Blogs – Page 57 – Keefe To The City

Sep 21, 2021

David Cone Calling Out Aaron Boone Is Beautiful

Barring a miracle, in two weeks the Yankees will need a new manager for just the third time in 25 years. Unlike last time, they can’t screw it up again. Moving David Cone from the booth to the dugout would prevent that from happening.

I have come to the realization the Yankees won’t play more than 162 games this year. There won’t be postseason Yankees baseball this October. Sure, there’s a chance the Yankees could get into the one-game, wild-card playoff, but with 11 games remaining against the Rangers, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays, it’s hard to envision it after the 7-15 performance they just put together against the Angels, Orioles, Blue Jays, Mets, Twins and Indians. I’m prepared for the only October baseball the Yankees play in 2021 to be the final three games of the regular season against the Rays, scheduled for the first weekend in October.

Aaron Boone won’t survive this disastrous season. He can’t. When the team you manage is expected to reach the World Series and you don’t even reach the postseason in a five-team format in which one-third of the league gets into the playoffs, you don’t get to come back from that. Even in the unlikely chance the Yankees somehow get into the wild-card game, simply getting there isn’t an accomplishment, and winning it and advancing to the ALDS isn’t something to be proud of. A fifth ALCS loss in the last 12 years wouldn’t be something to celebrate either. The measuring stick for if Boone gets another contract when this one expires should be reaching the World Series, which is what the Yankees were one win away from doing when he was inexplicably hired to be manager without ever spending even a single day as a coach at any level. Since the day he was hired, the team has gone backward, despite the league around them getting worse.

When each Yankees season has ended under Boone, he has always been quick to mention how the postseason margin has been “razor thin” between his team and the teams that have gone on to actually win the World Series.

“It’s important we realize how close we are and how razor thin the margin is when you get into the postseason,” Boone said on the first day of spring training this year. “It’s the bounce of the ball, it’s one play, it’s one pitch, and we feel like we’re certainly very close to that.”

Boone mentioned the bounce of the ball or one play or one pitch, but he didn’t say “or one game when you come up with the most idiotic pitching plan in franchise history to force J.A. Happ into a playoff game,” like he did last October.

In 2018, the Yankees lost in four games to the Red Sox in the ALDS. They lost both Games 3 and 4 at home and were outscored 20-4. It’s hard to agree with him that the Yankees were close to getting past the Red Sox when they finished eight games behind them in the regular season and then were run out of their own stadium against them in the postseason. Not exactly a thin margin.

In 2019, the Yankees lost the ALCS in six games after hitting .214/.289/.673 as a team and getting 23 2/3 innings from their starters, leaving the bullpen fatigued and ineffective. The Yankees lost four of the last five games of the series. The margin was thinner than 2018, but not exactly the coin flip Boone would like you to believe.

Then there was 2020, a series which Boone single-handedly flipped on his own when he tried to pull a fast one on the best manager in the game in Kevin Cash in Game 2, using Happ as a reliever beginning in the second inning against the left-handed-heavy lineup Cash had constructed. Boone was bringing in Happ, whose career was running on fumes. Not a high-quality lefty like Clayton Kershaw or Chris Sale. The plan backfired, the Yankees lost Game 2 and Game 3, and eventually Game 5 when the bats disappeared like they have done in every October for the last 11 years.

“Yeah, I do feel like it’s that close, and I felt that way in ’18 and I felt that way in ’19, and last year, we’re late in the game against the team that goes on to the World Series again,” Boone said. “So we have to find a way to get over that last hump and beat that team that’s going on to the World Series.”

The thing Boone fails to understand is simply beating the Red Sox in 2018 or Astros in 2019 or Rays in 2020 wouldn’t have automatically resulted in a parade in the Canyon of Heroes. In 2018, the Yankees still would have had to beat the Astros and then the Dodgers, in 2019, the Nationals, and in 2020, the Astros and Dodgers. If you lose in the division series to the team that eventually represents the AL in the World Series, it doesn’t mean that you would have represented the AL in the World Series if you had won your division series.

Barring a miraculous run over the next month, Boone will have never gotten over the hump as manager of the Yankees. That won’t stop him from spewing his never-ending positivity over the remaining 11 regular-season games, no matter how fake or contrived it might be. I believe Boone goes over the top with his defense of his players and their effort because he has nothing else.

He’s clearly not that communicator he was advertised to be when hired. We know that from the instances like Luis Severino not knowing the start time of the Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS, Sanchez telling ESPN he was never talked to about his 2020 postseason benching and Boone simply trying to sweep Domingo German’s 2019 and 2020 absence under the rug before Zack Britton stepped up and all but forced Boone to have German address the clubhouse.

When it comes to lineup construction, bullpen management and in-game decision making, Boone is the worst in the league, given the team he manages, the roster and personnel at his disposal and the expectations for his club. His postgame press conferences have become better suited for Comedy Central than YES and the buzz words and phrases he has been recycling since early April are still being used in late September as the threat of missing the postseason isn’t just a possible outcome for the season, it’s the likely outcome for the season. The schedule says so. Simple math says so.

All that leaves Boone with is his glowing optimism that there’s always tomorrow and that there will be another game for the Yankees to play. Except after Oct. 3 there probably won’t be.

On Saturday, Gary Sanchez dropped a foul pop-up that should have been the second out of an inning, in which the Indians turned a 1-0 lead into a 8-0 lead. In reality, the inning and game getting out of hand wasn’t Sanchez’s fault. Sure, his error gave the Indians an extra out to work with, but it wasn’t the third out of the inning and Luis Gil would have had to get another out, even if Sanchez had made the routine play. Prior to Monday’s game against the Rangers, Boone defended Sanchez, leading to this exchange during Monday’s game on YES.

Michael Kay: “Did you ever have a manager who was so overwhelmingly positive the way Boone is?”

David Cone: “No, definitely not.”

After 150-plus games, the broadcasters with the same employer as the team’s manager were openly questioning the manager. It has been commonplace for John Sterling to voice his frustrations with the performance and effort of the team over the years during bad stretches, especially in 2021, but here was the voice of the Yankees and the best color commentator in the sport openly doing on TV. Later in the game, when provoked by Kay, Cone continued.

“At this stage of the game, Yankee fans are frustrated. They want the truth. I understand Aaron Boone’s point: He’s got to back his players up, he’s gotta be accountable to his team, to his players, and he’s gotta protect them. And he always has, and that’s a strength of Aaron Boone. But not at the cost of being honest. Because the New York fan base is too knowledgable. You can not fool them. There has to be a balance there between acknowledging the obvious and still backing your player.”

Boone has spent this season unconditionally standing by his players, like always. The Yankees have now played 151 games and in all 151 games, the Yankees’ starting pitcher has had “good” to “great” stuff by Boone’s evaluation, which is odd since the team has lost 44 percent of its games and doesn’t currently hold a playoff. The never-ending optimism from the happy-go-lucky, everything-is-fine Southern California fool is annoying, but more comedic at this point. It’s the lying that’s the problem.

Whether it’s been saying Clint Frazier would be the team’s starting left fielder, Sanchez would catch Gerrit Cole (he did three times: Opening Day, when he pinch hit for Kyle Higashioka and saved the game with a three-run home run and when Higashioka had COVID), Giancarlo Stanton would play the outfield (after five months of saying he would he did on the second-to-last-day of July), Aaron Hicks would be fine as the team’s 3-hitter (he was demoted after less than two weeks as the 3-hitter for poor performance), Luke Voit would be a regular in the lineup upon the trade for Anthony Rizzo (he has started 12 games since Aug. 21), that only “the better teams hit into a lot of double plays” (lie) or that the “Yankees will get rolling” or “turn the corner” (they did win 13 games in a row and then lost 15 of 22 to essentially erase their winning streak), very rarely does Boone speak the truth.

I love Cone. Always have, always will. Two years ago, when I read and reviewed his book Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher, I, like all readers, found out that Bobby Valentine asked Cone to be the Red Sox’ pitching coach for the 2012 season. Thankfully, Cone didn’t leave the broadcast booth to take Valentine up on his offer because his absence would have created an irreplaceable void during Yankees games (and also the whole helping the Red Sox thing). But I’m sure Cone doesn’t regret leaving broadcasting to be part of a 93-loss disaster.

That one story did make me think about Cone as a coach in the majors. Now having listened to him as an analyst all these seasons on YES and seeing how he has embraced the analytics and data revolution in baseball, while also maintaining the game is played by humans, I have often wondered how he would be as a pitching coach. On a larger scale, if the Yankees were going to hire a manager with zero experience coaching or managing at any level, I wish they had gone with Cone rather than giving Yankees fans Boone.

The difference in the TV analysis from Boone when he was on ESPN to how Cone has been on YES is the equivalent to having Mariano Rivera close out a game to having Brooks Kriske close it out, and I think Boone’s time on TV is evident in his in-game management, and I feel it would be the same for Cone. Cone wouldn’t have sent Severino back out to the mound for the fourth inning in Game 3 of the ALDS and wouldn’t have followed that up by bringing Lance Lynn in with the bases loaded and no outs. And he certainly wouldn’t have let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ lineup for a second time with the season on the line and then defended his decision by saying he wanted Sabathia to face the 9-hitter which is why he let him face the rest of the team. He wouldn’t have tried that trickery with Happ in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, and he wouldn’t have spent the 2021 season telling anyone who would listen how good the Yankees are while the losses mounted.

Unfortunately, we’ll likely never know how Cone would be as Yankees manager because he’s probably too outspoken and too much of his own person for Brian Cashman and his group of Ivy League minions to work with. That just means we get to keep listening to Cone in the broadcast booth, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. But that also means a really, really good and maybe the best candidate to be Yankees manager when Boone’s contract expires in less than two weeks won’t even be in the running for the position.

Barring a miracle, in two weeks the Yankees will need a new manager for just the third time in 25 years. Unlike last time, they can’t screw it up again. Moving Cone from the booth to the dugout would prevent that from happening.

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!

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Sep 13, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Gleyber Torres Will Never Again Be Team’s Everyday Shortstop

Thanks to a monumental collapse since their 13-game winning streak, The Yankees now need to win nearly all of their remaining 18 games to reach the postseason. If they don’t, changes are coming. Some of the changes have already come.

Thanks to a monumental collapse since their 13-game winning streak, The Yankees now need to win nearly all of their remaining 18 games to reach the postseason. If they don’t, changes are coming. Some of the changes have already come.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After their’ 8-2 win over the A’s on August 27, the Yankees were 76-52. To get to 96 wins, which would put them in a great position to win the AL East (and also win my preseason over 95.5-win wager), the Yankees only needed to go 20-14 in their remaining 34 games. They have gone 4-12.

It’s been an explicable 16 games since the 13th win of the 13-game winning streak. The Yankees lost two of three to the Angels, lost two of three to the Orioles, got swept in a four-game series at Yankee Stadium and then lost two of three to the Mets. The collapse has been an embarrassment and it has seen the Yankees go from holding the first wild-card spot to being out of the playoff picture and now chasing both the Red Sox and Blue Jays.

2. In the collapse, Chad Green has pitched in six games, allowing runs in four of them and home runs in three of them. Green is the last person I want to see in a big spot, but the problem is there is no one else. Jonathan Loaisiga is injured, Zack Britton is out for this season and likely all of next season. Darren O’Day’s season ended after 12 appearances. Justin Wilson and Luis Cessa are in Cincinnati. To me, Clay Holmes is the best available Yankees reliever, and after him, there’s no one I trust.

Green’s knack for allowing home runs in high-leverage situations has been unbelievable. His season has been a collection of giving up home runs in high-leverage spots and blowing late leads. The Astros’ two wins against the Yankees this season came after Green gave up a three-run home run to Jose Altuve in both games and it was Green who had the post-All-Star break meltdown in Boston to blow a two-run, ninth-inning lead. The home run he allowed on August 29 in Oakland turned a 1-1 game into a 3-1 deficit. The home run he allowed on Saturday at Citi Field turned a 5-4 lead into a 6-5 deficit. The home run he allowed on Sunday at Citi Field turned a 6-6 game into a 7-6 deficit. Green has now allowed 15 home runs in 59 games and 74 innings. He allowed 13 home runs in 144 2/3 innings in 2017 and 2018 combined.

With limited options and no real trustworthy options, Green is going to continue to see high-leverage situations over the remaining 18 games. The Yankees’ season will likely hinge on whether or not he can revert back to his old self.

3. Green isn’t the only one who needs to revert back to his old self. Gleyber Torres’ error on Sunday in the series finale against the Mets was apparently the final straw for him as shortstop. After sitting by and watching Torres boot routine play after routine play both last season and this season, Boone finally announced Torres would be playing second base indefinitely. It’s good Boone and the front office are willing to improve the most important position in the infield, however, it’s likely too late for the change as the Yankees’ postseason chances are no longer great. By accommodating Torres (whose bat isn’t good enough to make accommodations for) it’s screwing up the rest of the infield.

Torres playing second means DJ LeMahieu isn’t. LeMahieu is a three-time Gold Glove-winning second baseman who will now play third base, a position he had never played prior to joining the Yankees. It also means Gio Urshela, who never played shortstop in the majors prior to this season will now play shortstop. So by improving the defense at short, the Yankees have downgraded their defense at both second and third. Again, this is to accommodate Torres, who isn’t nearly good enough to be getting this kind of accomodation. It would be in the Yankees’ best interest to not play Torres rather than shuffle 75 percent of the infield to keep him in the lineup.

4. Two years ago, Torres looked like he would be the team’s best player in the near future and the most important player on the team for years to come as a 22-year-old, superstar middle infielder. Instead, in his last 602 plate appearances, he has 10 home runs and a .688 OPS.

I would be ready for the Yankees to move on except for his value being so low. But maybe his value will never recover. Maybe the Yankees holding out hope he will return to the player he was in 2018 and 2019 or hoping his stock will rise, so they can move him will only hurt the team in 2022 and for however long they continue to play him.

5. The Yankees made it clear Torres is no longer the shortstop of the future for them when they reportedly tried to trade for Trevor Story in July. Now, needing to win every game down the stretch, the Yankees have decided to move Torres off of shortstop and to a position he hasn’t played since the 2019 ALCS. His time as the Yankees’ everyday shortstop is over. With the Yankees’ top prospect (Anthony Volpe) being a shortstop, as well as their No. 3 prospect (Oswald Peraza), I don’t see them going out and signing Story or Corey Seager or Carlos Correa to a long-term contract. But they are going to have to do something. They can’t go into 2022 planning on Torres being their everyday shortstop, and I don’t think they’re even considering it.

6. The Yankees won for just the fourth time in their last 16 games on Monday, overcoming a 5-0 deficit to beat the Twins 6-5 on a Gary Sanchez walk-off hit. The comeback was made possible thanks to a Judge game-tying, three-run home run in the eighth inning.

The Yankees have had a knack for hitting a late-inning, game-tying home run during the collapse. The problem is they usually don’t take the lead after tying the game with a big home run. In Anaheim, it was Stanton who tied the game at 7 with a two-run home run in the seventh before the Yankees lost 8-7. Against the Orioles, it was Joey Gallo tying the game at 3 in the eighth before the Yankees lost 4-3. Against the Blue Jays, it was Brett Gardner with a game-tying, three-run home run on Wednesday and Anthony Rizzo with a game-tying, two-run home run on Thursday, both coming in Yankees losses. On Sunday, it was Stanton again with a game-tying, two-run home run against the Mets in an eventual Yankees loss. (Only once during the collapse did the Yankees hit a late, game-tying home run and go on to win: Saturday against the Mets.)

7. The Stanton home run created a bench-clearing argument between the Yankees and Mets after Stanton stopped rounding the bases to have words with Francisco Lindor, who earlier in the game had words for the Yankees dugout while rounding the bases on a home run. Nothing came of the Stanton and Lindor exchange other than a bunch of yelling and hand gestures. It seemed like a moment that could lead the Yankees to a much-needed win and potentially serve as the starting point for a late-season run to the postseason. Instead, Lindor answered Stanton’s home run with his third home run of the game. When Stanton came up with two outs in the ninth and had the tying run at third and go-ahead run at second, he popped up to Lindor to end the game.

8. When these Yankees chirp their opponent, it never ends well.

After the Yankees won Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS in Boston, Aaron Judge walked through Fenway Park with a boom box blaring “New York, New York.” The Yankees followed that up with the worst home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 3 and were eliminated in Game 4, while the Red Sox went on to win the World Series, playing “New York, New York” in their clubhouse after each win.

Earlier this season in Houston, Judge mimicked Jose Altuve clutching his jersey on his way to home plate after his walk-off home run against the Yankees in the 2019 ALCS (the moment that cerated the Astros’ buzzer controversy). In the series finale, Altuve got the last laugh, like he always seems to go against the Yankees, hitting a three-run, walk-off home run to cap a six-run ninth in the final game of the first half.

Then there was Sunday with Lindor, who like Altuve, got the last laugh.

9. The only way for the Yankees to get the last laugh in 2021 is to win nearly all of their remaining 18 games. If they do so, they will have a chance to go on a revenge tour throughout the postseason. Either they will outlast Boston for a wild-card berth and end their season or have the opportunity to eliminate them in the wild-card game. If they win the wild-card game, they will have the chance to avenge their 2020 ALDS loss to the Rays in the 2021 ALDS. After that, they could see the Astros in the ALCS and repay the Astros for the 2017 and 2019 ALCS. The only way for this happen is for the Yankees to win each series from here on out and it might take even more than that.

10. The Blue Jays’ schedule is so easy the rest of the way. Ten of their remaining 19 games are against the Twins (7) and Orioles (3). The Red Sox’ schedule is also very easy. Nine of their remaining 17 games are against the Orioles (6) and Nationals (3).

The Yankees are in a bad spot. A very bad spot. That’s what happens when you lose the season series to the Angels and Mets, can’t beat the Orioles and get swept at home in a four-game series by the team chasing you. They now have 18 games left to avoid completing a collapse, which should result in vast organizational changes.

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!

Blogs • Giants

Sep 10, 2021

This Giants Season Needs to Be Different

This Giants season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Daniel Jones as a Giant.

I went into the 2020 Giants season wanting things to be different. Deep down, I didn’t actually think they would be, but I just really wanted a football season. Not a season that’s over when there are still leaves on the trees in the Northeast, and not a season that ends before the Major League Baseball postseason begins. I wanted what I have had twice in the last nine years, and that’s a football season that carries into December. I wanted something I have had once in the last nine years: a Giants postseason game.

The Giants kicked off their 2020 season as I was entering my 16th consecutive hour sitting in a hospital chair waiting for my wife to give birth. Just as the game and the season were starting, it was time for the baby to come out.

Five or six hours later, I’m not sure exactly what time it was, other than that it was the early hours of Tuesday, Sept. 15, I was sitting in the dark eating saltine and graham crackers and chugging water out of Dixie cups like I was Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway returning home, not having seen food in a very long time. The hospital cafeteria was closed and my only options were to either wait a few more hours for breakfast before crushing the hospital’s surprisingly exceptional French toast or to try to make a meal out of the airplane-like snacks the nurse was able to gather for me.

I wasn’t tired, and with the blinds drawn in the room, without a clock I would have had no way of knowing what time of day, or even what day it was, as if I had been in trapped in a casino. The last nearly 24 hours were a blur. I had been up for nearly all of them. It was now early Tuesday morning, and I had essentially been up since Sunday morning.

On Sunday afternoon, during the Week 1 “Witching Hour” of the 1 p.m. games and right as the 4 p.m. slate was about to begin, we were instructed to go the hospital as it appeared as though my wife was in labor. We raced to the hospital, I dropped my wife off at the entrance and then while flying around the parking lot looking for an empty space, of which there was one, I tried to force my car into a into a very tight window, like an inexcusable Daniel Jones throw, and hit the car to my right. The car ended up belonging to my wife’s delivery nurse who couldn’t have been nicer about the incident, and a few weeks later, it was resolved for only $250, which I likely would have lost anyway on the 4 p.m. games if I hadn’t been in transit to the hospital as they were being played.

My wife wasn’t going to be admitted until they ran some tests, and because she had yet to be admitted, under COVID precautions, I couldn’t enter the hospital until she was admitted. The woman in the hospital lobby told me I could wait outside. So I did that, pacing the sidewalk for 30 minutes before going to the car. I ended up spending the next four-and-a-half hours in the car (good thing I didn’t “wait just outside the door” like the hospital front desk woman suggested), before it was determined my wife was in very early labor, but wasn’t far enough along to admit her.

We got back home at 9 p.m. and by midnight the contractions started to pick up. I spent the next three hours meticulously timing them as if I were the one holding the stopwatch at the NFL Combine, and around 3 a.m., it was back to the hospital. By 4 a.m., we were in the delivery room. They had my wife doing squats on a exercise ball, while I sat in the corner trying not to suffer the same type of back injury Aaron Hicks would have if he had had to sit in that same chair for as long as I did.

Fast forward nearly 24 hours and there I was sitting in the dark in a slightly upgraded hospital chair. Despite being in the previous chair which made a Metro North seat seem like the recliners Joey and Chandler had in their apartment for upwards of 16 hours, I had avoided the type of back injury Hicks had suffered from a 27-minute spring training coach bus ride that kept him out for nearly three months of the 2019 Yankees season. I tried to quietly chew and crunch on my packets of crackers while my wife slept in an enormous and luxurious-looking hospital bed (which I would find my way into for a few quicks naps over the next two days), and next to her, our newborn son was out cold, swaddled tightly with a winter hat on, somehow full off less than a shot of Similac. I curled up in my folding chair bed to watch Giants-Steelers, which I had recorded.

The Giants lost. They could have won, and should have won, but they didn’t, in what has become the never-ending theme with the franchise for just about an entire decade. They couldn’t punch it in on first-and-goal from the 3 after a Steelers’ muffed punt in the first quarter, then with a seven-point lead and a chance to make it a two-score game, Jones threw an interception, and later in the game, while trailing, with a chance to take the lead back, Jones threw another essentially game-ending interception. It was the type of loss that led ownership to inexplicably move on from Tom Coughlin, got Ben McAdoo fired midseason and ran Pat Shurmur out of town after two atrocious seasons. On their fourth head coach in six seasons, the Joe Judge era was starting the same way the previous three had their eras end. A head coach I finally liked or wanted to like was overseeing yet another 0-1 start to the season, while Jones, who I was against the Giants drafting and have remained against, ruined yet another game.

Six days later, the Giants lost in Chicago by four points and lost their best player for the season. 0-2. A week after that they were blown out by the defending NFC champions by 27 points. 0-3. A week after only managing to score nine points at home against the 49ers, the Giants scored nine points for the second straight week in a loss in Los Angeles to the Rams.

The Giants were 0-4 and I couldn’t have cared less about them. I desperately wanted things to be different under Judge and I wanted things to be different knowing for the foreseeable future my family’s life would indefinitely be spent at home with only occasional and necessary trips out of the house. Once the Yankees season would end (and it ended early again), I knew the 2020-2021 NHL season might not start on the planned Jan. 1 date and might never start at all. I was relying on the Giants to provide a sports world escape and the only source of entertainment that didn’t require wiping spit-up or newborn poop, and instead, they were the laughingstock of the NFL, having become the worst team in the league over the last four seasons. I decided, like in recent seasons, I would watch the games with no actual emotional or monetary investment in them. My only reason for watching them had become wanting everyone to progress other than the quarterback to progress, so that maybe by spring 2021 they would have another general manager and another quarterback.

At 1-7, the Giants put together a four-game winning streak to “save” the season, highlighted by a road win in Seattle with Colt McCoy as the Giants’ starting quarterback. The winning streak and upset of the Seahawks reeled Giants fans back into believing they could win the NFC East. Some team had to win this embarrassing NFC East, why couldn’t it be the Giants?

After that four-game winning streak, I wrote:

I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. That’s what the Giants do. And if they are to go 1-3 or 0-4 between now and Week 17, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are. I’ll be upset with myself for caring about them again this season when I should have known better.

I did know better. I wrote exactly what would happen, and despite predicting how the Giants’ season would finish, I still let them suck me back in only to crush me. After the four-game winning streak, the Giants lost three straight before winning what ended up being a meaningless win in Week 17 over the Cowboys only to have the Eagles throw their Week 17 game against Washington. Unlike many, I wasn’t upset with the Eagles for purposely losing a winnable game. The Giants had lost 10 regular-season games, blowing leads in many of them. Win one of those 10 games and they wouldn’t have had to rely on their rival to win a game for them.

So the 2020 season ended wasn’t different. It ended the way every season but one in the last nine years has ended: postseason-less.

This season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Jones as a Giant, the sixth overall pick in 2019 was wasted and these last three years were nothing other than a waste. It will be back to the beginning of yet another “rebuild” and it will undoubtedly happen with a new general manager. It won’t necessarily mean the end for Judge as he’s not tied to Gettleman or Jones, but it certainly won’t be good for his future with the team if the team is essentially no better results-wise than where they were when McAdoo and Shurmur were fired.

This Giants season needs to be different even if expectations are that it won’t be.

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

Blogs • Yankees

Sep 9, 2021

Do Yankees Have One Last Season-Saving Run in Them?

The Yankees have 23 games left to turn their season around one last time. If not, they will finish it the way they started it: as a huge disappointment.

I wish the 2021 Yankees had just gone away. There were many times this season when they could have. When they started the season 5-10. When they finished April 12-14. When they got swept by the Tigers at the end of May. When they lost the first seven games to the Red Sox. When they fell to .500 on July 4. Rather than let their season unravel in a year in which they were expected to reach the World Series for the first time in 12 years, they fought back each time, doing just enough to stay mathematically in the postseason picture even as their playoff odds fell off like the final season of The OC.

Then came the July run, and the post-All-Star break run and the post-trade deadline run and the 13-game winning streak. The Yankees came all the way back to pass Seattle and Toronto and Oakland and Boston in the wild-card race, and after their 8-2 win over the A’s on August 27, they were 24 games over .500 and just four games behind the Rays in the AL East.

Then the wheels came off. And the doors. And the transmission and engine dropped, and now the Yankees are sitting on the side of the road having watched the Red Sox pass them on Wednesday night with the Blue Jays about to pass them and no help in sight. No help from the offense. No help from the starting pitching and no help from the bullpen.

The offense has turned back the clock to April, May and June. With four runs in three games against the Blue Jays this week, the Yankees have scored 36 runs in their last 11 games, losing nine of them. Things have gotten so bad Aaron Boone has had to bench Joey Gallo for striking out in half of his plate appearances as a Yankee, sit down Gleyber Torres for being a liability on both sides of the ball and move DJ LeMahieu down in the order for only hitting weak ground balls to the left side. Boone’s all-time favorite Brett Gardner found himself batting leadoff for the Yankees on Wednesday against the Blue Jays … in a playoff race … in 2021 … four years removed from the last time he should have been batting leadoff for the Yankees. Sadly, Gardner provided the Yankees’ only offense in Wednesday’s loss and what was the Yankees’ first extra-base hit since Sunday.

Aaron Judge is 1-for-his-last-21, Stanton is 3-for-his-last-19, the baseball looks like the size of a golf ball to Gallo, Anthony Rizzo has one home run since August 4, it’s startling when LeMahieu doesn’t hit the ball on the ground, Gary Sanchez already provided his production for the month with his two-homer, six-RBI day on Sunday, Torres is doing everything he can to play himself out of the organization, Gio Urshela looks like the player the Indians and Blue Jays gave up on, Luke Voit’s first half was ruined by injuries and his second half has been ruined by his own manager and Rougned Odor is 2-for-his-last 37 with only one home run in nearly a month.

Gerrit Cole’s hamstring injury has left a gaping hole in the rotation and with Jameson Taillon’s regression and Corey Kluber’s lack of knowing where his pitches will end up, there’s a lot of trust being placed with Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes.

Clay Holmes is suddenly the Yankees’ best reliever as Aroldis Chapman continues to pitch like Nick Nelson and Chad Green continues to poop his pants in big spots. Somehow Andrew Heaney keeps getting chances and even Brooks Kriske made an appearance this week, as Boone manages like it’s mid-March in Tampa.

The Yankees’ current five-game losing streak comes a week after a four-game losing streak. In their last 11 games, they have lost two to the A’s, who are chasing them, lost a pair to the Angels, who were responsible for ending the Orioles’ 19-game losing streak, lost a series to the Orioles, who are 48 games under .500, and have now lost three straight to the Blue Jays, who are only two back of the Yankees in the loss column.

The Yankees could have gone away and saved me many hours of my life, hours I wasted watching them get no-hit through the first four of five innings of about half their games. They cold have gone away and saved me the heartache and aggravation of watching the bullpen blow late lead after late lead. They could have gone away and let me peacefully go to bed many nights this summer instead of regretting my decision to voluntarily stay up knowing the baby would be up in only a few hours. But they didn’t. They did just enough to stay relevant and alive, and now after 139 games they might go away anyway.

Two weeks ago, the Yankees had a 97.8 percent chance of making the playoffs. Today, that number is down to 68.6 percent. They have dropped nearly 30 percent in two weeks! Seemingly impossible. While at the same time, the Blue Jays chances have gone from 4.6 percent to 42.5 percent.

I have been rightfully upset with the Yankees for being headed to the one-game playoff for the third time in the last four years the one-game playoff has taken place since it would mean using Cole in that game and not having him for the first two games of the ALDS. Well, I don’t have to worry about that scenario anymore, because if the Yankees are even able to qualify for the one-game playoff, at this point, they won’t be able to line Cole up for it. They will likely have to fight this thing out all the way to Game 162 now as just three losses separate the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Mariners and A’s. So not only are the Yankees embarrassingly headed to the one-game playoff for the third time instances of the game, they’re likely to be without Cole it in what is one final parting gift from the 2021 Yankees to their fans.

This season has been miserable. Even when the Yankees have won, they have done so in the most excruciating fashion, always winning by one or two runs, frequently needing a wild pitch to get a runner in from third with less than two ours and often praying the highest-paid closer in history can throw a single strike.

Nothing has come easy for the 2021 Yankees. Not even during their 13-game winning streak in which they won eight of the games by one or two runs, and only won two of the games by more than four runs. Nothing is coming easy now as they try avoid getting swept in four games at home to the team chasing them.

The Yankees have 23 games left to turn their season around one last time. If not, they will finish it the way they started it: as a huge disappointment. Either way, I won’t be surprised. That’s who the 2021 Yankees are.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Sep 7, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Get to World Series or Goodbye to Aaron Boone

The Yankees have 25 games left to change the narrative on their season yet again, and if they don’t, there will be plenty of blame to go around this October.

The Yankees have lost seven of their last nine games and it seems as though the April 1-July 4 Yankees have returned. The Yankees have 25 games left to change the narrative on their season yet again, and if they don’t, there will be plenty of blame to go around this October.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was beginning to get nervous the Yankees’ play since the second game of the doubleheader on July 4, including their 13-game winning streak, had made Yankees fans forget how awful Aaron Boone is at his job and how bad this Yankees team is. The mirage that was the Yankees’ recent run has come to an end and sandwiched around their 35-11 record between July 4-August 27 is a 43-48 record. The Yankees have lost seven of their last nine games with each loss seemingly uglier than the one before it.

The Yankees were expected to represent the American League in the World Series this season and were the odds-on favorite to win the pennant. They can still do so, but it’s going to be extremely difficult, and anything short of a World Series appearance should be the end of Boone’s time as Yankees manager. A wild-card berth isn’t nearly enough. An ALDS loss apperance isn’t enough. A fifth ALCS loss for the franchise in 12 years can’t be enough. Get to the World Series or say goodbye to Boone and make a needed change at manager.

2. There is this weird faction of Yankees fans who think Brian Cashman and Boone are not to blame at all for this Yankees team and this season, always wanting to blame the players. It’s never the fault of the front office or the manager. The front office only puts together the roster and the manager only creates the lineup and manages the bullpen and in-game decisions.

If I were to start at shortstop for the Yankees tonight and make multiples errors and go hitless at the plate, or if I were to be used as a reliever and failed to protect a late lead, these Yankees fans would blame me for my performance. They wouldn’t blame Cashman for putting me on the roster or Boone for putting me in the game.

I know this because there are fans who blame Gleyber Torres and Andrew Heaney for Sunday’s loss to the Orioles in the second game of the series.

3. Torres took his sweet time on a routine ground ball, which would have ended the sixth inning and maintained a 7-2 Yankees lead. After he was unable to make the routine play, the inning was extended and Albert Abreu allowed a two-run home run to make it 7-4.

Torres is an awful shortstop. He has never been good defensively, and his bat is no longer capable of negating his defense. But Torres doesn’t pencil himself in as the starting shortstop (and he doesn’t write him name into the seventh spot in the batting order above Gary Sanchez either).

The Yankees knew Torres was a defensive liability coming into the season. They knew he would be unable to consistently make what’s considered a routine play by major-league standards. Yet they still went into 2021 with him as their starting shortstop. But the same way the Yankees stubbornly told fans their all-right-handed lineup could be successful before trading for two left-handed bats in Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo, the Yankees tried to right their wrong in believing in Torres when they unsuccessfully tried acquire Trevor Story in July. Torres will either be off the position in 2022 or possibly off the team. The Yankees’ failed trade of Story says so. There are still 25 regular-season games left in 2021 though and then possibly one or more postseason games.

4. While Torres was out, the Yankees were winning and Andrew Velazquez became the easiest Yankee of all time to root for. With the Bronx native, who’s living at his parents while playing for the team he grew up dreaming about playing for, starting at shortstop every day, I wrote and said if Torres didn’t play well upon his return that the calls would begin to play Velazquez every day. Those calls have started.

In four games since coming off the IL, Torres is 3-for-13 with four strikeouts and no extra-base hits and a litany of mistakes in the field. Whether he’s botching balls, taking too long to get off throws or mishandling throws on steal attempts, Torres’ defense should be enough for him to sit on the bench. With a .686 OPS and nine home runs in his last 145 games and 580 plate appearances, Torres should no longer be an automatic when it comes to being in the starting lineup.

5. In the seventh, an inning after Torres’ miscue led to two runs, the Yankees still had a 7-4 lead. Get nine outs before allowing three runs. With the heart of the Orioles’ order due up, Andrew Heaney was brought into the game. Heaney had recently been moved to the bullpen to accommodate the return of Corey Kluber, even though Heaney had two career relief appearances before this season and even though he proved incapable of being a reliever in relief of Kluber the last time through the rotation in Anaheim. But with the Orioles’ 3-4-5 hitters due up, Heaney was brought in.

Heaney hit Trey Mancini with a pitch, allowed a single to DJ Stewart, a single to Austin Hays, a double to Jahmai Jones and after finally getting an out, another single to Jorge Mateo. Heaney faced six batters, five of them being right-handed.

I’m not upset with Heaney for his performance. He sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t put himself in the bullpen with essentially no experience as a reliever. He didn’t put himself in Sunday’s game, He didn’t keep himself in the game to turn a three-run lead into a one-run deficit, while recording one out. His roster spot is on Cashman and his continued use is on Boone. The Yankees have been unable to properly evaluate Heaney’s ability and haven’t come close to putting him in the best possible position to succeed. In return, he has allowed 24 earned runs and 10 home runs in 28 1/3 innings.

6. “He’s going to have to step up,” Boone said about Heaney on Sunday. “He wants the ball and he’s going to have to take advantage of an opportunity when he gets it.”

“When he gets it?!?!” The next time Heaney should get the ball is when he’s wearing a different uniform. There are 25 games left in the season, the Yankees haven’t clinched a postseason berth and one of their paths to the postseason (as the division winner) has been taken off the board. The Yankees’ only opportunity to reach the postseason is as one of the two wild-card teams. Their only opportunity to reach an actual postseason series is to then win a one-game playoff. The only way for them to reach a seven-game series will be to survive a five-game series against the Rays without Gerrit Cole for the first two games of the series.

Despite all of this and the uphill battle the Yankees face to reaching the playoffs, advancing to the ALDS, getting to the ALCS and potentially returning to the World Series for the first time in 12 years, Boone is filling out his lineup card and making in-game decisions as if it’s March in Tampa and the results of the games are meaningless. The roster is being managed the same way. When the rosters expanded from 26 to 28 on September 1, the Yankees used one of the two spots on Brooks Kriske. Brooks Kriske! BROOKS KRISKE!

7. At this point Kriske is my favorite Yankee. What Kriske has been able to do in becoming a Yankee, having his 40-man roster spot protected over Garrett Whitlock in the offseason and then maintaining his 40-man spot this season to collect major-league pay and service despite having zero career success has been nothing short of amazing.

In 11 1/3 career innings, Kriske has put 29 runners on base, allowed 19 earned runs, including six home runs, walked 13 and thrown seven wild pitches. He has a 15.09 ERA (11.11 FIP) and 2.471 WHIP. It’s not unrealistic to think you could pick any pitcher from Single-A and put them in the majors and get better results.

8. It made no sense to give one of the two additional rosters to Kriske, the the same way it made no sense to pitch him in a three-run game against the Blue Jays on Monday, a team the Yankees are trying to hold off from taking their playoff spot.

Like Heaney and Torres, I’m not mad at Kriske. He sucks. He didn’t ask to be called up on September 1 despite doing absolutely nothing to merit a call-up. He didn’t ask to come into Monday’s game, just like he didn’t ask to come into any other game or to even be a Yankee in the first place. His use is on the Yankees failing to properly evaluate his ability and for to continuing to use him as a viable major league reliever. I hope he stays on the roster and keeps pitching. Good for him. Get that major league money and that service time. I’m rooting for him.

9. The Blue Jays’ humiliation of the Yankees on Monday was expected. The Blue Jays are really good. They have a plus-136 run differential on the season, the same run differential as the White Sox who play 76 games against the Indians, Tigers, Royals and Twins. If not for the Blue Jays’ bullpen failing them for a large portion of the season, the Yankees would be chasing them and not the other way around.

The Blue Jays now trail the Yankees by three games in the loss column and their schedule is set up for them to control their own destiny. Half of the Blue Jays’ 26 remaining games are against the Yankees (6) and Orioles (7). They are playing the team they are chasing and they are playing the worst team in the majors, a team that no one has trouble beating other than the Yankees.

10. I’m now worried about both the Blue Jays and the Red Sox (who trail the Yankees by two games in the loss column). The Red Sox aren’t as good as the Blue Jays (or the Yankees) with a lineup that has three hitters, a bad bullpen and one starting pitcher. But like the Blue Jays, the Red Sox have a favorable schedule to end the season with six games left against the Orioles and they finish the season with three games against the Nationals.

The Yankees may “hold” a wild-card spot at this moment, however, a bad week against the Blue Jays could change that, and a continued bad month will change it for good.

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