The brilliant Widdle Billywitz put his finger on the Yanks' REAL problem this weekend, in the Times today, attacking "the increasingly apparent deficiencies of two rookies, third baseman Miguel Andujar and second baseman Torres, who lately have looked more like the greenhorns they are."
Widdle Billy went on to castigate Torres' lack of hustle at times—very true—and then to assert that "Andujar had a dreadful series in the field in Boston."
Well, you knew this was coming, didn't you? Our Knights of the Press Box could not ABIDE the fact that the Yankees were actually able to prosper playing "two rookies at the same time," something they had pretty much proclaimed to be a physical impossibility, any historical evidence notwithstanding.
So much like the Inquisition deciding to turn the screws on Galileo, the Knights of course had to blame the Boston series on them.
Our 35-year-old leadoff man is, as ever, melting faster that the Wicked Witch of the West in this summer heat. But the problem was the rookies.
Our 38-year-old starter pitched like he was 98. But the problem was the rookies.
Our still-waiting-to-fulfill-that-potential first baseman played so badly the manager actually subbed in Luke Voit. But the problem was the rookies.
Our closer spit the bit—yet again—in a big game. But the problem was the rookies.
No, Torres did not have a good series, and yes, he should be called out for not hustling. But in the 7th inning on Sunday—when Didi, our sadly inadequate 3-4 hitter, was striking out yet again with two runners in scoring position—Rookie Torres at least brought (what should have been) a crucial fourth run home with a sacrifice fly.
Rookie Andujar contributed to a botched rundown on Thursday, sure enough...that was mainly the fault of our completely inept relief pitcher, on a night when the staff gave up 15 runs on 19 hits.
On Friday, meanwhile, Andujar was the ONLY Yankee to get a hit or score a run in that gobsmacking meltdown against Rick Porcello.
And I'm sorry: the ball was in the first baseman's glove, in time for the final out of the game. When the ball is in the first baseman's glove, it should stay in his glove.
Andorra now has 46 extra-base hits in just 100 games. Only Stanton has more. El Matador also has the highest batting average of any regular on the team.
Torres has an OPS of .883. Only Judge, "The Man Who Could Only Hit At Home," has a higher one.
The kids are not the problem. But given the opportunity the Knights will run one or both right out of New York, just to "prove" they were right.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
"We Told You We Were Right"
Yankee victory reduces Wild Card Magic Number to 48!
The victory kept pace with Oakland - our new blood rival - and reduced the Yankee Wild Card Magic Number - (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing) - to 48. Forty-eight. Hooray, yahoo, whoopie, yabbadabbadoo.
Well... there you have it. In theory, we should understand the Wild Card Magic Number, and the economic incentives of bringing the big game to NYC. In the aftermath of this weekend's visit from Mr. Ryan McBroom, it's hard to give a soggy crap.
So we beat the mighty White Sox? They are 30 games below .500 and 25 off the Wild Card pace. Yippee. Say, did you know that Blake Rutherford - the former top draft pick we traded for David Robertson and the Toddfather last year - is hitting .306 and has re-established himself as a Top 100 prospect? In ten years, I wonder what we'll think about that trade. Probably nothing. Wait a minute: Shouldn't we be giddy about Lance Lynn's performance last night? He surely just added an extra zero to his free agent contract next winter. Maybe he'll be our big missing rotational lug nut over the next two months. Maybe he'll be our Wild Card starter! I dunno. I wonder what we gave up in Luis Rijo, an under-the-radar prospect, and Tyler Austin, who might have brought a fighting edge to Boston this weekend. Instead, we had Luke Voit. Luke Voit. Luke Voit. Luke Voit. Luke Vo-
Sorry. Glitch in The Matrix. I lost it. Oh, well. I keep reading how the Yanks miss the "big bat" of Gary Sanchez. Does anybody remember that his "big bat" was hitting .188? The Yankees seem to be now presenting Sanchez as a hero - that night when he jogged us into a horrible defeat, he was secretly injured. What a mensch! How dare we criticize his lack of hustle! Soon, he'll return. Yungawumba! Whoo-whoo! (I dunno. I still think the best thing that could happen to Gary would be a trade to a small city that doesn't even contend for the Wild Card. Four years in Cincinnati, and I bet he'll run out grounders, or tell his coaches when he's hurt.)
One other bit of Yankee news: Last night, Michael Kay stupidly criticized Clint Frazier for being injured. It was a clunker of a statement by a professional communicator, and Kay quickly tried to walk it back, saying he was being facetious. Good grief, even our announcers are botching easy grounders and throwing to the wrong base. Before Kay could move, Frazier had snapped back on Twitter, and thousands of fans came to his defense. This is important? A Twitter dust-up between a YES home announcer and a player who probably will never play for the Yankees again?
Last time I looked, Frazier hasn't hit one MLB homer in 2018. He has one RBI. In April, he disappeared into the Scranton coal mines, and search parties never did find him, though they heard clanking metallic sounds, suggesting he was alive. I dunno. We've all wanted Frazier to be the next big thing, but something about the last weekend puts a damper on any hope. If the Yankees do what I think they'll do next winter - sign a Jeter Morning After Gift Basket of expensive free agents - Frazier never will see an opportunity in New York. Just another particle in the ocean. The Yankee barge lists slightly forward. Our Magic Number is 48. Zowie!
Monday, August 6, 2018
Somewhere in the Dakota Territory
Dispatch from the Black Hills, for the New-York Tribune.
Your correspondent attended the tea for the gentlemen of the press, where we spoke to Priv. Aaron Boone, lately arrived from the battlefield at the Little Bighorn, and newly appointed press secretary for the 7th Cavalry. Here is the transcript of that discussion.
Boone enters, still covered in dust and looking shaken. He nods to a reporter.
REPORTER: Private Boone, is that an arrow in your hat?
BOONE: What? Where?
Boone raises a visibly trembling hand to his cavalry hat, and takes it off. His hair is completely white. He pulls out the arrow that has pierced the entire crown of his hat, his face blanching.
B: Um, yeah, could be.
R: Private, was the 7th Cavalry humiliated at the Greasy Grass?
B: Humiliated?! No, of course not!
R: Was Col. Custer's entire battalion wiped out?
B: Well, yes.
R: Were most of his men scalped?
B: Umm, I think those are the preliminary reports we've had. No one wanted to get too close—
R: Were most of the bodies stripped of their clothing and mutilated?
B: Look, I can see where you're headed here, and if you want to call it a humiliation, call it a humiliation. But these things happen over the course of a long campaign.
R: What went wrong? Is it true that your carbines were faulty?
B: I don't want to cast blame here. You go to the Indian Wars with the carbines you have.
R: Is it true that Col. Custer divided his forces in three? Was that really a wise decision in attacking a force of Indians three-to-four times that of his own?
B: Hey, anybody can Monday-morning quarterback. But at the start of the battle the colonel had no idea the odds were that lopsided.
R: So are we to understand then that no reconnaissance was done?
B: As you know, it is the philosophy of this army and General Cashman back in Washington that we don't want to discourage any field commander from practicing our "Dare to Charge Right the Fuck In" strategy. Or, as it's called elsewhere, the "Dare to Take a Tomahawk in the Face" or "Dare to Take an Arrow in the Liver" strategy.
The algorithms back at the War Department have proven over and over again that this is the way to win battles. Every respectable army in the Western world swears by them.
R: Did Sitting Bull swear by them?
B: Well, Indians. You know what I mean? I know I'm going to get into a lot of trouble on the telegraph for saying this, but those guys just don't know how to fight wars like civilized people.
R: Does this mark the end of the campaign to subdue the Sioux and Cheyenne?
B: What year is it, everybody? 1876, right? So chill out. Imperialist expansion is not a short-term project. There's still a whole lot of slaughtering to be done. In the past, we've done some of the slaughtering. Yesterday, it was their turn. Tomorrow, we'll be doing the slaughtering again. I'm very pleased with the outfit we've put together, and I think soon we'll be right back in it.
We just have to do a better job of executing. And I do mean executing.
R: What is the reason for this optimism?
B: Oh, lots of things, lots of things. This past winter we recruited one of the most promising batches of waterfront toughs, cutthroats, and street brawlers I've ever seen, the numbers are looking very good on the number of buffalo we've killed, and we're actually ahead of schedule in turning the fragile grasslands of the High Plains into a lifeless Dust Bowl. So it's all good.
Big picture: I've been in this war game long enough to remember how upset people were about the slaughter at Fredericksburg. And the slaughter at First Bull Run. And at Chancellorsville. And Chickamauga. And Second Bull Run. And Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the Battle of the Crater. But who won the Civil War, huh?
R: Private Boone, have you heard any of the news from back East? Are you aware that a new professional baseball league has been formed?
Boon (looks baffled) Baseball? What the hell do I know about baseball?
Chronicle of a Humiliation Foretold
We all saw this coming, didn't we?
Some of us—not me—were actively predicting it. All we were missing in Boston this weekend was the pineapple, the humiliating ninth-inning meltdown.
It came out of the way this team was constructed, so much worse than the not-terribly-deep but really-well-balanced Beantowners. Somehow, one of the deepest spring training teams I've ever seen, had been reduced to the Standard Cashman Model, desperately thin in bench and pitching.
Somehow, the ten—count 'em ten!—bee-you-tee-full outfielders we had in the spring had been melted down to Shane Robinson in right field, without a blessed thing done to alleviate that situation at the trade deadline.
Somehow, none of our starters could make it through the sixth inning. Somehow, Jonathan Holder became the vital piece in what all the Knights of the Press Box assured us was the greatest bullpen the world has ever seen.
But it goes back longer than that.
I had a twinge of pain when I saw the ESPN noodniks flash a graphic informing us that Machine Gun Chapman has saved 22 straight games going into last night—still far from the 36 consecutive saves The Great One had run up in 2009 for the Yankees record.
Did anyone ever really think that we were going to see this gigantic riddle of a man standing tall on the mound at the end of a World Series, the way that the great Rivera did four times?
Hell, in his one encounter with such a situation, Chapman got ripped to shreds by the Indians, and ended up standing as enigmatically as ever in the Cubs dugout while Carl Edwards, Jr., and Mike Montgomery bailed him out.
(To be sure, he actually may have helped Chicago win that Game Seven. The Indians beat him up so thoroughly in the eighth inning that they were swinging out of their shoes on every pitch in the ninth, instead of having the Sandy Leon-like patience to wait out what we now know would have been Chappie's inevitable crash and burn in a flurry of walks and singles.)
Our response to witnessing that effort should have been, 'He's all yours, Cubbies, and thanks for The Gleyber!' But not with Odysses Cashman, smarter by far than a smart man.
This pitiable, spiritless wreck of a team has come up at last against what has been staring it in the face for years now. There is simply not enough savvy, concentration, or passion at the top to make it anything more than a sometime contender.
Sure, if Cashman goes out and buys enough talent this off-season, we might get lucky some October, in a modern baseball world where one-third of the teams make the playoffs, and at least another third are always tanking.
Sure, if baseball continues to follow the inane Tampa Bay model, everybody will be a 110-130-inning pitcher, or a hitter with 20 homers and a .220 average, and that version of the sport will be almost by definition a crapshoot, in which the Yankees will be just as likely to win as Kansas City, or Shoeless Joe from Kokomo. Or the Mets.
But to me, that ain't baseball. And it sure as hell ain't Yankees baseball.
Welcome to the Boone Swoon, (aka another Cash Collapse)
Two years ago, September of 2016, the Yanks roar into Boston with a last-ditch shot at the AL East - four games out with a four-game series ahead of them. The YES team is delirious with hope; John and Suzyn have talked it up for weeks on the Yankee Radio Network, driven by Jeep.
In game one, Dellin Betances gives up a walk-off HR to Hanley Ramirez. Over the next three games, the vaunted bullpen blows three and four-run leads, giving Boston a four-game sweep, leaving John and Suzyn driven by cheap.
Which brings us to now. This weekend, we kept assuring ourselves it couldn't get worse. But it never stopped. They beat us in a shootout. They beat us in close games. They beat us in the ninth. They beat us without Chris Sales. They beat us without Ian Kinsler. They beat us over and over, as they would if we played them 100 times... they beat us without breaking a sweat.
This morning, only an idiot - or a Yankee-paid employee - would claim the Yankees belong in the same sentence - much less the same division - as Boston. The Yankees are a middling team full of holes and without a core leadership, sinking like a lead life-jacket, and folks, I have fucking seen enough.
I hereby surrender! "UNCLE!" Please, pull up the waterboard. I'll cut the renunciation video. Just put the statement in front of me, and I'll read it. Please. Make it stop.
I beg you. Just stop telling me how brilliant Brian Cashman is, and how the Yankees are so well run, and how our farm system is so stocked, and how we "won" the recent trade deadline. Please. No more. Take pity on me. Stop. Just... stop.
Since July 25, when we sent three quality prospects to Baltimore for a three-month rental of Zach Britton, the Yankees are 4-7. (The Orioles, worst team in baseball, are 5-5.)
Since July 27, when we sent two excellent young players to Toronto for three months of Mr. Hoof-n-Mouth, J.A. Happ, we are 3-6. (The Blue Jays are 4-5.)
And on and on.
Please. Just stop. I can handle the bottomless emptiness of this Yankee black hole. It appears like the Shadow Monster every time we put a runner in scoring position. You can smell it, like a giant invisible turd, a virus that infects veterans and rookies alike. You can sense where we're going: To a season where all our stars will get their "numbers," and we will finish somewhere, as we have done now since 2009.
Yes, from now on, the Yankees should be identified by the proud mantle: "Winners of the 2009 World Series!"
Come October, we'll have several players with 25 homers. Everyone will win higher contracts. And we will forgive events that would never be tolerated on winning teams.
I still can't over the game when Gary Sanchez jogged out a grounder with two outs in the ninth and the tying run about to score. I'm stuck in a time vault, reliving it over and over. But here's real beauty of our malaise: We never condemned him. We just pretended Gary was hurt, as if his presence in that game was heroic - not an embarrassment to the franchise. Subsequently, we've watched infielders fail to cover bases, jog out their own grounder and fail to make fundamental plays with games on the line. We've watched this team lose in every conceivable fashion, from shootouts to blowing a three-run lead in the ninth. And yet we tell ourselves it will all be rectified when Gary (batting .188) returns? Dear God.
Please. Just stop. I don't want to do this anymore. Please, Yankees, just get this over with. Have the dignity to go on a long, painless losing streak, which will free us to enjoy the month of September. Keep losing. End this charade. No more false hopes. I have had enough.
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Stretching The Truth Into A Bright Future
So the word is; " Chance Adams did a respectable job. This was the bright spot of an otherwise miserable day," they said.
And some of you foresee Tom Seaver in the wings.
Certainly all the Yankee-paid , talking heads gave the same opinion.
And I don't argue against the point that the Yanks, from minute one, would have been smarter to bring up Adams and Sheffied than trade all we had left for the guy with hoof and mouth disease, and the 33 year old from the Twins. Oh, and some lug nut named Luke who will play first base in Trenton.
But I feel compelled to respond to the positive evaluations of Chance Adams;
1. He did take all heart out of the Yankees and lose the game in the first inning. That two run blast by Moreland set the fans and the Red Sox up with a confidence booster. Like a shot of adrenaline.
2. His hair suggested that he was throwing better than he was. It made us all think us all of Jacob LaGrom ( Met guy ?) who has demonstrated more heat, more command and more talent, albeit across town.
3. At least three of the outs he earned would have been base hits, save for incredible " shift" positioning by Didi.
4. Most other outs were what I describe as " rockets." I think there is even a statistical category now for " hard hit balls." Well, Chance registered about 8.3 on that Richter scale.
5. Too many 3-2 counts. Not much evidence of an " out " pitch. Therefore, he was burned and dusted by the end of five innings.
6. Great defense saved him from even more damage, and nearly put Aaron Hicks into the hospital.
7. Just to remind us that he never really " got on a roll," was the 35th home-run of Martinez, who is light years ahead of our big sluggers in that category.
8. I saw nothing , in terms of his stuff, to hang my optimistic hat upon. His speed was average. His breaking balls were not devastating. He had nothing for which he was famous ( eg: high heat from Nolan Ryan; precise placement of Maddox, Cutter of Mariano, Curve of Gooden, attitude of Gibson...).
It is true that 3 runs in five innings against the best team in baseball, at their ballpark, left the Yankees ( in theory ) with a chance to win the game. But the ERA was not good. He recorded, what, 2 K's?
The reason for all the optimism, is that everyone expected him to give up 12 runs in 2.1 innings.
Leaving this Yankee team down 3 runs with 4 innings to go, on the road, is pretty much a guaranteed loss. And this pitching effort paled, dramatically vs the debuts of both German and Lasagne.
Just saying.
Don't get your hopes up. " Not awful" is a low bar to set.
Boston fans are right: The Yankees suck.
So go the Yankee hopes for 2018. It's come down to that: Maybe we will just magically, suddenly become blessed by the gods, or the fates, or random happenstance, or juju.
So comb that lucky rabbit's foot, folks. Yesterday, the juju gods were not on our side, and neither were the umps. Just sit back and cheer, and maybe things will get better, right?
Well, Suzyn, you can't predict hogwash. It just comes in too many forms. But if any conclusion can be summoned from this horror show weekend, I'd say luck has had little to do with the Yankee losses. In every phase, Boston has proven itself a vastly superior team, and the Yankees look like a one-dimensional, middling, busload of losers on a road to nowhere.
The crowd chants were right. The Yankees suck.
Watching these games, it's as if a mask had been yanked away, and the princess we thought we were dating turned into Vladimir Putin. For the first time all season, we've been able to see the truly dead soul of the 2018 Yankees. It hurts to think the things I'm about to write.
Brett Gardner is now a fourth outfielder at best. Yes, we love him. But he hits .240 with no power, no speed, and overrated leadership qualities. In recent weeks, as we've lost games due to lackadaisical play, has anybody busted a water cooler? In one terrible loss, Gardner stuck out with the tying runs on base, swinging at a 3-2 pitch well out of the strike zone. When he comes up, hope flees. Yet we have no replacement. In fact, we're playing a Triple A retread - Shane Robinson - in right field. Meanwhile, the Gammonites glow about what a great trade deadline the Yankees had. Does anybody judge trades by actual outcomes any more?
Our closer, Aroldis Chapman, nearly needed a shrink two weeks ago, after the All Star break, when he couldn't throw a strike. Now, thanks to a steam of losses, he's gone practically another week without being used. Does anyone think he'll hold the line in a close game?
We have nobody - pitchers or catchers - capable of stopping Boston's base-stealers. How did this happen? The Redsocks run the bases without a care in the world. How does this happen? Isn't there a fundamental baseline of incompetence, below which in the majors is simply not allowed? I mention this because one crowning defeat may be awaiting us tonight: The winnable game blown in the ninth. The ultimate pineapple colonoscopy, folks. Nothing would be more fitting. Brace yourselves. The worst is yet to come.
For various reasons, which trace directly to O'Neill's happy talk, the Yankee-owned media wants us to think this team is merely in a slump. Soon, we will rattle off a 10-game winning streak and be back to where were last week, four games behind Boston. Well, I'm not so sure. We just dropped our pants and exposed to the world not our manhood, but the sad weaknesses of an overly hyped team.
Oakland won again last night. They are now 3.5 games behind in the Wild Card. That's the next wall to crumble.
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Reasons to Be Cheerful
As some of you may have gleaned, I'm not really a "glass half-full" kind of guy.
It runs in the family.
On Armistice Day, when everyone was throwing confetti and drinking moonshine whiskey from a boot, my great-grandfather said, "Ah, we're just going to have to go back to Europe and fight the whole war all over again."
When TV came in, my grandmother said, "Ah, another 60 years or so and the kids'll just be projecting movies on their walls again, mark my words."
When they started the internet, my father told me, "Ah, it'll just become an excuse for lazy no-accounts to get drunk and blubber about their favorite baseball team."
You see what I'm getting at here. The thing is, it's generally pretty easy to be right by being as pessimistic as possible in this vale of tears. That's why I was so angry at myself, in an uncharacteristic fit of optimism, to have looked at this stacked Yankees team and its eager new manager in the spring and said, "They're gonna win 112 games!"
"Stuggotz!" my sister said, slapping my head and throwing me out of the house when my family disowned me. "What, you think Cashman suddenly grew brains? You think he went anywhere?"
What was I thinking?
BUT, in another, uncharacteristic bout of runaway optimism, I will say this about the game today: there were signs of life. Reasons, maybe, even to have hope. Which is like wishing for reasons to have plague.
But I'm bringing in the shade of Rod Serling now, to submit the following for your approval:
—Under the most trying conditions possible, Chance Adams did not suck. In fact, he was actually quite respectable.
Sure, part of his performance only makes you wonder why he didn't get a shot last season, when Coops was throwing prospects at GMs right and left for the likes of Sonny Gray and Jaime Garcia. And it makes you wonder about our entire, nimrod front office's ability to judge talent.
But...maybe we actually have another young pitcher. Fingers crossed.
—The bullpen looked solid. First clean outing for Chad Green in a long time. Another decent outing for A.J. Cole, who may yet prove to be one of Cashy's genuine dumpster diving finds.
—A little fire. Sure, it took awhile. Cora mouthing off about our best pitcher, that home plate ump who had a reservation at the No Name Fish Restaurant tonight punching out Walker and Gardner in the ninth on close calls. Kimbrel putting one under Stanton's chin.
BUT...that seemed to finally do it. There were signs of life, of concentration. Of clutchness, even.
All unfulfilled, of course, thanks to yet another big fail from Greg Bird, whose time on this team should also start winding down.
But...
It was something Leo Durocher used to say, according to, I think, Roger Angell: You let sleeping dogs lie. You don't ever rile up sleepwalking, second-division teams. That's what the Yankees were.
But this Red Sox team, which now seems to have become as churlish and cocky as its fans, couldn't leave well enough alone. They chose to take offense at what was a perfectly fine, tit-for-tat, Sevvy brushing Betts back after they plunked Gardner exchange.
They chose to make it World War Z...and they woke up the zombies, in the end. Kimberly's purpose pitch to Stanton—with a 4-0 lead, the Yanks almost finished with another somnolent effort, and much of the lineup showing how well it had absorbed the inane franchise dogma of, "Dare to take a called third strike"—was a tactical error.
It's not a coincidence that back-to-back doubles and two walks followed. That these Yankees looked fully focused for the first time in over a week, at least, and actually mad for the first time in over a month.
You go out of your way to humiliate an opponent that is already mailing it in, and you haven't done yourself any favors. Kimbrel got to put 32 more pitches on his arm, and look pretty vulnerable. The Yankees looked mad.
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but this suddenly seemed like a team that might even be interested in trying to win ballgames again.
Our Hitting Coach Sucks
None so far today.
Seven more innings of nothing.
Is everyone asleep?
File A Protest!
This just in: the Red Sox are cheating.
Yep, there's no doubt about it. Tyler Kepner's column in the Times today reveals all!
Are they stealing signs again? Corking their bats? Spiking the Yanks' after-game artichoke salads with saltpeter?
Oh, much, much worse than any of that!
Get this:
"The Yankees lead the majors in homers, but Boston ranked sixth of the 30 teams, while also leading everyone in stolen bases and ranking just 25th in strikeouts."
That's right! Why, Kepner even notes that the Sox have struck out just 7 times in this series so far, while "the Yankees fanned 11 times in five innings against the fill-in starter Brian Johnson and that was without the injured (and whiff-prone) Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. They fanned nine times against Porcello on Friday, and ranked eighth in the majors in strikeouts at game time."
It gets worse!
Kepner reminds us that Alex Cora was bench coach for the Astros last year, "whose hitters pulled off the nearly impossible feat of leading the majors in slugging percentage while ranking last in strikeouts."
Get this—it seems that he has brought these cheating ways to Boston, where he is "encouraging players to hunt pitches to drive early in counts, and at least make contact with two strikes."
My emphasis. Because I want to ask you...WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???
This isn't the New Baseball at all! What about swinging for the fences on every at bat? What about "daring to take a called third strike"??
Why, Cora even CONFESSES it:
"In an era that guys swing and miss at a high rate, it you put the ball in play with two strikes and men in scoring position, it's very important. With the defensive alignments, there's a lot of guys in other spots. With two strikes, you spread out, put the ball in play, you might beat a shift or put pressure on the defense."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
What the hell is he doing, using strategy to adjust to strategy?? What does he mean, picking back up tactics that have worked in baseball for the past 150 years???
Just keep telling yourself to breathe, breathe now, and keep repeating: "algorithms, algorithms, algorithms."
A Prayer For Owen Meany
What Exactly Is Hoof Nad Mouth Disease, Anyway?
Brian Cashman must have had someone on his staff do the negotiating, otherwise he might have contracted this bovine disease himself.
The " ground zero" of this new plague upon the Yankees, looks like this:
JJ Happ has to be the only player in history to have arrived at the stadium with full blown hoof and mouth disease.
One wonders about the due diligence process, but I digress.
So JJ can't be in the clubhouse ( it is contagious ). He shouldn't even be in the state. And he must not mix with cows and horses.
The symptoms expected are;
1. Low velocity
2. Lack of command
3. No bite on breaking balls.
4. Give up three run homers in late innings.
5. Induce no double plays, but lots of doubles.
6. Absence of " out" pitch
7. ERA in the 5's.
8. Pushing retirement age.
9. Short-term contract.
Hopefully, with rest and isolation, he can pitch to Jesus Sanchez and we can all have a moo.
Time is running out on Aaron Boone
Pray For Rain
The sky is falling on the 2018 Yankee team.
It is like being a recent graduate in Basra, Iraq.
There is no work. The temperature is 110 degrees. The electricity is on, erratically, maybe two hours a day. Most of the power comes from Iran, but they are cutting back due to to the drought.
You live in a region accounting for 70% of the nation's oil wealth, and yet you don't have money for food.
Inside the oil field compound, 96% of the workers are foreign. There are Mercedes and BMWs parked outside the executive offices.
You protest because the government promises jobs that don't materialize.
You can only get someone to read your application for work if you pay a bribe of $5,000. But you can't come close to that. So you protest against corruption.
Fights break out over a generator.
Protesters attack government buildings and set them aflame. The roads in and out of the oil fields are blocked, to draw the government's attention to the plight of the protesters.
Eventually, because they are losing control and don't know what to do, the local security guys start shooting. People die. Iraqi's are killing Iraqi's.
The protests widen and spread to other cities. The government in Baghdad gets edgy.
Everything seems to be falling apart.
And everyone thought the war was over.
What say you, Aaron?
Friday, August 3, 2018
Potpurri of Disgust
Tonight, I close my windows.
Even though it's 103% humidity and temps are in the high 80s and I live in a 139-year old house with no air conditioning, central or otherwise, I'm going to close my windows and bake and sweat until I have a shiny, inch-thick patina and generally look as miserable as CC did last night.
Why am I going to do this? Because last night I screamed FUCK YOU at the television so many times, I think my neighbors have all started a Change.org petition to get me shit-canned from the 'hood.
[Sorry for all the harsh language but those guys pissed me off royally last night.]
A client of mine, who hails from Erie, PA is a big Pittsburgh Pirates fan. At the time we sent him to the Pirates, Ivan Nova had proved himself to be another in a long line of frustrating Yankee pitchers to watch. I warned my client: Nova will dazzle you at first. He'll give you a few good starts and get your hopes up and just when you start to think you won the trade, he'll let you down.
It never happened. Nova has performed passably well for the Pirates. Why? Because the Pirates have a pitching coach and we have Larry Rothschild. Which brings us to Jonathan Holder.
I blame much of Holder's performance last night -- both in terms of getting batters out AND knowing something about baseball fundamentals, you know, like executing a rundown or knowing what to do when your opponent attempts to steal a base -- squarely on Boone and Rothschild.
Letting a pitcher give up seven runs on five hits without getting an out is inexcusable. Those two yutzes chewed their seeds and stared straight ahead and did nothing. I would have loved to see the dugout camera pan down the bench to catch every single player staring at Boone waiting for him to do something, anything.
When Holder saw Benintendi trying to steal second, I have to guess he never threw the ball because he assumed Boone was coming out to get him and that time had been called. But it wasn't.
My client from Erie sent me an article from today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In it, the Pirates' pitching coach, Ray Searage, talks about looking forward to working with Chris Archer and hopes he can be an "easy fix" the way Nova and Happ were:
J.A. Happ, that was an easy fix,” he said. “Nova coming over, that was an easy fix. You just see a little thing and it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s try this.’ And then it clicks, and then all of a sudden they just run with it...Does that sound like any quote you've ever heard coming from Larry Rothschild? Or from Aaron Boone for that matter? The Pirates' coach is a guy talking about seeing a little thing, trying out some ideas, watching something click, and then enjoying his players "running with it". He's talking like a professional coach who's good at what he does.
Our manager, by contrast, lets a guy give up 7 runs without getting an out and afterward says things like:
We have to do a better job, play a cleaner brand of baseball, especially when things are hard...That's the sort of mush-mouthed bland-speak that doomed Jeb Bush in 2016 and it will ultimately spell the end of the NYY clubhouse when an all-enshrouding soporific malaise descends over everyone. The players are all going to stare at runners trying to steal, waddle after passed balls, and lope back to the dugout after striking out. As a fan, you can feel it coming like another dreary batch of this awful humidity.
As far as actually watching his players -- you know, with his actual eyeballs -- Boone appears to be watching something else ... or maybe just the back of his eyelids ... or maybe that chick A Rod was gawking at back in the day. When asked about Gleyber Torres' lack of hustle last night, Boone was quoted in the NY Post as saying:
“I didn’t see that.”Any outraged Yankee fan on the verge of a stress-induced heart attack (like, say, me) also remembers Boone's response when someone asked him to comment on Gary Sanchez' lack of hustle just last week. You remember, Yankee fans, this was when Sanchez failed to run to first base with the Yankees down by a run in the ninth. We all saw it. Here's what Boone saw:
“I’d have to watch that,” Boone said.When asked separately about Sanchez waddling up the third base line earlier in the same game to retrieve a passed ball and allowing a runner score, Boone said:
“It’s another thing I’ve got to look at.”What game is this guy watching?
KD said in a comment this morning that he believed this team-wide letdown is "all the result of the Sanchez Contagion which Boone let fester."
Yer durn tootin' it is.
Ok, this rant is over. The game is starting soon. I'm going to go grab a beer and close all my windows. I've got Boone and Rothschild on a short leash tonight. Unlike those two, I'm watching and I'll take action if I see professional players not doing their jobs.
Just ask my neighbors.
The Yankiverse could be soon looking back fondly on Joe Girardi
He sure had his share of mess-ups, especially in the bullpen, but I don't recall anybody loafing under Joe.
Just sayin.'
What Are The Chances?
But!
We all know that everything I just ranted about ain't gonna happen.
This is sort of like the moment after Howard Beal in Network has just had the lecture from Ned Beatty's character, and accepts the real world limitations.
Let's face it:
—The Steinbrenners—the Snopes clan of the sporting world—aren't going anywhere.
—Brian Cashman will be their general manager until he chooses to retire, or has a horrible elf-rappelling accident.
—The franchise will be filled up with more and more Ma Boone minions at every level.
So what can we reasonably hope for?
Well, what happened the one time that Cooperstown Cashman won a ring with what was—more or less—his own team?
He was given permission to go out and buy up every big free agent on the market, all of whom had a good-to-great year.
So...forget all this rebuilding stuff. It's not going to happen, and Coops has no idea of how to bring it to fruition.
The only way we will ever see another World Series banner lifted in Yankee Stadium in our lifetime is to do it the only way Coops knows how.
This coming offseason, he might as well go out and sign up Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Patrick Corbin, and any other free agent he can find.
Will most of their contracts become battleship anchors around the team's neck, eventually dragging us back down to mediocrity or worse?
Yes. So what?
It's exactly the fate that the Steinbrenners deserve after sticking us with this awful little putz of a GM for so long. It's the only punishment they will ever understand or absorb: their profit margin will be slightly affected.
And in the meantime, we may—MAY—get to have one more happy, championship season, listening to all those Red Sox fans grind their teeth.
Enough
Enough with worrying about the Bud Selig Classic.
If we make it, that will only make this season into a pro-Cashman, pro-Boone narrative: 'Oh, look at all the injuries this team overcame to make it to the postseason!'
Yet as we all know, if we go on like this, two years from now these Yankees will be in fourth place with a losing record, and everyone will be wondering what happened.
Enough with this consummate office politician who has never really learned a thing about the game, but who is unrivaled at making both his bosses and the press believe that he is a genius—and who wants to surround his own self with yes men and puppets.
What they need is a new GM and a new manager, both of whom should be hungry, intense, and willing to consider a new approach to the game as it now is.
Enough with the "Dare to take a called third strike, swing for the fences every time up" approach.
Back to spoiling tough pitches with two strikes, hanging in, hitting to the opposite field—especially against the shift—and taking the double, single, or walk if you don't get the gopher pitch. Back to occasional steals, surprise bunts, starting the runner to stay out of the double-play.
There was a reason why this became the game in its highest form: because it worked.
Enough with the trend toward "You, too, can be a middle reliever!" This idea will kill baseball deader than box lacrosse as a big-time sport.
Back to teaching minor leaguers several different pitches, and how to stretch themselves, and get through even a whole seven innings sometimes. Back to pitching around the one good hitter on other teams, instead of mindlessly challenging him as if he were a third-string defensive catcher.
Enough with players, especially young players, who don't want to bother running or learning fielding fundamentals. Trade their sorry, unengaged asses for guys who realize that playing major-league baseball for a storied franchise in New York City for a king's ransom will be the time of their lives, and who are happy to hustle all the day long.
And frankly, enough with this insatiably money-grubbing ownership clan, which has no real interest in building a dynasty or creating a great fan experience, but just adding more bars of gold to a pile that already reaches roughly to Mars.
I know, I know: I will regret those last words when the Steinbrenners sell out to, say, Jimmy Dolan. It can always get worse, and the story of modern America is that it probably will.
But I still like to think that somewhere out there, lurks a savvy, intelligent, visionary individual with the guts of a burglar and the heart of champion.
Say, anyway we can swap franchises with Derek Jeter?
Groundhog Day
"Good mooooorrrning, Punxsutawney!
"And turning to sports, what a roller coaster year it's been for those Yankees, huh?
"Why, on June 12 they were 38-23 and looked like the fresh-faced team of the future! Then, through September 1st, they went all of 33-40, as general manager Brian Cashman insisted on playing the washed-up Chris Carter, putting Aaron Judge out there with an injury, and trading for nonentities like Jaime Garcia and Sonny Gray. But the team got it together, finishing 20-8 to make the wild card, and once you're in the playoffs, you know, ANYthing can happen!"
"Good mooooorrrning, Punxsutawney!
"And turning to sports, what a roller coaster year it's been for those Yankees, huh?
"Why, on June 21 they were 50-22 and looked like the juggernaut team of the future! Now, through August 2nd, they've gone all of 18-17, as general manager Brian Cashman insisted on playing the washed-up Neil Walker, putting Gary Sanchez out there with groin and brain injuries, and trading for nonentities like J.A. Happ and Lance Lynn Lance. But this team still has time to get it together and make the wild card, and once you're in the playoffs, you know, ANYthing can happen!"
Boone explodes!!!!: "We have to do a better job, play a cleaner brand of baseball, especially when things are hard..."
(From a comment by Local Bargain Jerk.)
Aaron "O so Carin" Boone has gone Hulk Smash.
"We. Have. To. Do. A. Better. Job."
There you have it, Yankee fans. Problem diagnosed, solution at hand.
Sevy up. Chance Adams tomorrow. Dear God. I'd call for a Juju Intervention, but it's too embarrassing.
I Feel Better Than All Of You Today
I am a coward.
I have learned that extreme stress can cause heart ailments and even death.
So I chose not to turn on the Yankee game. After all, they are playing in Boston. Those fans remind me of mobs in Tehran. And for them to witness and cheer the humiliation of the Yankees, brings back the storming of the US Embassy and helicopters failing in the desert sand.
So I decided, early, to protect myself from my own rage. Like the ostrich, if I don't see it happening, then it simply isn't happening.
As an alternative, I join my wife in the exciting game of watching real estate live from Waco, Texas; " do we re-model our house, honey, or buy a new one?"
Drinking barrel bourbon on the rocks does the trick and, soon enough, the game in Boston has ended. The score sent me shivers, yes, but no high anxiety where I throw things and propel myself into the drywall.
After Sonny Gray's meltdown against the Birds, thus setting up the ruination of our pitching rotation in Boston, I saw little reason to be painted red by the performance of a superior organization.
Neal Walker is still playing. Clint Frazier is learning how to make birds in origami class, Jesus Sanchez is inhaling burritos and ice cream sandwiches, Torres is playing second as if he were Gary Sanchez, and the menu of observations cited by El Duque ( eg lack of hustle, meaningless power, bad defense, zero managing finesse, poor pitching, etc.) validate my cowardly strategy.
I am alive today, and the house remains undamaged and in order. There is not a single strand of spaghetti clinging to the dining room wall. Can all of you say the same?
I plan do the same for the next three games.
When I rejoin the living, we'll still only be out of first place by 8 or 9 games. And we'll have all that talent recently acquired by Brian Cashman, re-shaping the team into older mediocrity. A team with no chemistry and no energy. A team shaped after solo homers, weight, and lack of hustle. A team with Gray but not Sheffield.
I do worry about the wild card, though.
Scoreboard baseball: With Oakland off and Mariners losing, Yankees maintain lead in Wild Card race
*Nine years old, that is.
I say, let's wait 'till Gary Sanchez's leathery hamstrings heal, sometime in September! Then, he and Gleyber Torres can have a race - see who takes longer to get to first on a grounder. (Did you see Gleyber "run" in the seventh? Shades of Joggy Cano!)
So Jonathan Holder doesn't know what to do in a rundown? Who cares? Last night, they stole second base without Holder throwing a pitch. I always wondered why they call him "Holder." I thought it was his real name. Now I get it: It's his stage name!
So Miguel Andujar lobs a throw to the plate, allowing Jackie Bradley to score? Well done! A creative way to lose.
And veteran Zach Britton doesn't bother to cover first on a grounder? Welcome to the Yankees, Sir! You're already feeling at home!
Giancarlo? He sure showed 'em. Buy him an ostrich suit! His big solo blast in the seventh cut the Redsock lead to seven! No reason to get on base and try to start an inning. Just take your cuts. They all look the same in the seasonal numbers. You can't predict baseball, Suzyn, but write this down: If the Yanks are way behind late in the Wild Card game, I predict Stanton goes deep. Wait and see.
Why rage against these Yankees? There's no shame in losing to a better team, especially when its hungrier and actually plays to win.
Besides, we need to save our strength for the Wild Card. Time for Boonie to start arranging the rotation. I suggest we go with Sonny Gray. He's always been our Wild Card. Why change now?
Thursday, August 2, 2018
A post while we are being massacred in Boston
La-la-la-la-lah.
Tell me again how this was going to be the weekend we gained ground.
It's time to bang the Gong on Sonny Gray
Thus, when the Yankees traded Tyler Austin and Luis Rijo for Lance Lynn, despite my urge to climb the cage and hurl feces at my captors, I sat back and twiddled. I held back my indignation, even though I saw us acquiring a 31-year-old tin can, who'd been jettisoned by the Twinkie for no other reason than they were tired of looking at him. And although you cannot predict baseball, Suzyn, one general rule is that fading 31-year-olds don't magically become 25 when they don pinstripes.
Moreover, I couldn't fathom why we needed Lynn, a sixth starter.
Well, today, thanks to Sonny Gray, I understand.
GONNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
Yesterday, Sonny cleared up my confusion, once and for all. Friends, it's time to stop the music. Surely, there will come a game in September when the Yanks are down by 14, and we've already used Cale Coshow and Brady Lail, not to mention a few position players. That's when we can welcome the sight of Smilin' Sonny Gray, the Pinstriped Tweetmeister, marching from the bullpen to embody every reason why the Yankees are having an off-millennium.
1. He is the latest in a long conga line of twentysomething, contract-controlled "power arms" that have become as Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman's version of the "manic pixie dream girl" from depraved indie movies. From Jeff Weaver to Javier Vazquez to Michael Pineda, the Yankees keep trading for them, and they always disappoint. Frankly, it's a wonder Cash didn't cut a deal for Chris Archer, because all he could see was Greta Gerwig.
2. He is also our version of a "too big to fail" bank during a financial crisis. Regardless of his performance, Sonny was guaranteed a slot in the rotation, despite the kind of outings that would send a no-name back to Scranton. The Yankees just keep waiting for him to gain command. He has a semi-hopeful outing - maybe six innings and three runs - and we tell ourselves he's here! And then... poof. Over and over... poof.
3. He is another trade acquisition whose whole positive focus has steadily evolved into ranking on the players we gave up to get him. In this case, only Dustin Fowler - whom the A's last night demoted to Triple A - has an MLB track record: hitting .231 with 6 HRs and 6 SBs. (He's only 23, so there's that.) The Yankees can point to Oakland and say Sonny came cheaply. But wasn't it yesterday that we were explaining how the collapse of Jesus Montero justified Pineda? When that's the positive, you're in trouble.
Yesterday, the Yankiverse learned the reason behind trading for Lance Lynn. Clearly, he should replace Gray in the rotation, and if he fails, I'd happily substitute Luis Cessa, and then Justus Sheffield, and then see who's hot in Scranton. The most intriguing rumor of the recent trade deadline was that the Yankees were offering Gray in deals. Now there are racially offensive tweets, which popped up yesterday. Can you put a guy on the DL for being an ass?
Look, I'm trying to be calm about this. No sense popping a gonad at the keyboard. We have Lance Lynn. Let's tuck Sonny deep into the bullpen, make it into September when the rosters expand, pitch him in 14-run games, and then - come December - trade him somewhere, anywhere, for whatever we can get. GONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG. Sonny Time is over.
Blame It On the Gleyber
Blame it on Cain
Don't blame it on me.
Oh oh oh it's nobody's fault
But we need somebody to burn.
—Elvis Costello
So, if you're a Newsday reader, it's pretty obvious what happened yesterday: Gleyber Torres screwed up the whole game.
Yep, that's the take from one Owen O'Brien, covering the game for the Long Island paper of record:
https://www.newsday.com/
You see, the Gleyber didn't cover first in time to field a bunt in the second inning, and he didn't get to second in time in the third inning, and there was a play in the ninth inning that O'Brien felt he could have made, all of which combined gave the Orioles one extra run.
At the plate, by contrast, Gleyber hit two home runs and drove in four of the Yankees' five runs.
But it was all Gleyber's fault.
The rest of the team put on yet another clinic of how not to hit in the clutch. They left 10 men on base and ran their streak to 19 consecutive at-bats without getting a hit with the bases loaded, before Andujar finally singled in a run in that situation in the 8th.
Immediately afterwards, of course, they reverted to their winning ways with Romine striking out and Irreplaceable Neil Walker grounding into a double-play with the bases loaded.
But it was all Gleyber's fault.
Sonny Gray, meanwhile, set an all-time record, becoming the only man EVER to start 4 games in a season in Yankee Stadium, in which he left after surrendering 5 or more runs and getting fewer than 12 outs.
Sonny's ERA in the Bronx is now 7.71, and the fateful inning when Gleyber Didn't Cover First also included four ringing singles, a double by a .206 hitter, a walk to a .157 hitter, and an inning ending double play on a hard hit fly to right.
But it was all Gleyber's fault.
Gray also managed to do something never seen before, which was to ruin not only his own start against what amounted to a minor-league team, but also spoil the Yankees' pitching rotation against Boston by forcing Lancelot Lynn to pitch over four innings of wasted relief, instead of getting to throw against a Red Sox team he had just done pretty well against.
But I'm sure that was Gleyber's fault, too.
If Phil Nevin really wants to yell at somebody where it would do the most good, his target should be his idiot boss, Brian Cashman, who has once again managed to screw up a highly promising Yankees team, or his manager, Ma Boone, who obediently keeps penciling in inane lineups and failing to light a fire under anybody on this flat and disinterested team.
But hey, why do that when you can take it out on the 21-year-old rookie who is the best hitter you got?
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
In My Dreams
Do you remember when Byung-hyun Kim gave up a ninth inning home run for the second straight game in the 2001 World Series, and Bob Brenly came out to the mound and hugged him?
My fantasy scenario for today is:
Second inning, 0-0 game. Danny Valencia on first with a single. Sonny Gray walks Chris Davis, with his .157 batting average.
Immediately, Ma Boone jumps out of the dugout and runs out to the mound, where he wraps Sonny Gray up in a big Brenly hug.
"You're hurt, son."
"Whaa? No, I'm—"
"You're hurt, son. That's what we're going to tell the ump so the next guy will get all the warm-ups he needs. But you're also hurt, son. Hurt in the head. And it's all our fault."
"Huh? I'm okay—"
"No, you're not. And it really is our fault. We should have known better than to ever think some little manchild named Sonny could ever pitch in New York, for any team not named the Mets."
"But—"
"Don't worry, kid. We'll stick you in the back of the bullpen to mop up for the rest of the season, then ship you someplace you'll like. Maybe you can go to Cincinnati with you-know-who. Maybe you can go to Kansas City. I don't know—and frankly, I don't care. But you're coming with me now, son. You have made your last start ever for the New York Yankees."
I Hereby Re-Name Gary Sanchez; Jesus.
You all remember when the Yankees had a highly touted catching prospect; Jesus Montero.
Montero kept having trouble catching the ball. For one thing, his head was too large for any conventional face mask, and one had to be forged in Indiana. For another, it seemed his mitt was made of the same resistant steel as the mask.
His amazing hitting in the minor leagues did not translate to the major leagues. He had power, but would tend to go 1-35, with his one hit being a solo dinger, and the remainder of his outs were rally-killing double plays and egregious strike outs.
He was, of course, traded to Seattle for a pitcher who amounted to nothing, and the arguments still endure about which team did worse in the deal.
One day, whilst in his Seattle uniform, a fan verbally and visually assailed the ever expanding waistline of Jesus Montero by showing this:
:
And sending a few to the bench.
This engaged the young man. Who pretty much disappeared from the game.
So, until Gary Sanchez re-images himself, I am re-naming him : Jesus Sanchez.
In 2018, he is hitting like the original Yankee Jesus ( under .200 ); he cannot catch the ball;
he is too pudgy to run or hustle; he hits into rally-killing double plays, he strikes out endlessly, and he spends most of his time not playing.
Seriously, folks, he has been awful in 2018 and most players would not have survived this long with the big club.
So Gary is the new Jesus.
And we all know what happened to him.
Does Anyone Know The Story?
I admit that I have not tried very hard.
But one of the big Yankee stories of the year has to be the absence of Ronald Torreyes.
He has been " on leave" of some sort, due to a family issue. It sounds like something awful has befallen him and his family, though I prefer not to conclude that. I prefer to remain hopeful.
We all know Torreyes to be a fine utility player, a great teammate, and an inspiration to many. And yet, he is playing no where.
I have been away a lot, scouting and raising funds for the South Mexican Dirt Field League, where there is no WiFi. So I have missed a lot.
Surely, John and Suzyn must have shared some information on the TOE by now.
Please share if you know the tale.
Many thanks.
Good teams rally when a star is hurt; the Yankees are a good team
We picked up a game on Boston last night.
Holy crap. They're human, the 2018 Hall of Fame Redsock Superteam of Destiny (TM.) We're still five back, four in the loss column. But we are now 4-1 since Aaron Judge stopped a fastball with his wrist, and there is one positive about minor injuries: Unless your first name is Jacoby, a guy can't get hurt while sitting in the Jacuzzi. They say Judge has ditched his wrist brace and could be back this month (Note: It's now August.) They also say Clint Frazier did not suffer a concussion - (they must have Manafort's lawyers parsing the words) - but is facing "fogginess." Hey, aren't we all?
The updates came via Cooperstown Cashman's post trade deadline happy talk session, rendered before the Evils whupped a charity pick-up team that was once the Baltimore Orioles. Poor Buck Showalter. I haven't seen someone so tortured, being forced to watch unfolding horrors, since Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange." Today, we play them again, and I think it was Paul O'Neill last night who noted that when you play a two-game set against the worst team in baseball, the split is not an option.
But hell, I've buried the lead. Boston yesterday received a Reality Gram from the juju gods: Chris Sale's bionic shoulder is barking, and he will miss a start. The Redsocks sprang into pooh-pooh mode, saying it's a minor tweak thingy. Sale himself claims it's just a flesh wound, ma-am; he'll rub some dirt on it and get back out there. I, for one, hope he does. Because if this were a Yankee pitcher - not the least their ace - I wouldn't believe a fucking word that came out of the organization's maw. Yesterday was THE crunch moment of the 2018 trade deadline - they announced Sale's injury after the 4 p.m. shutdown - and that's no coincidence.
In fact, I'm sort of amazed that the Boston media seems to have swallowed the Sale "no problem here" party line without a hiccup. An inflamed shoulder is nothing to screw around with, and Sale is about to miss what is the most important series of the season, thus far. Before this, he had been lights-out.
Boston's September schedule includes three games each against Houston, Cleveland and Atlanta, plus six against the Yankees. Anyone who thinks the Division race is over, they're wrong. All we need to do is keep beating the tomato cans. Yeah, it's now August. But the month has 31 days, and there is plenty of time. Win today, and we could hear those nine magical words once again, heading to Fenway.
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