Here are today's 10 signs...
1. Joey Gallo is attempting a comeback... as a pitcher. Makes sense. He sure hit like one.
2. The Gammonites are predicting improvements for Aaron Judge, due to the new automated strike zone challenge rule. Their claim: All his career, Judge has been screwed by human umps, lumbering neanderthals who expanded his 6'7" strike zone. Dunno. But I do know this: Last year, Judge was the best hitter in baseball. Are they really going to hang more expectations on the guy?
3. Could the automated zone help rookie Spencer Jones, also 6'7"? Dunno. But if Jones doesn't pan out, maybe they should cut to the chase and have him pitch? (Fun Fact: He was a great pitching prospect in high school, until he broke his arm.)
4. Gerrit Cole has a beard. Who knew he was one of them? (I think the Yankee clubhouse's demand for mustache wax is gonna rival that of condoms in Milan.)
5. Yesterday, in front of the Yankee brain trust, Cole thew two simulated innings and supposedly topped out at 96 mph. This is great news, unless it compels Cole to return too quickly. Then, it would be really, really bad news. Really, really, really. Which, I think, sums up the Yankees in many places.
6. Along with chin gardening, Cole showed off a new delivery. I hope he knows what he's doing.
7. After signing 35-year-old bullpen lug nut Rafael Montero, the Yankees quickly slotted him into Boonie's Circle of Trust. It's amazing how quickly a scrapheap acquisition can suddenly fill a massive hole, which the Yankees were refusing to acknowledge.
8. Montero signed a minor league contract, full of incentives. Fine. Cashman's great love is romping barefoot through the scrapyard. But Montero's ERA last year tanked at 4.48, and I suspect the Tigers experience PTSD from the sight of him. He was Mark Leiter (4.62), Ian Hamilton (4.28) though he still beat Camilo Doval (4.82) who inexplicably seems to be viewed as our 8th Inning man. Go figure.
9. They say Jasson Dominguez might need a year in Scranton. If so, what does it say about the Yankee front office's ability to assess and nurture talent? They will have effectively - perhaps permanently - screwed up The Martian. If he needed a season in Scranton, it should have been last year. They saw in spring training that he couldn't play LF. They wasted a year of his life, of his development. In another city, somebody would lose his job for this. WTF?
10. Is it me, or does the recent spate of insanely microscopic transactions - signing and waiving players at the end of the 40-man roster - suggest the Yankees are being run by an A.I. chatbot? If so, can such a team have a soul? Are you there, Yankee god?
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14 comments:
I’m breathing in and out slowly…
Boy, are they fucking up the Martian. Meanwhile, Volpe.
Meanie Meanwhile - what’z about all of us.
Maybe the fan base needs to spend time in Scranton.
Just saying
On a few other Yankees blogs I glance at some people ( a surprising amount actually) call him Cash Ninja and we have to put our trust in him apparently as he knows what he is doing and is at a different level to all the other GM's
Reminds me of the old Groucho Marx line
' Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? '
The Martian doesn't belong in AAA, and certainly not for a year. He is major league from the left side of the plate. Any other team would get him the right coach for the right side of the plate and get his right side going. (There are some obvious fixes for his right handed swing. Richard Schenkel, Aaron Judge's swing doctor, would fix these easily.) Any other team would try him out in CF, and if he was never going to be good enough defensively, would make him a DH.
The right move is to trade Stanton and make Dominguez a DH. Or sit Grisham and make Dominguez the CF. We all know Yankee management would rather do hara-kiri than either one of these. It's going to be another year of piss poor management.
I'm not surprised; many people, especially so called "experts", still think Cashman is doing a great, great, great job. No championships in 16 years; only one championship in 25 years. Yet, they still think Cashman is a demi-god. What gives?
I have some misgivings about Aaron Judge in the World Baseball Classic. Seems to me that the elbow problem he had last year was a sign that he should rest up this winter. And take it easy this spring training too. Instead, he's going to ramp it up and try to play at the top of his game for the WBC. I feel Judge might end up having an injury riddled 2026. Yankee management, of course, will use the Judge injuries as the excuse for why they finished in last place.
I heard Mookie Betts took insane amounts of batting practice every day in an effort to be the best hitter in baseball. And he was either there at the top or really close to it for a couple of years. I heard about how hard he worked and I thought, "this ain't going to end well for him". He ended up wearing a sleeve on his right arm, didn't he? And he really hasn't been the same since. His production has really fallen off the cliff. As the ancient Greeks always said, "moderation".
Aaron Judge was wearing a compressive sleeve on his right arm for a while even before they reported the elbow injury last year, right? When I saw the sleeve, I knew it wasn't good....
Hammer, your scenarios are all too likely.
First off, only a cartel as fundamentally stupid as MLB would keep the "World Baseball Classic" going. The morons who run the sport really think that they can make this the equivalent of the World Cup in soccer.
Baseball is not soccer, and never will be. There is no possible way in which a baseball, international tournament will compare to a soccer tournament. There is no possible way that baseball will ever be the global powerhouse that soccer is.
These are not bad things. To believe they are is like insisting that...I dunno...your favorite rock band should be trying to put on a great opera.
Sending down The Martian is an insane idea—and one that will, yet again, wreck a Yankee prospect because Brian Cashman is too scared to give his top prospect a true test run.
Cashman is a hysteric, who either throws each prospect out there too soon—as with Volpe—or holds him back too long, as with Rumfield and now Dominguez...
...I've heard all the praise lavished on him as well. It all seems to come down to: "Well, the Yankees have a winning season every year!" and/or "Well, the Yankees make the playoffs nearly every year!"
Neither "feat" is that difficult in this day and age. The Yankees play in the biggest market in the richest country in the world (at least, until another couple years of Fat Hitler ends that).
The extraordinary thing about New York sports is not that the Yankees usually contend; it's that all of our other teams do not.
And with the playoffs now extended to 40 percent of the major leagues, making the cut means less and less. Do we have political protests in which we rave about how much more "the top 40 percent" have? No, we do not.
So...utilizing what is always one of the very highest payrolls in any sport, and playing in the wealthiest market anywhere...Brian Cashman manages to usually contend.
Hurrah.
' Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? '
Ahem! It's in my avatar.
To be fair, "Tommy" is a pretty good 'opera' by an obscure rock band from England. Even if it's not really an opera.
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