We just traded four pitching prospects for a guy who may be a worse defender than Dominguez.
And, he plays the one position where we actually have depth ( first base)..
So now we can, each day, sit one of our three best hitters ( Rice, Goldschmidt, or the new guy ).
This is how you build a contender.
And we have him nest year as well.
Surely he can become a catcher by then.
My hat is off to Brian Cashman who never fails to face this team into the abyss.
"Luck is the residue of design."—Branch Rickey, former Yankee, greatest general manager of all time.
Sigh.
And here we are, with Brian Cashman, Yankees general-manager-for-life, once again outmaneuvered and out-thought approaching the playoffs that he did or did not say were a crapshoot, "to the best of my knowledge."
A few observations:
—The Dodgers were able to pull off the Skubal trade because they prepared. Over the last few years, they have not only discovered a way to maneuver around the luxury tax, but also built a first-rate farm system that gave them the flexibility to trade three leading prospects for one of the best starters in baseball.
—Included amongst the players they sent to Detroit was a Double-A, "upside" outfielder with the wonderful name of Zyhir Hope. But...they apparently have three other, highly regarded minor-league outfielders ahead of him, so..."Hope became expendable."
—We don't have four, highly rated minor-league outfielders. We don't have a single, highly rated minor-league outfielder that I know of. We don't even have hope, which long ago left the building.
—Brian Cashman's inability to anticipate or plan for the very most obvious things in baseball is astonishing.
—When the Boston Red Sox beat him out to sign Dice-K, Cashie inked another Japanese pitcher, claiming he was just as good.
Dice-K helped pitch the Sox to the 2007 World Series title. Kei Igawa gave us one of the weirdest, saddest stories in baseball history.
—A few years later, the Red Sox beat out Cashman to sign Yoàn "Slowly I turn to you..." Moncada. He turned out to be a disappointment—crapshoot time!—but the Sox insisted on trying anyway for four years to make him their starting shortstop...
—I kid, I kid! After just 8 games in the majors, they traded Moncada to the Pale Hose for Chris Sale, who went on to pitch the Carmine Hose to another championship in 2013, and has had a near-Hall-of-Fame career in Boston and Atlanta.
—Yes, the Red Sox used a highly rated minor leaguer to acquire an outstanding pitcher who would take the team over the top. What a strategy! Who could conceive of such a thing???
—Prior to the 2018 season, hitting-and-pitching sensation Shohei Ohtani shocked Cashman by passing up the Yankees' offer and signing with a team in a big, cosmopolitan city 3,000 miles closer to his home. Cashman's response was...nothing.
—Once upon a time, the New York Yankees could have been counted on to be the team that went full throttle after Tarik Skubal. Now, as always, they operate within the tightly circumscribed limits of contention imposed by Hal Steinbrenner, and such a coup is not possible.
—The results show. Over the past 25 years—25 YEARS!—Hal & Pal's New York Yankees have won exactly 1 World Series.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have won 3, and bid fair to become the first National League team ever to win three straight World Series. The Boston Red Sox have won 4 rings—and eliminated the Yankees three different times. The Houston Astros have won 2 championships—and eliminated our boys four times.
Even the San Francisco Giants, run as a small-market team, have won 3 titles in these same 25 years.
The shame of it all is that the Yankees, in this "run-it-back" year actually seem to have assembled a pitching staff that might be capable of competing even with the Skubal Dodgers in a short series. But they won't, because Brian Cashman once again will find the price at the trade deadline too high for any player who would actually help the Yanks (what a surprise!).
And Hal will spend the off-season fighting to...contain the Dodgers and make sure that he is less able than ever to bring the Yankees' enormous monetary advantage to bear in any future seasons.
Damn, what bad luck!
Tarik Skubal is a Dodger.
Anthony Volpe is a Yankee.
The Redsocks are now two behind in the loss column.
They will soon overtake us.
There is no certainty that Aaron Judge will return.
Without him, we're dead.
Today, Brian Cashman will try to trade our way back to the top.
Be afraid.
Warren, pitching shutout ball into the 7th, now looks like a cost-controlled starting pitcher for some team, any team, that is willing to cough up a decent catcher.
Unless, he's pitching so well that Cooperstown Cashman will decide to keep him, because we can't have another trade deadline where he gives up a Jordan Montgomery, which is what happened in 2022, when the brain trust whiffed on practically everything.
And Jones homered yesterday, his second in a couple days, and we might be on the verge of seeing what he does when he's hot, which might be the best time to trade him...
Unless... our lack of hitting means we need a hot bat more than ever, so why in God's creaton would we trade him, and let's get back to finding a new home and a decent return for Anthony Volpe who - beware - will probably hit three HRs today. So there. My head hurts. I need a drink. One more day of this.
It's not what we're getting from the team the Yankees put on the field. It's not what we're getting from their befuddled manager, or their general manager. It's not what we're getting from their absentee owner.
But it's also not what we're getting from the people who run the sport—and by that I include not only the awful, nepo owners and their odious commissioner, but also the militantly unionized, militantly right-wing, increasingly unaccountable ballplayers.
So here are 19 or 20 observations on all that:
—Dropped pop-ups, egregious baserunning mistakes, and gobsmackingly terrible decision-making: we have seen all of these help the Yankees fritter away game after game once again this past week, and really all season long.
You've seen them all; no need to nauseate ourselves further. But more than anything, I think, they display an overwhelming inattention.
—I understand that teams slump. I understand that the season gets very long, particularly out in Chicago on a hot summer's day.
"You have no idea what a grind it becomes," I remember Reggie Jackson saying to me—or words to that effect—in explaining how wearying the long season really is.
And I remember thinking (though not saying!), 'There are people in this country who work 12 hour days, six days a week, all year round, in meatpacking plants and sweatshops.'
—I'm not somebody who likes to accuse ballplayers of not playing hard.
For the most part, in sports such as football and basketball, which are now played by giants at a terrifying pace, I think it's impossible not to play hard without getting torn apart.
In hockey, maybe the players aren't so big. But it's still fast, and they give them sharp sticks they can whack each other with.
In baseball...the game depends much more upon being alert, all the time. Anticipating. Making instant, on-field decisions. That's not what we're seeing.
—Traditionally, this was something a manager might take care of. Chewing out players, benching them. Fining them. Shipping them down to the minors.
I realize that all of those methods are gone now. Guys have no fear that they are going to end up in those self-same meatpacking plants or sweatshops, and that's a good thing.
—Still, what methods there are—looking at you, Phil Jackson—seem beyond the capability of Aaron Boone. His lack of basic baseball instincts as a field manager is depressing—though of course it is hard to know exactly what orders he is getting from The Man In the High Castle.
—But his field smarts—or lack there of—aside, Boone seems to be operating from an archaic idea of what it is to be a Yankees manager.
He seems to think that he is the new Joe Torre, here to protect his players from both their insane owner and a rabid sporting press, and keep them focused on the game.
Well, Hal is no George, and the sporting press barely exists anymore, sad to say. And Boone's players sure as hell aren't focused on the game.
—Of course, Boone is not responsible for the roster he has been given, or the prevailing culture of the team. That's on our general-manager-for-life, Brian Cashman.
—We are about to be hit with yet another influx of trade deadline, pennant-drive acquisitions, as if Cashman were a modern-day George Weiss. He's not—and what we will get is the usual slop of burned out relief pitchers, back-up outfielders, and infielders who either can't hit or can't move.
Mark my words: the suppurating wound that is the catching position on this team will not even be addressed.
—Yes, the 2026 Yankees are beset by injuries. As they are every year now, and as many teams are. Cashman promised to thoroughly investigate this...after, I think, the 2018 season.
Nothing was done, and why would it be? Why should Cashie deprive himself of his usual excuse for the team underperforming?
—It doesn't help that the ballplayers themselves do nothing to ensure that they can stay on the field.
The other day, Cody Bellinger topped a season of awful hitting and inexplicably bad positioning in the field by pulling a hamstring just by sprinting out of the box. He is laid up for 4-6 weeks, at a time when his team needs him the most.
—Injuries of this severity, in this circumstance, never used to happen. Four-to-six weeks, from taking two steps from home?
They occur all the time now, and the reason they do is that, quite obviously, the players have bought into the algorithms and analytics, as instructed, and decided to routinely overwork their bodies in the weight room.
But hard as they might work on the weight, this too is not a good faith, baseball effort.
—Bellinger, you'll recall, took part in an extended holdout this year before he realized that the Yankees were only bidding against themselves, and grudgingly signed a contract that pays him $42.5 million a year.
Look, I don't like to make everything about money, either. And I admit that, were I to get $42.5 million a book, I might lose a bit of motivation, too.
—But at a certain point, as Casey Stengel used to say, the attendance is robbed. You get that sort of money, for any performance, you need to take a certain amount of responsibility upon yourself to...well, show up and perform.
—It's true that fish rot from the head down, and in Hal Steinbrenner, you have one rotten fish.
What makes watching this team so unbearable is how bad the game is in general. This is something that has been imposed upon it by the owners, in the name of efficiency, and accepted by the players, both without a thought as to what the viewing millions might think about it.
—Boring, insipid play at mind-boggling prices for tickets and TV? These problems with baseball today don't seem to occur to Hal and his fellow owners.
—They are too busy shoving their players into clown suits, mostly to milk still more money from the gearheads. Even great, traditional uniforms such as the Yankees' are now besmirched with advertisements, and it won't be long before they resemble the regular unis of racing car drivers and soccer players.
And the players go along with all this, without a murmur.
—Incessant, blaring advertisements—and permanent, player-maiming ads on the outfield walls—obscene prices for all concessions, countless thousands of seats lopped off stadiums for the space required to build luxury boxes and bars, game-time lotteries in the ballpark, monopolistic TV channels that nonetheless peddle games off to other streaming services for still more money...
But you've heard me say this before.
None of this is a good-faith effort in regard to the entertainment they are providing.
And neither the suits nor the players seem to actually know or care what the average fan experience is, or what we might think of the game they are steadily diminishing.
—Players and owners alike have decided to play the game they want, with as much effort and attention as they deign to expend, and geared solely to the elite customers they most value.
And now, on top of this, Hal is about to throw in with his fellow owners in yet another labor battle, and thereby make it all the more impossible to actually use his huge money advantage to compete.
—The ugliness of the game on the field, where today no one can hit .300, or pitch a complete game, or hit to the opposite field, or think for a moment, reflects the ugliness of its soul—and the shame of so many of us who let them get away with it.
He should've been fired at least seven years ago, but calling a run "a point" is worth a man's job.
— Richard M. Nixon (@dicknixon.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 8:27 AM
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I watched the last inning yesterday. Don't know why. Just had to see it for myself. There was Fernando Cruz, kissing his jewelry, raising his eyes to heaven and going 3-0 on batter after batter - the previous guy swung at ball four and would have ended the game earlier and more humanly, and so he walks in the winning run, another blown opportunity, and this is getting tedious. I need a drink.
I honestly now believe the Yankees are going to blow this Wild Card chase and finish out of the postseason. Something is really screwy, really bad, about this team. It's got 2013 written all over it.
So Cashman's left us bound and gagged
And he's chained us to a chair
Won't you please turn off Chicago
So I can save my mind?
For a team that's known for winning
How can such a thing be fair?
Won't you please turn off Chicago
Before it leaves us blind?
We can change this team
Rearrange this team
It's dying
To get better
(Can't get any worse...)
Aaron Boone sit yourself down
There's nothing for you here
Won't you please just leave Chicago?
No, we're not being snide
Don't ask Hal to help us
Cause he'll turn the other ear
Won't you please just leave Chicago or join the other side?
(We can change)
Yes, we can change the game
(Or at least the channel)
Rearrange the game
(It's dying)
And if you believe in baseball
(It's dying)
Play the game like you've got half a brain
(It's dying)
Analytics who needs them?
Throw 'em out the door!
Somehow the Yankees must be freed
I hope the day comes soon
Won't you please turn off Chicago?
I can't find the channel anyway
From the back of the bullpen
To the lumps sitting on the bench
Won't you please just leave Chicago?
And rejoin the human race.
We can't find the game
(Believe me, you don't want to)
We can't stand the game
(When we do find it)
If you believe in greatness
(It's dying)
If you believe in more than money
(Not Hal or Pal)
Analytics, who needs 'em?
Throw 'em out the door.
With apologies to Graham Nash.
(Do you want to keep going?)
Yeah, no, actually no. Siri, keep this going. There's nothing worse than a bullpen loss. We had the game, and we lost it. Terrible. I got nothing more to say.
(Send it to the blog?)
Send.
Did I mention that we're all in our 70s?
The event includes a few straggling Redsock fans, to whom I shall gently pose the following questions.
1. WTF happened to the great and almighty Marcelo Mayer? I thought he was supposed to be the next Jeter? Your Jeter. Like Jeter Downs was? Hey, remember Jeter Downs?
2. Is superman Roman Anthony still a thing? Didn't he bad cleanup for Team USA in the World Baseball Cup? Is it true that he's hitting .229? Wow. That's territory occupied by The Martian.
3. So, lemme get this straight: Aroldis is gonna close all season. He's never gonna blow? Ever? He's just gonna keep throwing 104 mph strikes, with flash flood warning sweat glands, and everything's gonna be okay? Lemme get this on tape. Aroldis is gonna save the season? Uh-huh.
4. Where is Jeter Downs, anyway? Drinking with Alex Verdugo? I wonder if they're talking about Mookie Betts?
5. Hey, you DO realize that neither the Yankees nor Boston are gonna win it all, right? We'll play 162 games, then three weeks of postseason, and the Dodgers will walk away with it, as they were always gonna, right?
6. Yeah, I hear you... Giancarlo, Giancarlo, Giancarlo... I yell "Jeter Downs," and you yell "Giancarlo." Do we sound like idiots?
7. Oh yeah? JETER DOWNS, pally. JETER DOWNS.
In this alt-Earth, the Yankees didn't trade away a generation of young catchers so they could hitch their future to Austin Wells.
In this crazy world - a reality that strains our imagination - the Yankees actually get production from their 9-hole catcher.
What a concept? Quality at-bats! Late-inning homers! RBIs! From the bottom of the order? Pinch me!
Last night, we visited this enchanted world. It evoked memories of Yogi, Ellie, Thurman, Jorge - even Gary Sanchez, the former future hall-of-famer. For one pristine night in this looming mildew of a season, one fated to end in early October... for one night, our catcher delivered, as they say at the CDC, "explosively."
Strange, isn't it, how the August trade deadline always seems to rouse a burst of hope from those we expect to bid adieu?
Last night, Ali Sanchez - a 29-year-old former Redsock, Marlin, Met, Cardinal and Blue Jay - crushed his first MLB home run, a three-run shot that basically won the game. By this time next week, Sanchez will probably be back in Scranton, replaced by a RH-hitting catcher in some trade that requires us to vastly overpay with young prospects.
(Also, Anthony Volpe - another endangered Yankee species - continued his unlikely hitting spree. He's at .308 over last seven days, raising his season's average to a serviceable .250. He's out the door, right? George Lombard Jr. is coming, right? Besides, Volpe's botched pop fly in the 9th reminds us of his downsides, right?)
One thing about the '26 Yankees, mired on this rather hopeless planet:
They play just well enough to win, and just bad enough to lose.
Boston recently won 15 in a row. These Yankees won't do that. If they win seven in a row, they'll lose the next seven. They hold second place in the AL East like a fat person on a bus. They're hard to get around. But once they fall into a seat, there's no getting up.
Ahh, a hitting catcher... what a concept. For one night, we got to see it...
 |
| The last 15 games show Bellinger's loss |
That's our '26 team: Two baby steps forward, one giant hamstring-pull backwards.
Next up, seven days in Chicago - the Sox and Cubs - with the trade deadline about to hit. We cannot fathom how they'll fare over the next few days, but this we do know:
They will leave Chicago as a different team. And not necessarily a better one.
For starters, George Lombard Jr. will probably be our SS. Last night, Anthony Volpe continued his assault on Jeter's tradition, hitting two doubles and then botching a throw to first, which opened the flood gates. At 3B, the comedy team of Rosario and McMahon will likely be replaced by Jose "Eight Seconds Over Tokyo" Caballero. We'll have a new catcher - somebody, from somewhere. And our farm system will be cleared out to a degree that - dear God, why am I thinking of the phrase "explosive diarrhea?"
Which brings us to The Hall. Last night, on the NBC broadcast, Bob Costa made a grand pitch for Don Mattingly to get the call. Good for him. I believe Costa, in old age, is trying to compensate for the anti-George sentiments he often expressed as a young turk. Like many top baseball announcers, most notably Joe Gariogiola and Red Barber, Costas often criticized Steinbrenner for spending too much and ruining the game for cheap owners. In recent years, he has warmed to the family and the franchise. I think he came to realize how Yank fans suffer, while the baseball world views us as pampered fat cats. (I'd like to see a Royals fan deal with Giancarlo Stanton's injuries. You think they would whine?)
Costa's plea for Mattingly was on the mark. The sad part, though, is that he had to be the one making it. Why aren't NYC writers screaming about Mattingly's absence? It's ridiculous - embarrassing - that Donnie Baseball is not in the Hall. Where is the thunder? Where are the death threats?
Meanwhile, this weekend, two huge Yankee disappointments got in. Seriously, we missed the greatness of Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltran.
First off, Jones? For starters, there's the spelling. Was that a joke? Secondly, he came to the Yankees at 34, when some players still show a spark. He hit .220 with tiny tot power (27 HRs over two seasons.) His glove was a satire of what it had been. After year one, he moved in the A-Rod and vowed to rededicate himself to the game. Then he sucked again.
Here's a stunner: Jones' career batting average is .254. Two fifty fukkin' four. Bernie Williams (career average .297, plus a handful of rings) gets routinely passed over, and yet everybody is supposed to think the voters favor the Yankees? Are you kidding me? And it wasn't just the Yankees. Jones sucked for the Dodgers. (.158) He sucked for Texas (.215.) He sucked for the White Sox. (.230). Honestly, when they announced that Andruw Jones was going into the Hall, I thought it was a prank.
Then there is Beltran. He came to us in 2014, Hal's last power play, when we signed three big free agents. (Brian McCann and Jacob Ellsbury were the others.) It backfired. Beltran, 37, batted .230 with 15 HRs. This effectively ended the Yankee owner's attempts to buy a pennant, or a wild card, or - frankly - anything. Beltran played three seasons with the Yankees - 56 HRs and a .270 average. I'll grant him some good years with Houston, KC and the Mets. But with the Yankees? His best season came in the broadcast booth.
As for Jeff Kent, the third Hall of Fame star this weekend? We never signed him. But don't be surprised if his son, Kaeden - the Yankees' third round pick two summers ago, and one of the jewels of their system - goes off in a trade. To get talent, you have to give it up.
Damn. Seven days in Chicago. The winds are gonna blow.
A) Revolutionary New Medical Imaging of Bellinger's Hamstring Injury
B) A Yankee Branded Chicken Leg marinating in Cornell BBQ marinade
C) Prototype for a new, 2027 post-lock out NY Yankees Mascot
D) Hal Steinbrenner's Dorian Gray Portrait
E) Revolutionary New Medical Imaging of Juan Soto's Calf Strain
WHAT DO YOU THINK IT, UH, LIKE YOU KNOW . . . IS ?
It's especially rewarding to top off a Yankee victory by reminding yourself that a) the universe is stacked against you, b) the juju gods hate you, and c) the slightest scent of hope should inspire a vomitous burst of negativity. This is what happens when one of the pillars of your childhood - the Yankees, as the greatest dynasty in sports - devolves into a poorly run money mill.
So, last night, celebrating the Yankees 3-1 victory over Philly, we had to wonder, "Okay, universe, how do you plan to ruin THIS?"
The answer: Cody Bellinger had suffered the first tweaked hamstring of his 10-year career. Today, it will be scanned like Epstein phone texts. The results will determine whether Belli will miss weeks... or months.
Hammies are the Springsteen of injuries: You think the show is over, and then they play five more songs. Bellinger could be out through August, and that's not counting the chance of setbacks, the kind that long ago turned Giancarlo Stanton into Mitch McConnell. Belli probably won't miss the rest of the season. But nobody knows.
What we do know is that Spencer Jones, at 25, just received from the universe a mystical, if not miraculous, reprieve. He is the logical outfield answer, beyond Max Schuemann, an overachieving everyman who plays hard but cannot inspire long range hope.
For years, we wondered what Jones would look like in a hitting streak. I think we gave up hope of knowing. I think Jones was ticketed for a trade next week, and we would never see what might be.
Suddenly, he has a month to show us.
Last night in Scranton, Jones went 0-2 with 2 Ks (his signature stat line.) In 194 at-bats this year, he has 14 HRs, 10 SBs, a .273 average and a .942 OPS. (And 72 strikeouts.) He's left-handed like Bellinger. He's fast like Bellinger. He's got power like Bellinger. But he's no Bellinger - more a Joey Gallo.
A month from now, we might regret having one more chance to decide Jones' future. But at least we should know. Bellinger's hammy should have scuttled any Yankee plan to trade him.
For years now, we've fantasized a Yankee outfield featuring Jones and Jasson Dominguez, home grown stars supplementing the twilight seasons of Aaron Judge. I had given up hope. It was never gonna happen. Well, last night, the Martian homered. He went 1-4. He hasn't gotten hot. He BA is mired in the .230s. He hasn't shown what he can do.
Suddenly, the two most hyped Yankee prospects of this millennium have a month to show themselves. The worst thing that could happen? Well, it happened. But damn... it could be interesting.
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