ALCS Game 2: 1. Bader, 2. Judge, 3. Stanton

Remember this day and keep it holy.

 

                       Mickmas, 2022.  Mickey Mantle, October 20, 1931—August 13, 1995.  RIP.

Losing to Houston has become a painful ordeal, and if the Yankees are fated for another such outcome, I hereby request that it happen quickly

I'm so sick of losing to Houston... 

Seriously, I'm sick of the crowds. I'm sick of their orange hankies. I'm sick of Jose Altuve, sick of being sick of being sick of them. 

I'm sick of Verlander getting charity calls on balls and strikes: Last night, those in-the-vicinity strikes? WTF? Does he have photos of the home plate ump? Is this their new cheat? 

I'm sick of hearing how smart the Astros were, tanking all those years, so they could hoard draft picks, hold the city hostage to fund a stadium, and then cheat their way to a championship. The American way, right? Hooray for Houston. Hooray for oil profits.

I'm sick of hearing that - any minute now, tick-tick-tick  - Josh Donaldson will go on a tear. Spoiler alert: He won't. The guy hit .222 this year. He's doing what he did all season. Right now, he's a human Golden Sombrero, and last night, the way he missed belt-high fastballs, he might as well have been swinging a hologram.

Next season, he will be paid $21 million - a price tag Shallow Hal will point to, if and when the Yanks finish second in the Aaron Judge bidding war. (That's Hal's superpower - finishing runner-up in free agent auctions.) One note, though: If Judge walks to SF or LA - or Queens - it won't be Donaldson's fault. It will be Hal's. The Yankee-owned media better get that straight. 

I'm sick of waiting for Matt Carpenter to hit. I'm starting to think his six weeks of wonder last summer was a once-around-the-league mirage. Moreover, I'm tired of believing that anyone - even a savvied vet like Carpy - can simply step from the Injury List into the postseason - and hit. Last night, every time Carpenter came up with runners on base, he fanned. It should have happened in a Double A rehab game, not in October pressures against an existential nemesis.   

I'm sick of wondering whatever happened to Domingo German? Last night, I was stunned - STUNNED! - to see Frankie Montas get the call - though not stunned by the result. 

Frankie the Yankee quickly surrendered a HR, burying us ever deeper. Seeing Montas cut ahead into the Circle of Trust fuels the Cashman conspiracy theory, which says Aaron Boone wears a brain implant that forces him to use Cashman's Cuties - players the GM acquired through trades. Everybody else must wait his turn, until the Cuties have worn out their welcome (then becoming Cashman Castaways, soon to be traded for another Cashman Cutie.)

I'm sick of Jose Altuve. Did I mention him? Yeah, most of all, I'm sick of him.

ALCS Game 1: Shame and secession

If you Google "Texas shame"--which I did in search of ammunition against the Astros for this post--you get appoximately 74,600,000 results. The first page is heavy with editorials against newly adopted state policies or party positions, with headlines like "Shame on Texas," "Shame on you, Texas," and "Deep in the Shame of Texas."

Google "New York shame" and you get about 101,000,000 results, but the early ones are mostly videos of Carey Mulligan singing "New York, New York" in the 2011 film Shame. 

Now I ain't here to talk no politics, but that "Deep in the Shame of Texas" one caught my eye. It concerns the 2022 platform of the Texas branch of a major political party--I ain't tellin' which one, 'cause like my daddy always said, "I ain't here to talk no politics." The plank that grabbed me was:

“Texas retains the right to secede from the United States and the Texas legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum. The possibility of secession should be put up for a vote in the 2022 general election.”

Which got me thinking. The Houston Astros are Texans, right? Well, maybe some of them think along the same line as the Texas braanch of that major political party. So what, if anything, could the Yankees do in tonight's Game One to motivate the Astros to secede from the American League?

And if there's something, isn't it worth doing without delay? 

[Added to the ALCS roster: Peraza, Montas, Weissert. Subtracted: Gonzalez, Hicks, Luetge.]

Yes, there IS precedent!

 

For me, the high point of last night's game had to be when Bob "Happy Talk" Costas looked into the stands to see a rather grizzled, grim-faced Yankees fan doing the "rock-a-bye baby" with a "Chuckie" doll. 

Even Bob didn't seem to know what to say to an image that bizarre. For me, it was one of those moments that made me inutterably proud to be a New Yorker. 

Yes, Cleveland Guardians of Traffic: maybe we ARE that crazy!

All of which will mean...bupkus when we get down to Houston, the City of the Swamp. Right?

I mean, this Yankees team is running on fumes. Hicks is now out for the season—again—our doughty bullpen corps is starting to develop the sort of thousand-yard stares seen on World War I doughboys after a month in the trenches, and we're down to starting Jameson Taillon against Justin Verlander, he of the 1.74 ERA and the bodacious wife, a man with a 4-1 record against our boys in the playoffs.

Hey, it could work.

All I'm saying is that there is precedent.

October 2, 1978. Bucky Dent Day. After finally dispatching a stubborn Red Sox team, did a jubilant Yankees squad board Amtrak's Downeaster Alexa for a raucous joyride back to the city, capped by tumultuous reception at...Grand...Central...Station!?

No, they did not. They took a plane to Kansas City, for an ALCS game the very next night. Even back in the day, television had to be served.

It looked pretty grim. The Royals, like Roger Stone's first political hero, were tanned, rested, and ready—or at least as tanned as anyone ever gets in Kansas City. 

If they were not quite as good as the Royals teams that the Yanks had barely put down over the last two years, they had still won 6 of 11 against the Bombers, including 6 of the last 8 they had played. Starting for Kansas City would be the team's ace, Dennis Leonard, coming off his second straight, 20-win season.

Leonard was 2-2 versus the Bronx team in 1978, but his last two starts, in July, had been dominating, complete-game wins. (He pitched 20 complete games that season—and did not even finish first in the AL in that category.)

It looked as though your New York Yankees, battered, exhausted after their long rundown of the Red Sox, had little chance. 

Our wonderful second baseman, Willie Randolph, was out with a bad muscle pull. We were alternating Chicken Stanley and rookie Brian Doyle at second. Other guys on our aging team had been plagued by injuries all year—Thurman, Mick the Quick, Catfish Hunter.

And for pitchers? Well, we were down to a Dartmouth man, rookie Jim Beattie, who had gone all of 6-9 

on the season.

Beattie had been called up after massive injuries to the pitching staff earlier in the year. After a rough start, he had started to come around, going 4-2 in September, including an outstanding game during the Boston Massacre, and had not surrendered a home run all month.

But even he would be going on just three days rest. And in 2 starts against KC he had been hit hard, failing to get past the 4th inning.

Everyone expected the Yanks to more-or-less roll over in the series opener, and try to salvage a split in Kansas City when Ed Figueroa started in Game Two.

And indeed, it was a walkover. By the Yankees, not KC.

This time, it was Leonard who was gone after 4 innings. The Yanks pounded out 16 hits against him and three relievers. Everybody in the lineup had at least one hit. Brian Doyle singled in a key run. Reggie wrapped things up with a three-run homer in the eighth.

Jim Beattie only went 5 1/3, but allowed just 1 run. When he got into trouble, Manager Bob Lemon gave him a quick hook for Ken Clay, a perpetually promising prospect who had been abandoned in the back of the bullpen for most of the season, but who came on to finish out the game for the save. 

(Yes, this was so long ago that it was before the advent of color photography. Or barbers.)

In the end it was NYY 7, KC 1. The Royals had managed only two hits.  

Kansas City came back to smoke Figueroa the next night, but the Yanks won a couple more nailbiters in the Stadium. 

They went on to take the Dodgers—another team they were supposed to be too exhausted to beat—in the World Series. Brian Doyle batted .438. Beattie pitched his first-ever, complete game in Game Five, winning 12-2.  

The team that's revved up and ready to go, coming off a big win and headed into a game they are thought to have absolutely no chance in...well, that's not likely to be your New York Yankees tonight in Swamptown. 

But hey, did you ever think you'd see Yankees fans rocking a Chuckle doll? As a great man once said, there's no predicting baseball!

 

So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt...

So we got by Cleveland, but now we're back in the place we've been three of the past six times we were in the postseason: facing Houston. All three of which have been the equivalent of standing on stage while Robert Stack walks out to canoodle with Carole Lombard.

As Duque mentioned, Houston is favored to win tonight. Well, Houston is always favored to win. And Verlander vs. Taillon does seem a bit lopsided, at least on paper.

To be...or not to be. Can we win is the question.

I'm still a little flabbergasted by the fact that Houston and the Yankees are the only two favorites to win a series in the playoffs so far. The underdogs beat Toronto, Tampa, the amazing Mets, 2021 World Series champs Atlanta, and even the mighty mighty Dodgers. Who'd a thunk it? Not me. Not the expert analysts or commentators. For that matter, most of us expected the underdog Guardians of Traffic to shut down our will-o'-the-wisp offense with their superior arms and our baling wire bullpen.

But we made it. We beat them. And now, we're the underdogs. In a postseason full of underdog upsets. Maybe? Could we?

Couple of things for sure, if we're to have a chance. If Maraschino is ready, we should have him on the roster, and I agree with Duque, Castro is worthless. And we need the other Oz and not Marwin. Marwin is dangled by the Safety First crowd as the only other first baseman if something happens to Rizzo, but that's untrue. If DJ is activated, then he's the other guy who can play first, and play it a hell of a lot better than Marwin. And if DJ can play, I'd rather have him at third than Donaldson if he's not needed at first. Donaldson just isn't worth the aggravation. He makes a nice play or gets a hit, then does something totally fucked up to negate it. Besides, both DJ and IKF are better third basemen than him. (Will they ever hear our cries to let Ralph play his normal position and sit the $25 million millstone?)

Of course, all the roster "problems" are solved if we just drop the pitchers Boone will obviously never use. German is top of that list, maybe Lugnut. Why carry so many pitchers if we'll only use them in mop-up roles? Hell, it's not worth the sacrifices on the position player side. But Safety First yahoos will want worthless guys in the bullpen, you know, just in case. (Of what? Nuclear war? Herpes? A pile of guys with George Brett-scale hemorrhoids?)

But, Cashman is Cashman, so who the fuck knows. To be, or not to be. And he's the clown that will largely determine our fate.

Big Game Tonight, and other reverberant insights about the Yankees

Well, here we are - once again eyeballing the intersection of Heaven and Hell. 

Houston... Texas... Ted Cruz... fake cowboys... floods...  migrant buses to NYC... 

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

A soul-eating, teardown city with the most polluted air in America, and a power structure built from oil billionaires and incest.  

A baseball franchise of secret computer rooms, upper-management sexual harassment and the worst cheating scandal since the 1919 Black Sox. 

A team of garbage can bangers.   

The problem with having a hate-filled arch-enemy is that, at some point, you must beat them. The Yankees have never beaten Houston in a postseason. 

Over the next two weeks - dare I even write this? - the Death Barge has a chance to reverse the polarity on their Houston/NY dynamic, maybe even flick back to their pre-2004 dominance of Boston, before the Bambino was ripped from his grave and paraded around Fenway. 

With Gerrit Cole warming in the bullpen last night, and Gleyber rocking the baby at second - Jeeze - for a moment there, I thought we could be looking at a team of Destiny. 

Dare I even suggest it?

So, okay, repeating for the dense: Here... We... Are...

Some other globs of consciousness...

1. What a difference DJ LeMahieu would make, if healthy. But how can we know? He'll say he's ready; they all do. But Matt Carpenter has looked terrible - 2 ABs, 2 Ks. Would the Yankees subject LeMahieu's rustiness to playoff intensity? 

One note: No matter how you slice it, DJ is a far superior leadoff hitter than Gleyber Torres, who just doesn't walk enough to bat first. DJ is made for that role, and with a runner on first, Aaron Judge is a different batter.

2. Ron Marinaccio says he's ready. If so, he would step into the late-innings rotation, replacing Miguel Castro, who was only there to look scary stepping off the bus. 

3. Somewhere in Miami, El Chapo must be throwing baseballs at his TV. (And missing, of course; they go straight to the backstop.) Too bad. I guess the tattoo infection went to his head. 

Aroldis had one shot - one shot! - at showing the Yankees that he had found command of his pitches: One shot, in their final practice, to throw strikes. Instead, he threw a hissy fit and went home. Sad. 

4. If LeMahieu can play, the Yankees would suddenly enjoy multiple options - but they all boil down to whether Giancarlo Stanton can play LF. If so, the lineup explodes with possibilities - Gleyber, Carpenter, DJ, Cabrera - so many moves. 

In the their winning streaks of early summer, Stanton often played LF. The outfield even seemed to rejuvenate him. Would they dare? Still... no signs of Stanton chasing flies in practice. 

5.  This winter, Jameson Tailion will be a free agent. Tonight, he has the chance to make himself a shitload of money in those upcoming negotiations.

6. No sightings of Domingo German, whom I thought could be an x-factor. When pitching well, the Herm can be lights out, at least once around a batting order. Frankly, I was surprised Boone didn't uncork him, but it worked out, eh?

7. If the Yankees are really going to bench IKF, it's time for Oswald Peraza. Playing Cabrera at SS is a ticking time bomb. He's a 2B, not a playoffs SS. They should flip Peraza for Marwin Gonzalez, keep Oswaldo for the utility role, and see what happens. Those Cleveland rookies sure didn't look overmatched. And let's remember that Peraza, in 47 MLB at-bats, hit .306 with a HR. (He also stole two  bases in two tries.) 

Game time is 7:37. Houston is favored to win. 

Onward!

 

ALDS Game 5: "This time for sure!"

Too Bad This Isn't A Movie

Doesn't it always rain at the end of Act Two? 

The Superstar can't hit.

The bullpen is in shambles.

The "real" ace, who didn't get it done last time, has to come back on short rest. 

Aaron Hicks is back in the line up.

The "Miracle Kid" is batting in the 100s.

Josh Donaldson. (No explanation need)

Sheriff Carpenter still rides the pines, limping like Walter Brennan.

And, should we win... the Final Boss of all Final Bosses, the Asstros sit warm, happy, and rested, eating roast suckling pigs off of silver skewers and getting massages by toga clad women, in a town that represents pure evil.

Do we get an Act Three?

 

Dear Juju Gods, I have one request for this evening

Hi, Juju Gods! It's your old friend - me, again. Just checkin' in to see "wazzup!?"

So... wazzup? 

By the way, you look great. Have you lost weight? Working out, I bet? I can see the improvements. Oh, I've left a carton of Luckies with Miss Bixley at the front desk. Hope you enjoy it. 

By the way... neat move, last night, the rainout? Didn't see that one coming. Obviously, neither did MLB. It left its most loyal fans - Yankee fans - to stand in the cold rain for nearly three hours. Those poor souls. Women and children, too. All for their team. And now, they're waiting to see what you have in mind. 

So... who won last night's rainout? I'd say, TBS: It finally found a use for those Big Bang reruns. Also, the gladiator show, where the guy balanced the balls on a flat plate. That was pretty intense. I watched for more than a minute.

As to which team the rainout helped - the Yankees or the Indians, the Commanders the Guardians... that's your job, eh? 

Apparently, we'll start Nestor today, 4 p.m., just as the shadows begin cutting a canyon between pitchers mound and home plate. He'll need his guile. I figure Nestor goes two, maybe three. Then, we turn their hitters around with Tailion - two innings, maybe three. Then it's pot luck: Loaisiga - one, maybe two? Wandy - one? Holmes - one? That gets us - what? - eight, maybe nine? Somewhere, somehow, somebody's gotta come through. And somewhere out there, a ball is going to take a weird bounce...

That's your department, the weird hops. John Sterling says we cannot predict baseball. What he means is that we cannot predict you - the juju gods, put in charge of fixing games. You are gonna do whatever it is that you're gonna do. 

But I do have one request for this evening. Let the record show that I am now typing this on my knees. 

I'm asking for Aaron Judge to get a hit, maybe two. More importantly, he must not go 0-5 with four strikeouts. No Golden Sombrero. He mustn't. I can accept that 2022 might end tonight - that the Yankiverse might collapse into a micro-dot and then explode into Big Bang reruns and gladiator shows - but please, please, PLEASE... don't let it end with Aaron Judge trudging back to the dugout beneath a blanket of angry silence - or worse, scattered boos. 

Please, juju gods, whatever you do, spare us such an ending. Think of the women and children, sitting out there in the cold. For all our early victories, it's been a surprisingly hard year, a roller-coaster ride that long ago cost me my lunch, my stomach and my dignity. And last night, about 30,000 of our brothers and sisters stood in the rain for three hours, like Linus in the pumpkin patch, hoping for a sign from you, hoping for - well - hope, itself. 

Please... be kind. 

 Oh, and I love that shirt! It's totally you! Say, I just had a thought: Can I buy you a steak? 

ALDS Game 5: O captain, my captain

GAME POSTPONED UNTIL 4:07 PM TUESDAY 

 

UPDATE: Oh, crap, we're in a rain delay.   

UPDATE 2:  

Suzyn’s app says we’re about to get slammed by rain. pic.twitter.com/T9Xwj6vEm8

— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) October 17, 2022

UPDATE 3: Rufus T. Firefly contributes two Rain Delay Theater videos that are excellent... but scary!      

As you can see in the header, Doug K has pointed out that if the Yankees lose tonight and if they don't sign Judge, this will be his last game in pinstripes.  He says whenever Judge comes up tonight, he should get a standing ovation. I agree, and further propose that those of us at home should, during his every appearance, burst into tears. 

"To see a world in a grain of sand/ And heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour." With respect to William "Not Matt" Blake, tonight several Yankee destinies stand at the crossroads

Big game tonight And frankly, what to say?

Last year, we hate-hate-hated the one game wild card, which boiled 162 contests into a four-hour catwalk show. It wasn't fair. It wasn't cricket. You can't decide an entire year, a box of careers, in one night. 

And yet, here we are, teeing up another set of lifetimes, players whose athletic careers will be permanently marked by a blooper or short hop.  Meanwhile, the evil Astros will sit on their fat asses, rooting for a marathon that would drain our bullpen the way politicians drain our wallets.  

  

One game. Tonight. Yankee Stadium. The Master and Suzyn. A 30 percent chance of rain. A 100 percent chance of Destiny. 

Aaron Judge's last game as a Yankee?  

Or Jameson Tailion's? He's another looming free agent. If he gives us five good innings, could it not seal his long-term future in NYC? 

Then maybe... Domingo German? Dare we ask for three innings? After that, it's whomever answers the phone. Jonathan Loaisiga, probably. Clay Holmes? Magic Wandy, if his arm hasn't fallen off? 

Can Oswaldo Cabrera continue to play flawlessly at SS? By now, it's obvious that Boone should have added Oswald Peraza to the playoffs roster. He's a superior fielding SS, the best candidate to replace IKF. Considering what's been piled upon him, Cabrera, he's been magnificent. But how far can they push the kid? And if he messes up, playing out of position, could his Yankee career be permanently shadowed?

Speaking of permanent shadows... Josh Donaldson. Last night, he waved pitifully at pitches down the middle. If we somehow beat Cleveland, and if his big toe hasn't fallen off, DJ LeMahieu should play 3B. We can't escape Donaldson next year; he'll cost us $21 million, no buyout until 2024. In the meantime, pray for DJ's big toe.  

Could this be the Yankee finale for Gleyber? It didn't help matters, watching him lollygag to first on his DP grounder last night. He handled everything at 2B. But the planets, long range, are lined up against him. Our best young talent - Oswaldo included - can play 2B. And then there is DJ. 

Oh, did I mention Boone and Cashman? 

So many futures... riding on tonight. 

Overture, curtain, lights. This is it, the night of nights. No more rehearsing and nursing a part, we know every part by heart...

ALDS Game 4 thread

 

The World Series of what, exactly?

 

To pick up on something that DickAllen mentioned:

Last night, the San Diego Friars' Club eliminated the Los Angeles Dodgers, meaning that the 5th and 6th best teams in the National League this year, the Padres and the Phillies, will be squaring off for the NL championship.

Hey, on a strictly emotional level, I could care less. The Dodgers are the team I hate the most, on purely moral grounds. I will not even root for them against the Boston Red Sox. 

That franchise spat on our fair city and left us for a few dollars more, despite decades and decades of support and affection. Respectfully, they can rot in hell.

For that matter, I would love to see the Cleveland Guardians of Traffic upset the Cheating Hearts of Texas, once they have dispensed with us tonight, and go on to win it all, preferably against the Phillies.  

But...what does all this mean, exactly? And just who is it for?

The Dodgers finished 22 games ahead of San Diego, in the same division, during the regular season.  TWENTY-TWO! The Phillies came in 14 games behind both the Braves AND the Mets in their division—both teams that have been eliminated. The guardian angels of Cleveland traffic at least won a division, but finished tied for third, for the best record in the American League.

So...does the World Series really mean anything, anymore?

Once upon a time, the best teams from each league met automatically in the World Series—and since there's was no inter-league play, this meant a sporting event of some interest. Sure, a short series is never the same as the Long Season, but there were some genuine bragging rights to be had.

That system went on for 65 seasons, 1903-1968, and in those years the World Series was indeed a very big deal.

Then came the first division system, and league playoffs. Well, hey, teams still had to finish first—against half the league—to be in it. Some divisions WERE much tougher than others, and the league championship series were generally hard-fought, even thrilling battles between regular-season champs.

In the 25 seasons that this system existed, 1969-1993, the team with the best record in the AL made it to the World Series 16 times, the one with the best record in the NL made it 13 times, and there were 9, "1 on 1" match-ups. 

Sure, there were distressing anomalies—such as when the 1973 Mets made the Series with only the 4th best record in the NL—but generally, you still had the best teams battling it out in the end.

Then came Wild Card Ball.

From 1995 through 2021, a total of 27 seasons, the team with the best record in the AL has made the Series only 12 times; the one with the best record in the NL, only 8—less than 30 percent of the time.

There have been only 3, "1 on 1" match-ups in that entire time, and the team with the best record in the National League has won it all only 3 times. When the Cubs won in 2016, it was the first time that the team with the best record in the NL had won the World Series in 21 years. (The AL has had 8 World Series champs with the best record.)

Again and again, teams with the third, or fourth, or fifth best record have made the Series. 

The all-time nadir came in 2012 when the Tigers, with just the 7th best record in the AL, made it, and lost to the Giants—tied for third in the NL.  Three different teams that were 5th in their leagues during the regular season have won it all:  the Braves last year, the Cardinals in 2006, and, ahem, your New York Yankees, in 2000.

Generally, though, it's hurt our boys. In 5 different seasons—2002, 2004, 2006, 2011, and 2012—the Yanks had the best record in the American League, but failed to make the World Series.

To me, this is another big thing that is wrong with baseball today. In its desperation to always imitate the NFL and the NBA, MLB has piled on the playoff levels—as noted, 40 percent of all teams now make October! But this simply cheapens and degrades the glory of baseball, which is the Long Season—as well as the World Series at its end. 

And that Long Season is, not incidentally, at least TWICE as long as any other season. A "problem" that all the extra playoff teams are supposed to address, boosting interest in that many more cities. But has it worked out like that?

Ratings for the World Series, baseball's showcase have fallen off drastically for decades now. The largest single-game audience was in 1986, the largest Series-long audience in 1978. The viewership is a fraction of those figures today.

And then there's attendance, which continues to plummet. Yeah, it's great seeing all those crazed stadium crowds come playoff time, isn't it?  

The reality, though, is that the Cleveland Guardians drew a little under 1.3 million fans this season, while taking the Central Division. That 1998 Cleveland team I mentioned the other day, which shook the Yankees in the ALCS? They drew nearly 3.5 million.

That's right. The hope of a playoff run was so great in Cleveland that...attendance was over 2.1 million LESS than it was 24 years ago. Similar drop-offs are the case for most teams. Baseball's big gimmick isn't bringing them out.

   

Good News! Yanks Have 37.5 Chance to Win Tonight!

 It's true!  

As reported here repeatedly, your New York Yankees have lost 8 different playoff series in the past 20 years AFTER they won the first game of the series.

In Game 3 of those series...they were a miserable 1-7. That pattern held last night, of course, as they lost again.

But...BUT...BUT!  In Game 4...it's a whole different ballgame!

Your New York Yankees are 3-5 in those games, with scores of 5-9, 4-6, 3-2, 3-8, 3-10, 10-1, 3-8, 5-1, for an average of 4.5-5.3. 

See?  We ALMOST have a chance to win!

Spoiler alert: In October, youth always beats age, small ball always beats HRs, and pitching depth always prevails. Why do the Yankees not know this?

Remember June? Ah... June. The days were long, the nights delightful, we were in love, romping naked in the outfield, and the AL East was our shagging couch. You wore silk. I wore aftershave. We swore eternal loyalty. We drank from the snifter of Torre.

And yet.. even in our highest, most delusional moments of beery bliss, one certainty prevailed:

If the Yankees failed in October, none of it would matter.

Well, it's about to not matter. One more loss, and some major, piping hot shit will be coming down. I'm talking about blaring headlines, seething blog posts, fan-on-fan crime, a total breakdown of society... as Bill Murray once feared, "Dogs and cats, living together!" Get thee to a nunnery, Suzyn, because Birnham Wood is coming to Dunsinane - and when I'm doing Shakespeare crapola, trust me, that's China Town, Jake, because the fucking final call is at hand. 

Oh, yeah, sure... I suppose some twinkle-toed namby-pambies out there will say we can win tonight, maybe teleport this traveling fiasco back to Gotham for the official bridge collapse. Or, who knows? Maybe Giancarlo walks into a couple fastballs. It's not impossible, just improbable. Two wins. That's all we need. Right? 

Listen: Don't buy a costume, because the 2022 Yankees won't reach Halloween. We won't beat Houston. We won't make the world series. Months ago, Boone fried our bullpen. We've been down to stems and seeds since August. Cashman's greatest June merely led to his worst-ever July. So, now, we wait for a merciful ending. The cavalry is not coming. Godot is not coming. Guffman is not coming. Not even the Great Pumpkin is coming. He's out with an infected tattoo.

Seriously, how do you NOT reach such a dismal conclusion? We have nobody - nobody - who can pitch a ninth. We've burned Trivino, we've burned Wandy, tonight we'll burn Loaisiga and - dear God, did I hallucinate this? Did we really, at the end of everything last night, go with Clarke Schmidt? 

Yes, he pitched well Friday. But - Jesus Christ, Clarke Schmidt? Not ripping the guy, but he's the long man, sixth or seventh on the depth chart, barely ahead of the Cuban Carwash down in Miami. And there we are, watching a game and a season fly out the window with... Clarke Schmidt? Wherever he is, I bet Colter Bean is smiling. 

Scattered thoughts...

1. Finally, Boone drops Judge to second in the batting order, so he can come up with runners on base and... Gleyber Torres, as leadoff? His on-base percentage is... drum roll, please... .310. Three ten. Not his batting average, mind you. His on-base percentage. Three one oh. Are you kidding me? (That's only 15 points higher than Harrison Bader, our long term, light hitting CF.) Ridiculous.

2. Love his energy, but Oswaldo Cabrera should not have been playing LF in the eighth and ninth. No matter how you slice it, he's a 2B playing the outfield. If Tim Locastro is out there, maybe - just maybe - that dunker gets caught.  

3. Tonight, it's Gerrit Cole. As it should be. Ashes to ashes, Coal to Cole. He needs to throw eight innings, maybe go the distance. It's probably too much to ask. Then again he's the Yankee fan for life, right? 

Iceberg, dead ahead. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday...

ALDS Game 3: Judge bats second

 

I'm glad the Yankees are listening to AROD, if no one else... 

"This is gimmicky baseball ... It's ridiculous that [Judge] is hitting lead off. It's a mistake. I don't know who's doing it, Boone or Cashman, but somebody has to change that immediately."

- @AROD on the Yankees batting Aaron Judge lead off pic.twitter.com/10C4UZ2Oaz

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 15, 2022

Resilience.

 

In the 1998 American League Championship Series, your New York Yankees steamrolled the Cleveland Indians pretty easily in Game 1. That wasn't unexpected. After all, the Indians, at 89-73, had finished the equivalent of 25 games behind the 114-48 Yankees. 

But Game 2 was a different story—a contest that would become permanently known for an enormous mental miscue. 

Home plate umpire Ted Hendry, having an even worse day than the appropriately named Jeremie Rehack had yesterday, turned the game into a farce with a strike zone that seemed to change with every hitter.  I was in the Stadium that afternoon, and I remember player after player, on both teams, fuming and shaking their heads as they stalked back to the dugout, the managers of both clubs gesticulating and barking at Hendry.  

Twenty strikeouts, 12 innings, and 4 hours and 28 minutes into it, Hendry and his crew  added to the piece de resistance to their piece de crap of a game, by making the wrong call on a sacrifice bunt. But of course the real villain of the piece was Chuck Knoblauch, who inexplicably decided to stand around and argue that call while Enrique Wilson went stumbling and flopping around the bases, to score what would turn out to be the winning run.

Yes, the Blauch-head game!

The two teams then reconvened in Cleveland, where Bartolo Colon shut down the Yankees in a complete-game, 4-hit masterpiece, before nearly 45,000 howling, chanting, tom-tom thumping fans. Suddenly, the Yanks were in trouble.

Forget that 25-game gap in the regular season. The Indians didn't have much of a starting staff behind Big Sexy. But they did have a good bullpen, and a formidable, all-star lineup.

Cleveland starters included Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel, Travis Fryman,  Manny Ramirez, Kenny Lofton, David Justice, and Sandy Alomar, Jr.—who had just helped oust the Yanks from the postseason the year before, with his stunning, opposite-field home run off Mariano. On the bench were Richie Sexson, Pat Borders, Shawon Dunston, and Cecil Fielder.

The Indians had been in the World Series two of the previous three seasons, and had come within a hairsbreadth of winning it in 1997. They were established winners, a veteran team that was not going to beat itself.

What happened the next night?

Paul O'Neill homered in the top of the first inning. In the bottom of the first inning, he made a terrific catch to snuff out an Indian rally.

That was all starter Orlando Hernandez—what was his nickname again?—needed. He pitched 7 innings of three-hit, shutout ball, before turning it over to Stanton and then The Great One for an inning apiece.

The Yanks never trailed again in the series.

The day after, it was David Wells, snarling and jawing back at the Cleveland fans as they showered he and his mother with insults. 

Then, back in New York, Derek Jeter lined a ball over Manny's head to clinch the pennant before a wild, jubilant crowd.

It was on to the World Series, where The Greatest Team What Ever Was clinched their title by sweeping the San Diego Padres, including two wins in games started by Padres ace Kevin Brown, whose un-clutch pitching and sniveling, excuse-bleating comments convinced a young Brian Cashman that Brown was the very man to lead Yankees staffs in the future.

(He also decided that the Cleveland pitcher they knocked out of the box in Game 1, Jaret Wright, would be a perfect addition. And Enrique Wilson. Sigh.)

But I digress.

Sure, the 1998 version of our favorite ballteam was light years ahead of this outfit—which is not their fault. 

But the lesson here is that even that team could easily have been derailed by a sudden, unexpected turn of events: an umpire befuddled by the afternoon shadows of Yankee Stadium in autumn; a veteran ballplayer making a wildly stupid decision in the heat of the moment. A big pitcher with many wives, suddenly at the peak of his game.

They didn't let any of that stop them. That's what pros are all about.

If this Yankees team is only a shadow of the 1998 squad, well, the Cleveland team they're playing is not exactly invincible, either. What remains to be seen is if the Yanks of now have the mental and emotional resilience to shake off a jolting loss, stay focused, and get right back at it.

That's what champions do.

Stop. Batting. Judge. First

 

To pick up on something that Matt P. just wrote in the comments section:

Stop. Batting. Aaron. Judge. First.

Let me say it another way:

STOP. BATTING. AARON. JUDGE. FIRST.

I thought this was always a bad idea, even during the Great Home Run Chase. But, okay, a case could be made for wanting to maximize his at-bats.

Now?  It's idiotic.  

In his 9 plate appearances through the first two games of the ALDS, Judge has batted with exactly ZERO baserunners.  

That's 0, nada, zilch. Nil-nil-nil-nil-nil-nil-nil-nil-nil, as they might say in England.

Unless he puts the ball in the seats, he has had ZERO RBI opportunities. That is, you are further pressuring your best average hitter—and the second-best average hitter in the league—to just swing for the fences on every at-bat.

Throw away your algorithms. Batting with runners on base ahead of him gives the hitter a crucial advantage.  

Baserunners distract the pitcher. What's more, the first batter or two is often critical in sussing out just what the pitcher is throwing and precisely how he is throwing it. 

You don't want your best hitter doing that kind of work. It's like sending your best general out to scout the lay of the land as your army advances.

But hey, don't take it from me. Just take it from 150 years of the people who played the game and knew it.