Saturday, February 10, 2018

The more you look at the 2018 Yankees, the more everything hinges on one player

In 2017, we experienced two Yankee teams: The one with a continuing parade of first-basemen - like chocolates on a conveyor belt in front of a crazed Lucille Ball - and the one with Greg Bird. 

The first team featured Chris Carter, Garrett Cooper, Gi-Man Choi, Head Caseley, and an injured Greg Bird, who played so poorly that he became a Twitter trend when his average hit .042 on the day baseball saluted Jackie Robinson. The second team featured Greg Bird, the one whose homer off Andrew Miller turned around the Divisional series against Cleveland. That's the team we want.

Every time you look at the Yankees' 2018 lineup, you see a chorus line of right-handed sluggers - Judge, Giancarlo and Sanchez - in need of a lefty slugger. And while Didi is an excellent supplement, the man in the center needs to be Bird.

Imagine the batting order:

Gardy LH
Judge RH
Stanton RH
Bird LH
Sanchez RH
Gregorius LH
Hicks S
2b (Torreyes, RH, Torres RH; Wade LH, Jace Peterson LH; Danny Espinosa S)
3b (Andujar RH; Torreyes, Peterson, Espinosa)


No matter how you slice it, everything hinges on Greg Bird. 

Note: Now imagine Hicks hitting as he did in the first two months of 2017, thus being elevated to second in the lineup. Too much to hope for? Get ready. It's almost here.

4 comments:

HoraceClarke66 said...

I did my best to stay up for curling at 2 a.m., but that pint of Woodford Reserve was probably a bad idea as a warm-up. I hope the Broometrics were amazing.

Apparently, the Times didn't stay up for it, either. But they DID manage to get in a major piece on the election of the new president of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

(I love how so much of their soccer coverage has to do with elections, rules, investigations, and bidding wars.)

That puts our total on the year at Soccer 21, Yankees 4, and, for February, Soccer 6, Yankees 3.

Leinstery said...

You could keep Judge and Stanton back to back (and belly to belly). Judge hits righties better than lefties and Stanton hits lefties better than righties.

HoraceClarke66 said...

If Andujar is the average hitter everyone is saying he is, he should be in the no. 2 slot.

So Darvish is gone: 6 years, $126 mill. I'm just as glad to go with the kids.

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