Despite there only being 22 games left in the season, it doesn’t seem like Aaron Boone is trying to win.
The Yankee are tied in the loss column with the Blue Jays for the final playoff spot in the American League. The Yankees have lost nine of their last 11 games and six in a row, losing seven games of ground on the Blue Jays in the last 10. Despite this and despite there only being 22 games left in the season, it doesn’t seem like Aaron Boone is trying to win.
This Giants season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Daniel Jones as a Giant.
I went into the 2020 Giants season wanting things to be different. Deep down, I didn’t actually think they would be, but I just really wanted a football season. Not a season that’s over when there are still leaves on the trees in the Northeast, and not a season that ends before the Major League Baseball postseason begins. I wanted what I have had twice in the last nine years, and that’s a football season that carries into December. I wanted something I have had once in the last nine years: a Giants postseason game.
The Giants kicked off their 2020 season as I was entering my 16th consecutive hour sitting in a hospital chair waiting for my wife to give birth. Just as the game and the season were starting, it was time for the baby to come out.
Five or six hours later, I’m not sure exactly what time it was, other than that it was the early hours of Tuesday, Sept. 15, I was sitting in the dark eating saltine and graham crackers and chugging water out of Dixie cups like I was Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway returning home, not having seen food in a very long time. The hospital cafeteria was closed and my only options were to either wait a few more hours for breakfast before crushing the hospital’s surprisingly exceptional French toast or to try to make a meal out of the airplane-like snacks the nurse was able to gather for me.
I wasn’t tired, and with the blinds drawn in the room, without a clock I would have had no way of knowing what time of day, or even what day it was, as if I had been in trapped in a casino. The last nearly 24 hours were a blur. I had been up for nearly all of them. It was now early Tuesday morning, and I had essentially been up since Sunday morning.
On Sunday afternoon, during the Week 1 “Witching Hour” of the 1 p.m. games and right as the 4 p.m. slate was about to begin, we were instructed to go the hospital as it appeared as though my wife was in labor. We raced to the hospital, I dropped my wife off at the entrance and then while flying around the parking lot looking for an empty space, of which there was one, I tried to force my car into a into a very tight window, like an inexcusable Daniel Jones throw, and hit the car to my right. The car ended up belonging to my wife’s delivery nurse who couldn’t have been nicer about the incident, and a few weeks later, it was resolved for only $250, which I likely would have lost anyway on the 4 p.m. games if I hadn’t been in transit to the hospital as they were being played.
My wife wasn’t going to be admitted until they ran some tests, and because she had yet to be admitted, under COVID precautions, I couldn’t enter the hospital until she was admitted. The woman in the hospital lobby told me I could wait outside. So I did that, pacing the sidewalk for 30 minutes before going to the car. I ended up spending the next four-and-a-half hours in the car (good thing I didn’t “wait just outside the door” like the hospital front desk woman suggested), before it was determined my wife was in very early labor, but wasn’t far enough along to admit her.
We got back home at 9 p.m. and by midnight the contractions started to pick up. I spent the next three hours meticulously timing them as if I were the one holding the stopwatch at the NFL Combine, and around 3 a.m., it was back to the hospital. By 4 a.m., we were in the delivery room. They had my wife doing squats on a exercise ball, while I sat in the corner trying not to suffer the same type of back injury Aaron Hicks would have if he had had to sit in that same chair for as long as I did.
Fast forward nearly 24 hours and there I was sitting in the dark in a slightly upgraded hospital chair. Despite being in the previous chair which made a Metro North seat seem like the recliners Joey and Chandler had in their apartment for upwards of 16 hours, I had avoided the type of back injury Hicks had suffered from a 27-minute spring training coach bus ride that kept him out for nearly three months of the 2019 Yankees season. I tried to quietly chew and crunch on my packets of crackers while my wife slept in an enormous and luxurious-looking hospital bed (which I would find my way into for a few quicks naps over the next two days), and next to her, our newborn son was out cold, swaddled tightly with a winter hat on, somehow full off less than a shot of Similac. I curled up in my folding chair bed to watch Giants-Steelers, which I had recorded.
The Giants lost. They could have won, and should have won, but they didn’t, in what has become the never-ending theme with the franchise for just about an entire decade. They couldn’t punch it in on first-and-goal from the 3 after a Steelers’ muffed punt in the first quarter, then with a seven-point lead and a chance to make it a two-score game, Jones threw an interception, and later in the game, while trailing, with a chance to take the lead back, Jones threw another essentially game-ending interception. It was the type of loss that led ownership to inexplicably move on from Tom Coughlin, got Ben McAdoo fired midseason and ran Pat Shurmur out of town after two atrocious seasons. On their fourth head coach in six seasons, the Joe Judge era was starting the same way the previous three had their eras end. A head coach I finally liked or wanted to like was overseeing yet another 0-1 start to the season, while Jones, who I was against the Giants drafting and have remained against, ruined yet another game.
Six days later, the Giants lost in Chicago by four points and lost their best player for the season. 0-2. A week after that they were blown out by the defending NFC champions by 27 points. 0-3. A week after only managing to score nine points at home against the 49ers, the Giants scored nine points for the second straight week in a loss in Los Angeles to the Rams.
The Giants were 0-4 and I couldn’t have cared less about them. I desperately wanted things to be different under Judge and I wanted things to be different knowing for the foreseeable future my family’s life would indefinitely be spent at home with only occasional and necessary trips out of the house. Once the Yankees season would end (and it ended early again), I knew the 2020-2021 NHL season might not start on the planned Jan. 1 date and might never start at all. I was relying on the Giants to provide a sports world escape and the only source of entertainment that didn’t require wiping spit-up or newborn poop, and instead, they were the laughingstock of the NFL, having become the worst team in the league over the last four seasons. I decided, like in recent seasons, I would watch the games with no actual emotional or monetary investment in them. My only reason for watching them had become wanting everyone to progress other than the quarterback to progress, so that maybe by spring 2021 they would have another general manager and another quarterback.
At 1-7, the Giants put together a four-game winning streak to “save” the season, highlighted by a road win in Seattle with Colt McCoy as the Giants’ starting quarterback. The winning streak and upset of the Seahawks reeled Giants fans back into believing they could win the NFC East. Some team had to win this embarrassing NFC East, why couldn’t it be the Giants?
After that four-game winning streak, I wrote:
I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. That’s what the Giants do. And if they are to go 1-3 or 0-4 between now and Week 17, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are. I’ll be upset with myself for caring about them again this season when I should have known better.
I did know better. I wrote exactly what would happen, and despite predicting how the Giants’ season would finish, I still let them suck me back in only to crush me. After the four-game winning streak, the Giants lost three straight before winning what ended up being a meaningless win in Week 17 over the Cowboys only to have the Eagles throw their Week 17 game against Washington. Unlike many, I wasn’t upset with the Eagles for purposely losing a winnable game. The Giants had lost 10 regular-season games, blowing leads in many of them. Win one of those 10 games and they wouldn’t have had to rely on their rival to win a game for them.
So the 2020 season ended wasn’t different. It ended the way every season but one in the last nine years has ended: postseason-less.
This season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Jones as a Giant, the sixth overall pick in 2019 was wasted and these last three years were nothing other than a waste. It will be back to the beginning of yet another “rebuild” and it will undoubtedly happen with a new general manager. It won’t necessarily mean the end for Judge as he’s not tied to Gettleman or Jones, but it certainly won’t be good for his future with the team if the team is essentially no better results-wise than where they were when McAdoo and Shurmur were fired.
This Giants season needs to be different even if expectations are that it won’t be.
With their recent run and schedule, the Blue Jays are going to the playoffs. Either the Yankees or Red Sox won’t be.
The Blue Jays are going to the postseason. Sure, they are 1 1/2 games out of a playoff spot right now, but they are going to get there. The Blue Jays had a 4.6 percent chance of reaching the playoffs on August 27, the same day the Yankees had a 97.8 percent chance. Now the Blue Jays have 42.5 percent chance and the Yankees have a 68.6 percent chance. Of the Blue Jays’ remaining 24 games, four are against the Yankees, seven against the Orioles and seven against the Twins. The Blue Jays are going to the postseason. Either the Yankees or Red Sox won’t be.
Cam Lewis of Blue Jays Nation joined me to talk about the Blue Jays’ two-week run that has gotten them back in the playoff picture and what the expectations are now for a team that on the verge of elimination at the end of August.
The Yankees have 23 games left to turn their season around one last time. If not, they will finish it the way they started it: as a huge disappointment.
I wish the 2021 Yankees had just gone away. There were many times this season when they could have. When they started the season 5-10. When they finished April 12-14. When they got swept by the Tigers at the end of May. When they lost the first seven games to the Red Sox. When they fell to .500 on July 4. Rather than let their season unravel in a year in which they were expected to reach the World Series for the first time in 12 years, they fought back each time, doing just enough to stay mathematically in the postseason picture even as their playoff odds fell off like the final season of The OC.
Then came the July run, and the post-All-Star break run and the post-trade deadline run and the 13-game winning streak. The Yankees came all the way back to pass Seattle and Toronto and Oakland and Boston in the wild-card race, and after their 8-2 win over the A’s on August 27, they were 24 games over .500 and just four games behind the Rays in the AL East.
Then the wheels came off. And the doors. And the transmission and engine dropped, and now the Yankees are sitting on the side of the road having watched the Red Sox pass them on Wednesday night with the Blue Jays about to pass them and no help in sight. No help from the offense. No help from the starting pitching and no help from the bullpen.
The offense has turned back the clock to April, May and June. With four runs in three games against the Blue Jays this week, the Yankees have scored 36 runs in their last 11 games, losing nine of them. Things have gotten so bad Aaron Boone has had to bench Joey Gallo for striking out in half of his plate appearances as a Yankee, sit down Gleyber Torres for being a liability on both sides of the ball and move DJ LeMahieu down in the order for only hitting weak ground balls to the left side. Boone’s all-time favorite Brett Gardner found himself batting leadoff for the Yankees on Wednesday against the Blue Jays … in a playoff race … in 2021 … four years removed from the last time he should have been batting leadoff for the Yankees. Sadly, Gardner provided the Yankees’ only offense in Wednesday’s loss and what was the Yankees’ first extra-base hit since Sunday.
Aaron Judge is 1-for-his-last-21, Stanton is 3-for-his-last-19, the baseball looks like the size of a golf ball to Gallo, Anthony Rizzo has one home run since August 4, it’s startling when LeMahieu doesn’t hit the ball on the ground, Gary Sanchez already provided his production for the month with his two-homer, six-RBI day on Sunday, Torres is doing everything he can to play himself out of the organization, Gio Urshela looks like the player the Indians and Blue Jays gave up on, Luke Voit’s first half was ruined by injuries and his second half has been ruined by his own manager and Rougned Odor is 2-for-his-last 37 with only one home run in nearly a month.
Gerrit Cole’s hamstring injury has left a gaping hole in the rotation and with Jameson Taillon’s regression and Corey Kluber’s lack of knowing where his pitches will end up, there’s a lot of trust being placed with Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes.
Clay Holmes is suddenly the Yankees’ best reliever as Aroldis Chapman continues to pitch like Nick Nelson and Chad Green continues to poop his pants in big spots. Somehow Andrew Heaney keeps getting chances and even Brooks Kriske made an appearance this week, as Boone manages like it’s mid-March in Tampa.
The Yankees’ current five-game losing streak comes a week after a four-game losing streak. In their last 11 games, they have lost two to the A’s, who are chasing them, lost a pair to the Angels, who were responsible for ending the Orioles’ 19-game losing streak, lost a series to the Orioles, who are 48 games under .500, and have now lost three straight to the Blue Jays, who are only two back of the Yankees in the loss column.
The Yankees could have gone away and saved me many hours of my life, hours I wasted watching them get no-hit through the first four of five innings of about half their games. They cold have gone away and saved me the heartache and aggravation of watching the bullpen blow late lead after late lead. They could have gone away and let me peacefully go to bed many nights this summer instead of regretting my decision to voluntarily stay up knowing the baby would be up in only a few hours. But they didn’t. They did just enough to stay relevant and alive, and now after 139 games they might go away anyway.
Two weeks ago, the Yankees had a 97.8 percent chance of making the playoffs. Today, that number is down to 68.6 percent. They have dropped nearly 30 percent in two weeks! Seemingly impossible. While at the same time, the Blue Jays chances have gone from 4.6 percent to 42.5 percent.
I have been rightfully upset with the Yankees for being headed to the one-game playoff for the third time in the last four years the one-game playoff has taken place since it would mean using Cole in that game and not having him for the first two games of the ALDS. Well, I don’t have to worry about that scenario anymore, because if the Yankees are even able to qualify for the one-game playoff, at this point, they won’t be able to line Cole up for it. They will likely have to fight this thing out all the way to Game 162 now as just three losses separate the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Mariners and A’s. So not only are the Yankees embarrassingly headed to the one-game playoff for the third time instances of the game, they’re likely to be without Cole it in what is one final parting gift from the 2021 Yankees to their fans.
This season has been miserable. Even when the Yankees have won, they have done so in the most excruciating fashion, always winning by one or two runs, frequently needing a wild pitch to get a runner in from third with less than two ours and often praying the highest-paid closer in history can throw a single strike.
Nothing has come easy for the 2021 Yankees. Not even during their 13-game winning streak in which they won eight of the games by one or two runs, and only won two of the games by more than four runs. Nothing is coming easy now as they try avoid getting swept in four games at home to the team chasing them.
The Yankees have 23 games left to turn their season around one last time. If not, they will finish it the way they started it: as a huge disappointment. Either way, I won’t be surprised. That’s who the 2021 Yankees are.
The Yankees have 25 games left to change the narrative on their season yet again, and if they don’t, there will be plenty of blame to go around this October.
The Yankees have lost seven of their last nine games and it seems as though the April 1-July 4 Yankees have returned. The Yankees have 25 games left to change the narrative on their season yet again, and if they don’t, there will be plenty of blame to go around this October.
1. I was beginning to get nervous the Yankees’ play since the second game of the doubleheader on July 4, including their 13-game winning streak, had made Yankees fans forget how awful Aaron Boone is at his job and how bad this Yankees team is. The mirage that was the Yankees’ recent run has come to an end and sandwiched around their 35-11 record between July 4-August 27 is a 43-48 record. The Yankees have lost seven of their last nine games with each loss seemingly uglier than the one before it.
The Yankees were expected to represent the American League in the World Series this season and were the odds-on favorite to win the pennant. They can still do so, but it’s going to be extremely difficult, and anything short of a World Series appearance should be the end of Boone’s time as Yankees manager. A wild-card berth isn’t nearly enough. An ALDS loss apperance isn’t enough. A fifth ALCS loss for the franchise in 12 years can’t be enough. Get to the World Series or say goodbye to Boone and make a needed change at manager.
2. There is this weird faction of Yankees fans who think Brian Cashman and Boone are not to blame at all for this Yankees team and this season, always wanting to blame the players. It’s never the fault of the front office or the manager. The front office only puts together the roster and the manager only creates the lineup and manages the bullpen and in-game decisions.
If I were to start at shortstop for the Yankees tonight and make multiples errors and go hitless at the plate, or if I were to be used as a reliever and failed to protect a late lead, these Yankees fans would blame me for my performance. They wouldn’t blame Cashman for putting me on the roster or Boone for putting me in the game.
I know this because there are fans who blame Gleyber Torres and Andrew Heaney for Sunday’s loss to the Orioles in the second game of the series.
3. Torres took his sweet time on a routine ground ball, which would have ended the sixth inning and maintained a 7-2 Yankees lead. After he was unable to make the routine play, the inning was extended and Albert Abreu allowed a two-run home run to make it 7-4.
Torres is an awful shortstop. He has never been good defensively, and his bat is no longer capable of negating his defense. But Torres doesn’t pencil himself in as the starting shortstop (and he doesn’t write him name into the seventh spot in the batting order above Gary Sanchez either).
The Yankees knew Torres was a defensive liability coming into the season. They knew he would be unable to consistently make what’s considered a routine play by major-league standards. Yet they still went into 2021 with him as their starting shortstop. But the same way the Yankees stubbornly told fans their all-right-handed lineup could be successful before trading for two left-handed bats in Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo, the Yankees tried to right their wrong in believing in Torres when they unsuccessfully tried acquire Trevor Story in July. Torres will either be off the position in 2022 or possibly off the team. The Yankees’ failed trade of Story says so. There are still 25 regular-season games left in 2021 though and then possibly one or more postseason games.
4. While Torres was out, the Yankees were winning and Andrew Velazquez became the easiest Yankee of all time to root for. With the Bronx native, who’s living at his parents while playing for the team he grew up dreaming about playing for, starting at shortstop every day, I wrote and said if Torres didn’t play well upon his return that the calls would begin to play Velazquez every day. Those calls have started.
In four games since coming off the IL, Torres is 3-for-13 with four strikeouts and no extra-base hits and a litany of mistakes in the field. Whether he’s botching balls, taking too long to get off throws or mishandling throws on steal attempts, Torres’ defense should be enough for him to sit on the bench. With a .686 OPS and nine home runs in his last 145 games and 580 plate appearances, Torres should no longer be an automatic when it comes to being in the starting lineup.
5. In the seventh, an inning after Torres’ miscue led to two runs, the Yankees still had a 7-4 lead. Get nine outs before allowing three runs. With the heart of the Orioles’ order due up, Andrew Heaney was brought into the game. Heaney had recently been moved to the bullpen to accommodate the return of Corey Kluber, even though Heaney had two career relief appearances before this season and even though he proved incapable of being a reliever in relief of Kluber the last time through the rotation in Anaheim. But with the Orioles’ 3-4-5 hitters due up, Heaney was brought in.
Heaney hit Trey Mancini with a pitch, allowed a single to DJ Stewart, a single to Austin Hays, a double to Jahmai Jones and after finally getting an out, another single to Jorge Mateo. Heaney faced six batters, five of them being right-handed.
I’m not upset with Heaney for his performance. He sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t put himself in the bullpen with essentially no experience as a reliever. He didn’t put himself in Sunday’s game, He didn’t keep himself in the game to turn a three-run lead into a one-run deficit, while recording one out. His roster spot is on Cashman and his continued use is on Boone. The Yankees have been unable to properly evaluate Heaney’s ability and haven’t come close to putting him in the best possible position to succeed. In return, he has allowed 24 earned runs and 10 home runs in 28 1/3 innings.
6. “He’s going to have to step up,” Boone said about Heaney on Sunday. “He wants the ball and he’s going to have to take advantage of an opportunity when he gets it.”
“When he gets it?!?!” The next time Heaney should get the ball is when he’s wearing a different uniform. There are 25 games left in the season, the Yankees haven’t clinched a postseason berth and one of their paths to the postseason (as the division winner) has been taken off the board. The Yankees’ only opportunity to reach the postseason is as one of the two wild-card teams. Their only opportunity to reach an actual postseason series is to then win a one-game playoff. The only way for them to reach a seven-game series will be to survive a five-game series against the Rays without Gerrit Cole for the first two games of the series.
Despite all of this and the uphill battle the Yankees face to reaching the playoffs, advancing to the ALDS, getting to the ALCS and potentially returning to the World Series for the first time in 12 years, Boone is filling out his lineup card and making in-game decisions as if it’s March in Tampa and the results of the games are meaningless. The roster is being managed the same way. When the rosters expanded from 26 to 28 on September 1, the Yankees used one of the two spots on Brooks Kriske. Brooks Kriske! BROOKS KRISKE!
7. At this point Kriske is my favorite Yankee. What Kriske has been able to do in becoming a Yankee, having his 40-man roster spot protected over Garrett Whitlock in the offseason and then maintaining his 40-man spot this season to collect major-league pay and service despite having zero career success has been nothing short of amazing.
In 11 1/3 career innings, Kriske has put 29 runners on base, allowed 19 earned runs, including six home runs, walked 13 and thrown seven wild pitches. He has a 15.09 ERA (11.11 FIP) and 2.471 WHIP. It’s not unrealistic to think you could pick any pitcher from Single-A and put them in the majors and get better results.
8. It made no sense to give one of the two additional rosters to Kriske, the the same way it made no sense to pitch him in a three-run game against the Blue Jays on Monday, a team the Yankees are trying to hold off from taking their playoff spot.
Like Heaney and Torres, I’m not mad at Kriske. He sucks. He didn’t ask to be called up on September 1 despite doing absolutely nothing to merit a call-up. He didn’t ask to come into Monday’s game, just like he didn’t ask to come into any other game or to even be a Yankee in the first place. His use is on the Yankees failing to properly evaluate his ability and for to continuing to use him as a viable major league reliever. I hope he stays on the roster and keeps pitching. Good for him. Get that major league money and that service time. I’m rooting for him.
9. The Blue Jays’ humiliation of the Yankees on Monday was expected. The Blue Jays are really good. They have a plus-136 run differential on the season, the same run differential as the White Sox who play 76 games against the Indians, Tigers, Royals and Twins. If not for the Blue Jays’ bullpen failing them for a large portion of the season, the Yankees would be chasing them and not the other way around.
The Blue Jays now trail the Yankees by three games in the loss column and their schedule is set up for them to control their own destiny. Half of the Blue Jays’ 26 remaining games are against the Yankees (6) and Orioles (7). They are playing the team they are chasing and they are playing the worst team in the majors, a team that no one has trouble beating other than the Yankees.
10. I’m now worried about both the Blue Jays and the Red Sox (who trail the Yankees by two games in the loss column). The Red Sox aren’t as good as the Blue Jays (or the Yankees) with a lineup that has three hitters, a bad bullpen and one starting pitcher. But like the Blue Jays, the Red Sox have a favorable schedule to end the season with six games left against the Orioles and they finish the season with three games against the Nationals.
The Yankees may “hold” a wild-card spot at this moment, however, a bad week against the Blue Jays could change that, and a continued bad month will change it for good.
