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Sunday, June 24, 2018

Picking Up the Wreckage

First off, granted: the Rays' Idiot Dome and their whole franchise is a disgrace.

I'd say somebody's going to get hurt playing down there, but somebody already did:  our catcher.

I never like to see a player get injured. But if Gary Sanchez WAS going to tweak a gonad grounding into yet another double-play, well, best he do it just now, when he was stuck in a deep, dark hole and industriously burrowing toward the earth's core.

It will likely give him some time to rest and relax, and get in a better head—and it WOULD give a crackerjack GM time to set up his trade to Miami for Realmuto, assuming we had such a crackerjack GM.

We don't, of course, which is why we are a modern, major-league franchise without a LOOGY. How can that happen?

I have to give Coops Cashman more props than I thought ever possible for getting the team this far. But as I feared, he is simply not the closer GM needed to take it over the top—a fact that will likely be confirmed before long by some absolutely asinine deal for Happ or Hapless. As if pretty much the whole last month of the Yankees' season has not illustrated that that should be about the last item on our to-do list.

Item one, of course, is to stuff Neil Walker into the pod bay, with Shreve to follow.

Item two is to bring up Drury and maybe even give him a shot at second, with the Gleyber at short.

I love our Flying Dutchman, and his numbers are better this last month now, but the truth is Didi is still awful in the clutch, and losing power faster than Jimmy Carter after they took the hostages in Teheran.

Which leads us to Item three: what IS it with this lineup?

I mean, remember 1961, back when Mantle and Maris, the M & M Boys, hit all those glorious home runs...sandwiched around Tony Kubek in the lineup?  No?

This is roughly what we're doing now. You maximize power by massing power hitters together, not by sprinkling them around the lineup. It forces pitchers to pitch to them, not around them.

When we first got Stanton, the idea was that we could stick Bird's Limitless Potential between him and Judge, and thereby stop the march of specialty relievers. But as we've seen, BLP is likely to manifest itself maybe sometime around the Great North America World Cup.

Right now, we need to stop the nonsense, and stick our big two back-to-back. Put the Gold Dust Twins, our wonderful infield rookies, out in front of them, and Frazier behind them. The rest of this woebegone lineup you can shake well and let float to the bottom in any order you so desire.




8 comments:

Vampifella said...

Really sucks to get swept by a team we should have dominated. Usually when the yanks loose big against an awful team, they'll win more against the better ones soon after. Now we are finally to that horrible 9 games against contending teams that I was so afraid of.

A couple weeks ago I had predicted we'd win 2 or 3 in total against these teams. I hope I'm massively wrong about that. It'll probably end up showing the Yanks if they really do need to spend big or not. We have a rather easy schedule other than like a zillion games against the Red Sox in September though.

TheWinWarblist said...

Darkness doom cloak of despair...

HoraceClarke66 said...

You're right, Vampifella. The schedule generally does get easier, and keeps us mostly on the East Coast. Only one more West Coast trip.

But as you point out, we're slumping at exactly the wrong time, losing players and cohesion just as we are about to play the Phillies, Indians, and Red Sox.

Expect a pummeling—and expect us to learn nothing at all from it. Instead of FINALLY getting the dead wood off the roster, reshaping our lineup, and questioning our calamitous approach to hitting, we'll likely give away the store chasing The Magic Verlander...even though he ain't out there.

Maddening.

Joe of AZ said...

I got sick looking at the stupid Ray's and their backward bullpen analytics celebrating like they won the world series. Rejoice now this is as close to a meaningful game they will play for the next decade. And these Yankees I want to know why we can't ever get a hitting coach that ACTUALLY does anything meaningful. The curse of Kevin long...he seems to be the last guy who actually made impact on Yanks hitting. All the rest just smile and nod and let the yanks flail away with out ADJUSTMENTS. How do u lose two times in a week to the SAME pitcher with a sub 9 era???

Everytime I see walkers name I .The lineup I Want to hurl. Surely Torreyes produced at a much better clip than this hack.

I'm also tired of Ma Boones blase face. Get mad throw something get in Sanchez face point your index finger straight in the umps face and give him the business DO SOMETHING BESIDES LOOK PRETTY AND TOW THE COMPANY LINE. This weekend was inexcusable ridiculous and depreaaing.

ranger_lp said...

With Gary going on the DL, Yanks are one of the few teams that can win by losing.

JM said...

Yep. Losing Sanchez here might be a real break. Romine is going to be doing whatever he can to show how much he's the overlooked backstop we really need.

Bird is injured or done. Maybe both.

Bring back Toe. Dump Walker. I mean, how is this such a no-brainer for all of us, yet simply unthinkable to the team experts? Is it merely because he bats lefty? What good is that if he can't hit beyond a week's stretch?

Maddening.

Anonymous said...

WALKER IS SHOT. (RELEASE)

SHREVE IS SHOT. (RELEASE)

BIRD LOOKS LIFELESS AT THE PLATE. (AT LEAST HE PLAYS GOOD DEFENSE).

PUT A FIRST BASEMAN'S GLOVE ON CLINT FRAZIER'S HAND.

CAN WE PLEASE FIND A WAY TO GET HIM INTO OUR LINEUP? (HE MAKES GOOD THINGS HAPPEN).

OOPS...TOO LATE, WE SENT HIM DOWN.

UNBELIEVABLE.

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