Blogs – Page 94 – Keefe To The City

Sep 10, 2020

NFL Week 1 Picks

The first week of football is special. Keeping up with the games, parlays, teasers and fantasy teams all at once, while drinking and eating thousands of bad calories for nearly 11 straight hours 17 times a year is magical.

Football is back, and it’s weird. Baseball began less than two months ago, and my brain is telling me we’re not even one-third of the way through the baseball season, so it’s hard to process the idea that football begins this week. For nearly four months, there weren’t any sports, and now all four major sports are active.

With the beginning of football, my seasonal depression also begins. The fact it’s getting cold at night and the temperatures have started to fluctuate enough from day to day that I will have to actually check the weather to see what I should be wearing saddens me. I hate that summer is over. I hate it. But like every year at this time, I’m happy that football is back.

The first week of football is special and the anxiousness at 1:00 p.m. on the first Sunday of the season is indescribable. Keeping up with the games, parlays, teasers and fantasy teams all at once, while drinking and eating thousands of bad calories for nearly 11 straight hours 17 times a year is magical.

In order to avoid a down week from a financial standpoint I have come up with some personal gambling rules to prevent any emotional or illogical decisions this season.

1. Don’t Be Tricked by Week 1
Week 1 is my favorite week to pick and wager on because your decision making is based on your own knowledge and feel for how the season will play out. Week 2, on the other hand, is a reaction and a lot of times an overreaction to what happened in Week 1. (If I could, I would sit out Week 2. I guess I technically could sit out Week 2, but we all know that’s not going to happen.)

I spend the entire offseason coming up with an opinion on each team, and then Week 1 happens, and some of those opinions, and at times a lot of those opinions, are destroyed or proved wrong. Except they aren’t.

Don’t let the results of Week 1 influence your original opinions on teams for Week 2. The Week 2 lines are the most reactive lines of the season because there is only one game of information to go off of.

I need to set a calendar reminder to read this paragraph when I write the Week 2 picks blog.

2. Be Careful with Thursday Night Football
It’s not so much about Thursday Night Football in September and October as it is in November and December when baseball is over and the time between Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football feels like an eternity.

The Thursday Night Football game generally sucks. Generally might be too generous. It sucks nearly every single week. The Opening Night Thursday game doesn’t count and neither do the Thanksgiving games since those are unlike the other Thursday games. When it comes to the Thursday game, just because there hasn’t been a game on on in 72 hours, it doesn’t mean it needs to be wagered on.

3. Beware of the Bs
Last season, I said “Beware of the Non-Bears Bs” after their 2018 season. A lot of good that did me. The Bears are back with the rest of the Bs in not being able to be trusted.

The Bears, Browns, Bengals, Buccaneers, Broncos and Bills are not your friend. Don’t get enticed by any high-point spread or any glowing money line. The Bears are still starting Mitch Trubisky. The Browns … well, they’re the Browns no matter what offensive names they have. The Bengals have a rookie quarterback. The Bucs have tried to build a Pro Bowl team from a few seasons ago. The Broncos are nowhere close to being good. And the Bills are expected to win the AFC East and contend for a championship, and the only thing worse than believing in the Bills is believing in a Bills team that has expectations for the first time since the ’90s.

4. Don’t Bet on the Giants
I have had some memorable runs with the Giants, especially their money lines over the years, but we are long past the point of where I have lost money overall on the Giants. Long past the point. If the point is Mischa Barton on The OC in 2003 then I’m Mischa Barton on The Hills.

I’m over thinking the Giants are going to be good or are going to eventually be good each week. I’m over it. I need to accept the Giants aren’t going to be good and need to realize no one really knows the next time they will be good. They have reached the playoffs once in eight years, and as a Giants fan, I need to expect the worst each week and not let inexplicable turnovers, undisciplined penalties and nonsensical in-game coaching decisions affect my life. I need to treat the Giants the way they have treated me in all but two years over the last 13 years: like I don’t care.

On top of this all, I need to somehow talk myself into thinking John Mara and David Gettleman have any idea what they’re doing and won’t further separate the Giants from contention. I need to talk myself into believing in Daniel Jones, the rest of Gettleman’s draft picks and the vision he has about building a team around a running back in a league which has drastically changed every rule to promote and help the passing game. I need to believe that the third time’s really a charm and that the organization finally got the head coach right in Joe Judge in their third try since unnecessarily moving on from Tom Coughlin

I won’t be betting on the Giants in 2020 because I’m suspending myself from betting on the Giants for all of 2020. (As a remminder, can someone please send me that last sentence every 15 minutes up until the Giants’ Week 1 kickoff?)

(Home team in caps)

KANSAS CITY -9 over Houston
Fans or no fans, a full Arrowhead Stadium or limited capacity, it’s always hard to pick against the Chiefs at home. Add in them raising their championship banner, it being the first game of the season and the fact the Texans couldn’t stop them in the playoffs and have only gotten worse since then and this game is a lay-up.

BALTIMORE -7.5 over Cleveland
I’m a little scared of the Browns’ offense actually putting it together with Baker Mayfield, Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry and Nick Chubb. But Mayfield has shown nothing to suggest he will be anything other than average in the league and your quarterback can’t be average when playing at Baltimore. If you’re Progressive, you can’t feel good about how much money you have dumped into Mayfield for your commercials. If I’m a prospective customer looking for an insurance provider, I have to cross Progressive off the list because they have Mayfield as the face of their company and the last thing you want is mediorcre insurance coverage. Until Mayfield proves he’s not the latest first-overall bust, I can’t get myself to back the Browns.

Indianapolis -8 over JACKSONVILLE
I was an Indianapolis believer last season after the run the team went on the season before. I wrongfully thought the drop off from Andrew Luck to Jacoby Brissett wouldn’t be as significant as it was, and my picks and bank account paid for it. The Colts were bad (7-9) and Brissett’s play forced the Colts to sign Philip Rivers. While I don’t trust Rivers at all, and don’t trust him to cover an eight-point spread in the first game with his new team, I trust the Jaguars less. This will be the last chance I give Frank Reich after his team burned me in the 2018 playoffs against the Texans and last season with their horrific play. If the Colts can’t go into Jacksonville and beat up on a very bad Jaguars team, I’m done with them.

Philadelphia -6 over WASHINGTON
There’s no good pick here. Either I picked the hated Eagles and they screw me the way they did in last season’s opener when they trailed Washington 17-0 in the second quarter and 20-7 at halftime before coming back to win 32-27, or I pick the hated Washington Football Team and I’m quickly reminded why you don’t pick Dwayne Haskins to cover a spread. The only answer is to go with the better team, and hope they are a touchdown better.

BUFFALO -6.5 over New York Jets
If the Jets are as bad as everyone thinks they will be and the Bills are as good as everyone thinks they will be, this might be the easiest game of the week.

NEW ENGLAND -7 over Miami
I always thought Bill Belichick would walk away from coaching when Tom Brady retired, for fear of not winning with Brady and for the grind of starting over, but that was without ever thinking Brady would play for another team. Once Brady left, Belichick had to stay. He had to stay to put a dent in Brady’s legacy. If Belichick can win with Cam Newton and a Patriots roster depleted by opt-outs, it will futher prove Belichick is the best coach in the history of the league and it will also prove he has been the most important part of the Patriots’ dyntasy and not Brady.

DETROIT -2.5 over Chicago
The second Matt Nagy named Trubisky as his starting quarterback, I knew who I was picking in this game.

MINNESOTA -2.5 over Green Bay
I think the Vikings missed their window of opportunity to win it all. If the window hasn’t closed, this season is likely their last chance to get to the Super Bowl with the current group, or what’s left of it after they turned over most of their defense. Following the NFC Championship debacle against the Eagles, the Vikings greatly overpaid for Kirk Cousins. It’s not Cousins’ fault the front office idiotically gave him a $96 million contract over three years, which has produced a season in which the team missed the playoffs completely and then were routed by the 49ers in the playoffs the following years. It’s that Cousins isn’t good, and he has done more harm than good for the Vikings. Maybe this season he can prove his contract wasn’t the worst investment the team could have made at the worst possible time.

ATLANTA -1 over Seattle
Ah, the battle of the two idiots who each single-handedly gave the Patriots a Super Bowl win as head coaches of their respective teams. I hate both teams and I hate both head coaches. Give me the home team.

Las Vegas -3 over CAROLINA
The best thing to ever happen to the Giants was the Panthers overpaying Matt Rhule and taking the Giants out of the equation. If Judge sucks, the Giants can look for the next guy as they continue to try to find a rightful heir to Coughlin. When you give a coach a six-year, $60 million deal like the Panthers gave Rhule, you better hope you picked the right guy because there’s no getting out of that. The Panthers aren’t going to eat that money if Rhule is a disaster, and I think he’s going to be a disaster. Giving a first-time NFL head coach and a moderately successful college head coach that kind of money is dumb.

Los Angeles Chargers -3 over CINCINNATI
I don’t care that the Chargers are starting Tyrod Taylor, even though the right play is to play Justin Herbert from the beginning. I’m sure four or five weeks into the season, Taylor will be on the bench, and the Chargers will have wasted a month or more valuable game experience Herbert could have gained. From a developmental standpoint, it’s a bad decision. From a picks decision, it’s a good one.

NEW ORLEANS -3.5 over Tampa Bay
I don’t want the Saints to beat the Buccaneers in Week 1, I want them to humilate them. I want the happy-go-lucky Brady Bucs to come crashing back to reality with the Saints running them out of the Superdome. Ultimately, I don’t want either Belichick or Brady to experience anymore success. For this week, let’s start with Brady getting knocked down adn then the attention can be turned to knocking Belichick down (though Newton might do that all by himself).

Arizona +6.5 over SAN FRANISCO
I can’t get the thought of picking against the the 49ers, who were the NFC’s best seven months ago, out of my head. I also can’t get the thought of Kyler Murray, DeAndre Hopkins and Larry Fitzgerald having their way with the 49ers’ defense. It’s extremely difficult to be great in back-to-back seasons in the NFL let alone repeat as conference champions in back-to-back seasons. I think the 49ers could regress this season, though that might just be the part of me that remembers watching Kyle Shanahan continuously call for passing plays with the Falcons holding a 25-point lead in the Super Bowl. I want the 49ers to be bad under Shanahan, and so I will root for that outcome.

LOS ANGELES RAMS +2 over Dallas
This season of Hard Knocks made me dislike the Rams more than I did after their vaunted offense no-showed in the Super Bowl against the Patriots and scored three points. For as much as HBO made me not like the Rams and their coaching staff, it could never make me dislike them more than the Cowboys.

NEW YORK GIANTS +6 over Pittsburgh
I’m very worried about this line because the Steelers aren’t any good and they’re giving six points to the Giants on the road. That’s not a good sign for the new-look Giants. It’s not a good sign for me as a Giants fan who wants the team to get back to the postseason for the second time in nine years. It’s a new season and I can’t pick against the Giants and turn on them yet. I will at least wait until they’re 0-2 (like they always are) to do that.

TENNESSEE -3 over Denver
I hated Mike Vrabel as a player. Vrabel as a head coach though? Well, that’s a different story. Between turning Ryan Tannehill into a viable NFL starter, ending the Brady-Belichick era, outsmarting Belichick with his run-down-the-clock play in the postseason, and knocking off both the Patriots and Ravens to reach the conference championship with essentially only a running back on offense, I have grown to love Vrabel. I wish he could be the head coach of the Giants. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with needing the Giants to have finally picked right with Judge.

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Blogs • Yankees

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.

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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.

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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?

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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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