Old Food Stamps covered a lot of ground - conjuring excuses and gaslit dreams - but I believe the above quotation, in all its toxic smog and fog, offers the clearest portrait of why the Yankees are a perpetual 2nd-place team with a 1st-place payroll.
Hal was "disappointed" in the '26 offense. Well, yeah, I guess we all were. That's because the Death Barge entered the year with the same offense that disappointed us in '25, and throughout the regular season, all those acquisitions that were going to save us? Well, they didn't happen. We were left with a roster of disappointments, which now fits neatly into Hal's backwards reckoning.
If you were to tell me last February that Cam Schlittler would chase the Cy Young, and Ben Rice would hit 40 HRs, I'd had have bet the house.
Now, that's disappointment.
After squandering the greatest seasons of Aaron Judge's career - Hall of Fame-level years - the Yankees may do the same with Schlittler and Rice.
So, Hal is - um - disappointed? Golly. Does he realize how tired those words sound, how insulting they are to Yank fans who are watching time run out on the franchise's legacy?
An entire generation now sees the Yankees as a bloated monstrosity that always comes close and never wins. They are a team that plays in a lunch-pail ballpark and that owns the primary media that covers it. Thus, you have hitters who swing for the porch and straddle the Mendoza line. (The Yankee lineup last season had three regulars - Wells, Grisham and McMahon - who hit below .215.)
It must be tough for Hal, watching Milwaukee and Tampa play old-school baseball, while he contemplates the murky future of a lockout.
He's disappointed.
Huh.
It seems as though the only schema through which Hal can view or judge anything is a spreadsheet - just numbers, no intangibles, no human factor. Then again, I never did like the taste of word salad and should try not to parse it too closely. Short story - Hal's a dick. Oligarchs don't really care too much about the sincerity of their excuses. He has made his official statement on the season, now he can get back to his true love - money - and leave the helm of the ship to his loyal moron, Brian.
ReplyDeleteHal was one "I'm concerned" away to being very similar to Susan Collins...
ReplyDeleteTwo things:
ReplyDelete1) Hal "I'm going to be looking from top to bottom"
The Top: Head of acquisition and roster construction GM Brian Cashman... Looks good from here.
The Top of the Team On The Field: Manager Aaron Boone. Great job! A keeper.
Fire the towel boy.
2) OT - Speaking of changes top to bottom... Great win for the Giants yesterday. I guess getting rid of a soft head coach and hiring one who know how to win and understands meritocracy actually works.
I was reading Big Blue View and one of the commenters, Mightywhig, said the following about the Texans cheerleaders,
"The Texans' lovely gym-chiseled cheerleaders performed the usual burlesque show, like so many Hester Prynnes in search of another "A." (Shout out to Jerry Izenberg!)"
It just reminded me about how great a writer Jerry Izenberg was and I wanted to give him a shout out here. I read he's still alive at 93.
That IS a great quote, Doug!
DeleteWhere do I sign up to date one of them "lovely gym-chiseled cheerleaders" from The Texans?
DeleteRanger - Good one.
ReplyDeleteONE is a Pissah
ReplyDeleteONE is a Shittah
ONE doesn’t know how
to manage our Hittahs
re betting the house etc onehitter(even judge!) and one pitcher (even a koufax) does not a team make. this isnt basketball whare one or 2 players can have such a huge impact
ReplyDeleteVery true, rebbe. Roster construction always eludes The Brain.
DeleteThe offense was inconsistent, perhaps because even batting .300 means you fail 70% of the time. And nobody on this team could hit .300.
ReplyDeleteDoug, the Jints continue to amaze me. What a difference a real coach makes. But I have to confess, I didn't know who Jerry Izenberg is, having never read a Newark paper in my life. Which doesn't mean I shouldn't at least know who he is, but I didn't.
Ranger, I'm concerned about your comment.
Hal, on the other hand, could not give a fuck. About anything.
Food Stamps Hal is a perfect name. Way to go Duque.
ReplyDeleteJM
ReplyDeleteHe's also in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29363433-once-there-were-giants
Great, great, sportswriter.
Reverse engineer this - as we have already done, ad nauseam - and Brian likes Boone because he's a meat puppet who won't question Brian, won't talk back, and won't make Brian feel stupid or less than. It's Brian's insecurity complex. THAT is why we can't have a winning manager. And Hal keeps Brian because 1. He doesn't care as long as the money is flowing in and 2. The Yankees stole his father away from him as a child and this is payback. Not that any of this is new to you all.
ReplyDeleteToo true, Bitty.
DeleteAnd once again: we'll look into it top to bottom!
ReplyDeleteRemember the entire system review they were going to do about why so many Yanks were getting injured? Back, I think, about 2019?
Wonder where that report is mouldering. Funny how it never came out.
The Brewers and Rays know how to play ball. Game 2 of the WS was incredible. This WS is baseball played at a very fine level. I love love the Yankees, but I am also a lover of The Game. The believe that Those Our 2026 New York Yankees could have played a better game, but they are managed (mangled? managmangled?!?) (I need a portmanteau for mangle and manage!) by The Idiot. And the GM is a bean counter whose sole responsibility is keeping payroll in check and maximizing profits. Fucking HAL is a lying nepo billionaire who got the exact results he was looking for this year: money money money. I cannot hate this group of fuckfaces any more than I already do, and boy howdy am I trying my best to hate them more. (Trump and Putin are absorbing quite a bit of that bandwidth.) They could spend as much as they do, or even less, a lot less, and still put much better baseball on the field than they do.
ReplyDeleteI hate them all so very much.
Go Brewers.
Milwaukee in 6.
Nathan Fielder should do a documentary on the Yankees Front Office / Upper management.
ReplyDeleteWe should do a mockumentary on the Yankees Front Office!
DeletePrince Hal should get the Nobel Prize for Einstein Level Observations that Everyone Already Knows. Offense inconsistent? LOL LOL LOL! Who told these dumb a-holes to run back the same offense from the year before, eh? Almost the entire lineup hits under .200. How could you possibly have any consistency?
ReplyDeleteThe HoG, they have apps and websites for that. There's a website or app for pretty much everything.
ReplyDeleteComing into this year, we all knew that bringing back Grisham and hanging onto McMahon, Chisholm, Wells ... these were all hanging offenses. (Pun fully intended.)
ReplyDeletePlus, it was absolutely predictable that Judge would have an injury riddled year. He had finished 2025 with an elbow ligament injury. And then he played in the World Baseball Classic in spring. You didn't have to be Nostradamus to see it coming....
I wasn't a fan of them re-signing Bellinger either. Yes, he's a helluva lot better than Grisham. But it was obvious that they needed some turnover here. One of those Japanese players would've been a better bet. Would've only required money.
Yankee management actually wants to waste money in useless ways. They prefer to dump enormous sums into players who will be injured or totally suck. Why would they do this? I think it's a financial game that they're playing. Sort of a "poker baseball", if you will. The game is so good that they prefer to just keep it going exactly as is.
This winter, the lockout and the new collective bargaining agreement with the players' association will, most likely, make the game even better for HAL. That's why HAL is so hell bent in support of a new CBA that mandates spending limits on teams. He wants to make the Yankees into just another team. I don't think he even wants to maximize his net profits. He prefers to keep everything as is. Every time a big useless salary comes off the books, they will find another big useless salary to replace it. This is risk management, portfolio management.
From a financial standpoint, these guys aren't stupid. They're doing everything right. They're making lots of money, paying zero taxes, and there is virtually no risk of it ever imploding. And there are many reasons why they might NOT want to make even bigger profits - higher risks; higher taxes; bigger headaches in the long run.
I've noticed it for years now. Yankee management has become extremely risk averse. They'll do anything to continue with mediocrity. They greatly prefer to bring back mediocre players, even if they have to pay ridiculous money. They even like to bring back players who sucked and then left. This is their modus operandi.
ReplyDeleteThis is why they like to have a manager and coaches who obviously suck. If the manager and coaches suck, you can bet that everything else sucks too. I'm sure the scouting sucks. The analytics nerds suck. The medical and training staff suck. The nutritional staff sucks. Probably even the catering for the pre-game and post-game meals sucks. Everything here sucks. They pretend that they have a first class organization, but it's patently obvious that they don't give a crap about winning. They just want to keep kicking the can to El Banco.
ReplyDeleteWatching the World Series between the Brewers and the Rays, we can see how far away the Yankees are from being a "championship caliber" ball club. These teams are young. Notice how many guys are in their early twenties. Jack London wrote "youth will be served". And are we ever seeing it right now.
ReplyDeleteThis is why the Yankees won't win by bringing in a few expensive free agents. True, the last time they won, in 2009, they did it by bringing in three big free agents (Sabathia, Burnett, Texeira). But those three added to a core that they still had from their previous championship dynasty. Right now, they don't have a championship level core. They have a couple of starters and a couple of hitters. Maybe a couple of kids who might become good players, if the crazy coaching staff doesn't fuck them up. Not nearly enough for anything except contending for the wild card.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of the crazy coaching staff, I'll beat on Matt Blake some more. (Because he is a pinata.) The coaching on these two World Series teams is at least three or four levels above Matt Blake and what the Yankees do. The pitchers on these teams actually read the hitters and can make adjustments on the fly, batter by batter. The Yankee pitchers cannot do this, because they don't know how to do it, because their coaches never help them develop a sense for doing it. The pitchers on these two teams are not necessarily better than the pitchers on the Yankees. But the coaching is oceans apart, light years apart.
ReplyDeleteBlake has gotten better, I think. He does develop his pitchers using shapes, spin rates, velocity, pitch percentages. But there is not nearly enough in reading hitters and making adjustments on the fly. That's where the real coaching differentiates itself from technicians.
The rest of the Yankee coaching, the batting coach, for insistence, can't even clear the low bar of a Matt Blake. These guys can't do anything right.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the AAA coaches finally got through to Volpe. He stopped trying to launch moonshots, leveled up his swing, and started making a lot more contact, spraying the ball around. (Why couldn't the coaches up here get him to do that?)
I'd say the talent level of Jasson Dominguez is up there on a par with most of the players in this World Series. But the Yankees do not believe in developing players, and their coaches suck. So JD appears on track to getting his career completely wrecked by these incompetent buffoons.
Spencer Jones, I'd say, only needs a bit of tweaking to get his approach right against right-handed pitching. He's there against lefty pitching. He just needs to stop trying to launch against righty pitching. Why am I certain that Yankee coaching is not up to the task? See above, about Volpe and JD.
George Lombard, Jr., is very close to being a really good player. But again, I have zero faith in Yankee coaching. If he's going to be good, he's going to have to do it on his own or with private coaches for both batting and defense. He's got one huge advantage, though. His dad, George Lombard, is a retired MLB player, and he also coached for the 2020 championship Dodgers and currently bench coach of the Detroit Tigers. So I'm sure Junior gets plenty of tips and feedback from his dad.
Steinsucker is disappointed? Not as disappointed as we are with him as an owner. It’s being reported he is one of the most hardline owners in support of the lock out next season. What a shitshow, and it’s not going to get better.
ReplyDeleteKing George is very disappointed in you, HAL. You are failing your fathers legacy. All the money on earth, nor the best balance sheet in baseball, will not replace your father's respect and love.
ReplyDeleteBut...but...they are showing a profit and have lots of cash in a war chest...
DeleteMilwaukee chased Peralta at 4 and 2/3.
ReplyDeleteAnd now Milwaukee is pouring it on!!
ReplyDeleteFIVE 2 OUT RUNS IN THE FIFTH!!!!
ReplyDeleteGo Brewers.
ReplyDeleteSIX 2 OUT RUNS IN THE BOTTOM OF THE FIFTH!! DAMN THAT BOOSER GUY WAS DREADFUL!!
ReplyDeleteGo Brew Crew.
ReplyDeleteTHE BREWERS JUST KEEP SCORING!! I'M GETTING OVER-EXCITED!!!
ReplyDeleteReminds of this team I used to love...
ReplyDeleteThe Brewers lead not helping the ratings…
ReplyDeleteFuck their ratings. May they all die of untreatable bladder cancer fistulizing into their genitals and rectums.
ReplyDeleteHere’s a fun stat for you.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees hit 69 more home runs than the Brewers this year — and scored 93 fewer runs.
And you know all those analytics geeks who have taken over the game and say that winning is all about home runs and launch angle, and batting average is the most overrated and meaningless stat? Guess which teams led the majors in batting average? Tampa Bay and Milwaukee. Guess which team was last in the NL in home runs? Milwaukee.
But … but … analytics!!!
Really damning stats right there. Not much you can say to that. Wow...
DeleteWell that was a drubbing…
ReplyDeleteRays LOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHammer, it was not the time to talk about how great the pitching coaches are in Milwaukee and Tampa. Milwaukee, yes, but Tampa? No.
ReplyDeleteHal extended the contract of the person most responsible for two decades of home run dependent offence, sloppy or no base running skills, inconsistent and sometimes horrifying defense and an utter absence of baseball smarts right up and to the schmuck he hired to run the team for 3 more years.
ReplyDeleteAnd the saddest part is that he spent a boatload of money and has to watch two teams in the WS who's payrolls are 45% and 36%, while his joke of a team are already out of the game.
But that's the downside of failing upwards.