O! how we were loathed!
You'd walk into a room, and Redsock fans would start to mutter under their breath. Orioles fans would leave. Rays fans would drink heavily, and Jays fans - who cared? You didn't even notice them. Our team bought pennants. We won every year. The owner gobbled up free agents, then spat them out, if they floundered. Everybody hated the Yankees, because their star players secretly hoped to join them. To play in New York, to wear Pinstripes, was to appear on baseball's greatest stage. Our personal stage. We owned them, as Yankee fans.
Remember how it was?
I raise this because - well - maybe it's old age, but I'm having a hard time recalling those days. It's been 15 years the last Yankee appearance in a world series - 15 years since A-Rod, in his PED haze, led us through a postseason unscathed. At times, lately, I wonder... Did it really happen, or did I dream it?
Over this long, ugly drought, the Yankees have squandered MVPs (A-Rod, Aaron Judge), a Cy Young (Gerrit Cole) and the entire careers of ascending "future stars" - (Brett Gardner, Greg Bird, Masahiro Tanaka...) with little to show. (Actually, if you consider the bar we once considered sacred - winning a ring - we have NOTHING to show.)
And this was supposed to be our year.
Since Week One, when we swept our longtime nemesis - the cheating Astros - 2024 was going to be different. We boasted MLB's greatest hitting tandem, with supporting hitters sprinkled through the lineup. We had stars facing their contractual walk years. It was a "go-for-broke" season.
For 84 days, the Yankees have led the AL East, often with the best record in baseball.
Now, the engine is sputtering, and second place looms like a massive iceberg ahead.
We were embarrassed in Boston, then humiliated at home by Baltimore. We have lost six of our last nine. Today, we face a rubber match against Atlanta and then the cruelty of a two-game Subway Series, which traditionally ratchets up pressure on both teams.
The Mets have won 8 out of 10, pulling themselves back into the postseason contention, and the chance of redemption. The Yankees have issues throughout their lineup, culminating in another wave of injuries, (Giancarlo Stanton, of course, is going for an MRI today; who doesn't expect him to miss the next two months?)
Listen: I can't take this.
I can't handle another Yankee collapse, another June swoon, another trade deadline that blows up our future. Failure has become the new Yankee normal. If the Yankees are going to fizzle - play .500 ball the rest of the way, loping toward a wild card, then exit in the first round - they are going to break me.
They are going to break us all.
There is still a chance to escape these doldrums. But if The Collapse continues - if we fall to the Mets, if we lose NYC, if we cannot even beat Boston at home - well - a storm is brewing, people. It's going to blow like we haven't seen in our lifetimes. If they lose the city, the second half of 2024 might prove to be incredibly memorable... and not in a good way.
“Can't Run
ReplyDeleteCan't Run
I'm Done
I'm Done”
Mumbled
Giancarlo Can't Run Stant-I'm-Done
“Can't Pitch
Can't Pitch
I'm Done
I'm Done”
Wept
Carloss Ro-Doe Doe-Done
“Can't Do Much
of Anything
Out There
I Labor
I Labor”
(translated)
Whispered
Our Sad Little Walk-Year Gley-BerBer
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how beating the Braves today and the Mets twice is going to fix things.
I'm rooting for those things to happen. But there's more that's wrong-wrong-wrong here than can be fixed with 3 wins.
Add: Is it wrong for me to be rooting for Stanton's injury to be career-ending....????
I got nothin' today. We won. It felt like two weeks ago. I enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteIt's gonna be hot out there with a 1:35 start. Hope everybody on the team hydrates.
And now it's official: Glassman goes to the IL for (cough, cough) ten days
ReplyDeleteIt just goes to show how hard it is to sustain success over a long season. Even if you plan properly.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees knew that Stanton would go down. As Brain said, "Apparently it is a pat of his game."
So the timing of it - if all is going right - is perfect. The Martian tearing it up, recovered from TJ and easy to step in. Better hitter, more speed on the base paths. Perfect.
Except tearing it up also refers to his oblique because, apparently, being hurt is part of his game as well. We didn't even get a single at bat.
They're warming up the aroid hot tub at the Ellsbury home for no longer wanted players.
ReplyDeleteYou had *one* job. Run around the bases without injuring yourself. Steven Hawking could have scored on that play without injuring himself.
Hard to believe that lout has been wearing pinstripes for seven years. And in those seven years he has managed to miss nearly forty-five percent of games (so far).
ReplyDeleteHis high water mark was his last year with the Marlins when our genius of a GM "stole" this bum for a song.
What's really interesting is that his salary appears to have been back-ended, with the Marlins paying him 14.5MM in his last year there. So the Marlins found someone to take the largest, ballooning portion of his salary of their hands. Someone in the Marlins front office took advantage of our little boy.
Something along the lines of the "greater fool theory."
And we've got him for another three years before buyout that'll cost Hal 15MM.
Move over Jacoby. You've got company.
This is why the man tries to only hit home runs 😒
ReplyDeletePrior to today’s game, the Yankees made the following roster moves:
ReplyDelete• Placed OF/DH Giancarlo Stanton on the 10-day injured list with a left hamstring strain.
• Recalled INF Oswald Peraza (#91) from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Rufus, very true about Steven Hawking easily scoring but you must remember that Hawking had a very souped-up motor and gyroscopic handling on his wheelchair.
ReplyDeleteThree pieces of plain toast…Stanton, DJ and Gleyber…actually 4…Rizzo. Flip them all CASH-hole!!!
ReplyDelete@ Carl, Yep, 7.5 horsepower!
ReplyDelete@ acrilly, Absolutemente. Which is precisely why it'll never happen. Those guys will all stay 'til their contracts expire. Gleyber might actually get re-signed. Hell, Stanton might get re-signed.
ReplyDelete@ JoeFoB, I confess that I hoped for the same thing. Hell, I was hoping at least that it would end his season. He'll make it back in time for the playoffs to fuck us over once again.
ReplyDeleteBeing able to hang in there and play is part of being a good player. When you get hurt every time you move, that's part of sucktitude. It means that you automatically suck. Because you are wasting a roster spot and keeping better and younger players from joining the roster. Because you are keeping the team from developing any kind of identity, other than that of an emergency room ward. A basic level of physical fitness is a pre-requisite to playing baseball or any other physical activity. If you cannot move without injury, you have NO BUSINESS walking around the neighborhood, much less taking up a roster spot on an MLB team.
ReplyDeleteAcrilly, i share your desire, but nobody wants a broken down car at premium prices. There’s no easy way out of the ruined roster the egg-headed egotist has created with the full support of his indolent nepo-baby enabler.
ReplyDeletePeraza may or may not be completely healthy, but the bloom is off this particular rose. He does offer much better flexibility, but precious little else. However, just a little more than a year ago, he was our future at SS. So here we are: one more (maybe last?) shot at redemption.
Oh, the irony of Hope Week.
I would be ok with glassman having a life ending injury if it got him off the yankees.
ReplyDeleteAnd Stephen Hawking (I miss-spelt his name above) could have scored *without* his wheelchair (if it was the 1950s).
They finally won a goddamned game. So they're not going to get broom cleaned this weekend. HOORAH! Um, hoo-rah....
ReplyDeleteAustin Wells and Oswaldo Cabrera should be playing a lot more than they are lately. I understand Cabrera is down to about .230 and Wells has never really got going. But seems to me that this is a different team when these guys are in there. Yeah, they'll make a lot of mistakes, sure. Both Cabrera and Wells take a lot of hittable pitches, then swing at bad ones. That's the price you have to pay to develop them. You have to hope that they'll develop and get better. Because the alternatives are even worse for the ball club long term. The solutions are already here. For sundry reasons of their own, Cashman, HAL & Co. would rather play veterans who no longer have any upside. There's nothing we can do, except laugh.
Death smiles at us all. All we can do is, smile back.
Hmm, I wonder who that little gremlin in the Marlins' front office was, the one who stuck us with Stanton? Maybe we could find out, and make HIM our new general manager....
ReplyDeleteBut of course it never was planned properly, Doug. It never is. Brian Cashman hopes like a child. He's like me at age 11, thinking, "Maybe Jerry Kinney is our third baseman of the future."
ReplyDeleteHe never plans for any possibility of injury—though injury is a certainty in today's game, particularly the way the Yankees insist on playing it. He never thinks any players will deteriorate with time, though that happens to all players, eventually. He always thinks that every mediocre pitcher he picks up will become a star.
In 25 years as a GM, he has learned nothing about baseball, no matter how many times the same things happen to him.
Hoss "He never plans for any possibility of injury—though injury is a certainty in today's game, particularly the way the Yankees insist on playing it."
ReplyDeleteGreat point. Judge playing CF, looks like for the entire season. A recipe for disaster and career shortening. On Friday, Judge dove for a ball and landed hard, no? He always lands hard on his left knee as he dives. One day, that's going to give. And then they'll cry about "how could anyone foresee this thing happening?" Playing a 300 lb behemoth in CF. What can you do, except laugh? From HAL, to Cashman, to Boone, they seem to have serious mental deficiencies. IQ might total 100 if you add up all three brains.
Meanwhile, another entry in "WAR, what is it good for?"
ReplyDeleteAccording to baseball reference, the Yankees rank 11th at second base in the league, with a -0.6 WAR rating.
But Gleyber Torres, who has made a league-worst 11 errors and is hitting .221, has a 0.0 fielding WAR, a 0.7 hitting WAR, and an overall 0.5 WAR.
How does this possibly make sense?
J D Davis to the Yanks. Tee hee! That milks my prostate almost as much as Chasen Shreve to the Yanks!
ReplyDeleteI’ve never seen a batter ground out to second as much as Verdugo.
ReplyDeleteLet’s move on from him after this season
Now that’s what I call perfect timing: Glassman is awarded The Player of the Week and for his troubles goes DL.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees say they don’t know the severity of his injury.
Anybody want to venture a guess when we him next?
Volpe in June: 3 walks and 3 rbi
ReplyDeleteNestor isn't nasty. So many flies. Atlanta has a great pitcher today and Cortes is no match.
ReplyDeleteIf we win, it will be a miracle. Especially when our crack bullpen crew gets going. No Santana, no Gonzales, but no improvement.
That was a good looking swing Rice put on the pitch.
ReplyDeleteAt least Davis didn't cost much...
ReplyDeleteDJ hasn't had an xbh in forever.
ReplyDeleteReflexive snark aside, there is no way that we won't miss a guy who was on track for 40+ HRs, close to a .300 average with RISP, and just under 100 RBI. We don't have a replacement, and if he's out for a long time, it will hurt.
ReplyDeleteHouston looks like they're going to sweep the Orioles. The good news is, we'll hold onto first. The bad news is, Houston is now good enough to sweep the Orioles.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, the team just going through the motions, one lazy, lousy AB after another.
ReplyDeleteRallykiller after rallykiller in the lineup
ReplyDeleteIt's not Spahn and Sain and pray for rain. It's Soto and Judge and the rest is sludge.
ReplyDeleteSoto losing all situational awareness there.
ReplyDeletePathetic. Giancarlo's eighth time in the IL.
ReplyDeleteFuck CashBrain.
ReplyDeleteFuck.
ReplyDeleteTerrible. And how great to see Torres take a fastball right down the pike as the last man up.
ReplyDeleteYes, there's no point to re-signing Verdugo. Which means we should trade him, right? (We won't.)
There's no point to re-signing Torres. Which means we should trade him, right? (We won't.)
And so we settle into the long, useless trudge part of the season, the inevitability of which is, I think, close to breaking not just our Peerless Leader but all of us with this team.
As the man sang: Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless.
Stanton was certainly better this year than I expected. But his injury was just a matter of time, as it always is. How a man can be in that sort of shape, and be unable to do even the running required by a DH, is beyond me. It is, obviously, beyond the ken off the Yankees' training staff, too,
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, how can you possibly be a major-league outfielder and not have at least one, serviceable DH prospect ready to step into the breach when your starter (very predictably) goes down?
Ca$hole happens.
ReplyDeleteGarrett Coopper has just been rereleased ( two teams in '24). Any wagers on how long it takes for Xashman to sign him?
ReplyDeleteA boring, lifeless game from first pitch to last. This team can’t hang with the big boys.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to explain to me, like you would to a child, why Torres and LeMahieu are playing.
Two reasons: The Intern still thinks he’s a genius for signing DJL to a long-term and he always stays with a sinking player two past his sell date.
ReplyDeleteThe other is his inability to draft well. In short, he has no real grasp of major league talent.
Dick,
ReplyDeleteThe intern couldn't grasp his own thumb without taking it out of his ass. You are too kind. The intern has no grasp of *anything* baseball related. He is incompetent in every phase of what he is SUPPOSED to do.
Well, that is, if the goal is to win championships. If the goal is to keep spending in line while *seeming* to care about winning championships, he has HAL's full approval.
Putzes all of them.
Roufuss:
ReplyDeleteA few days back you said that I could be pitching coach.
I’ll take the job if it’s still on the table.
Draw up the Contracts.
AA,
ReplyDeleteI'll have my lawyers do that. The esteemed outfit of Dewey, Scruem, and Howe.
(Read the fine print)
The Red Sox who aren’t even trying to win now have the 3rd WC spot
ReplyDeleteRooflux - I’ve got my readers ready and waiting.
ReplyDeleteBaseball isn't that hard. To be put in charge of selecting and developing players for 25 years...how can you not get it? Or if you don't, at least figure out how to put in charge of doing it for you?
ReplyDeleteI feel very sad tonight. I know where this team is going and nowhere is a place I never imagined them to be. I've never wanted to believe it. Even if they win the division, there won't be anything good come of it.
ReplyDeleteBut I have nowhere else to go. I love baseball - even this sanitized version of it - and even more importantly, I love the Yankees. I especially love coming here in spite of it all because this motley crew starts my day off on the right foot. Even if my left one yearns to be up The Intern's ass.
I vote we should put the card carrying members of this blog into a small conference room with Cashman and 1000 cream pies.
ReplyDeleteI know which group would win.
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ReplyDeleteStanton confirms PRP injection followed by at least 4 weeks of vacation. Meanwhile Cashole is shopping the scrap heap for help
ReplyDelete