Blogs – Page 76 – Keefe To The City

Feb 12, 2021

Joe Girardi Deserves Monument Park Plaque for 2013 Performance

Joe Girardi had a great deal of success in his 10 years at Yankees manager, but 2013 was his best given the roster he had to work with.

It’s easy to forget how bad the Yankees were just five, six and seven years ago. Sandwiched between 18 postseason appearances in 19 years from 1995-2012 and another four straight from 2017-2020 were the “dark” years of 2013, 2014 and 2016. (I will give 2015 a pass because the Yankees did appear in the one-game playoff, and would have been in the ALDS in pre-2012 format.) Yes, I realize posting winning records in 2013, 2014 and 2016 isn’t necessarily “dark” compared to other franchise, but those seasons were dark in Yankees’ terms.

The darkest of them all was 2013 when injuries from 2012 lingered, new injuries in spring training popped up and the longest performance-enhancing drug suspension of all time followed the Yankees’ season. I remember going to the Stadium on Opening Day of the 2013 season against the Red Sox and thinking the Yankees would be in contention once again after their disappointing ALCS sweep at the hands of the Tigers the October before. I was wrong.

The Yankees’ Opening Day lineup:

Brett Gardner, CF
Eduardo Nunez, SS
Robinson Cano, 2B
Kevin Youkilis, 1B
Vernon Wells, LF
Ben Francisco, DH
Ichiro Suzuki, RF
Jayson Nix, 3B
Francisco Cervelli, C

(Facing a left-handed starter, the team had the vaunted Travis Hafner and Lyle Overbay on the bench)

It was no surprise that Yankees team started the season 1-4. Maybe the mid-2000s All-Star Team wasn’t a way to go about building a roster. Then in the sixth game of the season in Detroit, they surprisingly pummeled Justin Verlander in a 7-0 win and went on to win four straight, seven of eight and nine of 11. At 10-6, the power of putting on the pinstripes never seemed so powerful. Sure, many former All-Stars and elite players had revitalized their careers wearing the Yankees uniform, but this was taking it to another level.

The 34-year-old Vernon Wells who had been unceremoniously let go by the Angels and hadn’t played a full season in three years hit .317/.394/.619 with five home runs in the first three weeks of the season. The 36-year-old Travis Hafner, who hadn’t played a full season in six years, hit .349/.440/.767 with five home runs in those three weeks. Kevin Youkilis at 34 with his career in serious decline had an .883 OPS with a pair of home runs, journeyman Brennan Boesch had an .857 OPS, newly-appointed starting catcher Francisco Cervelli was batting .310 with a .944 OPS. When the Yankees won in 11 innings over the Blue Jays on April 20 to improve to that 10-6 mark, Ben Francisco was batting second, Youkilis fourth, Wellls fifth and Cervelli sixth. Eduardo Nunez and Jayson Nix batted eighth and ninth and made up the left side of the infield.

Nearly three weeks after that, the Yankees swept the Royals in Kansas City to move to ten games above .500 at 23-13. In the third game of that series, Wells hit his ninth home run of the season, Ichiro was batting fifth, Chris Nelson (yes, who?) was playing third base and Chris Stewart was catching.

The Yankees’ success to that point was mainly due to their starting pitching. CC Sabathia (3.23 ERA) had yet to fall apart, Hiroki Kuroda continued to be one of the most underrated Yankees of all time (2.31 ERA), soon-to-be-40-year-old Andy Pettitte was masterful (3.83 ERA) in his final season, Phil Hughes’ career hadn’t completely collapsed (4.43 ERA) and David Phelps had given the team consistency as the fifth starter (3.44 ERA in three starts through May 13). Add in the dominant David Robertson and the still somewhat unhittable Mariano Rivera at 43 years of age amidst his farewell tour, and the Yankees’ early-season success made some sense.

The success didn’t last. The Yankees went 62-64 the rest of the way, finishing 85-77. They managed to keep the franchise’s winning-season streak alive (it began in 1993 and is still alive) and would have made the postseason under the 2020 eight-team format.

Wells’ power dried up and after hitting that ninth home run on May 12, he only hit two more over the next four-and-a-half months. Youkilis only played in 28 games total and Hafner 82. Aside from Robinson Cano’s .314/.383/.516 season, the only other bright spot was the return of Alfonso Soriano midseason, as he turned back the clock to 2002, hitting 17 home runs and driving in 50 in only 58 games with the team. There was also the Derek Jeter leadoff home run on the first pitch he saw in 2013, but Number 2 ended up playing in only 17 games.

Jeter wasn’t the only other expected regular to miss significant time. Curtis Granderson played in 61 games and Mark Teixeira in 15 games. Alex Rodriguez appealed his suspension, but was a shell of his former self, hitting seven home runs with a .771 OPS in 44 games.

Here were the players who appeared the most at each position for the 2013 Yankees:

C: Chris Stewart
1B: Lyle Overbay
2B: Robinson Cano
3B: Jayson Nix
SS: Eduardo Nunez
LF: Vernon Wells
CF: Brett Gardner
RF: Ichiro Suzuki
DH: Travis Hafner

David Adams (43 games), Mark Reynolds (36), Zoilo Almonte (34), Brennan Boesch (23), Ben Francisco (21), Reid Brignac (17), Brendan Ryan (17), Luis Cruz (16), Alberto Gonzalez (13), Brent Lillibridge (11), Chris Nelson (10), Melky Mesa (5), Thomas Neal (4), Corban Joseph (2) and Travis Ishikawa (1) all also played for the 2013 Yankees.

In 10 years as Yankees manager, Joe Girardi never had a losing season, went to the postseason six times, won the World Series (2009) and went to the ALCS in three other years (2010, 2012, 2017), but it was 2013 that was his best season. That Yankees team had no business winning 85 games. They had no business winning 75 games. Girardi deserved to win American League Manger of the Year for that team’s performance. He deserved to win Manger of All Time. He deserved to have the award named after him. The roster, lineups and batting orders are somewhat funny to look back on now, though I’m still not over that wasted season, so it will take a few more years to truly be funny. But it’s easy to recognize and appreciate the work Girardi did that season to keep his team afloat when it shouldn’t have made it out of April.

It was miraculous, yes an actual miracle, the 2013 Yankees finished with a winning record and eight games above .500. It was Girardi’s finest work as Yankees manager and maybe the finest work any manager has ever had in the history of the game. I just never want to experience a season like it again.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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

Feb 11, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Offseason Almost Over

A week from today, Yankees spring training will already be in its second day and baseball will be back. The grind of the offseason is nearly over.

A week from now spring training will have begun. That’s a beautiful sentence to write. Yankees baseball is nearly here.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. We did it. Well, we have almost done it. This is the last Yankees Thoughts of the offseason. A week from today, Yankees spring training will already be in its second day and baseball will be back. The grind of the offseason is nearly over, and now it’s time to focus on the next eight months (it better be eight-plus months) of Yankees baseball.

2. Again, the only move left to make for the Yankees (to stay under the luxury tax, which they blatantly want to) is to bring back Brett Gardner, but that doesn’t seem imminent. I still won’t believe Gardner won’t be a Yankee again until he’s not announced on Opening Day, though there has reportedly been no negotiations between Gardner and the Yankees. Gardner’s agent claims the Yankees said they would discuss yet another re-signing of their longest-tenured player once they took care of their more important offseason business. That business has been taken care of for a while. DJ LeMahieu was re-signed. Corey Kluber was signed. Jameson Taillon was traded for. Adam Ottavino was traded. Masahiro Tanaka left the league. Darren O’Day was signed. There’s nothing else for the Yankees to do at this point, and that makes it odd that Gardner and the only team he has ever known aren’t even talking.

3. I have never wanted Gardner back so much. I didn’t want him back after 2018. I wanted the Yankees to sign Michael Brantley. Gardner had lost his starting job to Andrew McCutchen and was coming off the worst year of his career. The Yankees still brought him back. Following 2019, he was undoubtedly coming back whether or not I wanted him after he posted a career-high 28 home runs with the super baseball. Now I want him back because I’m petrified of Mike Tauchman or Greg Allen becoming everyday players once Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks inevitably land on the injured list. It would be very Yankees for the team to not bring Gardner back the one time they actually need him.

4. There will be a lot made about Gary Sanchez’s every waking moment in spring training, but my focus will be solely on the pitching staff. The Yankees’ entire pitching staff aside from Gerrit Cole has dealt with serious injuries the last two years and anytime they are doing anything related to pitching, it could mean a season-ending injury. Any bullpen session, any fielding practice, any jogging, any anything, and I will be watching it as intently as I would watch The Weather Channel growing up when I had a paper due and there was potential for snow and a snow day to buy me an extra day.

5. I have spent the last three-plus months watching my wife open deliveries to our home from her father full of Dodgers World Champions gear. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, you name it, we have it. The Dodgers won the World Series and still decided to pay Trevor Bauer a ridiculous $40 million to pitch for them in 2021. Brian Cashman thought the Yankees would have the highest payroll in the league, but he was wrong, and wrong by a lot. The team the Yankees should be operating like will have the highest payroll. The team that combines player development with their financial might to put together the best possible roster.

6. I didn’t want the Yankees to sign Bauer. Not because of the money. I didn’t want the Yankees to sign a 30-year-old with one great full season to his name (2018) and then a great 11 starts (2020). Bauer had a 4.30 ERA (4.06 FIP) from 2014 through 2017. Then he had that awesome 2018 (2.21 ERA and 2.44 FIP) and a 4.48 ERA and 4.34 FIP in 2019 before his Cy Young 2020. Maybe he finally figured it out for good last season in Cincinnati, or maybe it was just the equivalent of a spectacular one-third of a normal season (which is what it was). I also didn’t want him on the team because of his past with Cole, whether it’s settled or not. The Dodgers have the best rotation in baseball. Dodgers fans think they just signed a sure-thing, though Bauer is anything but a sure-thing.

7. I just wanted the Yankees to do more this offseason. They supposedly didn’t counter an offer by Cleveland for a Francisco Lindor trade. It would have been nice if they had acquired Lindor and Carlos Carrasco. I guess they felt re-signing LeMahieu would be enough, and that maybe Gleyber Torres would show up in shape this season and be able to make routine plays at shortstop. It also means they really believe in Gio Urshela to maintain his 2019 and 2020, and the same for Luke Voit. It means they believe their right-handed, one-dimensional (aside from LeMahieu) lineup can finally come through in October after failing miserably to do so the last two Octobers.

8. I wanted them to do more with their pitching. Why not re-sign Tanaka, sign Kluber, trade for Taillon, keep Ottavino and sign O’Day? None of those moves were tied to each other, and they could have all of those pitchers on their 2021 roster, if not for the imaginary salary cap. Instead, get ready for a steady diet of Michael King, Nick Nelson, Luis Cessa, Jonathan Loaisiga and maybe even a little Tyler Lyons and Nestor Cortes this season.

9. It’s unfortunate the Yankees cut payroll by $50 million for the second time in three years when they could have gone all out to make themselves the clear favorite in the American League. Forget the league, they might not even be the favorite in their division. I’m very worried about both the Blue Jays and Rays, and all Yankees fans should be. The Yankees’ starting pitching isn’t exactly exuding confidence when it comes to health, the bullpen isn’t what it once was and the lineup is the same lineup that failed in October in both 2019 and 2020. Add in a manager that has shown no signs of progress or development after three seasons, and you can see why I’m nervous about the 2021 season.

10. That doesn’t mean I’m not excited for baseball to be back. I’m as excited as I am every year at this time. It’s just hard to see how the Yankees don’t have the same injury problems they had last year and the year before when they have retained all their injury-prone players and then added more injury-riddled pasts to their roster. There will be plenty of time to bring up the Yankees’ roster failures if the team fails, but this is the team Yankees fans have been given to root for this season. For now, baseball is about to be back and that’s all that matters. For now.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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 Offseason

Feb 10, 2021

Another Fresh Start for Giancarlo Stanton

Because I’m a nice person, I’m going to give Giancarlo Stanton a clean slate for the a second straight season. I’m going to be positive when it comes to Stanton for as long as he lets me be positive.

Spring training begins next week. NEXT WEEK! The offseason is long as it is, and it’s made even longer when there have only been 67 Yankees games since Oct. 19, 2019. Baseball is almost here, even if it’s not real, meaningful baseball.

Just over a year ago (on Feb. 4, 2020 to be exact), I decided I was going to give Giancarlo Stanton a clean slate for the 2020 season. After an up-and-down first season with the Yankees in 2018, which culminated in him having one of the worst at-bats imaginable with the season on the line against Craig Kimbrel in Game 4 of the ALDS, Stanton barely played in 2019. A biceps strain turned shoulder strain turned calf strain kept him to only 18 regular-season games, and then he benched himself due to injury in the ALCS.

Three weeks after giving Stanton a clean slate for 2020, he was shut down with a calf injury. The clean slate was muddied before the end of February and I called him a joke and called him the new Jacoby Ellsbury. The season was delayed and it allowed Stanton to get healthy and not miss the time he would have missed had it began in late-March as scheduled. Then two weeks into the shortened season, Stanton was back at home on the injured list with a hamstring injury.

There’s no arguing Stanton’s is among the game’s best hitters when healthy, but for the last two years he hasn’t been healthy. Now he’s 31 years old, a full-time designated hitter according to Brian Cashman, and he’s played 53 games since the start of 2019. Maybe the new offseason workout regimen Stanton has implemented from director of player health and performance Eric Cressy will prove to be the difference in keeping him in the lineup in 2021. Im going to give him clean again.

Stanton is a generational power hitter. After playing in only 23 games in 21 months from end of 2018 until Opening Night 2020 (July 23), he still managed to crush a first-inning, two-run home run off Max Scherzer in his first at-bat of the season. After playing in only 23 games in the 60-game 2020 season, Stanton returned in time for the postseason and hit a home run (and six total) in the Yankees’ first five playoff games, while driving in 13. His bat went cold in Games 4 and 5 of the ALDS (like everyone else on the team), and he finished the postseason 1-for-7 with three strikeouts. But even with that two-game disappointment, he still hit .308/.387/1.038 in the playoffs. A 1.426 OPS. That’s what he’s capable of when he’s healthy.

Unfortunately, for Stanton, he entered Alex Rodriguez territory in his first Yankees season. That means he’s only as good to Yankees fans as his most recent at-bat. Once you reach that territory, there’s no going back. Last February, I wrote: Stanton could have the kind of postseason A-Rod did in 2009, and it won’t matter. And then he went out and had essentially the same postseason A-Rod had in 2009 in eight fewer games and half the at-bats.

Rodriguez in 2009 postseason: 19-for-52, 6 HR, 18 RBIs, .365/.500/.808
Stanton in 2020 postseason: 8-for-26, 6 HR, 13 RBIs, .308/.387/1.038

I said it won’t matter, and it won’t. Yankees fans won’t treat him any differently.

Stanton’s magical postseason ended with an ALDS exit for the Yankees because of a lack of timely hitting, no starting pitching and Aaron Boone’s ridiculous Game 2 decision. Stanton did everything he could to almost single-handedly carry the Yankees to the ALCS, but his teammates let him down, the way he and the rest of the Yankees let down DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres in the 2019 ALCS. It’s not Stanton’s fault the Yankees’ season ended against the Rays, but because they didn’t win, his postseason dominance might have not even happened.

I used to think Stanton was a luxury on the Yankees. They had gotten to within one game of the World Series the season before he became a Yankee, and in his lost 2019 season, they had won 103 regular-season games and gotten to within two wins of the World Series. But that was before it became apparent Aaron Judge might never play a full season again, before it became obvious Aaron Hicks wouldn’t spend part of every season on the injured list, before Gary Sanchez’s stopped hitting completely, and before Gleyber Torres regressed substantially after coming to Spring Training 2.0 out of shape last summer. Stanton is no longer a luxury on the Yankees. He’s become a necessity.

Because I’m a nice person, I’m going to give Stanton a clean slate for the second straight season. That means no sarcasm to start the season, no snarky comments, no “Ladies and gentlemen” tweets on Opening Day. I’m going to be positive when it comes to Stanton for as long as he lets me be positive. I wonder if he will let it last longer than the three weeks in February it lasted a year ago.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Thoughts

Feb 9, 2021

Rangers Thoughts: David Quinn Doesn’t Seem to Be Coaching to Win or to Develop

The Rangers don’t seem to know if they should be trying to win this season or if they should be focused on the future. Their head coach’s decisions say as much.

The Rangers ended their two-game winning streak with a 2-0 loss to the Islanders. I keep thinking at some point the top two lines will produce offense, but the season is now one-fifth over and they have yet to do so. When are they going to end this drought?

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. When the Rangers lose it’s always painful. Not because they can’t afford to lose games in a 56-game season at the rate they have been (they can’t), but because it’s actually painful. Aside from the Rangers’ season-opening blowout loss to the Islanders, they don’t just lose, they have to lose in the most excruciating way possible. Whether it’s trailing early and coming back only to fall one goal sort of completing the comeback, or blowing a two-goal lead, or blowing a third-period lead, or having a chance to break open a 0-0 game with breakaways and odd-man rushes and failing to do so only to eventually lose, the Rangers have mastered the art of losing in the worst ways in 2021.

2. You can place blame all around the team for their 4-5-2 start to the season, (well, it’s no longer a “start” since 20 percent of the season is over), however, the majority of the blame has to be placed on the top two lines. Within that blame, David Quinn takes partial blame for his top-six combinations which change by the shift and rarely ever include the No. 1 overall pick from the 2020 draft or the No. 2 overall pick from the 2019 draft. Instead, spots are filled by veterans as if it’s a high school team and seniority matters. Quinn keeps using the same players in different combinations and he keeps getting the same result: a lack of offense.

3. Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad are always locks for the top six and nothing should ever change that. (They should be on the same line, but I have learned to semi-accept that is never going to happen on a permanent basis, and will only happen when the team trails in the third period and desperately needs a goal.) After them, the other four spots could go to anyone at anytime under Quinn.

4. Pavel Buchnevich has earned one of the spots with the way he has played this season. That leaves three spots. Unfortunately, the Rangers’ lack of a second center with Filip Chytil out means either Ryan Strome or Brett Howden has to take one of the three remaining spots by default. That leaves two spots.

5. One of them has to go to Alexis Lafrenière. The kid did things in the Q that only Sidney Crosby has. He was the most anticipated No. 1 pick since Connor McDavid, and he’s playing third-line and second-power play minutes. How is that responsible? How has no one from the front office stepped in and override Quinn’s idiotic usage of the star in waiting? The other needs to go to Kaapo Kakko. The No. 2 pick from the 2019 draft needs to be allowed to show what made him the second overall pick.

6. If it were up to me, the lines at full strength would be:

Panarin-Zibanejad-Buchnevich
Lafrenière-Chytil-Kakko
Kreider-Strome-Gauthier
Lemieux-Howden-Di Giuseppe/Blackwell/Rooney

7. Those lines make winning a priority and also help with the ongoing rebuild, which is the line Quinn needs to toe. If he’s coaching for results right now then he’s doing a horrible job and should be replaced. If he’s coaching for the future and to progress the rebuild then he’s doing a horrible job and should be replaced. The Rangers aren’t winning (they have lost seven of 11 games) and they are stunting the development of their young players by giving them limited ice time and close to no special teams time.

8. Quinn needs to pick a side or he won’t be the Rangers coach at some point in 2022. Barring an internal or cultural issue, the Rangers could finish in last place and Quinn will be back for 2021-22. This season can easily be categorized as yet another rebuilding year and a weird shortened season with no training camp and every other odd element this year. But next year, results will matter. Next year, the Rangers will have to have arrived. Quinn will have been given three years to figure it out, and if he doesn’t have it figured it out next year, that will be it for him.

9. Quinn could do himself a favor if he were to stop relying on players who aren’t getting it done. At times, he has shown he can make the intelligent move like removing Kreider from the top two lines or playing Lafrenière with one of the two already superstars or removing Strome from the first power play. Eventually, though, he reverts back to his comfort zone, which is playing veterans, letting Lafrenière and Kakko waste away on the bench while they watch Kreider and Strome turn the puck over the power play and doing things like pairing Jack Johnson with Tony DeAngelo in a real game.

10. The Rangers’ next three games are against the Bruins (twice) and Flyers. These three games over the next five days will be an enormous test for this Rangers team. Last season, the Rangers made their miraculous run with 16 wins in 22 games against non-playoff and mainly non-contenders. Of the 16 wins, only the first win against the Avalance in Igor Shesterkin’s NHL debut was against a truly elite opponent. (Yes, the 2019-20 Rangers beat the crap out of the Islanders and they went to the Eastern Conference Finals, but that Islanders team overachieved in a weird tournament four months afer the season was stopped.) The East doesn’t allow for any soft parts in the Rangers’ schedule this seaosn. If they want to go on the type of run they did a year ago at this time, they will need to do it against the league’s best, and that starts on Wednesday.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New Rangers episodes after every game throughout the season.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Feb 8, 2021

I’m Ready for Yankees Baseball to Return for 2021

The moment Gio Urshela lined out to third to end Game 5 of the ALDS, I was ready for next season. I’m always ready for next season. I hate the offseason.

The moment Gio Urshela lined out to third to end Game 5 of the ALDS, I was ready for next season. I’m always ready for next season. I hate the offseason.

The 59-day winter gauntlet that is January and February was rather tame in the first month of 2021, but freezing temperatures and snow have become daily fixtures in the second month. Punxsutawney Phil didn’t help matters by seeing his shadow last week, and there’s still more than a month until the clocks get set forward.

We’re close to baseball, even if it’s just beat writers live-tweeting intrasquad games and batting practice. Reading about pitchers’ fielding practice and back-field infield drills and watching videos of bullpen sessions recorded on a phone through the spacing of a chain-link fence never sounded so good. After the 2020 season was delayed by four months, I said I would never complain about the monotony of spring training again, and I meant it.

I welcome the daily updates and the overreatctions to Gary Sanchez’s every move and every second of the upcoming season. I look forward to Aaron Boone once again unnecessarily batting Aaron Hicks third because he’s the Yankees’ only left-handed hitter and because Boone thinks he has to break up the right-handed bats in the middle of the order. I’m eagerly awaiting the storeis about all the players who reported to camp in the “best shape of their life.” I want to lose it over the last position player and last reliever selected for the 25-man roster and I want to be irrationally upset over the order of the rotation to open the regular season. That’s how ready I am for baseball.

The wait is almost over. Even if there is snow in the forecast for seven of the next 10 days, we’re close. The sun is once again setting after 5 p.m., pitchers and catchers officially report next week and position players the week after that.

I’m more than ready for the return of Yankees baseball. I have been since Oct. 9.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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