Who will it be???

 

Oh, the tension grows! 

Who who who who who of the Feckless Five will be the very first to homer for your New York Yankees in the 2026 Rerun Season?

Wells and Chisholm, Grisham and Caballero and McMahon/

Write it out in verse/

A terrible futility is born...

They are, together, now at 194 plate appearances without a single Ballantine Blast. Why, with any luck, they could pass the 200 PA mark in this afternoon's contest!

To be fair, the whole team isn't hitting much. Just .218 on the season. The 1968 Yankees—not only the worst-hitting Bombers team but also the worst-hitting major-league team, EVER, since 1900, batted .214. And that was when pitchers could hit. The 1968 squad's hurlers batted all of .090. The position players hit .224—or 6 whole point above Noodniks' Row this year.

To be fair, Food Stamps Hal has insisted on scheduling and playing out one night game after another, despite the Arctic weather of late. But why, again, should we be fair, toward players making millions to play a game they are no longer so good at? (Fun fact: the Yankees' position players are an average of 30.5 years of age—not only the oldest team in the AL, but also the ONLY one over 30.)

The Big Five, shown here, hit 109 home runs between them in 2025, which is no doubt why The Brain thought they would be perfect for the Season of Reruns (next on the schedule: The Bullpen That Doesn't Work!). 

That is a lot of home runs. The top five boppers on the actual Murderers' Row, the 1927 Yankees (Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Meusel, Combs) hit 139 home runs between them. 

Amongst the other great Yankees teams of yore, the Top Five of the 1961 team (Maris, Mantle, Skowron, Berra, and Howard or Blanchard) hit 186; and the 1939 squad (DiMaggio, Gordon, Dickey, Selkirk, Dahlgren) and 1977 team (Nettles, Jackson, Munson, Chambliss, White) both belted 118. Even on the 1998 Yankees, probably the greatest team of all-time, the Top Five (Martinez, Williams, O'Neill, Strawberry, Jeter or Brosius) hit "only" 121 dingers between them.

Of course, all those players did other things, such as rope doubles and triples all over the park, bat over .300, steal bases, draw walks, and play outstanding ball in the field. 

Our Fan Five is currently striking out over twice as many times as they walk (57-28), they have driven in—collectively—less than one run a game, and none of the Ferocious Five have crossed the Mendoza Line. Ryan McMahon is currently hitting all of .077, which puts him under...I dunno what line. Mason-Dixon? Maginot? 

And even their vaunted defense of late seems...more daunted than vaunted.

But I have faith. I have faith that between the five of them, they will hit a home run this year. My guess is that the first will be Austin Wells, who has proven adept at dumping what should be routine fly balls into the Yanks' Lefty Charity Porch in right field.

What are your picks? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

What's keeping the Yankees afloat? A.L. Slop

 

With due respect to Mr. Magoo and Emperor Palpatine, nothing derails a movie like a clueless, unfiltered old fogy, who is flying 30,000 feet over his head and calling the shots, and we all know who I'm talking about.

The Yankees, of course.

With their "mature" lineup - "mature" meaning "aging" - the '25-26, same-as-last-year Yankees are a boring, bumbling team that needs 10 walks per game to score runs. When they lose, as they did last night, they are particularly dreadful to watch. They are Saturday Night Live hosted by Elon Musk. Basically, you have Aaron Judge, a few anecdotes by David Cone and the NAME THAT YANKEE trivia question. After that - well - Ben Rice might turn out to be something. And Giancarlo always entertains, until he gets hurt. The bullpen cannot hold leads, and the starting rotation will only get older. 

But but BUT... we are in first.

How can sit here, farting into my back-breaker office chair, and denigrate a FIRST PLACE team? Am I that spoiled, that out of touch with the realities of baseball? If they're so old, so listless, why are the Yankees in first? 

I say, it's A.L. Slop. 

Yes, Artificial Lousiness.  

Particularly, let's celebrate the once-mighty AL East, a division that was supposed to rule baseball, which - for now, anyway - is a collection of cupcakes and canned tomatoes. 

For example, did you happen to see the throw by Boston's future superstar, Roman Anthony, the other night? He snagged a one-hop single to left field and fired a cannon shot home, with a solid chance to nab a runner. The ball bounced about 30 feet from the plate plate, halfway up the 3B line. It was beautiful. It was magic. It had the makings of a Little League HR. The Martian, lost in Scranton, would be hard-pressed to match it. 

The line on Anthony, according to my Redsock fan sources, is that he spent the winter in the weight room, bulking up so he could wow the coeds over a full MLB season. (He got hurt last year and missed the playoffs.) 

Listen, Anthony is scary. He could be great, a future Yankee killer.  But maybe, just maybe, that MVP trophy that the Gammonites bestowed upon him over the winter - could it be premature? He wouldn't be the first great prospect to weight-lift his way into mediocrity. 

So, here's my personal vendetta list of cold-ass starts. 

Of course, it's wayyyy to early to assign meaning to these numbers. (And Jose Caballero, Jazz Chisholm, Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon  - the ballplayer, not the Onondaga County Executive - would all crack this list.) But the Yankees, for all their knock-kneed problems, have one thing going for them. 

A.L. Slop. Welcome to the new world.

Game Thread – 04/08/26 – Yanks √s A'zzzzzzz

. . . and DOOMED

Zeroes.

After all the heroics of last night's exercise in fan torture—and it should be noted that Steve Cohen bit the bullet and gave Mets fans a pair of games in the sunshine, complete with refunds (I know, I know: Uncle Stevie has more money than Hal. But then his family didn't get two subsidized stadiums from the city. And Steve Cohen earned his moolah the old-fashioned way: he stole it, fair and square.)—what remained was still a couple of chilling statistics.

After 10 games and some 184 plate appearances, over 55 percent of the Yanks' starting lineup—the Big Five, Trent Grisham, Jazz Chisholm, Austin Wells, José Caballero, and Ryan McMahon—still does not have a single home run. 

Nada. None. Zippo. Zero.

This should not be a surprise. Ryan McMahon, for instance, has played almost his entire career in Colorado, and is lifetime, .259/.810 hitter with 90 homers at home...and .215/.659 on the road. What?

Trent Grisham, before his 34 homers and less-than-HOF .235 last year, never hit more than 17 homers in a season, and batted beneath the Mendoza Line 3 times in 6 years. Jazzy is a lifetime .247 hitter who strikes out more than once a game. Who knew? 

Somehow, Brian Cashman could not anticipate any of what they are doing this season.

Meanwhile, over in Queens, the Borough of Mercy, the Metsies hung up another significant zero:  Luke Weaver and Devin Williams still have not surrendered a single run, in a combined 10 games and as many innings, while running up 2 saves, 1 hold, 1 win, and zero—that number again is, zero—losses.

Mets starter Clay Holmes, it must be said, has surrendered all of 2 earned runs this season, leaving his record at 2-0, 1.42.

Hey, I can't truly say that I miss Williams or Holmes, at least. But all three of these arms would certainly bolster our already teetering, No-Name Bullpen. 

And then there is the other big zero in the story: what the Yankees got back for them. You guessed it.

Nichts. Rien. A whole lotta nothin'. Not even a magic bean or two.

This is how Hal & Pal's Yankees operate. Acquisitions made on the basis of flawed or ignorant analyses, followed by simply letting the players in question walk off the team.

But hey, at least Volpe isn't going anywhere!

 

Amed Rosario saves the Yankees, which means that tonight, he will be Booned.

Last night, Stephen Colbert summed it up: 

“Trump has promised to deliver this civilization-ending blow tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. So, bad news: the world might end. Good news: not until after ‘Wheel of Fortune.’” 

At times, it's hard to obsess over the Yankees - a privately-owned public entity whose owner wants to win, sorta, if the price is right - while the world turns to shit. On that note, I'm delighted to announce that neither World War III nor the first official 2026 Yankee collapse happened last night, both being postponed for two weeks, when the Yankees play Boston. We're now in a reality that turns over every two weeks, which is no way to run a baseball team, or for that matter, a planet. When world peace cannot be visualized beyond two turns of the Yankee rotation, all existential matters boil down to Wheel of Fortune, and who's on third?  

So, let's talk about 3B. Because this morning, every Yank fan in captivity knows what happened last night, and what will happen today.  

Last night, Amed Rosario hit two HRs, saving the Yankees from a soul-crushing loss to a homeless team. Thus, he will not start tonight. And probably tomorrow. He will be Booned. 

That's right. He will disappear, just like every Yankee hitter does, after a big game. It's Boone's thing. It drives us crazy, but what are the odds that we don't see Rosario, at least in a starting role, until the weekend? 

Which leaves us still wondering about 3B. The Yankees have options...

Ryan McMahon. Ever since this guy came over in a July trade, he has confused all Yankee fans from Syracuse, NY. His name is the same of the Onondaga County Executive, a perpetually grinning Republican, who sits on the giant shit pile that is the Central NY governmental bureaucracy. He fills potholes, glad-hands developers and sends workers home early during blizzards. He could probably outhit his Yankees' namesake.

Thus far, the Yankee McMahon, 31, has been awful at the bat. He's 8 for 50 with 15 strikeouts, having been among the league-leaders in Ks throughout his career. Great glove. Lousy contact. He's two years past his sell-by date, (he made the All-Star game in 2024) and, statistically, his doppelganger is Mike Pagliarulo, who should give all Yank fans cause to worry. 

McMahon will not be Booned.

He will be Trumped - that is, given two more weeks to show his stuff. 

Rosario. It's nine years since he hit the Mets as MLB's top prospect, a 21-year-old SS and future star. He was Lindor, before Lindor. In his best year, 2019, he batted .287 with 15 HRs, and led the NL in Caught Stealings, with 10. He's bounced around to seven teams, and he signed with the Yankees this winter, knowing he'd warm the bench.  

That said, in the bountiful begorra of Bill Robinson, baseball history is filled with former great prospects who figured out the secret of hitting sometime around their 30th birthday. Why not Rosario?  

Obviously, after last night, he needs a full week at 3B. That won't happen.

Booned.

Oswaldo Cabrera. There is only one Oswaldo. The smiling warrior still holds 3B in our hearts. But he's been icy cold in Scranton, rehabbing his broken foot. (Like endless wars, the Yankees have endless rehabs.) Cabrera is currently hitting .188 - 6 for 32 with a homer and a SB. My guess is that, unless someone gets hurt, he must hit his way back to the majors, and as a utility player, not a starting 3B. 

Paul DeLong (32) and Max Schuemann (28), both currently of Scranton, two serviceable infielders, who probably have OUT clauses in their contracts. Neither is hitting. But both can probably field 3B on a notch just below McMahon. 

DeLong - a member of the All-Rookie team in 2017 for the Cardinals - is 4 for 23. Schuemann - two years with the A's, with 9 career HRs - is 4 for 26. 

Then there is the domino effect of Anthony Volpe, who should return in mid-May. He'll probably take over at SS, moving Caballero to 3B? And there is the outside, far-flung, not worth mentioning chance that George Lombard Jr.- now of Double A Somerset - could bypass everyone. Right now, he's 6 for 9 with a HR. Close your eyes and dream: Volpe at 3B, Lombard at SS, and we stop hearing all that mush about Boston's youth movement.

In the meantime, we'll be Booned and Trumped. Yikes. What a twosome.  

Game Thread – April 07, 2026 – Yankees √s NorCal A'zzzzzz – Now in Twist off Bottles !

 

Wrathful Yank fans make vendetta history with Juan Soto chant

My all-time, greatest anonymous Yank fans, ranked: 

6. In 1978, Yankee Stadium crowd showers giveaway Reggie bars at Reggie Jackson, causing game to be halted. 

5. In mid-1970s, in Syracuse, NY on a Saturday afternoon, a handful of drunken fans converge on local NBC affiliate to complain that Yank game has pre-empted for golf. Police called.

4. Car filled with drunken louts chases embattled pitcher Eddie Lee Whitson home, honking horn and yelling obscenities. 

3. Mob rushes field, slamming into Chris Chambliss, after his walk-off HR wins 1976 pennant. 

2. Crowd chants "Fuck Steinbrenner" after Reggie returns in an Angels uniform, belts homer.

1. Mystery group, circa 1985, put tacks on Whitson's driveway. 

Today, I proudly add Sunday night's stadium crowd, which spontaneously chanted "FUCK JUAN SOTO," after the heartbreaking news broke that the traitor will be sidelined with a minor calf strain.

Sadly, neither Michael Kay nor the YES team acknowledged the cheers, which once again proves that Yank fans are on a par with Trump, himself, when it comes to nursing grudges.  

Soto will always occupy a cold, dark basement in our hearts. He signed with the Mets, squeezing a few extra thin dimes on a $765 million contract, because he was too cheap to buy luxury box and too petty to forgive a low-level security guard for not immediately recognizing his relatives. 

Honestly, I can't think of a nicer addenda to Sunday's rancid loss than to imagine Soto having to sit out a week or two, watching daytime TV. I don't ask the juju gods for broken bones, ligament tears or concussions. But minor calf strains? Thank you, kind sirs.

Icing on the cake: Soto was off to a hot start, hitting .355. 

Let's hope he returns in two weeks, just in time for a sweet 0-for-20.  

If you're expecting forgiveness, or grace, why are you here? Two years ago, for an entire season, Yank fans showered Soto with unrelenting love. We overlooked his paltry fielding. We cheered him through ups and downs. And he pissed on us, signing with the Mets, for a few extra pennies on a stack of money taller than he will spend in 10 lifetimes. Fuck him. If I had some extra tacks... 

A fish rots from the head down.

 

Well, that didn't take long. 

The latest exercise in fan torture yesterday, a game—on Easter Sunday, no less—played in brutal weather exposed this Yankees team for just what it is, 7-1 start notwithstanding. 

From the back-up catcher to the head honcho, the debacle revealed just how insufficient this 2026 "Run It Back" team—an expression that was actually beginning to pick up some cachet with local sports commentators and reporters, as if "Run It Back" were really a brilliant strategy instead of just the knee-jerk default of what has become an unbearably cheap and unimaginative franchise—really is.

To "run it backwards" to the top, let's start with the brilliant, ninth-inning decision by Aaron Boone to pinch-hit back-up backstop J.C. Escarra with two outs and two on, in a one-run game. One might have expected, oh, I dunno, former MVP and future Hall-of-Famer, Paul Goldschmidt to stride to the plate, thus serving one feeble, last ounce of hope to those fans who had stuck it out through a three-and-a-half-hour rain delay and wintery cold.

But no such luck.

Boone stuck instead with "the book," putting up Escarra, the Yanks' last left-handed hitter, against righty Anthony "I'm Not the Chief" Bender, for the Marlins. 

What "the book" might also have told Boone is that while Goldschmidt is, indeed, a better hitter against lefties (.323/.422/.584/1.006), he has—unsurprisingly—batted nearly over 4,000 times more often against righties, and done pretty well against them:  .277/.364/.479/.843, with 265 homers and 914 RBI.

Escarra, by contrast, in his wisp of a career, is a .171/.270/.303/.572 hitter in 89 plate appearances against righties—albeit with 2 homers and 9 RBI.  

This was a foolish decision to cap off a very long day, though hardly the dumbest thing done or said by a manager who should not be employed by any serious contender.  

That would be his statement, before the game, that he was looking for "length" from the team's one-and-only ace, Max Fried, because the bullpen had been so overworked.

Yep, that's what you need in an early April game played in the rain and the cold: pressuring your best starter to go long, just so you can save the Yanks' No-Name Bullpen. You remember all the times Casey Stengel used to say, "We gotta push Whitey, so Rip Coleman and Mickey McDermott can get some rest."  Makes perfect sense.

Moving up fish scales, what yesterday's game also exposed, of course, is just what a collection of noodniks Brian Cashman has assembled in the pen. Who could have guessed?

I mean where, for instance, was Angel Chivilli as day turned into dark on Sunday? 

Oh, laboring down in Scranton, it seems, after compiling a 12.38 ERA during spring training.

Chivilli, you'll recall, was acquired for one T.J. Rumfield, the LEFTY first baseman who Brian Cashman adamantly refused to give a chance...and who is now hitting a mere .345 for the Rockies, with a .992 OPS, 2 homers and 5 RBI so far.

Gee, think Rumfield might have been a better alternative hitting for José Caballero yesterday? 

Caballero, of course, is part of the Pacifists' Row that Cashman has also put together in the Yankees' starting lineup—a group that threatens to make the Run It Back team Running in Reverse. 

Between them, so far, Caballero, Trent Grisham, Ryan McMahon, Jazz Chisholm, and Austin Wells—who, like every other catcher the Yanks have developed under Cashman, came up looking like Johnny Bench and soon looked like one more bench johnnie—are batting a combined .154 (22-143), with ZERO home runs and all of 10 RBI; along with just 22 walks against 49 strikeouts. 

Most of the Yanks' lineup, like the pen, has been predictably awful. But don't expect to see any of them replaced any time soon. Hal, The Great Whatizzit who heads this stinking fish has already paid for this lineup, and he expects results, no matter how long it takes.

I was unfair, yesterday, accusing him of not canceling yesterday's game before it started. Apparently, the rule has been changed, and those decisions are now made by the heedless corporate entity known as MLB. Never mind the actual weather in New York, never mind the fact that on a major holiday some fans might have been eager to get back to friends and family—eventually.

No can do—because with MLB's brilliant decision to have everybody play everybody, Miami doesn't have a return trip to the Bronx, and having to reschedule anything would cause CHAAAAAOOOOSSSS!

So I can't blame that on The Heir Incompetent. But I can blame the organization he has put together for the Run It Into the Ground team. So much for the captain, Aaron Judge, telling his teammates that every game matters. For their owner, every dollar matters. Once again.

Nine games into April, it's all about the ABS challenges

Last night, after being visited by the Babadook Bullpen - aka Jake Bird - the Yankees faced baseball's new dark reality: 

Don't go into the 9th without an ABS challenge in your pocket. 

If you do, you're like a football team in a two-minute drill without any timeouts. 

Last night, having squandered their two challenges early on, the '25/'26 Yanks agonized as pitch after pitch fluttered around the plate like an Iranian drone, to be called a strike.  

The victim was J. C, Escara - (who, with the Martian in Scranton, turned out to be our last lefty batter.) Poor guy had to watch as the home plate ump, wanting to put this rain-delayed game into the books, expanded the strike zone like a peacock's plumage.  

I'm not blaming Boone, or the brain trust, or anybody, for this new reality, which has hit baseball like a blown-out upstream dam. The ABS system is here to stay, and the Death Barge better figure it out - like, now - because it's showing the world, dramatically, who owns the strike zone, and who has not a clue.  

The Yankees have been one of MLB's most aggressive teams in tapping their heads and challenging calls. They rank 10th in overall success, according to ESPN's stat tracker which is the most interesting new set of baseball stats since we asked, WAR, what is you go for? 

Some takeaways from the tracker:

Austin Wells ranks 13th among catchers, with a 71 percent success rate. He is 5 for 7. It looks as though catchers will be the most vigorous - and critical - challengers. Their ABS success - or lack of it - will compete with the art of pitch framing and release time to second base. Right now, Dillon Dingler of the Tigers has the best ABS record, by far, among catchers; he's 7 for 7. If this continues, you'll hear his name when Golden Gloves are announced.

Yankee pitchers are not jumping into this pond. Max Fried is the only one to register a challenge and succeed. He's 1 for 1. Donno what to make of this. You wanna think that, when they return, cagy vets Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon would exploit this system. In fact, it could be the opposite: Baseball will have had two months to learn the new reality. For ABS, Cole and Rodon will be wild-eyed rookies. Weird, eh?

Trent Grisham and Jose Caballero are the most frequent Yankee batters, thus far. Both are 2 for 3 in challenges. Obviously, this is too small a sample size to draw conclusions, but when this system was implemented, everybody thought it would help Aaron Judge, over everybody else. In SF, he successfully overturned a strike call, then hit a towering HR. Since then, crickets. I gotta believe everything will revolve around the Captain. Whatever he does, the team will follow. He will be the most influential Yankee captain in history. (But Jose Caballero, or any of the bottom three batters, should not be team leaders in ABS challenges. I mean, come on...) 

There's a trippy relationship between winning games and winning challenges. The last place Redsocks rank 23rd in ABS success, at 46 percent. But the Guardians, leaders in the AL Central, rank 30th; (being in Cleveland is challenging enough, I guess.) The NL leaders - the Marlins, Brewers and Dodgers, are all middle of the pack in ABS success. This is a massive change, and nobody has yet figured it out.  

Soon, baseball will explode with ABS analytics. I bet, as you read this, some Yankee wonk is using an entire data center, crunching the $100-per-barrel numbers. The system is already significant enough to belong in box scores (they are not currently shown.) It's a new world, a new reality. And don't get caught in the ninth without a challenge.

The Son becomes the Father and the Father becomes the . . . . WRONG ! Resurrection Day Game Thread

 Statistically Speaking . . . He's around.  He's always around.

Jazz Chisholm phones one in. Did he just summon the juju gods?

Stop me if you heard this one.

Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, "What'll'ya'have?" Guy deliberates, takes his time, slurs the reply. And the Yankees lose.

Not exactly Maury Amsterdam. But last night, if you watched the ninth, or if you looked at social media today, you know that the juju gods emerged to blemish, if not threaten, the Yankees' 7-1 start, best record in baseball. 

It happened innocently. Two No outs, Yanks up by three, nobody on. Snore. Guy hits a routine grounder to second. Jazz grabs it, deliberates, takes out his phone, texts his mom, scratches himself, checks email, wipes his ass, then tosses a rainbow to first. The Marlin, busting ass, beats it. WTF? Game should be over. Instead, the roof early caves. Seven batters later, tying runs on base, the Marlins finally lose. By now, X is a prison riot: pitchforks and Bimbofication pix. What shoulda been an enjoyable, come-from-behind win ends in an existential crisis for a critical player. 

A teachable moment? Or time to punt? Some points to ponder.

1. Chisholm is a special case of arrested development. He was born in Nassau. When he was 2, his gramma started teaching him to hit. At age 12, he was sent to a sports factory in Nebraska, where he played everything. After high school, he went to a baseball academy. You wonder. Did the Guy ever have a childhood? 

2. Two years ago, when the Yankees appeared at the Little League World Series in wondrous Williamsport, Jazz befriended a 12-year-old fan. In their conversations, captured on video, you could see the joy of a new friendship, a little kid getting a chance to meet - in this case - the little leaguer. They are said to still be in touch (though that might be p.r. myth-making.) Kids...

3. Last week, when Jazz was mic'ed for an inning on network TV, you could see his absolute delight in being out there, in front of the world. He's still a kid, taking it all in. I'm not saying this is bad. But he's not Paul Goldschmidt. And the thing about little kids: They can get down on things. They can think nobody cares. Can the Yankees afford to have such a person at one of their most important positions?  

4. Jazz hasn't exactly been lighting up the box scores. He's 6 for 33 (.194) and is tied for the team lead in strikeouts (12, with Aaron Judge.) Last night, he went 0-5, was having a certifiable bomb of a night. But he has been running wild on the bases: his 4 SBs are tied for the most in baseball. 

5. Now and then, you wonder, "What would Billy do?" (And the answer is, you donne wanna know." It's scary, what Billy Martin might have done. For starters, he might have trotted out Bobby Meachem to finish the game, forcing Jazz to leave in a rain of boos. Elston Howard might have had to separate them in the dugout. (Or maybe Reggie, wouldn't that be delicious?) That's not Boone's style and, to be honest, that's probably a good thing. Let him chew his gum. The last thing we need is a regional dispute that escalates into World War III. Especially when you're leading the AL East by three and you're five up on Boston. 

6. Like it or not, the Yankees have nobody to replace him. Technically, I suppose Amed Rosario would get the call. But if you want stress over grounders, he's your man. Anthony Volpe should return next month. If Jazz doesn't have his act together by then, there's your change. But two winters ago, we traded the guy who would fill that position: Caleb Durbin is 2-for-25, batting .080, for Boston. 

7. Today, the Marlins are throwing a RH pitcher named Chris Paddack, and his ERA is 18.00. (Exactly the kind of numbers that make you expect the Yankees to get shutout.) A righty. You'd expect Jazz to play. He will hear some boos. He needs a big game. A big game, and he will ascend. It's a big day for resurrections, I hear. 

Weathers I'm Right, or Weathers I'm Wrong. Weathers I find a place in this world, or Never Belong ◊ Game Thread

 

I've gotta be Me, I've gotta be Me

What else can I be, but what I Yam

So, so sad.

 

The Yankees are off to a great start, but do we dare dismiss the Unknown Unknowns?

Best in the AL East. Best record in the AL. Best record in baseball. Best team pitching (1.16 ERA). Best with the robot umps. Second best in stolen bases (11, behind only Milwaukee.) Four games up on Boston...  

Six wins in seven games. 

God in his heaven, right?

Well, maybe. Unfortunately, as we all know, what matters remains in a distant galaxy - far, far away and a long, long time from now, aka "October."  Can this team finish 2026 with six of seven?

And what of the world? As we drift into another war, I'm recalling 2001 and the late Donald Rumsfeld, a classic character in humanity's troubled recurring history: Old men sending young men off to war. Rummy spoke of "known knowns" and "unknown unknowns," and I made a pretty penny by setting his words to poetry.

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns.

That is to say,

We know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns

The ones we don't know we don't know.

Lately, I'm imagining old Rummy checking the headlines and chuckling, way down there. Yesterday, two young U.S. pilots were shot down, and you could go back to the days of Cheney & the Rumster to remember the horror of seeing one of our boys held captive by an enemy we helped create. 

Ah, but this is a Yankees blog. Forgive me. Let's stay on topic.

THE YANKEES' CURRENT KNOWN KNOWNS. 

1. Aaron Judge will hit 50 HRs.

2. Giancarlo will miss at least two months with injuries.

3. Max Fried will be the staff ace.

4. Cody Bellinger will play solid LF.

5. The middle of the lineup, from 2-to-5, will function as our own Strait of Hormuz for opposing pitchers.   

6. The bottom of our lineup, from 6-to-9, won't deliver squat. 

7. The bullpen will eventually crack from the strain.

8. The wild card will be our salvation.

THE YANKEES' CURRENT KNOWN UNKNOWNS.

1. The ceiling of Cam Schlittler.

2. The returns of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon.

3. Anthony Volpe.

4. Minor league pitchers Carlos Lagrande and Elmer Rodriguez.

5. Scranton's mystery OF: The Martian and Spencer Jones.

6. Does Bednar last a season?

THE YANKEES CURRENT UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS.

Damn...  this gets scary. What happens in July and August, when the front office feels compelled to make its trades?

Six of seven. They say a win in April is just as important as a win in September.

Unless you consider the things we don't consider...

The Bronx – April III – Yankees √s Marlins – Will Warren Win ? Will Judge Find His Swing ? – Will Boone Swallow His Blow ?

While the world roils, the Yankees celebrate opening day.

So, here we are. 

Opening day in the House that Rudy Built.  

One game up in the AL East, with only 156 left.

A staff that has yielded six runs in 54 innings.

A looming cupcake caravan - the Marlins, A's, Rays, Angels and Royals - until Boston on April 22. 

Leading MLB in umpire-torturing ABS overturns.

MLB's second highest BA (among qualifiers): Giancarlo, at .500. 

The MLB leader in saves: David Bednar (with 3).

"Original" Ben Rice, with an OPS of 1.289.

In first, despite Aaron Judge batting .160. 

Trump threatening to bomb Iran into the stone age.

A government that prefers Kid Rock to Bruce. 

A country that - oh, hell with this. 

Why bother? You get the picture. The Yankees are winning, and nobody wants to hear me whinny about Brian Kashman Patel. We all should just shut up and enjoy April, the month of Yangervis Solartes and tornados, when every team is a contender and - besides, whatever we do this month will be eclipsed by the looming slumps of July and August, when the lineup's advanced age goes from Advantage to Liability.  

Why fret over August and September? It feels like they'll never get here. What will happen is what always happens: We will wake up around the July 31 trade deadline, with the Yankees is a few players shy of a wild card slot, so a bunch of prospects will be loaded onto a bus and sent to Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, or wherever the front office believes will be safe from immediate embarrassment. 

We will wake up on one of those endless summer days and realize that everything has changed, and the tomato cans of April, the teams that valued youth over creakiness, are ready eat our lunches. As for the world? Here's what the poet, Charles Bukowski, said...

"sometimes, you've got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow 
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time."

Okay, it's opening day and, frankly, we're doing better than we had a right to expect. June looks a hundred years away. A lotta shit is gonna fly. Better enjoy this while we can. And how 'bout that Giancarlo!

Requiem for a Morning Glory.

 

So word came a few days ago that Ken Clay had passed away at the age of 71. 

Many of us here will remember Ken Clay, one of another generation of can't-miss pitchers from the 1970s who the Yankees—even before Brian Cashman's day—managed to squander in bad trades and bad decisions.

Is there anything sadder than a promising young pitcher who never makes it?

Ken Clay was supposed to be one of those unstoppable young talents. He had an up-and-down minor-league career, but he seemed to have figured it out early in 1977, going 5-1, 1.68 at Syracuse. The Yanks brought him up.

The "morning glory" epithet came from George Steinbrenner. May the failings of his son never let us forget what a first-class, gigantic, ignorant prick mad old George was. He was quick to get off similar barbs aimed at other young pitchers who displeased him. 

There was his unforgettable characterization of Hideki Irabu, as a "fat, pus-sy toad." I think it was Jim Beattie he accused of "spitting the bit"—like "morning glory," a term for an underperforming horse. But then, his players were always just so much more horseflesh for George, creatures that existed for him only in so much as they pleased or failed him, imbued with personalities that existed only in George's head.

Then there was Billy Martin, who never met a young pitcher whose arm he couldn't ruin.

Unsurprisingly, Ken Clay never flourished in the Bronx Zoo. But he did have his moment of glory. In the first game of the 1978 ALCS, with Martin gone (for the time being) and a rational human being running the club, the Yankees found themselves desperately short of pitching. 

The club had just finished its astounding, comeback run from 14 behind Boston, capped by the one-game playoff in Fenway. A lot of people thought they might be done for the year, that incredible rally a good enough moral victory. When they pulled into Kansas City, all they had to throw out there against a strong Royals team, seething for revenge after two straight, heart-ripping playoff losses, was a young rookie named Jim Beattie, who had never so much as pitched a complete game.

Beattie was a little wild that night, as who wouldn't be in such a situation. He walked five, but gave up only two hits, and going into the bottom of the sixth, somehow the Yanks had a 4-0 lead. Beattie was soon over 100 pitches, though, and out of gas. With two on and one out, Manager Bob Lemon turned to...Ken Clay.

Clay was lights-out. He gave up a sacrifice fly to the fearsome Hal McRae, the first batter he faced, then got Al Cowens to end the inning. In the seventh, he gave up a walk, but induced no less than George Brett to ground out and end the frame. Reggie Jackson soon put the icing on the cake with a three-run blast, and Clay finished the game, 3 2/3 innings without allowing a hit. The Yanks were on their way to a second straight world championship.

That was about it for Ken Clay, in the game, and his life, sadly enough. After an awful 1979 season, he was traded to Texas for Gaylord Perry, and out of baseball after 1981. He never seemed able to adjust. Repeatedly convicted of theft, grand larceny, and forgery, he had spent at least seven years in prison by 2012. 

Some make the transition to real life with all its shortcoming. Some don't.

Jim Beattie—dealt away in another stupid trade, this one for Ruppert Jones—ended up having some very decent years...in Seattle. Tippy Martinez and Scott McGregor, shipped to Baltimore to pick up insurance for a 1976 race the Yanks already had well in hand, ended up having excellent careers...for the Orioles.

A pitcher who was thought to have an even brighter future than any of them was Gil Patterson, another young righty who fell victim to the Yanks' longtime indifference to common sense when it comes to developing young arms. 

Patterson went a combined 16-4, 2.44 at two levels of the minors in 1976, conquering Triple-A at just 20. The next season he was brought up to the big club, and astonished everyone.

After he struck out 8 Red Sox in 5 2/3 innings of a losing effort, Carl Yastrzemski called him one of the best young pitchers he had ever seen, and said his stuff was harder to hit than Nolan Ryan's.  

But Patterson's arm was already throbbing with pain, after having been used on a cold minor-league night, or for one inning too many by Billy Martin. The stories vary. Gil Patterson tried everything he could to come back, even teaching himself to pitch lefthanded. But he was done.

George Steinbrenner, in one of his moments of grand largesse, discovered Patterson parking cars at a Fort Lauderdale restaurant in 1983, and offered him a job "coaching for life" in the Yankees system. "Life" ended the next year, when Gil Patterson refused to keep a sore-armed Al Leiter out on a minor-league mound. Leiter eventually became a major-league star, of course, and called Patterson, "one of the best pitching coaches anywhere."  

Patterson got to the majors again as a coach, and was widely lauded—even beloved—by people whose careers he didn't save. Despite having his greatest dreams dashed, he was able to hang on, bring out the best in himself, have a life worth living. 

We all react to adversity in different ways. It's never easy, but it's best to try to hang on to that person inside you, despite of what society, or a bloated blowhard like George Steinbrenner, or a sad, warped psychopath like Billy Martin might think of you.  

Call this a homily for Maundy Thursday.

Let's see if we can bring that down

Earlier this week The Athletic published its survey of baseball fans' optimism, ranked by team. We Yankee fans came in at 22nd (!) out of 30, between the Marlins and the White Sox. Yes: We have slightly less optimism than the Miamiphiles, and a hair more faith than the Pope. 

The green bar represents the percentage of optimistic fans; the orange bar represents IT IS HIGH. 

 

It's not Judge, Gio or Jazz. Within the Yankiverse, everything swirls around Ben Rice, and the juju gods of product endorsements are starting to take notice

 O, to be Ben Rice! 

Perched nightly in the geological and spiritual center of the Yankiverse - that is, two hitters behind Judge & Belli, and two ahead of Gio & Jazz -between Scylla and Charybdis, the Yankees' Strait of Hormuz. 

Last year, that fivesome hit 163 HRs, of which Rice contributed 26, which was, fun fact, his age.

Thus far in '26, every time he steps to the plate, something is cooking - and it's not necessarily rice. Often, the pitcher is peeing himself from having survived the game's greatest hitter and one of its cagiest. (Imagine, a batter who chokes up with two strikes.) Or it's not urine at all. He's halfway through the carwash, scrambling to plug the spray.

Rice may be the first Yankee-grown star whose entrance to the NYC pressure cookier was rescued by the newfangled stat of exit velo - that is, by miles per hour, rather than outcome per at-bat. He hasn't as Wee Williie once said, "hit 'em where dey aint." Nope. He hit 'em where dey is - often at a well-placed 2B or RF, that is, unless the ball leaves the park. Cuz dey aint in the bleachers.

Yesterday, in the win over Seattle, Rice went 2-3 with HR and a walk. Thus far, he's hit in every game. Woopie-doo. It's fucking April 2, fer kricesake. The YES team, famously known to gaslight young stars, has gushed over Rice's improved defense at 1B. But, honestly, it's not Micheal Kay blather. The guy has put in the work. He's made himself a legit 1B. 

And now, his future has been blessed - or at least acknowledged - by the juju gods of product endorsement. Rice has signed the most perfect sponsorship deal since George Herman gulped down his first Baby Ruth. He's endorsing Ben's Original Rice, which - ironically? or mockingly? - is owned by the Mars food company, which must surely be aware of Jasson Dominguez. You have to wonder: Could The Martian, at 23, exactly where Rice was four years ago, someday get a Mars Bar?

And why stop there? Surely, other Yanks deserve product endorsements. 

Max Fried Chicken. 
Ryan AccuWeathers
Jake Angry Bird
Paul Gold Bon Skin Lotion Goldschmidt
Elmer's Glue Rodriguez 

(Yikes. That bit sure ran too long. Should've quit after Fried.) But - wait, back to the Yankees - down in Scranton, The Martian homered yesterday! His first of the season. (He's 5-for-17, hitting .294.) He's no Paul Blair, in fact, he spectacularly blew a fly ball in game one, a video that went viral. But we cannot give up. In spring training, the guy hit .347 with 4 HRs. He was right up there with Spencer Gifts Jones (Wait... is Spencer Gifts still a thing?) who - sadly - struck out four times yesterday for Scranton. (Ugh. So much for that fantasy.) 

Last week, we put Ben Rice's HR total as a tie-breaker for the 2026 IT IS  HIGH predictions contest. That's because, until further notice, he sits in the center of the Yaniverse. So, have a dish of Long Grain! O, to be Ben Rice.