A collapse so intense - so profound, so greasy - that it's now easy to imagine this team falling out of the wild card.
Ten takeaways from last night.
1. Somehow, the brain trust dealt four of its best prospects without addressing any of the looming Yankee crises. We brought in a clank-glove OF, Heliot Ramos, and a career-year 1B, Luis Garcia Jr?
Why do I sense that the rest of MLB waits for Aug. 1, just to drill the Yanks?
2. As the night unfolded, as it became universally apparent that our rivals - the Dodgers, Redsocks, Rays, et al - had dramatically improved, the 8th inning collapse became epically remindful of last year's debacle.
3. If you recall, last year, we drunkenly celebrated what later turned out to be a horror show trade deadline with a 13-12 loss to the Marlins, a game that ended with a ball rolling between Jose Caballero's legs in RF, where he was supposed to be proficient. Our newly acquired bullpen lit a gasoline fire that smoldered through October.
4. So last night, we commemorated another lost deadline with one of the worst losses of 2026 - featuring a meltdown of our razor thin bullpen, after we put three of our best young arms out with the Japanese tide.
5. No catcher. No RP. No 3B. Unbelievable. Cashman's excuse: "It was a very thin market of opportunity." Nice revelation, eh? We spent the last three years trading away catchers, and now we face the worst offensive outputs in baseball. Yeah, Austin Wells and Ryan McMahon homered last night. Wells is hitting .167. McMahon is at .212. And nothing will change.
6. Apparently, the Yankees have promoted George Lombard Jr. up from Scranton for tonight's game. I cannot help but think they are using him to distract from the universal disappointment with the team, the franchise, and the front office.
7. Of course, they're finding scapegoats: Jasson Dominguez, who plays RF like your grandma trying to solve a Rubik's Cube, and Anthony Volpe, who almost reached MLB mediocrity in his recent incarnation. They will join a long list of Yankee failures - Greg Bird, George Frazier, Miguel Andujar, et al - who couldn't live up to their hype.
8. Ah, yes, the hype. Honestly, it's that relentless Yankee hype that pisses me off the most. The YES Network is quite good at pretending to be critical, rather than the propaganda mill that it is. At times, you get comical versions of Michael Kay and Jack Curry, seeming to tell it like it is. But they never challenge the front office. They never challenge the owner. They never challenge the real problems that haunt his franchise.
9. It's going to hurt when Boston passes us, probably in the next two weeks. When the Redsocks visit in late August - a four-game series - they will probably be ahead of us.
10. If there is a coded message from yesterday, it's that Aaron Judge is no certainty to return this year. If he does come back, he might be compromised. A fractured rib is not to be trifled with. He'll be a DH, along with Stanton, Garcia, Rice, Goldschmidt and maybe Bellinger.
Bonus: Last night in the 8th, didn't Trent Grisham botch that fly to deep center that opened the flood gates? It either hit the base of the wall or Grisham. Tough play, for sure. But it certainly looked catchable. The YES men never mentioned it. Close your eyes, everybody. It's almost time to think about football.
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25 comments:
The Giants look good this year. To someone.
Somewhere deep inside my brain there’s a small pulsating flare of energy cycling with the desire to see cASShman get interrogated on just how that Volpe thing worked out for him. He’d slip his way out of it with weaselly responses but I love to see him have to deal with a series of tough questions
Per Jack Curry: Volpe, Chivili, & Dominguez optioned to AAA. Lombard being brought up.
The timing suggests they held on to the Fox and the Martian hoping in vain to deal them.
I can't really expect guys whose job depends on the Yankees to be highly critical of its front office. But this was, once again, not a good faith effort—yet another trading deadline with nothing done to address pressing needs, and no discernible vision for this team...
The pity of it is, this Yankees team really might end up with the pitching depth to make a run in the playoffs: Fried, Cole, Schlittler, Rodon, Weathers, Warren, Schmidt, and Bednar.
If they're firing on all cylinders—a big if, but still—if they're firing on all cylinders, that's as good a staff as any that will make October, including even the Dodgers'...
But as Duque points out, who knows if the Yanks will even make it to the postseason? They may well not, letting the "championship window" close not with a bang but with a whimper...
Beyond that, there is the question of those who DIDN'T go at the trade deadline. Grisham, Jazz, McMahon—this is the last chance to get SOMETHING, anything for them. Instead, they will walk off the team like so many others, without even a body to replace them.
Wells and Volpe should've gone, too, though they have reached such depths that it may well be that they would bring nothing in return.
Yes, this does have the stench of 2013 all over it. And this time, without a manager who could, as Girardi did, rather miraculously keep the team above .500 while it rebuilt.
Can't really fault Miggy 2bags.
Other than, didn't he hurt his shoulder with a head first slide? Great coaching.
We'd all take a .300 hitter at 3rd right now, even with zero power.
And now this from Fox Sports:
"Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees' star player, may not return this season due to a rib injury, according to general manager Brian Cashman. Speaking on Monday (August 3), Cashman expressed hope that Judge would recover from his stress fracture but admitted uncertainty about his return. Judge has been sidelined since May 31, and his next imaging will determine if he can resume baseball activities. Cashman did not specify when this scan will occur."
The needle is pointing up. Not way up, but up.
I know it’s de rigueur to bash the Yankees at the deadline, but because of the opportunities presented this year, the result was particularly disappointing. Somehow, the team is even more unbalanced and lopsided than before. The other teams in our division easily surpassed us. To me, Garcia and Ramos make more sense on next year’s team - if there is a next year. We were left with the same bottom feeders as before as before. Dominguez played himself right off the team. Volpe has no discernible future. McMahon, Grisham, Rodon survive because of their horribly bloated salaries. It feels like all the air was let out of the balloon. I don’t know how cashman and the rest of his staff make it through this, but they do. Failure embraced,
I say, without a bit of snark, this is truly an awful time to be a Yankee fan.
Pre-deadline - two left-handed catchers who can’t hit
Post-deadline - same two left-handed catchers who can’t hit
Pre-deadline - third baseman who can’t hit
Post-deadline - same third baseman who can’t hit
Pre-deadline - one underachieving second baseman
Post-deadline - same underachieving second baseman
Pre-deadline - one overpaid mediocre center fielder
Post-deadline - same overpaid mediocre center fielder
Pre-deadline - hole(s) in bullpen
Post-deadline - hole(s) in bullpen
Pre-deadline - lack of right-handed hitting
Post-deadline - marginally less lack of right-handed hitting
Pre-deadline - one good left-handed hitting, mediocre fielding first baseman
Post-deadline - two good left-handed hitting, mediocre fielding first basemen
Pre-deadline - idiot at manager
Post-deadline - same idiot at manager
Pre-deadline - moron at GM
Post-deadline - same moron at GM
Pre-deadline - indifferent owner
Post-deadline - same indifferent owner
There's always one "but". They did finally bring up Lombard. Hopefully, he only plays SS and hits maybe 8 or 9 to begin. If he hits, I'd still be very cautious about moving him up in the lineup too quickly.
The trade deadline was pretty much a debacle, just like the game last night. Wow, what a shit show! Just enough comeback to keep the fans in it. Then, it all withered like a plate of pasta that's been sitting too long.
So, I have a theory about Aaron Judge. He's a very big guy, right? That rib must be 30% bigger, thicker than an average guy's rib. Ergo, it'll take at least 30% longer to heal than an average size rib. Can't tweak the laws of physics and biomechanics, unless you're at least part divine like Achilles or Hercules.
In an under the radar move. Ca$h signed Lyly Overbay to a minor league contract because he felt the first base position was a little thin
It won't take Boston two weeks to pass the Yankees. Gonna happen before the end of this week, methinks.
How bad are the Yankees going to lose tonite? Maybe 17-5?
One last thing about last night's debacle? Didn't the baseballs look juiced last night? Not only that, but the sound of bat on balls last night was incredible. Sounded like gunshots. No ... almost artillery blasts.
The gambling establishment must have ordered "super hard, super tight wound" balls with fifty percent extra carry. Either that or the new humidifiers that Cashman ordered haven't yet been fully and properly set up and fine tuned. Perhaps the gambling establishment failed to warn the Yankee management that the truckload of balls arriving for the game were supercharged. Perhaps the Yankee humidifier technicians failed to properly mark "Yankee" balls and "Cardinal" balls, so that a lot more of the humidified balls were given to Yankee pitchers, with predictable results. Bang, zoom!
It did feel very late 2010-s when we couldn't really pitch well enough to win it all but heroes could be made out of Neil Walker, Mike Tuschmann, or Cameron Maybe on any given night.
That's why, for me, every year is 2020 or 2021--there is always some inherent promise in the team that 2013, over the long haul of the season, didn't have.
In another under the radar move, the Yankees exhumed the remains of Roger Maris to play RF in place of Judge. Pedro Cerrano presided over the voodoo ceremony to bring the former 61 HR champ ack to life.
Originally, the Yankees wanted to reanimate Babe Ruth, only to find out that he was creamated.
No problemo, that. Just need to call in the Caped Crusader, Bat-Man! He can use his high tech Bat-Lab to re-hydrate the cremation remains, just like in the movie. To the Bat-Phone!
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