Blogs – Page 124 – Keefe To The City

Jan 4, 2019

My Super Bowl LIII Dilemma

In what is becoming a recurring theme, the Giants aren’t going to win the Super Bowl this year since they once again didn’t reach the playoffs. Now I need to figure out which teams to root for this postseason.

Someone will win Super Bowl LIII, but it won’t be the Giants. Unfortunately, this column is becoming an annual thing because of the Giants’ inability to reach the postseason.

Normally, there’s at least one team I can pull for in the playoffs even if they have little-to-no-chance of actually winning the Super Bowl though this season there’s really no team I want to see win. But someone has to win.

Here’s the list of playoff teams in order of who I want to see win the Super Bowl to who I don’t want to see win the Super Bowl.

1. Bears
The idea of Mitch Trubisky winning a Super Bowl is outrageous and it’s even more outrageous when you think about the possibility of him winning the Super Bowl in his first full season as a starting quarterback. I like the Bears because I like watching good defense in a league that has done everything it can to limit playing defense aside from actual forcing teams to play with less players on defense than offense. If the Bears had earned one of the two byes in the NFC, I would feel a lot better about their chances in the frigid Chicago winter. But the Bears will most likely play only one home game in the postseason and that home game will come against the Eagles, who don’t mind playing in winter conditions either.

2. Texans
The Texans aren’t going to win the Super Bowl, so why not put them near the top of the list? Sure, they could beat the Colts at home this weekend, but even if they do, does anyone really think they are going to get over their postseason hump and knock off either the Chiefs or Patriots on the road? The Texans had an incredible season, winning 11 of their last 13 games after starting the season 0-3, but they are certainly going to fall short in the playoffs the way they always do.

3. Rams
The Rams winning the Super Bowl would be good for football in Los Angeles, especially in anticipation of their new stadium opening in a couple seasons. But if the Rams won the Super Bowl, would anyone in Los Angeles even care? The history of this version of the Los Angeles Rams needs to start somewhere though it seems too early and would feel wrong if they won this early in their return to the West Coast. Plus, I don’t think Jared Goff is ready to lead a team to the Super Bowl, let alone win it.

4. Colts
I don’t want Andrew Luck to win a Super Bowl, but this playoff field is making it easier and easier to root for him. There are too many worse options out there that I now find myself in a situation where I could be rooting for Luck in the divisional round to upset the Chiefs or Patriots. My rooting for Luck, however, won’t be enough for him to win a game in either road venue, if he can even get his team through Houston this weekend.

5. Ravens
I don’t like the Ravens, plain and simple. Like the Colts, the Ravens are in the top half of my list of teams to root for because of how disgusting the rest of the teams are. The only thing that really kept the Ravens from dropping on this list is the enjoyment of watching Lamar Jackson.

6. Chiefs
Let’s say the Chiefs keep their home-field advantage and reach the AFC Championship Game. I have no doubt they will be playing the Patriots in that game. So far, this Chiefs team has proved that they are incapable of winning the big game, as they lost every important game during the regular season after blowing a 21-point lead at home in the playoffs last year. I would certainly root heavily for the Chiefs to win the AFC Championship over the Patriots, but we all know that’s not going to happen.

7. Saints
I will be rooting for the Saints on Super Bowl Sunday when they play the Patriots in Atlanta. I don’t want to root for Drew Brees to win another championship after he single-handedly depleted my bank account over the last few weeks (mainly in Dallas), but I’m going to have to. The Superdome Saints aren’t going to lose in the NFC playoffs and then it’s off to Atlanta, another dome for the Saints to hopefully prevent the Patriots from winning another championship.

8. Eagles
I never thought I would root for the Eagles, let alone with a Super Bowl on the line, but playing the Patriots will do that. While I am a fan of Nick Foles and the story that would come along with him leading the Eagles to a second straight Super Bowl and the quarterback controversy that would ensue if Carson Wentz was on the sideline again while Foles won back-to-back Super Bowls, one championship is enough for the Eagles and their fans.

9. Chargers
I should never have to defend Eli Manning as a two-time Super Bowl MVP who has missed one start over 15 seasons and only missed the one start because of the nonsensical decision from Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese, which cost both men their jobs, but I constantly find myself in arguments trying to show support for Number 10 against those who think the Giants should have kept Philip Rivers in the 2004 draft.

Rivers has been an incredible regular-season quarterback and fantasy football quarterback who has always faltered in the postseason, and that alone has served as the Manning-Rivers debate trump card. If Rivers were to finally win a championship, it would put a dent into that trump card, even though it really shouldn’t.

I’m really not worried about the Chargers going on any sort of the run. A cross-country flight to the Eastern Time Zone where they always play poorly is enough to realize even if the Chargers get past the Ravens this week, they aren’t going to win three straight road games to get to the Super Bowl. That’s something Eli Manning would do and has done and Philip Rivers isn’t Eli Manning.

10. Seahawks
After Pete Carroll’s goal-line decision in the Super Bowl, I promised myself I would never root for the Seahawks again unless they were playing the Patriots in the Super Bowl again. The last thing I want to see is Carroll and Russell Wilson hoisting the Lombardi Trophy to ease the pain of their performance four years ago and talking about what they had to overcome to become champions again. I need the goal-line disaster to be their lasting Super Bowl memory after ending the Patriots’ nine-year championship drought.

11. Cowboys
The Cowboys and Eagles used to both fit nicely at the bottom of the list, but after the Eagles won last year (a game in which I painfully rooted for them), it is now easier to accept the Eagles winning their first Super Bowl. I can’t stomach the idea of Jason Garrett as a Super Bowl-winning coach and it’s not something I ever want to experience. There’s only one instance in which I would root for the Cowboys to win the Super Bowl, and that’s if they’re playing the last team on the list.

12. Patriots
My hatred for the Patriots forced me to root for the Giants’ No. 1 rival in the Eagles last Super Bowl. If I’m willing to root for the Eagles against the Patriots, I’m willing to root for anyone against the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Blogs • Giants

Jan 3, 2019

A Look Back at Another Miserable Giants Season

I believed Pat Shurmur and Dave Gettleman were going to fix the 3-13 mess Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese left them. I believed this Giants team was a playoff team. I was an idiot.

I’m an idiot. I believed Pat Shurmur and Dave Gettleman were going to fix the 3-13 mess Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese left them. I believed this Giants team was a playoff team.

The Giants were far from a playoff team. Even if they still had a less-than-one-percent chance at 5-8 before losing to the Titans to finally mathematically eliminate them, the Giants were never close to being a playoff team this season, and I wish I had known better. After all these years, I should have known better. You can change the general manager and the head coach and the offensive live and trade away underachievers on defense, but you can’t change the Giants. And whenever the organization decides to move away from Eli Manning, that won’t change anything either.

Back on Sept. 7, I wrote “New-Look Giants Have Me Optimistic” and that headline now reads as a joke. Let’s go back through my words from before the season and see what went wrong.

I enter every Giants season the same way: thinking they will win the Super Bowl. I realize it’s not a smart approach to set my expectations for the season at a championship, considering I root for a franchise that despite its four Super Bowl wins in the last 31 years has given its fan base a lot of regular-season disappointment. It’s also not the best idea to think an ownership group that interviewed Ben McAdoo and then named him head coach after speaking with him and then let him bench Eli Manning for Geno Smith has now put the team in proper hands moving forward. But the same way I’m dumb enough to bet on the Giants nearly every week, I’m dumb enough to think they can win the Super Bowl this season.

I was smart enough to know that my expectations for the Giants weren’t realistic since the worst time to be a Giants fan is when the team has positive expectations surrounding them. It’s not until their season is in peril and they are barely hanging on that they are their best. Yes, I was dumb enough to think this Giants would be a playoff team let alone a potential Super Bowl contender the same way I was to think an ownership group that hired Ben McAdoo would hire the right man for the job this time. I would say there’s a better chance that a year from now Shurmur will be looking for a new job than there is that the 2019 Giants will be a playoff team.

I realize success is fleeting in the NFL, but I have a hard time believing the Giants could be an 11-win team in 2016 and the only team to beat the Cowboys in that regular season, which they did twice, and then become a three-win team overnight. Maybe the eight wins by a touchdown or less in 2016 were a sign that the team just had some breaks go their way in a way they never did near the end of Tom Coughlin era, but winning one-possession games is the way to win in the NFL.

I wasn’t the only one fooled by the Giants as many other Giants fans thought 2018 would be more like 2016 and that 2017 was a fluke. Instead, it was 2016 that was the fluke. All of those close games that went the Giants’ way once again didn’t go their way this season and it left them with a 5-11 record. Outside of the Redskins game in which they sent Mark Sanchez back to being a backup quarterback, the other four Giants wins were like nearly every other win of theirs in my lifetime: a nail-biter. I don’t expect the Giants to become a team that consistently wins by two or more possessions, so that means they are going to have to figure out how to win close games again as soon as possible. And that’s going to mean rebuilding a defense that is guaranteed to allow a field goal when winning by three or less or a touchdown when winning by four to six in the final minutes of play.

It’s felt like two years since I watched any Giants football that has mattered. Last season was over in Week 3 when they lost to the eventual champion Eagles on a last-second field goal to fall to 0-3. Two weeks later, they were still winless, and a month after that, they were 1-8. It was the most miserable Giants season of my life and for many Giants fans lives, all culminating with the decision to bench Manning for no reason. But looking back, had McAdoo and Reese not decided to bench Manning and handle it the way they did, maybe the Giants win a few games down the stretch and they are both still in their old jobs for the 2018 season. It’s possible that the two idiots needed to make the worst decision in the history of the Giants to avoid Giants fans going through another season with them in charge.

This Giants season felt over when Dak Prescott hit Tavon Austin for the long touchdown in the first minute-plus in Week 2. I didn’t expect the Giants to beat the Texans in Week 3, and they nearly blew the lead in that game, before holding on to give the season meaning once again. But that meaning didn’t last long as the Giants went on to lose their next four games, and at 1-7, they had to run the table to reach the playoffs.

Losing has become synonymous with the Giants as they have fallen from the NFL’s elite to basically become the Browns of the NFC. I’m sure if you asked ownership if they regret their decision to move on from Tom Coughlin they would tell you they do. And if they were to say anything different, they would be lying.

Now it’s Pat Gettleman and Pat Shurmur and I don’t know what to expect. Everything about the way the Giants have planned for this season makes you think they are a playoff team. Factor in the potential Super Bowl hangover of the Eagles, the illogical roster decisions of the Cowboys and the unknown with the Redskins and it’s very easy to see how the Giants could return to the playoffs in 2018, and quite possibly as the NFC East winner. The only thing standing in their way is their schedule.

The Giants planned for the 2018 as if they were going to win the division. They just forgot to rebuild the offensive line and create any semblance of a pass rush prior to the start of the season. The decisions by Gettleman and Shurmur made everyone think the Giants were going to have a big year, but their poor decisions only served as an idiotic mirage for the same problems from 2017.

Normally, when you finish last in your division, you have a path to the playoffs paved for you the following season. Not for the 2018 Giants though. The first seven weeks of the Giants’ season are as hard as any ever with games against the Jaguars, Cowboys, Texans, Saints, Panthers, Eagles and Falcons. Throw in what is always a challenging division game against the Redskins in Week 8 and it’s an absolute gauntlet for the Giants until their bye week. I know it’s not about who you play in the NFL, but when you play them, but as of now, the Giants are going to have to be at least 3-4 in those first seven and 4-4 after Week 8 to have a chance at returning to the postseason. And they are going to have to start hot with a new head coach, a new offensive line and a defense that doesn’t have one true pass rusher on it. The more I write, the more I’m talking myself out of the previous paragraph and the Giants being a playoff team.

That paragraph alone should have been enough to help me realize the Giants were never going to be a winning team in 2018. I wrote those words and I still went against my own thoughts and planned on having the Giants playing in the playoffs this coming weekend. Needing to be at least 3-4 in the first seven games, the Giants ended up going 1-7. That’s as Giants as it gets.

But for now, I’m optimistic. That’s right, I’m optimistic about not only the New York Football Giants, which is as ridiculous as it gets, but I’m optimistic about a Giants team that has a new head coach, a new offensive line and pass rush-less defense coming off a three-win season. I don’t know how long this optimism will last (probably until the first delay of game by the offense, or draw play on third-and-19 or holding penalty by the offensive line or first down allowed by the defense on third-and-21), but I think it will last longer than it did a year ago. It better.

The new head coach proved to be the same as the old head coach. The new offensive line was the same as the old offensive line with a few players in different spots. The pass rush-less defense was as pass rush-less as any defense in history. The three-win season felt a lot like this five-win season. I did get a longer meaningful season that last, but that’s not saying much.

I’m sure next September I will talk myself into the Giants once again being a playoff team and maybe even a Super Bowl team. Hopefully, I’m smart enough to remember everything I just wrote.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Jan 2, 2019

Troy Tulowitzki Is a Great Addition to the Yankees … For Now

For now, the addition of Tulowitzki is a move Yankees fans should be happy with. That happiness might not last depending on how the rest of the Yankees offseason goes.

I thought the first announcement from the Yankees in the New Year would be a deal for Manny Machado even though I want Bryce Harper more and really want both of them. I didn’t think the first announcement would be a deal for Troy Tulowitzki.

I wanted Tulowitzki to be a Yankee … in 2015. After Derek Jeter’s retirement and Didi Gregorius’ embarrassing start to his Yankees tenure, it seemed like Tulowitzki and his enormous contract the Rockies could no longer afford were a perfect fit for a team used to giving out and taking on albatross contracts. But Tulowitzki ended up in Toronto, along with David Price, and seemingly every other player available at the 2015 trade deadline, and the Blue Jays erased an eight-game deficit in 15 days at end of the July and beginning of August.

But that was more than three years ago. Back when the Blue Jays traded for Tulowitzki, he was a 30-year-old, who had just appeared in the All-Star Game and was batting .300/.348/.471. Now, he’s a 34-year-old, who missed all of 2018 and missed 96 games in 2017, playing just 66 of a possible 324 games over the last two years. Health has never been a skill of Tulowitzki’s as he has missed significant time in each of his major league seasons, including his prime years.

Tulowitzki spent most of last offseason rehabbing an ankle injury before bone spurs were discovered in his right foot and then his left foot. He had surgery in the first week of the season and was expected to return in June before missing the entire season. (Jacoby Ellsbury would be proud.) The Yankees watched Tulowitzki work out at both shortstop and second base in December. They must have seen enough from the former Gold Glover to believe he is past the recent ankle and foot injuries to think he could step in and play nearly every day until Didi Gregorius returns sometime in the summer.

The old Yankees fan in me loves the move to sign Tulowitzki despite his long list of career injuries because of the low-risk, high-reward potential. If Tulowitzki is his old self, the Yankees just added a star at the league minimum $555,000. If Tulowitzki sucks, they can release him and only lose out on $555,000. But that’s the old Yankees fan in me.

The new Yankees fan in me worries that if Tulowitzki sucks and they have to release him, that $555,000 will prevent them from a midseason move to help an area of need midseason. The Yankees once again seem set on being under the luxury-tax threshold and every penny matters with Hal Steinbrenner’s new way of doing business. A league minimum contract shouldn’t prevent other business, but a 100-win team in the middle of a pennant race thought it was acceptable to start Shane Robinson in the outfield for the month of August.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m a 2 when it comes to worrying that the Tulowitzki might somehow ruin the acquisition of an impact player during the season. But I’m a 7 when it comes to worrying that the Yankees are now less interested in signing Manny Machado. A league minimum deal shouldn’t be an obstacle or alternative plan to signing a superstar for his entire prime, but no one can say for sure how the Yankees are going to operate, though recent history suggests the Yankees are going to pass on both Machado and Harper because of tax issues.

The Yankees haven’t done anything to show they are once again worried about going over the threshold. This offseason they have shopped in the bargain bin and on the clearance rack, so far, avoiding any big-money contracts. They re-signed Brett Gardner to a $7.5 million deal and then Brian Cashman cited a “crowded outfield” as to why the team isn’t in on Harper. They brought back CC Sabathia on a one-year, $8 million contract and then traded for James Paxton, only to not come away with Patrick Corbin, the best pitcher available on the free-agent market. Once Corbin went off the board, they turned to J.A. Happ, who was exceptional as a Yankee in the regular season, but is also a 36-year-old fastball-heavy pitcher with declining metrics around his fastball. Now with a chance to add one or possibly two 26-year-old generational talents to their lineup, the Yankees seem to be in no better position than the Dodgers, Phillies or White Sox to come away with a game-changing player this offseason.

Tulowitzki was once a star and maybe there is some of that star left in him. Maybe he is finally healthy and a change of scenery and playing for the team he has wanted to play for in the same infield spot his idol used to play at will revitalize his career. But to think a player who missed 442 of 1,296 games (34 percent) during his age 25-32 seasons and then missed his entire age 33 season is somehow going to stay healthy during his age 34 season is an incredible risk to take. I have a hard time believing the Yankees of all teams, in the middle of a championship window, are going to settle for patching up holes on their roster with reclamation projects.

For now, the addition of Tulowitzki is a move Yankees fans should be happy with. That happiness might not last depending on how the rest of the Yankees offseason goes.

***

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.

Jan 1, 2019

I Never Want to See Jacoby Ellsbury Play for the Yankees Again

Given contract and performance, Jacoby Ellsbury is the worst player in Yankees history and there’s no debate.

I never wanted the Yankees to sign Jacoby Ellsbury. No Yankees fan did. No one thought the Yankees’ decision to bid against themselves and give a 30-year-old outfielder, whose game is based on speed, a seven-year, $153 million contract was a good idea. No one outside of Boston.

The worst contract in the history of the Yankees was one that never made any sense. This wasn’t the Yankees competing against several other contenders to add Carl Pavano or even Jaret Wright after the 2004 ALCS collapse. This wasn’t the Steinbrenners overruling Brian Cashman to give A-Rod a 10-year, $275 million after his second MVP season in three years. This wasn’t the Yankees continually upping their offer to CC Sabathia to put so much money in front of him that he would have to say no to California. This wasn’t the Yankees giving A.J. Burnett $82.5 million because he led the league in strikeouts once (with an above-4 ERA). This wasn’t the Yankees stepping in and stealing Mark Teixeira away from the Red Sox with an eight-year, $180 million deal. This was the Yankees deciding to pass on their own homegrown, All-Star talent to sign essentially a one-year wonder to a seven-year, $153 million contract (with a $5 million buyout for an eighth season, which we can’t forget) when NO ONE ELSE was bidding.

Given the contract and performance, Jacoby Ellsbury is the worst player in the history of the New York Yankees. Pavano is not a counter argument. There is no argument. And all of the weird injuries and issues aside, Ellsbury made more in his first two seasons with the Yankees than Pavano did in his four, and two years from today, Ellsbury could still be a Yankee, weakly grounding out to the right side, hitting for no power, stealing no bases and blocking prospects with real baseball talent from reaching the majors.

In five seasons as a Yankee, Ellsbury has played in 520 of a possible 810 regular-season games (64.2 percent) and missed the entire 2018 season. He has hit an anemic .264/.330/.386 and averaged a .716 OPS and has averaged 9.8 home runs, 49.5 RBIs and 25.5 stolen bases when he has played. He was benched for the 2015 AL Wild-Card game, and then in the 2017 postseason, he went 0-for-9 with three strikeouts and two walks, sharing time with Chase Headey as the designated hitter before losing that part-time job the way he lost his full-time one in center field to Aaron Hicks.

The Yankees have paid him $105,714,285.75 for that performance and he will “earn” $21,142,857.15 in 2019 and another $21,142,857.15 in 2020. And then in 2021, instead of paying him $21 million for his age 37 season, the Yankees will have to buy him out for another $5 million.

The idea that having Ellsbury and Brett Gardner hitting first and second at the top of the order was what the Yankees needed after the disastrous 2013 season was such a bad idea that it makes choosing Gary Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero look good. Like that Sheffield-Guerrero decision, maybe this decision also wasn’t Brian Cashman’s call after the 2013 season since ownership had to watch the Red Sox win their third World Series in 10 years while the Yankees put together the 2006 All-Star team with Ichiro, Travis Hafner, Kevin Youkilis, Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay. If it weren’t for Alfonso Soriano’s MVP-like return in the middle of the summer to string Yankees fans along until early September, maybe the front office would have done something more drastic than signing Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. Maybe they would have also signed Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $140 million deal. (Unfortunately, that’s not a joke as Cashman and Co. did offer Choo a seven-year, $140 million deal.)

I never thought I would find a hitter streakier than Gardner, but Ellsbury has been that, except his hot streaks last a quarter of the time of his cold streaks. Yes, the Yankees’ plan was to put the two streakiest hitters in the game back-to-back at the top of their lineup in hopes that hot streaks would occur at the same time. Why would you want to do that? If you know the answer then maybe you can also tell me why you would want two Brett Gardners on the same team? And then maybe you can also tell me why would you want to pay the real Brett Gardner $13 million per year and the bad Brett Gardner $21.1 million per year?

If the decision wasn’t Cashman’s then it needs to be made public. I can’t sit here five-plus years later with potentially two seasons left of Ellsbury (his third season will be bought out) and not know whose decision this was. Cashman has gotten a lot of praise in the last year and a half after he tore down a team he built and netted valuable assets like Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield and Dillon Tate. But if the Ellsbury signing was Cashman’s decision, I need to know. If it was someone in his front office then I need to know that they are no longer making decision for the New York Yankees. And if it happened to be ownership’s decision, well, that would make the most sense since Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine’s smart decision-making track record starts and ends with the Rafael Soriano signing. And if it weren’t for Mariano Rivera shagging fly balls in Kansas City, they wouldn’t have a smart track record.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whose decision it was. What does matter is that it can be fixed. The person responsible for the worst contract in Yankees history, which produced the worst Yankee in the team’s history, can salvage the monumental mistake that cost the franchise $153 million (plus his $5 million buyout for 2021) and Robinson Cano. And it’s very easy. Release Jacoby Ellsbury.

No team wants Ellsbury, not even for pennies on the dollar. Unless the Yankees eat a significant portion of his remaining $47 million and attach a prospect or prospects to him, no one is touching the one-year wonder, and after that was made abundantly clear last offseason, it has been reinforced in this one.

The Yankees aren’t getting out of this mistake. They can’t pay Ellsbury to play for another team through a trade like they did with David Justice or A.J. Burnett or Brian McCann. The only way out is to release him and find out which team is the dumbest in the league. If the Yankees release him and he signs with another team for the league minimum, which he most likely will, so be it. He’s not going to become the player he was for one season of his 12-year career. That one season also happened EIGHT YEARS AGO! He’s not going to be rejuvenated and revitalized with a change of scenery and more playing time because he isn’t good. He’s not going to come back to hurt the Yankees. He will most likely play like a Hall of Famer against them when he faces them because every ex-Yankee does, but he’s not going to be the missing piece of another contender, and he’s not going to get some big hit or make some big play against the Yankees that ruins their own championship aspirations. Because in a game of that magnitude, Ellsbury will be on the bench, like he was for the 2015 Wild-Card Game and like he was for nearly the entire 2017 postseason aside from a few DH at-bats, in which he went 0-for-9 with three strikeout and two walks.

Ellsbury’s comical injury saga of 2018 should be the fitting end to his Yankees tenure. He has no place on this team, other than to give the Yankees front office an out when they choose to not sign Bryce Harper, citing a “crowded outfield” as their reason. Ellsbury has no place on this team even if a series of unfortunate injuries or a rash of underachieving decimated the team. Even having him in spring training as a potential depth player is an insult. There’s no need to try to salvage even one penny of his remaining contract.

2013 was an embarrassment. 2014 was a disappointment. 2015 was great until the trade deadline and awful after it. 2016 sucked until after the trade deadline. 2017 was unexpected and the most fun I have had as a Yankees fan since the moment before Derek Jeter’s ankle was ruined in Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS. 2018 was enjoyable for the first three months of the season before a second half of .500 and embarrassing postseason ruined the year. But even with the disappointing end to last season, the Yankees are back to playing like the pre-2013 Yankees where winning a World Series every season was an attainable goal. If the Yankees don’t win a championship this season it will be a disappointment like it was for eight years after 2000 and again for three years after 2009. Ownership likes to apologize to the fans when the goal of winning a championship isn’t met and they promise to do better and do the things necessary to win moving forward. Getting rid of Ellsbury is doing better and doing something necessary. It doesn’t matter if he’s the last man on the bench or the 25th man on the roster. He’s there and he’s a reminder and holdover from the run of disappointing seasons from 2013-2016 and the bad contracts that led to those disappointing seasons.

It’s just money, and it’s just $47 million at this point. The other $105 million-plus has already been wasted. Sure, the Yankees could have used the Ellsbury contract to sign Cano, or give 765 New York City high school students $200,000 towards college, or give a $100 ticket or food credit at the Stadium to 1.53 million Yankees fans, or done anything other than give a one-year wonder on the wrong side of 30 a seven-year contract to play Major League Baseball. But they did and now it’s time to fix it. Release Jacoby Ellsbury.

***

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.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Dec 21, 2018

All I Want for Christmas Is the Yankees to Sign Bryce Harper and Manny Machado

The Yankees weren’t good enough to win in 2017 or 2018. They can change that in 2019 by signing two generational talents. But to do so, they need to start acting like the Yankees again.

Every year I write a Christmas List here and ask for things that will make my life as a sports fan better. Whether it’s for Masahiro Tanaka to sign with the Yankees or for the Giants to make the playoffs or for the Rangers to build an even adequate defense in front of Henrik Lundqvist, I have asked for many things over the years, and like any Christmas List, sometimes I get the things on it and sometimes I don’t.

This Christmas, I don’t have a list. I have one thing I want, though that one thing has two parts to it. I want the Yankees to sign the two 26-year-old generational talent free agents. I want Bryce Harper and Manny Machado to be Yankees. That’s it. Is it too much to ask the richest team in Major League Baseball to spend somewhere around $750-800 million on two players to give them their best chance to win the team’s first World Series in a decade? No, it’s really not.

The cost of Harper and Machado is money. Yes, a lot of it, but the Yankees have it. No trade, no prospects and no more dismantling of a now mediocre farm system. Just money: the one thing that separates the Yankees from the rest of the league. Or at least the one thing that used to separate them from the rest of the league.

Somehow over the last few years, Yankees ownership has tricked its fans into believing the team can’t afford to go over the luxury-tax threshold, which is simply untrue. The truth is Yankees ownership doesn’t want to go over the threshold because they feel they are throwing away a few dollars that could better line their own pockets, not because they can’t afford to go over the threshold. So now you have an entire fanbase worried about the salaries of back-end starters, bench players and relievers, counting every penny the way the Steinbrenners do to see if the team can add any pieces during the season.

This line of thinking is what led to the Yankees not going over the top in 2018 after coming one win short of the World Series in 2017 and instead cutting payroll significantly. The 2017 Yankees had a 25-man Opening Day payroll of $196,389,700 and their 40-man roster at the end of the season cost $224,224,707. After blowing a 3-2 series lead in the ALCS, the 2018 Yankees 25-man Opening Day payroll was $166,111,632, which was over $30 million less than the year before. The 2018 Yankees 40-man roster at the end of the season totaled $192,980,833, which was over $31 million less than the year before. This way of spending is why Shane Robinson started in the outfield for a World Series-contending team for nearly an entire month in the second half because the Yankees were scared off by the initial asking prices in salary relief of potential trade targets. It’s why the team didn’t sign the best available free-agent starting pitcher in Patrick Corbin and it’s why Harper and Machado are still free agents.

I would like to think the Yankees are slow playing the Harper and Machado situation, waiting to make their move at the final minute the way they have done with big-name free agents before. But with the way ownership has worked in recent years, it’s hard to think they are going to suddenly act like the Yankees, as they are now more worried about nickel-and-diming their way to building a roster rather than building the best roster possible. For a family and a franchise that used to care only about winning and championships and doing everything in their power to a put a team on the field which left no questions, we are far from those same ideals now.

Brian Cashman cited the Yankees’ crowded outfield as to why the organization isn’t interested in Harper. It’s the biggest lie Cashman has ever told, even bigger than when he said he would grade Aaron Boone’s first season with “A’s across the board” after the manager single-handedly destroyed the last two games of the ALDS. Let’s break down the crowded out field. Aaron Judge has a place on the team. Aaron Hicks has a place on the team. Giancarlo Stanton has a place on the team. That’s three outfielders, though it’s essentially two as Judge and Stanton rotate as designated hitter (or at least they should even though Stanton was the DH most of the time in 2018). Brett Gardner? He’s essentially a fourth outfielder at this point in his career, as he was down the stretch last season after the trade of Andrew McCutchen. Clint Frazier? I would like for Frazier to be part of the equation, but after last year’s concussions, which held him to 242 minor-league plate appearances and 41 plate appearances for the Yankees, it’s hard to rely on him not only in 2019 but also in future seasons. Jacoby Ellsbury? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

So the crowded outfield is essentially Judge, Hicks, the DH, a fourth outfielder, a former top prospect with concussion issues and a 35-year-old who lost his starting job in 2017, missed all of 2018 with a variety of injuries and is rehabbing after surgery for a torn labrum in his left hip. On top of all this, Gardner is on a one-year contract and Hicks is a free agent at the end of this coming season. The crowded outfield is far from crowded.

Cashman also said he doesn’t see Harper as a first baseman. Harper appeared at first base in one game this season and that’s the only time he has in 927 career games. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t play first base. And more than likely someone on the team is going to have to learn to. Greg Bird can’t be relied on in 2019 and who knows if Luke Voit is anything more than a great two-month story. It would be irresponsible to go into next season thinking Bird or Voit is the starting first baseman with no backup plan or no depth at the position, but it wouldn’t be the first time the Yankees went into a season with no first-base depth only to get the worst first-base production in the league during the season and refrain from fixing the situation during the season because of … money!

Cashman and the Yankees can make up any excuse they want as to why the team isn’t going after Harper, and if they don’t sign him, they can come up with plenty of bullshit reasons why they didn’t, but any reason they give will be susceptible to criticism and full of holes. If the Yankees let Harper sign with another team it will be because of the luxury tax, no matter how they spin it. Whether they talk about there being no room on the roster for one of the game’s best players or saying they offered a fair number that didn’t meet the asking price, if Harper signs anywhere else it will be because of one thing: money. That used to be the one thing the Yankees didn’t care about because they have more than every other team.

The same goes for Machado. If Machado doesn’t sign with the Yankees, the team will tell its fanbase there wasn’t a place for him in a crowded infield and that there would be no room for everyone once Didi Gregorius returns midseason. With Gregorius out for at least half the season, an infield of Gleyber Torres, Manny Machado and Miguel Andujar sounds a lot better than an infield of Gleyber Torres, Miguel Andujar and some average utility guy with no bat. And once Gregorius returns, you add him with those other three, and the best part is, you then have Machado for the foreseeable future and his entire prime. (I will worry about where Andujar plays when the time comes.) And if it’s not a crowded infield or a low-ball contract, the Yankees will use Machado’s hustle comments from the postseason as their reason. The Dodgers reached the World Series with Machado’s “lack of hustle” and if not for Dave Roberts’ historically bad management in the series, Machado might be a champion right now. I care just a little more about Machado averaging 36 home runs over the last four years and coming off a .905 OPS than I do about him sprinting down the first-base line on routine ground balls.

But like Harper, there doesn’t have to be room for Machado. You make room for these two. You sign them and figure out the rest later because it’s not often superstars reach free agency in their age 26 season because superstars don’t usually reach the majors as teenagers. And if they do, they get locked up to long-term contracts through their prime by their original team long before they ever get to this point. And a crowded outfield or crowded infield for one season doesn’t stay crowded for long with injuries and underperformance, and these signings aren’t only for the 2019 seasons, they are for many seasons.

The Yankees are in a championship window. They are either in the second or third year of this window depending on how you view the 2017 season and this window isn’t going to last forever. They wasted last season by not doing everything possible prior to the season to build the best team and then by not adding the necessary pieces during the season. The result: .500 baseball in the second half finished off by an absolute embarrassment in the postseason.

I’m holding on to the idea the Yankees didn’t throw away 2018 to get under the luxury-tax threshold for this offseason only to come away with Brett Gardner, CC Sabathia, J.A. Happ and an eventual reliever. I’m holding on to the idea that the Yankees don’t think they can essentially throw the same team out there for a third season in a row and think 2019 will end any differently than 2017 or 2018 did. I’m holding on to the idea that the Yankees are still the Yankees who use their financial prowess to their advantage.

I’m scared I won’t get either Harper or Machado for Christmas and for the prime of their career. I’m scared the Yankees think they can run out the same team that couldn’t get through the Astros in 2017 or the Red Sox in 2018 and think they will have a different result in 2019. I’m scared the Yankees are going to be scared of the luxury tax forever.

At this point, it will take a Christmas miracle for the Yankees to change course and become the Yankees once again, but it would make for the best Christmas story possible.

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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.

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