Last night, they not only fell to the worst MLB team in recent history, they were blown out - humiliated, embarrassed, pilloried as a steaming lump of sporting incompetence. For sheer fiasco cred, you've got the Spanish Armada, Napoleon's drive into Russia, Yahoo Serious... and now, a looming series loss to the fabled '24 White Sox.
Still, I'm sorry, Yankee sprayers of dismay...
Last night's disaster cannot top the loss to Baltimore on All Star Break Eve - our leader in the clubhouse, still the gold standard for mortification. On that bleak afternoon, we bundled two errors with a closer meltdown to gift 1st place to the O's, punctuating the event with Alex Verdugo's immortal face-plant, while chasing a routine fly.
I have a feeling that Verdugo's flop will haunt him - and this franchise - for years to come - a dark symbol of Steinbrennerian malfeasance, and - perhaps - the precise moment when Brian Cashman's seat atop the Yankee tower of shit began to shift.
Any other pitcher would be released today. But he was Cashman's last door prize at the deadline, so he'll probably get another shot at throwing gasoline at the dumpster fire.
This came shortly after Jazz Chisolm Jr. left the game with a sore elbow. Today, he will get an MRI. If you're keeping score, the third Yankee obtained at the trade deadline, Mark Leiter Jr., gave up two HRs the other night. Before that, he had given up just two HRs all season.
We might go 0-for-3 in trades, though the YES apparatus will assure us that we gave up nobody of consequence. They always do.
Yes, last night was a grand humiliation, maybe a fulcrum point for 2024. The Yankees either win the next two, or they will lose a series to what is basically a mediocre Triple A club.
You could say that no MLB team looks like a champion. Last night, Baltimore lost again. They have squandered multiple ops to run away with the division. No team in baseball is on course to win 100 games. (The highest projections: 96.) If any team gets hot, the AL East is theirs for the taking.
But who pitches our 7th, 8th and 9th? Scott Proctor? As our journey continues, considering our bullpen, one troubling thought keeps rising:
The worst is yet to come.
Last year - Judge ran into a wall.
ReplyDeleteThis year the entire team has hit one.
Perhaps they should all be thrown into one.
Tonight will either be our blow out or squeaker win.
But, I’d be lying if I didn’t think it was important for this team
to suffer another big loss against these 2024 Chicago Juggernauts.
Where is the darkness? When will it engulf us to close this dark chapter?
ReplyDeleteFuck Hal.
I wonder how soon after he gets “promoted” Cash-hole will ghostwrite his book and what will the title be? "The Trade Master”, “Jack-off of all trades, master of none”, “You CAN settle for good enough”, “Hal and I, friends with benefits”…just spitballing here, but surely the fine folks at Simon & Schuster can do better.
ReplyDeleteSo the brilliant GM gives up prospects for Mark “Light up” Leiter, George Santos and Jassman. Why did SD, a team still in the playoff hunt, trade Santos ? Because he sucks! But our guy Booney will keep sending him out there because the idiot GM tells him to.
ReplyDelete"You're All Pawns: My Life as a 4-D Chessmaster" by Brian (the turd) Cashman
ReplyDeleteThose are terrific titles.
ReplyDeleteI like: INTERNinable!
All of us here, both the polite and the profane, are knitted together in an accepted understanding of the root causes of the team’s failure to win a championship. What makes it galling this season is the obvious lack of a dominating team. I turned the game off last night because I couldn’t tolerate another of boone’s unctuous recaps. The team should be absolutely ashamed by last night’s outcome, and management should drive the point home by releasing De Los Diablos, That is not nearly enough, as there needs to be established a clear culture of accountability and responsibility with a focus on only one thing: winning. That’s how professionals perform
ReplyDeleteBTR999, yeah, I turned the game after about the 10th runner LOB in the 4th inning. No sense in watching. I knew they'd lose. Maybe the worst is not yet to come if we achieve acceptance about this team and just let go now.
ReplyDeleteAnother 8 left on by Cantrun, by my count. Along with the 9 in the previous Sunday's win, that's 17 in just 2 games. Must be close to some kind of record.
ReplyDeleteAnd good old Boonie. Not that it would have mattered, ultimately, but Tim Hill had just pitched a scoreless inning in a 5-2 game, and got the first out of the next inning.
Out to the mound trots Genius Boone the manager, no doubt following some pre-game instruction from Genius Brian the general manager, to pull Hill for de los Santos. Seven runs later...
The Aaron Boone motto: Never, ever, ever stay with the hot hand. Never.
The incompetence boggles my hungover Berlin-sodden brain.
ReplyDeleteThe crazy thing is, I think we could win at least 10 or 15 more games with a real manager. Even as bad as the Brain is.