Monday, May 13, 2024

Top 10 mirthful takeaways from Sunday's masterful Yankee victory, ranked.

1. We won. 

2. Yank Zone of Death (in yellow) came alive: 8-for-21 with 6 RBIs. 

3. Now with 10 HRs, ump-scourge Aaron Judge - aka "Furiosa" - tied for 4th in AL. In all of MLB, he is tied for 11th, one behind Ohtani. (Fun fact: Both have 27 RBIs, even though is Ohtani hitting .352 - 117 points above Judge.)  

(Extra fun fact: Arguably in first slump of Yankee career, Juan Soto still leads AL in RBIs, with 34.) 

4. Gleyber Torres woke up, hit 3-run HR, no longer saddled with the worst John Sterling homer-holler of all time: "Like a good Gleyber, Torres is there..." YES team launched "slump is over" mode, though he's still hitting .208. 

5. Shell-shocked Alex Verdugo finally sat, respite for new father on Mother's Day?

6. How good is Luis Gil? His 2.51 ERA beats Cy Young Cole from last season (2.63.) Can he keep it up? Gil now with 8th best ERA in AL, among starters. Godsend. 

7. Yanks survive near worst bullpen meltdown of 2024. Enter 7th up by 6. Leave 7th with one-run lead. To staunch bleeding, needed Weaver's 9th straight scoreless outing. To win, needed 10 runs. Hold my beer. I gotta puke.

8. Yanks still half-game behind O's, who lost Sunday. Baltimore now hosts last place Toronto, with chance to permanently hobble always hateful Jays and maybe coax Vlad Jr. to vow never to play for them. Can they make Vlad's shit list? 

9. Jasson Dominguez starts minor league rehab assignment Tuesday, launching ultimate Yankee question: How good is he? Ceiling still a complete mystery. He hit 4 HRs in 31 ABs last September, rousing an already overhyped legend. Now, he's returning barely 9 months after elbow surgery. Last year in Somerset and Scranton, The Martian hit .265 with 15 HRs and 40 stolen bases. If he hits in rehab, the sheer volume of newsprint around Dominquez will push the Yankees to call him up. Who gets benched? Verdugo? Stanton? (Surely, by then, somebody will have tweaked something, right?)

10. Then there is Boone who - what? Excuse me, gotta go, I've a phone call from Yogi. 




14 comments:

  1. Mirthful Mirthful Mirthful!

    I'm so mirthful!

    My mirthful takeaways:

    11. Still have not sold naming rights to the Stadium.
    12. You can still get some tickets for less than $100
    13. Brian Jones Cashman still universally acknowledged as the all-time juju master of four-dimensional chess
    14. This early part of the season justifies every decision Hal has ever made
    15. "Cashman forever President for Life" campaign is now on solid footing
    16. My mirth runneth over
    17. Feeling so mirthy I could cry.

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  2. 18. Worms in the brain. No refrain.

    19. Worms in the brain. Yes refrain.

    20. Solar flares - no one cares

    21. Bring on the meteors

    22. Bring on the ‘quakes

    23. Have we signed Soto yet?

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  3. "AI that simulates dead people risks haunting relatives"

    See there - vampires do exist!

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  6. They got lucky again, pure and simple. Yankee Cosmonaut Commander Boone at the self destruct button again. Only the self destruct button's failure saved them. Most probably, the circuitry was made in China.

    7th inning, sure looked like the roof was gonna collapse. If that fly ball drops, it would've been a different story.

    10 runs, and still barely hanging on to win. You gotta worry that, at some point, their luck will run out and they'll lose a whole bunch of these kinds of games. It's very rare to see a team have great luck for the entire season and seemingly lead a charmed existence all the way to the championship. If that happens, then you say they made their own luck and conclude that it was a great team. But very, very rare.

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  7. 18) Duque's above post makes me miss "The Whole Mirth Catalog".

    19) Since that doesn't actually exist it makes me want to write "The Whole Mirth Catalog" for the two-hundred or so surviving people that might remember "The Whole Earth Catalog".

    20) Fortunately the feeling has passed.

    21) Speaking of the dead... For Mother's Day, after watching a few innings of the Yankee game, I decided to forgo the Knicks game and instead go to the cemetery that serves as her final resting place to pay my respects.

    22) As it turned out, this simple, but sad act of familial piety made me the happiest Knick fan in the Tri-State area.

    23) Don Mattingly's number!

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  8. Keefe needs to read our blog. Or vice versa.


    Fuck Hal.

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  9. Luis Gil looked like their ace from the get-go this season. He's got the best stuff of all their pitchers. Throws very hard. Even has a 94 mph changeup. Whoever heard of a 94 mph change of pace?

    I'm hearing some worrying talk about him not having his best command for two straight starts. For a guy who just came back from Tommy John surgery, that's worrisome. You just have to hope that it's nothing. With the lousy coaching and medical team here, you never know, nothing can suddenly turn into something.

    If he keeps pitching like this, Cashman may have finally developed a good young starting pitcher. Andy Pettitte was the last one to manage to survive here (and thrive) for more than a few years. Clarke Schmidt - getting better - but we'll see. Chien Ming Wang - after two good years, fell off his horse and that was that. Severino - a flaming meteor, then his arm fell off and Yankee coaching could never fix him. J.P. Sears - traded away for a guy with a broken arm.

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  10. If Gil keeps pitching like this . . . Cashman will trade him for a bag of magic beans.

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  11. Speculation on The Athletic is that Gil will probably go to the pen when Cole returns. To which I say, WTF???

    But, it figures. He's the best starter we have, but Rodon and Stroman are making a lot of money, so they have to stay in the rotation. (As usual, in Cashworld, good or bad makes no difference; playing time is based on salary, period.) Schmidt is proof of genius, so he'll stay. Nestor might deserve to be bumped, but Gil has no mustache to market to moronic fans.

    I expect it's not going to be pretty. That's why it's hard to enjoy whatever success we have. Between Boone's maddening bullpen choices, the detritus therein that's kept on the roster (snuck a therein in there again), Gleyber's brain farts, and the bad moves you just know are coming...well, all enjoyment is drowned by a ladle of cringe. Yesterday's 7th inning, when we should have been enjoying our six-run lead and coasting to the close, is a prime example.

    It's hard to have too much fun with this organization. You're always waiting for the next dumb decision that will fuck things up.

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  12. Nestor goes to long relief until he figures this stuff out.

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  13. It should be noted, for all the Yankees early season success, the Daily Murdoch hardly pays any attention. In today’s edition there were 22 stories before there was any mention of the team: an article about Jones hitting a homer on Mother’s Day.

    The Yankees aren’t even Page Six news anymore .

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  14. I am anxiously awaiting Yogi's take on this year's team.

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