Mr. Glass Half-Full

All right, I hate to be the optimist here.  It's not something I'm really used to.  And, hey, even my idea of optimism is heavily tinged with, well, pessimism.

First off:  don't worry too much about this year's playoffs.

If we have to lose key guys for October...this is the year to do it.  Nobody is going to beat Houston.

I imagine that Astros fans just now must feel the way I did watching Game 5 of the 2000 World Series: Yeah, boy, I really hope we win this one.  But if we don't...no way that the Mets are beating Pettitte, and then El Duque (the original) and Clemens back in the Stadium.

Verlander, Cole, Greinke, and Miley Cyrus?

No way we're getting past that save for a miracle on the order of the one that got us past Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine in 1996.  And that would be the sort of cosmic hurricane in which it won't matter a helluva lot if we have this player or that.

Look, EE is, what, 36?  And hasn't had a real sniff of the World Series.  If he can't come back for this, well, then, God bless him, he's all but dead.  And we have people to replace him.

Happ would be a real loss...but we've played almost this entire season with him as a dead loss.  We could use Kahnle, but he may be all right, and if just one of these guys—Sevvy, Monty, Toonces—can come back, we won't miss him.

Which leaves Sanchez.

I hate to say this, but:  Sanchez is a boob.

Sure, it could be he was ordered to steal second—though I very much doubt it.

But if you're ordered to do something so idiotic and you know how you feel, you trudge toward second at a home-run-trot pace, then go back to the dugout and say, "Aw, gee, skip, bad jump!"

Anybody who can't figure that out is a boob.

But I very much doubt that Boone sent him.  I very much suspect that the great idea to steal second base in a meaningless situation in a meaningless game was all Sanchez's.  Because he is a boob.

Hey, I don't mean that he's a boob away from a ballfield.  For all I know, Sanchez spends his evenings reading Marquez, Proust, and Dostoyevsky in the original Russian.

But on the field...

Guys like this, it's always something.  They have a permanent bad weather system following them, like that Al Capp character, Joe Shlobotnik, or some such, who had a storm cloud always over his head.

There are always guys like that, whether it's their fault or not.  Sanchez is one of them.

When he first came up, he looked like a young Johnny Bench.  Since then, it's been only backwards.  It's been one thing or another—and it always will be.

Injuries, fielding problems.  He seems to have solved the passed ball problem, but now his throwing out baserunners percentage is way down, from 41 percent to just 26.

It's always something.  You push something with this guy, something else gets pulled.  We should've dealt him for Realmuto this past postseason but we didn't, and now we'll have to deal with the soap opera that is Gary Sanchez forever.

Except maybe this postseason.  Which is not a big deal.

Sanchez's Octobers?  .197 in 75 plate appearance.  Much like his regular seasons.  A big game or two in which he clubs a couple massive homers.  A whole mess o' strikeouts in between.

Sancho goes out hitting .233.  Will we miss him?  Um, as much as we missed John Ellis, another mess o' potential.

Bring on Romine and Higgy.