The Yankees, of course.
With their "mature" lineup - "mature" meaning "aging" - the '25-26, same-as-last-year Yankees are a boring, bumbling team that needs 10 walks per game to score runs. When they lose, as they did last night, they are particularly dreadful to watch. They are Saturday Night Live hosted by Elon Musk. Basically, you have Aaron Judge, a few anecdotes by David Cone and the NAME THAT YANKEE trivia question. After that - well - Ben Rice might turn out to be something. And Giancarlo always entertains, until he gets hurt. The bullpen cannot hold leads, and the starting rotation will only get older.
But but BUT... we are in first.
How can sit here, farting into my back-breaker office chair, and denigrate a FIRST PLACE team? Am I that spoiled, that out of touch with the realities of baseball? If they're so old, so listless, why are the Yankees in first?
I say, it's A.L. Slop.
Yes, Artificial Lousiness.
Particularly, let's celebrate the once-mighty AL East, a division that was supposed to rule baseball, which - for now, anyway - is a collection of cupcakes and canned tomatoes.
For example, did you happen to see the throw by Boston's future superstar, Roman Anthony, the other night? He snagged a one-hop single to left field and fired a cannon shot home, with a solid chance to nab a runner. The ball bounced about 30 feet from the plate plate, halfway up the 3B line. It was beautiful. It was magic. It had the makings of a Little League HR. The Martian, lost in Scranton, would be hard-pressed to match it.
The line on Anthony, according to my Redsock fan sources, is that he spent the winter in the weight room, bulking up so he could wow the coeds over a full MLB season. (He got hurt last year and missed the playoffs.)
Listen, Anthony is scary. He could be great, a future Yankee killer. But maybe, just maybe, that MVP trophy that the Gammonites bestowed upon him over the winter - could it be premature? He wouldn't be the first great prospect to weight-lift his way into mediocrity.
So, here's my personal vendetta list of cold-ass starts.
Of course, it's wayyyy to early to assign meaning to these numbers. (And Jose Caballero, Jazz Chisholm, Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon - the ballplayer, not the Onondaga County Executive - would all crack this list.) But the Yankees, for all their knock-kneed problems, have one thing going for them.
A.L. Slop. Welcome to the new world.
It’s all fun and games until we lose a few too many of them.
ReplyDeleteThen it’s….
Pinstripe Purgatory.
We all know that this team is not built to Weathers the coming storm.
ReplyDeleteCamilo Doval...Camilo Doval...if he doesn't scare you, then you must like Pal.
ReplyDelete(Cruella, we salute you.)
Great post by Hoss, again. I can't believe we lost last night, even if it was this morning here. But today is a day game, right? So I get to watch it this evening and enjoy the idiocy that is Boone, along with the incompetence that is half our lineup.
Love it, JM! And hey, where the hell is Angel Chivilli?
DeleteJust call me Angel
Down in Scranton
Then just walk away...
The Master would say wait until 20 games into the season...that aside, Bednar is dreadful...
ReplyDeleteNobody is going to be another Mariano, but this shit...
DeleteMeanwhile, as Hoss points out, Williams and Weaver and Holmes are doing great for the Mets. We didn't need any of them, because Genius.
Perhaps, JM (if I may call you JM, JM) if Blake gets thrown out of more games this season then perhaps the pitchers will all benefit from less Blake and perform better whilst on the mound.
DeleteThanks, JM. And yeah, this team is starting to play just like we feared.
ReplyDeleteWho knew? WE knew!
As for the pathetic hitting—and why, oh, why oh, was the Great Escarra playing in what was a night game after a night game and NOT a getaway day last night?—no doubt it's probably due in part to all the home night games Hal let the team schedule.
On the other hand...this has also probably kept how many balls from flying out against our crack corps of arsonists in the pen—a pen that, just 11 games into the season, is already noticeably coming apart.
Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.
The delusional Yankees organization:
ReplyDelete'“(McMahon is) a good major-league hitter,” Boone said.'
Not really. Decent at Coors Field and nowhere else. How does the braintrust always miss analyzing these types of stats?
SPEAKING OF MLB SLOP - I need to vent for a moment, but only a moment because I have lost an hour of my life to this and now must take my dog to the vet.
ReplyDeleteGot the tickets for our get-together but, in MLB's infinite wisdom, they sit in either "MYYankees" account or somewhere in the netherworld of Ticketmaster/MLB Ballpark app. One hour trying to move these virtual tickets so I can transfer them. I'm not tech idiot, been doing this shit for decades, yet their backend is so profoundly stuffed with shit - probably coded by AI - that it's just not working. They appear, the disappear. They say I'm verified, but that I'm not verified. They exist, they don't exist. Unable to do at the moment. "Please try again" etc. I just wrote to our group sales manager and will see what he says. Yes, they take your money, then they fuck you like a crackhead in the parking lot. So sick of MLB. They want your money, your data, your eyeballs and attention, but they don't care about their "product." They are going to lose the next generation of young suckers if they don't turn this barge of donkey shit around pronto.
Fucking Bronx Bastards played like crap last night. What a fucking creepshow that was.
ReplyDeleteWas so busy these last couple of days that I missed the great discussion on Wednesday:
ReplyDeleteHoss: "I'll go you one better and say that I suspect Hal was furious when he got outbid by San Francisco and Judge chose to return to New York anyway.
Hence, all the careful dances around stars such as Soto and Yamamoto, making sure that the Yanks are seen offering just enough to come in second. Which is the plan for the team in general."
Awesome, Hoss! I used to believe that they were actually trying their best to win. Maybe it was so, up until 2010. It wasn't until maybe 2020 that I started thinking that Yankee management had a sea change in their mentality. Lots of competing factors are going on here: profit maximization, tax avoidance, cost stability, risk management, public relations. Plus healthy dosages of stupidity, stubbornness, hubris, arrogance, vindictiveness, owner collusion, risk averseness, and maybe even some economic racism/disparate racial impact. Put it all together, and I think it explains their behavior extremely well.
Like I always say, all we can do is look up at the heavens with our telescopes and observe, then try to come up with theories about why things happen. Our "finance" theory, for lack of a better term, seems to fit like a glove. Let's all give ourselves a pat on the back!
Bottom line is that, just like in the Paul Newman movie "Slap Shot", ownership of this club doesn't want to win. We've become like the K.C. Royals or the Homeless Athletics. Ownership is happy to rake in the profits, claim paper losses for tax purposes, and cringe at the idea of doing anything that might rock the boat and ruin the party.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why Cashman stays around. That's why he gets paid big bucks. Let's face it: how many of us would be able to only get the wildcard every year and lose in the first or second round of the playoffs? I'm certain that every one of us would eventually win a championship or two or three, though it might take a couple of down years. That ain't what HAL wants. Prince Hal is a Machiavellian sumbitch!