Blogs – Page 87 – Keefe To The City

Sep 8, 2020

If This Wasn’t the Lowest Point of the Yankees’ Season, I Don’t Want to Know What Is

Monday ended up being another failed attempt by the Yankees to turn their season around. Maybe Tuesday will be the day the Yankees turn their season around. Maybe they won’t turn it around.

I thought the Yankees might have turned their season around when they won three straight against the Mets. But that was followed by losing to the Rays. Then I thought the Yankees might have turned their season around when they finally beat the Rays. But that was followed by another loss to the Rays. Then I thought the Yankees might have turned their season around when they won the first game of a doubleheader against the Orioles. But that was followed by three straight losses to the Orioles.

When Luke Voit and Aaron Hicks went back-to-back on Monday night against the Blue Jays, I thought, “This is when the Yankees turn their season around.” And when the Yankees led 6-2 after five, and after Jonathan Holder of all pitchers was able to pitch a scoreless inning, I knew this was the game the Yankees would turn their season around. They had a four-run lead and their “elite” relievers were fully rested and ready in Adam Ottavino, Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. The game was set up perfectly for them to win and not even Aaron Boone could screw it up.

Green entered for the sixth, and for the third time in two weeks, he didn’t have it. After two walks, a single and a Voit error, the Blue Jays had cut the Yankees’ lead to 6-3 and had the bases loaded and one out. Boone pulled Green and turned to Ottavino, and he didn’t have it either. Ottavino faced six batters and didn’t retire any of them. Three singles, two walks and a grand slam later against Ottavino and the Blue Jays had a 12-6 lead in what was a 10-run inning. Green and Ottavino combined to produce this line: 0.1 IP, 5 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 4 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. The Blue Jays didn’t swing-and-miss at any of their 58 pitches.

To Boone’s credit, the Yankees didn’t lose because of him on Monday night, which isn’t something you can often say. But his evaluation of the game and his team continues to be a major cause for concern. Boone was asked after the game about Ottavino’s performance, and he answered the question in typical Boone fashion, saying, “I thought his stuff was actually good.” Boone thought a pitcher who allowed six earned runs without retiring a batter had “good stuff” the same way he said he saw “good things” from the Yankees this past week after losses to the Rays, Mets and Orioles.

The Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi, claiming he was too tense and it made the clubhouse and players tense. Boone was hired for his communication and coddling skills and his ability to be everyone’s friend rather than their manager, but his buddy-buddy, everything-is-sunshine-and-rainbows, Southern California approach has done nothing other than make losing acceptable. If you think a team that was once 10 games over .500 and is now one game over .500 has done any “good things” of late, and if you think a pitcher who allowed six earned runs without retiring a batter had “good stuff,” then you clearly find losing acceptable. Brett Gardner is the only Yankee who has been part of a championship team. The rest of the team has never won anything. All they know is losing, and their manager, who has also never won anything, has made losing tolerable.

When I think about this season, I think about looking for something to do on March 26 when the Yankees were supposed to open 2020 in Baltimore. I think about the four months of baseball in spring and summer that were canceled, leaving me to watch re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens every night on TV Land. Back then, I would have agreed to watch Nick Swisher’s postseason at-bats on a three-hour loop every day if it meant real, meaningful baseball would return. Now I wish I was back to watching Ray Romano and Kevin James every night instead of real, meaningful baseball. I’m very close to going back to that time and substituting YES with TV Land each night.

This season has been painful to watch in the way the 2013 season was. The lineups featuring Lyle Overbay, Jayson Nix, Vernon Wells, David Adams and Reid Brignac have only slightly been upgraded by the lineups featuring Tyler Wade, Mike Tauchman, Mike Ford, Erik Kratz and Jordy Mercer. The days of replacment players like Tauchman, Ford and Cameron Maybin playing at an All-Star level are gone. Injuries have forced Season 2 of “Next Man Up” and it’s been a flop as Tauchman has looked like a player the Rockies gave up on, Ford’s lost power has him slugging .282 and Wade has managed to remain a major leaguer despite a .189 average and .550 OPS in 306 career plate appearances.

The Yankees chose to do nothing at the trade deadline. They chose not to upgrade the offense, instead hoping Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton would get healthy. They chose not to upgrade the rotation, hoping Jordan Montgomery would show some level of consistency and that maybe J.A. Happ could turn back the clock for a month. They chose not to upgrade the bullpen, hoping what was expected to be the team’s strength would in fact be that. So far the only thing that has worked out is that Torres has returned. Judge and Stanton are still nowhere close to returning. Montgomery has lost two games since the deadline, recording two outs in one and 10 in the other. Happ lost his only start since the deadline, blowing a four-run lead to the Mets. Instead of becoming the team’s biggest strength, the bullpen has become the team’s biggest weakness. The Yankees have lost seven of nine since the deadline with the bullpen losing four of those games, capped off by Monday’s disgusting performance.

Monday ended up being another failed attempt by the Yankees to turn their season around. The team is now one game over .500, which was unthinkable three weeks ago when they were 16-6. They are two games behind the Blue Jays for second place in the AL East and they only have a one-game lead in the loss column on the Orioles for the eighth and final postseason spot. The Orioles! The eighth and final postseason spot! Maybe Tuesday will be the day the Yankees turn their season around. They’re running out of days and games and chances to turn it around. Maybe they won’t turn it around.

After Monday’s loss, Boone said the Yankees will continue to “say the right things.” No Yankees fan wants to hear the right things. They want to see the right things. They want to see wins. Something this team no longer gives them.

***

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

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

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Sep 7, 2020

Yankees Thoughts: Aaron Boone Makes Gary Sanchez Team Scapegoat

The Yankees’ season unraveled even more this weekend as they fell to the eighth seed in the American League. The Yankees now have a one-game loss-column lead on being in the postseason. But everything is fine!

The Yankees’ season unraveled even more this weekend as they lost three of four to the Orioles to fall to the eighth seed in the American League. The Yankees now have a one-game loss-column lead on being in the postseason. But everything is fine!

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Aaron Boone had another memorable weekend managing the team into the ground. On Friday, he started Michael King, or at least he had input with the analytics department on starting King. The thing about King is that he isn’t good. Here were his appearances this season before Friday’s start:

3.1 IP, 4 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 2 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 3 ER (start)
3.0 IP, 1 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 2 ER (start)

King put the Yankees behind 1-0 in the first, but was then given a 4-1 lead to work with. Despite not having completed four innings of work in any of his outings this season, Boone let him stay in for the fourth on Friday. Three batters into the fourth, the Orioles had cut the Yankees’ lead to 4-3, and Boone stayed with King for the entire inning.

This game was the first of a doubleheader and therefore a seven-inning game. So after King’s four innings and three earned runs, the Yankees had a one-run lead to protect with nine outs to get, which meant Chad Green followed by Zack Britton followed by Aroldis Chapman, right? Nope. Boone went to Ben Heller for the fifth inning. Sure enough, Renato Nunez hit a game-tying home run off Heller.

2. At the time of Heller allowing the game-tying home run, here were the recent workloads of the elite relievers:

Adam Ottavino: 29 pitches over the last six days
Chad Green: 19 pitches over the last five days
Zack Britton 29 pitches over the last 16 days
Aroldis Chapman: 32 pitches over the last six days

With the game tied in the sixth, Boone then went to Britton, proving he would rather have Britton pitch against the bottom of the order in a tie game than the middle of the order with a one-run lead (which is when he had Heller pitch) because of the inning number. In fact, he pitched both Britton and Chapman with the score tied. Boone clearly went to Heller in an attempt to steal outs and an inning and save one or more of the elite relievers for the second game of the doubleheader, a move that frequently burns him.

After the game Heller was optioned to the alternate site. A little over an hour prior, he was good enough to protect a one-run lead with nine outs to go, and then suddenly he was no longer good enough to be a Yankee. This has been on an ongoing trend all season of players and pitchers being used in high-leverage situations only to then be optioned or designated for assignment or released.

3. In the second game of the doubleheader, Deivi Garcia started strong, but finally gave up his first runs as a major leaguer (4.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 1 HR). It was what you would expect from a 21-year-old in his second career start. In relief of Garcia, Boone decided to have Clarke Schmidt make his major league debut.

Clarke has made 27 minor league appearances, starting 25 of them. He’s ranked as the Yankees’ top pitching prospect, one spot ahead of Garcia and has been trained and prepared as a starter. So how did Boone use him? Not as the starter in Game 1 of the doubleheader. That went to King, who sucked per usual. Instead, he brought Schmidt in with runners on first and second and one out in the fifth. The Yankees would rather waste starts with King or J.A. Happ than let Schmidt start, and they are completely fine bringing Schmidt into his first game in a situation he has little to no experience with: entering mid-game, with runners on and having to pitch out of the stretch. Talk about putting your players in the best possible position to succeed.

4. On Saturday, things got worse. With the Yankees reeling and struggling to score runs, Boone elected to give the team’s best hitter in DJ LeMahieu the day off. But as always with Boone’s days off, LeMahieu didn’t even get the full game off as he was needed as a pinch hitter with the team losing.

Gerrit Cole wasn’t good again. Five days after writing What Is Wrong with Gerrit Cole?, nothing changed. Yes, he dominated the Orioles for five innings, but he fell apart in the sixth, allowing yet another home run to add his to league lead and then another four runs after a Thairo Estrada error. Cole only got charged with one earned run out of five, but he took his third straight loss. What a letdown he has been. I was worried the Yankees might get Pittsburgh Cole instead of Houston Cole, but it looks like they have neither.

After the Yankees recently lost two out of three to the Rays, Boone talked about all the “good things” he has seen out of his team that has gone from World Series favorite to postseason bubble. And after losing a Cole start to the Orioles, he did the same.

“We gotta continue to take a lot of really good positive things that happened,” Boone said, “and finish some of these off now.”

What “good things?” Cole pitched well for five innings. That was the only good thing that happened in the game. He lost the game in the sixth inning, the offense scored one run, left 10 on base and struck out 12 times. Boone acts like Alec Baldwin’s character Parker on Friends who is over-the-top positive about everything to the point that he annoys everyone he encounters.

5. If you thought things were bad after Saturday and back-to-back losses to the Orioles, Sunday was the worst of all. The day started with Boone benching Gary Sanchez, who went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts the night before. During the Sunday game on YES, the broadcast team talked about how decisions within the organization are made unilaterally, but it didn’t seem that way with what Boone said about the decision to bench Sanchez.

“I deliberated on it a lot last night,” Boone said. “I just feel like this is the way I need to go right now. Hopefully a day off or two, or however I decide to do it here, can help get him going. It’s on all of us to get around him and try to help him get to what we know he can be.”

Boone used “I” four times, never using “we,” and made it clear it was his decision to bench Sanchez and that it’s his decision on when he will play again. Boone doesn’t appear to be the front office puppet everyone makes him out to be. There’s no way the Yankees’ analytics team would recommend or approve Sanchez sitting in favor or Erik Kratz or Kyle Higashioka. And there’s no way the analytics team would approve any of Boone’s bullpen decisions.

Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are on the injured list like they always are; Gleyber Torres just came back from the IL; Aaron Hicks can’t hit, Brett Gardner is finished; Cole has been awful; Masahiro Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery have been inconsistent; Happ and James Paxton have sucked; the bullpen has been a disaster and Boone has been idiotic. Yet it’s Sanchez who becomes the scapegoat for the 2020 Yankees. Mike Tauchman and Tyler Wade play every day no matter how many outs they make at the plate or on the bases and Mike Ford plays every day even though he’s a one-dimensional player who’s lacking his only dimension. None of them have the track record of Sanchez, but it’s Sanchez who gets benched.

6. Sanchez wasn’t the only one with the day off on Sunday. A day after coming off the IL, Torres was given the day off in an unproven attempt to prevent further injury. Hicks was also once again on the bench too for load management reasons. Do you think Torres and Hicks were given the full game off though? Of course not. Sure enough, the Yankees were in need of offense and needed to use Torres and Hicks in pinch-hit roles. Sanchez wasn’t used as a pinch hitter as Boone chose to let Kratz bat in the seventh, representing the tying run at the plate.

7. Boone didn’t mention that he saw “good things” from the Yankees after Sunday’s loss. Maybe someone finally got to him and told him how embarrassing he sounds talking about the positives for a team whose season is spinning out of control. A day after scoring one run against the Orioles, Boone said he thought Sunday would be different.

“I felt like the energy coming in today was really good,” Boone said. “I felt like the mindset was, ‘This is the day were going to go out and start turning it around.’”

It’s time Boone stops reading minds as the Yankees scored one run on a day when Boone thought his team was going to turn it around. Not only did they only score one run, they got shut down by Dean Kramer, who one-hit the Yankees in his major league debut (6 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K). This came the day after Keegan Akin shut out the Yankees for 5 1/3 innings in his second career start. And not even two weeks ago, the Braves’ Ian Anderson one-hit the Yankees over six innings in his major league debut.

8. On the first 12 pitches he threw on Sunday, Tanaka allowed three hits, a walk and two runs without recording an out. He settled down to hold the Orioles to the two runs through five. In the sixth, a Miguel Andujar error began the inning, but Tanaka bounced back to strike out Ryan Mountcastle. After Rio Ruiz singled on a ground ball, Boone decided to go to the bullpen. With two on and one out and the Yankees trailing by one and desperately needing a win and with a completely rested bullpen available, Boone brought in … Luis Cessa! Two singles and a walk later and the Orioles’ one-run lead had become a three-run lead.

Meredith Marakovits bluntly asked Boone about this after the game, asking, “Why Cessa there in relief?”

Boone didn’t know how to answer. He paused, then picked up his hat off his head with his right hand and placed it back on his head. He let out his patented “Ummmmm” and then struggled trying to come up with an excuse which would justify his managerial blunder.

“As opposed … you mean … ,” Boone said fumbling his words. “Why did I take Masa out?”

“No, why did you choose to go with Luis Cessa,” Marakovits repeated. “Did you consider going to any of the other guys?”

Then Boone gave the most run-around, non-answer of all time.

“Obviously not Britt or Chappy at that point,” Boone said, making it clear the inning dictates who pitches and not the situation. “So the only one I was considering was Otto in the sixth there to start if I was gonna take Masa out. But I felt like Masa … as the day went on, especially his slider started to play more and Cessa has been obviously throwing the ball really well for us … and I felt like, down a run, Cessa was a guy that for that bottom part of the order and then at the top to hand the ball off to Otto or something. It felt like that was a good matchup. He just gave up the base hit.”

No, that wasn’t a coherent answer from Boone. It sounded like Billy Madison’s answer using The Puppy Who Lost His Way in the academic decathlon. It didn’t answer Marakovits’ question and it didn’t come close to making sense. That’s the answer from the man the Yankees decided to hand their team over in the middle of a championship window.

9. On Sunday’s Yankees Podcast, I talked about what will happen with Clint Frazier when Judge and Stanton come back (if they ever do), and Ken Singleton brought it up on YES as well. If Frazier, who has been one of the Yankees’ only three hitters (along with LeMahieu and Luke Voit) to consistently produce, doesn’t play because two guys who never play finally return, I will actively root against the Yankees. That’s not a joke. I will root as hard as I normally do for them to win, for them to lose. I will go as far as to buy apparel for whichever team they face in the playoffs if I have to. That is if they get to the playoffs.

10. Remember when the Yankees were a lock for the postseason because of the eight-team format? Well, now they’re the 8-seed in the AL, trailing the Blue Jays by one game, and their lead for the eighth and final postseason berth is one game in the loss column on the Tigers and two games in the loss column on the Orioles.

The Yankees were 16-6 and now they’re 21-19. They just lost three in a row to the Orioles and have lost five of seven. I wonder who will get the day off on Monday.

***

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

Sep 4, 2020

Yankees Keep Losing and Aaron Boone Keeps Saying They’re Doing ‘Good Things’

It’s embarrassing to be a Yankees fan right now. After winning four of five to sort of get back on track, the Yankees have now lost three out of four to continue their downward trend.

It’s embarrassing to be a Yankees fan right now. After winning four of five to sort of get back on track, the Yankees have now lost three of four to continue their downward trend.

The Yankees were once 16-6 and now they’re 20-16. They have gone from having the best record in baseball to now being tied with the Blue Jays. The only thing keeping them ahead of the Blue Jays is percentage points, and it’s only .014 percentage points. Once that goes, the Yankees will be the 8-seed in the American League playoffs and lined up to play the Rays in the best-of-3 first round with all three games at the Trop. From World Series favorite to potentially the 8-seed if they lose either of the two doubleheader games on Friday to the Orioles. The next stop is out of the playoff picture completely, and they only have a one-game lead in the loss column on the Tigers from that happening.

I haven’t heard a word lately from all of the people who told me “Everything will be fine” when the team was purposely giving away games to the Phillies and blowing leads to the Rays. I haven’t received any tweets recently telling me “The Yankees are a lock for the playoffs in the expanded postseason field” the way I was when they kept giving starts to J.A. Happ and high-leverage situations to Luis Avilan. The Yankees kept up their load management strategy even as the injuries once again got out of control and they gave unnecessary rest to players and pitched the last relievers on the roster in winnable games because they thought they could waltz into the playoffs. From the first game, the Yankees treated this season like a formality to the postseason and now they are barely holding a postseason spot.

Thursday’s loss to the Mets was the latest embarrassment in a season full of them. The Yankees blew a 4-0 lead and a 7-4 lead. They blew the 4-0 lead because apparently Happ has an endless leash when he clearly doesn’t have it. They blew the 7-4 lead because Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman couldn’t get six outs before giving up three runs. The second Chapman allowed the game to be tied, I knew the Yankees were going to lose. They had already used Adam Ottavino, Chad Green, Britton and Chapman and whatever came out of the bullpen from then on was going to be a fringe major leaguer. It only took one batter in extra innings for the Mets to end the game.

If you were fooled by Happ’s last start against the Mets into thinking he might have turned a corner, you’re a fool. There is no corner to turn for him. Given enough chances, Happ was eventually going to have a good start, the way Brett Gardner will eventually get a hit if given everyday at-bats. But that one start was an anomaly. Thursday’s start was who Happ is, and that’s a pitcher who shouldn’t be pitching for a team with championship aspirations. Happ allowed nine baserunners in five innings, and as he unraveled in the fourth inning, Boone sat in the dugout twiddling his thumb and leaning with one arm on the dugout railing like the clueless idiot he is. Boone let it happen, and it wasn’t the first time this has happened either.

On July 30, Happ was given a 5-0 lead before he even took the mound. By the end of the second inning, he had given four runs back. He had to be pulled after four innings.

On Aug. 5, Happ was given a 3-0 after two innings. In the third inning, he gave it all back and then some, putting his team behind 4-3. In that inning he allowed a walk, two-run home run, another walk, a single, another walk and another walk to walk in a run, and Boone allowed him to finish the inning.

On Aug. 16, Happ beat the Red Sox, who are the worst team in the AL. What an accomplishment! That day, he also told the media about his unhappiness with having his starts skipped.

On Aug. 25, Happ made it clear to the media the Yankees were skipping his starts because of his $17 million vesting option for 2020, which kicks in if he gets 10 starts. At the time of this, Happ had a 6.39 ERA.

On Aug. 29, Happ beats the Mets and has his longest start as a Yankee. It was the first time he pitched exceptionally well since the end of the 2018 regular season.

Then there’s Thursday, where Happ was given a 4-0 lead and blew it completely, and was allowed to blow it completely and keep pitching after it was blown. “In that fourth inning, I was one strike away from getting out of there,” Happ said after the game. “They put some good at-bats together and hit it where we weren’t.”

As I wrote in J.A. Happ Can’t Start Another Game for the Yankees back on Aug. 6, it’s not Happ’s fault he’s losing games for the Yankees. He didn’t miss out on Patrick Corbin in free agency over a measly extra year only to then turn around and give himself a multi-year contract at the age of 36 as a fastball pitcher with a declining fastball. He doesn’t keep himself in the rotation and he doesn’t let himself remain in games as he keeps putting runners on base and letting those runners score. He sucks, but he’s going to pitch as long as the Yankees let him, and they keep letting him.

Britton was horrible (1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2K, 1 HR), but Chapman was even worse. I have no confidence in Chapman. I tweeted the other night that my confidence level with him is a 2.4 out of 10. Well, that 2.4 is now a 1.3. He’s allowed four runs in four innings this season and two home runs. In his last 13 2/3 innings going back to Sept. 7 of last season, and including the playoffs, he’s allowed four home runs. One on Sept. 7, the walk-off bomb to Jose Altuve in the ALCS and the two this season. “As far as our team, I think we should be able to be fine,” Chapman said after the game. I’m glad the closer who can’t close a game and can’t pitch a 1-2-3 inning thinks the team will be fine.

Chapman didn’t say he sucked or made bad pitches, everything he said sounded like excuses. “It’s a matter of working on my fastball command,” Chapman said. “Little by little, every day that goes by, it keeps getting better.” Keeps getting better? What? Chapman can’t throw strikes. He’s behind every hitter and then when he has to come in the zone, he throws a fastball major leaguers can sit on or a get-me-over slider that gets crushed for an extra-base hit. Yes, Chapman needs to work on his fastball command. No, it’s not getting better. If anything, it’s gotten worse. He was bound to become mortal eventually as his velocity declined, but now he can’t get outs at 99-101 mph? He needs to be at 103 mph? He was on the mound when the Yankees’ season ended last October, and I have a bad, bad feeling about what he will do this October.

As for Boone, he’s a joke. He really is. After the game, he said, “It’s a tough one to lose, because we did a lot of good things today.” What were the good things? Blowing a 4-0 lead? Personally letting your starting pitcher blow the 4-0 lead? Blowing a 7-4 lead? Watching your setup man and closer melt down? Having your baserunning specialist get doubled off second in extras? Should I keep listing all the good things the Yankees did?

It didn’t stop there. “We’ve got to build on the good things we did,” Boone said. “We were set up there to close it out. It just didn’t happen today, and we’ve got to turn the page real quick.” I’m sick and tired of hearing the Yankees talk about “turning the page” like they’re Bob Seger or how they have to have “short memories” or how they have to “come back tomorrow and play better.” Time is running out. It’s a 60-game season and the season is now exactly 60 percent over. When does the page turning stop? When do the Yankees get to the end of the chapter about having absolutely no urgency?

The Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi, claiming he was too tense and it made the clubhouse and players tense. Well, Boone’s buddy-buddy, everything-is-sunshine-and-rainbows, Southern California approach seems to be working as it has the entire team thinking losing isn’t a big deal. When they get laughed at like they were by the Rays on Wednesday or humiliated like they were by the Mets on Thursday, they don’t seem to care. Why should they? Their manager seems to think they are doing “good things” as the losses pile up and they slide down the AL standings.

If the Yankees were to ever miss the playoffs, I’m sure Boone would say the Yankees played well and did “good things” and it just didn’t work out for them. The front office would blame the collapse on the shortened season and injuries as if they were the only team to deal with those two things, and Boone would get a new three-year contract to continue to tell the highest-paid roster in the league that everything is great as their championship window of opportunity continues to close.

If Happ thinks he “was one strike away” and if Chapman thinks the team “will be fine” and his fastball “keeps getting better and better” and if Boone thinks the team “did a lot of good things” on Thursday, who am I to argue?

The Yankees don’t seem to care that their season is falling apart and another year of their championship window will be wasted, so why should Yankees fans?

***

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

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

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Sep 3, 2020

Yankees Thoughts: The AL East Is Over

Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore painful losses to the Rays.

Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. The Yankees are 18-7 against teams not from Tampa this season, and they went 2-8 against the Rays this season. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore embarrassment of the team with the 28th payroll beating the team with the highest payroll in every facet of the game.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Back in February, the Yankees were the favorite to win the World Series. Aaron Hicks was going to miss the first half of the season. Then James Paxton was going to be out for the first month of the season. Then Luis Severino went down for the season. Then Giancarlo Stanton was going to miss the first half of the season. Then Aaron Judge was going to miss the first half of the season. Then the season was postponed.

With the late-July start to a shortened, 60-game season, the Yankees were still at least the favorite to win the American League. Then Masahiro Tanaka missed the start of the shortened season after taking a line drive to the head. Then Aroldis Chapman got put on the COVID-19 list. Then Paxton lost his velocity. Then Tommy Kahnle went down for the season. Then J.A. Happ pitched like a soon-to-be 38-year-old coming off the worst season of his career. Then Aaron Boone didn’t improve as a manager. Then Gary Sanchez couldn’t make contact. Then Stanton went on the injured list. The Judge went on the injured list. Then the Yankees couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Brett Gardner turned back into the player who looked finished in 2018. Then DJ LeMahieu went on the injured list. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Hicks became the No. 3 hitter. Then Zack Britton went on the injured list. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Gleyber Torres went on the injured list. Then the Yankees started playing Tyler Wade every day. Then Judge went on the injured list again. Then Sanchez still couldn’t make contact. Then Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on. Then Gerrit Cole started giving up home runs like Phil Hughes. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Chad Green turned into his April 2019 self. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays.

Once 16-6 with the best record in baseball, the Yankees are now just 20-15.

2. The division is over. It’s over. Put an asterisk or a lowercase letter next to the Rays in the standings denoting they clinched it. The Yankees are three games back in the loss column and 4 1/2 games back overall against the Rays. According to FanGraphs, the Yankees have a 13 percent chance of winning the AL East. If you’re holding on to the slimmest of hope that they can play better than .750 baseball for the next three-plus weeks or that the Rays collapse, just remember the Yankees are closer to being out of the playoffs (they have a two-game loss-column lead on the ninth-place Tigers) than they are to the Rays.

The Yankees have 25 games remaining and the Rays have 22. If the Rays play .500 baseball the rest of the way and go 11-11, they will finish at 37-23. The Yankees would have to go 18-7 just to tie them, and that would do nothing since the Rays won the head-to-head matchup in an 8-2 landslide. The Yankees would have to go 19-6 to win the division if the Rays play .500 baseball. The Rays aren’t going to play .500 baseball though, not with a rotation of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton. And the Yankees aren’t going to go 19-6. Not with 10 of their remaining 25 games against the Blue Jays, who are much improved and also battling for a postseason spot.

3. The best the Yankees can do now is finish as the No. 4 seed in the AL playoffs. That is the only non-division winner spot that will get to host all three games in the best-of-3 first round. The Yankees are one game back in the loss column from the 4-seed and are tied with the same record as the Astros for the 5-seed, but lose the division record tiebreaker. Right now, the Yankees are the 6-seed, lined up to play the Indians in the best-of-3. That means facing the best pitcher in the AL this season in Shane Bieber in Game 1 and then either Carlos Carrasco (3.75 ERA), Zach Plesac (1.33 ERA), Triston McKenzie (1.69 ERA) or Aaron Civale (3.72 ERA) in Game 2, and another name from that list in Game 3. All three games (if necessary) would be played in Cleveland if there isn’t a playoff bubble.

4. The Yankees just had their current postseason rotation of Cole, Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery perfectly set for a three-game series at home against the Rays, who wouldn’t be starting Snell, and they still lost the series. That’s about as disheartening as it gets. The Yankees not having Judge, Stanton or Torres isn’t an excuse. Even without those three, the Yankees’ lineup is still better than the Rays’ on paper. The problem is the Yankees’ lineup doesn’t hit like it should on paper and neither does the Rays’. And the Rays have their own injury problems, missing Ryan Yarbrough, Nick Anderson, Oliver Drake, Jalen Beeks, Chaz Rose, Mike Zunino, Yonny Chirinos and Jose Alvarado. I don’t see anyone complaining about the Rays’ injuries, all I see them is winning nearly every day and having the best record in the American League.

5. I’m happy the season series against the Rays is over. Now I don’t have to watch the Yankees lose anymore regular-season games to the Rays and I don’t have to hear about the two team’s recent history of throwing at each other. Has there ever been more made of a pitch that didn’t actually hit a player or benches clearing that didn’t actually lead to a fight than there was from Tuesday night? Maybe Chapman meant to throw at Mike Brosseau. If he did, he’s an idiot, considering the Yankees had to have that game and putting Brosseau on with two outs in the ninth would have brought up the tying run. And Chapman isn’t exactly Mariano Rivera or even his old self in terms of confidence in successfully closing out games. He can’t be screwing around with runners on base because it usually doesn’t end well for him. The suspension for him and the suspensions for Boone and Kevin Cash were unnecessary. Nothing happened. No one did anything and no one pushed or punched anyone, outside of Wade for some reason trying to hold the Rays’ dugout back. If you were picking teams in a fight between the Yankees and Rays, Wade would easily be the last pick of the draft, and that’s after you pick the clubhouse attendants and bat and ball boys. I wonder how tough the Rays would have acted if Judge and Stanton were on the IL or if CC Sabathia were still on the team. Probably as tough as they have acted under those circumstances when tempers flared in the past: not tough at all.

6. So much for that grand slam on Sunday leading to Sanchez turning around his season. None of his previous five home runs led to him turning around his season, and homering in three straight games didn’t either. So I’m not sure why I thought maybe, just maybe a go-ahead, extra-inning grand slam would bring the old Sanchez back. Sanchez went 1-for-10 with a walk and four strikeouts in the three games against the Rays and he’s down to .130/.245/.337. It’s appalling that Sanchez’s OPS (.582) looks like what his slugging percentage should be. The other night, Paul O’Neill said that Sanchez isn’t going to hit .300 this season should focus on just hitting well for from here on. .300? .300?!?! Can Sanchez even get to .200 at this point?

7. DJ LeMahieu’s average finally dipped below .400 to .392. If LeMahieu can get to 186 plate appearances, he will qualify for the batting title, and he will win it. He needs 82 over the final 25 games or 3.28 per game. Basically, he just can’t get hurt. The next closest is Franmil Reyes at .336 and Tim Anderson at .333. LeMahieu would become the first player ever to win a batting title in both leagues, and he should have done it last season when he hit .327, but Anderson stole it from him by hitting .335 in only 123 games and 22 fewer games. LeMahieu is the best player on the Yankees. He needs to be extended. The Yankees can’t screw this up, but I wouldn’t count on them not screwing it up.

8. I want to reiterate what I wrote in What is Wrong with Gerrit Cole? on Tuesday because he’s the most important Yankee when it comes to the postseason. If Cole doesn’t turn into his Houston self, the Yankees aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does in October, he’s the single-most important Yankee in the postseason. He was supposed to be like signing two starting pitchers if the Yankees were to face the Astros in the ALCS since the Astros would be without him and the Yankees would be with him. Now that there’s an extra best-of-3 postseason round, the Yankees will need him to beat whichever team they face in that game. Cole has five starts left: Baltimore (2), Toronto, Boston and Miami. He has five stats to go from the guy leading the league in home runs allowed to the guy that couldn’t lose a game for more than a year. If this version of Cole is present in the postseason, it won’t matter if the team is at full strength, the Yankees won’t have a chance.

9. I like how the Yankees keep saying Deivi Garcia is in the conversation to start on Friday. I hope that’s just an unnecessary strategy ploy, so the Orioles don’t overly prepare for him because if it’s not, this team is more poorly run and managed than anyone thought. Garcia produced the best, or at worst, the second-best start of the Yankees’ season in his debut. It was better than any Cole or Tanaka start, much better than any Montgomery start, and the only start comparable would be Happ’s against the Mets. Garcia doesn’t just deserve to start, he deserves to be in the rotation. I would have him pitch Game 3 in the postseason right now over Montgomery based on one major league start. That’s how good he was. I’m sure the Yankees will call him up to start on Friday and make him the 29th man on the roster for the doubleheader and then send him back down after his start because they don’t want to not have Nick Nelson or Ben Heller on the active roster. What would they do without Nelson or Heller?!

10. The last three games were absent of Boone screwing anything up, causing my blood pressure to hit dangerous levels. That’s because Cole ruined Monday’s game in the first inning and the offense could barely make contact against Tyler Glasnow, Tanaka was able to get the ball right to the elite relievers on Tuesday, and Boone was suspended for Wednesday’s game, though it didn’t matter since Montgomery ruined it within the first four batters. It wasn’t fun watching the Yankees lose another series to the Rays, lose more ground in the standings, and ultimately lose the division. But it was nice to sit back and not have any issues with Boone over the last three nights. I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, if at all.

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Blogs

Sep 2, 2020

The 2020 MLB All-Animosity Team

In a normal year, I would put out the All-Animosity Team to coincide with the All-Star Game. But this isn’t a new normal year and there’s no All-Star Game, so now is as good a time as any to announce the team.

On Tuesday night, the Yankees had a 2-0 lead over the Rays in the fifth inning, and it seemed like maybe this would be the game the Yankees would finally stop their losing streak against their only division competition. Instead, Kevin Kiermaier hit a game-tying, two-run home run off Masahiro Tanaka, a night after putting a Gerrit Cole pitch in the second deck at Yankee Stadium. On the light-hitting Rays, Kiermaier might be the lighest hitter, but not against the Yankees. In seven games against the Yankees this season, Kiermaier has two doubles, two home runs, four walks and a 1.150 OPS.

In a normal year, I would put out the All-Animosity Team to coincide with the All-Star Game. But this isn’t a normal year and there’s no All-Star Game, and after Kiermaier’s latest big hit against the Yankees, I decided now is as good a time as any to announce the 2020 MLB All-Animosity Team.

I’ll always remember the teams which featured David Wright, Josh Beckett, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Adrian Gonzalez, Chone Figgins, Kevin Youkilis, Robert Andino, Carl Crawford, Manny Ramirez, Matt Wieters, Delmon Young, B.J. Upton (when he went by B.J.), Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Jose Bautista, Magglio Ordonez and many others. But I also like having a new generation of players to have animosity for, and this year there are a few new names on the list.

Here is the 2020 All-Animosity Team.

C: Christian Vazquez
There were reports of the Red Sox possibly trading Vazquez prior to Monday’s deadline and I couldn’t have been happier about what I was hearing. Unfortunately, Vazquez wasn’t traded and remains a Red Sox and remains in the AL East where he will undoubtedly hurt the Yankees.

Vazquez only has a .633 career OPS against the Yankees, but it seems like the times he does get a hit, it’s a big one. None bigger than the opposite-field home run he hit off Zack Britton in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS, which ended up being the difference in the game.

1B: Pete Alonso
I will never get over Pete Alonso breaking Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record in a season in which the actual baseball was manufactured so differently that Brett Gardner hit 28 home runs. Alonso never should have hit 53 home runs and never should have broken Judge’s record of 52.

Alonso has been terrible this season, which has made last season hurt less, and has also made it obvious that his record-setting power was a product of the baseball. Alonso is on a 28-home run pace with six and is batting .213/.333/.385 this year. He has been demoted from in the top-third of the Mets’ order and has mostly batted sixth over the last few weeks, which hasn’t been hard to watch.

2B: Jose Altuve
Jose Altuve used to be my favorite non-Yankees player. That was before this past October and offseason.

After hitting .320/.414/.560 with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the 2017 ALCS, Altuve hit .348/.444/1.097 with a double, two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the 2019 ALCS. He also is responsible for ending the Yankees’ season with a walk-off, pennant-winning home run in Game 6.

A career .291 hitter against the Yankees, I used to enjoy watching Altuve play (when not playing the Yankees) and admired his ability for his stature. Now I watch him hoping he will fail, and this season he has, hitting .211/.276/.316 in 32 games. A .592 OPS? Now that’s enjoyable.

3B: Rafael Devers
The moment Rafael Devers hit that two-strike, opposite-field home run off Aroldis Chapman in 2017, I knew I had a problem. I also knew the All-Animosity Team had a third baseman for the next decade.

After his impressive 58-game rookie season in 2017, Devers looked lost last in 2018, batting .240/.298/.433 in 121 games and I got ahead of myself thinking the 21-year-old might be a bust. Last season, he hit .311/.361/.555 with a league-leading 54 doubles to go along with 32 home runs 115 RBIs.

Devers is going to be on this team for a long, long time. That is, until he’s set to free agency and the Red Sox cry poor and trade him. I can only dream that will happen.

SS: Carlos Correa
While Altuve and Alex Bregman were hiding behind their prepared statemetns and vague responses to questions about the Astro’s sign-stealing scandal, Correa was busy talking to anyone who would listen. The only problem was a lot of what he said was outrageous.

Add in his ridiculous 1.040 career OPS against the Yankees, his .913 OPS against them in the 2017 ALCS and his two home runs in the 2019 ALCS, including his walk-off in Game 2, and Correa is an easy fit to pencil in at short on this team.

LF: Anthony Santander
This spot went to Trey Mancini last season, but unfortunately Mancini isn’t playing this season. I do wish him a healthy and speedy recovery, so he can get back on the field and back on this team and I can get back to watching him torment Yankees pitching.

In Mancini’s place, I thought it only made sense to fill the spot with an Oriole. And like Mancini, Santander is seemingly the only hitter to truly worry about in the Orioles’ lineup and not let beat you, and the Yankees consistently let him beat them. No, they don’t let the Orioles actually beat them and win a game, they let Santander beat them in his at-bats. Even as the Yankees won 17 straight games against the Orioles in 2019, Santander kept on hitting against them with three home runs and a .900 OPS. He currently leads the league in doubles (13) and RBIs (32), so not having to worry about him isn’t going to end anytime soon.

CF: Kevin Kiemaier
Kiermaier is a career .249/.308/.382 hitter, but against the Yankees he might as well be Ken Griffey Jr. This season, Kiermaier has drawn game-changing walks, hit big home runs against Tanaka and Gerrit Cole and has continued to play Gold Glove defense, up until his ill-advised dive on Tuesday night.

Normally, I want Yankees pitching to face as many hitters with Kiermaier’s numbers as possible, but not Kiermaier. I’m looking forward to his contract with the Rays ending in 2022, and hopefully the team option for 2023 isn’t picked up.

RF: Randal Grichuk
How did Randal Grichuk end up on this team full of All-Stars, award-winning players and ex-Yankees? Well, in 19 games last season against the Yankees, Grichuk had two doubles, eight home runs, 15 RBIs and a .938 OPS. Add in the five home runs he hit against the Yankees in 16 games in 2018 and you know why he’s on this team.

Grichuk is barely a major leaguer when he plays against the 28 other teams not named the Yankees and he’s a Hall of Famer against the Yankees. He essentially hits against the Yankees the way Ortiz, Evan Longoria, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Manny Machado used to.

DH: Alex Bregman
The first thing I used to think about when thinking about Bregman was how hard it is to retire him at the plate. Now when I think of him, I think of him standing there at the Astros’ fan fest and giving the same rehearsed answer over and over about the team’s sign-stealing scandal with that smirk on his face and the sarcastic laugh he kept giving the media. It doesn’t matter that he overall doesn’t hit against the Yankees, those answers, that smirk and that laugh are enough to get him on this team.

SP: Justin Verlander
I haven’t liked Justin Verlander since Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS. The Yankees’ decision to not trade for his enormous contract at the 2017 August deadline and allowing him to go to the Astros to single-handedly decide that season’s ALCS made me like him less (though it made me like the Yankees’ financial decisions even less).

It pains me that Verlander was finally able to get over the championship hump in 2017 after years of losing in the ALCS and World Series and it pains me even more that his championship came after he won both Games 2 and 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees.

Verlander was openly critical of sign stealing around the league, but after his own team was caught in the biggest sign-stealing scandal of all time, Verlander had nothing to say. He’s a fraud.

RP: Nathan Eovaldi
Nathan Eovaldi isn’t a relief pitcher, but he has been, and he most notably was in the 2018 World Series.

Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and can’t strike anyone out and that’s exactly what Eovaldi is. The Dodgers gave up on him and the Marlins gave up on him despite him being 24 years old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and he 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 per 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 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 the team’s history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the 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 and I’ll never get over it. At least he’s returned to his former pre-2018 postseason self.

Manager: Dave Roberts
If Dave Roberts is unsuccessful in his attempt to steal second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees win that series and most likely the World Series, and who knows, maybe the Red Sox still haven’t won a championship since 1918. Without that steal, Roberts isn’t a household name in the baseball world and he most likely isn’t the manager of the Dodgers.

It was Roberts’s bullpen decisions in the 2018 World Series which led to another Red Sox championship as he continually gave the ball to Ryan Madson, forgetting it was 2018 and not 2009. The right-handed reliever somehow appeared in four of the five games in the series despite allowing all seven of his inherited runners to score. It was also Roberts who decided not to start Cody Bellinger in Games 1, 2 and 5 and Max Muncy in Games 1 and 2, choosing to not have arguably his best two hitters in the lineup for the entire game. Roberts is now responsible for two Red Sox championships.

I dream about the Yankees playing the Dodgers in the 2020 World Series and the Yankees handing Roberts his third straight World Series loss. But if the Yankees and Dodgers do play in the World Series, I won’t have to dream about the Yankees winning, Roberts’ managing will take care of it for me.

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