What's keeping the Yankees afloat? A.L. Slop

 

With due respect to Mr. Magoo and Emperor Palpatine, nothing derails a movie like a clueless, unfiltered old fogy, who is flying 30,000 feet over his head and calling the shots, and we all know who I'm talking about.

The Yankees, of course.

With their "mature" lineup - "mature" meaning "aging" - the '25-26, same-as-last-year Yankees are a boring, bumbling team that needs 10 walks per game to score runs. When they lose, as they did last night, they are particularly dreadful to watch. They are Saturday Night Live hosted by Elon Musk. Basically, you have Aaron Judge, a few anecdotes by David Cone and the NAME THAT YANKEE trivia question. After that - well - Ben Rice might turn out to be something. And Giancarlo always entertains, until he gets hurt. The bullpen cannot hold leads, and the starting rotation will only get older. 

But but BUT... we are in first.

How can sit here, farting into my back-breaker office chair, and denigrate a FIRST PLACE team? Am I that spoiled, that out of touch with the realities of baseball? If they're so old, so listless, why are the Yankees in first? 

I say, it's A.L. Slop. 

Yes, Artificial Lousiness.  

Particularly, let's celebrate the once-mighty AL East, a division that was supposed to rule baseball, which - for now, anyway - is a collection of cupcakes and canned tomatoes. 

For example, did you happen to see the throw by Boston's future superstar, Roman Anthony, the other night? He snagged a one-hop single to left field and fired a cannon shot home, with a solid chance to nab a runner. The ball bounced about 30 feet from the plate plate, halfway up the 3B line. It was beautiful. It was magic. It had the makings of a Little League HR. The Martian, lost in Scranton, would be hard-pressed to match it. 

The line on Anthony, according to my Redsock fan sources, is that he spent the winter in the weight room, bulking up so he could wow the coeds over a full MLB season. (He got hurt last year and missed the playoffs.) 

Listen, Anthony is scary. He could be great, a future Yankee killer.  But maybe, just maybe, that MVP trophy that the Gammonites bestowed upon him over the winter - could it be premature? He wouldn't be the first great prospect to weight-lift his way into mediocrity. 

So, here's my personal vendetta list of cold-ass starts. 

Of course, it's wayyyy to early to assign meaning to these numbers. (And Jose Caballero, Jazz Chisholm, Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon  - the ballplayer, not the Onondaga County Executive - would all crack this list.) But the Yankees, for all their knock-kneed problems, have one thing going for them. 

A.L. Slop. Welcome to the new world.