Blogs – Page 53 – Keefe To The City

Aug 22, 2022

Yankees Thoughts: Why Aren’t ‘Great Friggin’ Players’ Winning?

The Yankees are 2-5 on their current homestand, and it’s not over yet. They still have to face Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom before this miserable week at home ends.

The Yankees are 2-5 on their current homestand, and it’s not over yet. They still have to face Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom before this miserable week at home ends.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees lost another series. And not just “another” series, but a four-game series to the Blue Jays, the team still trying to catch them in the AL East.

It was another frustrating and disappointing week for the Yankees as their once-15 1/2-game lead is now down to eight games, and seven games in the loss column. If they could just find a way to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish at 94-68, and in doing so, the Blue Jays and Rays would have to go 29-13 to tie them, and likely 30-12, as right now, the Yankees hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over both teams. Because of this math, the Yankees have a 91.2 percent chance of winning the division still, despite losing 14 of their last 18.

2. The Yankees lost three of four to the Blue Jays and were outscored 20-8 in the series. They have now put together these rather horrific records over the last two months:

The Yankees are 25-32 since June 19.

The Yankees are 10-20 since the All-Star break.

The Yankees are 5-14 in August.

3. As the Yankees’ division lead has been significantly cut into, Aaron Boone has gotten testier and more sensitive with each passing day. On Saturday, Boone got snippy with Meredith Marakovits and freaked out on the media after the Yankees lost 5-2 for being asked about the dwindling lead in the standings.

“I gotta quit answering these questions,” Boone exclaimed right before he slammed the table. This came a day after he said, “I don’t give a crap about the division lead.” It’s literally his job to answer questions from the media and to give a crap about the division lead.

If Boone doesn’t answer questions from the media, then the media doesn’t cover baseball. If the media doesn’t cover baseball, there’s no attention paid to baseball. If there’s no attention paid to baseball, then fans don’t exist. If fans don’t exist then Major League Baseball doesn’t exist. If Major League Baseball doesn’t exist then Boone’s entire life is different since everything he has had in life has been a result of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball was the way his grandfather earned a living to pay for his father’s life. Major League Baseball was the way his father earned a living to pay for his life. Major League Baseball is the way he has earned a living to pay for his family’s life. He might want to shut up and answer questions about the game that has given him everything.

4. The Blue Jays went into this season as the favorite to win the American League. When they were 46-42 through July 12, they fired their manager for failing to meet expectations as they were 15 1/2 games back in the division and barely holding on to the final wild-card berth. Since then they have taken 7 1/2 games off the Yankees’ lead and are tied for the first wild-card berth with the Rays.

The Yankees went into last season as the favorite to win the AL. They finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division. Their manager’s contract was up, and instead of moving on from Boone (who had failed to meet expectations in each of his four seasons as Yankees manager), the front office gave him a new three-year contract with an option for a fourth year.

Unless the Yankees collapse to the point of not winning the division and having to play in the best-of-3 round and losing there, I don’t think Boone’s job is in jeopardy. Even then, I think he would be safe. I think if the Yankees were to miss the playoffs completely, he would still be safe. But for the last week he hasn’t been talking to the media like someone who has never been held accountable for a single second in his position. He has been talking like someone who is on the hot seat, which he has never been on. Despite his endless nonsensical lineups, idiotic in-game decisions, incredible lies about injuries and unbelievable sugarcoating of poor performances, Boone has never once had to worry about his job as Yankees manager.

5. In the Derek Jeter documentary The Captain, Buck Showalter talked about leaving the Yankees after 1995 and how George Steinbrenner wanted to fire all of his coaches. Showalter said he couldn’t have stayed with the Yankees and had “any credibility” with all of his coaches being let go. After 2021, the Yankees fired Boone’s third base coach and friend since childhood Phil Nevin as well as his hitting coach Marcus Thames, assistant hitting coach P.J. Pilittere and first base coach Reggie Willits. This comes two years after firing his bench coach Josh Bard and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Boone has maintained his job while everyone around him has been replaced.

The only person who hasn’t been replaced is the one person who unconditionally loves Boone: Brian Cashman. The only way Boone isn’t the Yankees manager in 2022 is if the Steinbrenners move on from Cashman with his contract expiring at the end of this season and the new general manager wants his own manager. But Cashman isn’t going anywhere. For as much as he loves Boone, the Steinbrenners love Cashman more. Hal Steinbrenner has never once blamed Cashman or Boone for the organization’s shortcomings over the last four-plus seasons and always blames the players.

It’s hard to believe Boone has any credibility in the clubhouse. He might be a nice guy and could be the nicest guy of all time, but it’s hard to believe the players on the team experience decisions he makes and think he should be in the role he is in. If a manager is going to be given credit for a team’s run following a team meeting then they should be criticized when a team meeting has an opposite effect. Since Boone’s team meeting in Seattle, the Yankees are 4-9. I wonder why his message didn’t get across to his players.

Boone said himself on Saturday, “We’ve got great friggin’ players in there.” So if you truly believe you have great players then why have they played .439 baseball for more than two months? Why didn’t they listen to what you had to say in Seattle?

6. A day after saying he manages “great friggin’ players,” the Yankees blew an early 1-0 lead and a late 2-1 lead before finally winning a game with Andrew Benintendi finally doing something at the plate. Even with a .951 OPS over the last six games, Benintendi is still hitting just .211/.322/.368 with the Yankees, which tells you how bad he has been since becoming a Yankee on July 28.

7. The Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day at the Stadium with the organization retiring Number 21. I loved O’Neill growing up as a Yankees fans in the ’90s, but in no way should his number be retired. He was a great Yankee, but number retirements should be for iconic Yankees. The Yankees have diminished what it means to get your number retired with the Yankees, and the fact that people have conversations about if CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner should have their numbers retired tells you all you need to know about how much (or how little) it now means.

I was at Ron Guidry Day in August 2003 when Number 49 was retired. For gifts, George Steinbrenner gave Guidry an SUV, a tractor, golf clubs, a digital camera, a gold ring, mountain bikes for his kids and five roundtrip train tickets from Louisiana to New York because Guidry doesn’t like to fly. George’s son gave O’Neill a replica of his plaque in Monument Park, a single bottle of wine, a Number 21 jersey signed by the 2022 Yankees (that probably goes right in the trash) and a gimmick gift of a $29.97 Gatorade cooler from Dick’s Sporting Goods with band-aids on it and a bat through it. Hal isn’t just cheap when it comes to the actual Yankees roster.

The fact that the Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day has definitely raised the idea to Hal that the Yankees don’t need to buy players to win games they can just retire more undeserving numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sabathia and Gardner get their numbers retired at some point, and it will likely happen after Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius get theirs.

8. On Sunday, Boone first asked Lou Trivino to come into a 2-2 game in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and two outs and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. up. Trivino successfully got him to ground out to end the seventh. Then he asked Trivino to start the eighth and he produced a 1-2-3 inning. Then he sent him back out for the ninth and he pitched around a one-out walk to save the game for the Yankees. It was the Yankees’ most impressive relief pitching performance of the season. They had to have the game on Sunday and going to Trivino for seven outs was an absolutely insane ask, but he Trivino handled it just about perfectly, needing only 32 pitches to get through 2 1/3 innings.

9. Alek Manoah hitting Aaron Judge is a non-story. First base was open and Manoah was going to pitch Judge inside and if he happened to hit him in doing so, so be it. It was a good strategy for the Blue Jays. Gerrit Cole trying to play the role of tough guy or enforcer and hopping over the dugout railing to chirp Manoah as if he was going to do anything to do the 6-foot-6, 285-pound Manoah was comical. What Cole should worry about is pitching like Manoah. Cole was awful in his start in the series on Saturday, allowing four earned runs on five hits and two walks across six innings. His manager (friend and neighbor) did say “he threw the ball well,” though, so there’s that.

10. The Yankees need to find a way to win of these two Subway Series games against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Starting Domingo German against Scherzer on Monday would be bad at any time, but with the state of the Yankee’s offense it’s especially egregious. Then asking the Yankees to beat the best pitcher in baseball the following day is just unfair, let alone with Frankie Montas starting, who will likely give up a run per inning.

After the second half of the Subway series, the Yankees head to the West Coast for seven games in seven days against the A’s and Angels, two teams they are a combined 6-0 against this season. But that doesn’t mean anything because these Yankees aren’t he same Yankees that went 6-0 against the A’s and Angels, outscoring them 33-12 earlier this season.

I expect the Yankees to have trouble with the Mets this week. If they have trouble against the A’s and Angels, then I think we will all officially know how this season is going to end.

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Blogs

Aug 19, 2022

Yankees Could Use Mulligan on Frankie Montas

Frankie Montas is only three starts into his Yankees career, but so far, he looks like every other young, controllable starter Brian Cashman has traded for.

I guess Wednesday was just a moment and not the start of something special. The Yankees followed up their much-needed, dramatic, come-from-behind, walk-off win with yet another loss, this time a 9-2 loss to the Blue Jays. Wednesday was just another win labeled as “The Possible Turning Point” that turned out to be nothing more than a letdown. There was no carryover effect and whatever momentum the Yankees had created in the early minutes of Thursday morning was gone before sunset on Thursday night. Momentum in baseball is only as good as the next day’s starting pitching, and unfortunately, Frankie Montas was the next day’s starting pitcher.

Before the Yankees batted for a second time the game was over on Thursday. Montas allowed a 5-spot in the top of the second, giving up a pair of singles, a double, walk and a three-run home run in the frame. The Yankees trailed 5-0 after an inning-and-a-half, never recovered and lost for the 12th time in their last 16 games.

While Montas was busy putting runners on base, the offense was performing their disappearing act against Jose Berrios, who entered the game with a 5.61 ERA and had allowed 13 earned runs and 20 baserunners in his last 7 2/3 innings. The Yankees scored just two runs, with both coming in a second-inning rally made possible by the Blue Jays’ defense. The Yankees didn’t hit a ball out of the infield in that inning, but managed to plate two thanks to a walk, a hit by pitch and an error. Even with their eight-run explosion on Wednesday, the Yankees have scored just 20 runs in their last nine games. Remove Wednesday, and they have scored 12 runs in their last eight games. Bronx Bombers, indeed.

For as bad as the offense was, this game was on Montas as he took the team out of it in the second. Through three starts as a Yankee, he’s pitched more like a No. 5 (at best) and nothing like the No. 2 or No. 3 the Yankees thought they were acquiring at the trade deadline. Of course, the Yankees should have traded for Luis Castillo, but at this rate, they would have been wise to just keep JP Sears, who they traded for Montas. (And obviously they should have kept Jordan Montgomery, who they inexplicably gave away for no reason and who hasn’t lost as a Cardinal, posting the lowest ERA of any three-game stretch in his career.) The Yankees traded for a pitcher with a 3.23 career ERA at home in Oakland and a 4.48 career ERA on the road, and he has lived up to those numbers.

Montas has been no different than the other relatively young, controllable starting pitchers Brian Cashman has traded for in the past who failed to come close to duplicating their performances with the Yankees.

Jeff Weaver
The Yankees traded for the 25-year-old on July 5, 2002 after he posted a 3.18 ERA (3.17 ERA) in 17 starts with the Tigers (giving up Ted Lilly who would go on to pitch in the majors for more than a decade). In two years with the Yankees, Weaver pitched to a 5.35 ERA in 32 starts and 15 relief appearances, and gave up the walk-off home run in Game 4 of the 2003 World Series that led the Marlins to three straight wins to beat the Yankees in six games. After the 2003 season, the Yankees traded him to the Dodgers for … Kevin Brown! What a way to double down on a bad decision and compound the problem.

Javier Vazquez
After pitching to a 3.52 ERA (3.40 FIP) for three straight years with the Expos, the Yankees traded for the 27-year-old in December 2003. He was an All-Star in 2004, pitching to a 3.56 ERA and accumulating 10 wins in the first half. But after the break, he fell apart, pitching to a 6.92 ERA in 14 starts. He relieved Brown in the second inning of Game 7 of the ALCS and allowed a first-pitch grand slam to Johnny Damon. After the season he was traded to the Diamondbacks in the Randy Johnson deal.

After winning the 2009 World Series, Cashman let World Series MVP Hideki Matsui walk, so he could bring back Nick Johnson to be the team’s designated hitter, who he traded to the Expos acquire Vazquez back in 2003. He also brought Vazquez back after posting a 2.87 ERA in 32 starts with the Braves. Vazquez was even worse in his second go-around with the Yankees, pitching to a 5.32 ERA (5.56 FIP) in 26 starts and five relief appearances, the only regular-season relief appearances of his career.

Michael Pineda
The Yankees traded Jesus Montero for Pineda after Pineda was an All-Star in his rookie season in 2011 with the Mariners. Pineda missed all of 2012 and 2013 with injuries and didn’t make his Yankees debut until his third year with the organization. He was outstanding in 13 starts, pitching to a 1.89 ERA, but got busted for having an exceptional amount of pine tar on his neck against the Red Sox and got suspended and injured and missed the majority of the season. In six years with the Yankees, Pineda missed two full seasons due to injuries, and most of two others, making only one true full season of starts (32 in 2016) with almost another full season (27 in 2015).

Nathan Eovaldi
As a Marlin in 2014, Eovaldi led the league in hits allowed (223), so of course the Yankees thought they could fix a 25-year-old with a triple-digit fastball who somehow couldn’t strike anyone out. In two seasons with the Yankees, Eovaldi made 51 starts and three relief appearances, pitching to a 4.45 ERA, while allowing nearly one-and-a-half baserunners per inning. He left the Yankees after 2016 needing Tommy John surgery, signed with the Rays and was traded to the Red Sox and helped eliminate the Yankees in the 2018 ALDS on the way to winning the World Series.

Sonny Gray
In 2015, David Ortiz said this about Gray:

“The last few seasons, the toughest guy I’ve faced is Sonny Gray from Oakland. This kid’s stuff is legit … the first time I see this Gray kid on the mound, I can’t help but notice he’s 5’10” and skinny. He looks like the guy who fixes my computer at the Apple Store. I’m thinking, Here we go. This is gonna be fun. Then he took me for a ride, man. Fastball. Sinker. Slider. Curve … Whap. Whap. Whap. You have no idea what this kid is going to throw. He drives me crazy.”

That coupled with his 3.42 ERA in five seasons with the A’s had me ecstatic when the Yankees traded for him at the 2017 deadline. Gray was solid down the regular-season stretch for the Yankees, pitched poorly in Game 1 of the ALDS, but extremely well in Game 4 of the ALCS. In 2018, after allowing 10 baserunners and seven earned runs in 2 2/3 innings against the last-place Orioles, Gray and his 5.56 ERA were removed from the rotation. Cashman made it clear in the media he was going to move Gray after the season, saying, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results.” This admission ruined any value of Gray and any leverage for the Yankees and they traded him to the Reds for nothing.

In three seasons with the Reds, Gray was an All-Star and pitched to a.349 in 68 starts. This year, his first with the Twins, he has a 3.11 ERA In 18 stars.

James Paxton
The Yankees trade for the oft-injured left-hander who had never pitched more than 160 1/3 innings in a season. He was good (3.82 ERA and 3.86 FIP) but not great for the Yankees in 2019, and in the postseason, he couldn’t get through five innings in his lone ALDS start and got only seven outs in his first ALCS start. His Game 6 start in the 2019 ALCS (6 IP, 1 ER) made up for his other two, but his inability to give the Yankees length helped destroy the bullpen.

In 2020, he made five awful starts ( 6.64 ERA) before going to down for the season with an injury, ending his time with the Yankees.

(I will leave Jameson Taillon out of this for now since he’s still a Yankee, but he’s not as good as the Yankees hoped in trading for him and has worse numbers as a Yankee than he did with the Pirates.)

Montas is only three starts into his Yankees career and will ultimately be judged on how he pitches in October (if he doesn’t pitch himself out of the rotation by then). He will be a Yankee through next season (if he doesn’t pitch himself out of the rotation or off the team by then).

He’s a long way from becoming the latest young, controllable starter that the Yankees have traded for who then failed with the team. But as of now, he’s off to the same start and on the same path as some of his predecessors. And if it doesn’t work out for Montas with the Yankees, I’m sure he will enjoy success again once he’s no longer a Yankee, like all the other young, controllable starters Cashman has acquired.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Aug 18, 2022

Yankees Thoughts: Turning Point in Season or Simply One Moment?

The Yankees ended their latest losing streak with a come-from-behind, walk-off win on Wednesday against the Rays. They still lost the three-game series and have lost five straight series, but for one game the Yankees

The Yankees ended their latest losing streak with a come-from-behind, walk-off win on Wednesday against the Rays. They still lost the three-game series and have lost five straight series, but for one game the Yankees gave their fans a night off from being depressed.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It’s nice to write these Thoughts coming off a win. It would have been better to write them coming off a series win, something the Yankees haven’t had in three weeks, but I will take what I can get att this point as the Yankees continue to make me sweat my over 91.5-win preseason wager. (They need to go 19-25 to clinch for me.)

I’m happy the Yankees won on Wednesday and I’m happy they scored eight runs (seven if you don’t count the automatic runner in the 10th). I’m happy they finally called up two position players to give the roster and lineup a new look, and I’m happy they finally brought back the organization’s best reliever since Michael King went down and Clay Holmes turned into Jonathan Holder. But the happiness is only as good as the next day’s game, and if the Yankees get embarrassed by the Blue Jays over the next four days the way every team other than the Royals has embarrassed them since the All-Star break, Wednesday’s much-needed come-from-behind win will be forgotten the way every other win since June 19 that has been labeled as “The Possible Turning Point” has been.

No team with a 73-45 record should have as big of a win in mid-August as the Yankees had on Wednesday night over the Rays. The Yankees were a an an early four-run deficit and eventually three outs away from yet another loss and from seeing their once-15 1/2-game division lead falling to just seven games in the loss column. But then Josh Donaldson (one of the faces of everything wrong with the 2022 Yankees) stepped up and had his biggest hit as a Yankee.

2. The “Owed $48 Million Man” hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning off Jalen Beeks to prevent the Yankees from losing a fourth straight game, and for at least one night, brought some good vibes back to the Bronx.

Do I expect Donaldson to now go off and turn around his season and make his situation and contract with the Yankees anything more than the disaster it’s been (which is why they reportedly tried to trade him at the deadline, but no general manager was as dumb as Brian Cashman to take on his money owed)? No, I don’t. I don’t because this isn’t the first time Donaldson has had a game in which he tried to fool fans into thinking he was anything other than washed up only to continue his drastic decline.

On Opening Day (April 8), Donaldson went 2-for-6 with a walk-off single against the Red Sox as the leadoff hitter. He then hit .207/.343/.345 with two home runs over his next 105 plate appearances.

In Chicago against the White Sox on May 12 and May 13, Donaldson went 4-for-10 with a double, two home runs and six RBIs. He then hit .213/.283/.336 with two home runs over his next 138 plate appearances.

From July 6 through July 9, Donaldson went 5-for-13 with three home runs and nine RBIs. He then hit .192/.259/.295 with one home run over his next 85 plate appearances.

In Seattle on August 8, in the middle of a five-game losing streak, Donaldson went 4-for-5 with two doubles, a home run and three RBIs. He then hit .120/.241/.120 over his next 29 plate appearances before Wednesday.

And then on Wednesday he hit the grand slam. Even with the grand slam, his OPS is at .698 on the season.

So I’m sorry if I don’t think Wednesday night’s moment was anything more than that: a moment. I don’t expect 2015 AL MVP Donaldson to now appear for the Yankees, and I don’t even expect 2021 Donaldson to appear. I expect the version of Donaldson we have seen for nearly the entire season to continue to be the Donaldson we see, and if he continues to play every day like he has all year, he will have occasional moments like he did on Wednesday. Not enough to warrant him being an everyday player for a championship team, but just enough for him to keep playing and to bat in the middle of the order for these Yankees.

3. Welcome back, Estevan Florial, and welcome, Oswaldo Cabrera. It took scoring one run (on an error) over three games and watching the Yankees 15 1/2-game division lead get cut in half for them to finally make some roster changes. Florial is back after four games with the team earlier this year (and after hitting .300/.440/.550 in 11 games last year), and Cabrera made his major-league debut at third base on Wednesday. Aaron Boone said both are going to play, and we’ll see if Fletcher Reede actually means what he says.

4. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit his first home run of the season and drove in all three Yankees runs in their win on Saturday when the outrage about his play and the calls for Oswald Peraza were as loud as they have ever been (and still remain that loud). Donaldson finally did something at the plate in a big spot for the Yankees on the day one of the Yankees’ top prospects made his major-league debut at Donaldson’s third base. It’s almost as if sending messages and not being complacent can lead to positive results! Who would have known? (Well, clearly the defending-champion Braves who have called up their prospects with less Triple-A time and production than the Yankees’ prospects and have had immense success.)

I hope Florial and Cabrera both flourish in their opportunities. I want the Yankees to roster likable players, and Florial and Cabrera having success in the majors means less of Aaron Hicks, Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa. (I don’t actually think it will mean less Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa since the Yankees clearly think they are good, everyday-worthy, winning players. But it should mean less of them if this duo plays well.)

If Peraza keeps hitting in Triple-A, he should get a chance too. Just because the Yankees traded for Kiner-Falefa as a 2022 stopgap to bridge them to Peraza or Anthony Volpe doesn’t mean they have to wait until 2023 to turn to either. Kiner-Falefa has done enough (or rather not enough) for the Yankees to already have reason to be playing either of them now in the majors. If Kiner-Falefa continues to be an atrocious at-bat with an untrustworthy glove, give someone else an everyday chance.

5. It was nice to see Gleyber Torres finally do something as well on Wednesday, as he hit a two-run home run to get the Yankees on the board. But then in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and one out and the Yankees trailing by one run, Torres came to bat, swung at the first pitch and grounded into an inning-ending double play. Aaron Judge had walked on four straight pitches right before Torres came to bat and it’s likely what happened in Judge’s at-bat never crossed Torres’ mind. It was an ill-advised swing from a player who continues to boast arguably the lowest Baseball IQ I have seen from any player since Nick Swisher.

6. Boone did everything he could to try to extend the Yankees’ losing streak on Wednesday. After Lucas Luetge allowed a run in the sixth, he sent him back out there for the seventh. Luetge was allowed to put two more runners on in the seventh (after putting on two in the sixth) before Boone turned to “Roster Manipulation Ron” Marinaccio to get out of the jam. If Boone was willing to go to Marinaccio in the seventh, why didn’t he just start the inning clean? Why do I find myself writing a sentence similar to that in every one of these Thoughts blogs?

7. Thankfully, Marinaccio was recalled and available on Wednesday. It’s comical that Marinaccio entered in what was the highest leverage situation in the game to that point. Good enough to be used as the most important reliever last night, but not good enough to be a Yankees the previous 10 days. Well, that’s not true. He has always been good enough to be a Yankee, he was just used as a pawn in the Yankees’ roster manipulation strategy. The Yankees lost seven of nine will Marinaccio was wasting away in Triple-A, losing games because of meltdowns from Albert Abreu, Scott Effross, Lou Trivino and Holmes. The Yankees likely have a couple more wins if Marinaccio is on the Yankees over that nine-day period, as well as if Clarke Schmidt were too (who is still wasting away in Triple-A).

8. In the bottom of the ninth, Boone sent up Hicks as pinch hitter for Kiner-Falefa. Boone operated under the idea that Hicks had a better chance of ending the game with one swing than Kiner-Falefa, but that concept is meaningless since I too had a better chance of ending the game with one swing that Kiner-Falefa. Hicks has also homered in 1.6 percent of his plate appearances this season, so let’s not act like Matt Stairs was coming off the bench in that situation. Hicks struck out.

9. Then in the 10th, Boone brought in Aroldis Chapman. I was fine with that decision. What I wasn’t fine with was staying with Chapman with the bases loaded and one out and Francisco Mejia up. Mejia is a .225/.248/.384 hitter against righties and a .386/.397/.561 hitter against lefties. Even down 0-2, Mejia was able to hit a go-ahead, three-run double off Chapman.

As I said on the Keefe To The City Podcast earlier this week, Chapman could pitch 30 straight perfect innings and I will never trust him. The narrative of Chapman of late had been that he had resolved his issues and was his old self, and deserving of being the No. 1 arm in the Yankees’ bullpen. Then he went out on Wednesday night, got two outs and allowed two walks and a double, nearly ruining the game and handing the Yankees another loss before the walk-off in the bottom half of Chapman’s disastrous inning.

10. All Wednesday’s win should have done was make Yankees fans feel good in the exact moment of the walk-off grand slam. That’s it. Be happy until the moment Donaldson crossed the plate and then get back to reality. Because all the Yankees did was win one game. They still have a long way to go to getting back to being even remotely close to the team they were from mid-April to mid-June and to proving their postseason isn’t going to last only a handful of days.

Wednesday was one game and it was one win. Maybe it’s the start of something for the first time in two months. No win since June 19 has been the start of anything, but maybe this win will be different. I pray it is.

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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!

Blogs • Yankees

Aug 16, 2022

Aaron Boone Guarantees Yankees ‘Will Recover’

Aaron Boone still thinks the Yankees “are good” and believes they will get back to being the team they were earlier in the season.

Shut out. Again. That’s what happened to the Yankees on Monday night at the Stadium in a 4-0 loss to the Rays. It was their second straight game being shut out and their fourth in their last nine. Since the third inning on Friday night against the Red Sox (a span of now 34 innings), the only Yankee to have driven in a run is Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

Since June 19, the Yankees are 23-28. They are 8-16 since the All-Star break and 2-10 since in their last 12 games. They are in a free fall. Not the kind of free fall that will find completely blowing what was once a 15 1/2-game lead in the division (it’s now at 10), but a free fall that will inevitably end in an early postseason exit.

Despite playing like the Nationals (who traded away their 23-year-old generational star) for the last three-plus weeks and like the Rangers (who fired their manager earlier this week) for the last two months, Aaron Boone doesn’t view his team like one that is extremely fortunate no other team in their division has capitalized on their eight-week slide. He said as much in his postgame press conference after Monday night’s shutout loss to the Rays.

“When we are right, and we are hole. We are going to be a very good offense.”

What exactly is “right” and what is “hole?” Because if being “right” and “hole” is having every possible available player healthy then the Yankees will likely never be “right” or “hole” again this season.

DJ LeMahieu has missed the last two games with a foot issue that has reportedly been bothering him for a good amount of the season. Giancarlo Stanton has missed one third of the season with various injuries and still hasn’t played in rehab games. Everything has to go exactly right in Matt Carpenter’s healing from his broken foot for him to return this season. The Yankees need to get all three of those players healthy and back and producing to meet Boone’s promise that the “offense will be very good” again. (I didn’t include Harrison Bader since I expect as much out of him offensively as Aaron Hicks has provided.) What Boone isn’t considering is that more players could get injured even if any of those three return.

Every team deals with injuries and the Yankees have dealt with seemingly more injuries than every other team over the last four seasons. This might be in terms of the Yankees’ lineup though since you can’t count on injured players to return and be productive and you can’t count on other players not getting injured. With the Yankees’ unwillingness to give any player in either Triple-A or Double-A a chance at the major-league level over players like Kiner-Falefa, Hicks and Josh Donaldson, there will be more shutouts over the next six weeks.

“Big picture, there are some good things happening. We just gotta get some guys on track offensively right now.”

The starting pitching has been better of late and the bullpen has gone from completely untrusworthy to just untrustworthy. That’s about the only positives I can see that Boone could possibly be referring to.

Who are the guys that need to get on track? The only offensive players to be consistent all season are LeMahieu, Carpenter, Aaron Judge and Jose Trevino. With LeMahieu and Carpenter out, that leaves Judge and Trevino as the only consistent available bats, and no one should be counting on the best defensive catcher in the league to be an important bat for the Yankees. That leaves Judge.

Anthony Rizzo has had his moments this season, but he’s been bad since returning to play last week and has been up and down all year. He’s the only other “healthy” possibility at the moment you can maybe rely on.

The players Boone is referring to are clearly Hicks, Donaldson and Gleyber Torres.

When Hicks homered in three of four games from July 6 through July 9 there was this perception his power (or whatever power he has ever had) had returned and he was going to turn his season around. Since that home run on July 9 (38 days ago), he hasn’t homered again, and hasn’t even had an extra-base hit. He’s hitting .159/.289/.159 since and on Monday single-handedly helped the Yankees to a loss.

Last Monday in Seattle, for the third time this season, people thought Donaldson was finally going to turn his season around after going 4-for-5 with three RBIs. Since then he’s yet another slump, going 2-for-21 with 11 strikeouts. (I guess it’s not technically a slump since it’s really just been one atrocious season.) His OPS is back down under .700 at .692. The lowest full-season OPS of his career.

Torres had a pair of singles on Monday night, which were his first hits in exactly a week. He has one home run in nearly four weeks and the early-season idea he was returning to the 2018-19 version of himself was always as ridiculous as thinking the 2022 Yankees could achieve what the 1998 Yankees did.

There’s no getting these three “on track.” This is who they are. Hicks is a 32-year-old outfielder who spent his entire 20s on the injured list and is now playing with a surgically-repaired elbow and wrist to go along with all of the ailments he has had in his career. Donaldson is a 36-year-old, washed-up and overpaid shell of his former self who the Yankees foolishly owe $48 million to. Torres is a former star who was on his way to a Monument Park-like career before coming to 2020 spring training out of shape and never recovering. It’s no surprise post-deadline reports have come out that the Yankees were trying to trade all three two weeks ago.

“We’re good. We’re going to get a little more whole as we move forward here.”

You’re not “good.” You were good in late April, May and early June. Now you’re a team that is living off what they accomplished two-plus months ago and seems to be destined for another ALDS exit. And again, you may get “whole,” but there’s no assurance you will.

“We’re going to recover.”

I don’t know that the Yankees will recover. And recover to me means to play like a championship team, which it seemed like they were earlier in the season, but last were on June 18. Back then it was the Yankees and Astros in the American League and everyone else. Now in the AL? It’s the Astros and everyone else.

The Yankees may have a bye to the ALDS, but that doesn’t mean they will survive the ALDS. If they play the Mariners, who will feel confident, considering the Mariners just won four of six against the Yankees and boast Luis Castillo, who the Yankees failed to acquire. What Yankees fan would feel good about a matchup with the Rays or Blue Jays? No Yankees fan that has seen how they have played against either of those teams in the last few years.

By claiming the Yankees will recover, Boone opened himself up to a potential disaster if they don’t.

“It’s not great right now.”

No, it’s not.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Aug 15, 2022

Yankees Thoughts: ‘Everything Is Fine’

The Yankees lost another series, this time to the last-place Red Sox finish their 2-7 on their nine-game road trip. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. I haven’t heard the YES broadcast booth

The Yankees lost another series, this time to the last-place Red Sox finish their 2-7 on their nine-game road trip.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I haven’t heard the YES broadcast booth or any Yankees fan compare the 2022 Yankees to the 1998 Yankees lately. I wonder why that is.

Maybe it’s because the only Yankees the 2022 Yankees are comparable to are the 2021 Yankees. A team whose season was based around one hot streak and who ultimately (to use Aaron Boone’s second-favorite word after “obviously”) underachieved. The 2022 Yankees’ hot streak might have lasted longer than the 2021 Yankees’, but it looks like they are headed down the same path with the same inevitable fate: an early postseason exit.

2. The Yankees are 23-27 since June 19. They are 8-15 since the All-Star break. They are 2-9 in their last 11 games. They were shut out on Sunday night for the third time in eight games. If not for the rest of the AL East playing nearly as poorly as they have for the last eight weeks, they could have easily blown their massive division lead. The lead was at its highest at 15 1/2 games and now sits at 10 games. So while they have managed to erase 35 percent of their lead, it’s still a double-digit lead because the Blue Jays and Rays failed to capitalize on an opportunity to overtake the Yankees.

“If you would have asked me at the start of the year, would I like a 10-game lead in the middle of August?” Aaron Judge said to the media after Sunday night’s shutout loss, “I think any of us would have signed up for that.”

That’s true. But that’s also like being given $1 million, losing one third of it and then trying to justify being fine with it just because you didn’t expect to have the $1 million in the first place.

3. At 3-10 since the trade deadline, the Yankees’ marginal upgrades at the time haven’t even been that. Andrew Benintendi looks like the guy the Red Sox gave up on, and while he was always expected to regress, regressing to be worse than Joey Gallo is certainly something else. Scott Effross’ only earned runs came on one mistake pitch (a giant mistake at that) and Lou Trivino has been OK, but both have them have been used at times after Albert Abreu and Lucas Luetge have pitched and been allowed to blow games. Frankie Montas has pitched like a No. 5 starter in two starts, and a bad No. 5 at that, and Harrison Bader still isn’t close to playing for the Yankees. Add in Jordan Montgomery putting together two scoreless starts for the Cardinals (with one coming against the Yankees), and to date, the Yankees couldn’t have botched the deadline any worse than they did.

The new Yankees are only a small portion of the team’s problems. The majority of the rest of the team is the still the problem.

4. Anthony Rizzo finally decided to halt his non-injured list stint after a week of missing games and is 1-for-15 with six strikeouts since returning.

A week ago, for the third time, people thought Josh Donaldson was finally going to turn his season around after he went 4-for-5 with three RBIs in the series opener in Seattle. Since then he’s 2-for-18 with nine strikeouts, and his season OPS is back below .700 yet again.

The idea that 2018-19 Gleyber Torres was back was always an illusion. Since July 28, Torres is hitting .154/.167/.200. His OPS was at .802 at the beginning of play that day. It’s now at .729 as he tries to become another everyday Yankees to have a sub-.700 OPS.

Aaron Hicks is part of the sub.-700 OPS club. His is at .650. Remember when he homered in three of four games from July 6 through July 9 and there was this perception his power (or whatever power he has ever had) has returned and he was going to turn his season around? Well, July 9 was the last time he homered, 37 days ago. Since then he’s hitting .165/.297/.165 with no extra-base hits.

Benintendi is an exceptional candidate for worst deadline acquisition of all time, hitting .196/.323/.294 with the Yankees. If you want to say “Oh, it’s only 16 games,” well, the Yankees traded for him prior to Game 100, so he has played more than one quarter of the games he will be a Yankee for.

Want to call Saturday’s win over the Red Sox the “Isiah Kiner-Falefa Game?” Go ahead. That’s the only game he has had as a Yankee that could be considered that. After 104 games played, he’s hitting .269/.315/.323 with one home run as he tries to be the worst everyday player to play for a championship team.

5. The Yankees aren’t currently a championship team. Not with the combination of an abundance of underachieving players and an abundance of injuries. Maybe in late April, May and early June they were when they were getting seven innings of one-run or shutout ball every night from their starting pitching and they were completely healthy. But even then, the offense was severely flawed, and as the injuries have mounted, the offense has only gotten worse.

6. The only players to be consistent this season have been Judge, Jose Trevino, Nestor Cortes, DJ LeMahieu, Matt Carpenter, Jose Trevino, Nestor Cortes, Michael King, Ron Marinaccio and Clarke Schmidt. Judge is the AL MVP and Trevino and Cortes All-Stars. LeMahieu is now injured, which is why he didn’t play on Sunday night. Carpenter is out for possibly the season and King is out for this year and maybe all of next, while Marinaccio and Schmidt are both wasting away in Triple-A because they have options to allow the Yankees to manipulate the team’s depth. Everyone else has been inconsistent, awful or has underachieved.

7. I never thought Clay Holmes would be a part of the inconsistent group on this team. Not after how good he was for the first three months of the season. But now that he doesn’t know where the ball is going and walks at least one batter an appearance, he can’t be trusted just like the rest of the bullpen. He’s been so bad since mid-July that Aroldis Chapman has jumped him on the bullpen pecking order and Chapman is the least trustworthy reliever given the high-leverage situations he’s used in. Holmes has allowed 11 earned runs, 11 hits and 10 walks in his last 9 2/3 innings with opposing batters hitting .282/.482/.385 off him. Prior to July 9, batters had hit .165/.213/.188 off him and he allowed two earned runs, 22 hits and five walks in 38 innings. The Yankees’ bullpen is too beat up and too shallow now to have Holmes be Jonathan Holder.

8. It would be nice if Giancarlo Stanton could play baseball in the near future. Stanton has missed 35 games this season, the equivalent of 32 percent of the season. (I thought Eric Cressy and his team has solved injuries! It’s almost as if you can’t prevent injuries, especially for historically injury-prone players.) But what you can prevent is the amount of time it takes for Stanton to return. Stanton has taken one day to shag balls, another to swing a bat, another to run the bases, another to go through a pregame routine, and so on. Basically one day per baseball-related activity. It’s all pretty ridiculous and there’s no evidence this will prevent him from getting injured in his first game back.

With Rizzo out and now back but being unproductive, LeMahieu now out, Carpenter out, the Yankees could desperately use Stanton. But I’m sure he will need to brush his teeth on Monday and then go through buttoning his jersey on Tuesday and then try to tie his cleats on Wednesday and maybe at this rate he will be cleared to play by Labor Day.

9. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, and I don’t know how much worse they can get for a team that has the second-worst record in the AL since the All-Star break, trailing only the Tigers. On Monday, the Yankees begin a nine-game homestand against the Rays (3), Blue Jays (4) and Mets (2). For a team that in the last month has split a series with the Pirates, lost a home series to the Reds, has lost five of nine to the Red Sox, got swept by the Mets and Cardinals and lost four of six to the Mariners, I don’t know how anyone could feel good going into these nine games. Add in the unknown with LeMahieu’s foot injury, the underperformance of every offensive player not named Judge or Trevino, the shakiness of the rotation after Cortes, the instability of the entire bullpen, the front office’s unwillingness to call anyone up, and the incompetency of the manager, and you have a team that could really screw up its season over the next nine days.

10. Now that the comparisons to the 1998 team’s success have stopped, the comparisons to the Septembers of the 1998 and 2000 teams have started. Two teams that finished out their regular seasons like these Yankees have played for the last eight weeks. The difference is those teams knew how to flip a switch and they could flip the switch once the postseason began. They also earned the right to be allowed to flip the switch with four championships in five years and six championship appearances in eight years.

These Yankees haven’t earned that benefit. They haven’t earned anything other than for fans to think this season will end the same way every other season has ended with this group and this core: early. The Yankees may be headed to the postseason and headed there with a bye to the ALDS, but that doesn’t mean they will do anything once they get there. After these last eight weeks, the only thing I can see them doing is holding an end-of-the-season press conference while the ALCS is going on without them.

They have six-and-a-half weeks to change that.

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