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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27 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.
@13bit: the Battlin' Bronx Bastards! Despite all the dire predictions & lack of supplies & ammunition, lack of manpower, lack of talent on the Yankees, we're going to have a lot of fun this year cheerin' on our Battlin' Bronx Bastards! Hell, I'm lookin' forward to it!
Hoss, if I remember correctly, MacArthur later claimed that he was not caught with his pants down, that he warned Truman that they needed more troops, but that the order was to make do with what you got because the cavalry ain't comin'. I don't know if this was an accurate assessment or not, but that's what he said happened.
We do know for sure that when MacArthur proposed droppin' atomic bombs all over eastern Europe, Russia, and Communist China, that a shocked Truman ended up relieving MacArthur of command. Who was right is debatable. Because it seems that dismissing MacArthur probably only postponed the inevitable. I suppose Truman was right to shoot down the idea.
Of the horrors of nuclear war, just saw a PBS documentary on Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently, and one of the most poignant, nauseating accounts was by a woman who survived the Hiroshima bomb. She said she saw people, turned black and red, who were walking with what looked like strips of seaweed around their ankles trailing on the ground. When they got closer, she saw that the "seaweed" was burnt skin flaking off their legs. Their clothes were all gone, incinerated, skin coming off them like seaweed. The imagery reminded me of the leper ghosts from the movie "The Fog". But obviously, this was infinitely worse since it was real.
Unfortunately, the Korean War was mismanaged by the U.N. forces. The MacArthur counterattack through the Inchon landing was a superb lightning strike, but after taking over most of Korea, they failed to properly secure the border with China. It lead to the fighting retreat, the stalemate at the parallel, and the current tinder box truce at the dividing line. The Korean War never really ended. Technically, they're still at war.
I think one military analyst (I forget who, maybe a British army officer) put it best when he said that the U.S. forces are great at forging ahead and attacking positions but don't know how to defend territory.
They should've done a much better job of holding the whole Korea. Many troops had already died fighting to gain control of the entire peninsula. It was up to Truman and the rest of the U.N. to hold that position. Then we wouldn't have this stupid situation now with that a-hole dictator in North Korea firing test missiles and making threats. It was another case of not going far enough, just enough to maintain the status quo. So, in that sense, MacArthur was certainly right. You can't have peace without total victory.
Yeah, I think they said "Hell, we're not retreating, we're attacking the rear".
Duque, I also would love to see them just play The Martian everyday. But we know it ain't gonna happen. Therefore, and very unfortunately, it would be best for Jasson Dominguez if he got traded. Same for Spencer Jones. These guys are never going to get a real shot. Even if they're still here, they won't be developed properly. When they're 28 or 29 years old, they'll get canned for a bag of money or just released.
I wonder what would've happened if they had just put The Martian in CF to begin last year. How much did the change in position affect his development? They say, if you can play CF, then you should be able to play LF. Yes, but this was a guy who barely knew how to play CF. Methinks it was asking too much to throw him into LF at that time. Maybe if he'd played CF a couple of years here, then you want to move him to LF, okay. But this was a bridge too far.
He may have been adequate in CF. Instead, they put him in LF, where he was terrible. Typical Yankee bullshit these days, with the musical positions. They must subscribe to the "think method" of playing, like The Music Man. Just think you doing it, and you'll play "seventy six trombones led the big parade ..."!
It was a huge mistake to play Trent Grisham in CF last year. They didn't win anything. They didn't find out anything about Jasson Dominguez. It was simply a wasted year. If they do the same this year, it'll be another wasted year. This is why they never develop position players. They are simply risk averse to young players. They'd rather play 29 year old rejects from the bargain bin than hand a position to a rookie.
@Doug, Yeah, when they sent up Dominguez to pinch hit with 2 outs in the 9th inning, it was like a bad joke. Why bother at that point? Were they hoping that he'd make the last out, so that they could say "Hey, lookey there, see, we told you he can't hit, that's why we benched him!" And didn't he pinch hit for Volpe? So, all that time they played Volpe. All of a sudden, with two outs, they no longer believe in Volpe? Just asinine management.
HOG - what I get from all of your learned comments above is that we should play the Martian every day, send Volpe to Korea, then nuke Houston, LA and Boston. We might have a fighting chance after that.
This is why I love this blog. Where else can you get a learned discussion of the Korean War AND The Music Man in the same thread?! (Something tells me we'll be doing a lot of this in the coming year.)...
Been a long time since I studied it, Hammer, but as I recall, the Army units in the sector were considered sort of second-rate—hadn't really been trained enough, and weren't commanded well. That's what came from us demobilizing so quickly after WW II, and not restoring the draft right away, but how you could blame everyone for wanting to get home?...
MacArthur sounds like certain kinds of football coaches: brilliant strategist, but tended to neglect crucial details. For instance, how the hell did his planes get caught on the ground the day AFTER Pearl Harbor? Apparently that army unit—was it an entire corps?—was not only underprepared, but also strung out through several steep valleys, where they would have trouble reuniting easily, if the Chinese came it...
...Which MacArthur did not think they would do, even though they kept sending more and more warnings, diplomatic but also doing spooky stuff such as overrunning our encampments in the early mornings, but then withdrawing without killing anyone.
He still refused to believe that this was evidence they had crossed the Yalu. Also, he thought they couldn't do much, since we controlled the air. That SHOULD have been the case...thanks to him, it wasn't...
As I understand it, Ridgway came in and did a pretty good job of cleaning up his mess. Maybe we could get him to relieve Cashman.
Oh – my – GOD - - - I'm sure Hal already does a fine job of relieving Cashman, thank you very much.
Hoss, That's right, MacArthur got caught with his pants down right after Pearl Harbor as well. When he had been warned about what happened and how Japan would most likely come for him.
So Korea was another case of something similar happening. But it is also true that they were undermanned and would be overrun by 10-1 and 20-1 numbers. Any way you look at it, it was a great opportunity lost. If they hadn't fumbled it, Korea would be one country today, not divided in half.
They really should've done whatever it took to hold the line in Korea. Then perhaps they could've punted on Vietnam. Korea being a peninsula, it was of vast strategic importance and would've been a buffer to Communist Chinese aggression. Instead, the opposite ended up happening. Communist China created a buffer zone for itself by propping up North Korea.
It's all hindsight now, of course, but if they'd held all of Korea, then they might have just let Vietnam turn communist without interfering there. In fact, even though Vietnam became communist, they were not exactly on loving terms with Communist China. (Vietnam and China later fought a border war. We could've made an ally of Vietnam against Communist China. Another lost opportunity.)
Another bad situation is now looming with Taiwan, which is where all the anti-communist Chinese barricaded themselves after their civil war. Communist China is now threatening to take Taiwan by force. I think Taiwan, a tiny island country only a stone's throw from mainland China, is indefensible. If it comes to war, I think they should evacuate the island of everyone who doesn't want communism.
The age old problem of zenophobia is everywhere though. Just as in ancient Egypt, which enslaved the Israelites who had settled there to escape famine, all over the world, nobody wants war refugees living in their backyard. Korea, Japan, the Philippines, the U.S.A., all should divvy up the refugees and take 'em in. But they won't. Seems like all hell is about to break loose. Humans just can't learn to live with their own kind. That's the pitiful shame of it all.
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