2. On the last pitch of 2026, Jazz Chisholm was breaking for third. Would he have stolen it?
3. Did Paul Goldshmidt's two rather lame Yankee seasons help or hurt his Hall of Fame chances?
4. Will Aaron Judge ever again be Aaron Judge?
5. Are we going to wait on Anthony Volpe for the fourth straight year?
6. To be sated, how much money do the Steinbrenners need?
7. In our lifetimes, will the Yankees ever develop a homegrown all-star 3B?
8. Are the Yankees prisoners of a HR mentality that stems from the right field "porch?"
9. What happens if the Mets ever field a great team?
10. Considering the state of the world - from measles to diesels - should we even bother to think about 2027?
I mean, Tim Hill will be a free agent. Why the fuck should anybody care?
Chris Kirschner of The Athletic has ventured forth--or sallied forth, or fourth and 1 (go for it!)--with his predictions for our free agents. I can't disagree, though I still like Hill if Boone can stop overusing him.
ReplyDeleteGrisham--Goes
Chisholm--Goes
Bednar--Stays
Goldy--Goes
Schreiber--Goes (does Jack Burns have to go with him?)
Hill--Goes
Rosario--Goes (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease)
Yarbrough--Stays
Blackburn--Stays, Singing in the Dead of Night
Fulmer--Goes and Why the Fuck Was He Ever Here
Sally had the whole lineup and that’s a natural fact.
DeleteWe're an American band
DeleteWe're an American band
We'll come into your town
We'll help you party it down
We're an American band
Like the Blackburn joke, JM.
DeleteThat's a lot of Goes.
ReplyDeleteBlackburn and Yarbrough will mean a jubilant winter!
ReplyDeleteThere is no pain, we are receding
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering
I was hopeful that Boone would have replaced Karoline Leavitt as the administrations new Press Secretary but unfortunately that did not come to pass (in part because they could not find a (and I’m….like, you know. . . . quoting here)
“a blonde look that worked for Boone”
The world is a vampire.
7. It was Mike Lowell
ReplyDeleteFor the Marlins and Redsocks.
DeleteCorrect, and they quickly traded away " Mr. One Testicle" to the Marlins.
DeleteYes, even when they make the right decision, they fork it up.
DeleteVery true, Rufus! Also, poor Miggy might have made it, save for another freak injury. Otherwise you have to go back to Clete Boyer, and beyond him, Red Rolfe.
DeleteCollectively, probably Genius Cashman, info from Genius Fishman, Clueless Hal and others.
ReplyDelete3- He makes the HOF easily.
ReplyDelete6- As Ted Kennedy stated in response to corporate opposition to raising the minimum wage circa 2007, "How many billion dollars more are you asking... when does the greed stop?"
So the answer is there isn't enough money. It's a sickness.
8- The answer is dependent on what the number of years left the average person here has left. So the answer for most of us is " No."
10- The answer to that is similar to the question " How deep is the ocean, how wide is the sky?"
1. Who made the decision - Cashman, Boone, Hal, Judge, Dua Lipa? - to bat Giancarlo?
ReplyDeleteA: Fan Duel.
2. On the last pitch of 2026, Jazz Chisholm was breaking for third. Would he have stolen it?
Yes but then he would have been picked off.
3. Did Paul Goldschmidt's two rather lame Yankee seasons help or hurt his Hall of Fame chances?
All HOF players get a couple of years at the end of their career that don't count. Mays on the Mets. Randy Johnson on the Giants.
4. Will Aaron Judge ever again be Aaron Judge?
Was he ever Aaron Judge to begin with?
5. Are we going to wait on Anthony Volpe for the fourth straight year?
I hope he gets DFA'd and opens "Volpe's!" a marginal Italian Restaurant and then he cas wait on me. (because he will be a waiter)
6. To be sated, how much money do the Steinbrenners need?
Death comes for us all.
7. In our lifetimes, will the Yankees ever develop a homegrown all-star 3B?
Kind of amazing that they never have. It's almost statistically impossible right? Who was the last one Bobby Brown?
8. Are the Yankees prisoners of a HR mentality that stems from the right field "porch?"
No. They just suck.
9. What happens if the Mets ever field a great team?
They will still lose.
#5 - Hey, that's terrible! LOL
DeleteP.S. Will he still be wearing Charles Tyrwhitt whilst waiting on you? And will he still have that hot model girlfriend? I would think "no" and "no".
Delete4. I think there's about a 60/40 chance that Judge is done. 60% chance that he'll never be the same again. It's hard to stay King of the Mountain for long. Sooner or later, the injuries mount up, or you do something stupid to kill yourself, or some newbie becomes the next big thing.
ReplyDeleteJudge made a lot of dumb mistakes recently. After the elbow injury in 2025, you'd think he'd have taken it easy during the winter. Just continue to rehab the elbow, strengthen that ligament. Cross-training, lay off baseball activities to allow recovery. Come back stronger in 2026, right? Nope, the big bozo trains all winter to get ready for the World Baseball Classic. Pretty obvious that he's not at 100%. Then, in the early part of the season, it's obvious that he's battling something, something is wrong. And it turns out that he's got the same injury as before: a 1st rib stress fracture. You're supposed to get smarter with experience. And that means you don't make the same mistake twice. He had the same injury as before and tried to play through it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Probably made it much worse. If this same injury ever happens again for a third time, his career might be over. Because it'll require surgical intervention and a much longer recovery time.
Judge might be unable to take as much batting practice as he wants due to the threat of this same stress fracture happening again. He might never be able to regain the same form.
We'll see if he comes back next year (if there is a next year) and hits laser line drives off fastballs out to right field and moonshots to centerfield off 100 mph heat. These would be signs that he's still got it. Pulled homers to left don't really prove anything because anyone can hit a hanging slider out. It's those shots to the opposite field and straightaway center that scare pitchers to death. Hit a 100 mph fastball out to right field, and that pitcher will be afraid to throw strikes. His walk rate zooms up and he's over 1100 OPS. Then you'll know he's back in form.
Judge being dumb would also explain his public support of Boone.
Delete5. I would give Anthony Volpe a shot at 2B. First of all, it would be smart to let Chisholm walk away. (It would've been smarter to have traded him away, but that chance has flown away.) So they have a hole at 2B. Volpe should continue doing what they taught him at AAA. They ironed out his swing, made him go the other way more. Why couldn't the coaching up here do that? And that is the trillion dollar question. I think the coaching here sucks, run by fucking Cashman and Yankee AI. I've said for years that Volpe has to work on shortening his swing, go the other way, spray liners. And you do that by leveling up your swing and hitting liners through holes. Stop trying to hit moonshot homers. Big difference between hitting .300 with 15 homers and hitting .210 with 25 homers.
ReplyDelete6. The answer is in the old Tolstoy short story, "How much Land does a man need?" Six feet, to bury him in. Ergo, for the Steinbrenners, only enough to buy their coffins.
ReplyDelete7. Don't think so. For some madball reason, the Yankees never draft or develop or trade for a young 3B. They go for stopgaps or move SS over to 3B. For crap's sake, they even had Volpe over there for a game or two! Yankee management is hopeless.
Your answer to # 6 reminds me of the joke about asking a guy, but not your friend, if he wants free land. If he says yes, proceed to kick him in the balls and say " Here's 2 free "achers."
DeleteThat is a hoot, Carl! I gotta remember that one.
Delete8. No. It's got nothing to do with it. They've won with lefty pull hitters and they've won with lefty line drive hitters that spray the ball around. It's the manager and the coaching that's the biggest problem right now. They don't correct mistakes, tolerate bad approaches, allow bad hitting to fester. A real manager would never allow Jazz Chisholm to do what he just did this year. Chisholm has too much talent to be striking out on three huge swings. Just a lame ass approach. What can we do, except laugh?
ReplyDeleteWe can stop watching.
Delete8. BTW, Trent Grisham is a lefty pull hitter, and he was part of the problem. He is a career .200 hitter who draws some walks by taking a lot of pitches and he hits cookies out of the park. That's his game. Exactly the kind of game that Cashman seems to prize. It doesn't work in the playoffs because Grisham is not good enough. The pitching gets smarter in the playoffs, they're more talented than the average pitching in the regular season, and they zero in the hitter's weaknesses. The pitches are on the margins and the cookies stop coming. Grisham stops hitting. Simple, eh? Boone & Cashman think it's just bad luck. That's why Grisham will be back here for 2027, if there is a 2027. And that's part of the reason why the Yankees will not win in 2027, if there is a 2027.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to harp on Grisham like he's the only reason they can't cut it. But looking back now, the Padres made the right decision to get rid of him, and Cashman made the wrong decision to get him. This is exactly the kind of hitter that you don't want, if you want to win. You don't even need to look at any advanced stats. Do you want a barely .200 hitter on your roster?
ReplyDelete1—I'm guessing Cashman, though I am very suspicious of Dua Lipa.
ReplyDelete2—Yes, and when the throw got away from the third baseman, he would have sprinted for home and been gunned down, providing an even more agonizing way to end the season.
3—They did not hurt him. He should be first ballot.
4—Yes, Aaron Judge will bounce back. Sure, his stats will decline with age, as they do for all but the juicing. But he really is a dedicated ballplayer, and he wants to win.
But in no way, shape, or form should any valuable Yankee be permitted to play in the World Baseball Classic, ever again. I don't care what Rob Manfred wants.
5—Actually, 2027 (or 2028) would be our FIFTH year of waiting on Anthony Volpe. Godot never made us wait like this.
6—Sadly, the Steinbrenners value their accomplishments solely in terms of money made, so they will never be satisfied. And yes, they will still die.
7—As Rufus wrote, Mike Lowell did it. And I think Miguel Andujar might have done it, if not for that awful injury.
In the past, Clete Boyer never made an all-star team, though he certainly deserved to. Gil McDougald did—and also made the game at second and short. Dr. Bobby Brown did not get enough at-bats to do so—and was not considered a good fielder at the hot corner.
Bill Johnson, a third sacker who had a terrific rookie year in 1943, missed the next two years due to the war, came back and made it in 1947. (Johnson was always very frustrated at having to split time with Brown at third, and was eventually traded.)
And finally, Red Rolfe—the greatest ever, non-juiced Yankees third baseman—did it four times in the 1930s.
8—It was stupid to put in that porch. For years, the Yankees beat Red Sox teams hobbled by lineups constructed largely to take advantage of the Green Monster, while the Bombers benefited by having a team that could play anywhere.
But all lessons from the past are lost on the man who lives only in the stats in his head, our general manager.
9—The Mets fielding a great team would be a great thing, because it's the only possible scenario that would push Hal Steinbrenner to make the Yankees a champion.
10—As for 2027, well, I see it starting with an earthquake, then birds and snakes, an aeroplane, the eye of a hurricane, wire in a fire, government for fire and a combat site, book burning, blood letting, and listening to ourselves churn.
But I think we'll be okay, as long as we're not coming in a hurry with the furies. I mean, at least Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
And yes, Grisham should go, and Jazz should have been traded. Might keep Schreiber, though.