble with three straight singles with two outs, he made mistakes with fastball location. But, give him credit, he got out of it by nailing that last out, blowing away Yankee nemesis Maldonado with a high 94 mph fastball on the inner half. The key was that it was right at the top of the zone, and had Maldonado not swung at it, it would've been strike 3.
When he was with the Yankees, they had him pitching like a left-handed Clarke Schmidt, except that Montgomery doesn't have the ace level kind of stuff on his off speed that Schmidt has. It turns out that there is NOTHING WRONG with Montgomery's fastball. It's not an eminently hittable pitch. When he was a Yankee, he was simply not commanding it properly and not being aggressive enough. Neither Montgomery nor Schmidt knew what they hell they were doing, and neither did the pitching coach here.
One word of caution on bringing Montgomery back here: if he comes back, he will be just as bad as Rodon, unless we exorcise Matt Blake and get a pitching coach who knows what he's doing.
The Evil Dwarf was at it again, this time trying to cheat on the base paths. He rounded second base on a fly ball, then ran back to first without touching second base on the way back. Might've saved himself a half second there and got back to first ahead of the throw trying to double him off. How many different ways are there to cheat in baseball? This guy seems to be a master of every single method.
ReplyDeleteHe finally got caught by the replay cameras. And they reversed the call on the field that he was safe, so he got doubled off first base and killed the 8th inning. Gunslinger Chapman got Part I of his revenge.
One note about the umpiring last night. I don't know how much the umps were paid by the gambling business, but man, there must've been a half dozen strike calls that went in favor of the ASS-stros and against the Rangers. The umps took what should've been an 8-0 Ranger win and turned it into a 2-0 nail biter. Even on the Altuve play, that ump should've called him out on the field because it was pretty obvious that he went a step around second base and then didn't touch it on the way back to first.
@ DickAllen, Hey man, I've given up on the Jets so long ago that I don't even bother watching the games anymore. You have to a freaking unrepentant masochist to watch the Jets. I saw the highlights on their win and was SHOCKED. This just doesn't happen with the Jets, what the hell is going on? And they're now 3-3, without their starting QB! Have they finally turned the corner? Are they no longer the laughing stock of the NFL?
ReplyDeleteTo get back to the Rangers-ASS-stros affair, in the 9th inning with two outs, Leclerc fell behind McCormick 3-1. Then Leclerc blew away McCormick with two straight fastballs up and in. Last one, a 98 mph "blue bayou" fastball.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when a guy can throw like that, why the hell should he fuck around with a slider? Especially in that situation, with the score 2-0, and nobody on base. It was just smart pitching.
You know that if that had been a Yankee pitcher, he might get to 3-2, but then he throws the slider down and away for ball 4. Then the next guy comes up with a chance to hit it out and tie the game. More often than not, the ASS-stros would've tied it against the Yankees, and then would've walked it off either in the 9th or in extras. Yankee baseball is perfectly predictable. Don't even need garbage cans to tell you what pitch is coming and where it's going.
One last thing about that game. Did anyone notice that all of the damage against Verlander was done by left handed batters? Evan Carter with a double to lead off an inning, then scoring on a bingle by another lefty hitter. A solo homer by a lefty hitter to cap it off. But Genius Cashman says lefty or righty don't matter in today's game. 100+ years of baseball flushed down the fucking toilet by the Yankee front office.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Evan Carter, that guy plays left field pretty good, don't he? Probably saved the game for Montgomery with at least three good catches that I saw. The Gunslinger Chapman fly ball, I thought Carter might've made it look a bit more difficult than it was, instead of taking one more step, he kind of made a ballet jump and caught it way up in the air for a circus catch. But most of the left fielders for the Yankees this year probably don't make that catch. Note to Genius Cashman: there is no defensive position that is unimportant.
Great analysis, guys. And it all boils down to the same thing: everyone here would be a better GM than the one we have.
ReplyDeleteI had my last straw with Cashman years and years ago, and I know that some of you on the blog here don’t like Monty for whatever reason, but the Monty trade really broke me. Maybe he wasn’t Cy Young, but I always liked the guy and he was pretty serviceable and he didn’t get as much support as he should have. Either way, or pitching staff has been bilious and he could’ve helped. And please remind me what we got for him? two sacks of bat shit? Some scabs off of a syphlitic hooker’s ass? A courtesy cup of cyanide? What did the boy genius get for him? We all know the answer. More mediocrity, compounded. Fuck Brian fuck Hal fuck Randy and Blitzen…
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ReplyDeleteThe one thing I never hear mentioned about the Montgomery trade is how much the pitching staff liked each other and acted like a unit. The starters were always talking to each other at the rail, in the dugout etc.
ReplyDeleteAfter they traded Monty it was like the light went out. And, with that so did the Yankees dominance. They went from being a team to being a collection of players and have been mediocre to bad since.
@ 13bit, There was nothing wrong with Montgomery. The problems that he had here all stemmed from piss poor coaching.
ReplyDeleteCoaching in baseball has a bad rap. Whilst it's true that, generally speaking, coaching doesn't make a big difference in baseball, it can easily make a particular hitter or pitcher something like 10-15% more effective. What pro athlete wouldn't want to be 10% better? And sometimes poor coaching can turn a good player into a fucking turd.
We're seeing very well coached and managed teams in the playoffs right now. And it's night and day different from the Yankees.
What I wouldn't give to see that Evil Dwarf Altuve swing and foul off a pitch, shattering his bat in the process, and have five ping pong balls fall out of the broken bat. Man, I'd love to see that on fucking national t.v.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the Yankees in the 8th inning would've moved their left fielder to right field, their right fielder to center field, their second baseman to left field, their first baseman to second base, the third baseman to first base, and the Bat Boy would've played third base.
ReplyDeleteHow can you possibly have good defense when everyone plays everywhere? Musical outfielders, musical infielders. Only in Yankee Wonderland.
Doug...the Yanks are enamored with strikeouts and Monty wasn't checking off that box...and that box was created by the analytics team who love spin rates and rpms and don't give a living fuck about control and mixing up pitches...
ReplyDeleteI know Hammer. I know. But I watch, year after year. New coach. New quarterback. New Hope. All dashed and crashed without fail every December.
ReplyDeleteI predicted before the season started that Rogers wouldn't last five games and Wilson would finish off a winning season. He really beat me to it.
As it is, I think yesterday's game and the Buffalo game have sort of given me hope, at least to watch this stunning killer defense. I still believe they'll make the playoffs, which as we all know, is a crap shoot. But then again, there's always December when a cold wind blows off Flushing Bay.
That being said, fuck you Cashman, you ignorant twat. I pray you have diarrhea and go blind at the same time. Except, based upon your history, you are already blind and have made so many bad decisions that I think you must have filled your pants years ago.
Maybe Cashman will emulate Hans by falling off the Landmark Plaza building in Stamford during his yearly rappel on it.
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