Thursday Game Thread – Every Day Should Be √s Tampa Bay !

A few more losses, and the Yankees should consider selling at the trade deadline

 

It won't happen, of course. 

The Yankees never look at the long haul - not in July, anyway.

Nope. Three weeks from now, Cooperstown Cashman will do what he always does: bundle prospects, along with home and car insurance, and trade the Yankee future for a few bullpen lug nuts who have already thrown more pitches than in any previous summers of their careers. 

When you buy a used Mustang, you come to own every mile, every storm, every pothole, that it's been driven through. You own the leaking oil, the twitchy turn-signal and the strange scent of the compartment. You own the elbow, the rotator cuff, the hamstring. You buy it all. 

But Cashman will do what Cashman does: Trade youth for age, tomorrow for yesterday, the future for the past. He'll land a mid-thirties RH catcher and some bullpen stopgaps, and he'll be hailed by YES as baseball's version of Peter Minuit. Then the wheels will start creaking.

What if the Yankees did this... 

1. Trade Anthony Volpe. (This might actually happen, as he is being booed at home.) The problem: They won't get much, trading a guy in the pit of his career. Also, you can't help but think Volpe could blossom, once he escapes the hometown hero bullshit that the Yankees piled onto him.  But George Lombard Jr. is coming, and it's time they started destroying the next kid on Lucy's chocolates conveyor belt.

2. Trade Giancarlo Stanton. Or release him. Or something. This won't happen, because over the years, the brain trust has made peace with Stanton playing 50 games per season. If they paid part of his $29 million salary - the Marlins are already coughing up $10 million - they might get a low-level lottery ticket. 

3. Trade Jazz Chisholm. I feel bad suggesting this, as I have come to enjoy Chisholm's antics. The foul to his balls. The lollypop. The embarrassing pitch call challenges. The cockeyed way he wears his cap. Guy's always up to something. I believe he plays as hard as any Yankee, and when he gets on base, he runs wild. He could lead MLB in stolen bases (he's currently third.) And he would fetch a decent haul. 

4. Trade Paul Goldschmidt. Again, he's a fan fave, a great player and a future Hall of Fame cusp candidate. He can help any team. Trouble is, he's 0-for-34 and has struck out 10 of his last 12 plate appearances. Has any player been more in need of a week off? 

5. Frankly, trade anybody over 32 who is not named Aaron Judge. I think we've seen enough to know that the 2026 Yankees are not a Team of Destiny. It's fun to imagine Judge returning and magically rallying the lineup. But why kid ourselves. When he does come back, he'll need to DH, rather than subject his tender rib to the rigors of right field. That leaves the Yankees with four DHs - Stanton, Judge, Goldy and Rice. 

Seriously, I think we've seen enough. Play The Martian. Play Spencer Jones. Bring up Lombard and Elmer. Let's see what happens. It can't be worse than this.

Afternoon game today. Beware. 

Sing-a-Long with the Crøønin' Bøøne – Game Thread !

 

K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K. Seventeen K's, as Yanks set all-time record for squalor

Seventeen K's on Monday...

Seventeen K's last night...

Seventeen K's... First AL team ever to fan 17 times in back-to-back - (and belly-to-belly!) - nine-inning games. 

Seventeen K's... Franchise record over two games. 

Seventeen K's... Most whiffs in baseball since June 18. 

Seventeen K's... And not one walk. 

Seventeen K's... At one point, Jose Caballero laid down his bat on a 3-2 payoff pitch and started jogging to first, well before the call. Strike three, of course. But points for style? 

Seventeen K's... Against Koufax and Drysdale, right? Well, how about Garrett Clevenger, Ian Seymore, Bryan Baker, Cam Booze and Kevin Kelly. The greats...

Seventeen K's... And the K-Man himself, Spencer Jones, never touched a bat. (He's in Scranton, which won last night 18-3, though Jones somehow went 0-4 with two K's.)

Seventeen K's... Only two Golden Sombreros - Goldie and Cabby. The rest of the lineup chipped in. A team effort.

Seventeen K's... "A little bit of a funk," said manager Boonie. (One of these days, I swear he's going to give us a "Liberty-biberty.")

Seventeen K's... Mitch McConnell had a more sentient night.

Seventeen K's... Hey, ya can't win 'em all. right?

Seventeen K's. Five games behind Tampa in the loss column... seven above Boston. 

Seventeen K's. And tonight, 17 more?

Game Thread º7•º7•27 HAL SPEAKS !

 

For one night, the Yankees shine. Ten takeaways...

 

That was a big Yankee win. 

(Note: Every win is a big Yankee win.) 

Now, what? Ten ponderings of the unponderable...

1. I've always heard that Trump is a Yank fan. So why hasn't he accused umps of cheating? Or, at the least, demanded that Hal spend more money? 

2. Gotta believe Jose Caballero's two HRs last night signaled an end to Anthony Volpe in NY. The question now is whether the Yankees can get anything decent in return. A bullpen widget? A backup catcher? Not a lot of hope here. But it's now six years since his breakout season in the minors, and the Yankees have never stopped hyping him. That's a long, long wait. Soon, it will be over. 

3. Cam Schlittler should pitch next weekend, killing his chance to start in the All-Star Game. He is unquestionably the best pitcher in the AL, with a 9-5 record and 2.01 ERA. If he does not pitch in the All-Star game, the honor would probably fall to - gulp - Sonny Gray. (10-1, 2.61 ERA) adding another smear of incompetence onto Brian Cashman's record.

4. I keep telling people to fear Boston. They have a young team, they've won eight of 10, and they've been far too awful to still be this close. 

5. Recent slump sends Ben Rice into the All-Star game with an uninspiring batting average on the Jumbotron. He's down to .267. He's still hitting HRs - fourth in the AL - but nobody is missing Aaron Judge more. Rice is hitting a shit-ton of grounders, and he now seems to be swinging for the fences more than in the past. Is there no coach to straighten him out? 

6. Yankees' silence on Giancarlo is a loud siren signaling that he will not be back until September, hoping to warm up for the postseason. What a fiasco. I don't begrudge the man his contract, and injuries are injuries - (poor guy can't open a bag of chips) - but at some point, the Yankees must cut bait. This perpetual wait, marred by setback after setback, you can't run a baseball team this way. You cannot win without hungry players, and the Yankees are a country club. 

7. The failure of Austin Wells this season has been utterly breathtaking. The guy has 10 RBIs. Ten. He's played 61 games. Ten RBIs. Ten. And yet they have nobody in the system, having traded all their catchers (Higashiyoka , Narvaez, Sanchez, Torrens, Trevino, Torres...) Ten.

8. The Martian is running out of time. He's probably got another month, while Aaron Judge slowly mends. But .209 with 4 HRs isn't cutting it. The biggest disappointment of 2026 remains the nothingburger (thus far) from Jasson Dominguez and Spencer Jones. 

9. Apparently, no Yankees were invited to Trav and Tays's super-party mega-blast. Back in the day, you couldn't imagine ten celebrities getting together without Jeet or A-Rod in the mix. Now, no A-Listers? Not even Judge? Sad.

10. The best hitter in baseball is Jordan Alvarez. The second best? Juan Soto. And he's still not worth it. 

USA s-u-c-k-s, Yankees get three hits, three dingers

 Donuts for everybody!!!!

Monday Night Game Thread - Same old Schlitt in Tampa Bay ? We'll See . . . .

 

So here we go. Early July, a season on the brink, and an end in sight to the era of Aaron Boone.

My god, they're like a talk show panel, spitting applause lines to a studio audience.

"We're not good right now," says Gerrit Cole/Joy Behar. 

"We've got to remember who we are," says Jazz Chisholm/Whoopie Goldberg.

Applause. Well, who the Yankees are should be easy to remember. They are a 13-year cicada manifestation, rebirthed from 2013, the year of Lyle Overbay and Melky Mesa, when they finished 3rd in the AL East.  

The Yanks have now botched nine of 10, tumbling like socks in a drier, after yesterday's phoned-in fiasco with Minesota. Everybody's got an excuse. Everybody's got a tag line. And everybody agrees on the problem: Affordability Focus.

"Losing sucks," says Aaron Boone/Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Applause. Like last year, eh? In fact, this is last year's team, kept intact through Brian Cashman's experiments in cryonics. Right now, this team will be remembered for Jake Bird and Max Schuemann, and for its ridiculous collapse after Aaron Judge cracked a rib.  

Listen: If we live long enough, we will laugh at the memory of 2026: 

The last season of Aaron Boone. 

Applause. Yes, this is it. This is the team that ends Boone's reign. (Note: It won't take out Cashman. Whatever he has on Hal Steinbrenner, it must be Epstein Island-level shit.) But this can take out a Yankee manager.

Tonight, in Tampa, the trap door opens, and we see what lies below. 

Losing four in Tampa - easy to imagine, considering our recent play - would put the Yankees nine games behind the Rays in the loss column. From now on, they'd be chasing a wild card. 

Losing four could leave the Yankees tied with Cleveland in that wild card scrum, one game ahead of Texas, currently a .500 team.

Losing four could leave them a mere four ahead of Boston, with nearly a half-season left. 

Losing four would leave them five games above .500. 

People, we are standing on the precipice, looking out over a deathly hellscape, and preparing to leap. It's cold down there. Pronk, Lyle, Melky and the gang are waiting to catch us. So are the ghosts of Stump Merrill and Dallas Green. This could be the last Great Yankee meltdown in our lives. 

I know it hurts. I know it's scary. But don't be afraid. Breathe in the impending gloom and step forward. Soon, Boonie will be gone. This is the year it happens. And maybe, just maybe, this is the week. 

Applause.

He wasn't the only one

(Thanks, Ranger.)

P.S. 

NEW YORK — The New York Yankees continue to back struggling reliever Camilo Doval — and he feels like he’s actually in a better spot than ever before.

“In my career as a pitcher,” Doval said, “I’ve never felt this good.”

 

As the Yankees continue to fall apart - Today's game features RYAN √s WEATHERS. Imagine that!

 You can almost smell his, uh . . . like, uhm - you know . . .

wheels spinning

It's Not Working.

 

It was a Tale of Two Carloses these past couple weeks, as both the Yankees' ever-unreliable, no. 2 or 3 or 4 starter, Carlos Rodon, friend of the fan, went on the DL. Again.

Joining him was the Yanks' latest "great new arm of the future," Carlos Lagrange, who the Bombers should have put in their bullpen to start the season, so they could have at least got a decent half-year out of what is certain to be yet another, sad career of rehab stints, imagings, and promising comeback outings, down in the far-flung outposts of the Yankees' crumbling empire.

At 33, Carlos Rodon has never thrown 200 innings in a season. And yet, he joins Max Fried, who has also never thrown 200 innings in a season, on the DL.  

Carlos the Younger, who is 23, has never thrown more than the 120 he reached last season. Didn't help.

Gerrit Cole has thrown over 200 innings in a season. He is just coming back from his second, extended DL stint. If "coming back" is what he's doing.

The prevailing idea in baseball now is that you bring pitchers along slowly, and they slowly gain arm strength (and bulk) and are  able to go longer as they get older.

But the fact is that doesn't happen with your New York Yankees.

The young guys get hurt, the older guys get hurt. They are coddled, they are instructed, they take all kinds of pills to give 'em all kinds of thrills learn all kinds of things about all kinds of pitches...

And they still get hurt.

Look, I'm NOT for rushing along young pitchers, or overworking guys. The past really was full of young guys who were overworked and blew out their arms, never to be heard from again.

But this—whatever this is—for the Yankees or the majors, isn't working.

We keep hearing about the tremendous velocity that guys attain today...although at our ill-fated outing to the Stadium, we saw Yankees and Reds pitchers alike throwing all sorts of 80-something junk.  (I think one pitch was even at 79 mph, though that might've been the position player we ended up using.)  

Reserved and rested and reconstituted as these guys are...none of them can complete nine innings. Almost none of them can throw six innings—something else that's destroying our game. It's sure as hell destroying the Yankees. Every year it's the same thing: the kids don't come up, and the older guys go down.

We keep being told this is scientific. We keep being told this is better. It's not science, and it's not better.

The other day on SNY, the estimable John Harper was advising the Yankees to do whatever it took to get Tarik Skubal from the Tigers. Harper's reasoning was that, "With the American League the way it is, the Yankees are practically slotted in to make the World Series."

Sadly, even with the American League the way it is, they are not. I don't think they will make the playoffs, much less the Fall Classic.

And I doubt that they could even assemble a package of players that would bring them Skubal. And I doubt that Skubal would get through even the rest of the season with this franchise...without ending up on the DL.

What the Yankees need to do—what MLB needs to do—is figure out what they're doing wrong, so they can fix it.

Crazy idea, I know.

 

The Yankees are collapsing in real time, saved only by the pathetic American League, and why should we pretend to be surprised?

What a sad state of affairs. 

What an inconsequential mess.

What a waste of time.

Why are we devoting time to this spiritless Yankee franchise, this spineless company, this blood-sucking family-owned business? 

What is the point?

After four months of play, the American League is a shambles, and only two teams - the Angels and Royals - are effectively done for the year.

If the season ended today, any AL team over .500 would get to play in October. A week from the All-Star break, the wretched Redsocks - mired in their most disappointing season of this millennium - are just five games down in the wild card race. Five. 

As the Yankees flounder, are you starting to feel - well - abused?

The Yankees sport baseball's third highest payroll ($339 million) after the Dodgers ($420 million) and Mets ($374 million). They spend three times as much as the Tampa Rays ($111 million). If they were a governmental agency, they would be indicted for fraud.  

So, why are we assigning so much energy, so much angst, to a team that can't even field an MLB worthy defense? 

It's simple: They cannot fail. The AL is gerrymandered, rigged with tomato cans. It doesn't matter what the Yankees do this week, or next. They are positioning themselves for October. They'll get Judge back in August. They'll get Giancarlo back - oh, fuck a duck, who cares? Soon, we'll hear breathless updates on Clarke Schmidt, and then comes the trade deadline, when they once again sacrifice their farm system for short team gains. 

We're doing it again. 

The Yankees aren't collapsing. They are just doing what they always do.

HAPPY 96TH BIRTHDAY, GEORGE ! (game thread)

And when the sun comes up, I'll be on top
You'll be right down there lookin' up
And I might wave, come up here
But I don't see you wavin' now

Too many teardrops

For one heart to be crying

Too many teardrops

For one heart to be crying

You're gonna cry 96 tears

You're gonna cry 96 tears

You're gonna cry, cry-cry-cry, now

You're gonna cry, cry-cry-cry

Uh, like . . . you know

Cry 96 tears

Thank you, 'Sota. (Springsteen should write you a song) and 10 other ponderings for those who were not invited to Taylor and Travis' wedding.)

 

The Twinkies came to Gotham, and the Death Barge broke its seven-game, slow motion skid. They play two more afternoons against 'Sota, then visit Tampa and Trumptown (DC) next week, before tumbling into the All-Star break. Four against the Rays: We will soon know the truth about this team. 

In the meantime, 10 meanderings...

1. To win in baseball, it's not rocket science. You supplement a strong farm system with a few star free agents. The Dodgers do it quite well. But the 2026 Yankees have neither. 

2. Someday - maybe next year - the Mets will rise. We can smirk about their record - fourth most losses in MLB. But they are building the farm, and they are spending the money. One of these days, we will feel the whoosh of them passing us, as NY's favored baseball team. (If you look at tabloid covers, they are already ahead of us, but that won't last through September.)   

3. It's taken half the season, but Jose Caballero has apparently won the SS position, (I'll believe this when he plays an entire series.) Congrats to all who are still suffering from Volpe Derangement Syndrome.

4. Cooperstown Cashman has four weeks to find what he can get for Anthony Volpe. Right now, not much. A bullpen lug nut, maybe?

5. The Yankees are yet to see the ballyhooed rotation with Gerrrit Cole, Carlos Rodon and Max Fried pitching at the same time. It's possible that they never will. This should blare sirens about mortgaging the farm for Tarik Skubal. When you obtain an ace pitcher, you're paying for every pitch he's ever thrown.

6. Still bumming over the loss of Carlos Lagrange, the star of spring training. He's out with a strained shoulder, and he probably won't return until - gulp - spring training. Damn. The Yankees had one breakout pitcher last spring, and they will probably get nothing from him in 2026. I realize that young pitchers are always fragile, but the Yankees pitching gurus blew this one, horribly. They had one job: Get this kid - and his 102 mph fastball - to the majors. They botched it.

7. After last night's game, Spencer Jones was dispatched to Scranton. That's strike two for his Yankee career. Unless somebody gets hurt - always a possibility - he's done with this organization. Gone at the trade deadline.

8. Jones is just another reminder that Yank fans - thirsty for news about the farm system - should never raise their hopes about Yankee prospects. They are simply a commodity to be traded. 

9. The seven-game losing streak made it a given that Cashman will remake this roster on or about July 31. Last year brought two disasters - (Bird and Doval) - two successes - (Bednar and Cabby) - and a no decision (McMahon.) I don't know how anyone can look at last year's trades and find great optimism for this team.

10. One of these days, the Twins will stop rescuing the Yankees from themselves. 

Happy fucking fourth. 

ø7/ø3/2ø26 game thread – Seven in a row. One more LOSS and we'll be saying . . .

 

It's a heat wave, and the Yankees are a hot mess. Ten overly boiled truths.

Today's Heat Index could hit 105. Stay inside. Watch Judge Judy. Take Hydration Breaks. Do not ponder the Yankees or their seven-game streak. Do not succumb to their mind control. 

Ten truths to free our tortured skulls.

1. No matter what happens, Aaron Boone will never be fired. Ever. He will outlast us, our children, and our children's children. He will speak at your funeral. Do not gaze deeply into those demonic eyes. He will manage the Yankees forever.

2. Thus, do not fall into the soul-sapping trap of calling for Boone's dismissal. It won't happen. He cannot be removed. Same with Trump and his offspring. They're not leaving. Ever. None of them. Kash Patel? Taylor Swift? Vana White? The cast of Yellowstone? Here, forever.

3. That's because our world is run by inhuman, immortal demon alien vampires who cannot be killed. If you get in their way, you will be sued or disappeared to a desert prison colony. If you get in Boone's way, you must deal with his secret hell-spawn acolyte, Anthony Volpe.

4. Jazz Chisholm is a robot. He was designed to be a 50-50 player, but his software became degraded, and now, he suffers from weekly chip malfunctions. He needs to be restored to factory settings, but the Yankees fear losing their investment in the lollypops.

5. Hal Steinbrenner is alive and being held captive in a remote stretch of Area 54. If we had our shit together, we would mount a courageous military operation to free him and restore him to the Yankee helm. But frankly, nobody wants that. 

6. This week, the Yankees finally destroyed pitching prospect Carlos Lagrange. In spring training, Lagrange was throwing 102 mph fastballs, so they sent him to Scranton, where he could throw out his arm. There are good reasons to go slowly on young pitchers, but opposing teams do it often, rather than horde Camilo Dovals and Jake Birds, and they have now beaten the Yankees seven straight times.

7. The sportswriters now calling for a trade deadline Yankee makeover are, in fact, automated online flesh bots, reincarnated from gum-swabs of Peter Gammons, whose disembodied brain is currently running a traffic light on Martha's Vineyard. 

8. Jack Curry is a hologram transmission from a planet millions of miles from here. His hair gel is the receiver. 

9. The black paint on Jose Caballero's face never comes off. I do not know what that means.

10. Few losing streaks survive 9th inning meltdowns by the likes of Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Janson. But the miracle plummeting '26 Yankees did just that. Was there ever a darker omen of the looming Yankeegeddon? 

Beware. And don't stare into Boone's eyes.

Uh...let's see...

 

Signs of the Apocalypse

 

This is all the fault of the New York Knicks.

 

It's the Knicks who did it. The incredible, amazing, jaw-dropping, unbelievable, gobsmacking, miraculous run of your New York Knickerbockers is what is leaving Yankees fans in such a funk about this season.

The Knicks! Of all people. Yet another taxpayer-subsidized, New York ball club run by a certifiable nepo troll...whose front office, coach, and never-say-die players nevertheless somehow got it together to win it all, and set the city's hearts (and the odd school bus) aflame.

How else to account for why it is that Yankees fans are sooooo disgruntled over their team going a mere, record-setting 12 straight games without scoring more than 4 more runs (and 14 games without getting as many as 10 hits)?  

Why, won't they understand that this team is still right in the midst of the wild-card hunt?

The reason has to be...the Knicks.

I kid, I kid, of course.

BUUUUUTTTT...you can absolutely expect to hear this argument made, in one form or another, by someone in the Yankees front office, or at least the YES broadcasting booth (same thing). Especially if the crowds continue to diminish.

(The Yanks still lead the AL in attendance, but the last two games each saw fewer than 40,000 fans, even with the Skubal-Schlittler "duel." What, people don't want to pay through the nose so they can come out in 100-degree heat and watch teams full of mediocrities flail futilely at the ball? Slackers!)

If the US soccer team somehow makes a run (it won't), you can expect to hear this rational applied to them, too: 

"People were distracted by this whole, marvelous, ne'er to be repeated spring and summer of special events. It won't last."

Except, that it will. 

This Yankees team is the oldest in the American League. It's not rebuilding, it's breaking down. And there are no viable replacements in sight for even its worst players: Wells, McMahon, Volpe, Jazz. 

There has never been much relief pitching this season, and now the starting pitching is falling apart in a hurry. The team can't hit, but insists on sticking to techniques that have been shown to fail for years now. Running, fielding?  That's SO pre-Sabremetrics.  

The general manager won't fire the manager, and the owner won't fire the general manager, and all we New Yorkers keep doing is ladling money over the owner. 

The Yanks aren't merely bad, and rapidly getting worse. They are unwatchably, historically bad, and there is no incentive to change the system that is making them so

Rrrrr...those Knicks!

The Yankees are falling apart, and their greatest supporter is losing her mind.

Yesterday, it finally happened: 

The singularity. The apocalypse. The culmination of all terrors. 

Suzyn Waldman went speechless.   

The Yankees' soccer mom took a long and piercing glimpse into the bottomless pit that is her team, and she saw a rigged system, without hope for the failing human condition. The world is going to hell, and the Yankees are leading the way.

It came in the 9th, after Jazz Chisholm - a recent lightning rod for fan anger - dramatically found a chance for redemption. One run down, Jazz singled, stole second, then stole third, and then scored on a wild pitch that clearly resulted from Tiger closer Kenely Jansen's frustration. 

This was it, the moment these Yankees had been waiting for! Anthony Volpe was coming up, with Spencer Jones to follow. Two lifetime Yanks, in need of a breakout. You could feel it in Suzyn's voice. 

Anthony Volpe legged out an infield single. Surely, he'd be running. Suzyn's voice rose an octave. This was their moment. 

Volpe broke with the pitch. He was... out? Nooooo. The Yankees called for a video challenge. There, on the Jumbotron, it clearly showed Volpe beating the throw. Suzyn was delirious. This call was going to be overturned. Everyone saw it. Justice would be restored.   

Then the replay showed Volpe over-sliding the base by a half-inch, the glove still upon him.  Out. The call would not be overturned. 

"This call goes against the spirit of the rule," Suzyn declared. 

If a runner beats the throw, he should be safe. The rule-makers didn't expect every half-second to be analyzed on a 60-foot Jumbotron. "It runs against the spirit of the rule." 

The rules are wrong. The country is wrong. Everything is wrong. And Suzyn has seen enough.

Seven straight losses - all to tomato cans, which is what the Yankees have become. 

Honestly, what else is there to say? In his postgame gobbledegook, Boone said: 

“There’s no way of sugarcoating it. We’re capable of way more, obviously. You’re gonna have stretches where it’s tough, where you’re missing some guys. This was a really difficult week."

No. This has been a really difficult season. Boston had collapsed. The Yankees seemed on the cusp of running away from a weak American League. And now, they look cooked.  

Soon, Ryan McMahon and Trent Grisham will return. The way the Yankees are spinning this, you'd think it was Mantle and Maris. McMahon is hitting .210, and Grisham is at .232. Their returns are supposed to spark hope?

Nope. I'm with Suzyn. The spirit of baseball is being violated. And if she's losing her shit, at least she's fighting.