Mediocrity NOW! A Modest Proposal

 From the desk of HoraceClarke66...

 

Time to hop in the old hot tub time machine and head back to the 1970s for the solution to our catching dilemma. There we find two capable back-up catchers, who could have made a very nice combination behind the plate for your New York Yankees, following the untimely death of Thurman Munson.

 

One was Rick Dempsey, the clown prince of late 20^th-century baseball. The other, Mike Heath.

 

The Yanks traded them both. Heath went to Texas in a 10-player, 1979 deal that boiled down to Sparky Lyle-for-Dave Righetti, one of the best trades the team made after Gabe Paul’s departure. 

 

Dempsey went to the Orioles in 1976, in a deal that helped nail down the division for the Yanks that summer, but which in retrospect proved to be a disaster. The Bombers got Doyle Alexander, Ken Holtzman, Grant Jackson, and Elrod Hendricks. They gave up Dempsey, Rudy May, Scott McGregor, and Tippy Martinez. 

 

The point is that both Heath and Dempsey were both very capable catchers for many years. Both were mediocre hitters with some pop, but superior catchers. Dempsey twice led the AL in percentage of runners gunned down, played until he was 42, and even won a World Series MVP award in 1983. Plus, there were all those silly dives through the tarpaulin water during rain delays.

 

Heath played more often, and once led the AL in assists and double plays by a catcher. He twice reached 13 homers, subbed in the outfield and infield, and hit .308 in a pair of league championship series. Things might have worked out better for NYY if they had held onto this pair of conscientious, versatile, defense-minded guys.

 

Instead, in the constant churn that was Yankees baseball in the ’80s, George’s “baseball people” tried to find a replacement for Munson in Crazy Butch Wynegar (“Top of the ninth, Ma!”), Ron Hassey, the Don Slaught Onslaught, Bob Geren, Scott Bradley, Phil Lombardi, Matt Nokes, and “the Italian Stallion II,” Rick Cerone, who after a terrific first year in the Bronx devoted himself mostly to trying to score more Guess jeans commercials.

 

It wasn’t that any of these guys were so bad. They weren’t, not at all. But think of the stability and the professionalism a Heath-Dempsey combination might have given a team that was not lacking for offense anywhere else.

 

The Yanks will pretend to go after J.T. Realmuto this off-season. But Foodstamps Hal is not going to shell out $200 million the year after giving Gerrit Cole $300 million—you know it, I know it, the American people know it, as Bob Dole used to drone. Any such efforts will only be in the service of driving up the bidding for the Metsies—something I’m all for. But it won’t get us a catcher.

 

So, how about re-signing Austin Romine and having him split the catching duties with Higgy? Sure, the combination is not ideal. Both are righty bats, they are only so-so hitters, and they are not as superior in the field as Dempsey and Heath were.

 

But both are steady pros, who survived the Yanks’ patented CatcherWrecker@ machinery, which has of late chewed up and spat out not only Sancho, but also Francisco Cervelli, J.R. Murphy, and Jesus (Montero) himself. They could at least until that ambidextrous, part-time pitcher, one-man band the Yanks signed with their first pick a few years ago is ready for the bigs.

 

I kid, I kid! Anthony Seigler is never going to play a game in Yankee Stadium. But Higashioka and Romine have. They know the territory, they know the score. Mediocrity now! (Over abject failure!).