1. The 22-16 Yankees lead the AL East, three up on Boston and four over the hateful Jays. (And four behind today's record, on the right.)
2. To the rapture of YES, Aaron Judge is chasing .400 - hitting a Ted Williamsesque .396 - though his HR total stands at only 10. (Today, he has 15, tied for the most in baseball, and hitting .270.)
3. Ben Rice has risen to No. 3 in the Yankee lineup, hitting .261. (That's 79 points below his current BA.)
4. Anthony Volpe is our everyday SS, batting .230.
5. The Yankees are about to win 13 of their next 17 and seemingly run away with the AL East.
Well, so much for time machines. As you may recall, around Memorial Day, 2025, the Yankee Edmund Fitzgerald hit an iceberg and sank in the Strait of Boonefuk, off the coast of Cashmanland. Toronto took first, and the Yankees spent their summer chasing a wild card. Deja vu, all over again.
I note this because last winter, the Yankee brain trust chose to rerun the same basic roster of 2025, and here we are, where we were, hiking circles in the deep dark woods like campers in The Blair Witch Project. We've been here before, but it remains a mystery how we got here.
Listen: It's hard to find hope when your team looks completely outclassed, as the Yankees did last night.
We can tell ourselves that the batting order hit a buzzsaw, an unhittable starter and a lights out bullpen. We're not playing Baltimore anymore, and the National League looks like a raging dogfight. We can tell ourselves that help is on the way - Carlos Rodon will pitch Sunday. We can tell ourselves that Spencer Jones is here, and an experiment has begun, and maybe the Yankee farm system will save the day, after all? (Last night, George Lombard and Volpe: 1-4, each with a SB.)
Dunno. It's still too early to gauge this team. But last year's hot streak in May? We've gone through it, a bit ahead of schedule. We we've been here before. Has anything really changed?
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13 comments:
Nothing makes my morning like mixed shipwreck references! Thank you!
Let's just run the same team out there. It'll be different this time. We caught a few bad breaks, a few injuries last year. This year, it's all going to come together and we can - AND WILL - win it all before everybody gets locked out for an extended labor dispute. Hot damn! Baseball is so much fun these days.
A little off topic, but I'm wondering what will happen with the new CBA after the lockout.
Consider this -- Ca$hole has ruined many a prospect with (in addition to horrible player development and coaching) by yoyoing them between AAA and MLB. And he's doing it to many of the current prospects. Part of the reasoning for this is apparently controlling service time to lengthen the time to free agency.
What if he has done all this and the new CBA changes that to make it all for nought?
GENIUS!
I wouldn't worry about that, Rufus. Cashman is really, really good at finding new ways to finish in 2nd place and then get booted out of the playoffs faster than the Titanic sunk after grazing that giant iceberg.
That loss last night was a look at the true 2026 Yankees. They can beat up on the Orioles all they want, they're not going to convince me that they're championship caliber. The three losses in Tampa & now they're probably going to be swept in Mill-Walk-Key.
The Battlin' Bronx Bastards are back! See the BBB get their butts handed to them! Watch in amazement as they have to fight their way out of the ice freezer known as the Korean Peninsula, surrounded & outnumbered by naked & bootless & rifleless Chinese Communists 10 to 1. Hell, they're not retreating: they're fighting backwards! Coming soon to a theatre near you!
And don't forget - the naked Chi-Com soldiers have huge Red Sox logos tattooed on their butts and foreheads....
Baseball, like all physical competitions, has an enormous psychological/mental component to it. I don't think it was coincidence that Max Fried fell apart in the 2nd inning. After watching the Yankees look like they might get no-hit through two innings, you can almost see wheels turning in Fried's head: "I better shut these guys down - have to pitch a shutout if we're going to have a chance to win". And you can't pitch like that. Nobody can. He started throwing ball after ball. And you know what happened next. The dreaded Yankee infield defense made it's appearance. The rest was history.
Too bad we don't have a pitching coach who knows what to tell his pitcher in those situations. A pitching coach doesn't earn his pay when everything is going great and you're beating up the Orioles 12-1. A pitching coach earns his pay when he's able to calm down his pitcher when it's 1st and 2nd or bases loaded and nobody out.
When a man is running as fast as he can, he should not feel as though he should run even faster.
It's the coach's job to remind the athlete of that. It's amazing how much of an effect "feel" has on physical performance. Just like the Yogi Master said "baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical" (or something like that).
The team’s flaws were I’m full display last night. Spencer Jones is NOT the answer. The offense will not remain buoyant all season, and the bullpen can explode anytime.
And then, there’s boone.
Pitching is starting to come down to earth as well. That's how it happens: all phases of the game start going to hell in a handbasket. Pretty soon, they're losing 16 out of 20. Pretty soon, they're close to last place. We've seen this movie before many times.
But it's good to see a ball club that relies on youth, speed, contact, skill, fundamentals. A size friendly ball club. I may have found a new favorite team to follow!
And as good as the Yankees looked against the Orioles, I think we caught them boyds at the right time. Ditto with quite a lot of the teams that we thrashed this year. I think the Yankee record so far this year is an illusion, a house of cards. It's all gonna come crashing down sooner or later.
They looked this bad when they faced Skenes the first time too...they'll be alright....and always look that bad against Eovaldi
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