Monday, June 3, 2024

Yankees are best team in baseball. The only problem? It's June 3.

One key to life is knowing when you got it good... because, as every practicing fan knows - it won't last. 

So it goes with the '24 Yankees. We now possess MLB's best record, three up on Baltimore - (still the team to beat) - with Gerrit Cole's return maybe weeks away and an emerging Jasson Domiguez, raking - (.333 with 4 HRs in 51 ABs) - on rehab in the minors. 

It won't get better - which raises an existential question: Will we blow it... again? 

We face parallels, terrifying  omens, with 2022, when we washed ashore at the disastrous Aug. 1 trade deadline. Two years ago, a splotch of woeful deals kicked this team in its balls. The feeling still persists.

Then: The team was running away in the AL East despite an open sore in LF named Joey Gallo. Eventually, we traded him to LA for a lottery ticket named Clayton Beeter (now injured). Gallo briefly revived with the Dodgers, then returned to his uppercut malaise. (He's currently hitting a sad .141 with 4 HRs for Washington.) We went with a pile of players - Oswaldo Cabrera, Harrison Bader, Aaron Hicks -none who succeeded.  

Now: The team is in first despite growing concerns at 1B, where Anthony Rizzo has gone stone cold. Over the last 30 days, he's hitting .219 - with the second lowest OPS (.571) in the AL among first basemen. His fielding seems to have degraded. MLB is full of expensive, underwhelming first basemen, which opposing GMs would love to send to the Yankees for a workable prospect. In a nutshell, be afraid.

Then: Giancarlo Stanton was hitting HRs - (he'd finish with 31) - but was increasingly marginalized because of his inability to play the field.

Now: Giancarlo Stanton is hitting HRs - (he has 14, projected to hit 37) - but is totally marginalized because of his inability to run.

Then: An unexpectedly bad Josh Donaldson was stumbling and fumbling, with the YES team constantly assuring us he was coming around. He never did.

Now: Gleyber Torres cannot seem to get his act together. He's hitting .230 with 4 HRs and a series of on field blunders worthy of the Savannah Bananas. 

Then: Defying the laws of random sequence, every deadline deal Brian Cashman made blew up in our noses. (It should be noted that none of the prospects we dealt away became a big star; but that simply might free up the GM to... dear God...) 

Now: Will he attempt to restructure the bullpen and infield? And this time, will we give away the future? If you continually trade away the seed corn, eventually, you hit a famine. 

I know what you're thinking: Jeeze, Duque, be happy, for once. The Yanks just shredded the AL West - on a road trip, no less. They have baseball's best pitcher rehabbing, and maybe the game's best young pitcher leading the rotation. On a day devoted to Lou Gehrig, you could argue that we have the modern equivalent of Ruth and Gehrig - Judge and Soto. For God sake, cheer up. Because this can all go poof in one outfield collision. 

Yeah, that's it, eh? Celebrate while we can. But as a practicing fan, never let down your guard. Beat your chest, and the juju gods will take notice. That's when Judge will step into a wall. We're four months from October, a long hard slog. We might be peaking. It might never get better than what we just saw. Be happy. But don't let your guard down.


18 comments:

  1. Words of wisdom:

    A horse is a horse, of course, of course
    And no one can talk to a horse, of course
    That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed!

    Go right to the source and ask the horse
    He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse
    He's always on a steady course
    Talk to Mr. Ed!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Us Ranger fans have it worse...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I sooooo wish The Master was calling these games, he (and we) would be having a blast!

    ReplyDelete
  4. If I had a horse, it's battery would go dead in the stable.

    ReplyDelete
  5. But Wilbur's wife....rrrrrrrrrrrowwwwww. Hubba hubba.

    I remember 2022 well. I do not see anything like that happening this year, barring multiple visits from the injury goddess. She who taketh away and never giveth.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ahem, so those of us who predicted doom, gloom, malaise & apocalypse, were we wrong? Stang's prediction for a monster season looks pretty good now, eh?

    The real test is coming soon ... the hateful Dodgers, the resurrected Orioles, our original nemesis the Red Sox, and of course, the Braves. Scalps will be flyin'....

    All of the team's problems should be filled from within. The unproductive dead wood has got to be excised. Youth must be served. Cashman shouldn't make any trades, except to get rid of Torres for a bullpen lug nut.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I remember the Mr. Ed episode with Mae West...lol...

    ReplyDelete
  8. You can rely on The Intern to do something incredibly stupid at the TD.

    Mr. Ed would be a better choice for Yankees GM. In fact, he’d be even better as an owner, cause the current owner is more of an ass than a horse. Ba-dump

    ReplyDelete
  9. Leo Durocher Meets Mister Ed:

    Hardcore Los Angeles Dodgers fan Ed calls team manager Leo Durocher to give him tips. Wilbur and Ed then go to Dodger Stadium to help Durocher, resulting in Ed hitting an inside-the-park home run pitched by Sandy Koufax.

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4uuhvd

    ReplyDelete
  10. I stand by my dire and dark pre-season predictions.

    And Mister Ed ended up as the glue used to bind foreign-language copies of that Book of Mormon that missionaries gave out in the '60s.

    Humbug.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Leo Durocher could have been a movie star

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh, this team could so easily fall apart. That's the biggest difference between it and the 1998 version: depth.

    The 1998 team had five proven veterans in the pen, including the greatest closer of all time.

    The 1998 team had, in the end, six, count 'em six, guys to play LF. Poor Darryl went down with cancer, but they still had Shance Spencer, Ricky Ledee, Tim Raines, Chili Davis, and Chad Curtis by then. The main back-up infielder, Homer Bush, hit .380 in 45 games. Behind him was Luis Soto, who would only get a World-Series-winning hit.

    This team is a lot frailer...but damn, they're fun!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Also, just for the record, I believe I predicted boom, vavoom, mayonnaise, and a lotta chips. You must've misheard, Hammer.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The baseball season is like a Grateful Dead concert. You're in for real disappointment when you peak too early.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I’m stunned and thrilled by the overall results here, but a realistic view tells us that the team is playing over their heads the last month, and a course correction is coming. It doesn’t have to be a collapse, just that playing .700 ball is not sustainable. After the Twins, it will be something of a gauntlet for the rest of June, and I still think it will a dogfight for the playoffs, but we have a cushion, so the advantage currently lies with us.

    ReplyDelete

Members of the blog can comment. To receive an e-mailed invitation, write to johnandsuzyn@gmail.com. And check spam if it doesn't show up. (Google account required.)

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.