NYY RIP

 

For decades, the Steinbrenner family has flourished thanks to the efforts of men they have done their level best to abuse and undermine.

Players, managers, general managers—right down to scouts and coaches, and a secretary who once famously brought George a sandwich he didn't like (maybe it was the spittle)—were all publicly denigrated, insulted, demoted, moved on, fired, or even blackmailed, no matter how much success they had.

So it's the greatest irony that the Steinbrenner dynasty is now about to crash because the current heir cannot bear to fire the singularly most destructive employee in Yankees history.

No doubt, Brian Cashman thinks he's dodged yet another bullet thanks to the cosmic bad luck of your New Jersey Jets. (And by the way, was Cashman seen anywhere in the vicinity of the Meadowlands last night? Just asking for a friend.)

The wailing and rending of garments over A-Rod II will no doubt draw some attention away from Cashie's latest fiasco.

But as the estimable ranger_lp summarized for us yesterday:

Yankees this year:
Played a guy with a torn ligament in his wrist for months 
Played a guy with a concussion for months 
Played a kid with a torn UCL for a week
Currently playing a guy with torn ligament in his toe 
Sent 4 pitchers to the IL with shoulder issues 

And then, of course, there is getting no-hit for 9 or more innings for the second year in a row, being nearly shutout or no-hit for weeks at a time, hitting and reaching base at levels not seen since the super-pitcher years of the late 1960s, bad fielding, awful base-running and fundamentals, the most lackadaisical Yankee player ever seen, and general zoning out 

After a while, there's just no hiding stupid. Or lazy. Or unengaged.

Is analytics a bad approach to baseball, as suggested by the now bottomless disabled lists around the leagues? Or is Brian Cashman just particularly bad at learning and applying them? At this point, I don't think the answer matters much. Hey, hey, ho, ho, Brian Cashman's got to go.

But will he? 

Almost certainly not. 

What's doubly vexing about the above list is the echoing silence of the sporting press in reaction to it.

Like many here, I can remember the days when reporters used to scuttle like waterbugs back and forth across the Yankees locker room, eager to see if they could get Reggie to diss Billy, or Billy to diss George, or George to diss anyone and everyone.

Not journalism's finest hour. But nowadays, we see what happens when a free press has been largely coopted or coerced into collusion.

Following The Martian's Crash Landing there was not so much as a murmur on SNY, New York's leading nightly sports show to suggest that maybe the Yankees' training and coaching methods could be at fault. Instead, we got more of what SNY mostly gives us: their experts' best guesses on the random bets that the gambling operations that are sports' biggest sponsors want to promote.  Content and advertising, the perfect synergy!

For that matter, some yutz featured in the MLB-sponsored content advertising on baseball reference.com decided that this week was the perfect time to start the debate on...whether or not Giancarlo Stanton should go to the Hall of Fame. The answer was yes, of course—no need to introduce anything negative into sports talk!

Meanwhile, the Paper of Record continues to wring its hands over the pressing question of whether or not women's professional soccer will ever match the NFL in popularity. (Spoiler alert: The answer is no.)

Reality's a tricky thing, though, with a tendency to come back and bite you in the ass no matter how hard you try to cover it over. 

The Steinbrenner Clan can turn all the attention they want to their real interests, such as building that soccer stadium in the Bronx that will never see the light of day, or even—in the case of George Steinbrenner IV, depicted with his crew here—moving into auto racing. They can put all the women's basketball, and running shows, and golf tips, and Michael Kay interviews they want on YES.

Nonetheless, when the newly inflated, 2024 ticket plans go on sale soon, I suspect they are in for a rude awakening.  The Yankees, after this season, will have led the AL in attendance for 17 of the last 20 seasons. 

I suspect that stops now. And I suspect with Steve Cohen quite willing to spend money and jettison people who can't perform, the Yankees will no longer be the leading baseball team in this town before very long. 

The reaction to this will be slow, and painful. We've already been all but assured that Ma Boone is coming back next year. So is The Brain, so is the whole cast of characters who cannot manage to keep even 20-year-old stars healthy and functioning.  

These moribund inheritors of untold wealth—America's greatest argument for an estate tax that is not named "Dolan"—are able to turn things around about as easily as an ocean liner in the Gowanus Canal. 

Thanks to the decisions they have already made, we are looking at years and years of losing, decrepit, BORING baseball before things even begin to change. And then the change might be for the worse.

The lights are going out all over the Bronx. They won't be lit again in our lifetimes.