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Thursday, July 26, 2018

Worst timing ever? A brutal week flushes us into the trade deadline

According to the Interweb, JA Happ is on his way! Like Santa on Christmas Eve, reporters are tracking his flight down from the North Pole, with his bountiful sack of toys for good Yankee fans. Hoo-ray! If last night's reports are true - and how could they not be? - we're about to win the JA Happ Rental Sweepstakes! 

Yesterday, we were Happ-less. Today, we're Happ-ening! 


Insert barf here.

Listen: If you were to design a checklist of incantations to conjure up the quintessential doomsday Yankee deadline trade, JA Happ would magically appear in your mirror, like Beetlejuice, or Slenderman, or Candyman, or - holy crap, this is getting scary - Sonny Gray. 

Let's look at what Happ brings.

Advanced age? Yep. He'd instantly become the oldest Yankee, turning 36 in October.

Declining skill set? Check. His ERA has risen in each of the last four years. 

Signs of being done? Uh-huh. In his last four starts, he hasn't seen a six inning. He's given up 19 runs in 15 innings. Nineteen runs in fifteen innings.

Overvalued? For now, we can only guess the price tag. Fortunately, our good friends, the Blue Jays, only want the best for us. Surely, they'll give the Yankees a discount, hoping to help their AL East comrades. And our watchdog media, the rapidly disappearing Gammonites of NYC, will ignore whatever prospects we trade, explaining that they were over-rated and never going to play for the Yankees anyway. They will note that Happ is "an all-star," the lone Toronto rep to last week's game. 

But the potential worst part of any deal would be that we become inexorably handcuffed to Happ. He will receive the rest of the season to sort things out. After a clunker outing, Domingo German - (assuming he's not traded for Happ) - would be banished to Scranton to work on a pitch. But Happ joins Sonny Gray as being "too big to fail." Regardless of his performance, the Yankees have no choice but to pitch him again and again. That's a recipe ripe for disaster, especially in New York, and it couldn't come at a worse time.

Suddenly, we cannot beat the lowly Rays, who have taken five out of six. Suddenly, the one-game Wild Card looms over us like the shadow of an executioner. Suddenly, we have no surefire starter for that one-game season. Suddenly, Gary Sanchez looks like a lost cause, and we are still wondering if Aroldis Chapman will ever throw another strike. 

Surely, between now and the end, the Yankees will make a run. We'll win six or seven straight, something like that. Surely, Boston will cool, and injuries could dramatically reshape either team. We're not dead yet. But here we are, lost in the heat of July, unable to beat the Rays and waiting to hear who we're about to give up for the latest tin can rental. Let's just hope this is the darkest trench of 2018. And let's hope we emerge without the kind of disastrous trade that shapes a decade. 

18 comments:

13bit said...

Fuck Cashman. How do you make a young, interesting team unwatchable? Look back on his recipe for this season. Fuck Cashman.

Ken of Brooklyn said...

Everything about this season is going in the wrong direction, URRGGGGG!!!!

Joe Formerlyof Brooklyn said...


I'd like to come to the defense of Cashmoney.

However, I can't conceive of a single argument in his favor. For all of the good, there is Ellsberger. There is GStanton's humongous contract (which, no matter how well he does in the next 3 years, goes on and on and on).

With all of the pieces of this now-becoming-impossible-to-eat pie that NEED TO GO......Cashmoney might be Number One.

In the year 2028, when Dillon Tate is working on his 4th 20-win season, we will curse Cashmoney yet again.......whether he is in the job or not.

13bit said...

Let's face it - Brian is just not that smart. He has had lots of money to play with and, for a short time, had some good baseball people advising him.

Turns out that good baseball knowledge can be worth a lot more than heaps of money. There are many cases I could use to buttress my point, but I prefer to just hurl rocks from the sidelines and plot out my next pizza order.

I'll tell you one thing, my desire to watch games continues to diminish with each passing day.

KD said...

I simply refuse to watch whenever we play Tampa in their stupid House of Horrors. I'm boycotting.

Guys, I've seen the Yanks play at Tampa. the place is even more horrible in person. Its only redeeming qualities are that it was filled with Yankee fans and good seats are cheap and available.

ranger_lp said...

Brian was smart with the Cubs trade and the Rangers trade. Dealing for pitchers is his Achilles heel.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Trouble was, Happ had a good five innings against the miserable Orioles. Oh, happy day!

Brewers and Cubs are supposedly after Happ, too. Let's hope they beat us out.

Anonymous said...

Agree totally with 13bit's comments. If you don't take care of pitching during the winter, you're going to pay through your ASS to get one now. Look at the losers (pitchers) he got last summer and what he gave up to get them. This is cASSman's team. If you can't beat the bottom dwellers, you're not going to win the division. F**king losers (Yankee ownership and management, that is)!

Anonymous said...

I don't know what to make of the potential Happ deal because I don't know the eventual particulars.

But I know this. We ARE giving the young pitchers a chance and they are getting chewed through like(INSERT: Some analogy that is very clever, requires arcane knowledge of popular culture and leaves us all with a vaguely comfortable yet at the same time disquieted feeling.)

Did we give starts to Johnny Lasagna? Yep. He showed something but couldn't sustain. (Hurt)

Did we give starts to Domingo German? Yep. He showed something but couldn't sustain.(Hurt?)

Did we give starts to Jordan Montgomery? Yep. He showed something but couldn't sustain. (Hurt)

Did we give starts to Luis Cessa? Yep, in progress odds are he will show something but won't sustain.

So now what? So now you go to proven middling ML pitchers to try to get more consistency. Someone has to start. You build the pen (check) because you know the rotation is shaky and you try to get some life back in the offense as players hopefully start to play to their baseball card.

I'm going to digress for a second.

The real issue with the offense is how streaky everyone is.

Hicks blazing hot or useless
Stanton Finally hot
Judge. This is the guy. Can look feable for extended periods and then BOOM! Also what with those home away splits?
Walker. Very streaky. Great in other years. Ice cold in this one.
Didi. Need I go on?

Only Andujar and Gleybar, and kind of Gardner are consistent. Can't win like that. Actually they can. If Boston wasn't so damn freakishly good we would all feel different.

So Happ. Yes, we need starters and the cupboard is bare with one major exception. Sheffield. Maybe they want him to come up at the very end and go for lightening in a bottle because the odds are that in 2018 he will...

Show something but can't sustain.

Doug K.



Anonymous said...

Doug K.'s logic: if young pitchers show great promise but falter along the way, give up on them and resort to gutting your farm system to nab fading veterans who ARE GUARANTEED TO SUCK EVEN WORSE THAN SONNY GRAY, WHOSE MAIN ALLURE IS THAT THEY WERE GOOD FIVE YEARS AGO AND HAVE A NAME THAT IS RECOGNIZABLE TO THE HOSTS AND CALLERS ON WFAN.

Vampifella said...

CC is still the oldest Yank. I remember reading last week that he turned 38 and that he's now considering playing another year rather than retiring. We may see him for another year as I doubt they'll get any decent free agent starters any more than they'll be able to get a decent trade deadline pitcher in the next couple days.

Either way rumors is that Sheffield is going for Happ and I'm sure that's just to start the deal. That's insane, let Sheffield pitch as he absolutely will not do any worse than Happ. Happ is crap, like getting a rental Sonny but worse as we'll probably give too much to get him. UGH!

Anonymous said...

"Doug K.'s logic: if young pitchers show great promise but falter along the way, give up on them and resort to gutting your farm system to nab fading veterans who ARE GUARANTEED TO SUCK EVEN WORSE THAN SONNY GRAY, WHOSE MAIN ALLURE IS THAT THEY WERE GOOD FIVE YEARS AGO AND HAVE A NAME THAT IS RECOGNIZABLE TO THE HOSTS AND CALLERS ON WFAN."

That's not what I wrote. I never said give up on the farm system and if you've ever read any of my comments that I'm pretty much always, "play the kids and don't trade the farm for nothing."

What I said was that the Yankees have been trying to find a starter from within but have come up short either through injury or lack of sustained ability (at this stage of their careers.)

Doesn't mean trade them. I also said that they might be saving Sheffield for later (not agreeing or disagreeing with the wisdom of that.) Also 20+ of our top 30 are pitchers. They are not all going to make it.

After running through the top four kids with poor results you turn to finding starters somewhere else. Also, even though I liked Dillon Tate I can understand why we needed to bolster the pen. You know we are going to make the playoffs right?

We need more starters and the internal options are few right now because we've been there and sadly, it didn't work out.

Doug K.


Anonymous said...

Oh and Sheffield is not going for Happ. That would be madness. That would be what the person who commented on my comment is afraid of. If they did that he would be right. Madness. Chance Adams? Sure, why not?

Doug K.

Anonymous said...

They didnt get poor results from the young pitchers. Better results than they will het from misHapp, who is sucking worse with each outing. German had rough first innings bimut eas otherwise fine--the highest swing and miss rate in the league. Happ will be worse.

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Anonymous said...

German 2-6 5.68 -0.4 WAR

Montgomery is out for the year.

Lasagna on the DL

Like i said injury or lack of sustained ability at this point in their careers

Doug K.

Rufus T. Firefly said...

TWW,

Could you please be more explicit on what your thoughts are?

You seem to be equivocating.

I just need more detail for the lawsuit, -er... I mean BOOK, I'm considering.

Signed,

Ca$hmoney's ex-girlfriend Stalker

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