Last week, we were bypassing Jordan Montgomery because of his history with the Yanks. Now, it's our longtime critic, Marcus - gulp - Stroman...?
Make it two gulps. Let's ignore Stroman's shrinking output: Last year's 3.95 ERA, his highest since 2018. Forget that he's a decade past his winningest season, 2014, when he went 11-6.
This is our big gift under the tree? This is the answer to our pitching woes? This is the glorious opening of Hal Steinbrenner's purse? This is the pride of the Yankees?
Say it aint so.
This is Domingo German without the cracked clubhouse TV. This is Luis Severino four years from now. This is Carlos Rodon surgically spliced into Jhony Brito. This would be worth celebrating if the Yankees were acquiring their 5th starter. The problem? Stroman will slot in at No. 2, just above Clarke Schmidt.
Seriously, is it just me? Does no one else see a looming disaster?
What happened to all that big-ass Yankee money, which was going to exorcise the sorry 2023 and resurrect the Steinbrenner family name? We went all in on Yoshi Yamamoto - offering cash and 90 years of tradition - and finished third. Third.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are now baseball's marquee franchise, by far. The Mets are positioned to take New York. And we're dickering over nickels and dimes... with Marcus - gulp - Stroman?
The ranks of free agent pitchers keeps thinning. The trade market for pitching is a minefield. Everybody wants young arms, and we've managed to shed nine of them. We have no more prospects to deal, and in our hearts, we live in fear of what a desperate Brian Cashman might do to stave off a 2024 meltdown that would likely end his Yankee career.
Two months ago, when the team acquired Juan Soto, the Yankiverse foresaw a rebound in 2024 - maybe even a tussle with still-improving Baltimore.
Now, it's stems and seeds. Marcus Stroman? Pardon my gulp.
Posts
42 comments:
Heyman was just saying on a fan Q&A yesterday that adding Snell would give us the top two pitchers in baseball, and maybe we get Monty, too.
Yes, in a logical, free-spending Yankiverse, that would be loverly.
Snell is the 2nd best pitcher in baseball? Who said that, his dad?
There is a point where common sense and what we think should be, no longer matters.
Case in point...
I have a friend in LA who lives in a marginally decent neighborhood who has a "nice" if smallish house. It's worth $1.5 million dollars. One. Point. Five. Million. Dollars. His back yard is a postage stamp. No amenities. Not even a walk in closet. One. Point. Five.
To me, that's insane.
But that is the market. If you want to live there you gotta pay it.
The Yankees should just spend the money. They've got it. Overpay Monty. It's good karma. Overpay Snell. Overpay Hader. Who cares? Up the price of a hot dog from $7.25 to $7.75 and be done with it.
Don't trade for Dylan Cease. I saw a trade proposal for him today that was flat out absurd. So nuts I won't even repeat it.
If you have to trade find out what would it take to get back J.P. Sears? And/or Waldichuck for the pen? I'm being serious.
While I haven't lived in LA for years at least I have a walk in closet.
I think we’re all going to be hiding in our walk in closets to help shield ourselves from the pain and misery of the 2024 season.
I’m already on the phone with contractors to install a microwave/refridgerator combo, running water and a Turkish Toilet in our downstairs walk in C.
(We may even install a tunnel leading to the bomb shelter)
2024!
I don't want to start rumors, but I hear the Hal has nothing but closets and lives in one.
"If the Yankees pull the trigger and sign Stroman we know they are officially desperate."
--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa on the blog Bleeding Yankee Blue
That was my reaction, too, Duque. I could not believe it. This doofus even directly insulted Cashie.
And...with all due respect to Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa (great name!), the word here is NOT "desperate," even though I keep hearing it from sportswriters and commentators.
The word is not "desperate." It's cheap.
As Doug says, HAL wants to pretend he can live in a nice neighborhood in LA—or maybe a Central Park West condo—and pay 1960s prices for same. Sorry, those days are gone. No Reggie Jackson available for $250,000 per annum. No Dave Winfield for a whopping $1 mill, or whatever it was...
If the Yankees are foolish enough to replace one domestic assault perpetrator (German) with another (Stroman), I don't know what to say. Throw in his lovely clubhouse persona and he can partner with Verdugo to make the clubhouse toxic.
Yeah, Cashman knows how to build a team. Look at all his successes the past 20+ years.
It's looking like the Yamamoto bid was just a charade. Not that they would have won the sweepstakes, given Yamamoto's preference for a competent, championship-class management/front office. But Hal's purse seems to have a padlock on it and Cashman is sniffing for trades with nothing in his hands to barter with.
I expect more dumpster diving by the world's greatest intern and a lot of laughably nonsensical predictions by Cashman and Boone in the spring.
Oh, and clubhouse brawls by early July. Get your tickets early!
...what, you don't have the money, HAL? Not one but TWO heavily subsidized stadiums to your loathsome family was not enough? The YES Network is not paying off enough like you thought it would? (Try better programming.)
The Yankees—if they were going to be THE YANKEES—should have done what it took to outbid the Dodgers for YY. If they weren't going to do that, they should have signed Monty and Snell and Hader, come what may. They should have signed Bellinger. They should have never got to these sorts of choices by:
—Hiring a GM who could actually develop good players
—Signing the whole host of players who might have come here in the last five years.
They didn't do any of that...
...Instead, as Doctor T notes, they seem to be bent on building The Bronx Dream Team of Assholes.
Rodon, Vertigo, and now Stroman? Good luck with that. And not "assholes" in the old, Munson-Jackson-Nettles-Lyle-Gossage style of wanting to crush the other team. Assholes in the sense of malingering jerks.
Yeah, I'm sure Soto is gonna want to stay with THAT team!
I hate them so very much.
But we love Neil Hamilton, starring here with Pat O'Brien:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo0feQS6srU
Verdugo has been given a ringing endorsement from none other than one of the largest turds to ever put on a uniform: Jonathan Paplebon. He had this to say about Verdugo:
“It has everything to do with the baseball gods and in the way baseball is. And I thought it was a bitch move... I do know one thing, I don’t want him on my team...can that work in New York? Yeah, it can work.”
And Papelbon ought to know about bitch moves. He knows all about bitch moves.
Hey Guys…..my contractor wants to know whether I want them to install indoor/out door carpeting around the Turkish toilet or mosaic tiles in the walk in C. Any thoughts?
Bud Harrelson passed away……
Today is arbitration deadline for Soto, Torres, Verdugo, Holmes,, and others…Steinly must be squirmin’’ like Herman
RIP, Bud.
AA, go with the tiles. Always.
Yeah, tiles are classier.
Sat next to Bud at the crazy, Mets' "walk-off single" game, during the great, NYC 1999 playoff season. Game went 15 innings, mostly in the rain, but for some reason, Bud Harrelson came down from whatever box he'd been in to sit in the same row with my Met fan friends and I in the upper grandstand, behind home plate.
Superstition? Inability to tolerate Fred Wilpon's company for another minute? I dunno. But he was there in the next seat, quietly watching. Mets rallied to win, game went almost 6 hours. I was happy for my friends, glad to see the game...and had my eyes glued to the scoreboard, where the Yanks had fallen behind the Sox, 2-1, up in Fenway.
Quite a hustle back home to see the end of that game. But no worries. Yanks pulled away to win, 9-2, while the Sox, the Fenway crowd, and the entire city of Boston had a mental breakdown on camera.
Good times.
Oh, and a shout-out to Bud for punching Pete Rose.
I’ve abandoned the walk in closet build out idea because after much reflection (4.5 minutes) I have decided to stick with the Yankees throughout the 2024 season.
No Turkish Toilet or appliance combos just yet.
Just another layer or two of enamel ground away from my molars.
I liked Bud’s sense of humor.
I remember him once joking with Ralph Kiner on Kiner’s Corner a thousand years ago that he was taking “special” vitamins before games to help him play better. They found the use of the word vitamins to be very, very funny.
AA, start with the tunnel to the bomb shelter, then have the molars resurfaced (every time I look at MLBTR.com my mouth feels like sixty grit sandpaper paid a visit. Only a matter of time before I hear the "Crack of Doom). These are trying times.
HAL, COME OUT OF THE CLOSET!
Look, he’s got some warts, but he’s only 38 and been out of the league for 6 years, but maybe Cash starts calling around to Joba Chamberlain…he can start AND relieve…it’s what us metrics guys call a two fer!
We signed……
Luuuuuuuuuuuuuke WEAVER
I believe you can get us through the ninth
Jon Heyman reports that the team has an offer on the table for Blake Snell.
The "opening" offer to Snell is likely . . . underwhelming and slightly insulting.
The Intern probably thinks he signed Jered Weaver.
$oto - - - Dontcha KnowHo!
The "opening offer" to Snell is worth less than the Hood's opening salvo to the Bismark. A lot of water splashing which counted for naught in the end... This is a very bad sign. Usually the players that they DO sign never make it to the rumor page...
The rich just keep keeping richer whilst us fans keep getting poorer……
Stroman to NY - Big Gulp ain’t only at 7/11
Holy crap--we really signed him.
Dodgers shop at Neiman Marcas and the Yanks at the Salvation Army. Things have truly gotten depressing
Yet another Blue Light special courtesy of Cashole
While Cashole is patting himself on the back for signing yet another injury-plauged player on the wrong side of 30, we should see Snell sign with a team that made a serious offer within the next couple days
"Marcus Stroman has just been put on the 60-Day EL..." lol...
Dick, not Jared -- Jeff.
Ranger, as a precautionary measure, the Yankees should schedule the TJ surgery for mid-May.
MLB.COM:
Right-hander Marcus Stroman and the Yankees have agreed to a two-year, $37MM deal with a vesting option for 2026. The sides had previously been rumored to be in talks over the past few days
I have actually seen him pitch in real life
My partner got me tickets for the Cubs Cardinals game in London
He was rotten Ha ha and bad tempered and in the huff with his infielders think he lasted 3 innings and gave up 8 hits
I was just so happy to be at a game in real life even though it wasn't the Yanks it was just so wonderful to be at a real MLB game
Those fly balls truly seem like they are going to reach the sky and the outfielders make them look so easy how quickly they get into position to catch them you just do not see that on tv coverage
And the distance of the throw from third to first is just so big yet they do it with a flick of the wrist and they are so accurate.
It was a dream come true how I wish I could see another game but this will probably be my only ever time seeing real baseball but I will cherish it forever
Unbelievable. But yes, this is how HAL and Cashman think of ballplayers in their heart-of-hearts: interchangeable pieces, much like low-level office clerks.
The idea, for HAL, that if you sign one player for $25 million, and he's the missing piece you need and gets you over the top and brings you a great season and the fans pour in and turn on and you enhance your brand and make lots more money now and later—while if you sign a vastly inferior player with all kinds of warning signs but get him for $18.5 mill, and thus save $6.5 mill in the short term but he helps degrade your product even more through this season and next and the people don't come and don't tune in...NEVER registers with him.
$37 million out the window.
The obligatory offer they know won't be accepted has been made to Snell.
Hey, we could do a lot worse than Stroman for a middle of the rotation pitcher. IF he can stay healthy he's a belongs good pitcher who stupid Brain should have signed five years ago. He 'knows how to pitch', a quality that management has overlooked for years. Now if we could only sign Monty...
Yes, Duque. Genius Cashman doing the job he does so poorly. My prediction, this will not work out well for The Yankees and unfortunately, we the fans.
Post a Comment