Also a winner: that "too small for the majors", "get rid of the little squirt" Caleb Durbin. In fact, the Red Sox had three Gold Glove winners.
Yeah, well. Whatever.
RIP Jerry Koosman.
As for Randy Levine...some people walk down the street and get called "asshole." This never happened to Pablo Picasso.
Q: Should we dare hope that Randy L. admitting it is the first step in fixing it?A: No, because you can't fix stupid.
1. The owner's been phoning it in for years.
2. The ownership lockout will ruin 2027 anyway.
3. Under Aaron Boone, the Yankees already tank each June.
4. Tampa regularly tanks; it works for them.
5. The Brewers, Rangers, Astros, Nats, Redsocks, Royals and Cubs all have recent world championships; at various points, they tanked.
6. Tanking would be easy; not even Cashman could mess it up.
8. One of these days, as impossible as it seems, the Mets will rise from constant tanking.
9. With our new draft picks and international spending money, we can load up with Dax Kilbys and Martians.
10. The 2027 winter is already lost, as NYC follows the Giants' march to the Super Bowl.
1. Won 93 games!
2. Runner Up in AL East!
3. Cam Schlittler!
4. Ben Rice!
5. Attendance of 3.2 million, 2nd in MLB.
6. Escaped Jeffrey Epstein files scandal. (Thus far.)
7. Hooked Apollo Investments and banked billions.
8. Burned full year of Giancarlo Stanton contract.
9. Beat the Redsocks.
10. Leaves fan base okay with impending lockout.
AND THE BOTTOM TEN (OUT OF 100)
91. Scored 13 runs in one inning against A's.
92. Max Schuemann!
93. Mets!
94. Never figured out Boone's post-game gestures to fans.
95. Dua Lipa attended game and ate hotdog!
96. Postponed CC Sabathia Jersey ceremonies.
97. Austin Wells broke up Rays playoff no-hitter.
98. Austin Wells showed hustle, going for three in Rays playoff game.
99. Anthony Volpe's playoff game-tying HR against Rays. (For two minutes.)
100. John Sterling spared from latest collapse.
Someday, when you're unfathomably wealthy and playing for a big market team where everyone chases personal stats, you must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a smile is still a smile...
Sorry. Got carried away.
In this millennium, no words have more frighteningly indicted the Yankees.
Ten ugly thoughts...
1. Every Yank fan on this planet agrees with Murphy.
2. Though the owner, the management, and the YES propaganda mill would deny it, modern Yankee teams are compilations of individual players chasing stats.
3. What else explains the fixation with home runs at the expense of fundamentals? Regardless of the situation, batters take full, ridiculous swings - because that's where the money is.
4. In recent years, the Yankees have lacked one key component: A catcher. A 3B. A soul.
5. This vacuum begins at the top, where Hal Steinbrenner perpetually settles for a contending team. That lack of urgency percolates throughout the organization.
6. Even though the Yankee s are no longer baseball's biggest money pit, to small market teams and fans, they still epitomize excessive, runaway spending.
7. When players become indescribably rich, they're never the same.
8. In professional sports, you cannot buy hunger.
9. The Yankee culture will not change under this management, and the owner will not make changes, because he is comfortable with second place.
10. Yankee fans, and their opinions, simply do not matter.
That's China Town, Jake.
(Even if their longtime owner did manage to wreck the 1994 season, turn a blind eye to a generation of juicing, and stand there hopelessly unable to determine how to break a tie in the All-Star Game, in his wholly compromised role as commissioner. This Bud IS you, Mr. Selig.)—
—though reportedly, the Brewers' fine manager, Pat Murphy, asked Jake Bauers, the surprise hero of the postseason, if he wasn't glad he was no longer with that "selfish" Yankees team that played the game the wrong way.
This quote sounds so bizarre that I question its veracity. Among other things, Mr. Bauers stunk up the joint as a Yankee, a Mariner, an Indian, and a Ray, before turning in a .199 first year in Milwaukee.
The shock is not that Brian Cashman let him go, but that he didn't throw $22 million at him.
Well, good for Jake Bauers. And good for Pat Murphy. The both deserve their rings. But here are 10(?) observations on how it was the Yankees who were really exposed by this World Series.
—After an ALDS in which they kept the Yanks from so much as taking a lead for one inning, much less winning a game, the TB Rays had to grind out an ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians of Traffic, then were steamrolled by the Brewers.
—In the Series, the Rays hit .182 with 1 home run and only 5 stolen bases in 9 attempts, and committed 3 errors. They played poorly in every aspect of the game. Their starting pitchers lasted a combined 21 1/3 innings, or fewer than 5 per start, and surrendered 13 earned runs in that time.
—There was no reason to think they would do much better. While the Rays had the best record in the American League, they were only third in total WAR, at 7.9, behind both the Red Sox (14.6) and your New York Yankees (13.8).
—At no position, save for José Caminero at third, did the Rays field the best player at that position. In fact, save for RF, where they were second, no Ray ranked no higher than fifth in the league at any position.
—The greatest disparity between the Rays and the Yankees came in pitching, which is almost always the difference in baseball. The Yanks, boasting their best starting pitching in 25 years, and what rounded into a highly effective bullpen, were at 13.4 in pitching WAR. The Rays were merely 7th in the AL, at 1.9.
—In other words, with pitching ranked almost TEN TIMES better than Tampa Bay's, the Yankees could not get closer than within 4 1/2 games of the Rays over the regular season, or snag so much as a lead during their playoff series. I don't know if this has ever happened before in the history of baseball, but I would bet that it has not.
—For all the talk about "selfishness" in the Yankees' clubhouse, or Cashman's magical ability to deflect the fault to Aaron Judge—"He said nice things about Verdugo!"...Tampa Bay did not display any great advantage over the Yanks in almost any statistical category, throughout the season.
—In team fielding, the Rays fielded .984, the Yanks, .983. Tampa Bay made 4 fewer errors—the Yankees pulled off 23 more double-plays.
—In team batting the Rays led with an OPS of .728 to .720, and an OPS+ of 103-101—hardly huge differences. The Yankees actually scored more runs, 739-736, and outhomered TB, 223-169. Tampa Bay had all of 11 more steals, 164-153.
—The one big statistical difference came in clutch hitting. TB outhit the Yanks, .258-.235. Also, the Yankees were second in the AL in most strikeouts, at 1,480 and last in total hits, with 1,250. Tampa Bay, by contrast, had the fewest strikeouts in the league, at 1,145, and led all American League teams with 1,405 hits.
—In other words, here is where Cashman's disastrous insistence on playing "Three True Outcomes" baseball came clearly into play. The Rays struck out 335 fewer times, and out of those 355 at-bats, slashed 155 more hits, for an average of .463 "non-strikeout hits." (Stat patent pending.)
—Throughout the World Series, the broadcasters (and everyone else) heaped praise upon the Brewers and Rays for playing baseball "like it should be played," and rightly so.
But it's worth pointing out that the two teams in the Series just last fall—and what were obviously the two best teams in their respective leagues in 2025, the Blue Jays and the Dodgers—hit home runs by the bushelful, belting 191 and 244, respectively, during the regular season, and combining for another 19 during their seven-game set.
—In other words, there are many ways to play winning baseball. Brian Cashman is bad at all of them.
—It's not just that the Yankees stick rigidly with "Three True Outcomes" ball. It's that they don't know how to play that, either.
—The key to the Yanks' failure this postseason was that they had at least five players in their starting lineups—Austin Wells, Ryan McMahon, Jazz Chisholm, Anthony Volpe, and Trent Grisham—who had no business being there, after their repeated and abject failures all season, and in the recent past.
—Remarkably, three of those players—Jazz, Volpe, and Wells—had also made critical mistakes in the infamous, Fifth Inning Fiasco of the 2024 World Series. Two of them, along with McMahon and Grisham, were on the field to make equally disastrous flubs in the first inning of the critical, Game Two of the 2026 ALDS.
—Even more incredibly, the Yanks managed to exhaust their pinch-runners by the end of the final game in that series, put a chronically injured player who had not batted since the end of April up in the two most crucial at-bats of the season, and ended it with Trent Grisham—a player not only injured but awful—up there for the last out, in a one-run game.
The only conclusion possible from all this is that the Yankees—despite one of the greatest advantages in pitching ever seen in their league playoffs—did not even get to the ALCS not because their players were "selfish," or their clubhouse atmosphere was bad, or Aaron Judge said nice things about his teammates, or even because of the general incompetence of Aaron Boone (incompetent managers having won plenty of World Series).
It was because their general manager, Brian Cashman, made once again the same mistakes that he makes year after year, and failed to put the right players on the field—.even after their proven failures in the recent past.
Well the season's over but there's still plenty of baseball stuff on tap. The real games as it were.
October 31st 2026 – Cleaning Out
Not the lockers or the rosters.The cleaning out I’m talking about is the elimination of the last of the alcohol consumed while watching the World Series from my system.
November
2nd - Negotiating Window Ends
There
is an exclusive five day negotiating window where teams can try to re-sign their
Free Agents. After November second the players can negotiate with the rest of MLB. During this period teams can also make the Qualifying Offer to their Free Agents.
Last
year Cashman trying to be too clever by half decided to give Trent Grisham $22 million dollars
to stay for the extra year. He looked at Grisham’s numbers and figured he
wouldn’t take it because he could do much better in the open market and the
Yankees would get a free draft pick.
Grisham
looked in the mirror and said… KaChing!
This
year the only guy being seriously discussed is the team's closer David Bednar.
The QO is $23.15 Million. That’s a lot
for one year of a closer.
The 2nd
is also the night before Election Day. Don’t forget to vote.
November
9-12 General Managers Meetings
Brian Cashman, he of his 29thyear as GM of the Yankees is the dean of these meetings. Dean Wormer. He’s now the old guy at the bar.
Typically not a lot of deals get made here. It’s more of a set up for the
Winter Meetings but due to the potential lockout there will be even less to do.
Well other than the traditional playing of “Pin The Third Baseman on the Yankee
Roster.”
November 11th The Cy Young Award
Schlittler!!!!! There are other awards but none that concern
the Yankees. Schlittler!
2. Former Yank Gary Sanchez. Seriously. He flopped in NY, after a grand unveiling. Still, no regrets. And who'd'a thought he'd have a ring, and Judge doesn't?
3. Fuck Tampa. Seriously. They love hating us more than they love their team. The stands were full of Brewers fans. I realize that, if the Rays won, it would hasten their collapse, as they systematically sell off their players. Still, it's nice to see them flounder. And Tropicana Field is terrible.
4. Milwaukee has never hurt us. To reopen a flesh wound, you must time-travel back to 1957, with Del Crandall, Lou Burdette and a 23-year-old Hank Aaron. Even I don't go back that far. (Also, Green Bay doesn't count.)
5. Milwaukee, the city. How can you hate on a town known for beer and sausage?
6. The Brewers' victory undercuts the owners' claim that a salary cap is necessary to restore competitive balance. What a load of crapola.
7. The Brewers won via fundamentals: Singles, bunts, baserunning, glovework - I half expected to see a hidden ball trick. Do the lords of baseball, as they sabotage their sport, realize how utterly boring it is to watch a game with 30 strikeouts? Yet they chase the three true outcomes.
8. Front Row Amy. First time I noticed the cleavage - (first batter, first inning, game one) - I figured she was some B-list scream queen, or a Kalshi's marketing answer to Sydney Sweeney. How refreshing to learn the truth: She's a true fan who has attended home games since 2007 and who scores each game by hand. Write this down: She's the greatest fan in American sports.
9. Brewers manager Pat Murphy is a Syracuse native, from a modest city neighborhood called Eastwood. That's the heartland, folks. Kids on bikes. Halloween decorations. Root for the Cuse.
10. The Dodgers didn't win. Neither did Boston. And the Mets sucked. Baby steps, eh?
Apparently, his discomfort stems from 2011, Georgie's final days, when he was cut for ex-Dodger Russel Martin and the team's long-term future: Jesus "Ice Cream Sandwich" Montero. You remember 2011. The Death Barge fell to Detroit in a maelstrom of whiffs, though Old Urine Fingers - (he used to famously soak his hands in piss to toughen them) - hit .429 in the divisional series.
Ever since, he's been a growing outlier with the company that put his bronze plaque in Monument Park.
Posada says he has avoided spring training because the Yankees don't want him.
Ten dispirited thoughts...
1. Honestly, I don't have time for this. The coastlines are crashing, the world is exploding, and we're supposed to sweat this?
2. If somebody's feelings are hurt, soak them in piss and carry on.
3. Wasn't there once a rule that teams are supposed to avoid public controversies during the World Series? So who let this one out?
4. Obviously, the Yankees have blown this. There is no excuse - none - for pissing off one of the Core Four. This is why they have interns, to gladhand former stars whose feathers are ruffled.
5. But but BUT... there is something here, because Jorge represents the kind of prickly, peppery, hard-ass personality that the Yankees could use as manager. If he's calling out the Yankees, it's because he won't accept their bullshit. Good for him. I only wish they listened.
6. It's now 30 years since 1996, when the Yankees won their first championship under Joe Torre.
7. Thirty years.
8. That's not a typo. Thirty fucking years.
9. That this has gone public should prompt Hal to apologize, and somebody should be flogged, but nothing will happen, because that's the modern, dead-eyed Yankees.
10. The Mets will invite him to camp, or maybe Boston. (Of course, there will be no camps, due to the lockout.) Or if they lose, maybe even Tampa. Either way, there are always teams out there who are delighted to carve off a piece of what was once a great Yankee legacy, and which shrinks further into the abyss every year.
Thirty years.
This morning El Duque pointed out the absurdity of what we witnessed last night. Ten runs being scored without home runs. Something our analytic gurus have explained is no longer possible.
He may be correct that it is a space time or biblical level
event that will usher in the apocalypse.
But, there’s another possible explanation.
One far more sinister.
One that has been lurking in the background since the 1930’s
and is once again threatening its ugly head and threatening, not the fabric of
the universe, but something far, far more dangerous… the American Way of Life ®.
Creeping Socialism. ®
The World Series® and therefore, America Itself®, is under
attack. The idea that baseball is no longer beholden to a few John Galt level
superstars. No longer beholden to launch angles and probabilities foisted upon
us by analytical technocrats who claim to know what is best for the game… And
for us. The T-Mobilization® of the world.
Creeping Socialism®
Last night the Brewers showed that games in the soon to be
re-named One-World World Series® can be won by grinding it out. Everyone in it
together. Sacrifice.
Giving up the body, like that great catch by Sal Frelick in
the top of the fifth. Sal Frelick? There’s
a commie name if I’ve ever heard one. Jacob Misiorowski?
Prove me wrong!
This was a win for the men and women who fill the beer halls
in Milwaukee not the luxury suites in the Tropicana Field. (Do they have luxury
suites there? That is one crappy stadium. I’m surprised that the lights work.)
Yes, it was nothing short of a revolution taking place at Tropicana
Field®.
Tropicana Field®! Birthplace of Anita Bryant®. The very home of orange juice in concentrated
form. Tubed and shipped fresh to your grocer. America’s Other Breakfast
Beverage ®
Creeping Socialism. ®
I heard talk on a hot mike in the dugout about a Two-Strike
Approach! Approaching a STRIKE. The number one tool in the Commie/Socialist
playbook.
The Brewers style of play sends a dangerous sub-conscious
message to us all. We don’t need the Three True Outcomes® to win. We can do it by working together and getting
back to fundamentals.
You know, Creeping Socialism®
---
All of the above said… Don’t worry. The American Way® is
safe.
In a month’s time the owners will meet and decide to lock out the workers in an attempt to bust the player’s union. (Yay!)
They will seek to cap salaries. (Yay!)
They will seek to remove the advantages given to the uber-wealthy teams and create a
more equitable distribution of money to…
"Wait a minute!"you say. "A more equitable distribution of money? That’s
Creepin…'
No… it’s OK.
They are creating a more equitable distribution of money…
among themselves.
Good old fashioned collusion by the owners to deny the
workers a higher wage.
Thanks to American heroes like Hal Steinbrenner and soon to be convicted billionaire fraudster Mark Walter the game will return to the real Three True Outcomes®.
Taxpayer subsidized stadiums.
Tax deductions to corporations for luxury suites.
And
Using gaslighting and myth to convince fans that raising
ticket, parking, and concession prices while at the same time lowering their
expenses by paying the players less is the only way the game can survive.
Whew!
They performed two impossibilities, two miracles, two glitches in The Matrix, two Old Testament cataclysms, two signs that the End Is Near...
They scored 10 runs, without one homer.
They scored eight runs in the 5th inning, all with two outs.
Okay, settle down, everybody. For those of you who are deeply rooted into our Liberty-Bibberty, quicksand, time-and-space conundrum - aka our sad reality - let me recap...
The Brewers scored eight runs with two outs and not one homer.
Impossible! you say. This challenges the boundaries of astrophysics, the landscapes of human consciousness. It might just prove the existence of God. Or Dave Kingman. Is it a mass hallucination? Did some supernatural entity, while we slept, just reboot our home page? Are we reliving this, over and over, to power a gigantic, otherworldly Commodore 64?
Listen. It's one thing to score 10 runs. Every now and then, the '26 Yankees would hang a ten-spot. They'd find some dishrag reliever and turn a close game into a laugher, often ending with a position player lobbing strikes. They would suddenly look like the powerhouse that our YES Channel overlords proclaimed them to be. And one of our supreme joys would be to look up the box score and tally the five or six HRs we hit. You never knew. Ten runs could mean 10 solo shots.
After all, the Yankees finished second in all of MLB - with 223 home runs, three behind miserable Houston. Meanwhile, the lowly Brewers finished 28th (out of 30), hitting a mere 154. Pathetic, eh? I mean, what kind of baseball is that?
And WTF happened last night? Oh well, disregard it. We've got Ruth, Maris, Reggie, Judge... the Yankees are synonymous with home runs, right? So, stay the course, right?
I finally became a fan in 1967, I believe it was. It was not a great time for the Yankees, but I had no first-hand experience to really understand that. So, I watched the games whenever an Albany TV station deigned to show one, always on the weekends, and I listened to almost all the rest on my transistor radio thanks to WSNY (was it?) in Schenectady, the home of the Polish Program every Sunday--a polkafest my dad never missed.
I had come to sports a lot later than the other kids and did not exactly have any skill sets to speak of, so I ended up being the "Official Pitcher" a lot of times in neighborhood softball games. I pitched for both teams, never batted, and thereby earned the nickname "Mel," which hung on for a few years.
The Yanks weren't good, as you know, because most of you lived through that era, too. But I stuck with them, admiring Mike Burke's long sideburns and flare-bottomed windowpane suits when he showed up (groovy, man). I figured they eventually had to get better, which they did. It took 10 years before they won it all, and I was shocked to see that a number of Yankees were really, really good. Who knew?
Of course, by then I was at the tail-end of my college haze, and I don't remember much of the season. There were drugs to be found and music to be heard, and baseball became a side interest to some degree.
But I have kept following the Yankees, even when they sucked, and Mattingly was the bright light that saw me through the dark times. The late 90s were a miracle. Finally, the dynastic team that I had never known.
And it's been downhill ever since. In the face of failure, the management's attitude has been sickening. Fuck, CBS cared more about this team than the three-headed monster that runs it now.
None of this is news, insightful, or edifying in any way, shape, or form. But what a shitty way to slide into old age, and the limited years therein. Just another huge disappointment in a world that's devolved into nothing but a huge--and frightening--disappointment.
The Yankees are a shitshow that accurately reflects the larger shitshow we live in. The troika are a lot like our so-called leaders. They're doing it all right out in the open, blatantly lying about it, with no accountability whatsoever.
Living in Germany is not helping. It's all too deep in my bone marrow.
Old Food Stamps covered a lot of ground - conjuring excuses and gaslit dreams - but I believe the above quotation, in all its toxic smog and fog, offers the clearest portrait of why the Yankees are a perpetual 2nd-place team with a 1st-place payroll.
Hal was "disappointed" in the '26 offense. Well, yeah, I guess we all were. That's because the Death Barge entered the year with the same offense that disappointed us in '25, and throughout the regular season, all those acquisitions that were going to save us? Well, they didn't happen. We were left with a roster of disappointments, which now fits neatly into Hal's backwards reckoning.
If you were to tell me last February that Cam Schlittler would chase the Cy Young, and Ben Rice would hit 40 HRs, I'd had have bet the house.
Now, that's disappointment.
After squandering the greatest seasons of Aaron Judge's career - Hall of Fame-level years - the Yankees may do the same with Schlittler and Rice.
So, Hal is - um - disappointed? Golly. Does he realize how tired those words sound, how insulting they are to Yank fans who are watching time run out on the franchise's legacy?
An entire generation now sees the Yankees as a bloated monstrosity that always comes close and never wins. They are a team that plays in a lunch-pail ballpark and that owns the primary media that covers it. Thus, you have hitters who swing for the porch and straddle the Mendoza line. (The Yankee lineup last season had three regulars - Wells, Grisham and McMahon - who hit below .215.)
It must be tough for Hal, watching Milwaukee and Tampa play old-school baseball, while he contemplates the murky future of a lockout.
He's disappointed.
Huh.
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