2. Every winter, they sign just enough talent to compete for a wild card, then stop short of adding the final piece.
3. As they continually trade young prospects, long term malignancies are starting to pile up.
4. The team is full of players who desperately need a change of scenery, and the front office is terrified of letting them go.
5. Their owner doesn't care, as long as tickets are sold.
6. The franchise has squandered some of the greatest individual seasons in modern history.
7. Aaron Judge is a great player but - at least, thus far - a failure as captain.
8. They are slowly defining NYC as an impossible sports town.
9. They refuse to rebuild, even for one season, rejecting the path taken by almost every successful team.
10. The new generation of fans knows them as a team that always loses.
This weekend, Boston. It's been 46 years since the Massacre, 20 since The Curse was lifted. In this millennium, the Redsocks have the superior team.
In a nutshell...
It's a terrible time to be a Yankee fan.
One day, from seemingly nowhere, hope will rise, like methane from a feedlot. I hope to live to see that day.
ReplyDeleteYes, HAL has to die eventually. Doesn't he?
ReplyDeleteA sad, sad list. There are a number of really good points in there but two stood out.
ReplyDelete7) Aaron Judge is a great player but - at least, thus far - a failure as captain.
It's disappointing to say the least when he comes up short with the game on the line and the EXPECTATION is that he will look at strike three.
MLB has a statistic called late and close (essentially "the clutch stat" - except that clutch doesn't really exist - except that it DOES) and Judge's is terrible. He bats under .200 in those situations.
10) The new generation of fans knows them as a team that always loses.
This is the saddest and truest of all. Unfathomable! Completely accurate. Shame on Hal for letting them go to seed like this. If there is a level of hell for sports team owners he has earned his seat at the table.
Unfortunately it is we who are the damned.
Yep. And even when Hal is gone, who knows what other incompetent or uninterested Steinbrenner could take control? This is the age of the nepo baby.
ReplyDeleteIt's awfully hard to tell clutch from statistics.
ReplyDeleteWillie Mays, for instance, in 134 postseason plate appearances, hit all of .248 with 1 home run. Mantle, in 273 plate appearances, set the World Series record for home runs, but batted only .257. Joe, Joe DiMaggio hit a meh .271, with 8 homers 220 World Series PA. Ruth's BA was lower in the Fall Classic, but his OPS, incredibly, was even higher, 1.214 to 1.164. Gehrig, phenomenally, hit .361, also with a 1.214 OPS, and that includes the 1938 World Series, when he was already dying...
...Of course, it helps to hit behind Ruth and DiMaggio your entire postseason career—just as it helps to hit behind Joe Rudi and Thurman Munson when you're Reggie Jackson. Or with Yogi Berra hitting behind you.
ReplyDeleteJudge, more than any other great Yankee hitter, is left all but unprotected in the lineup.
BUT...
They say Steve Swindal's son, is considered the next heir to the Yankees throne. Here is a piece from the Post:
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2024/03/07/sports/meet-steve-swindal-jr-the-35-year-old-potential-successor-to-yankees-throne/
...According to baseballreference at least, Doug, Judgie's clutch stats are NOT that bad.
ReplyDeleteBF has him, lifetime, at .275, .940 "Late and Close," as opposed to his overall averages of .284 and .996.
Other "Clutch Stats"—at least according to BF—are similar:
2 Outs, RISP: .267, .955.
Tie Game: .274, .960.
Within 1 Run: .281, .979.
So, I'd have to say, based on that, that Judge being "unclench" is unproven...
Su true and furthermore "SCREW YOU HAL!"
ReplyDelete...I DO think there may be a growing tendency in Judge to try to do too much, the more his team fails.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, in the postseason, Judge initially had some good series. 3 homers and 7 ribbies against Houston in 2017 (the closest he will ever get to a World Series); .375 in the infamous, Boston 2018 series; .333 against Minnesota the next year.
Since 2020, though, Judge has gone just 10-70 in October, with some power (5 dingers, and 8 RBI), but greatly diminished plate discipline: only 6 walks and 25 strikeouts.
This is, again, a very small sample size—just 17 games spread out over 4 seasons. But it does seem to indicate a player who is maybe trying too hard, because he knows—not wrongly—that he is the straw who stirs the drink...
...As for the intangibles of being a captain, well...
ReplyDeleteWe all loved Thurman Munson's fiery character. But did he really serve the team well by letting his feud with Reggie linger for a whole season?
I love me some Derek Jeter, by now actually an underrated player in baseball. But as captain, should he really have told Cashman, 'Sure, go ahead and get A-Rod' then spent the next 10 years cold-shouldering him? (Granted that Alex was/is a mass of insecurities.)...
...It's walking a fine line, being captain—how to be both inspiring and encouraging. Particularly in today's game. I mean, what exactly is Judge supposed to say to the likes of Glass Man, or Gleyber the Noodlehead? It's hard to herd millionaires...
ReplyDeleteThe Mariners were able to trade 2 low level minor leauge OFs for Randy Arozarena. Other GMs see Cash-hole coming a mile away now and we’d have to send Spencer Jones for an established MLB OF'er
ReplyDelete...One thing I do think we should try to avoid is making Judge the fall guy for the abundant failures of this organization. If we had 9 Aaron Judges, we would have 0 problems.
ReplyDeleteBoston, where the sportswriters used to be much more vicious than they ever were here, decided to make Ted Williams the fall guy for the team's years of ineptitude. One of them used to write constant columns about all the times Teddy Ballgame failed in the clutch.
I don't think we should do that with Judge.
Re: rebuilding, the usual excuse for not doing just that is that "Yankees fans" wouldn't stand for it, but which Yankees fans are they talking about? Bandwagoners from Yuma, AZ, and Salina, KS, and such, who mix and match sports teams based upon historical success? Or actual New York sports devotees, who support, say, the perennially futile Knicks and Rangers?
ReplyDeleteEven so, a rebuild is only as good as the owner and GM managing it, so we are likely effed either way.
ReplyDeleteSwindal was supposed to be the guy who would take over from George, but he and George's daughter got divorced. There went that.
ReplyDeleteOr am I thinking of someone else?
Hoss, I do admit to thinking Judge is not a dramatic hitter, and not productive in very late innings when a key hit or HR is needed. I've noticed it for a few years now. He just doesn't do drama, the opposite of Soto or Jeter or O'Neill or some other guys. I don't think he'll ever be the Tino Grand Slam or Brosius winning HR type of hitter.
ReplyDeleteSometimes stats are important to me, but other times I have to believe my own lying eyes. I cringe when he comes up with the game on the line in the ninth.
Hoss - I was talking about this year not his career. I don't know how to access the actual stats but if you do I would be curious.
ReplyDeleteJudge is the very least of our concerns.
ReplyDeleteThe idiot GM, who will remain nameless, wouldn’t trade SJones for Dylan Cease, but will not trade him for probably Bob Dylan. It’s unbelievable!
ReplyDeleteBob Dylan has a great screwball.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteBaseball. It's like we're all sitting around JM's living room, passing the bong, old Fleetwood Mac albums on the Dual.
The Yankees are worth $7.55 billion, next highest is the Dodgers at $5.45 billion. The team is second in average attendance this season behind only the always-nice-weather Dodgers. That's baseball in Hal's world.
Ah, sorry, Doug! And you're right: for this year, BF has him at just .216 and .753, "Late & Close." Though they still have him at .267/.940, "Two Outs, RISP; .291/1.191 "Game Tied,"; and .322/1.186, "Within 1 Run."
ReplyDeleteSo I dunno. But again, it does look like he's trying to do too much or be too fine in ninth innings.
Paxton to BoSox.
ReplyDelete@ JM....It is Swindal you're thinking of. He was a furniture salesman who went out on a blind date with George's daughter, Jennifer. In 2008, The Boss named him future Managing Partner. Which he would have become had he not gotten a DUI shortly after and resulting in corporate embarrassment and divorce. Costly bender because George dropped dead 2 years later.
ReplyDelete