Blogs – Page 137 – Keefe To The City

Blogs • KTTC Classics • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

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.

***

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 • Giants

Dec 17, 2018

Giants-Titans Week 15 Thoughts: The Season Is Officially Over

There’s no more talking myself into the Giants reaching the playoffs and there’s no reason to watch another second of the Giants again this season. The 2018 Giants are done.

The 2018 New York Giants season is over. After weeks and weeks of talking myself into the chance of them miracuously getting into the playoffs, it’s over. The Giants can’t reach the playoffs this season. It’s something we have known since their Week 2 disaster in Dallas, but now it’s official.

What better way for this awful season to end than for the Giants to get shutout at home with Eli Manning and the offensive line playing as bad as they had all season, Odell Beckham not playing at all, the defense unable to make a big spot or avoid a careless third-down penalty and Pat Shurmur coaching his team out of the game and using all of his challenges anyone could finish their first beer. With the Giants clinging to a far-fetched playoff berth, they lost 17-0. It’s nearly impossible to not score in the NFL in 2018, but the Giants did it … at home.

I spent a lot of time watching, writing, reading and listening about the 2018 Giants and a lot of money wagering on (and mostly losing) on them as well. It’s time and money I won’t get back as a season with so much promised ended up just being a continuation of the three-win season of a year ago. The offensive line was as bad and possibly even worse, Manning was as inconsistent, Beckham was as much of a jerk, the defense was as unreliable and Shurmur and Dave Gettleman might as well have been Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese.

Giants fans were made to believe that this team was capable of contention and that 2017 was a fluke and not 2016. In reality, 2016 was the fluke, as the Giants’ 11 regular-season wins were a product of the low-scoring, one-possession wins they have been on the wrong side of many times over the last two seasons.

Sure, every team’s season can come down to a few plays. For the Giants, it was the crushing loss to the Panthers in Week 5, in which they lost on a 63-yard field goal as time expired, and the Week 13 letdown against the Eagles when they had 19-3 halftime lead, but failed to put the game away. There were other missed opportunities against the Jaguars and Cowboys and Redskins, but those two games were the difference in the season. Turn those two losses into wins and the Giants are 7-7 right now, and a pair of wins in their final two games from a winning season and a potential postseason berth. Instead, they are 5-9 and eliminated and most likely going to get blown out by the Colts and then play in front of a Cowboys crowd at MetLife in the season finale.

The season went south before it even began when in the offseason the Giants thought they could fix the offensive line by placing a few patches on a boat that had been taking on water for a long time. Instead of getting a whole new bought, the Giants tried to repair the poorly-made piece of crap that could barely stay afloat the last two seasons. The offense was able to produce and put up points once the line was just bad and not a complete embarrassment, but the changes came too late, and asking a team to climb out of a 1-7 hole and finish the season on an eight-game winning streak after winning just four of their last 24 regular-season games was ridiculous.

Now there is no reason to watch another second of Giants football this season. They have already wasted enough of Giants fans time this season and last season that watching just to watch isn’t even close to a good enough reason.

Shurmur will try his best to win the last two games and avoid a 5-11 or 6-10 season in what is his second and last chance as a head coach in the league. Manning will try his best to prove that he should be given one more season in 2019 to get the team back in the playoffs and back to where they should have and could have been many times in recent years. Beckham will probably sit out again now that there is truly no reason to play. As for the rest of the team … who cares?

The once-proud Giants are now 8-22 in the last two seasons and 19-27 in the three regular seasons since Tom Coughlin was shown the door. They have played one playoff game in the post-Coughlin era, a game in which only the quarterback showed up to play, and they were routed. The team is now much closer to being the Jets or the Browns than they are to being champions again. I would like to think that will change in 2019, but it would be foolish to think it will.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Dec 13, 2018

Yankees Had to Have J.A. Happ

J.A. Happ was a necessary addition and the Yankees are better today than they were before they signed him. They are good enough to get to the postseason, but I’m not sure they are good enough to win the postseason.

The Yankees needed to sign J.A. Happ even if it meant going to a third year, which they kind of did. After passing on Patrick Corbin, the best pitcher on the free-agent market, who would have only cost money, Happ became the next-best pitcher on the free-agent market, who also would only cost money. Now the Yankees have a complete five-man rotation with three lefties in it.

Happ was the perfect trade deadline acquisition. No, he didn’t pitch against the Red Sox in the biggest series of the regular season in August due to a rare illness, and no, he didn’t pitch well in his only start in the ALDS (Game 1) against the Red Sox, the team he was supposed to be able to dominate as he was advertised to Yankees fans throughout July. But he did go unbeaten for the Yankees in the final two months of the season, helping them avoid a complete collapse in the standings and clinch the first wild card. (Again, I wish they had lost out on the first wild card or at least lost to the A’s in the wild-card game to avoid the result of the ALDS.)

The addition of Happ fills out the rotation along with Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and CC Sabathia. Yes, there are lingering health questions about Tanaka’s elbow that have been going on for over four years and Paxton has never really pitched a full season in his career and Sabathia is guaranteed at least one trip to the disabled list in 2019 and now a 36-year-old joins that group. But what team doesn’t have health questions surrounding their starting pitching? With pitching comes the risk of injury and the Yankees’ risk of injury with their pitching is no better or worse than the rest of the league.

I wanted Happ back and I thought it made sense to have him back, given his career success, his history against the Red Sox (minus the ALDS) and the AL East and the fact that he has been as durable as any pitcher at his age with the amount of work his left arm has seen. (Knock on every piece of wood you can find.) Re-signing Happ after not wanting to sign Corbin was the right move and I’m not scared of Happ’s age or the diminishing spin rate on his fastball (at least not yet). What I’m scared of is that the Yankees will add in an elite reliever whether it’s David Robertson, Andrew Miller or Zach Britton and a utility guy like Neil Walker and call it an offseason. That’s what scares me.

The Yankees are in a championship window. They are either in their second or third year of it depending on how you view their improbable 2017 postseason run. The 2017 Yankees weren’t good enough despite holding a 3-2 lead in the ALCS before losing Games 6 and 7. The 2018 Yankees weren’t good enough despite replacing Chase Headley, Starlin Castro and a worthless DH spot with Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton and winning 100 games. Now the possibility of the Yankees running the same not-good-enough-team from 2018 back out there for 2019 and expecting a different result.

The league is going to suck again in 2019. It might actually suck more than it did in 2018 with more and more teams tanking and trying to duplicate the Cubs and Astros model. It used to take a special season to win 100 games, but there was nothing special about the 2018 Yankees and the 2019 Yankees shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the 100-win mark even if they didn’t add another piece to their team. You can only plan for the regular season and build the best possible team for the 162-game schedule. The postseason can’t be planned for. You can’t plan for Nathan Eovaldi to finally realize his potential after a career of disappointment or for Steve Pearce to become the most feared hitter in a lineup with the top two MVP candidates or for Jackie Bradley Jr. to go from hanging on to a career in the majors to a three-run home run machine and you can’t envision going into the postseason with your bullpen as your biggest weakness and suddenly have no-namers putting up zeros as if that’s all they had ever done. The 2018 Red Sox reminded us how big of a crapshoot the postseason is even if you win 108 games in the regular season. It can’t be planned for. Only the path to it can.

Right now, the Yankees have done a good enough job planning their path to the postseason that it would take a season decimated by injuries for them to not get there. Because the American League is going to suck as much if not more than it did in 2018, you can pencil in the Yankees, Red Sox, Astros and Indians right now, and take your pick on which mediocre team will serve as the one-and-done second wild card.

Happ was a necessary addition and the Yankees are better today and than they were before they brought him back. They are good enough to get to the postseason, but I’m not sure they are good enough to win the postseason.

Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are still free agents and they are still both 26 years old and either in the prime or have yet to enter it. The Yankees could go out and sign both (they have the money to even though they have somehow tricked Yankees fans into thinking they don’t) and create the best lineup in baseball to go along with one of the best rotations in baseball. Add in Robertson or Miller or Britton (or two of the three since they will end up trading for someone like that anyway in July) and while these high-priced signings might not guarantee a championship, they would put the Yankees in the best possible position for one in this current window.

The end of this coming season will be a decade since the last Yankees championship, and if the team wastes another year of this window, I’m not sure when the drought will end. The offseason can’t stop with Happ.

***

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 • Giants

Dec 11, 2018

The Giants’ Less-Than-One-Percent Path to the Postseason

The rest of the NFC gave the Giants countless chances to save their season and now they are down to their last chance. They need five things to happen to reach the playoffs, but really they need one major thing: a miracle.

I keep thinking about the moment right before Graham Gano kicked a 63-yard game-winning field goal against the Giants back in Week 5.

As Gano lined up, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. The chances of winning were in favor of the Giants as Gano would need to drill a field goal a yard shot of the all-time record, but as a Giants fan, I knew that math and science and odds and probability could be thrown out the window. When you’re dealing with the New York Football Giants, especially during the Eli Manning era (it’s sad I can’t refer to it anymore as the Tom Coughlin era anymore), there’s no statistical information that could discount the team involved.

Part of me thought maybe the kick would sail to the right or left and miss the uprights or fall short of crossbar, or maybe just maybe the Giants might even block it and never let it get to that point. But the Giants fan in me knew what was going to happen the moment Ron Rivera decided against a Hail Mary pass and opted to try to a field-goal attempt from the other side of the 50.

That 63-yard field goal essentially ended the Giants season. Sure, at 1-4 they could still go an a ridiculous 9-2 run and win 10 games or possibly get a playoff spot with an 8-3 finish if things broke right. But the Giants had given away four of their first five games of the season and for a team that had was now 4-17 since the start of 2017, only an idiot could envision them win eight or nine of their last 11 games.

Then at 4-7 and holding on to their dwindling postseason odds, the Giants took a 19-3 lead over the Eagles to halftime. Missed opportunities, turnovers, bad play calls and poor in-game management prevented the 16-point lead from being even bigger and putting the game out of reach in the first half. Sure enough, in the second half, the Giants went away from everything that got them their two-possession lead, and they eventually lost.

Now the Giants are a disappointing 5-8 when they could have easily been 7-6, but even at three games under .500 they are somehow still mathematically alive for a playoff berth. Five things need to happen in the final three weeks of the season for the Giants to reach the playoffs:

1. Giants win out
2. Vikings lose two of three
3. Panthers lose two of three
4. Eagles lose two of three
5. Packers lose one of three

That might seem like a lot of things that have to happen, and it is, but that’s what happens when you’re 5-8 and trying to reach the playoffs: a lot of shit has to go your way. Let’s break down each of the five steps to see if there’s any reason to even root for what is being considered a less-than-one percent chance of the Giants reaching the playoffs.

1. Giants win out
The Giants are home this week against the 7-6 Titans who are playing for their own postseason life. The Titans will be well rest after playing at home on Thursday Night Football in Week 14 and will have more than two days of extra rest than the Giants. The Titans are a great home team (5-1), but a bad road team (2-5) and their defense won’t exactly be seeing the Cody Kessler-led Jaguars offense this week.

The Giants go on the road to play the Colts in Week 16. This will be the hardest of their last three games to win, considering the currently 7-6 Colts will be playing for a postseason berth and have gone 6-1 since their 1-5 start with the return of Andrew Luck and a revamped and at-times dominant offensive line.

In the season finale, the Giants host the Cowboys. By this time, the Cowboys will have wrapped up the division and if the way they handled the final weeks of the season with the division clinched two years ago is any indication, the Giants can expect to see the Cowboys starters for very minimal time.

It’s easy to see the Giants winning this week, considering they are 3-point home favorites, and in Week 17 where the Cowboys will have nothing to play for. They will need to pull off an upset on the road in Week 16, however, for this whole plan to work.

2. Vikings lose two of three
A long time ago, this would have seemed impossible. But a long time ago, the Vikings were legitimate Super Bowl contenders. Now they are playing to hold on to the 6-seed and go on the road to Chicago — where they already lost this season — in the first round. Kirk Cousins has destroyed the Vikings offense and his embarrassing play has now reached the coaching staff and the loss of his offensive coordinator’s job. An all-time collapse by this Vikings team could lead to Mike Zimmer being fired and even Rick Spielman as this team hosted the NFC Championship Game a year ago and then handed out an $84 million contract to a bad quarterback, which has set the team back substantially.

The Vikings host the Dolphins this week, and after the Dolphins saved their season with a miracle play last week, these two teams are headed in opposite directions. Then the Vikings go to Detroit in Week 15 where better teams than the Vikings have lost this season, and then they finish at home against the Bears in Week 17, in what could be the first of back-to-back week matchups with the two division rivals.

3. Panthers lose two of three
The Panthers are in the middle of their own collapse like the Vikings as the two playoff teams from a year ago have left the door open for the Giants. The Panthers were 6-2 a little over a month ago and now they are 6-7 after five straight losses, including the last two to the Buccaneers and Browns.

The Panthers host the Saints this week and go to New Orleans in Week 17. Sandwiched between their two games with the current NFC No. 1 seed (who will surely want to hold on to that spot and avoid going to Los Angeles for the NFC Championship) is a home game against the Falcons, who have nothing to play for other than to save their head coach’s job. I’m not sure if the Falcons want to save his job (I wouldn’t), but he will be coaching to save his job and that will mean pulling out all the stops to improve his record.

4. Eagles lose two of three
It’s understandable for the Eagles to have a letdown year following the team’s first-ever Super Bowl win. And after last week’s crushing overtime loss in Dallas, which all but took the Eagles out of contention for the division, it would be easy to see them pack it in and lay down over the last three weeks.

The Eagles are going to win in Week 17 in D.C. because right now the Redskins are the worst team in football with a combination of Mark Sanchez and Josh Johnson at quarterback. That means they need to lose their other two games, which are at the Rams and at home against the Texans. The Rams’ disgusting play in Chicago last week all but guarantees a win this week and the Texans’ need to fend off the Colts and Titans in the AFC South race and secure their own playoff berth ensures the Texans will come to play in Week 16.

5. Packers lose two of three
The Packers could very well lose to the Bears this week (I think they will) and clinch their role in helping the Giants reach the playoffs. But if the Bears lose at home this week, the Giants would need the Jets or Lions to step up in the next two weeks to complete the plan.

If I had to rank in order from the most likely to happen to the least likely to happen of these five things, I would rank them:

1. Panthers lose two of three.
2. Eagles lose two of three.
3. Packers lose one of three.
4. Giants win out.
5. Vikings lose two of three.

If the Giants don’t reach the postseason and miss out by one game, you can think back to the Gano field goal. And if they miss it by two games, just remember the 19-3 halftime lead over the Eagles that was eventually blown.

The rest of the NFC gave the Giants countless chances to save their season and they never took advantage of it. They have one last chance, but they need a miracle.