The World Baseball Classic rosters were announced on Friday and three Yankees will be participating.
The World Baseball Classic rosters were announced on Friday and three Yankees will be participating: Kyle Higashioka, Nestor Cortes and Jonathan Loaisiga. I’m not worried about Higashioka participating. I’m somewhat worried about Cortes participating. I’m extremely worried about Loaisiga participating given his injury history.
After Monday night’s exciting 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, Wednesday night feels like 10 days away, which is when the Rangers will play next. Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
I’m glad the Rangers just ended a 10-day layoff and aren’t starting one because after Monday night’s exciting 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, Wednesday night feels like 10 days away, which is when the Rangers will play next.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. I don’t have a hard time falling asleep. Just ask my wife. I could lie down on a hardwood floor with two children two years and younger playing around me with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse blaring on TV and “The Wheels on the Bus” playing on volume 10 on Alexa and be asleep within seconds. But on Monday night after the Rangers’ 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, I couldn’t fall asleep, which is why I’m writing this with a fatigue headache sitting over my left eye feeling like I was on the other end of a Jacob Trouba open-ice hit.
Between the three blown leads, the five Ranges goals, the nine total goals, the big hits, the fights, the play of Mika Zibanejad and the Kid Line, the kicking motion review (that of course didn’t go the Rangers’ way) and the big saves from Jaroslav Halak, the game had everything. I couldn’t fall asleep because I couldn’t stop watching Trouba lay out Nazem Kadri.
2. It’s rare that a player of Kadri’s ability is on the other end of a hit like that because a player of Kadri’s ability is usually smart enough to not put themselves in a situation like that. Henrik Lundqvist discussed the play after the second intermission on MSG, and broke down how Trouba sets up attacking opponents by making them think for a fraction of a second that there is enough time and space in the middle of the ice for them to cut across before taking away that time and space before they can realize it.
3. It was a clean hit, just like Trouba’s hit in the first period. Just like nearly all of Trouba’s hits are. But every time Trouba makes a hit like the ones he made on Monday night, he immediately has to defend himself in the form of a fight. I get the opposition wanting to stand up for their teammates, but maybe instead of fighting for their teammates they could just tell their teammates to keep their head up when skating with the puck.
4. After Trouba laid out Kadri, the nearest Flame to Trouba was Dillon Dube, so he took it upon himself to fight Trouba. Dube had zero career fights before taking on Trouba and had exactly 20 penalty minutes in each of the last two seasons. Trouba made quick work of him and as Stephen Valiquette said on MSG, “That’s somebody that shouldn’t want that smoke.” So in the span of seconds, Trouba destroyed the Flames’ third-leading scoring, beat the crap out of someone who has no business fighting and got his team a power play thanks to the instigator penalty. There’s nothing more demoralizing than a player jumping another player to stick up for his teammate who got leveled, only to also get his ass kicked.
Trouba takes a lot of shit from Rangers fans (including me) about his play and especially his play relative to his salary cap hit. But his performance in the win over the Flames made him worth every penny.
The Dube instigator led to a Zibenejad power-play goal to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead, so so much for Dube standing up for his teammate and making a statement. Within the next nine minutes of play, however, that lead was gone and the Rangers trailed by a goal.
5. It would have been hard to stomach if the Rangers had lost the game, and they nearly did. They blew a 1-0 lead, a 2-1 lead and a 3-2 lead. They had to overcome a 4-3 deficit with 7:05 left in the game to avoid losing what was a dominating performance. They had to overcome the deficit because the officials and Toronto upheld Andrew Mangiapane’s third-period goal. (I’m glad Mangiapane isn’t a Ranger. It’s hard enough to say and write Leschyshyn.)
I understand why the call was upheld because Mangiapane’s right foot was moving forward after he made contact with the puck. When you see a slowed-down replay it looks like he’s making a kicking motion even though I don’t think he is. But I have seen that same type of goal called back countless times and thought it would be in this instance as well. It wasn’t. That’s the way it goes for the Rangers and goal reviews.
6. Since Artemi Panarin became a Ranger I have called for him to play on a line with Zibanejad. Play the team’s top playmaker with the team’s top goal scorer. (What a concept.) David Quinn would only pair the two when the team was trailing and in full-blown urgency mode in the final minutes of the third period. I have enough problems with Gerard Gallant and his unfortunate similarities to Quinn, but the one thing Gallant can do to separate himself from Quinn to avoid the same fate as Quinn is to keep the two together.
7. Gallant was asked about keeping them together moving forward after the game.
“You’ve gotta give it some time, and I don’t know if I’m going to give it time or not,” Gallant said. “We’ll see.”
I think Gallant made part of that comment in jest, but I’m not 100 percent sure he did. He knows his penchant for changing lines daily is out of control, though I don’t know how he could think of breaking the two of them up. I guess when you’re the guy who healthy scratches Kaapo Kakko in the playoffs and Alexis Lafreniere in the regular season and plays Sammy Blais over Vitali Kravtsov, you could think of breaking up Panarin and Zibanejad.
8. The Kid Line was more than noticeable, driving play and creating chances as Filip Chytill scored a pair of goals and Lafreniere scored the overtime winner. If Gallant could just change out Vesey with Panarin and Zibanejad, and continue to allow the Kid Line to play without the nerves of making a mistake and being benched (or scratched), the Rangers would have a very dangerous top six. They could have a dangerous bottom six as well, but that would entail rebuilding the entire fourth line, which they seem unwilling to do. But to keep the theme of these Thoughts positive after the memorable win and the most entertaining game of the season, I will refrain from writing about the fourth line disaster. (And I won’t mention how Blais hasn’t scored a goal in 53 games with the Rangers.)
9. Lafreniere desperately needed that goal, (as he desperately needs every point he can get), which was just his second since December 7. Chytil looks like he will be a consistent goal-scoring threat and Kakko is starting get his name on the stat sheet with regularity. Now Lafreniere needs to do the same. The trio is never gong to be given PP1 time as long as Gallant is the head coach, so they are going to need to find a way to get their points in the limited final-seconds-of-the-power-play time they do get and at even strength. They are starting to do just that.
10. Coming off a 10-day layoff and at home and given the performance, the Rangers had to have two points from that game. The same goes for their next game on Wednesday night against a Canucks team that isn’t good and an organization that is lost. It’s not often that I expect the Rangers to win, but I expect them to win on Wednesday.
Coming off a 10-day layoff, the Rangers beat the Flames 5-4 in overtime in the most entertaining game of the season.
In what was the most exciting and entertaining game of the season, the Rangers beat the Flames 5-4 in overtime at the Garden. It may not have been the Rangers’ best performance, but the game had everything coming off a 10-day layoff, and that included Jacob Trouba having to defend himself after two more clean open-ice hits.
The Yankees have spent the offseason making excuses for their postseason play, and that continued this past weekend.
I spent the weekend avoiding the -15 degree weather in New York City by staying inside, watching countless episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and wondering why the NHL can’t just have their traditional skills competition during their All-Star Weekend. The Yankees spent the weekend continuing their public display of delusion about how the 2022 season ended and how they compare to the world champion Astros.
Brian Cashman went on 670 The Score this weekend and wanted to be celebrated for reaching the ALCS even though his latest roster to come up championship-less didn’t even win a game in that series.
“New York’s a tough grading system,” Cashman said. “So the only A you get is if you finish with that trophy in hand otherwise you get an F. There’s nothing in between.”
This is a misleading statement from Cashman. The 2017 Yankees lost in seven games in the ALCS and I would have given that team an A at the time given their expectations, performance and how set up for the future they appeared to be. I certainly didn’t think I would be sitting here five years later with these Yankees still having not won a championship.
The 2013-2016 Yankees were mostly hated rosters filled with either past-their-prime superstars like Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez or roster stopgaps desperately hanging on to major-league careers like Lyle Overbay, Vernon Wells, Kevin Youkilis and Travis Hafner. Those were truly awful teams that Joe Girardi was somehow able to squeeze winning records out of, and after 2017, I didn’t think the Yankees’ roster would be so universally detested again for a long, long time.
But that time has come again as the roster is littered with washed-up players like Josh Donaldson, overpaid busts like Aaron Hicks and bargain-bin disappointments like Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Add in a failed manager who’s protected by his general manager, and there’s a lot to not like about the current Yankees. It’s truly scary to think about if Aaron Judge had left this offseason. Giancarlo Stanton coming off the worst season of his career would be the position player face of the franchise.
The grading system Cashman speaks about is accurate when it comes to the current state of the Yankees. A team that in the last six postseasons has been eliminated by the Astros three times, the Red Sox twice and the Rays once. A team that is going on a 14-year World Series appearance drought and a team that has won it all once in the last 23 years. A team that has consistently passed over generational free-agent talent for less expensive options and in-house options that don’t pan out.
“In the end we were four games short of a World Series appearance,” Cashman said. “But it felt like with the way our fan base reacted and the press that we got knocked out in the first round.”
It’s not surprising Cashman thinks he and his roster should be praised for their embarrassing showing in the ALCS. This is the same guy, who a year ago, said the organization’s World Series drought doesn’t date back to 2009, it only dates back to 2017 because the Astros cheated, calling his Yankees the rightful champions that season in what what his lowest moment as general manager. It’s been a long time since Cashman won that he now has to conjure up championships in his head rather than have his team win them on the field. So of course he believes reaching the ALCS and not winning any games there is an accomplishment.
“The perception was we didn’t do well,” Cashman said. “And the reality was we had a hell of another run at it, but we fell short, so that’s just the New York market.”
If the young, inexperienced Guardians, with the fourth-lowest payroll in baseball, who weren’t supposed to sniff the postseason, had won Game 5 of the ALDS over the Yankees and then got swept by the Astros, I would say the reality was they had a hell of a run at it. Their entire roster made less than Stanton and Donaldson combined and they had the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning of a win-or-go-home Game 5 against the Yankees. Yes, if they reached the ALDS and were swept, so be it. They could be proud.
The Yankees shouldn’t be proud of their showing. A team that kicked their ass all season, kicked their ass worse than ever in four games over five days in October. It was demoralizing. The Yankees were mismanaged in Game 1, complained about exit velocity and open roofs costing them Game 2, were one-hit through 8 2/3 innings in Game 3, and when they finally broke through and scored five runs in Game 4, they allowed six runs. The Astros beat them in every way possible.
That’s not how Michael King sees it. While I was busy watching Mickey and Goofy find all the animals for their petting zoo, and while Cashman was telling sports radio in the Midwest about the participation award his 2022 Yankees deserve, King was on MLB Network Radio talking as if the Yankees had just won the World Series and had played in their sixth straight ALCS and not the Astros.
“Every offseason move that we make, you can see the Twitterverse going nuts, like ‘Is this enough to beat the Astros?’” King said. “It’s never just like ‘Is this enough to be a World Series team?’ It’s ’Is it enough to beat the Astros?’ Because we know that obviously, ultimately that will get us there.”
King wondered why Yankees fans can never just wonder if a move is enough to be a World Series team and then quickly realized that the American League berth in the World Series goes through Houston, changed course and corrected his incorrect initial thought. Then, toeing the Cashman/Aaron Boone company line, he goes back-to-back with the use of “obviously” and “ultimately” as if he were reciting a Boone postgame press conference. (And to think there are people who don’t think a team takes on the character of their manager.)
Every move the Yankees make needs to answer the question: Does this move close the gap between the Yankees and the Astros? Right now the gap is sizable. It’s four postseason wins, which is the equivalent of an entire league championship series. It’s enormous. The Yankees might have made it to the baseball final four, but they did nothing once they got there. It’s not something that should be celebrated. Not for the Yankees and not for this group of Yankees the string of postseason failures they have put together.
“I think that if we faced the Astros when we were rolling in those May, June, July months, I think it’s not even close,” King said. “We were by far the best team in baseball.”
Michael, Michael, Michael. The Yankees did face the Astros in June when the Yankees “were rolling.” The Yankees were 51-18 and 7 1/2 games up on the Astros when they met for the first time on June 23 for the start of a four-game series. And the Yankees “were rolling” for the end of April, May and most of June. In July, they were falling apart.
Here’s how those four games when the Yankees “were rolling” went:
June 23: The Yankees are no-hit for seven innings, strike out 10 times and pull off a miraculous four-run ninth inning for a walk-off win.
June 24: The Yankees score once and lose.
June 25: The Yankees are no-hit, strike out 15 times and (obviously) lose.
June 26: The Yankees are no-hit for the first 6 1/3 innings, rally for two runs in the ninth and walk it off in the 10th after Dusty Baker rests all of his ‘A’ relievers.
Here’s how the other three regular-season meetings between the two teams went:
June 30: The Yankees score one run, strike out 11 times and lose.
July 21: The Yankee score two runs and lose.
July 21: The Yankees score five runs (and still lose) off a starter who wasn’t in the Astros’ postseason rotation and a reliever who’s no longer in Major League Baseball.
The Yankees saw the Astros when they were the so-called “best team in baseball” and never had a lead. They faced them when they were starting their second-half collapse and got swept in a doubleheader. They played them in the ALCS, scored nine runs in four games and were swept.
“We hit a little bit of injury. Trade deadline I think kind of just like threw off the locker room a little bit,” King said. “But if it’s all together I think this team is unbelievable and there’s no chance an Astros team could stop us when we’re rolling.”
Well, the Astros did stop you when you “were rolling.” At one point the Yankees had a 9 1/2-game lead over the Astros in the AL and that was erased. So not only did they stop you, they stopped you, caught you and passed you, humiliating you in the process.
The Yankees did have their fair share of injuries, but so does every team. The 2021 Astros didn’t have Justin Verlander or Lance McCullers Jr. They went to the World Series. The 2021 Braves didn’t have Ronald Acuna and they won the World Series. The 2022 Astros lost their 2-hitter after 64 games in Michael Brantley and still won it all. Every team has injuries. No one wants to hear about injuries, especially the Yankees’ injuries.
As for the change in the clubhouse at the trade deadline, well, King last pitched more than a week before the deadline after suffering a season-ending injury, so he wasn’t in the new-look clubhouse daily. But yes, clubhouse favorite Jordan Montgomery was traded at the deadline. Did the removal of Montgomery from the clubhouse make Boone a bad in-game manager in October? Did Montgomery’s departure cause Judge to go 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS? Is it the reason why Donaldson went 1-for-13 with 10 strikeouts? Kiner-Falefa couldn’t handle routine ground balls because he was upset the Yankees traded one of their homegrown starting pitchers? It’s hard for me to think Harrison Bader dropped a ball in center field because he was uncomfortable being the player Montgomery was traded for.
“I never want to make the excuse of injuries because every team goes through it,” King said, “But unfortunately, we just had some issues that made is so we weren’t at full strength.”
King doesn’t want to make excuses for injuries, but unfortunately, he’s going to anyway! What team is at full strength by late October? Sure, if the Yankees had a completely healthy Matt Carpenter batting and if DJ LeMahieu and Andrew Benintendi were available and if King himself never got hurt, then yeah, the Yankees’ chances of beating the Astros would have improved. But the Yankees didn’t have those players, and they lost. That’s the way it goes.
If the Yankees and Astros meet again in the ALCS in 2023, I don’t expect that either team will have the 26-man rosters they planned on having for the series. And if the Yankees and Astros do meet again in the ALCS in 2023, I pray the Yankees finally win, so I don’t have to listen to excuse-filled interviews like these ones.
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The Yankees as an organization continue to be delusional in talking about how they compare to the Astros.
A new baseball season is just about here, and the Yankees continue to try to change the perception of how last season ended and how this offseason has gone. Over the last few days, Brian Cashman once again talked about how close the Yankees were to the World Series, and Michael King went on to say only injuries prevent the Yankees from beating the Astros. It wasn’t a great weekend to be a Yankees fan.
Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!