As seen on the right, the top tractor-trailer is Kyle Tucker, who announced he will become the newest Dodger because - of course - he wants a ring. The second truck is Cody Bellinger, surrounded by suitors - the Mets, Phillies, Jays and several mystery teams - all of whom will likely outbid the Yankees, who are off screen in a ditch.
Onto our fire of hopelessness, toss another log.
This is the most depressing January since 2005, when Cooperstown Cashman was touting the chops of Richard "Bubba" Crosby in centerfield. While the AL East bulks up, via free agents and trades, the Yankees are struggling to maintain last year's aging, also-ran lineup - now a year older and spackled with injuries.
Tucker's signing - and, by the way, hats off to the inscrutable Dodgers, who sat for three months like a cobra before striking - suddenly explains why Scott Boras has pursued an outlandish seven-year deal for Bellinger. The three wildest bidders - the Mets, Phillies and Jays - must now chase two remaining major free agents: Bellinger and Bo Bichette. It doesn't matter that Food Stamps Hal has lost his taste for spending. There is plenty of money out there. So, how 'bout that Bubba!
I say it's time to invoke the Yankee Fan Insurrection Act, which means forgetting the holes at LF, SS, 3B, the rotation and bullpen, and starting to say aloud the most frightening word in the team dictionary:
Rebuild.
Ouch. What a word. In many ways, it's time to think about 2028, or 2030, or some distant future time line, when a crazy, vulgar trillionaire has taken over the team. By then, if we're still cogent, our brains will be wired into the new singularity, running traffic lights and smart refrigerators.
As a great yogi once said, It's getting late early. I hate to go Chicken Little on the upcoming season. But let's face it: The Dodgers will win the 2026 world championship, and the Yankees will be lucky to reach the second week of October.
They're not the Yankees, anymore. The Dodgers are. It's time for an insurrection. It's time for fans to remind the Yankees of who they are. (Or were.)
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29 comments:
"REBUILD" would be music to all of our ears. But you know what that means? It means money, wisely spent. That is an impossibility on the current team. It also means a shift in priorities from pure profit and tax dodging to *minor* sacrifices - money-wise - in order to field a winning team. Hal suck balls.
The Dodgers were named after pedestrian-streetcar activities. Now they're just dodging luxury taxes.
What an outrageous contract. This guy is not a 30 million dollar player, much less a 60 million dollar one.
The Dodgers ownership should be sued for malfeasance.
I don't necessarily agree with the esteemed Publius's post on the DodgerMLB conspiracy theory, but I do think there's something funny, possibly some weird thing we don't know. Otherwise, how do you explain this shit? Is a conspiracy theory simply the absence of logic? Or, maybe L.A. has shopaloism.
It's a . . . beautiful morning,
Oh Hal
I’ll stand by the window and smile a while
Oh Hal
Just press my face against the glass and smile a while
Oh Hal
Its still dark outside and I’ve got the time
Oh Hal
it's a . . . beautiful morning,
Oh Hal
Each bird falling dead from out of the sky
So long
It just ain't no good when the sun goes away,
Can’t breath
When you're still inside trying to hide
Oh Hal
Still inside (trying to hide)
Oh Hal
Still inside (trying to hide)
Oh Hal
Still in - - -
Oh No
do you think that Hal and Brian are sitting around now, after maybe the worst off-season/hot stove in memory, thinking, "we're so fucking smart..."?
In the previous post's comments, AA posits that we should be compensated for watching the 2026 Yankees. To which I say, WHERE ARE MY REPARATIONS FOR THE 2025 SEASON? Hal, do you have something you'd like to say? Even a simple apology? I have known White Sox, Cubs, and Mets fans over my life and they all received money for therapy from the Baseball Mental Trauma Trust©, but it appears that the Yankees don't pay into that one. Another example of Hal's greed and malfeasance.
y e s
y e s y e s
+1
Tryin' to buy another championship before all hell breaks loose. And I agree, not even a 30 mill player, even with inflation!
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Not sure if Publius' theory is correct, but it's true that the Artful Dodgers are MLB's darlings. Whatever they do, like Ohtani's deferred contract, gets rubber stamped. If the Yankees had given Judge $1 a year, then $100 mill a year ten years from now, you know that a-hole Rob Manfred would've cried foul.
+1
Yep, we should be compensated for having to watch this drivel. Torture, with no effin' reward.
Yessir
Yessiree
Yes for You
and
Yes for Me
Weirdly, JM, "Trolley Dodgers" was sort of an insult—like "rubes"—Manhattanites threw at Brooklyn residents. Even though...there were trolleys all over Manhattan. It's as if today we sneered "Subway Riders!" at them...
Yeah, those Dodgers!
So...they are spending lots of money to make their product as good and attractive as possible for their many customers.
That's...that's positively un-American!
As for rebuilding...all for it. But here again, we hit THE CASHMAN CONUNDRUM!
Does anyone seriously expect the man who likes to draft and sign pitchers because they HAVE had serious arm surgeries, to be able to rebuild your New York Yankees?
Didn't think so.
Also, I have no idea what the Mets are doing, but they've never sounded very keen on Bellinger. As for Toronto, well, better to run to Toronto than to run to a girl you don't want to.
I was just talking with the two guys I used to work for, one of whom is a Dodgers (and Rams) fan. And even he said the Dodgers are just going crazy, and thinks MLB should do something. That's why he likes football better--there's a salary cap, and everyone has to build a team within it.
I'm not so sure about that, but certainly this kind of profligate spending has reached Citizen Kane-reporter-poaching levels. LA is making King George look like a total piker.
Which I would mind less if it wasn't for the shady accounting and deferments. Something not right there, just like the Ohtani-adjacent gambling.
But I can't keep the Wolfs from the door, Hoss!
Ever notice that each Wolf ate a pound of meat and every Buck ate a dozen eggs, and a dozen cost a buck? Freeloading relatives were obviously a much hotter topic 120 or so years ago.
This is why Stevie and Hal are not spending to win a championship. It's already been decided...
@JM...they will have to create a hard salary cap...you can't have one team severely go over the soft salary cap and pay the ridiculous penalty sum and have a competitive league...
It is probable that after, the lockout , there will be a hard cap but one that allows all previously existing contracts to be grandfathered in by some formula that creates an "even "playing field going forward after they expire.
So it behooves the Dodgers and any other team to lock in talent, even at a higher cost, prior to the lockout, to give them an advantage out of the gate and before they need to get clever in the creation of their budgets.
This of course implies that the Dodgers want to win. No such assumption can be made about the Yankees.
Bo a Met
Shocked
Like
Not
OK
certainly is time
That is stunning. "The Metsies have two shortstops." WTF? Could it be that Stearns is some sort of genius after all?
I disagree about the hard cap. First off, the free agent era has been easily the most competitive in baseball history—particularly the last 25 years. The big-spending Dodgers also took big risks. A couple of injuries—or the Blue Jays get a little luckier, or Boone gets infinitesimally smarter—and they win nothing and have a huge bill coming up...
Second, a hard cap is classic, cartel behavior (and what is a league, really, but a cartel?). Yeah, they cap their costs—payroll—and make no promises whatsoever to cap prices. So essentially, fans in big markets (us) are subsidizing play around the league.
All teams are equal...but all fans are not, with those in a few cities expected to fund stupid, uncaring, and undercapitalized owners in other towns.
Any hard cap should be accompanied at least by:
—A hard floor on franchise payrolls.
—A hard ceiling on ballpark and viewing prices for fans.
—A hard set of capital requirements for who gets to be a major-league owner—not just, "you buddy."
—A hard end to ripping off cities and states in bidding wars with each other.
"Competitive balance" are nice words to say only if they come in a fair environment for all. Otherwise, it's just (more of) owners ripping us off with no consequences.
I agree with you, Hoss. A salary cap only helps the owners make more money. Which of course is why the owners will try to force it down the players' throats. And I thought the luxury tax was supposed to penalize the "rich" teams and help the "poor" teams. So now if they rip that up and do this thing with the salary cap, that is admitting that the luxury tax didn't work. How 'bout fucking Rob Manfred enforce the luxury tax rules by making the Dodgers pay luxury tax on Ohtani's contract, instead of allowing them to bypass the rules by deferring money? Deferring should never have been allowed to affect the luxury tax computation. By allowing it, everybody could defer their payrolls to get around the rules. It was shortsighted and stoopid of fucking Rob Manfred.
The other thing is that international players from Japan are allowed to all go to the Dodgers. That's got to stop. MLB has to figure out a better way to divvy up those players. It's created a severe competitive imbalance. Getting an elite player from Japan should maybe forfeit ALL of your draft picks for that year, maybe even for two or three or four years. These guys should be rated in talent by MLB.
Allowing a player's contract to pay almost all of its value ten to twenty years into the future? Are you fucking kidding me? The player could be fucking dead ten years from now. Who would they be paying? His family, beneficiaries? What the fuck is this, a goddamned life insurance contract? Why should the Dodgers not pay luxury tax on all of it on a per annum basis?
What the fuck are they going to do next? Let the fucking Dodgers pay Ohtani $1 per year and $500 million per year fifty years from now? This is a fucking joke.
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