Kevin Baker's book is here!

Kevin Baker's book is here!
"... an exemplary sports book..." Kirkus Reviews

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

"Sing, O Muse, of the Cashman of Many Ways."

(with apologies to Richard Lattimore, and Homer)

This is how our esteemed general manager likes to think of himself, navigating through all the snares and terrors of major-league baseball with Odyssean brilliance, able to do all things at once.

But he's not.

To contribute my two-cents worth to what we've all been wondering, no, I don't think that Britton or Happ suck. Maybe even Lance Lynn or Lynn Lance or Yin Yang, or whatever his name is doesn't suck.

That's the thing with veteran pitchers who have already had their major injuries. They're much more likely to be in a slump than ready for the knife. And they're much better at correcting their problems and not letting them get inside their heads.  Could be, all three will have a terrific 2-3 months with us.

But that's part of the problem here. Then what?

They are all rentals, something which greatly limits their value. Even if they have a good or just okay rest of 2018 with us, they'll be off to the free-agent market, and who can know if they really want to stay in a town where the people ride in a hole in the ground, or spend each off-day surfing off San Diego's beaches?

Cooperstown Cashman is not Odysseus but O'Ditherer. His modus operandi is to never really make up his mind, but to move in several directions at once and cover his indecision with the pretense that he's playing a game far too deep for the rest of us mortals.

Are we going for it all this year?

It appears so. Hence the acquiring of guys who are supposedly great at beating Boston, and who will get us through the injuries or problems with almost all of our stars.

But if we were always going for it all, then giving Shreve most of the year to work out his problems was senseless. Trading him now, for a rental, just as he DOES seem to have said problems worked out, is even more senseless.

Ditto with Warren.  And ditto even with the guy we're keeping, Neil "Mr. Survivor Island" Walker.

All year, we have had ample time and opportunity to see what Frazier, Drury, McKinney, and Sheffield, and Rogers and Carroll, and maybe even Frare and Tate and Chance Adams, might do at a major-league level.

Any one of those guys could yet be a star. And if just one is, we will deeply regret it. They will be worth more than all the chaff we just picked up combined. That's true even if we win it al this year—something, let's face it, that's not going to happen barring catastrophic injuries to at least 3-4 other teams.

But we chose not to find out. All so we could make sure that Shreve and Walker came around, and so we could go way too far with Domingo German.

This is not good management. It is not looking ahead and doing due diligence.

And Cashman's typical second guess of himself, stripping the middle levels of the farm system to load up on 16-year-old crap shoots, is not "rebuilding." It is simply a way to get back to what Coops likes to do most, which is signing up huge, overpriced stars for crazy-long contracts. Right now, the agents for Machado and Harper must be licking their chops.

Sing, O Muse, of the man who never sees the next rock coming...




41 comments:

TheWinWarblist said...

That's beautiful, Hoss.

Masahiro is going tonight.

TheWinWarblist said...

We can't keep losing to Buck can we? The dark terrible though has coalesced in the front of my mind. I dare not spake of it but I shall if I must. And may there be pity enough for all our souls ...

HoraceClarke66 said...

Thanks, TWW. And I know. Buck always manages against us as if it were the 7th game of the Series. Who can blame him?

JM said...

Chris Sale put on the DL.

Well, that's something.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Well, I can't wish anyone hurt. But if he just stays out long enough for the Red Sox to lose 16 more games...

HoraceClarke66 said...

And get this: it's now being reported that J.A. Happ has "a mild case of hand, foot, and mouth disease," though it's not supposed to cost him a start.

Dammit, it's running through the whole herd!!

Anonymous said...

Who says that you can't predict baseball? Sometime tonight The Mastser and Suzyn will declare that all of Cashman's recent trades are "brilliant."

TheWinWarblist said...

"J.A. Happ was sent home before Tuesday's game against the Orioles after contracting hand, foot and mouth disease." What the effing fuckedy fuckfuckfuck.

TheWinWarblist said...

I must spake of it now. I must. I fear we have awakened a hideous curse, now fallen atop the heads of our beloved Yankees. I think it involves BPH. Yes! Buck's Puckered Hemorrhoids!! He lurked here befouling and besmirching all of us, but the Yankees won and won. And then he slunk off. Now longer was I Killer Doc. No longer were we all ignoramuses unable to grok the advanced stats. Our discourse returned to normal (normal for IIHIIFIIC). But LO! The Yankees became broken and mired in mediocrity. I believe BPH's abuse of all of us acting as positive JuJu for the Yankees!! The more BPH raved and insulted, the better the Yankees played. And when BPH left, a wave of indifference and injuries descended upon the Yankees. And now Boston is unbeatable. I fear BPH is now tormenting the Boston Red Sox bloggers. What else could exPLAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!? IT WAS BPH!! BUCK'S PUCKERED HEMORRHOIDS!! HE BROUGHT A POWERFUL HIDDEN jUjU WITH HIM WHEN HE WAS HERE AND IT LEFT WITH HIM!!! WE NEED THE FOULNESS OF PUCKERED!! HE MUST COME BACK!! WE MUST COMPEL HIM TO RETURN!!!

THERE!! I HAVE SPAKE THE EVIL!! TO ALL!!

[huff huff huff]

And now Boston is surging in an inhuman manner. Boston is unbeatable. They cannot lose. As if they are buoyed by a powerful JuJu. I fear I know where Puckered has gone. I fear BPH is now tormenting the bloggers of the foul Red Sox.

TheWinWarblist said...

[huffhuffhuffhuff]

TheWinWarblist said...

How the fuck do you get hand, foot and mouth?

Ken of Brooklyn said...

Playing duck duck goose w Syndergaard,,,, little kids ( or tall pitchers) w poop on their hands.
I feel like we need a mega holistic/ health and human services Vitamin JuJu intervention soon soon soon!!!!!!

Ken of Brooklyn said...

@WinnnWarrrblisst> you are sooooo right about BPH, when the black hole was open on our event horizon, no negative JuJu could escape to terrorize our Guys!

Austria's Only Baseball Fan said...

Hoof and mouth disease? What next? Plague? Bring out yer dead...

KD said...

I’ve had the same foul thoughts, TWW. He must return else the loathsome redsocks will open a ten game lead on us. Shit. We may be forced to insult one another ourselves.

TheWinWarblist said...

I FEARED TO SPAKE IT DURING THESE LONGS SLUMPS, BUT IT IS SO!!! IT IS SOOOO!!!

Ken of Brooklyn said...

Black Hole Sun, won’t you come, won’t you cooooooome!!!!

Rufus T. Firefly said...

For Austria's Only Baseball Fan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53kJX64ieQ

I'm not dead!

But I have seen them in concert a few times.

Rufus T. Firefly said...

TWW,

You present a plausible case the causes me a moral dilemma.

BPH is a foul Harpy. Yet you make the case that I should want it back here fouling our pages.

Do I root for that if it means Yankee success? Would YOU want to live in the basement apartment of the port-a-potty if it meant Yankee success?

Rock, meet hard place.

Rufus T. Firefly said...

"THAT" causes...

Local Bargain Jerk said...


Uh, guys, I hate to be the turd in the punch bowl, I really do, but I would rather see the Yanks lose than have Stat-Boy return to these parts. Please don't wish this on us.

13bit said...

LBJ, please do not invoke that entity.

As for BPH, that's too ghastly an image for me to take to bed. I'm going to need to cleanse my mental palate, I'm not sure what it will take.

Also, didn't Syndergaard just have Hand, Foot and Mouth, or HFM, as we can now call it? What the fuck is going on? BPH? HFM? WTF?

I have to go walk the pup and meditate on all this.

TheWinWarblist said...

What is Toonces doing out there?

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Just be glad the Yankees didn't sign Chris Davis. One-fitty-ate batting average.

...before his last strikeout.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Here's some happy news, campers!

The Mets just loss 25-4, the most lopsided loss in their franchise history. Worse even than that 26-7 meltdown to the Phillies in, what, 1985?

But hey, they WERE down 25-1 going into the ninth. Among other things, Austin Jackson homered.

Those Mets. Never say die!

(They just say arggh urrrrgg oof garble ohhh.)

Rufus T. Firefly said...

LBJ,

We know who the turd in the punchbowl is. And it is definitely not you.

None of us (currently present) want the Yankees to lose. Even ONE (1) game, EVER (sorry all-caps for the copyright infringement). But Harpy's make you do crazy things.

https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/harpies_greek_mythology

HoraceClarke66 said...

But WAIT! Did I say there was happy news? There's MORE happy news!!

Sox were down 3-1 going into the bottom of the ninth, but the Phillies' "closer" immediately walked Martinez and hit Bogaerts. I was thinking, 'Gee, which Sock will hit the walk-off, three-run homer?'

But...

Kinsler K'd.

Betts popped out.

Holt...made some kind of out.

SOX LOSE! SOX LOSE! SOX LOSE!

The magic numbers are 14 (NYY) and 15 (Boston).

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Three in the loss column, as the Master would say.

Anonymous said...

Let's deal in reality. By Sunday the Yankees will be out of the division race, with Oakland nipping at their heels for the second wild card. Then some people--such as every dead soul on this blog, alive only in the vicarious masturbatory dopamine hits they crave from spectator sports--will have to find a new pastime, a new preadolescent diversion (maybe collecting vintage issues of Playboy magazine, in its post-nipple, pre-pubic zenith) from the stygian, bottomless depths of emptiness they call a life. Imagine a despair so merciless and unremitting as the deprivation of the kindness of strangers on an illuminated rectangle in the dead of night. As the world burns, fellas.

Anonymous said...

The pathetic asshole has returned from his jerk- off lair.

Joe of AZ said...

...and who called for this guy's return again???

Anonymous said...

I've been posting all along. Diseased Anon is just too stupid to have recognized it. Diseased Anon is my favorite interlocutor; I take perverse pleasure in witnessing the outpourings of a soul so drenched in bitterness and misanthropy, so flagrantly devoid of even a trace of tenderness or compassion or love, this flailing nematode in the night. Bosch and Poe and de Sade shrivel in humility before the specter of this gruesome deformity, this lava flow of vomit in human form. Nice to see you again!

Joe Formerlyof Brooklyn said...


The mystery of Bawlmore is not which various body parts of Buck's . . . suck.

The mystery IS how the F is he still on the job. His team is 32-and-75 -- 17 games behind 4th-place Toronto. Even the Mets have a (significantly) better record.

What's worse, whenever Buck looks around, he sees......dung. They've got Jace Peterson (a Yankees cast-off) playing 3B, hitting a sharp .203 (OBP = .324, so that's something I guess).

Yelfry Ramirez, P, age 24, is up in the majors before his time, probably. But note: He was a Yankees farmhand. Traded exactly one year ago (7/31/17) for, I believe, the famous "international" money.

So a guy that we literally sold off as not useful -- not even for bringing in another single-A pitcher in a trade -- is now one of their starters. ERA = 4.39, WHIP = 1.36. Actually not bad for Yelfry, considering he should prob. be hurling in AA ball right about now.....he'd be 4-and-1 for Trenton, wouldn't he?

I put Jace and Yelfry in here to make the (minor) point: THIS is part of what Buck sees, along with Chris Davis and his awful 2018, when he looks around the clubhouse. And is that's not bad enuf -- NO Manny Machado.

In other words: For Buck Showalter, "life" has gone from an occasional upset stomach to a Perpetual Maalox Moment.

KD said...

If Buck had any self-respect, he's bug out of that goofy little town.

KD said...

I can tolerate a lot of perverse juju if it means Yankee wins. a couple of years back, I even grew a moustache in obedience to Mustang's call for facial hair. went around all summer looking like a 70's porn star, as joyously noted by coworkers.

Anonymous said...

You’re a verbose narcissist. Good luck with your miserable life.

TheWinWarblist said...

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HaHaaHAHAHAHAA-
AAAA-AA-Ahh-AHHH-AAAHHHHH-AAaAaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHaaaaAAHHHHHHHHHHHaaaa-ah-ah-ah-aaaaaaaaAaAaHaHaHaaaAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!

TheWinWarblist said...

Uh, guys? Yeah, sorry about this.

KD said...

you can do no wrong in my book, TWW. You gave me a warble when I shared with everyone that my best friend had died. One doesn't forget a heartfelt kindness of that magnitude.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Well written, KD.

Also, I seem to recall the Paper of Record predicting that Baltimore would make a wild card spot over the Yankees.

Huh, that was spot on.

Isiyku Abdulahi said...


I really want the world to know about this great man who brought back happiness into my life again after my husband left me and the kids 3 years ago for another women online when i contacted Dr Believe he cast a love spell for me within 48 hours my ex husband start calling me and begging for forgiveness for everything that have happened between us. I was so happy to have my family back together with love again here is the email of Dr Believe via believelovespelltemple@gmail.com a man with the great powers you can also call him or add him on Whats-app: +2348156148821
God bless you
I am very grateful for your help in my marriage.