Crapshoot? Part One.

 

Just to riff, for a moment, on Doug K.'s telling stats about how well the Blue Jays play in the Rogers Centre—and also Hammer's observations about how the Yankees never adjust (at least, not in Brian Cashman's reign of terror):

So, knowing that we—or at least, Doug—knew about the Blue Jays at home...shouldn't the Yanks have gone all out to avoid giving the Jays the home field advantage?

I mean, it was bad enough that we gave the Red Sox almost their best possible chance to beat us in two—something we avoided by a hairsbreadth.

But to not go all out for first, when we knew that the Blue Jays were monsters there?

What's worse, this is far from the first time during Cashie's House of Horror that the Yankees have played it too cute by half.

—Think back, back to the halcyon days of 2007. The Yanks pretty much openly let Boston crawl to the division championship. Our Brian, who can never, ever, resist letting everyone know when he thinks he's being especially clever—great trait in a GM—put it about everywhere that this move was pure genius.

That way, our first series would be against Cleveland, and not the Angels of Ventura Highway, who always beat us. You know, because the Angels had some kind of magic juju thing going, not because they were a team of mortals we could try stacking up better against.

Oh, we fooled them! That way, like Predator v. Alien, the Angels and Hose would spend the ALDS just ripping each other apart, and we could come in and shoot the survivor.

Well, as you'll recall, the Angels went into October badly banged up that year, and got swept by the Sox with barely a murmur. What awaited us in Cleveland was MidgeFest '07! The rest is history—and not pretty history!

—Of course, Cashman's reaction was...to fire his manager, Hall of Famer Joe Torre.  

Fast forward now, three years to the stretch run of the 2010 season. I stuck around through what must have been at least an hour-long rain delay in what I had THOUGHT was vital, pennant race game against Tampa Bay, a whole game-and-a-half ahead of us, with just 9 left to play. 

Yanks were up 3-1 after 5, when the rains came.  They returned...with a decidedly different attitude.  Soon, most of the starters were out of the game.  TB cruised, 10-3.  Yanks dropped 8 of their last 11.  BUT WAIT!  Brian Cashman had a plan!

Of course he did. We were all set up to play Minnesota in the ALDS. All right, so hard to lose with that. But Texas snuck past Tampa Bay...and then, with home field, proceeded to pummel us in the ALCS.

But surely Brian Cashman learned something after that.  Didn't he, Grandfather?

'Oh, hush up, little Heidi! As all of us in the Alps know, Brian Cashman never, ever learns anything from experience!' 

And he hasn't yet!