A fish rots from the head down.

 

Well, that didn't take long. 

The latest exercise in fan torture yesterday, a game—on Easter Sunday, no less—played in brutal weather exposed this Yankees team for just what it is, 7-1 start notwithstanding. 

From the back-up catcher to the head honcho, the debacle revealed just how insufficient this 2026 "Run It Back" team—an expression that was actually beginning to pick up some cachet with local sports commentators and reporters, as if "Run It Back" were really a brilliant strategy instead of just the knee-jerk default of what has become an unbearably cheap and unimaginative franchise—really is.

To "run it backwards" to the top, let's start with the brilliant, ninth-inning decision by Aaron Boone to pinch-hit back-up backstop J.C. Escarra with two outs and two on, in a one-run game. One might have expected, oh, I dunno, former MVP and future Hall-of-Famer, Paul Goldschmidt to stride to the plate, thus serving one feeble, last ounce of hope to those fans who had stuck it out through a three-and-a-half-hour rain delay and wintery cold.

But no such luck.

Boone stuck instead with "the book," putting up Escarra, the Yanks' last left-handed hitter, against righty Anthony "I'm Not the Chief" Bender, for the Marlins. 

What "the book" might also have told Boone is that while Goldschmidt is, indeed, a better hitter against lefties (.323/.422/.584/1.006), he has—unsurprisingly—batted nearly over 4,000 times more often against righties, and done pretty well against them:  .277/.364/.479/.843, with 265 homers and 914 RBI.

Escarra, by contrast, in his wisp of a career, is a .171/.270/.303/.572 hitter in 89 plate appearances against righties—albeit with 2 homers and 9 RBI.  

This was a foolish decision to cap off a very long day, though hardly the dumbest thing done or said by a manager who should not be employed by any serious contender.  

That would be his statement, before the game, that he was looking for "length" from the team's one-and-only ace, Max Fried, because the bullpen had been so overworked.

Yep, that's what you need in an early April game played in the rain and the cold: pressuring your best starter to go long, just so you can save the Yanks' No-Name Bullpen. You remember all the times Casey Stengel used to say, "We gotta push Whitey, so Rip Coleman and Mickey McDermott can get some rest."  Makes perfect sense.

Moving up fish scales, what yesterday's game also exposed, of course, is just what a collection of noodniks Brian Cashman has assembled in the pen. Who could have guessed?

I mean where, for instance, was Angel Chivilli as day turned into dark on Sunday? 

Oh, laboring down in Scranton, it seems, after compiling a 12.38 ERA during spring training.

Chivilli, you'll recall, was acquired for one T.J. Rumfield, the LEFTY first baseman who Brian Cashman adamantly refused to give a chance...and who is now hitting a mere .345 for the Rockies, with a .992 OPS, 2 homers and 5 RBI so far.

Gee, think Rumfield might have been a better alternative hitting for José Caballero yesterday? 

Caballero, of course, is part of the Pacifists' Row that Cashman has also put together in the Yankees' starting lineup—a group that threatens to make the Run It Back team Running in Reverse. 

Between them, so far, Caballero, Trent Grisham, Ryan McMahon, Jazz Chisholm, and Austin Wells—who, like every other catcher the Yanks have developed under Cashman, came up looking like Johnny Bench and soon looked like one more bench johnnie—are batting a combined .154 (22-143), with ZERO home runs and all of 10 RBI; along with just 22 walks against 49 strikeouts. 

Most of the Yanks' lineup, like the pen, has been predictably awful. But don't expect to see any of them replaced any time soon. Hal, The Great Whatizzit who heads this stinking fish has already paid for this lineup, and he expects results, no matter how long it takes.

I was unfair, yesterday, accusing him of not canceling yesterday's game before it started. Apparently, the rule has been changed, and those decisions are now made by the heedless corporate entity known as MLB. Never mind the actual weather in New York, never mind the fact that on a major holiday some fans might have been eager to get back to friends and family—eventually.

No can do—because with MLB's brilliant decision to have everybody play everybody, Miami doesn't have a return trip to the Bronx, and having to reschedule anything would cause CHAAAAAOOOOSSSS!

So I can't blame that on The Heir Incompetent. But I can blame the organization he has put together for the Run It Into the Ground team. So much for the captain, Aaron Judge, telling his teammates that every game matters. For their owner, every dollar matters. Once again.