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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Mediocrity leads atrociousness in the AL East

Last night, or I should say, this morning, the Yankees lost again.

If this were Wall Street, we'd call it a "market correction:" The Yankee stock was temporarily over-valued; thus, its price is merely falling back to normalcy - or .500.

In sports, .500 is generally the shorthand term for "mediocrity." But in today's finely orchestrated sports "seasons," all franchises are kept basically competitive. It's called "parity." For at least another month, the Yankees can pretend they are in a pennant race. They lead the AL East, because everybody else is actually awful.

Soon, a new phase of the season will begin. It's called "The Trade Deadline." Bad teams will start dumping the contracts of old and fading players. The Yankees will trade minor leaguers - who will immediately be exposed by the YES cheering section as non-prospects - for new, old players - or "veterans." The team will discard the likes of Chris Young and Stephen Drew, and maybe Chris Capuano - last summer's big acquisitions. Back then, the YES songbirds couldn't believe how crafty the Yankee front office was, by gathering such talent for the non-prospects. It kept the team competitive through August, chasing the one-game Wild Card post-season event.

Soon, we will have our summer crop of new Yankees. And next year, we can go through the same dark and tiresome process, all over again.

Malfeasance, it's called.

2 comments:

Alphonso said...

Cashman,, it's called.

Local Bargain Jerk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.