Tuesday, March 5, 2024

No, Yankee fans are not shouting "Blake Snell Who?" following Clarke Schmidt's outing

Now and then, I wanna scream. 

I mean, I wanna bellow, cut loose and direct few million decibels - like a sunspot corona ejaculation - directly at Mt. Hal, until the entire Yankiverse dissolves into random molecules of Zolio Almonte and Greg Bird. 

This happens when Yank fans display Stage IV Stockholm Syndrome, and assume the boisterous, anti-spending views of our captors, Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman. It happens often, I'm sad to say. We see good-hearted Yank fans take Hal's side in contract talks because, of course, those greedy players are asking too much, and we should bring canned food to games, so our poor owner can feed his starving children.  

It's one thing for a small market billionaire in Milwaukee or KC to whine about the financial imbalances of baseball, (though they're always first at the trough when luxury tax monies are being doled out.) But when the Yankees clutch their purse, as they've done over the last month with Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, you wanna turn off the Internet and watch Huckleberry Hound. Are we fans really that gullible? Is it an automatic that, whenever Hal says we can't afford a starting pitcher, we instinctively agree? Unfortunately, for lifelong Yank fans, whose childhood histories intertwine Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra, turning off the season is impossible. For better or worse, we'll cringe-watch 160 games from behind the couch.

Anyway, I just want the record to note that today - early March, the morning after a nice-but-meaningless outing against the Florida Marlins - some Yankee fans are NOT shouting "Blake Snell Who?" In fact, I'm still hollering that either Snell or Montgomery would be a huge boost to our chances in 2024, and that by mid-June we will be kicking ourselves for not signing one of the two. 

Sadly, Hal is unmoving, so we will do what we always do: Challenge for a wild card and hope to get lucky in October. 

And more likely than not, we will crumble in August, and then throw up our hands and blame the incredible wave of injuries that year after year decimate veteran rosters. I mean, WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED SUCH A THING? 

Look...  okay... resetting here: I'm not without hope. Let's enjoy Clarke Schmidt's outing, though it was against a team that couldn't score a single run against us last week. Schmidt pitched four fine innings. After Gerrit Cole, he might be our No. 2 starter. 

Unfortunately, Will Warren - the first stopgap solution to an injury - was not so blessed. And one injury always seems to beget another. (Breaking News: Tommy Kahnle has an issue and might not be ready for opening day.) Our vaunted March rotation, by June, turns into the Scranton Shuttle. From there, it's Luke Weaver and the cast of Glee.

Oh, well, hey! maybe this time, it won't happen, right? Maybe this time, somehow, nobody will get hurt, and everybody will have his career year, right? And if so, I hereby promise to stand upon the mountain top, and scream into the void with all my might these three incredible words: "Blake Snell Who?" It will be wonderful. I can't wait.

18 comments:

  1. Josh Donaldson has retired!!
    Josh Donaldson has retired!!!
    Josh Donaldson has retired!!

    A year late.

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  2. Sign Snell and move Cortez’s questionable shoulder to the bullpen. I think Schmidt is going to have a season comparable to Montgomery

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  3. Wise man say: player who is always hurt is always hurt.

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  4. Oh, well, hey! maybe this time, it won't happen, right?

    Maybe this time, Lucy won't pull the football away and Charlie Brown will kick it smack dab through the middle of the uprights!

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  5. Hal clutching his purse is a good way to put it.

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  6. It's behind the paywall for ESPN+, but this an interesting article on injuries impacting WAR and wins in MLB. Some quasi-science and rankings. Surprise...Concerning IL use over the last 5 seasons, the Yankees ranked 2nd, 4th, 5th, 18th and 1st (last year).

    https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/insider/story/_/id/39631841/mlb-injury-index-teams-il-how-much-injuries-hurt-yankees

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  7. Hey! We did win something last year!

    FIRST IN INJURIES!

    The Montefiore Hospital World Series Winners. We won the Golden Crutch!

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  8. I hate them so very very much.

    Fuck.

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  9. Pablo Ricalde who?!?

    From "sportskeeda" (motto, we're the skeezy sports reporters)

    "Pablo is a journalist covering Major League Baseball at Sportskeeda. His favorite team is Boston."

    His profile pic is in a carmines jersey and he's described as an "ANALyst"

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  10. Dick,

    Nice turn of phrase -- the golden crutch.

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  11. With all that talk of Sun Ra before I'm going to continue to bury my head in the cosmos,,,, Last year finally sucked all the enthusiasm out of me, we know how this will end up; I finally know how the Mets fan feels, and with Hal and Brain at the helm we are doomed,,,

    Happy Spring Everyone> Space is the Place!



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  12. You know Shota Imanaga by the Cubs to a four-year contract worth $53 million with possible options after that. For that money Hal could have taken a flyer on him with a more than decent chance of striking gold. There were a few other Japanese pitchers that would have been good buys. Instead, Hal went for the splashy headlines of chasing HE WHO WILL NOT BE NAMED. Was this a ploy? The old, "missed him by that much" trick that this team has specialized in for the past decade? The Brain has this maddening habit of always going for THE MAN, and then playing the pauper when it comes down to filling out the roster. Many on this site written about this all important team building concept, "team depth". Those nineties teams had it. Since then it is all about the headlines...

    On a possibly more cheery note Mike Axisa mentioned in his blog today that Spencer Jones has made contact with the ball a (to me, at least) staggering 82 consecutive times! I remember back in the mid-eighties a story that mentioned that Rafael Palmeiro had made contact 22 consecutive times. This was in spring training before he had made the Bigs. Probably read about it in the "Sporting News". Kind of a big deal. I would imagine that Jones has super-human hand-eye coordination. And that can't be bad. Right?

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  13. Kevin,

    That *is* impressive. Let's hope the Yankee hitting "instructors" don't ruin him.

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  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. Viddi this, me fellow droogies:

    https://yanksgoyard.com/posts/yankees-allow-pair-of-inexplicable-mets-runs-on-ben-rortvedt-spring-brainlock-01hr80v7q05b

    Can we please, PLEASE get rockheads like this off the team? They keep inventing new ways to lose.

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  16. KB! Just got my copy of your book. Just in time for my trip to Bozeman this week, I'm looking forward to digging into it.

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  17. Its funny - about an hour ago I received a call from a frail sounding older woman who after clearing her throat a few times asked the following question:

    "Hey . . . are YOU the person who special ordered a copy of this, uhm, New York Baseball book?"

    I said "Yes, I am that person."

    She said "Well it just came in so you should pick it up!"

    I told her I would.

    And I did.

    Alas . . . seeing that I have no trip planned I plan on reading it at home.

    End of Story.


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  18. My friend and fellow blog reader - Tommy Shirts, whom you all met at the Huckleberry Roundup - tipped me to this section from Yardbarker today. I'll post it below. It sounds like the stat guys on the Yanks sat him down and started to dictate to him in their special code:

    "Clarke Schmidt Shines in Yankees’ Win Over Marlins
    The Yankees already saw Clarke Schmidt make his debut against the Rays, but there wasn’t any public Statcast information from that outing. This time, however, we’d get all the pitch velocity and movement goodness that we deserve as enthusiasts of this great game. A huge tweak that Schmidt has made is in regards to his velocity, and everything was up across the board, with the right-hander displaying a strong sinker and cutter with not only firmer velocity but better movement as well.
    One of the biggest issues with Clarke Schmidt’s sinker last season was the lack of armside run on the pitch, and he averaged four inches more of horizontal break (13″) than he did last season (9″). The firmness of his sinker coupled with a cutter that had more vertical ride could make for a devastating combination, especially with how strong his secondaries have historically been a the Major League level. His sweeping slider was averaging 11.9 inches of gloveside break, whereas last season it was closer to 8-9 inches, and it’s a pitch that could also benefit from tweaks to his mechanics."

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