Neil Keefe

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason • Yankees Postseason

Oct 11, 2018

The Yankees Weren’t Good Enough Once Again

The Yankees’ World Series drought is now at nine years after the team’s disappointing performance in the postseason.

There have been a lot of times in the Brian Cashman era where I thought the Yankees were the best team in the league and they still didn’t win the World Series. In some of those seasons, they didn’t even make it out of the ALDS. This season, though, the Yankees weren’t the best team. They had the most talent. They just weren’t the best team.

The best team doesn’t have a manager who single-handedly swings a series for the worst or starting pitching that gets outpitched or a lineup that gets shut down by mediocre pitching. The Yankees had all these things and it’s why their real postseason lasted four games and why they had to play a game before the real postseason.

Top to bottom, one through 25 on the roster, I still believe the Yankees had the most talent, and on paper, should have won the division and should have represented the American League in the World Series. Underachievement, injuries and poor decisions forced them into the wild-card game, and those three negative traits eliminated them in four games against the Red Sox.

Just like that, the season is over. The grind that began in Tampa back in February and became official in Toronto is March is over, and for the ninth straight season, the Yankees’ season will end without a championship. The last nine seasons haven’t even provided a World Series appearance. The eight-year championship drought from 2001-08 has now been surpassed.

The final week or so of the regular season coupled with their impressive win over the A’s in the wild-card game and their effort in Boston in Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS served as a facade for the team’s real problems. The lineup was too right-handed heavy and was then shut down by two right-handed pitchers in Nathan Eovaldi and Rick Porcello. Their starting pitching was untrustworthy as seen by the disastrous starts of J.A. Happ, Luis Severino and CC Sabathia. And their manager’s lack of any managerial or coaching experience at any level was exposed on the postseason stage. When the Yankees failed to hit home runs, they failed to score, which put pressure on their rotation and forced their clueless manager to make meaningful decisions. When the Yankees failed to hit home runs, they failed to win. That’s not to say relying on home runs is wrong. It’s just that having home runs as your only source of offense is. And outside of Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez’s power display in Boston, the Yankees couldn’t score.

The Yankees supposedly arrived ahead of schedule in 2017. They were picked to finish close to or last in the AL East and they wound up winning the first wild card, winning the wild-card game, coming back down 2-0 against the Indians in the ALDS and coming within a win of the World Series. Their unexpected postseason run made them the AL favorite for 2019 and they fell short of those expectations. Well short. They blew their division chances in August, barely hung on to the first wild-card spot, and then after winning home-field advantage from the Red Sox in ALDS, they suffered the most embarrassing postseason loss in the team’s history as they would lose both home games in the series.

This season was a step back for a team whose natural progression should have been at least a second straight ALCS appearance, if not a World Series appearance. Yes, the MLB postseason is a crapshoot, and just reaching the ALDS should be enough, but not when you’re built like the Yankees. Not when you reach the ALCS, come within a game of the World Series and then add the NL MVP and swap out Starlin Castro and Chase Headley for Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar. That should have been enough to close the one-win gap the Yankees weren’t able to close when they went to Houston for Games 6 and 7 up 3-2 in the series. Instead, the gap is now even bigger than a year ago.

In the nine years since their last championship, the Yankees have three ALCS losses, two ALDS losses, a wild-card loss and three postseason-less seasons. Where do they go from here? I really don’t know. The team has many paths it can take this offseason, so that a year from now they are still playing games and not holding exit interviews and end-of-the-season press conferences. They have decisions to make on CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner. They have rotation spots to fill from within or outside the organization. They have to figure out who will be their first baseman and how they can add left-handed balance to the lineup. And on top of all that, they have to make the right choices when it comes to the best free-agent class in history. If you believe that the Yankees did arrive early in 2017 and that these last two seasons were just experience-building years then 2019 is truly the first year of this current team’s window of opportunity, and it can’t be wasted.

Success can be fleeting in baseball and nothing is guaranteed. On paper, the Yankees should be as good, if not better in 2019 than they were in 2018. But on paper, the 2018 Yankees should have been the best team in baseball, and their season ended short of their goal once again.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 11, 2018

NFL Week 6 Picks

The best part about your team playing on Thursday Night Football is that you only have to wait four days between games. The worst part is that you then have to wait at least 10 days until the next game.

The Giants are hosting the Eagles on Thursday Night Football this week in what is a must-win game for the Giants, and a need-to-win game for the Eagles. A Giants win would improve them to 2-4, tying them with the Eagles record-wise and putting them ahead of the Eagles head-to-head tiebreaker-wise. A loss would make the gap two games between the two teams and prevent an all-out quarterback controversy for the Eagles.

The NFC East might be won this year by an 8-8 team, and if things keep going the way they are in the division, it might be won by a 7-9 team. And there’s nothing better than a 7-9 playoff team hosting an 11-win team in the first week of the playoffs. The Redskins are 2-2, the Eagles are 2-3, the Cowboys are 2-3 and the Giants are 1-4. A Giants win on Thursday to go along with a Redskins loss to the Panthers (likely) and a Cowboys loss to the Jaguars (very likely) would give the 2-3 Redskins a half-game edge over the other three teams at 2-4.

It was five years ago that the Giants opened the season 0-6 before winning four straight games, and at 4-6, playing for first place in the NFC East against the Cowboys. They lost that game and would go on to miss the playoffs, but at 0-6 a team should never again have a chance to think about the playoffs. At 1-4, the same should be able to be said, but the NFC East always has a weird way of working things out and very rarely is a team able to run away and hide with the division. Here’s to the 7-9 Giants winning the division and hosting a playoff game.

(Home team in caps)

NEW YORK GIANTS +1.5 over Philadelphia
My bold prediction before the season was that the Eagles would miss the playoffs. Maybe it wasn’t so bold since a lot of Super Bowl champions fall apart the following season after playing a month’s worth of extra games, especially for a franchise like the Eagles that had never won a Super Bowl. Sure, they are the middle of a solid window of opportunity to add on to their championship, but I can’t help but think that they are more than content with their 2017 season, at least for now.

On top of that, I wished for the ultimate quarterback controversy between Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles and franchise quarterback Carson Wentz. The team is now 1-2 with Wentz after benching Foles for going 1-1.

A Giants win on Thursday Night Football would save the Giants’ season, improve them to 2-4, give them the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Cowboys and give every NFC East team two wins for now. It would also drop the Eagles to 2-4, which would mean they would be 1-3 with Wentz as their starter and the calls for Foles to be the starter would be out of control. The Giants have to win this game for so many reasons. I need the Giants to win this game.

HOUSTON -10 over Buffalo
It’s one thing to get behind the Bills at home. It’s another thing to get behind them on the road in a dome against the offensive threats and pass rush of the Texans. I’m in no way a believer in the Texans, but now at 2-3, it’s possibly they are turning into the team everyone thought they would be. It’s hard for me to see them winning a game by two possessions, but I’m not about to back Josh Allen to find out.

Seattle -3 over OAKLAND
There’s so much to love about Jon Gruden’s 1-4 Raiders. From Gruden’s cockiness as a broadcaster to his ridiculous contract to completely run an organization to his decision to run Khalil Mack out of town to his team being an absolute disaster, it has been a pleasure watching him destroy the Raiders both on and off the field. And while I’m certainly not a Seahawks fan after what happened on the goal line in the Super Bowl a few years ago, it makes it a little easier to stomach picking them when the Raiders are their opponent.

MIAMI +3.5 over Chicago
The Bears have sucked for so long I forgot what it was like to have them be competitive. It’s weird. Since their Week 1 collapse, the Bears defense has allowed 41 points over the last three games, and their offense even chipped in last game with Mitchell Trubisky somehow throwing six touchdown passes in a 48-10 rout of the Buccaneers.

The Bears are coming off their bye week, but it’s still much too early to trust them. It’s often easy to get caught up in how a team has played lately, but as a Giants fan I know more than anyone that you need to trust every week in the NFL like a brand-new season. I want to like the Bears, but it’s a little early for them to be giving points on the road, especially in Miami where the Dolphins seem to always play close games and pull out wins.

CINCINNATI -2 over Pittsburgh
I despite both of these teams. The Bengals for me foolishly believing in them so many times during the Andy Dalton era and the Steelers for losing every big game and playoff game to the Patriots. I probably should take the points in this division matchup, but my dislike for the Steelers far outweighs that of the Bengals.

NEW YORK JETS -2.5 over Indianapolis
Jets fans were ready to retire Sam Darnold’s number after Week 1, even though the defense deserved the credit for their blowout win in Detroit. Then after three weeks of losing, despite going into this season knowing the entire season was to be used as experience for Darnold, Jets fans returned to their old ways, questioning whether or not Darnold was the future. Now after a big win at home against the Broncos in which the Jets’ rushing game put up fake-like numbers, Jets fans think there is a path for them to the postseason.

My ideal situation for the Jets would be to just fall short of a postseason berth. That way, their fans are strung along and they end up with a pick in the middle of the first round, which is exactly won’t they don’t need as they try to build a team around Darnold. I don’t even think I need to root or pull for this happen. It’s the Jets, so it will happen all on its own. I can easily see an 8-8 season for them.

Carolina +1 over WASHINGTON
The Redskins were flat-out embarrassed on Monday Night Football as the Superdome Saints made their triumphant return. Those are the Saints everyone thought they would be getting in Week 1 before their loss to the Buccaneers and before their near-loss to the Browns. The Redskins couldn’t have picked a worse time to play in New Orleans.

As a Giants fan, it’s looking more and more like a near-.500 record will win the NFC East and that means tiebreakers are going to play a huge role in determining which of the crappy NFC East teams will win the division. The Giants and Cowboys have both already lost to the Panthers, so that means the Redskins have to as well to keep, and then the Eagles will also have to. Let’s Go Panthers!

MINNESOTA -10.5 over Arizona
Either the Eagles aren’t good (very possible) or the Vikings everyone expected this season have finally arrived (also very possible). But the Vikings’ win on the road over the Eagles was a very good sign for a team that struggled to a 1-2-1 start after being considered a true contender before the start of the season.

I’m a Vikings believer. Not only because Brittni is a Vikings fan and forces me to be when the Giants aren’t playing, but because I think they are a very balanced team, minus their kicking issues, which have now reached the historically-accurate Dan Bailey. The Rams might be 5-0 and the best team in the NFC and possibly the league, but the Vikings proved that they can go there and play with the Rams, and have Kirk Cousins not fumbled on the last possession of their meeting, maybe it’s the Vikings everyone is talking about as the team to beat in the NFC.

The Vikings are a very good team, and the Cardinals are a very bad team with a rookie quarterback. Very good teams blow out very bad teams at home. Well, unless the very good team’s quarterback turns the ball over every possession and then in that case, you lose a game to the Bills you were favored by 17 points in. But that won’t happen again!

CLEVELAND -1.5 over Los Angeles Chargers
A season after going 0-16, the Browns could easily be 5-0. They tied the Steelers because their kicker missed a game-winning field goal, lost to the Saints by 3 because their kicker missed two field goals and only lost to the Raiders in overtime despite four turnovers. The Browns have the ability to be a good team, they just need consistency.

When the Chargers have to play games in the Eastern Time Zone, bad things usually happen. And considering the Chargers never live up to their expectations, and with this specific Chargers team being a preseason favorite to reach the playoffs, there’s no way they don’t go 8-8 this season.

Tampa Bay +3 over ATLANTA
The Falcons are a joke and each week that passes with their current coaching staff makes the joke even bigger. They couldn’t convert in the red zone in their Week 1 loss to the Eagles, couldn’t get a stop in their overtime loss to the Saints, couldn’t hold on in their one-point loss to the Bengals and got destroyed in their 24-point loss to the Steelers.

I enjoy watching the Falcons’ fall from grace after their collapse in the Super Bowl and I can only hope they lose every game.

Los Angeles Rams -7 over DENVER
I thought the Denver defense was supposed to be good? Or did everyone think it was still the 2015 season? The Broncos allowed 323 rushing yards to the Jets last week. Yes, 323! And 198 passing yards for a total of 521 yards of offense to the Jets. The Jets! Yeah, let me back the Broncos against the Rams and feel confident about it …

JACKSONVILLE -3 over Dallas
The Cowboys suck. I can’t say this enough. And the more I say it, the more angry I get that the Giants gave away their Week 2 game in Dallas.

The Jaguars are good and one of only three teams in the AFC with a chance to reach the Super Bowl. Going back to the NFC East tiebreakers, after the Jaguars beat the Giants, I now need them to sweep the division. Let’s Go Jaguars!

TENNESSEE +3 over Baltimore
Two teams that seem to always lose when you think they are going to win. Now in a matchup between them, someone has to win, or I guess they could provide us with the third tie of the season. But considering that both teams will likely show up and play poorly, which is what these teams do when you pick them, give me the points.

Kansas City +3 over NEW ENGLAND
You want to prove you have the best offense in the history of the league? Go into New England on Sunday Night Football against the weakest Patriots team in years and come out with a win. If the Chiefs lose this game, there’s no sense in believing they will be anything other than a minor obstacle for the Patriots on their way to another Super Bowl appearance because a loss in the game could be the home-field tiebreaker in the AFC Championship Game.

GREEN BAY -9.5 over San Francisco
That’s a lot of points until you realize that the C.J. Beathard 49ers lost at home to the Josh Rosen Cardinals.

Last week: 6-9
Season: 30-33

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Oct 9, 2018

Yankees-Red Sox ALDS Game 3: Embarrassment

Every aspect of the Yankees from the starting pitching to the bullpen to the offense to the defense to the manager was an embarrassment, and now as a result, the Yankees are facing elimination.

Embarrassment. That’s all there really is to say about this game. Every aspect of the Yankees from the starting pitching to the bullpen to the offense to the defense to the manager was an embarrassment, and now as a result, the Yankees are facing elimination.

Not even a week ago, I gave Aaron Boone a clean slate for the previous six-plus months after his team reached the real playoffs: the ALDS. But that clean slate didn’t last long.

Luis Severino didn’t have it on Monday night and it was obvious from the first pitch of the game. Mookie Betts jumped on a first-pitch fastball and sent it to the warning track in center field, and off the bat, I thought it was gone. Severino was able to pitch around a two-out walk in the inning, but two of three outs ended up on the warning track.

In the second inning, Severino lost a seven-pitch battle to Rafael Devers that resulted in a line drive to right field, which somehow wasn’t a double, for the third hard-hit ball put in play out of the four batters who put the ball in play. After a steal, a groundout and a defensive miscue by Severino, the Red Sox had a 1-0 lead.

A 1-0 lead in Yankee Stadium against Nathan Eovaldi and the Red Sox bullpen with eight at-bats left isn’t a big deal, and when Giancarlo Stanton led off the bottom of the second with a single, I thought they might get the run right back. But Didi Gregorius decided to bunt for a hit rather than try to hit the ball in the gap or over the wall, and he was thrown out. The inning would end with nothing.

Severino had thrown 44 pitches in the first two innings, and Boone was going back to him in the third inning with the top of the order due up. At the time, it wasn’t necessarily the wrong move, but given how hard Severino had been hit in the first two, there was certainly reason to think it was time to go to the bullpen.

Betts and Andrew Benintendi led off the third with back-to-back line-drive singles and J.D. Martinez hit another ball to wall in left-center that looked like it had a chance. If you didn’t think Severino should be out of the game to start the inning, he should have certainly been relieved now with the Yankees down 2-0. Xander Bogaerts singled and a Devers groundout made it 3-0 before Steve Pearce hit a deep fly ball to center field for the third out of the inning.

The one-run deficit had turned to three and it was obvious Severino had nothing. Nearly every out had been a line drive right at a fielder and the fact the score was only 3-0 and not worse was a miracle. There was no way he could go back in the game for the fourth. Except the Yankees manager is Aaron Boone.

Boone sent Severino back out for the fourth, trailing 3-0, and No. 7 hitter Brock Holt and No. 8 Christian Vazquez hit back-to-back singles on the first two pitches of the inning, and no one was warming up in the Yankees bullpen. Then No. 9 hitter Jackie Bradley Jr. walked. Bases loaded and no one out. Boone’s decision had put the game from within reach to possibly getting out of hand in the fourth inning. Why did he bring Severino back out for the fourth?

“Just hoping he could get something started to get through the bottom of the lineup there, and then we were going to have Lynn ready for Betts no matter what. And then once the first two guys got on there, thinking Bradley’s in a bunting situation, so we’re going to take an out and then go to the pen there. But it just snowballed on him, and then Lance had a little bit of trouble obviously coming in there. So it just turned into a really bad inning for us.”

So Boone thought Severino would magically find his game in the fourth inning after struggling through the first three and being fortunate to have many of his line drives hit at fielders. Then he had already determined he wanted the last pitcher on the postseason roster to face the AL MVP. Then he assumed Bradley was going to bunt, despite not having sacrifice bunted since the 2015 season. And finally, he thought Lynn “had a little bit of trouble”. To me, walking in a run on the first batter you face and then allowing a bases-clearing double on the second batter you face is more than “a little bit of trouble”.

But even after Boone let Severino load the bases, the game still could have been saved with a couple of big strikeouts by either Dellin Betances, David Robertson or Chad Green. Instead, Boone went to the last pitcher on the postseason roster. Why didn’t he go to one of his elite relievers with the game on the line?

“Well, because with Dellin we only had for an inning we figured tonight. In hindsight, we certainly could have started the fourth inning with Robbie or something, but we really felt like Sevy could at least get us a couple outs in that fourth inning before turning it over to Lynn and then we could roll out our guys. But we just couldn’t stop the bleeding at all. That was the thinking behind it.”

Apparently, the Yankees determined before a postseason game that their best pitcher would only be available for one inning. If that’s not nonsensical enough, the Yankees had an off day the day before, and on top of that, Betances had pitched twice in the last nine days, throwing 53 pitches. But he was going to be limited to one inning in Game 3 of the ALDS? And how about Boone using “in hindsight” there as if these moves are only now being second-guessed and as if not everyone in the world thought they were awful decisions at the time. Boone would go on to use “in hindsight” again in his postgame press conference. But nothing might be worse than the idea that he was going to try to steal a few more outs with a laboring Severino and only start to “roll out” the elite relievers after Lynn pitched. Good thing Betances and Robertson are rested now with the Yankees facing elimination.

Lynn walked in a run and then allowed a bases-clearing double, and the game was over. Now trailing 7-0, Lynn would end up recording one out before Boone decided to go to Green, the same way he had decided to go with Jonathan Holder over Green in the first game between these two teams in August that led to the division race unraveling. By the end of the inning, the Red Sox led 10-0, and not even Eovaldi and the Red Sox bullpen would blow the game.

The Yankees would go on to lose 16-1 and pitch Austin Romine in the ninth inning because the first eight innings hadn’t been embarrassing enough. Severino didn’t show up, Boone continued to prove he has no business being a major league manager, Lynn turned back into the Lynn that was available at the trade deadline, Green couldn’t stop the bleeding and the offense didn’t show up before the game got out of hand.

The Yankees now have to win Game 4, and the only way I can see them doing that is to score enough runs that Boone’s decision-making won’t impact the game. Put the game out of reach and don’t allow him to potentially make costly pitching decisions.

After winning a game in Boston and returning home with Severino against Eovaldi, the Red Sox feeling the pressure and the Stadium crowd behind them, I said it would be a disaster if the Yankees now blew this series. And if they lose one more game, it will be a disaster.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Oct 8, 2018

It Will Now Be a Disaster If Yankees Lose ALDS

Everything is set up for the Yankees now in the ALDS, and if they screw it up, it will be a complete letdown. They have favorable matchups on the field and they have the Stadium crowd behind them.

The Yankees took care of business in Boston by winning one of the first two games of the ALDS and now return to Yankee Stadium and have home-field advantage in what is now best-of-3.

Everything is in the Yankees’ favor and if they screw it up, it will be a complete letdown. They have favorable starting pitching matchups in Games 3 and 4, they have the deeper lineup and bullpen and they have the raucous Stadium crowd that can see the clear path to a second straight ALCS set up for them.

Now that the ALDS is tied up, I decided to email Michael Hurley of CBS Boston for one of our usual email exchanges.

Keefe: I remember reading a story about Derek Lowe’s car getting destroyed after he blew a save as Red Sox closer. I have to imagine there was extra security surrounding the Red Sox players’ parking lot following Game 2 of the ALDS. Or maybe, David Price was smart enough to get a ride to Fenway Park the other night.

I know there is a big movement around the idea that “being clutch” isn’t a real thing or doesn’t exist, but as a Yankees fan who lived through the David Ortiz Red Sox era, no stat, data or mathematical or scientific fact will ever be able to get me to believe that “being clutch” isn’t real. It’s not a coincidence that great players and pitchers can be great throughout the regular season and in the days right before the start of the postseason and then suddenly be unable to perform. October is different. It’s 100 percent different. Just ask Ortiz or Derek Jeter or Scott Brosius or Curt Schilling, and on the other end, ask Alex Rodriguez or Nick Swisher or Mark Teixeira or Clayton Kershaw or Bryce Harper, or in this case Price.

There’s no way Price can have any fans or supporters left in Boston. He wasn’t unable to win a postseason game with the Rays, Tigers or Blue Jays, and still hasn’t with the Red Sox, despite saying in his introductory press conference in Boston that he had saved all his postseason wins for this team. Game 2 was his latest postseason failure as he was pulled after five outs, forcing his bullpen to get 22 outs and handing over home-field advantage to the Yankees.

Unfortunately, I had to leave Boston early in the morning on Sunday, but I would have liked to stay around for the day-after breakdown of Price by Red Sox fans in the city. What’s the mood in Boston after Game 2?

Hurley: Well first of all, David Price drives a car that is the closest thing a civilian can get to an armored tank. Come to think of it, I suppose that’s not a coincidence. but we need not worry about his safety, so as long as he drives that thing. (Seriously, Google it.)

The mood in Boston is, I think, the way it feels in any city after a playoff loss. That is to say, it feels like it’s the end of the world, that there’s no hope, and that it’s all over. A hundred-and-eight wins for nothing. What a waste.

All of that will obviously change significantly if the Red Sox can roll into Yankee Stadium and take back the series lead in Game 3. But based on that atmosphere from the wild card game, doing that doesn’t feel like it’ll be easy.

As for Price, what a disaster. Just, what an unmitigated disaster. The Red Sox traded Jon Lester after knowing that he was nails. From April through October, nails. Helped you win two World Series. But had to get rid of him because you don’t pay pitchers premium money when they’re over 30. But, whoops, a second straight last-place finish, and maybe it’s time to give the richest pitcher contract ever to David Price, eight months shy of his 30th birthday. Let’s see how that works out. Brilliant.

I agree with you on clutch, but what I find fascinating is that Price was able to close out Game 7 of an ALCS as a reliever, and he’s been really good as a postseason reliever (he threw 6.2 scoreless innings last October). But he’s just crumbled as a starter. I’ve always thought of it as a “you have it or you don’t” type of thing when it comes to ability to perform in huge moments. But David Price is just a unique individual. He’s got a unique elbow, and he’s got some unique psychological factors going on.

Keefe: I have never thought this Red Sox team was as good as their record. Yes, they won 108 games and are the “best” regular-season team in Red Sox history, I just don’t see it.

The top of the order with Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and J.D. Martinez is the best 1-2-3 in the majors, but the rest of the lineup? Sure, Steve Pearce is the right-handed Ortiz against the Yankees, but he doesn’t hit like that against the rest of the league. Xander Bogaerts? He’s OK. Mitch Moreland? Eduardo Nunez? Ian Kinsler? Sandy Leon? Jackie Bradley Jr.? They are all average to bad hitters.

The rotation has Chris Sale, who is one of the best pitchers in the league when healthy, and David Price, who is a great regular-season pitcher. But Rick Porcello is just OK, I saw enough of Nathan Eovaldi as a Yankee to know he’s awful and Eduardo Rodriguez wasn’t good enough to beat out Eovaldi for a postseason start. Where is Drew Pomeranz?

The bullpen has Craig Kimbrel and … um … that’s it. Craig Kimbrel.

I think the Red Sox are all the proof anyone needs to know that winning 100 games in 2018 was no great accomplishment. The majority of the league was just so, so bad this season and the Red Sox were able to get fat off the Orioles and interleague, which is why they won the division and the Yankees didn’t. But the best Red Sox team in history? No way.

Hurley: Yeah, that’s generally true. You’re off the mark about Xander Bogaerts, who led all AL shortstops in OPS, doubles, and RBIs. But the rest of that assessment is pretty accurate.

I’ve looked at this year as just having some inflation with regard to the win totals. I guess with masterminds like Buck Showalter running baseball teams, it’s been easy for good teams to rack up victories. I don’t know the exact equation, but I think you can safely lop off 10 wins from the good teams to compare them to teams from years past.

This would probably be a good opportunity to rant and rave about how the 91-win Indians were gifted a trip to the ALDS despite playing 76 games against the awful AL Central while posting sub-.500 records vs. both the AL East and AL West, all while the 100-win Yankees and 97-win A’s had to play a do-or-die exhibition game for TV ratings. BUT I WILL WITHHOLD FROM THAT COMPLAINT FOR THE TIME BEING.

Keefe: I think we are the only two people in the world who feel the current MLB postseason format is bad. Everyone seems to love it because it gives them two extra days of playoff baseball and it keeps more teams and cities involved during the regular season longer. You know what I love? The best teams playing for a championship. That’s what I love. But hey, JUST WIN YOUR DIVISION!

OK, maybe I’m wrong about Bogaerts. Let’s group him in with Betts, Benintendi, Martinez and Pearce. (Any non-Yankees fan has no idea why Pearce is being group in with All-Star players). Mitch Moreland, Eduardo Nunez, Ian Kinsler, Sandy Leon, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Rafael Devers are 4-for-29 with a walk so far in the series. That’s not great.

The Red Sox are asking Nathan Eovaldi and Rick Porcello to go into Yankee Stadium and send the series back to Boston for a Game 5 on Thursday. I understand Eovaldi had some success since being traded to the Red Sox, but I saw 48 starts and 51 games from Eovaldi when he was a Yankee and I know he sucks. Red Sox fans have reminded me of his eight shutout innings against them in the August four-game sweep, but that Yankees lineup was without Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Andrew McCutch and Luke Voit, who is 1998 Shane Spencer. Never trust a pitcher who throws 100 and at times over 100 and can’t average a strikeout per inning. Eovaldi throws as hard as anyone in the league and 640 career strikeouts in 850 innings. He can’t be trusted.

The more I look at these teams, and not just from the two-game sample size, but from a full-season standpoint, the more my opinion that the Yankees are a better team from top to bottom. Their lineup is deeper, their rotation is deeper and their bullpen is deeper. If the Yankees lose the series, Yankees fans should be upset because they lost to a lesser team. Red Sox fans will be upset because of the regular season they had and because it’s the Yankees, but they would be losing to a better team. But if the Red Sox do lose, I don’t think fans in Boston will look at it like that.

Hurley: I mean, I follow you on Twitter, so I know how you feel about most Yankees. So I’m not surprised to see how much you still hate Eovaldi.

I’m not going to sit here and say that Eovaldi is great by any stretch, but if you’re going to bring up the August Yankee lineup, then you should at least mention the lineup on Sept. 18, when Eovaldi pitched six scoreless innings. That day featured everyone except 1998 Shane Spencer, and he pitched pretty well. It was the bullpen that blew that one.

I’m not sure I wholly buy that the Yankees are a better team. In spring training I went position by position. Some of the names in that story are ancient history — Hanley Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, Greg Bird, Brandon Drury — but it was a pretty close comparison. I gave the edge to Stanton over Martinez, which was wrong. I gave the edge to Judge over Betts, which ended up being wrong. I gave the edge to Gregorius over Bogaerts, which was wrong. I think the only spots where you can definitively say the Yankees are better is at catcher, center field, third base, second base, and obviously the bullpen.

None of that really matters though, when Eduardo Rodriguez decides to just not cover first base in a playoff game. And none of it really matters when the bottom third of the Yankees’ lineup reaches base five times, while the top four batters in the Red Sox’ order goes a combined 2-for-15 with one walk. Going back to your first point about clutch, maybe the Yankees are just wired better for moments like this. Mookie Betts’ career regular-season OPS is .888. Mookie Betts’ career postseason OPS is .666. Not great! Meanwhile Aaron Judge is somehow muscling home runs to the opposite field on inside curveballs from Craig Kimbrel. (Seriously, how the hell did he do that?)

Keefe: It’s not most Yankees, it’s only Aaron Boone (during the regular season), Sonny Gray, Shane Robinson, A.J. Cole and Shane Robinson and none of them are on postseason roster. And Jonathan Holder too, but thankfully, he hasn’t pitched yet in this series.

Judge is amazing. No one with his body type (well, no one close to having his body type since he’s the only one to ever be built like that and reach the majors) has ever had his success and everything about the way he is built says he shouldn’t be this good. But he is, and he seems to only be getting better. Betts and Martinez had incredible seasons and one of them (likely Betts) will be the AL MVP, but Judge should also get votes and attention. Look at how bad the team was from when he got hurt at the end of July until he came back near the end of September. And look at what he has done in the postseason so far.

I think everyone was on board with your idea that Stanton was better than Martinez outside of the true Red Sox homers, who likely have bricks with their name on it inside Fenway Park. But Stanton was a disappointment while Martinez filled the void left by Ortiz after 2016. There are a lot of Yankees fans who somehow defend Stanton’s season (.266/.343/.509 with 30 home runs and 100 RBIs) while forgetting his salary and that he was basically Barry Bonds last year. I thought him playing 81 games in Yankee Stadium would enhance his 59-home run season, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. You can count on one hand the amount of big hits he had this season with most of them coming when games were out of hand. I bet on a lot of baseball and saw him play a lot with the Marlins, but apparently not enough to realize that he’s essentially just a bigger version of Starlin Castro with no plate discipline.

Stanton’s true colors have shown up in the three-game postseason. He hit a mammoth solo home run when the Yankees were already well on their way to a win in the wild-card game, and in Boston, he struck out four times in Game 1 (once with the bases loaded and no outs) and weakly grounded out in a big spot in Game 2 (it would have been a double play if he actually hit it hard). Thankfully, he was saved by Gary Sanchez’s home run, which landed in Back Bay.

I know the answer isn’t Stanton, but which Yankees hitter are Red Sox fans most scared of in a big spot? For me and Red Sox hitters, it’s Steve Pearce and then J.D. Martinez and then Eduardo Nunez. W

hy Nunez? Because he was an awful Yankee and at some point in this series will likely have a big hit.

Hurley: Judge is the obvious answer when it comes to frightening Yankees. That one speaks for itself.

But — maybe this is just me — but I also randomly put Brett Gardner on that list. He objectively stinks, and the fact that he’s been a starting outfielder for the New York Yankees for like 10 years is amazing to me. Generally, hustle only gets you so far.

Anyway. He’s a pain in the ass at the plate. I know Kimbrel got him swinging in Game 1, but I feel like he’s liable at any point to slap a perfect pitch the other way for a game-tying double, setting up the top of the order to win the game.

Friggin’ Brett Gardner. I’m already annoyed by this inevitability.

I wouldn’t worry about Nunez though. He was in the lineup over Devers for his defense. Didn’t really work out.

Keefe: Before the series, I predicted the Yankees would win in four games. I thought they would lose Game 1 against Sale, rock Price in Game 2 and then return home to continue their home postseason win streak with Red Sox fans not getting to see the 2018 Red Sox play another game at Fenway Park.

So far, the series has unfolded exactly I envisioned, and the Yankees have a chance to win the series at home. It’s unusual for me to be so confident about Yankees-Red Sox games, let alone Yankees-Red Sox postseason games, but I am. Maybe I will be let down and Eovaldi will shut them down in Game 3 and their season will end in Game 4, but I really don’t see that happening (so now it will happen). Yankees in 4.

What was your prediction before the series and has it changed?

Hurley: I don’t really make predictions. Not because I’m above them or anything. Just because I’m always wrong.

So I don’t know what will happen in Game 3. But I’d say, if the Yankees win, the series is over. If the Red Sox win, the series is still not over. If that makes sense.

I don’t give the Red Sox much of a chance of climbing out of a 2-1 hole. But I could easily see the Yankees winning Game 4 and the bumming everyone out at Fenway Park in Game 5.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

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Blogs • Giants

Oct 8, 2018

Giants-Panthers Week 5 Thoughts: Another Game Given Away

The game should have never come down to a 63-yard field goal to possibly destroy the Giants’ season. In typical Giants fashion, the Giants simply gave the game away, and the officials did their part as well.

There’s too much time. That’s the first thought I had when Saquon Barkley went flying through the air and into the end zone to give the Giants a 31-30 lead with 1:08 left in the game.

I actually had that thought when it looked like Russell Shepard hadn’t been touched as he went into the end zone on the play before, but thankfully, he was down and the Giants could run off more clock before Barkley scored.

I know you score when you can score, especially against a defense like the Panthers. You can’t bank on the idea that you are going to get into the end zone, but when it comes to the Giants and their defense late in games in recent seasons, you know that no lead is safe even if there are just a few seconds left in the game, let alone more than a minute.

Sure enough, the Giants defense let the Panthers get into at least Hail Mary range with six seconds left in the game, and no one really thought they were in field-goal range, except Ron Rivera, who sent out Graham Gano for a 63-yard attempt. And of course he drilled it and might have been good from 70 yards as the Panthers handed the Giants a crushing 33-30 defeat to drop them to 1-4 on the season.

The game should have never come down to a 63-yard field goal to possibly destroy the Giants’ season. In typical Giants fashion, the Giants simply gave the game away, and the officials did their part as well by handing out 15-yard penalties for non-penalties, completely changing the game in the process.

Prior to the game, I tweeted that I was done supporting Odell Beckham Jr. I had gone out of my way to defend him being a Giant because of his on-field talent, and that when healthy, he’s the best wide receiver in the league. I have looked away when he has had his on-the-field meltdowns and sideline meltdowns and when he has done everything other than be a team player or a leader because of his talent. But after receiving a $95 million contract, including $65 million in guaranteed money, for him to give the interview he gave leading up to Week 5 was the final straw. Beckham might be the best receiver in the league, but aside from a one-handed catch four years ago in Dallas and thousands of yard in losing seasons, he’s never done anything to earn the right to speak out against his quarterback, his teammates and the organization that just made him the highest-paid player at his position.

Right away, my jumping off the Beckham bandwagon paid dividends as he dropped a wide-open catch on fourth-and-3, turning the ball over on downs. The Giants had just gone down 7-3 in the game and his inability to haul in what should have been an easy catch for the highest-paid wide receiver in the league turned the ball over. The Giants defense stepped up and got a three-and-out from the Panthers and Beckham went out to return the punt with a chance to give his team good field position for their next possession and erase his significant drop.

As the punt approached the ground, Beckham moved to his right to allow the punt to fall in, choosing to throw an unnecessary block instead. The ball hit his leg and rolled around near the Giants’ goal line, eventually getting jumped on in the end zone by the Panthers. Beckham given the Panthers the ball on downs and the very next play he was involved in gave the Panthers seven points on his poor choice.

A couple possessions later, Beckham threw a touchdown pass to Barkley on a trick play, and he would even score his first touchdown of the season in the fourth quarter to bring the Giants closer to a comeback. He finished the game with eight catches for 131 yards, and I’m sure he thinks he did his job, and isn’t bothered by the fact that he did as much harm as good in the game, and possibly even more. Judging by everything he has done since the one-handed catch in Dallas, Beckham thinks his team let him down around him and not the other way around.

The Giants had their chances to win this game and not let it come down to a 63-yard field goal. But they’re the Giants, and that’s Giants football. It has been my whole life and I don’t expect it to ever change, no matter who the quarterback is, who the coach is, who the general manager is or what roster and personnel the organization puts together.

The Giants have been given a gift by the poor play across the NFC East and despite being 1-4, they are only one game back of both the Eagles and Cowboys. Their rivals have let them hang around with a chance to save this season and make something of what should already be a lost year. Will the Giants capitalize on the second life given to them when they host the Eagles on Thursday Night Football in Week 6? I doubt it. This is the New York Football Giants we’re talking about after all.

Author: Neil Keefe

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