Blogs – Page 56 – Keefe To The City

Oct 26, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Postseason Isn’t Random Crapshoot Yankees Think It Is

The Yankees’ season has been over for the three weeks. It feels like it’s been three months. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. When you bring back your manager for a fifth season

The Yankees’ season has been over for the three weeks. It feels like it’s been three months.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When you bring back your manager for a fifth season after four underachieving, mostly miserable seasons, it means the roster has to be changed. However, I don’t think the Yankees will actually make real changes to their roster. The team had the same payroll in 2021 that it had 16 years ago despite the exponential increase in ticket prices, merchandise and concessions costs and the amount of income they have brought in on broadcast rights over that time.

Will they get a shortstop? Sure. Brian Cashman said as much in his end-of-the-season press conference. Does that mean Carlos Correa or even Corey Seager? Probably not. They will cost money and a lot of it, and the last thing the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees want to do is spend more money. It’s why Rougned Odor was a Yankee in 2021. It’s why the early-season bench had Jay Bruce, Mike Tauchman and Mike Ford on it. It’s why the Yankees gave up more prospects to acquire Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo in order to get the Cubs and Rangers to cover the monetary ends of the deals. The Yankees like free. They like cheap. Every once in a while they will sprinkle in a big-money contract to make fans think they are still the Yankees. But they’re not.

2. My expectations for this offseason are low because Hal Steinbrenner has made them low. Hal would like to win, but he doesn’t need to win. If the Yankees happen to win, great! If they don’t, oh well! As long as the Yankees continue to turn a profit (and they will never not turn a profit), he’s happy. The annual statements he releases about being unsatisfied or unhappy with the team coming up short of a championship or the fans deserving more have about as much credibility Aaron Boone’s evaluation of his starting pitcher in postgame press conferences. When Hal’s father said it, it meant something because it’s how he truly felt.

Whether the Yankees won the World Series or had what George considered “a failure” and didn’t win the World Series, immediately following the end of the season, he would be back in Tampa planning how to win the next season. There was no grace period. There was no time off. Winning consumed him and taking a day to celebrate the team’s recent achievement would be one less day he had to try to achieve the same level of success the following season. His son just took two weeks to simply decide if he should bring back the same manager whose teams have produced one division title, one wild-card game embarrassment, two ALDS losses, one ALCS appearance and two postseason exits at the hands of the rival Red Sox in four years. Hal brought him back and Boone will now be the first manager in franchise history to go into his fifth season without a championship.

3. In another time, Boone wouldn’t have survived this offseason as Yankees manager with George in charge because he wouldn’t have survived the previous two either. George had his faults as an owner, but every move he made was made with one goal in mind: to win. He didn’t always make the right or best decision, but he made every decision believing it would increase the Yankees’ chances of winning. His son couldn’t be less like him in that regard. (After coming one win away from winning the pennant in 2017, Hal cut payroll by $50 million for 2018). Likely because of that, George didn’t want to leave the team to Hal. George wanted to leave the Yankees to his son-in-law, likely knowing what would happen if Hal took over. And that’s what’s happening now.

4. A wild-card game appearance as the second wild-card team is an embarrassment for the Yankees and should be treated that way. In a season in which they were expected to go to the World Series and were a heavy favorite to win the American League, they finished third in the AL East and fifth in the AL. It’s why I nearly threw up when Brian Cashman said, “We’re proud of the many successes we had this year … We were once again a postseason contender.”

The Yankees played an extra nine miserable innings this season and that somehow qualifies them as a “contender.” I wish the Yankee had missed out on the postseason completely rather than getting humiliated by the Red Sox for the third in the last three times the teams have met in the postseason since 2004, just like I wish the Yankees had lost the 2018 wild-card game knowing what took place in the ALDS.

5. The Yankees were never going to win that game three weeks ago. I wrote as much. Not with Gerrit Cole pooping his pants in the first inning on the Fenway Park mound, completely failing to show up with the season on the line after failing to show up for all of September. Not with the offense doing its latest October disappearing act, which has become a staple of these Yankees over the last five seasons. Not with Boone giving every pitcher in the game one extra batter to see if they could magically find it on a night when all of Fenway reminded us all that the Yankees do in fact suck.

6. Over the last 21 days, I have had to watch the Red Sox upset the Rays and the Astros laugh the overrated White Sox out of the playoffs. If not for Jose Altuve’s series-changing home run in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the ALCS, the Red Sox would be hosting the Braves on Tuesday night on their way to their fifth championship in 18 seasons. As much as I hate Altuve, I’m thankful he saved me from having to watch yet another Red Sox roster and yet another Red Sox general manager win a championship, while the Yankees continue to run in place.

7. Boone loves to say how “slim the margin” is between the Yankees and the teams that actually do have success in the postseason. Cashman loves to say the “postseason is a crapshoot” and success in it is “random.” That must be why the Astros are in the World Series for the third time in five years after reaching the ALCS in every season since 2017. It must be why the Astros and Red Sox just met in the ALCS for the second time in four years and why the Red Sox came two wins away from going to the World Series for the fourth time since 2004. The Dodgers must just be really, really, really lucky to have appear in the NLCS six times since 2013 and what a random coincidence the Dodgers and Braves just met in the NLCS for the second straight year.

Unfortunately, I find myself rooting for the Astros in the World Series because of Cashman’s belief. If the Braves win as an 88-win club that didn’t get over .500 for the first time until August, it will only give credence to Cashman’s idea the baseball playoffs are nothing more than a roll of the dice. I doubt he thought that when the team he inherited in 1998 won 114 regular-season games and the World Series and then the next two World Series, appearing in the Fall Classic in five of his first six seasons as general manager. I don’t think Cashman was attributing postseason success in the late-’90s and early-2000s to shear luck after taking over Gene Michael’s creation.

8. It’s been 12 years since the Yankees last appeared in the World Series, and it seems like even more with all of the ALCS losses (2010, 2012, 2017 and 2019), ALDS losses (2011, 2018 and 2020) and wild-card game losses (2015 and 2021) since. Add in the team’s one division title since over the last 10 seasons and 2009 seems like so long it almost feels fake.

The eight-year championship drought from 2001-2008 felt like an eternity while it was happening. The current drought has now been four years longer with no end in sight. The three-year contract for Boone proves Hal is OK with that. Giving a loser another three years to lose and another three years (with an option for a fourth!) to make losing even more acceptable within the organization is an immensely regrettable decision.

9. But these are the Yankees I root for, for better or worse. Mainly for worse. A team that spends all summer talking about turning corners that never appear, getting on a roll that never comes and how tomorrow is a new day until there’s no more tomorrow the way there wasn’t after the wild-card game in Boston or Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS or Game 6 of the 2019 ALDS or Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. (I won’t lump Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS in as that way pre-Boone. Back when there was hope and promise with this core.)

10. At least once a day I think back to how I felt when the Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. The loss didn’t hurt. I wasn’t angry or frustrated or disappointed. I was excited. I wanted the next day to be Opening Day because that’s how promising the future looked for these Yankees. Now here we are four seasons and four years later and the team has gone from coming within a game of the World Series to having their postseason last four batters in the wild-card game. They have never gotten back to within a game of the World Series and have suffered excruciating and humiliating postseason exits since.

I can’t believe how I felt just about four years ago and how I feel today with the Astros and Braves still playing and about to play for a championship. I envy Astros fans and Braves fan and I miss the feeling they’re feeling. Unless the Yankees drastically change their roster, I don’t know the next time I will experience that feeling.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Oct 11, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Expect Team to ‘Run it Back’ with Roster in 2022

The problem is while it shouldn’t be an option or a thought, “running it back” is most likely what the Yankees do. There’s only so much that can change on the roster due to contracts and value.

It’s been almost a week since the end of the Yankees’ season and it sucks.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ season has been over for six days and it seems like 60 days. It’s bad enough the Yankees were eliminated by the Red Sox for the second time in four postseasons and the third straight time since 2004, but now it’s miserable having to watch the Red Sox (who continue to overachieve) play the Rays (who were absolutely screwed over in Game 3 of the ALDS) and the Astros (who are one win away from their fifth straight ALCS and would already be in it if Dusty Baker had called me for advice on whether or not to pitch Yimi Garcia) play the White Sox (who are comically proving why the AL Central shouldn’t get an automatic postseason berth). There isn’t a good answer on who to root for in the American League, so I guess the National League it is.

2. On CC Sabathia’s most recent podcast, he gave an outstanding summary of the difference between the Yankees and Red Sox:

“Our core lost to a team in 2018 that is not even the same Red Sox. They went on to win the World Series with Mookie, Jackie Bradley, Benintendi. They traded all them dudes. We still got the same core. We come back to Boston fucking three years later and lose to a fucking completely different core of players that they have raised up in three years. How does that happen? What the fuck are we doing wrong and they’re doing right that in a three-year span they win the World Series and then a completely different core whoop our ass in the fucking wild-card game?”

3. The Yankees’ remaining position players from 2017 are Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks. Judge was the team’s best player this season, Sanchez was on the bench for the team’s elimination game for a second straight season, Gardner was forced into an everyday role (yet again) because of injuries (to Hicks and Clint Frazier) and Hicks once again missed the majority of the season. The Yankees added Giancarlo Stanton, called up Gleyber Torres and traded for Luke Voit in 2018. They signed DJ LeMahieu and Gio Urshela emerged in 2019. That’s the “core.” Some of them were injured and most of them underperformed yet again.

4. The roster has to change. After the team’s wild-card loss, Gardner mentioned having the chance to “run it back” with the same roster in 2022. That can’t be an option and shouldn’t even be a thought. This team hasn’t been good enough to win for four straight seasons (not including 2017 since that was an unexpected postseason run) and they’re not even close. They aren’t getting to the World Series and losing because they’re short a starter or a big bat. They’re not one player away. They’re a-lot-of-the-roster away. No matter what Aaron Boone idiotically says about “how the league has closed the gap on the Yankees.” There has always been a gap for his Yankees.

5. The problem is while it shouldn’t be an option or a thought, “running it back” is most likely what the Yankees do. There’s only so much that can change on the roster due to contracts and value, but the parts that are changeable need to change. Judge isn’t going anywhere. Stanton still has 37 years left on his contract. LeMahieu is signed through 2026. Hicks was given a seven-year deal in 2019. (If the Yankees have the opportunity to move Hicks, they need to do it no matter the return.) That leaves Torres (who you can’t trade right now because his value is so low), Gallo, (who the Yankees have under contract for next year) and Urshela.

6. Barring an unforeseen trade, the Yankees are going to keep the 24-year-old Torres and play him at second base and see if the player from 2018-2019 and the player he was the final month of the season can return. In the most important regular-season games without LeMahieu, they did bat him leadoff after all. The Yankees love Gallo. They love his “true outcome” hitting profile and his defense. They didn’t finally successfully trade for him just to let him go after two months of him. That leaves Urshela. He’s cheap, which the Yankees love, but I think it’s time to move on.

7. Unfortunately, I think Sanchez has played his last game as a Yankee. Sitting on the bench in a win-or-go-home postseason game for the second straight year was likely the end. The Yankees (or their manager) thinking it’s best to play Kyle Higashioka who hit the equivalent of a great NL-hitting pitcher over the last few months of the season will always be puzzling. Even though I’m a Sanchez fan, and even though he had the third-highest OPS among AL catchers in what was “another down year,” at this point I hope the Yankees move on from him. Make Higashioka the starter or sign some limited-skill free agent and let the fans see how enjoyable that is. I hope Sanchez ends up somewhere like San Diego, grows out a beard and hits 35-plus home runs in helping the Padres win the World Series.

8. I thought this team’s ceiling was an ALDS appearance. Another one-and-done postseason series exit. And maybe, just maybe if everything fell into place and they got a lucky bounce here or there they could squeeze out an ALCS appearance. Their ceiling ended up being the wild-card game, and clinching their appearance in it came down to the final at-bat in the final game of the regular season.

9. Every day I sign online, I pray I see some version of the phrase: Source: Yankees expected to move on from Boone. I haven’t seen it yet and the longer it goes without me seeing it, I fear I won’t see it. The Mets announced they were moving on from Luis Rojas the day after the season ended. We’re on Day 6 over here and nothing. I understand Boone’s contract hasn’t technically expired, but if the Yankees were going to move on from him, there would be some sort of report or leak by now I would think. This seems like the type of decision that has already been made, so there shouldn’t be a hold up. Either announce you’re moving on or announce an extension.

10. If the Yankees bring back Boone, it will be an awful decision and a worse decision than when they hired him originally. He has done nothing to prove he deserves the job he was wrongfully given. Continuing to employ him as manager would compound the mistake the Yankees made nearly four years ago. If he’s around to give an end-of-the-season press conference, which should be any day now then you know he’s coming back. If only Brian Cashman gives one then the Yankees have made the right decision and the first step in fixing the team and getting back to the World Series.

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Oct 7, 2021

Yankees Need Organizational Change This Offseason

I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m not even annoyed or frustrated. I’m accepting of the Yankees’ disappointing ending because it was a disappointing season.

I was ready for exactly what unfolded on Tuesday. I expected the Yankees’ offense to disappear the way it always does in big games, especially in October, and I was prepared for Gerrit Cole to continue to pitch the way he has since injuring his hamstring on Sept. 7. I wrote I had a bad feeling about the wild-card game, and that feeling came to fruition as the Yankees’ 2021 season ended after a single “postseason” game.

The 2021 Yankees spent six months and 162 games foreshadowing how a one-game playoff would play out, and the nine-inning debacle perfectly portrayed the season. Cole sucked the way he had sucked since his Sept. 7 start against the Blue Jays. The offense that scored less runs than the Indians and Angels this season and that scored six total runs over the final three games of the season with a postseason berth on the line showed up. Aaron Boone mismanaged his bench and let Cole, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga all go longer than they should have, which has become a staple of his managerial style. Phil Nevin inexplicably sent Aaron Judge home on a play in which Judge wasn’t even in the camera’s view with the ball already waiting for him at the plate. Ultimately (to use Boone’s second-favorite word after “obviously”), the Yankees lost a game that ended four batters into the bottom of the first inning.

I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m not even annoyed or frustrated. I’m accepting of the Yankees’ disappointing ending because it was a disappointing season, and it was made possible by the Yankees’ belief they could bring back the same manager and essentially the same roster which hadn’t been good enough the last few seasons and think it would magically be good enough this season.

The Yankees built 40 percent of their Opening Day rotation on arms that hadn’t pitched in two years due to injury. Another 20 percent of the rotation was made up by an arm that had been suspended since the second half of 2019. They went into the season with two reliable and healthy starters in Cole and Jordan Montgomery, praying Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia would emerge, if needed. Schmidt was injured on the sixth day of spring and Aaron Boone said he would miss “three to four weeks.” He began a rehab assignment more than five months later. After Garcia showed promise in the majors in 2020, he walked 68 in 90 2/3 innings at Triple-A and got torched in his two starts with the Yankees in 2021, taking more than just a step back in his progression in what is a serious issue for the organization’s player development. By the 13th game of the season, the preseason favorite to win the American League was using Nick Nelson as an opener in an important game against the Rays, a game in which Nelson allowed four earned runs in 1 2/3 innings.

I call an April 16 game against the Rays an “important game” because every game is important. Every single game. The Yankees didn’t lose the ability to play the wild-card game at home in the final weekend of the season when they couldn’t win a home series against a Rays team with nothing to play for, the same way they didn’t lose the division when they lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. The Yankees blew the first wild card and they blew the division over the entire season beginning on Opening Day when Nelson was used in the 10th inning in Game 1 on April 1.

This season was miserable. Despite winning 92 games, you could count the enjoyable moments of the season on one hand, as the majority of those 92 wins were painful, nail-biting affairs until the final out. The Yankees started the season 5-10, were 41-41 on July 4 and lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. They went 25-24 against the Orioles, Tigers, Indians, Phillies, Angels and Mets, and lost three of six to the Orioles in September.

Starting 1-5 against the Rays, 0-7 against the Red Sox and getting swept by the Tigers was a sign of things to come and also a cry for help. That help came when after vehemently denying that being all-right handed would hinder the Yankees’ chances at success, Brian Cashman pivoted at the trade deadline and acquired two left-handed bats in Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo. Rizzo hit an OK .249/.340/.428, while Gallo was a disastrous .160/.303/.404. To bolster an injured rotation and worn down staff, Cashman acquired Andrew Heaney, who allowed 29 earned runs in 35 2/3 innings and was designated for assignment on the day of the wild-card game. To fill the void left by trades of the always-uninspiring Luis Cessa and the flat-out awful Justin Wilson, Cashman brought in Joely Rodriguez in the Gallo deal and traded for Clay Holmes from Pittsburgh. Rodriguez was solid and Holmes became arguably the team’s best reliever alongside Jonathan Loaisiga.

Aaron Boone spent his fourth season lying, exaggerating and mismanaging the team to countless losses, showing no signs of improvement as a manager who was hired without coaching or managerial experience at any level. His sole job as manager is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed, and after using one hand to count the enjoyable moments of the season, you can use the other to count the amount of times Boone did just that. (You’ll likely have some fingers left over.)

The lying began on the first day of spring training when Boone said Gary Sanchez would catch Cole in 2021 after separating the two in 2020. Sanchez caught Cole on Opening Day, once out of necessity when he pinch hit for Kyle Higashioka and once when Higashioka was on the COVID list. The same day Boone said Sanchez would catch Cole, he also said Clint Frazier would be the team’s starting left fielder. In the third game of the season, Brett Gardner was starting in left field. To compound his lies about Sanchez and Frazier on that February day, Boone told the media Giancarlo Stanton would play the outfield. He said the same thing in March, April, May and June. Finally on the second-to-last day of July, Stanton played the outfield.

The exaggerating came after nearly every game. You can use those remaining fingers to count the amount of times Boone didn’t mention his starting pitcher having “great stuff” despite the team losing 71 of their 163 games. Boone spent six months telling fans the Yankees “would be fine” or that they would “turn the corner” or “start rolling.” They weren’t fine, never turned the corner and didn’t roll anywhere other than to another early offseason. Between Boone’s endless uses of “obviously” and his daily tipping of his hat to the opposing starter (even when it was Michael Wacha, Matt Harvey, Jordan Lyles, Bruce Zimmerman or any one of a number of fringe major leaguers) came unbelievable defenses of his nonsensical decisions and his players’ underperformance.

The most memorable example of this came when Boone idiotically declared Hicks the team’s No. 3 hitter in spring training, and after Hicks went 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the first series of the season (in which the Yankees lost two of three), Boone was questioned about moving Hicks out of the coveted spot. He answered by saying, “Hicks will be fine.” Eight games later, Hicks was batting sixth, and four games after that, he was hitting seventh before eventually being lost for the season after playing in only 32 games. (Hicks has now played in 493 of a possible 870 regular-season games as a Yankee or 57 percent over six years.)

The 2017 Yankees came within one game of the World Series and replaced Starlin Castro, Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury with reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton and budding (at the time, but no longer) star Gleyber Torres. In four years Boone took that roster and won one division title, lost in the ALDS twice, the ALCS once and now the wild-card game as well. Boone has overseen two postseason exits to the Red Sox and was the manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in Yankees history. The Yankees as a team have gone backward with Boone at the helm and the core of players he inherited have all regressed during his tenure.

Tuesday’s loss wasn’t on Boone, even as he started Higashioka with the season literally on the line, didn’t pinch hit for the weak-hitting Higashioka until the eighth inning when the remainder of the game was a formality and used Rougned Odor before Sanchez. But the Yankees playing in that game and that game being played in Boston? Boone had a lot to do with that. As did his starter in Cole.

There was a time when I would have argued Gerrit Cole being the best pitcher in baseball. I won’t make that argument again anytime soon.

Cole’s performance was an embarrassment. “Sick to my stomach,” he said after the game, after making Yankees fans sick to their stomach over his final five September starts, in which he left early against the Blue Jays, needed 108 pitches to get through five innings against the Orioles, allowed seven earned runs and 12 baserunners in 5 2/3 innings against the Indians, got bailed out by the offense in Boston and allowed the most extra-base hits in a single game in his career in Toronto. Cole allowed 19 earned runs in his last 26 1/3 innings of the regular season with hitters batting .311/.364/.566 against him. Why anyone thought he would just turn it on like a light switch on Tuesday against a team he didn’t pitch well against when healthy on a mound he has never pitched well on in his career is beyond me.

And I use “when healthy” because Cole clearly isn’t healthy. Following the hamstring injury on Sept. 7, he was basically the right-handed version of Heaney for the rest of the season culminating with him throwing batting practice at Fenway Park in the wild-card game. But as Derek Jeter used to say, if you’re out on the field playing (or in Cole’s case pitching) then there’s no excuses. Cole deemed himself healthy enough to pitch and to take the ball in an elimination game and now he must own the humiliating effort.

Maybe a 12th straight championship-less season is for the best. Maybe the Yankees needed this finish to their season to make real organizational changes because that’s what they need: organizational change. Had the Yankees won on Tuesday and then inevitably got trounced by the Rays in the ALDS, the front office would easily give Boone a new contract, let Boone talk about how “slim the margin is between the Yankees and the team that wins the World Series” and chalk up another first-round exit to the “randomness of the postseason” as Cashman likes to do.

Immediately after the wild-card loss, while still wearing his Yankees uniform for possibly the last time, Brett Gardner said, “There’s a lot of uncertain, uncharted waters with this team heading into the offseason … Hopefully we’ll have a chance to run it back.” Run it back? Again? That’s the last thing this organization needs to be doing with this roster. They had their chance to run it back in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, and with each season they have grown progressively worse.

Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2018, saying, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” and yet, the Yankees just went through the same exercise in 2021 as they did the previous three seasons, and to no surprise the result was the same: an early postseason exit. Ownership and the front office can’t possibly think about bringing back the same manager and the same roster. Not after finishing third in the AL East and fifth in the AL in a season in which they were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series.

Following Tuesday’s season-ending loss, Boone oddly talked about how “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees. It was a confusing comment normally reserved to compare emerging teams to a recent champion, not a team that hasn’t won a championship in what will be 13 years next October and hasn’t even played for one in that amount of time.

There’s no gap to be closed on the Yankees. They’re the ones who need to close the gap. As long as Boone is manager and this roster remains intact, the gap will only grow wider.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every game during the season.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

Oct 5, 2021

A Bad Feeling About Yankees in Boston

When the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2004 ALCS I was a just-turned 18-year-old college student living in Beacon Hill in Boston. Six weeks after move-in day, it was parents weekend during Game 3 of

When the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2004 ALCS I was a just-turned 18-year-old college student living in Beacon Hill in Boston. Six weeks after move-in day, it was parents weekend during Game 3 of the ALCS when the Yankees put together a 22-hit performance, including 13 for extra bases in their 19-8 win to take a 3-0 lead in the series. The next morning I laughed to my dad about how the Yankees were going to sweep the Red Sox. His response? “Why would you say that?”

That night the Yankees lost to the Red Sox after Kevin Millar walked, Dave Roberts stole, Bill Mueller singled and David Ortiz went deep in the 12th. But it didn’t faze me. Sure, my dad’s “Why would you say that?” kept coming to my mind, but the Red Sox weren’t going to come back. The Yankees had to win one of the next three games of the series with two of them being at Yankee Stadium. I didn’t even think the series would get back to the Stadium, so I decided to do the most sensible thing I could think of: use essentially all of my first-semester spending money on tickets to Game 5.

My dad thought I was an idiot for blowing a summer’s worth of work for the possibility of the Yankees clinching the pennant in Boston. I wanted to see the Yankees spraying champagne on the Fenway Park field even if the friendly confines of Fenway weren’t so friendly back then and I might no longer be here if the Yankees had actually won the game. It turns out parents actually do know best. I blew a substantial amount of money to watch what was then the longest postseason game in baseball history only to have my heart ripped out and stomped out Michael Strahan-style right near the Pesky Pole where I watched Ortiz’s walk-off single fall into center field. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I still see Bernie Williams charging in on the ball, hoping Johnny Damon would stumble and fall while rounding third to head home. The money that could have been better used on Natural Light, 5-5-5 Domino’s orders or Captain Morgan’s disappeared thanks to Joe Torre’s usage of Tom Gordon and the short wall in right field, which prevented Ruben Sierra from scoring the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning.

Fourteen years later, I found myself back in Fenway Park for the 2018 ALDS. I had seen many Yankees-Red Sox games between at Fenway between Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS and Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, and nearly all of them ended in an unspeakable loss for the Yankees. From Gary Sheffield fighting fans to Chase Wright allowing back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs to Kevin Youkilis’ walk-off home run off Damaso Marte, which might still be in orbit, to Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte to countless other awful defeats. Every time I walk in there I glance over to the right-field pole and get a little queasy envisioning my 18-year-old self watching the worst collapse in postseason history take place at my expense.

The Yankees lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, but went on to win Game 2 thanks to Gary Sanchez. After Game 2, I walked back to the hotel with my then-fiancée and now-wife and our two friends looking for a place to have celebratory drinks with an Amtrak ride back home in just a few hours awaiting us. I didn’t care about barely getting any sleep or not sleeping at all. The high of knowing the Yankees had taken home-field advantage from the Red Sox in the series was enough to keep me going and keep me awake.

Two nights later that high had become an unimaginable low. Luis Severino didn’t know what time Game 3 started, warmed up late and got rocked. Aaron Boone sat back and watched Severino get barreled for three innings and let him hang around long enough to put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole and load the bases with no one out in the third. Boone relieved Severino with Lance Lynn, who wasn’t the best strikeout options, not even close, wasn’t a reliever and was nowhere near the pitcher he is now. Lynn allowed a bases-clearing double and the Yankees were on their way to the franchise’s worst home postseason loss in team history.

The following night, I was back at Yankee Stadium, hoping to be going back to Boston for a Game 5. But when Boone let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ entire order a second time just so he could face the No. 9 hitter in Jackie Bradley, there would be no going back to Boston. In the single oddest managerial move of all time, Boone put the game just out of reach for his team in the eventual one-run loss and the Yankees’ season ended, while the Red Sox went on to beat the Astros and Dodgers to win the World Series.

The Red Sox haven’t played a postseason game since winning the 2018 World Series. The Yankees have played 16 with nothing to show for it other than two more years added on to their latest championship drought. On Tuesday, they will meet again with the winner going to Tampa and the loser going home.

The Yankees have everything to lose as a team in a supposed championship window, who was the preseason favorite to win the American League and now playing in the wild-card game yet again. The Red Sox? They were supposed to only beat out the Orioles in the AL East, weren’t considered close to competing for a postseason spot, and here they are, owning the same record as the preseason-favorite Yankees and hosting the wild-card game after beating the Yankees in 10 of their 19 games.

I’m not ready for Yankees baseball to end. Even in a season that nearly put me in the hospital several times, made me question being a sports fan all together and whether I should continue to watch baseball, I don’t want it to end. But I have a bad feeling about Tuesday night. A very bad feeling. The kind of feeling only the Red Sox could make me feel, and the kind of feeling their fans used to feel before the 2004 ALCS.

Tuesday night will be about the offense. Outside of Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez’s dual disaster in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, going back to the team’s last championship in 2009, when the Yankees’ season ends, it’s because of the offense. One run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS. Four runs in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. Three runs in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. Shut out in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. Shut out in the 2015 wild-card game. One run in Game 4 of the 2012 ALCS. Two runs in Game 5 of the 2011 ALDS. One run in Game 6 of the 2010 ALCS. When the season ends, it’s because of a lack of offense, never because of their pitching.

I think Gerrit Cole will be good on Tuesday. Not great, but good. He’s never been great against these Red Sox and has never been good at Fenway Park. I don’t think he will go out and lay the kind of eggs he was laying throughout September, but I don’t think we’re going to see complete-game shutout Cole from the Saturday before the All-Star break. Partially because of his lingering hamstring issue and partially because this team has seen him too much.

The roster, game and situation is nearly fool-proof from Boone. It would take his worst performance ever to not be able to piece together 27 outs. If your name isn’t Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Jonathan Loaisiga, Clay Holmes or Aroldis Chapman, you shouldn’t see the mound on Tuesday. Maybe Wandy Peralta for Rafael Devers. Everyone else should be stapled to the dugout or bullpen bench.

That brings us to Nathan Eovaldi. The starting pitcher on my All-Animosity Team. Eovaldi was a horrible Yankee as a guy who can hit triple digits, but can’t strike anyone out. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him as a 24-year-old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if he faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in their history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the 2018 playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero.”) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion, continues to beat the Yankees’ poorly-designed, all-right-handed lineup and I’ll never get over it. If he pitches a gem on Tuesday, especially after the Yankees chased him in just 2 2/3 innings just 11 days ago, I will truly never get over it. If the Yankees lose on Tuesday because of an inability to hit Eovaldi of all pitchers, I won’t be able to get over it.

The Yankees weren’t supposed to be here. Here being in the wild-card game. And now it being in Boston isn’t a scenario I envisioned as recently as five days ago. But they are here and the only way to avoid being embarrassed by their rival who has taken the clear upper hand in the rivalry ever since I laughed to my dad on October 17 now 17 years ago is to win. Win one game.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Oct 1, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: This Team and Season Have Been Health Risk

1. The Yankees are a health risk for their fans. There have been many times this season when I thought I might not make it, but somehow after 159 games, I’m still here. And somehow after 159 games, the Yankees are still here.

The Yankees are going to the postseason. Well, they’re most likely going to the postseason. If they don’t, it will be one last parting gift from a team that has found new ways to disappoint their fans all season. But I don’t see that happening. (OK, I’ll knock on wood.)

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are a health risk for their fans. There have been many times this season when I thought I might not make it, but somehow after 159 games, I’m still here. And somehow after 159 games, the Yankees are still here.

The highs and lows of this season have been emotionally, physically and mentally draining, and thankfully, there are only three games, one series and one weekend left in the regular season. And in those three games, one series and one weekend, the Yankees have a chance to do something they only had a 29 percent chance of doing as recently as 12 days ago: clinch a postseason berth.

This entire season has played out like the extremes of Giancarlo Stanton at-bats. When the Yankees opened the season 5-10 or lost 11 of 13 immediately after winning 13 straight, they looked like Stanton when he’s guessing wrong and flailing at pitches that bounce in the other batter’s box. With moments like the 13-game winning streak or their current 8-1 run with the season on the line, they have looked like Stanton did last weekend when he was trying to single-handedly destroy the Red Sox’ season with moonshots. Like Stanton when he’s off, you wonder if the Yankees will ever be good again. And like Stanton when he’s on, you wonder if they will ever lose again.

2. DJ LeMahieu recently called the Yankees the streakiest team in baseball and he wasn’t exaggerating. Here are the Yankees’ streaks this season:

5-10
23-9
5-13
7-2
1-7
35-11
3-12
12-4

3. This season has been mostly a disappointment (so far). The Yankees were favored to win the American League and get back to the World Series for the first time in 12 years. For a team expected to the best in the league, they will instead play in the wild-card game for the fourth time in six years and the third time in the last four seasons in which the game has been held.

For as hot as the Yankees have been over the last 10 days and for as good as they have looked against the Red Sox and Blue Jays over the last week, they will play one game for their season on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium or somewhere else. It’s not a great spot to be in.

Sure, playing in the wild-card game is better than not playing in the playoffs at all, but that doesn’t make me feel better as a Yankees fan. For the Red Sox, an overachieving roster which has no business even being in contention for a postseason spot, it would be an accomplishment. For the Blue Jays, a young team whose window hasn’t even really opened yet, it would be an accomplishment. For the Mariners, the team with the longest postseason drought in North American major sports, of course it would be an enormous accomplishment, considering they had a 2 percent chance just five days ago and boast a minus-48 run differential. For the Yankees, it’s a disappointment.

4. The Yankees will start Gerrit Cole in the wild-card game and in theory it’s about as well as any team could be set up from a starting pitcher standpoint. That’s in theory. In actuality, Cole hasn’t looked like himself in exactly a month, and my confidence in him has waned following his hamstring injury on Sept. 7 and his five starts after the injury.

Sept. 7 vs. Toronto: 3.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR
Sept. 14 at Baltimore: 5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K
Sept. 19 vs. Cleveland: 5.2 IP, 10 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 2 HR
Sept. 24 at Boston: 6 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 6 K, 1 HR
Sept. 29 at Toronto: 6 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 2 HR

The Sept. 7 start was cut short due to the hamstring injury and while Cole says he’s healthy now, it’s hard to believe him. In the four starts he made before Sept. 7, he allowed two earned runs in 24 2/3 innings (24.2 IP, 17 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 39 K, 1 HR). Since Sept. 7, he has allowed 42 baserunners, 18 earned runs and six home runs in 26 1/3 innings.

5. The Yankees got Cole to win this exact game: a must-win game in the truest sense of the phrase. A game literally with the season on the line. In Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS, he started the elimination game on three days rest and couldn’t protect a minuscule 1-0 lead over his 5 1/3 innings in the team’s eventual season-ending loss. This season, outside of his complete-game shutout of the Astros in Houston in July, Cole has failed every other important assignment. After his clunker on Wednesday against the Blue Jays, he’s lucky he’s going to get to pitch again in 2021.

I really don’t know what to expect from Cole on Tuesday night. Will we see the Cole who threw that complete-game shutout in a 1-0 win in Houston? The Cole who was good, but not great in Boston this past weekend, allowing three runs over six innings? Or the Cole who was knocked around by the Rangers, Mets and Indians this season and who was lit up over his last five starts in September? I honestly have no idea. No one does. And if you think you do, John Sterling would have a good laugh in your face.

6. The problem with being the wild-card winner is that 48 hours after your season-saving win, you’re playing on the road against the well-rested best team in your league without your best starter until the third game of the series. If the Yankees survive Tuesday, they will go to Tampa for the first two games of the ALDS at Tropicana Field (a place they rarely play well at) against the Rays (a team they never seem to beat). It’s a bad spot to be in, but it’s the best spot you can be in when you’re 41-41 on July 4 or when you go 24-30 against the Rays, Red Sox and Blue Jays or 23-22 against the Orioles, Mets, Angels, Tigers and Indians or when you lose 13 of 16 from late August to mid-September.

After Cole, I don’t know what the Yankees do. I guess they go with Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes in some order for Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS? Corey Kluber could be an option, though I would only want him to be an option if he were to have a two-times-through-the-order limit, though with Aaron Boone managing the team, there’s no such limit.

7. With the Yankees’ season and Boone’s own job in question on Thursday night in Toronto, and with all of the data in the world suggesting Kluber shouldn’t face any lineup a third time, Boone let him face George Springer, Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. each a third time. Guerrero Jr. hit a go-ahead double to give the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead at the time and then Boone went to the bullpen to relieve Kluber. Thursday’s game was essentially a playoff game, just like this entire month has been has been for the Yankees, and Boone has once again shown he can’t be trusted to make even the simplest of logical decisions in playoff-type games. Do you really want him to have to make these decisions in actual playoff games? If Kluber is “cruising” or in line for a win (an archaic concept), Boone won’t pull him. He didn’t on Thursday.

The two-times-through-the-order limit should be for every Yankees starter (with the exception of Cole if he’s himself). The Yankees’ bullpen is once against deep with Michael King (who should never open or start again), Clay Holmes, Jonathan Loaisiga, Chad Green and Aroldis Chapman. Wandy Peralta and Joely Rodriguez no longer have to be trusted to get the biggest outs in games and that’s a good thing. And the addition of Luis Severino to the bullpen has made the Yankees that much better.

8. I would feel a lot better about the Yankees starting pitching in the postseason (again, if they’re able to survive Tuesday) if Severino were an option. But he’s not an option, even though he could be. Severino rejoined the Yankees as a reliever because he “wasn’t built up” to start games. He could be, but he’s not. He’s not because of his odd usage.

In Severino’s season debut on Sept. 21, he thew 30 pitches over two innings. Four days later he threw 37 pitches across two innings. Three days later he threw 15 pitches and two days after that (Thursday in Toronto) 16 pitches. The Yankees haven’t tried to stretch him out and increase his pitch count to make him a postseason starting option. They have done the opposite, limiting his pitch count over his last two appearances and holding him to one inning in each game. It’s odd, but it’s Boone and the Yankees, and so it’s not a surprise as they idiotically chase a set-inning, late-game formula, featuring Severino. My choice for ALDS Game 1 starter would be to have Severino start the game and figure it out from there. After Cole, he’s the Yankees’ best starter even if he’s not currently a starter. Holding him back to maybe pitch the sixth or seventh inning in a high-leverage situation that may never come is a waste.

9. Whether it’s Severino (unlikely) or Montgomery (very likely), Cortes (also very likely) or even Kluber (not as likely) starting Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS (if the Yankees get there), I have confidence in the Yankees’ pitching, both the rotation and bullpen. The Yankees’ season will hinge on their offense, the way it does every postseason and if the Yankees’ offense performs an October disappearing act for the ninth time in the last 12 Octobers, their season will finish the same way it has the last 11 Octobers: without a championship.

Right now, the Yankees’ offense looks the best it has all season. During this nine-game stretch in which they have gone 8-1, the Yankees have scored 55 runs, averaging 6.1 runs per point game. Seven of the eight wins were by two-plus runs, a far cry from how they were winning through the first 149 games of the year. Everyone (and I mean everyone) in the lineup has been contributing. Yes, some more than others, but over the last nine games and 10 days, every Yankee has had a moment. It’s been a collective effort with Aaron Judge and Stanton leading the way. The Yankees’ offense of Games 150-159 has been the Yankees we rarely saw from Games 1-149. Had we seen this offense more often in those first 149 games, I would be worried about who’s starting after Cole in Games 2 and 3 of the ALDS and not whether or not the Yankees will even reach the ALDS.

10. The Yankees now have three games left. Three games against the Rays, who have nothing to play for other than to prevent the Yankees from reaching the postseason. After Thursday’s win over the Blue Jays, the Yankees’ magic number is down to 2 to play a 163rd game. It’s not where I thought the team would be on Opening Day, but it’s where they are.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every game during the season.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!