Neil Keefe

Oct 23, 2018

Giants-Falcons Week 7 Thoughts: I’m Sick of the Giants

The Giants lost again, and if you thought things were bad with the 2017 Giants under Ben McAdoo, the 2018 Giants under Pat Shurmur might actually be worse.

The Giants were finally going to show everyone their offense on Monday night in Atlanta. Between their new-look offensive line, their healthy receivers, a Falcons defense which hadn’t allowed fewer than 29 points in the last four weeks and which has been the 31st-worst defense in the red zone this season, the Giants were going to put on an offensive display. And they did. They put on an offensive display of ineptitude.

None of the other five losses this season were as bad as the Giants’ sixth loss to the Falcons. It was possibly the single-worst Giants game I ever watched. The loss to the Eagles had been bad considering it was a short week, the Giants’ season was on the line and the Eagles had to travel on the short week and still embarrassed the Giants, but this was even worse. The Giants had nearly 11 days from the end of the Eagles loss to kickoff on Monday night to plan for the Falcons, and their game plan produced three first-half points.

The Giants were unable to get into the end zone against the second-worst red zone defense in the league until the game was nearly over. In typical Garbage-Time Giants fashion, the offense quickly put together two touchdowns near the end of the game to lose 23-20, tricking those who didn’t watch the game in full into thinking it was a close game, the same way they have done in prior losses this season. The new-look offensive line might have been the worst of the three we have seen this season as Eli Manning was sacked four times and pressured and hit so often it felt like five Ereck Flowers were blocking for him.

Pat Shurmur, who is completely lost as a head coach, called unsuccessful play after unsuccessful play in the red zone, failed to score on fourth-and-1 on the goal line and then inexplicably went for a two-point conversion despite potentially making it a seven-point game with 4:47 left in the fourth quarter. Odell Beckham dropped the two-point play and after the game Shurmur defended his decision, citing a 50-percent increase in chances of winning had the play been successful and had the Giants scored another touchdown later. They did score another touchdown later, but it was only after the defense let the Falcons go down the field and only after yet another kicker drilled a miracle field goal against the Giants.

Shurmur once again talked about “battling” in his press conference, as if this Giants team has battled at all this season. The offense doesn’t produce until the game is over and the defense can’t get a big stop or prevent any points from being put up when needed the most. He also mentioned how the team “isn’t going to do the math” but how they are instead going to “get ready for the Redskins” on Sunday. He might want to do the math. The math says the Giants are 1-6 and if winning 10 games gets you in the playoffs, which it doesn’t always, the Giants have to go 9-0 to reach the playoffs. Do the math, Shurmur. Your season is over.

This season essentially ended when Graham Gano’s 63-yard field goal handed the Giants their fourth loss of the season, but the true optimists still believed. Most of those optimists gave up after the Giants were run out of their own building four days later by the Eagles. Now, if there’s anyone who still calls themselves a Giants fan, who believes this team has a 9-0 run in them, what are you doing? Go out. Call a friend. Date. Binge-watch a show. Pick up a new hobby. Do something that’s not sitting around thinking the Giants are going anywhere other than the top of the 2019 draft.

The Giants are now 4-19 since the start of last season for a .174 winning percentage. If you thought the 2017 Giants were bad under Ben McAdoo, the 2018 Giants might actually be worse. Those Giants at least lost a few close games early in the season before injuries destroyed their depth and the team gave up. These Giants aren’t playing close games, have been mostly healthy all season and if they haven’t given up yet, it’s going to be scary to watch what it’s like once they finally have.

Blogs

Oct 22, 2018

Dodgers Have to Win World Series

Thankfully, the Dodgers won the NL. The Brewers would have served as a red carpet for the Red Sox to a championship. The Dodgers, however, have a real chance to win the World Series and save Yankees fans.

Sometimes I will randomly think about Dave Roberts stealing second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS and I try to envision him being called out.

What if Joe West had gotten the call wrong and punched Roberts out at second base? There was no video review back in 2004, and while Terry Francona would have gone out to argue with West, nothing would have come of it other than Francona likely being thrown out in the last inning of the last game of his team’s season. There would have been one out in the inning and no one on, and if Bill Mueller still singled on a ground ball up the middle in his at-bat, it wouldn’t have tied the game.

When I see a replay of that stolen base, so many awful memories come rushing back as I watch Derek Jeter put down a tag that is just late and dream about if only Jorge Posada’s throw could have been there a fraction of a second earlier. Unfortunately, for at least the next week, Yankees fans are going to be seeing that play a lot.

The Dave Roberts Dodgers are going to the World Series, and now I’m forced to root and root hard for the man I have hated for the last 14 years. The man who saved the 2004 ALCS for the Red Sox and whose stolen base changed the course of history.

The Yankees couldn’t take care of their own business and the Astros were flat-out embarrassed, so now it’s up to the Dodgers. The Dodgers are Yankees fans’ last chance at preventing the Red Sox from winning the World Series.

My fiancée, Brittni, who has made quite a number of appearances in blogs on this site over the last nearly six years, is a Dodgers fan from Los Angeles, and the Dodgers have never won a World Series in her lifetime.

Last year, we were one Yankees win away from our relationship potentially being destroyed by the outcome of a Yankees-Dodgers World Series. Instead, our relationship was saved by the Yankees’ inability to hit Justin Verlander, Charlie Morton and Lance McCullers Jr. in Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS and the Dodgers faced the Astros.

Brittni thought she was going to get that elusive first championship when the Dodgers returned home for Games 6 and 7 of the World Series, up 3-2 in the series on the Astros. But after losing Game 6, the organization decided to start Yu Darvish over Clayton Kershaw in Game 7, only to then bring Kershaw in for four innings (four scoreless innings they would be to pour salt on the wound) after the game was out of hand, the Dodgers lost and she was crushed. I watched her dream of experiencing a Dodgers championship fall apart and watched tears roll down her face as the final outs of Game 7 dwindled away.

For most of this season, it looked like she would have to wait at least another year for a chance at a World Series win. The Dodgers were 10 games under .500 over a month into the season and just about a month ago they were in third place in the NL West. They didn’t clinch a postseason berth until the final weekend of the regular season and needed to play a tiebreaker game to win the division. They ended the regular season with a 92-71 record, but their plus-194 run differential projected them to be a 102-win team as they played 10 games worse than their expected record. After all that, they trailed 2-1 in the NLCS and had to pull off a 13-inning win in Game 4 to even the series before eventually winning Game 7 on Saturday. But they made it. They’re back in the World Series.

The Red Sox could sweep the Dodgers and I still won’t understand how the Red Sox won 108 regular-season, beat the Yankees in four games, eliminated the defending champion Astros in five games and then won the World Series. Their success hasn’t made sense. More than half of their lineup is crap, they have one trustworthy starting pitcher and their bullpen is full of high WHIPs and a closer who seems to have lost his ability this postseason. I have no idea how this team has gotten this far and how they continue to win. It makes absolutely no sense and it makes me sick.

Thankfully, the Dodgers won the NL pennant and not the Brewers. The Brewers would have served as a red carpet for the Red Sox to a championship as the Brewers’ success reminds me of the Red Sox’, both very puzzling. The Red Sox never get a worthy opponent in the World Series and the Brewers would have been their latest cupcake matchup.

The Dodgers, however, have a real chance to win the World Series. Aside from the Astros, they are the one team that has true starting pitching depth in this postseason. They have a deep lineup with powerful right-handed hitters to combat Chris Sale and David Price, they have Manny Machado, who both hates and owns the Red Sox, and they have a solid and reliable bullpen. Thanks to the off days on Sunday and Monday, they can set up their rotation accordingly for the series, and could potentially pitch Kerhsaw three times in the series, if the team learned from their mistakes in last year’s World Series and is now willing to pitch him on short rest.

I told Brittni if the Dodgers lose to the Red Sox in the World Series I will never root for them under any circumstances for the rest of my life (aside from playing the Red Sox again in future World Series), the same way I will never root for the Cardinals or Rockies in any scenario that isn’t them playing the Red Sox in the World Series. I will go to great lengths to root against the Dodgers if they lose this series. I will hate the Dodgers if they lose this series.

This feels like it for Brittni. If the Dodgers can’t win the World Series, when will they? I highly doubt there will ever be as weak of an NL playoff field as this year and with how fleeting success can be in baseball, it’s unrealistic to think the Dodgers will continue to be a contender with the threat of underperformance and injuries and the complete crapshoot that is the MLB postseason format. If Brittni can’t get her championship this year, I don’t know when it will come. I don’t know if it will come.

Brittni has to get her World Series this year. I need her to get her World Series this year. Every Yankees fan needs her to get her World Series this year.

***

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 • NHL

Oct 19, 2018

These Rangers Are Fun to Watch

The Rangers picked up five of a possible eight points against some very good competition over seven days, but more importantly, they proved they will be fun to watch this season.

When the Rangers lost the first three games of the season, it was expected. The only expectation for the Rangers this season is that there are none. It’s an 82-game tryout for the organization to determine who will be part of the team in 2019-20 and beyond, all while Henrik Lundqvist wilts away like the rose in the glass case in Beauty and the Beast waiting for a surrounding team of contender-worthy players that’s never going to show up to save his career.

In those first three losses, the Rangers lost a one-goal game to Nashville, a team that could very well win it all this season. Then they lost in Buffalo, scoring just once against a Sabres team that is improved, but nowhere near a team that goals should be hard to come by against. Then the next night, they scored five goals against Carolina to prove they do have some scoring ability. Except they gave up eight in Lundqvist’s first night off of the season.

I didn’t care the Rangers were 0-3, pointless and sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference in the first week of the season. Losses and a lot of them should be expected this season as players with little to no NHL experience gain just that and the Rangers improve their chances at landing Jack Hughes or another franchise players next June.

After those three very different losses, the Rangers beat the Sharks, a Cup favorite, in overtime at the Garden, lost a tough one to Oilers on a late Connor McDavid goal, beat the Avalanche — a playoff team last spring — in a shootout and took the defending champions to overtime on the road on the second night of a back-to-back. The Rangers picked up five of a possible eight points against some very good competition over seven days, but more importantly, they proved they will be fun to watch this season.

I’m sure that fun will fade away as we near the trade deadline and the team is closer to the bottom of the conference than they are to the playoff bubble, and I’m sure it will fade even more when they move some of the only remaining tradable assets they have left following last season’s firesale. But until, I expect Rangers games to be enjoyable as each win feels like a major accomplishment and each game feels like a playoff game since this team has absolutely no margin for error and can’t afford the kind of losing streak they endured to open the season if they want to shock the hockey world.

The problem is the best-case scenario for the Rangers would be to miraculously sneak into the postseason as a bottom seed or just miss the playoffs. In reality, that’s actually a worst-case scenario. Every point the Rangers accumulate is detrimental to their goal of rebuilding and getting to pick at the top or near the top of the 2019 draft. This team isn’t supposed to win. It’s not that the players aren’t trying to do so, it’s that they’re not supposed to. This is supposed to be a complete rebuild and any winning creates an obstacle to that goal.

The biggest obstacle for the Rangers is in their own net. Lundqvist won’t settle for anything other than greatness and every night he’s in goal, the Rangers have a real chance to win, especially with the way he has played early on. As long as Lundqvist tries to single-handedly will this young and inexperienced group to wins, the rebuild is in trouble and the dream of landing a potential superstar in June slowly deteriorates.

Unfortunately, for Lundqvist, his best won’t be enough to keep these Rangers relevant through the winter and into the spring. For as fun as the last week was, the Rangers are still only 2-4-1 with a minus-6 goal differential and haven’t won a game in regulation.

The expectations haven’t changed with the Rangers and that is that there aren’t. But win or lose, for the time being, these Rangers are fun to watch.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 18, 2018

NFL Week 7 Picks

When it comes to the picks, it’s been a pretty blah season. Well, it was a pretty blah season before last week’s 3-11-1 embarrassment. Thankfully, there’s a lot of time left to chip away at the deficit.

It’s been a week since the Giants’ season ended and with 11 weeks left of regular-season football and then the playoffs and Super Bowl and the cold, dark days of January and February inching closer, it’s been hard to handle. All of that coupled with the Yankees’ playoff loss to the Red Sox, who are likely going to win the World Series, and the Rangers playing for nothing this season has me looking to pick up some new hobbies. What do people who don’t like sports do for fun? That’s a question I need to answer and answer fast because the next meaningful game I will watch will be the Yankees’ first game in 2019.

When it comes to the picks, it’s been a pretty blah season. Well, it was a pretty blah season before last week’s 3-11-1 embarrassment. At least I finally got a push to create a tie column like so many teams in the NFL this season. Unfortunately, the Giants were routed, the Vikings didn’t cover by a 1/2 point, the Buccaneers blew a late chance to not only cover but win, the Browns reverted back to the Browns on the West Coast, the Panthers proved to be frauds, the Titans couldn’t score a single point in an NFL game in 2018, the Jaguars should have forfeited and saved the trip to Dallas and the Packers struggled against the C.J. Beathard. When you put together all of that, you get a 3-11-1 week. That’s going to be one big hole to climb out. Thankfully, there’s a lot of time left to do so. It’s time to starting chip away at the deficit.

Denver -1 over ARIZONA
The Cardinals are my biggest enemy this season. Why? Because they pose the biggest threat to the Giants for the No. 1 pick in the draft. I can’t believe the Giants are really going to be picking at or near the top again in the 2019 draft, but here we are. After last year’s 3-13 disaster, the team is already 1-5 this season. And even though the NFC East is as a weak as it’s ever been, the Giants would have go on either a 10-1 or 9-2 run the rest of the way to win the division. Yeah, that’s not happening.

Tennessee +7 over LOS ANGELES CHARGERS
When I first saw this line, my initial thought was “Charges in a teaser!” But then I remembered that this game is in London. The Chargers usually have enough trouble switching time zones in the United States and historically struggle when they go to the Eastern Time Zone. Now they are going past the Eastern Time Zone and across the pond to play a game that will be eight hours ahead of their internal clock. The Titans aren’t good by any means, but they are good to stay within a touchdown of a team that can’t handle jet lag.

Buffalo +7.5 over INDIANAPOLIS
If the Cardinals are the Giants’ biggest threat to the No. 1 pick in the draft, well, the Bills and Colts are their next two biggest threats.

I just had the thought that if this quarterback class turns out to be weak, the Giants could potentially use the top or near-top pick and turn it into a bunch of lower picks and try again with this same group, but slightly revamped in 2019. For those who think it’s time move on from Eli Manning (not me), this is their worst-case scenario. The second worst scenario for them would be to use the pick on a non-quarterback, which I think is what will actually happen.

New England -3 over CHICAGO
It’s crazy to see a line that has the Patriots as only a 3-point favorite over the Bears. It just looks wrong.

I bought into the Bears last week when I teased them to win in Miami. This Bears defense against Brock Osweiler just to win?!?! is what I thought. That didn’t go so well, and that’s all I need to jump off the 2018 Bears bandwagon for good.

PHILADELPHIA -5 over Carolina
Eff’n Panthers. All they had to do was go to Washington and beat the Redskins and keep the NFC East clustered together and improve to 3-0 against the division. Instead, they lost and they put a huge dent in my dream of a team winning the division at 7-9, or maybe even 6-10. The Panthers are the team everyone continues to think is good, but they aren’t. They will let you down with their inability to score and their overrated defense.

Unfortunately, Carson Wentz looks better and better each week since returning and I have a feeling the Eagles’ road rout of the Giants on Thursday Night Football will send them off on a run that returns them to the playoffs and destroys my preseason prediction that they would miss the playoffs. (Either that or that’s one great reverse jinx right there.)

MIAMI +3 over Detroit
I don’t care that the Lions are coming off their bye week and I don’t care who the Dolphins quarterback will be in this game. I will no longer pick against the Dolphins at home in what should be a close game.

Minnesota -3.5 over NEW YORK JETS
I will be in attendance with Brittni at this game, and the only thing that will keep me from going into depression over the Giants is if the Jets are the Jets. At 3-3 with a rookie quarterback, they are anything but the same old Jets right now, and that needs to change. I need a Vikings blowout on Sunday. I need it.

TAMPA BAY -4 over Cleveland
Everyone all set with the Baker Mayfield hype? OK, good. I’m not going to lie, I started to buy into the Browns as a good team in 2018, but last week proved they have a long way to go. While the Chargers are certainly better than the Buccaneers, it’s going to be a while until I can trust Mayfield to not destroy a game.

JACKSONVILLE -4.5 over Houston
That Jaguars debacle in Dallas last week? Yeah, I wagered on the Jaguars -3. The bad news is I lost. The good news is the game was over so fast I didn’t have to waste my afternoon into the early evening hoping for a miraculous cover or even a push.

The Jaguars are now 3-3 as the AFC South competes with the NFC East for the worst division in football. And the Jaguars’ loss to the Cowboys was both embarrassing for them and costly for the Giants, who lost another tiebreaker. What am I saying? Why do I even care about records and tiebreakers? The Giants season is over. O-V-E-R. They suck. It’s hard to have many tiebreakers with one win.

But back to the Jaguars. They are returning home to play the only team the Giants have beat in the Texans. The Texans haven’t lost since their loss to the Giants, but I don’t buy them getting hot at 3-3 now. They are still the Texans and they still can never be trusted. Give me the Jaguars at home coming off the humiliating loss to the very bad Cowboys.

New Orleans +2.5 over BALTIMORE
The Saints’ slow start to the season appears to have been a fluke and they look every bit like the team that should have gone to the NFC Championship Game if not for the greatest game-winning play in the history of football. Normally, I would be against picking the Saints outside against a strong defense, but if I’m right about the Saints, this game won’t be a problem.

WASHINGTON -1 Dallas
This game will be depressing to watch since it’s a reminder that the NFC East was there for the taking for the Giants and they screwed it up. Last season, they sucked, but when you look at the type of season the Eagles had, the Giants were never going to win enough games to win the division. This season though? This season the Giants could have won the division. As you can tell, I’m over the Giants throwing away another year.

Los Angeles Rams -10 over SAN FRANCISCO
I don’t know what this line would have to be for me to not take the Rams. -21? -24? -28? I think -28 might keep me away from picking the Rams, but I wouldn’t feel good about it.

KANSAS CITY -6 over Cincinnati
Everyone loves offense in every sport. Not me. I like games where points or runs or goals are hard to come by. Where field position and baserunners and power plays matter. I don’t care for these ridiculous games where both teams are in the 40s, or in the case of Sunday Night Football, the 30s. The Chiefs and Patriots couldn’t have cared less about playing defense and everyone ate it up. It was sad.

The only thing we learned from the Chiefs’ first loss is that they aren’t to be taken seriously. That game gave the Patriots the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Chiefs and because there’s no doubt in my mind that the Patriots will reach the AFC Championship Game every season until Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are gone (if they ever leave), the Chiefs won’t be going to the Super Bowl. They can continue to be the Greatest Regular-Season Show ever, but they aren’t going to win a championship because of that loss. By the time the AFC Championship Game roles around, Belichick will have turned his crappy defense around and the Chiefs will be the same Chiefs.

NEW YORK GIANTS +4.5 over Atlanta
I could see the Giants going to Atlanta coming off nearly 11 full days of rest and beating a bang-up Falcons team and everyone thinking the Giants might go on some run because they beat the Falcons on the road.

I could also see the Giants getting embarrassed by a banged-up Atlanta team that can’t beat anybody right now.

The first option would likely sucker me back into thinking maybe, just maybe the Giants could get back in the division. The second option would have me upset that the Falcons won’t clean house of the coaching staff that handed the Patriots a Super Bowl.

Nothing good can come out of this game. Either the Giants win and they ruin their place in the 2019 draft or they lose and continue to be an embarrassment and the Falcons, who have cost me so much money over the last three seasons, win. There’s no result to root for in this game.

Last week: 3-11-1
Season: 33-44-1

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Oct 15, 2018

Didi Gregorius Replacement Options

The Didi Gregorius injury changes how the Yankees planned to operate this offseason and it hurts his own personal value since he will become a free agent after missing part of the season due to elbow surgery.

Have you ever sat down for a test and had to bullshit your way through the essay questions, so you ramble on and on about nothing just to fill space, giving no actual answer? That’s how Aaron Boone handled his end-of-the-season press conference.

The Yankees manager said nothing insightful and somehow still believes he made the right decisions with his bullpen in the playoffs. The only good thing to come from Boone having absolutely no clue what he was doing in the ALDS is that a lot of Boone supporters, both fans and media, now wonder if he is actually the right person for the job. It only took them nearly the entire season from what Boone displayed that first weekend in Toronto to realize the manager of the Yankees should probably have some managerial or coaching experience prior at any level before being handed a win-now team.

After 15 minutes of nothing from Boone, he took the final question of his press conference, and then Yankees public relations man Jason Zillo said the following:

“We’re going to have Cash in here in a few minutes, but in fairness to you guys (at this point Boone turns to Zillo like he remembers something and points at Zillo), there’s not a great point to drop this in, but I want Aaron to be able to respond to it. Didi had an MRI yesterday. He will undergo Tommy John surgery at a yet to be determined time …”

Boone spoke about nothing for 15 minutes and forgot to mention that the team’s starting shortstop and only left-handed, non-switch-hitting bat in their lineup played in the ALDS with a torn throwing elbow and is going to miss a large portion of 2019 following surgery on that elbow. How is it even possible Boone nearly let this slide without talking about it during his part of the press conference? Was he just going to leave if not for Zillo bringing it up? Judging by Boone’s reaction Zillo bringing it up, it sure seemed like Boone was going to walk out without having mentioned this incredibly significant news.

Boone said Didi Gregorius hurt his arm on a throw when he played a ball off the Green Monster in Game 2 of the ALDS. How did a shortstop play a ball off the left-field wall? Well, in the seventh inning, Ian Kinsler hit a ball off the wall that Andrew McCutchen played as if he had no basic knowledge or understanding of geometry. The ball bounced past McCutchen and to Gregorius, who threw it back in. (The image at the top is Gregorius getting ready to make the throw that tore his elbow.)

Boone is an idiot, but we already knew that. The real news is that the Yankees are going to be without Gregorius for some amount of time in 2019 and possibly the majority of 2019. And here I was thinking the 2019 Yankees would be better than the 2018 Yankees. The 2019 Yankees can still be better than the 2018 Yankees, but it just got that much harder to make that possible.

The Yankees have a few options with how they can handle this.

Option 1
The Yankees could keep Gleyber Torres at second base, if that’s where they feel he will play moving forward in his career, and use someone like Adeiny Hechavarria or someone with his defense-first skillset to play shortstop and bat ninth (unless Boone goes into 2019 thinking Torres should continue to bat ninth no matter what). I certainly don’t want the Yankees to play any part of next season with a near-automatic out like Hechavarria in the lineup, let alone possibly the majority of next season, so this would be the worst-case scenario for me.

Option 2
The Yankees could sign Manny Machado. This would mean while Gregorius is out, Machado could play short, Torres second and Miguel Andujar third. Or Machado third, Torres short and Andujar first or outfield. The first step to this process would be to sign Machado and then determine where Andujar’s future is. Gregorius is going to be a free agent at the end of this season, so maybe Machado plays third for 2019 and then shortstop in the years to follow, or maybe the Yankees also sign Gregorius, and Machado plays third and Gregorius plays short for the foreseeable future. That would mean Andujar becomes an outfielder or a first baseman. I wouldn’t hate this scenario, but it’s not my favorite.

Option 3
If the Yankees are going to sign either Machado or Bryce Harper, I would rather they sign Harper. The Yankees desperately need a middle-of-the-order left-handed bat and I would rather have Harper for the next decade than Machado. Signing Harper would mean Option 1 above would be less of an issue since having either a defense-first player at either short or second (whichever Torres isn’t at) would be negated in the lineup by the addition of Harper’s bat. If Harper isn’t an option for the Yankees because of the regrettable decision to add Giancarlo Stanton for 10 years then Option 2 becomes my favorite option because I do want either Machado or Harper (or both!).

Option 4
The unknown. The Yankees could do something not listed here. (This will likely be what happens since no one is expecting it.)

This Yankees offseason is so unpredictable and there are so many avenues they can take to set themselves up for the next decade that it actually hurts my head to think about. The Gregorius injury comes at a terrible time because it changes the course of how the Yankees planned to operate this offseason and it hurts his own personal value since he will become a free agent after missing part of the season due to elbow surgery.

The Yankees have an opportunity this winter to build on what began at the 2016 trade deadline and to put themselves in position to sustain success for a long period of time. The construction of their infield without Gregorius is now their first major decision of the offseason. They can’t get it wrong.

***

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 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.

Author: Neil Keefe

Giants-Falcons Week 7 Thoughts: I’m Sick of the Giants

Dodgers Have to Win World Series

These Rangers Are Fun to Watch

NFL Week 7 Picks

Didi Gregorius Replacement Options