Neil Keefe

Feb 2, 2016

Bye Bye Greg Bird

There’s a chance Greg Bird won’t be ready for 2017 and there’s a chance he won’t be as productive as he once was and there’s a chance he won’t be able to be the first baseman of the future.

I guess I won’t have to waste a million words this season writing about how Greg Bird should be the Yankees’ starting first baseman over Mark Teixeira even though Teixeira will make $23 million this year. Now I just have to hope I don’t waste a million words next season once again longing for Bird to be the Yankees’ starting first baseman. I will spend the next year desperately hoping for 2015 Greg Bird to show up in 2017, completely fixed from his shoulder surgery and not suffering any setbacks, and not skipping a beat from the last time we saw him on the field in the wild-card game.

There’s a chance Bird won’t be ready for 2017 and there’s a chance he won’t be as productive as he once was and there’s a chance he won’t be able to be the first baseman of the future. The Yankees aren’t about to go into 2017 without an insurance policy at first base and that most likely means Mark Teixeira won’t have to move from Greenwich anytime soon. Aside from the actual problem of Bird being originally told to rest and rehab his shoulder and now he will miss the entire season after surgery, the other here is that Bird’s absence sets up a potential terrible chain reaction. Like a 75-yard chain of dominoes built during indoor recess due to inclement weather, if the dominoes start to fall, we’ll be looking at 2013 and 2014 all over again. Actually, we might be longing for the days of 2013 and 2014.

With the Yankees’ recent luck of injuries, I can easily see Teixeira spending the majority of the season on the disabled list (and you know if Bird were healthy, Teixeira wouldn’t get hurt all season, but be unproductive, while Bird raked in Triple-A), which would make Dustin Ackley the Yankees’ everyday first baseman. Between Ackley at first and Chase Headley at third, the Yankees will have two non-power hitters in two spots that, which need power. In that scenario, and with Brett Gardner in left field, the Yankees’ lone corner power hitter would be Carlos Beltran, and counting on the soon-to-be 39-year-old to not only contribute the way he should at $15 million, but also stay healthy isn’t exactly assuring. The Yankees could get by if they had a power hitter in a non-traditional power spot, like say second base, but they no longer have that luxury. Sure, this isn’t exactly the most positive line of thinking, but when your 23-year-old first baseman of the future goes down for the season, and you’re now desperately relying on your 31-year-old catcher (will be 32 on Feb. 20), 35-year-old first baseman (will be 36 on April 11), 38-year-old right fielder (will be 39 on April 24) and 40-year-old designated hitter (will be 41 on July 27) to not only stay healthy, but be productive, it’s important to think about the worst-case scenarios.

You might think this is overreacting to an injury to a player that was going to start the season in Triple-A, if Teixeira were to remain healthy come Opening Day, but it’s not. Bird was going to play a role for the Yankees this season even if Brian Cashman wants to pretend like you can suddenly bet on Teixeira’s health like he’s American Pharoah at Churchill Downs. And without Greg Bird last season, the Yankees don’t make the playoffs. They won a wild-card berth by two games and won home-field in the wild-card by one game on the last day of the season thanks to an Astros loss (not that it mattered). Take away Bird’s performance, while in for Teixeira and the Yankees would have been postseason-less for three straight years (even though it’s basically like they were).

Bird seamlessly fit in for Teixeira when he went down with a bone bruise, which turned out to be a broken leg, and was as good, if not better than Teixeira, giving the Yankees their first promising look into the future for a position player since Robinson Cano debuted in 2005. Bird hit .261/.343/.529 in 178 plate appearances, while Teixeira hit .255/.357/.548 in 462 plate appearances. Combine their power and they hit 41 home runs with 110 RBIs. Together, Mark Teixeira and Greg Bird were a Top 3 AL MVP finalist.

Teixeira played 111 games last year. He played 123 games in 2014. He played 15 games in 2013. He played 123 games in 2012. In the last few years, he has missed time due to wrist surgery, pain and discomfort from that wrist surgery, a pulled hamstring, injuries to his rib cage and knee and lat, tired legs from being on the bases(!), light-headedness and an injury to his pinky sliding into home. There’s a 100 percent chance Teixeira misses time this year either due to an actual injury or something comical like having tired legs from being on the bases. This is the guy that complained about the length of playing baseball games in Sept. 2011, saying, “I can’t stand playing a nine-inning game in four hours. It’s not baseball. I don’t even know how to describe it.” This is a guy who has made $189.9 million in his life playing the game he doesn’t know how to describe and will make another $23.125 million this season. You can guarantee he’s going to get hurt this season.

Last season, we got a glimpse into the future of a real prospect for the first time in 10-plus years, and it’s been taken away. Greg Bird was the future at first base for the Yankees. Now, we need to hope he still is.

NHL • Podcasts • Rangers

Feb 2, 2016

Podcast: Rear Admiral

The Barstool Sports Boston blogger joined me to talk about John Scott’s MVP performance at the All-Star Game.

John Scott saved the NHL All-Star Game from another ho-hum weekend and overall lackadaisical effort by creating a buzz the league has longed for with it’s midseason event. The problem is the league tried to avoid it at all costs and will now benefit the most from trying to keep one if its top vote receivers from playing. Thanks to John Scott, we were treated to a memorable night in Nashville that the league tried to steal from us like parts of the 1995-96 and 2012-13 seasons and all of of the 2004-05 season.

Rear Admiral of Barstool Sports Boston joined me to talk about John Scott’s MVP performance at the NHL All-Star Game, the slumping Boston-born players on the Rangers, the state of the Eastern Conference, old Boston and the Boston Garden and the best and worst bars in Boston.

Blogs • NHL

Feb 1, 2016

The Legend of John Scott

If it weren’t for Pacific captain John Scott, I would have watched no more than five minutes on Sunday night. After watching the efforts of the Metropolitan and Atlantic, I wasn’t sticking around if not for Scott.

I felt like I was watching a Rangers playoff game during the Pacific vs. Atlantic championship on Sunday night. If there was video of me watching Rangers-Lightning Game 7 in May and video of me watching then NHL All-Star Game championship, a split screen of the two would look like the split screens of Robinson Cano and Rod Carew. For a game with zero meaning other than for the players on the ice wanting their $90,909 winning share, I was pulling for the Pacific and once they took a 1-0 lead, I slowly watched the clock tick away. All of this unnecessary stress and uneasiness for no reason other than John Scott.

If it weren’t for Pacific captain John Scott, I would have watched no more than five minutes of Sunday night’s three games. After watching the Metropolitan and Atlantic put in the worst of efforts in the night’s opening game, there was no way I was sticking around to watch the Western Conference’s two teams “compete” if not for Scott. But the 33-year-old with five goals and six assists in 285 career games kept me around as if a trip to the Cup Final was on the line.

The NHL got its wish. They got their real fans and even casual fans to care about an exhibition game in 2016 that has no significance. But it wasn’t the way they wanted by implementing 3-on-3 play in a tournament format with $1,000,000 going to the winning team as a carrot at the end of the stick to get their multi-millionaire stars to care about competing. It was because they embarrassed themselves in a way only the NHL could thanks to the scum in the league office acting like the scum that they are.

The NHL’s attempt to keep John Scott out of the All-Star Game after he rightfully won a spot and captaincy through their own fan voting system was disgusting. Their plan to force a league-owned franchise in the Coyotes to trade Scott to Montreal and stick him in the AHL to make him ineligible for the game to try to keep an enforcer and non-traditional “All-Star” out of the game was disgusting. The idea that they didn’t that Scott would have to move his wife, who’s pregnant with twins, and two young daughters from Arizona to Newfoundland, or force him to be apart with his about-to-be larger family all to avoid him playing in the All-Star Game was disturbing.

Even though the entire story seems unimaginable and even though Scott’s account of it on The Players’ Tribune seems unfathomable, it shouldn’t be. This is the NHL we’re talking about. The same league that forced a partial-season lockout in 1994-95 and a full-season lockout in 2004-05 and another partial-season lockout in 2012-13. The league has never cared about doing what’s right or taking care of their fans or taking advantage of a great public relations opportunity. They have operated like the Mets at a league level and have remained tone deaf to the hockey world outside of their Avenue of the Americas office. Only the league could make me miss a former Ranger, who played six games for the team four years ago. And only the fans could make sure Scott attended the weekend and only the fans could make a write-in candidate the MVP.

It took pure scum to try to get Scott out of the weekend and to force a trade of him and to ask him to back out of the weekend and to ask him, “Do you think this is something your kids would be proud of?” and to leave him off the MVP ballot during the tournament. So it made sense that the king of all the scum, Gary Bettman, would stand there after championship amid a chorus of boos with that shit-eating grin on his face and shake Scott’s hand and pose with that dirty smile for a photo opportunity while telling Scott, “I’m proud of you.”

Before Bettman could smile about how his poorly-run league backed into a Disney-like story because of his own Joe Thornton-like leadership, John Scott had scored two goals. The first was the first for the Pacific in the tournament, tying the Central at 1 and the second came on a breakaway later in his team’s first game. He had scored twice and sat his former teammate Patrick Kane down before fake fighting the league’s leading scorer after the Blackhawk scored. He had played in front of a sold-out Bridgestone Arena chanting “M-V-P” at him and had the backing of the world’s best players at his side, giving the ultimate eff you to the league even if scumbag Bettman and his band of scum would be the ones who would ultimately benefit of the league’s short-lived publicity. And he had stood on the blue line, as an All-Star Game champion, $90,909 richer and in awe as his name was announced as the tournament MVP with a new pickup truck to go with his trophy.

The only two All-Star Games that have ever stood out to me were 1989-90 when Mario Lemieux scored four goals in Pittsburgh (which I was only three years old for, but relived hundreds of times thanks to the VHS Dynamite on Ice) and 1995-96 when Ray Bourque scored the game-winning goal with 38 seconds left in Boston. Now 2015-16 when John Scott took over the hockey world and then took over in Nashville joins them.

I wonder if his kids are proud of him.

Blogs • Giants

Jan 22, 2016

NFL Championship Weekend Picks

The good news is there are still three games to pick to finish the season on a winning note. The better news is I’m 13 games over .500, so no matter what happens in the last three games, the season was still a success.

The final four. It’s been four years since the Giants played on this weekend and it’s felt like 40 given what’s gone on with them since they beat the 49ers in San Francisco in January 2012. From the 2-6 finish to the 2012 season to the 0-6 start to the 2013 season to the seven-game losing streak in 2014 to the six last-minute losses in 2015, the Giants have done the exact opposite of what I thought they would do when they won Super Bowl XLVI and started the next season 6-2. The point is you don’t know when you’re going to get back to this round or if you’re ever going to get back, so when you get here, you better win.

So about me wanting to dominate the divisional round picks … (crickets … crickets). By dominating, I must have meant going 0-4 and falling to 2-6 in the playoffs. The good news is there are still three games to pick to finish the season on a winning note and the better news is that I’m 13 games over .500, so no matter what happens in the last three games, the season was still a success.

DENVER +3.5 over New England
I can’t believe I’m in this spot again: rooting against the Patriots from reaching the Super Bowl. Actually, I can. The AFC East was once again a joke, the rest of the AFC wasn’t much better and with the Patriots able to wrap up a first-round bye and then divisional round home game, I’m not sure why I ever think they won’t be in this spot. Since 2001, the only time they haven’t been in the AFC Championship Game was 2002 (missed the playoffs), 2005 (lost to Denver in the divisional round), 2008 (lost Tom Brady for the season in Week 1), 2009 (lost to Baltimore in wild-card round) and 2010 (lost to the Jets in the divisional around). Take out 2008 because of injury and that’s 10 AFC Championship Games in 14 seasons with Tom Brady as the quarterback. Right now, if you were to tell me that Tom Brady will be healthy for all of 2016 then it’s hard not to think the Patriots won’t be back in this game again next season. Now the only thing standing between the Patriots and me drinking heavily to avoid dealing with a Patriots championship a little over two weeks from now is Peyton Manning.

I never thought Brock Osweiler should remain the Broncos’ quarterback when Peyton got healthy and couldn’t understand the people that thought he should. Maybe Osweiler will eventually be a top-tier quarterback, but for anyone who watched him play in Peyton’s absence (or bet on the Broncos during this time), a healthy Osweiler isn’t even close to a barely-hanging-on Manning.

Peyton was horrible in the regular season, but was saved by his defense after years of carrying his team, and his performance last week against the Steelers and one of the worst secondaries in the league wasn’t exactly promising. The greatest passer in the history of the game has been downgraded to game manager and the rapid decline of Peyton’s health and career couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The theme all week has centered around the idea that Peyton will be forced to beat the Patriots deep and he won’t be able to. No one is talking about what the Broncos’ defense is capable of or how special teams could impact the game, but why would they? It’s Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady (kind of) and one’s career is coming to an end and the other’s has no end in sight.

I want Peyton Manning to beat the Patriots, give the Mannings another postseason win against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, go to the Super Bowl, win it and ride off into the sunset as a champion. I want that to happen. But most importantly, I need the Patriots to lose. Let’s take care of the need first and then we can get to the wants.

CAROLINA -3 over Arizona
There is a Regular Season Carson Palmer and a Postseason Carson Palmer, and if you think the near-MVP you saw for 16 weeks was going to be the guy that showed up last week, your bank account can’t be doing too well.

Carson Palmer was bad in the divisional round, but he wasn’t the only one. The Cardinals’ defense was surprisingly bad, and Bruce Arians, managed the clock in the final minutes like he was paying tribute to Tom Coughlin’s 2015 season and installed a defense on the final drive of regulation as if he had bet against his team with the spread. The Cardinals mailed it in in Week 17, had a week off and showed up for their home playoff game as the 2-seed as if it were a preseason game in August. There was nothing to feel good about from the Cardinals and for a team that has historically been embarrassed on the East Coast, they couldn’t have a worse matchup for the NFC Championship Game.

I still don’t believe in the Panthers, even after their 15-1 regular season and even after they ran off a 31-0 halftime lead against the two-time defending NFC champions. But if they win two more games, I will have been wrong all along. I guess even getting to this point shows I was wrong all along. If the Broncos can’t beat the Patriots and they go to Super Bowl 50, the Cardinals aren’t going to beat them, but the Panthers can. In the event the AFC Championship Game doesn’t go the way I want it to, I’m going to need the Panthers to be in San Francisco in two weeks. It’s time to believe in the Panthers.

Last week: 0-4-0
Season: 136-123-5

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 20, 2016

The Rangers Aren’t Done

Last night at 7 p.m. I put on MSG and oddly enough the Rangers were playing the Canucks. I couldn’t believe it. The Rangers are still playing? Their season isn’t over? The 2015-16 Rangers are still a thing?

Last night at 7 p.m. I put on MSG and oddly enough the Rangers were playing the Canucks. I couldn’t believe it. The Rangers are still playing? Their season isn’t over? The 2015-16 Rangers are still a thing? I thought the Rangers were done? Luckily, I don’t listen to Larry Brooks or I would have been left watching hours of House Hunters courtesy of my girlfriend and DVR. Instead I got to watch the Rangers’ 3-2 overtime and comeback win over the Canucks.

The Rangers aren’t done. They are done when it comes to winning the Presidents’ Trophy again or being the the 1-seed in the East or winning the Met. They aren’t done when it comes to the only thing that matters: winning the whole effing thing. Do I think the Rangers are going to win the Stanley Cup? No, but I didn’t last year when they were the best team in the league for 82 games. I feel the same way I do about them every year: it’s hard to win the Stanley Cup. It’s so hard that it’s actually insane the Blackhawks have won three of the last six and it’s even more insane they might win it again this year. Like last year, the Eastern Conference is so deep that the Rangers could get knocked out in the first round or go to the Final.

But we’re a long way away from worrying about the Rangers’ first-round opponent or whether or not they will get back to where they were two years ago or revert back to where they were five and six years ago. There are still 36 games left to figure it all out, but most importantly, there are 36 games left for the Rangers to figure themselves out and figure the Capitals out.

On Nov. 3, the Rangers beat the Capitals 5-2 to improve to 8-2-2 on the season. It was their third straight win in what would be a nine-game win streak. At the time, I laughed at the idea that the Capitals would finally overcome the Rangers for the first time since 2010-11. After three straight postseason series losses and years of underachieving, I wasn’t worried that the Capitals would finally live up to their preseason hype and be the best of the East. Less than three weeks later, it all turned for the worse.

It’s actually scary to think the Rangers are third in the East in wins (25) and points (55) despite being four games under .500 over the last two months or half the season. The cushion they built with their nine-game win streak and 16-3-2 start has kept them from falling out of the playoff picture and jockeying for position for a wild-card spot. But the Rangers were never as good as their incredible 21-game start to the season when it seemed like they would never lose and they certainly aren’t as bad as their last 25 games when one-goal deficits felt like they did from 2008-2013. Fortunately, outside of the Capitals, no one else has played especially well or well enough to bury the Rangers for their 25-game sleepwalk and if the Rangers have to settle for the 2- or 3-seed in the Met and we get the inevitable Rangers-Islanders first-round matchup, that’s not such a bad thing.

In his overreaction piece, Brooks said:

The Rangers look slow. They look unsettled. They don’t look like a well-coached team. They look like a playoff-bubble team that will need Henrik Lundqvist to be at the height of his powers every night in order to have a chance to qualify for the playoffs.

He wasn’t saying this at the beginning of the season when the team couldn’t lose. If they play the way they did against the Islanders in a loss last week in Brooklyn, they’ll be fine. They’ll still need Henrik Lundqvist “to be at the height of his power every night” not only to get in the playoffs, but once they get there. We already knew that. We’ve known that since 2005. The 2015-16 Rangers aren’t the 2013-14 Rangers and they’re not the 2014-15 Rangers either, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Neither of those teams finished the job either.

When I went to Boston the day after Thanksgiving for the Rangers-Bruins Black Friday matinee, the Rangers were coming off a 5-1 loss to the Canadiens, but had still won 13 of their last 16. They blew the Black Friday game with some help from the officials and then lost the next day to the Flyers. In four days, the Rangers matched their loss total for the entire season and were outscored 12-4 in the three losses. Since that loss to the Canadiens, the Rangers are 9-13-3 with their last back-to-back wins coming on Nov. 21 and 23.

I thought the Rangers would turn it around when they beat Carolina on Nov. 30, but they didn’t. I thought they would turn it around when they beat Ottawa on Dec. 6, but they didn’t. I thought they would turn it around when they beat Edmonton on Dec. 15, but they didn’t. I thought they would turn it around when they beat Anaheim on Dec. 22 or when the finally beat Tampa Bay on Dec. 30. Nope and nope. And they didn’t turn it around after their wins over Dallas on Jan. 5 or Boston on Jan. 11 or Philadelphia on Jan. 16. It hasn’t happened. So I’m hopeful that Tuesday’s win over Vancouver will be the start of something.

Mats Zuccarello shot back at Brooks on Tuesday night when he said, “We’ve got to show that Zed’s not dead” after the Rangers’ win. The Rangers aren’t done. Far from it.

Author: Neil Keefe

Bye Bye Greg Bird

Podcast: Rear Admiral

The Legend of John Scott

NFL Championship Weekend Picks

The Rangers Aren’t Done