Having watched the Yankees for 70 seasons - no lie, 70, give or take the Wonder Years - I know what's coming...
After all the squawking, the Yankees will re-sign Cody Bellinger.
Dunno the price. Don't care. I just think everyone - including the rest of the AL East - is fine with the Yankees dropping $40 million or so on a human yo-yo of up-and-down seasons. None of your owner buddies will whine if you maintain last year's runner-up roster. The world loves to watch the Yankees tread water. Thus, Bellinger will return, leaving you in desperate need of pitching, and with two commodities to trade for it.
1. Either Will Warren (age 26) or Luis Gil (27) - youngish 4th starters who could break out and anchor a rotation.
2, Either Jasson Dominguez (22) or Spencer Jones (24), corner OFs with interesting upsides, both of whom would become expendable with the return of Bellinger.
Trade one of each and add some Single A fodder, you could acquire Freddy Peralta in his walk year, and open camp with an arguably improved roster.
Thus, a key to 2026 - and beyond - comes down to one massive choice: Who goes? The Martian or Mr. Jones?
I humbly suggest it be Jones.
I get it that The Martian is a horrible fielder, an atrocity of the warning tracks. Meanwhile, the Yanks have hyped Jones as a potential CF. (Let's believe that when we see it.) Both are fast as hell. Jones, last year in the minors, stole 29 bases (caught 6 times.) Dominguez, with the Mother Ship, stole 23 (5 times caught).
But it's all about the Three True Outcomes - the Holy Trinity of stats: BBs, Ks and HRs.
Last year, in 544 minor league at bats, Jones walked 58 times, hit 39 HRs and fanned 179 times. Altogether, 51 percent of the time, he failed to put a ball into play. He either jogged the bases or marched back to the dugout. Fifty one percent of the time.
Dominguez, with 429 MLB at bats, rendered 41 walks, 115 Ks, and 10 HRs - a 39 percent wake-me-when-he's-done rate.
In another city, in another reality, Jones could become a huge star. He looks like a young Joey Gallo, and though I can hear your catcalls, that's something Yank fans never got to see in pinstripes. Gallo had some all-star years in Texas; they were smart enough to trade him when Cashman called. Meanwhile, if The Martian doesn't learn to play LF, he will become the Plutonian.
Still, I like it that Dominguez last year never hit a couple HRs and got slugger-drunk. The Yankees entered October with the most HRs in baseball, and they exited it like all HR-dependent teams do: Walking dejectedly back to the dugout.
We don't need another Three True Outcomes swinger. We need batted balls in play.
Sir, if and when it comes to a trade, hold the line.
Think: Mars.
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12 comments:
Fuck Buffalo Bill Cody. This is the year of Little Big Horn. Pitchers and Catchers in a month or less.
I guess I was thinking of Custer. Same thing.
The Hot Stove Season of the Chosin Reservoir "March to the Rear."
or was it the "Advance to the Rear"?
Urrrggg ... this discussion makes me want to up chuck ...
1) We all saw the look on Jasson's face when they FINALLY gave him an AB against Toronto n the final game of last year's Yankees short lived playoff run. and he ripped a double.
It was hostile. It was justified. It said, "Now you finally let me fucking hit? You moron."
He would welcome a trade. I don't want them to do it.
2) Jones by all accounts is a good CF. Grisham is a one and done and we won't have a CF in 2028 (The next time MLB is played after this year. Don't trade him either.
Unless... the find a way to get Tatis. Then you can have Jasson since that's his ceiling anyway and I'd rather take the guy who is great, now. I still keep Jones.
Aaron Judge should "lend" him his personal batting coach or just pay for it out of the goodness of his heart or his desire to finally win a series. Actually Hal should pay but we all know he won't.
3) Pretty sure MLB is going to go to an international draft with draft slot money to control costs like the NFL does. That's why they fired their Head of International Scouting. Well that and, he sucked.
4) Buffalo Bill was right up there with PT Barnum as the greatest showmen this country ever produced. The amount of genius he displayed both creatively and organizationally to pull of his Wild West Show leaves me in awe.
He even had a musical, "Anne Get Your Gun" before PT got his.
The guy doesn't get enough credit.
Good analysis, Duque, and I'm with you on the choice—if a choice has to be made. And it shouldn't be. I agree with Doug on this: keep 'em both!
And yes, teach Jasson to play left—or put him in center. Trade Jazz for some pitching (but that's not going to happen)...
...And sign Bellinger, TOO! I don't think he's THAT much of a human yo-yo. He had those awful three years when he had some massive injury. Since then, he's been fairly consistent coming back—and Yankee Stadium, and hitting behind Judge, is the PERFECT spot for him. Which he probably realizes, or he would not still be talking with Brian Cashman, Lord of the Flies...
...Trouble is, Cashie—or Hal—dickering with Scott Boras is like Albert Brooks going up against Rip Torn in that Defending Your Life movie: "Still don't get the big brain thing, do you?"
The Yanks think they've got Boras over a barrel (actually, that was a big hit for The Happy Wanderers: "Boras Over the Barrel!") because nobody else is biting on his highest ask.
They don't. You watch: Bellinger will sign a short-term, big-money contract with somebody else this week. Say, two years, with an opt-out after the first. He'll do this with the Dodgers. Or—saints preserve us!—the Boston Red Sox.
Cashman will sit there with that same, sick look he must have had on his face when the Giants outbid us for Judge. Hal will shrug and head to his yacht.
Bitty, I think Larry McMurtry wrote a pretty good novel about Buffalo Bill's traveling show some years ago (The Paul Newman/Robert Altman movie, alas, was unwatchable.). Ol' BB was the more benign side of empire: Hey, leave off the cultural destruction for a time—everybody get on the boat and let's go perform for Queen and Kaiser!
Plus, who the hell else ever got a football team named after him?? (Sure, Paul Brown. But he didn't get the city name, too!)
Sorry I misunderstood you about Europe, Bitty. But yeah, Greenland is a terrifying scenario. I would hope that our troops would refuse to invade and kill our NATO allies—but then what?
Lawrence O'Donnell—who is to me like Rip Torn to Albert Brooks—is convinced Greenland is all a fake, and that the real target is Cuba. We'll see...
...Oh, and the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir is a hell of a story. I was trying to write a movie or limited series about it years ago.
The Marines get cut off because an ill-trained, ill-led, ill-positioned Army unit gets annihilated by the Chinese (Gen. MacArthur was too busy throwing a fit because Truman wouldn't let him drop a "cordon sanitaire" of nuclear bombs on the Chinese-North Korean border.).
Wildly outnumbered, the Marines retreated for 80 miles, to the port of Hungnam, at the height of a Korean winter. They hauled their dead along with them—and the retreat entailed, at one point, building a bridge that was parachuted in, under fire, over a deep chasm.
They DID call it "advancing to the rear" or some such, with their usual, brutal irony. An incredible feat of arms, though.
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