What Might Have Been

Those kids down in Miami just love Donnie Baseball.

The worst Yankee decade in history?

As we stand on the bridge, here is Today's Official Yankee Comfort Thought: 

Cheer up, everybody! The Twins, Astros, Braves and Reds still have worse records than we do! 

Of course, three of those teams entered 2016 as tear-downs. The Reds and Braves were manically trading vets such as - hey, anybody want Aroldis Chapman? - for anyone under age 22. Only the bargain basement Astros seem to have flown off the rails, but they remain a work in progress. As for the Twins? What can you say? They're the embodiment of Phil Hughes.

But we - the mighty New York Baseball Yankees of Gotham! - remain baseball's marquee disappointment, the worst professional sports team that old money can buy. Our players are genetically coded to under-achieve or get hurt. Whenever a star gets hot - as A-Rod, CC and Ellsbury recently did - some law of random sequences requires them to tweak a gonad. In this decade, the Yankee way is: Stay cold or get injured.

And standing on the bridge, rest assured that it works! This period - from 2010 to 2020 - could be the most fruitless Yankee decade in history.

Yes, bridgers, the worst Yankee decade in history! 

Think about that. Even the wretched sixties and eighties - rotted as they were - offered glimpses of championship teams. But in our new billion dollar mausoleum, the modern Yankees chase only Wild Cards and tax-threshold payroll caps.

And now, that long-awaited collapse - the one Hal Steinbrenner, in his family's signature hubris, assured Yankee fans simply would not happen - looms on the horizon. A month from now, all that will be left will be the trade deadline. For the first time in this millennium, the Yankees could be selling off their antique livestock and looking to draft high in 2017. (Wait, does Cito Culver have a brother?)

It will be Hal's way of taking vengeance on the high-priced Yankee veterans, the ones he courted and signed. He can blame them for growing old and fragile. But in fact, the players will be rewarded - by moving to teams and organizations that are in the pennant race. Who knows? They might actually see what Mariano and Jeter were denied - the chance to finish their careers in a post-season game.

But while we hold our water on this bridge, here's Today's Official Yankee Sobering Thought: Our owner will not change. He might clean house in the dugout. The front office will stay the same. The monument to nepotism and cronyism that is the modern New York Yankees shall not be impinged by a measly trade deadline or unfortunate collapse into rubble.

Last in the AL East, the fifth worst team in baseball, old and slow... and a distinct feeling that the worst is yet to come.

Fuck it, everybody. I'm ready to jump.

Fan Letter to Mr. Cashman

Dear Mr. Cashman;

I have been a Yankee fan longer than you have been alive.

At each pivotal moment in Yankee history, one feels the need to unburden oneself with respect to  the team which appears on the field.  The team which you have built.

Let's for today,just focus on the player development aspect of your job.  The future prospects, so to speak.  It is a major responsibility of every GM, and I thought the world should get a better sense of how you have performed in this regard.

Earlier this year, we all watched a young Tampa Bay pitcher make his major league debut against the Yankees.  He went 7+ innings, if memory serves, and yielded one run.  Tampa won the game for him.

By contrast;  our best young pitching prospect ( Severino ) is now 0-6, and awaits the surgical magic of Dr. Andrews.  The team is still pretending that he has, a " tricep strain," which s nothing serious and that he need not have any procedure at all.

You still believe in the easter bunny, as well, right?

Even if you are correct for the short term, has psychiatry ever occurred to you?  Luis has to be a head case by now, at minimum. So here is a question we ( fans ) would like you to answer:  Why do our best prospects always seem to underperform versus the top prospects that other teams promote to the majors?

More recently, you brought up our best hitting prospect ( Sanchez ) who struck out twice, popped up and hit a weak infield ground ball.  He, too, participated in a loss, and was quickly optioned back to Scranton.  Need I bring up some of the names of other teams' top  position prospects, and how they  fared in their debuts?

When a prospect gets a shot, they are supposed to show something.  When they don't, it usually means they really are not major league material.

So last night, the Yankees start one of the pitching prospects you traded for to add, " length, " to our starting staff in Scranton.  Many of us howled at the idea of trading for career minor leaguers, when you announced this coup.  So we were somewhat flabbergasted to see Green on the mound in a real game.

It was stated that Green was pitching the best of anyone down at Scranton.  He got hammered and the Yankees were embarrassed 12-2.  Let's look at the logic here;  if this guy is the best pitcher we currently have in Scranton, and if he was basically a batting practice guy to the Arizona batters, what does that say about his future?

Mor importantly, about the future of the Yankees?

Our top prospect pitcher and hitter put up only zeros, and of the bad kind.  Zero wins, zero hits, zero RBIs..

Our best pitcher in Scranton did the opposite:  he put up almost no zeros ( clean innings ).

Not for one second did I think we had any shot of winning that game.  Did you feel the same way?

So you have built  nothing but false promises.

 What have you to say for yourself, Mr. Cashman?  What reasons can you give us to have any hope for the Yankees now or in the next 10 years?

Eight games out, though it seems a lifetime

A-Rod returns Thursday, and CC on Friday. Ten years ago, such words would make a difference. Now? We just reshuffle the deck. The Bronx Boredoms are listing.

It's ridiculous to be watching scoreboards in mid-May. Nevertheless, the standings are starting to pinch. We are last in the AL East, four below .500, eight losses behind Baltimore, with a never-ending shuttle of middling prospects from Scranton, and a lineup stressed to score three times per game. Wasn't it yesterday that the Yankees were the premier franchise in baseball? Now, we're a distant second in NYC, delighted with ourselves for beating mighty Kansas City and - worst of all - an organization that curtsies to Big Papi just to keep alive the moribund Yankee-Redsock rivalry. What happened to us?

Well, okay... we became antiques. No news here. Everybody knew this team couldn't last forever. But why, why, why couldn't our farm system grow an infield? Other teams do. What happened to all our high draft picks, which the blog/YES propaganda mill touted? There was Dante Bichette Jr., Jeremy Bleich, Cito Culver, Andrew Brackman, Ty Hensley, et al - WTF happened? Some were hurt. Some are gone. Some are stuck forever in Trenton. WTF happened? We have scouts. We have coaches. We have "baseball men." WTF?

And then Hal ruled that he should not have to spend his hard-inherited money. That was Bud Selig's last joke on NY - the luxury tax, which Food Stamps didn't want to pay. Thus, we're stuck in Steinbrenner limbo, unable to get below the tax threshold, unable to legitimately contend, waiting for 2019, or maybe the year after that. We passed on Max Scherzer. We passed on David Price. We passed on Greinke, Cuetto, and a generation of Cuban players, including Yoan Moncada, who looks to be a Yankee scourge for years to come. What we do have is a raft of 18-year-olds from a burst of international signings two summers ago, before most of them started shaving. They're three years away, and considering our track record with the Bichettes and Culvers, who knows if they won't just disappear into the Charleston-Trentonian void? Are we really supposed to be following the Dominican Summer League?

Last night, we were shut down by the pitcher the Diamondbacks received in the Didi Gregorious trade, the one we spent the last 18 months congratulating ourselves over. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad we have Didi. But it's just one more reminder that you can't magically trade your way to the top. Those other GMs - the ones that are not us - they are not stupid. They don't give up something for nothing, especially when dealing with the Yankees. So here we are - last in the East, with a sea of empty blue seats in Yankee Stadium and a long hard summer ahead.

Doom? Gloom? Sorry. Maybe it's just the morning after a spanking. But these mornings-after are starting to become the norm. And the return of A-Rod isn't enough.

Coke adds life (to Arizona bats); Green lives up to his name; Goody not so much

Wallace what's-his-name on ESPN did a short article about the Yankees' lack of middle relief and how that makes the Closer Cluster a lot less useful. I guess it took him a while to figure that out.

Why did Girardi start the Green kid? Who knows? It's difficult to peer into his brain with all that cement in the way.

And a big welcome back to Phil Coke! Phil gave up a triple, a double, three singles and four runs...but only 3 of those runs were earned!!

More good news:  we got our two runs. It's a long season, and baseball rewards consistency. Right?

After 36 games, a perfect match

The 1966 Yankees won their 36th game, putting on an offensive display in an 11-6 win over the Angels. Mantle hit two HRs.

After 36 games, their record was 16-20.

The 2016 Yankees won their 36th game, putting on an offensive display (for them) in a 7-5 win over the White Sox. Beltran and McCann homered.

After 36 games, our record is 16-20.

The lineup for both of those 36th games below. Tracking pretty closely so far.

For the record, the scorecard and official program is no longer 25 cents and box seats cost more than a few bucks.

FUN FACT: Back in the 1960's, many Yankees players stayed at the Stadium Motor Lodge. Players who did not live in New York or near the stadium would stay here during the season. The lodge was just a short walk to Yankee Stadium. It still stands today but is used as a homeless shelter for men.

World coming to end: Mushnick gets something right

"A stronger stench could not be systemically and financially applied to a team whose legendary logo includes Uncle Sam’s stars and striped hat and carries the decorated-by-history name, New York Yankees."

Can Chase Headley still save his Yankee soul?

Fun Fact: Last July, Chase Headley hit .370. 

That's no false fun-fact. I'm not micro-dosing toad sweat. Headley hit three-seventy, raising his average to the respectable Jumbotron showcase of .285. For 31 days, we had a .370 masher at 3B - (albeit with lingering concerns about whether the ghost of Chuck Knoblauch was occupying his arm.) 

In August, Headley tapered off slightly - a sweet .298. In September, he tumbled into the sinkhole - .179. Then again, so did everybody on that moribund, hell-bound team. 

For the year, Headley finished at .259 and 11 HRs. Not bad, unless you're lashed to him like Ahab to the whale for four seasons. 

I don't have to say what a disaster Headley has been thus far in 2016. Why dwell upon the kidney stones? He went 23 games without an RBI. He hit his first HR Friday. At one point, he was unable to even see the Mendoza Line, and but yesterday, he had the game-winning hit. It's still May. The tulips are blooming. The summer reruns are just beginning. Let's ponder the extremes.

1. Bad. This is a Stephen Drew re-enactment. His hits merely extend the Yankees' willingness to stick with him, and - frankly - we'd be better off if he goes 0 for May. This is a brutal assessment, but Yankee fans have seen this movie many times - Vernon Wells, Alphonso Soriano, Travis Hafner - going back to the 1980s, and the days of Danny Tartabull and John Mayberry. A former slugger comes to Gotham, falls off the table, and we burn six months, refusing to accept what everybody else knows. He's done. Every time we are ready to pull the plug, he hits a home run, so we extend the leash for another month. This is a nearly a uniquely Yankee phenomena, because of our over-reaching, Steinbrennerian hubris: We somehow think giving a guy pinstripes and the wistful romance of NYC means he will become 28 again. It can happen on a great team - (see Strawberry, see Gooden, see Reuben Sierra, et al) - but is this a great team? Nope. Done.

2. Good. He's going to conquer this slump and re-install himself as a legitimate major league third baseman. It's not out of the question. Right now, it's hard to imagine Headley hitting .370 for a week, much less a month. But the Yankees have him for two more long, potentially depressing years. We have no other 3B at the upper end of the farm system. (Reports on Rob Reysnyder playing 3B in Scranton are not pleasing, even though Refsnyder hit 2 HRs last night for Scranton.) Nobody is coming to save the day. If Headley could turn it around - well - we really don't have any other option, do we? He seems to be a good person. Then again, so were Drew, Wells, Hafner, all the others. Being a good person doesn't mean hitting.

Of course, there are always shades of gray. Headley could start hitting and throwing balls into the dugout. More than perhaps any other Yankee position, we have no fallback. This is what happens when the only thirdbaseman your farm system develops in 30 years is Mike Lowell, and you trade him for a bag of donuts. Why do the Redsocks consistently develop thirdbasemen - in the last 10 years, a Youkilis, a Middlebrooks* and now a Travis Lee, while the closest we come is a scrap pile acquisition of Yangervis Solarte? What is wrong with our farm system, and will we ever address this problem?

*(Before you note that Middlebrooks turned into a disappointment, in 2013 - their championship season - he hit 17 HRs.)

Victory!

Con mucho gusto!

Ivan Nova throws a nice game, after a clunker. Who'd a thought?

Okay, we used the three-eyed bullpen raven to seal a big win, a critical win. (Note: Every Yankee win is a big win, a critical win.) I get that. But after using Dellin, Andrew and the Garage Door Opener last night, what now? How many threesomes can we go in a row before our, well, A-Rod bobblehead thingy falls off? Seems to me, the beauty of having three stoppers is that you should always have one, like snakebite remedy, to use as needed. But when we use them all in one single solitary win... a big win, a critical win... well, in another era, that would be called Scott Proctoring.

Of course, we had to win that game. I'm not faulting Joe. Seriously. Mr. G had no choice - no choice whatsoever - but to empty the keg. That's what Joe Torre would have done. Run the dogs until they fall. Nine up, nine down. Take that, Mrs. Obama! (I don't get that reference either, but I'm going with it.) Can we score a bunch of runs and win a shootout? Can we win a game with Kirby Yates and the cast of Glee? I dunno. Just asking.

I Finally Figured Out Why The Yankees Can ( usually ) Only Score 2 Runs

The reason is Brett Gardener.

It is as if he is the designated, " automatic out."

Situation:  runners on 2nd and 3rd and we have just been robbed of a run, because of the ground rule double.

Brett makes out.

Situation:  Runner on second, and Yanks need insurance run.  Gardener goes down looking.

Brett gets all his hits when they don't matter.  We are losing 7-0 in the 9th, with two out.  Gary hits a solo homer.  We lose 7-1.

If you want an at bat to put you to sleep, watch Brett at the plate.

He just never gets a clutch hit.

Good thing he moved to 7th in the line-up today.  I would bat him 9th.

 I would make him bunt at every at bat.

Or, sit him down.

I never liked him.  Now I know why.

New Idea

I have actually said this before.

NickSwisher is 35.  He can't run, hit or throw.

But he can pitch.  His arm strength peaks out in the 70's.

A perfect guy to learn the knuckleball.

He can replace Severino ( who only has an an elbow strain.....like I only have a few extra pounds on me ).

He can be ready by the all star break.

And another one bites the dust...

Comrades, the fix is in.

After last night, every Yankee fan in captivity must realize that the Fates are pissing on us, that we are the new Knicks fans, and that this nepotism-cursed, crony-run franchise won't win anything meaningful until OJ is free, Trump is in his second term, and Burnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill... and considering wide-load tie-ups on the NY State Thruway, good luck with that.

This season already feels like it's six months old.

Last winter, the Yankees offered us two rays of hope: Greg Bird and Luis Severino. Bird never even made it to Tampa. Last night, the second shoe dropped. Severino - 0-6 and horrible - walked off the mound holding his elbow. Wherever he is, Manny Banuelos must be flinching.

Later, the Upheaval Empire announced that Severino's elbow has only a mild strain and will not need Tommy John surgery, and that he will rest and maybe return soon, perhaps in a matter of weeks. It's all okay, everybody. Tokyo has been spared from Godzilla.

Of course, nobody believes a word they say.

If there is one given in the Yankiverse, it is that the Dolan Steinbrenner family sees no advantage in disclosing the true extent of injuries to the press and fans. Severino's MRI could have shown a Florida sinkhole; they'd say it was mosquito bite. Within this slow-motion Yankee collapse, credibility is an afterthought. That went out the door a long time ago.

Now we see why the Yankees have been fighting StubHub so bitterly: They rightfully see the secondary ticket market as their biggest nemesis in 2016. Come August, when even a Wild Card away slot looks like an impossible dream, those $500 fat cat tickets will be selling on StubHub for the price of a jelly doughnut. Those poor corporate bigwigs who still go to the games will have to sit next to barking street people, and not even John Oliver will give a damn about putting hipsters in the seats.

The fix is in, folks. The Redsocks are in first, the Mets own New York, it's barely mid-May and we are already down to stems and seeds... and the injuries are just beginning. What a sad time to be a Yankee fan.

Did You Think I Had gone?

" I got a message to pick up a young pitcher and bring him to the DL.

Dr. Andrews is waiting in his office.

Does it really matter?  Your top pitching [prospect with 0 wins?

He wouldn't get a uniform on the Mets."

Have a nice week.

Using double-secret reverse sarcasm, Seattle blogger promotes Joggie Cano for MVP

You'll need to read this five times to figure out the guy's message. That's a sign of very good writing.

With three out of four against the the Royals, the Yankees are holding on to that Wild Card dream

The other day, watching Max Scherzer light up Washington with 20 strikeouts, I couldn't help but close my eyes and imagine him as a Yankee. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? We're the effing Yankees, the one team that stops at nothing to put its greatest team on the field? Or at least, we used to be, until the Boy Owner took over.

Right now, all of baseball is wondering what's wrong with David Price? Will he be worth all that money? Redsock fans are apoplectic. Will he be a dud? But that should be our controversy, not Boston's. We should be the team everybody is talking about, not the Redsocks. When ESPN holds its game of the week, the announcers should be haggling over what's happening with the Yankees.

As it is, nothing is happening with the Yankees.

Today, we are 7 out in the AL East and 5 down in the AL Wild Card race, which - with 129 games left to play - requires a doctorate in theoretical mathematics to calculate. Our Wild Card Magic Number falls somewhere between grains of sand in the Sahara and the Celino & Barnes hotline, which is - as you know - 888,888,888.

Want to burst with pride? We finally have a pitcher with three wins - Nathan Eovaldi. We finally have a regular hitting .300 - Starlin Castro. Thanks to Chase Headley, we can finally field a lineup with every batter homering in 2016.

Thanks to El Chapo finally completing his anger management courses, we finally have baseball's best bullpen - at least from the seventh on. It includes the sport's greatest teammate - Andrew Miller - who accepted a role change without one complaint, even though the traditional contract structure rewards marquee closers over middle-men. Right now, beyond the hoopla over Chapman, we finally have a legitimate heir to Mariano - it's Miller.

We have finally seen the wave of injuries - to A-Rod, Ellsbury, CC and Tex - that everyone knew was coming. (Gardy is still out there, but struggling. In the last half of 2015, he hit .205. This year, he's hitting .235. He is nearing an entire full season of mediocre play. This is troubling.) We have yet to see what the old players will do after they return. With the exception of Tex, the others were showing signs of life just before the injuries. Now, what?

With luck, we look like a team that can win 86 to 90 games. That means challenging for another Wild Card slot, at least through mid-September.

This would be the fifth consecutive year in which we chase the Wild Card.

This is the modern goal of the Yankees: Win the Wild Card and hope to get hot.

Could we dramatically improve? I guesso. If Pineda and Severino somehow turn it around, that would be huge. Combined, they are 1-9. But after that, no single area of the team justifies great hope. Headley won't hit .140, but will he hit .260? We can bring up Aaron Judge, but will he really produce more than Beltran? (And a Beltran injury is waiting to happen.) What improvements suddenly make this team win the AL East? Jeeze, I dunno.

I guess our hope is that Baltimore and Boston stumble. (If Jackie Bradley Jr. is really a .329 hitter, and Travis Shaw continues to hit .320 - let's face it: We are toast.) Aside from that, we look like a carbon copy of 2012 through 2015. We're still chasing Wild Cards. And Max Scherzer is the most exciting pitcher in the game. It's something for us to talk about.

FINALLY, FINALLY... a spoken poem by The Master

FINALLY, FINALLY

         By John Sterling


The Yankees are finally,

     FINALLY

Starting to hit.

And you know what?
It's better this way.


   May 12, 2016
   Bottom of the fourth
   Yankees 5, Kansas City 2

The Redsocks may be cheating, yet the story is about how the mean MLB is asking questions

MLB is investigating Boston for its signings last July of several Latino 16-year-olds, a few who were considered as top talent in Venezuela, for only $300,000 per boy. Because they'd overspent their international allotment, the Redsocks were supposed to be capped at $300,000 per boy. So how did they buy these boys?

Well, what if you sign five boys - four duds, one stud - from the same pimp trainer, for $1.5 million overall, and then let the pimp jeefe agent re-distribute it? The prized boy prospect gets $1.2 million, or whatever, the others go home happy with scraps, Boston circumvents the rules and its vaunted farm system continues to magically produce.

Some would call it "cheating," but - hey - only the Yankees do that, right?

Evidently, Baseball America has been asking questions. Nevertheless, in this illuminating write-up, it's hard to figure out whether the villain is Boston or MLB. Questions are raised about the tactics of those mean old investigators, who rounded up the now 17-year-olds and tried to get information.

According to multiple sources, MLB officials told the players that if they lied, the commissioner’s office would suspend them. They asked the players to give them their banking information and said they would investigate their bank accounts, according to those sources. Some of the players broke down in tears.


The story goes on to prattle that everybody does these package deals, so why is MLB picking on Boston? Frankly, I assume the Yankees are just as guilty.

When you have a Third World economic system predicated on pimps trainers finding, raising and selling 16-year-old boys for millions of dollars, you're always going to find a garbage heap of morality.

In America, we don't allow teams to sign 16-year-olds. Last time I looked, the concept is creepy, disgusting, offensive and flatly wrong. How MLB allows it to continue in Latin America is a disgrace. So they're "investigating" Boston? What a crock.

In Scranton, forever, Refsnyder on a 15-game hitting streak

Last night, he went 3 for 4, playing thirdbase. As if it matters.

With a game on the line, the Big 3 sit and watch

Peabody here... Sherman, set the Wayback for May 11, 2016 - with the location as "Yankee Stadium." Make sure it's not the one with the 26 world championships and the ghosts of Ruth and Gehrig. It's the one now famous for empty blue seats. Yes, we're going back to early 2016...  the year of Trump, when collapses. Yes, the year that "America? became a brand of beer, owned by a foreign company. 

It is top of the 6th, the KC Royals lead 4-3 with Mr. Michael Pineda pitching for our heroes. But he is unraveling. Pineda walks the lead-off man. That electrical surge you detect is the collective shriek of 6 million Yankee fans, pleading to their TVs for Girardi to change pitchers. He doesn't. The next batter whacks a DP ball, and the East Coast power grid might be safe, after all. Then Pineda walks another man. Girardi calls time. "This call to the bullpen is brought to you by..." NO! Girardi leaves Pineda in. That bonking sound you hear is not thunder. It is 6 million heads slamming into 6 million living room walls. Tonight, it pays to be a Comcast customer.

Next guy singles. Two on, two outs, game on the line... Girardi signals to the pen. In comes...  Nick Goody.

Let me stop this torturous parlor game. Let me note for the record that I like Nick Goody and think he can become a serviceable relief pitcher someday. He is only 24 - adorable - and has pitched 10 innings in his MLB career. He is, basically, a loaner from Scranton. Whenever he throws more than 20 pitches, instead of a hotel room, they give him a bus ticket to Wilkes Barre and call up a replacement.

The Yankees have three of baseball's best relievers - perhaps the three best strikeout machines in any bullpen - and when clutching fingernail to chalk board - they go with Nick Goody.

So what happens? He hits Alcides Escobar, loading the bases. That brings up Lorenzo Cain, who hit three HRs the previous night. Again, there is no reason in Trump's holodeck universe why the Yankees - with the highest priced threesome in any bullpen, anywhere - have Nick Goody pitching to Lorenzo Cain.

So what happens? Do I need to say it? Cain singles, two runs score - it's now 6-3, and that's China Town, Jake. Phil Coke comes in. The Big Three go back to hibernation. They're like a great bottle of scotch that you bring out, let everyone sniff, and then put it back in the case.

The Yankees could have won last night, but it would have meant abandoning their nightly role-play costume pageant - Mr. 7th, Mr. 8th and Mr. 9th Inning. Everybody has his slot. You don't ask poise questions during the swimsuit competition. It's not cricket.

Last night, the Yankees had one pivotal moment to save that game. Instead of Betances, or Miller, or el Chapo... they went with Nick Goody. Wow.

Electrified by el Chapo, John hits 7.05 seconds in WinWarble