Brutal. Remember our insurmountable lead, back in May? Seven games up in the AL East. And a lineup of unsung heroes. Rice. Grisham. Goldie. Cody. Yarlboro. The entire bullpen. Judge hitting .415. We owned the division.
Suddenly, we're the Knicks, leading Indiana by 12 with two minutes to go. I mean... wow.
What really hurts? The sense that this year would be different. This was 2025, fulcrum point to the decade. The Yankees had spent all - or at least most - of that saved Juan Soto money to build the roster. They were a lock for the postseason, when all they'd need was an extra win or two. This was not 2024, when June loomed like an iceberg. Moreover, they were on the verge of burying Boston, once and for all. Remember?
Wow.
So, here we are - Hope Week - when Hideki Irabu once killed himself - and we are officially collapsing in YES-Mo. Four straight losses. Worst streak of the season. We cannot score a run. Last night - facing a sub-.500 team - you could feel our desperation grow. WTF happened?
1. Well, fly balls weren't carrying. We hit at least three that, on a different night, might have gone out. But. They. Didn't. They died at the track. The Yankees are a team of solo HRs. They cannot move runners. Come October, folks, that's our Babadook, right there. And he is very real. You can feel him in the batter's box, swinging every Yankee bat.
2. Not even DJ LeMahieu - nicknamed "Fun-D" for his grasp of fundamentals - could bunt a runner to third. It cost us the game. Not to pick on DJ - this was a team loss - but there our moments when you rely on your veterans. Last night, the message became clear: the Yankees cannot rely on their veterans.
3. There's something soul-crushing about rolling over the batting order to reach Trent Grisham and Ben Rice, both of whom are in freefalls. (Last 15 days: Grisham at .200. Rice at .143.) Last night, the Angels comically pitched around Aaron Judge, without paying a price. It's a template for beating them all season.
4. Right now, I'm ready for something batshit crazy. How about this: Bat The Martian leadoff. See what happens? Maybe he'll break out. The Yankees need something bold. The days will soon start getting shorter. Objects in the mirror are closer than they may appear.
5. Yeah, last night, the Yankees got some legitimate, unbelievably bad luck. The juju gods conducted a master class in subversion. Who hits a grounder to 3B that arrives just as The Martian - who was stealing the base - slides directly into the way? Who does that? You can't make that shit up. Still... it happened. In the end, another runner thrown out at third. Remember how they used to say the Jeter NEVER got thrown out at third? On this team, everybody gets thrown out at third.
6. We can blather up and down about who is hitting and who isn't, but one conclusion is starting to become clear: The Yankees, as a team, simply aren't that good. Our so-called youth movement - if it qualifies for such a designation - involves Volpe, Wells, Dominguez, Gil, Peraza and Rice. Hate to say it, but there might not be one future star in that entire group. Either somebody steps up and becomes a future Core Four-level player, we could squander Aaron Judge's greatest seasons in a generational dead zone. What an awful thought.
7. This recent June swoon amplifies the pit-of-stomach fear felt by every Yankee fan: That - on or around July 31 - Cooperstown Cashman will tear apart the organization with garage sale trades of what few prospects our farm system can offer. Whatever prospects are thriving - George Lombard Jr., we're talking to you - they might fly out the door in exchange for a bad contract and a band-aid.
8. That once-insurmountable lead? It's surmountable. In fact, it could be surmounted by the end of Hope Week. Wherever you are, Hideki, Rest In Peace. Wow.
Despicable.
ReplyDeleteWhen will we all learn . . .
ReplyDeleteToday is Tomorrow and
Yesterday Today . . .
The June swoon is turning into an exhausted faceplant into the manure pile.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAll of mental lapses are infuriating. ALL preventable with good coaching.
ReplyDeleteSo..... for the Yankees they are not preventable, but inevitable.
P.S., I hate small fucking keyboards
FUCK Boone
FUCK Ca$h
FUCK HAL with a $19 beer can. Shredded
I remember commenting when we had the 7 game lead that it could evaporate fast. It's evaporating fast.
ReplyDeleteJesus, Marianne Faithful, and Joseph.
The surprise was that we were that good, for that long. Not nearly enough of the money saved on Soto was put back into the team (what a shock).
ReplyDeleteI do not read all of the writers who follow the NY Yankees. I actually DO read what appears here, and am duly educated and impressed.
ReplyDeleteFor perspective: Here is what how WashPost writer took on the problems with the Nationals. This is just a bit of the article -- which was played up big on Page One of the sports page:
--
A dam broke at Nationals Park on Saturday afternoon when Dave Martinez lost his cool.
He said something managers shouldn’t — at least, according to the unwritten rules of clubhouse decorum that require blame be shared or shouldered but never assigned.
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Because when Martinez said his coaching staff is not to blame for the Washington Nationals’ recent futility, he nodded to an “us” and a “them” dynamic, a line between coaches and players — a division between one group trying with all its might and one group failing the other. Many of his players were unpleasantly surprised by the message, according to people familiar with their thinking. Martinez insisted publicly he did not mean to call them out and that he remains firmly on their side.
“I appreciate those players. I played. I understand how hard this game is,” Martinez said Sunday when asked about his comments. “They know that. So it’s a difficult game. These guys are out there trying hard.”
Sometimes things such as this blow over. Sometimes they do not. But what cannot be patched up is the long-cultivated vision of the Nationals as a team ready to emerge from a rebuild, with a trajectory solidly headed upward — with revitalization a matter not of if but when.
Because even with their best young hitter since Juan Soto getting better by the minute and plenty of young talent around him, they have lost eight games in a row entering Monday, including three at home to the last-place Miami Marlins, a team they should beat regularly these days. They have scored 31 runs in 13 games in June. And they are 11 games under .500, probably headed for a sell-off of veteran assets yet again, with players once viewed as part of a future core repeating mistakes they have made for years.
The Nationals are, in short, stuck in a mud years in the making, stirred by apathy in ownership, a prolonged drought in player development and the now-undeniable sense that even the friendly neighborhood manager — who has seen far more hopeless times than these — has grown so frustrated by his players’ inconsistencies that he can no longer mask the feeling. Frustration festers, and it is festering in the Nationals’ status quo.
Thanks, Joe FOB—and this is exactly what is wrong with today's, "parity" sports leagues. Teams like the Nationals—no, excuse me, the OWNERS of teams like the Nationals—continually use revenue from fans in places like New York, to haul in bigger and bigger profits while constantly "rebuilding" and never really competing.
DeleteAlso, the idea that players can't be called out, now that they are making literally hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases...is ludicrous.
From the Internets....on X:
ReplyDeleteAs unbelievable as it sounds, the #Yankees have played 9 extra innings this season with a runner auto starting on 2B.
They have scored just once.
8 times out of 9 they left the automatic runner on the bases. Unreal.
Automatic
DeleteRunners
Automatically
Annihilated
From Katie Sharp:
ReplyDeleteYankees in Extra Innings This Season:
.077/.194/.077
26 AB
2 H
0 XBH
1 R
1 SF
4 BB
8 K
‘nuff said?
‘nuff said.
That Katie . . . sure is Sharp
DeleteLast year the Yankees built a division lead so large that even a half season of .500 ball wasn't enough to derail them. This year they are worse and even more unwatchable.
ReplyDeleteThat their fanbase think the team is going to lose, trailing by only one run, against one of the worst teams in the league, and is proven right pretty much says it all.
To lighten the mood
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlVr45CHOuA
That was some slide!
He could take Jasson's place right now. Or, I guess, Dave Sims.
DeleteThat WAS pretty funny, 999. Also love how the actor has apparently never heard or said the word, "homestand" before.
ReplyDelete