Blogs – Page 98 – Keefe To The City

Nov 5, 2019

It’s Time for Yankees to Move on from Didi Gregorius

I don’t want the Yankees to bring Didi Gregorius back. It’s time to move on. It’s not that I would be upset if the Yankees do decide to bring him back, I just don’t want them to.

On Opening Day 2015, the Yankees trailed the Blue Jays 6-1 when Didi Gregorius was hit by a pitch to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning. With two outs, Carlos Beltran walked to push Gregorius into scoring position as Mark Teixeira came to the plate. The Yankees had a chance to get back into the game with one swing with from Teixeira, but on the first pitch to Teixeira, Gregorius inexplicably took off for third and was thrown out. Inning over, rally over, Yankees’ last chance to get back in the game over.

There was no need for Gregorius to try to steal third, mainly because there’s never a good reason to steal third, unless you’re being given it and are 100 percent certain you will get there. It was an ill-advised move by Derek Jeter’s heir most likely trying to do way too much in his first game with his new team in the team’s first game with a new everyday shortstop in 20 years. Gregorius tried to get into better scoring position for no logical reason, and while the Yankees were most likely going to lose the game anyway, it expedited the result.

After spending much of 2015 criticizing Gregorius, I grew to like and accept him as a player over the next four years despite his in-game decisions like stealing third with two outs, laying down bunts when it was the last thing the team needed or swinging at the first pitch after the previous hitter walked on four straight pitches. He saved the season in the 2017 wild-card game, beat up Corey Kluber in Game 5 of the 2017 ALDS, was the best player in baseball for the first 30 games of 2018 and provided the game-breaking grand slam in Game 2 of this year’s ALDS. Aside from the few postseason moments and the improbable early-season run in April 2018, Gregorius has been exactly what I thought he would be as a Yankee: a great fielder, but a low on-base, bottom-of-the-order bat. Due to injuries and a lack of left-handed bats, Gregorius was often miscast a Top 6 presence in the Yankees’ lineup when he has mostly belonged in the bottom third. Overall, the Gregorius trade worked out for the Yankees. They got an everyday, defensive-minded shortstop who was able to realize his power potential for five seasons.

When it was announced the Yankees didn’t extend a qualifying offer to Gregorius, I wasn’t shocked since he would have most likely accepted the one-year, nearly $18 million payday to rebuild his stock after Tommy John surgery and if the Yankees really wanted him back they could get him for more years at a lower average annual salary. But I don’t want the Yankees to bring him back for more years at any salary. It’s time to move on from Gregorius. It’s not that I would be upset if the Yankees do decide to bring Gregorius back, I just don’t want them to.

It’s not for any one reason but rather a combination of reasons. His low career on-base, his decline in production following surgery, his age turning 30 prior to Opening Day 2020 and his in-game baseball IQ being the lowest on the team since Nick Swisher. Unfortunately, money does matter to these Yankees and any money spent on Gregorius is less the team would have to spend eventually on someone like DJ LeMahieu or any of the young core players. In an ideal world, or a world prior to Hal Steinbrenner counting every penny, I would welcome Gregorius back knowing the Yankees would eventually not play him if he didn’t perform or move on from him if they needed to. But these Yankees won’t do that. Money owed is more important than production and if Gregorius were to fall off on the other side of 30, Yankees fans would have to sit through it.

The question becomes what the Yankees do at shortstop. Thankfully, they have a 22-year-old shortstop who has been playing second base for the last two seasons they could slide over to short and a three-time Gold Glove second baseman who has been playing first base who could slide over to second. The Yankees could then have either Gio Urshela or Miguel Andujar at third base, possibly move to Andujar to first base (which I want them to do), or go with a healthy Luke Voit there.

Gregorius was a nice player for the Yankees. He became a fan favorite, had some big hits, a few Yankees Classic-worthy moments and turned his career around in New York. He ended up being a more-than-acceptable replacement to an all-time Yankee at a position which hadn’t seen change in two decades and his time with the Yankees went much better than originally expected. But it’s time for a change and time to move on from Gregorius.

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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 • Giants

Nov 5, 2019

Giants-Cowboys Week 9 Thoughts: Another Game Played Means Another Loss

The Giants might not have the right head coach to lead them in the future, but they have the right head coach for this season. They have the right head coach to lose and keep losing.

I didn’t think the Giants would beat the Cowboys on Monday night. My opinion didn’t change when Dak Prescott was intercepted on the first play of the game. It didn’t change when the Giants took a 3-0 lead. It didn’t change when Brett Maher missed a go-ahead field goal. It didn’t change when Randall Cobb fumbled. It didn’t change when the Giants took a 9-3 lead and then a 12-3 lead. It didn’t change when the Cowboys screwed up, which they did a lot of, because I knew the Giants would screw up more in the end, and they did, and they lost 37-18.

The moment the Giants couldn’t take advantage of a first-and-Goal situation from the 7 after the Prescott interception to start the game, the result was inevitable. The Giants turned two Cowboys turnovers into a combined six points as they couldn’t cash in in the red zone, Aldrick Rosas missed another extra point, Daniel Jones had three more turnovers and Pat Shurmur lost another unwinnable challenge. It was the New York Football Giants’ weekly superfecta as the game had every ingredient for a recipe for another Giants loss.

The Cowboys aren’t good. Four of their five wins are against the Giants (twice), Dolphins and Redskins, and they are the same team that lost to the Jets three weeks ago. They played as sloppy and undisciplined of a game imaginable and still came away with a 19-point win because of how much worse the Giants were and are. Had the Cowboys put together that kind of effort against the league’s better teams they would have been the team losing by three scores.

The Giants need to play near-perfect football like they did against the Redskins or be gifted a win like they were against the Buccaneers to do anything other than lose at this stage of their rebuild. Jones is nowhere near ready to lead a competitive team, the offensive line is nowhere near ready to being competitive, the defense can’t put together a complete-game effort and is mostly lost and the head coach is about as qualified for his job as Bradley Jackson is for hers on The Morning Show.

Another week, another game, another expected loss for the Giants which resulted in a loss. The same story keeps getting told each week for a team that has lost 30 of its last 40 games, with another loss in the postseason, and is 40-65 since 2013. The team is now 7-17 under Shurmur, and while any successful coach would be discouraged by a .500 record, Shurmur can only dream of such an accomplishment.

If there are any Shurmur fans or supporters out there … why? How can you support and root for a guy who does nothing but lose an NFL head coach? Not just with the Giants, but anywhere. A head coach who can’t seem to design plays or a plan to properly utilize the most dynamic offensive player in the sport. A head coach who continues to make the same mistakes, place blame and not accept responsibility for what is another lost Giants season.

The only bright spot from the Giants’ performance in yet another loss to the Cowboys is that they continue to improve their draft status and make it harder for Shurmur to retain his job for 2020. I have no idea how ownership can even think for a second about bringing Shurmur back next season. Like Brian Cashman said about Sonny Gray before trading him, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” there’s no way the Giants can think Shurmur is magically going to find ability as a head coach next season. The front office let Shurmur ruin two seasons too many and they can’t allow him to ruin a third straight.

All there’s left for the Giants to do this season is to lose and keep losing. Get Jones and the young defense game experience along the way, and most importantly, keep on losing. The Giants might not have the right head coach to lead them in the future, but they have the right head coach for this season. They have the right head coach to lose and keep losing.

Blogs • Giants • NFL • NFL Picks

Oct 31, 2019

NFL Week 9 Picks

The season has become a one-month season at best for the Giants for all but one of the last seven years. Combine the Giants’ losing with a 5-10 picks week like last week and I wonder why I even watch this sport.

It’s been three years since the Giants played a meaningful game after October. Sure, last season they weren’t mathematically eliminated as far as December, but it was going to take the biggest miracle of all miracles for them to reach the postseason and that miracle certainly didn’t happen.

The NFL season has become a one-month season at best for the Giants and Giants fans like me for all but one of the last seven years and it’s miserable. Combine the Giants’ losing ways with a 5-10 picks week like last week and I wonder why I even watch this sport. Maybe the young and exciting, but very inconsistent Rangers will give me something to do after the holidays to get through the dark days of winter until March Madness and Opening Day. because once again, it won’t be the Giants.

(Home team in caps)

San Francisco -10 over ARIZONA
A 10-point line to open the week isn’t the greatest when you’re coming off a five-win week and need to start putting together a lot of Ws to dig out of a 10-games-under-.500-hole. I know taking the points on the road on a short week goes against everything I know about the NFL, but I can’t talk myself into the Cardinals.

JACKSONVILLE -1 over Houston
Flip a coin. I’m going with the Jaguars in their second home of London against yet another overrated Texans team. (I hate this game.)

BUFFALO -10.5 over Washington
Dwayne Haskins’ first career start is coming on the road in Buffalo against the Bills’ defense. That’s all.

Minnesota -4.5 over KANSAS CITY
I trust Kirk Cousins as much as I trust Pat Shurmur to challenge a play worth challenging. So needing Cousins to cover four points at hostile Arrowhead isn’t exactly an ideal situation. I’m banking on the Vikings’ defense being able to shut down a Matt Moore-led offense, and if they can’t do that then the Vikings are even bigger frauds than I think they are with one of their six wins being even remotely close to solid.

New York Jets -3.5 over MIAMI
If the Jets can’t beat the Dolphins then Adam Gase needs to be fired immediately following the game. I mean immediately after the team leaves the field. No ride home with the team on the plane. Fired. In the same building he was fired from a year ago.

PHILADELPHIA -4.5 over Chicago
As long as Mitch Trubisky is starting games for the Bears, I will be picking against the Bears.

Indianapolis -1 over PITTSBURGH
For some reason I like this Colts team. I continue to pick them to cover and win, bet on them and put them in teasers. They’re not that good if they’re even any good at all, but for some unknown reason I continue to trust and back them. I can’t explain it, but there’s very little that can be explained with regards to anything in this league.

CAROLINA -3.5 over Tennessee
As long as Ryan Tannehill is starting games for the Titans, I will be picking against the Titans.

OAKLAND +2.5 over Detroit
I’m done picking against the Raiders. Even though they’re not “good”, they’re good enough to keep screwing me over in parlays and teasers, and the only answer is to now starting picking in favor of them.

SEATTLE -4.5 over Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay shocked everyone when they went across the country and beat the Rams earlier this season. There’s a difference between being play a road game against the Rams and their “fans” and one against the Seahawks and their fans.

Cleveland -4 over DENVER
Baker Mayfield has regressed in his second season in the league, which isn’t what you want from the No. 1 overall pick and your franchise quarterback. Between Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen, the supposed great quarterback draft class of 2018 is look anything but that. The Browns are bad and I enjoy watching them lose, but even these Browns should be able to win in Denver against a quarterback making his first NFL start.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS +4 over Green Bay
I still think the Chargers are good. No, they’re not going to win a championship, but they’re good enough to be a playoff team and win a playoff game like they were last season. At some point though, they’re going to want to actually start putting wins together in order to be a playoff team and win a playoff game.

New England -3 over BALTIMORE
Two teams I hate and one of them has to win. The Patriots don’t usually play well against the Ravens, but it’s hard to pick against this Patriots defense right now, which looks the way it did in the early years of the dynasty.

Dallas -6.5 over NEW YORK GIANTS
When the Giants scored a touchdown on their first possession of the season against the Cowboys, I thought this season might amount to something. It didn’t. The Cowboys aren’t very good, but the Giants suck, and I can’t see a scenario where the Cowboys don’t convert third downs all game against the awful Giants defense.

Last week: 5-10-0
Season: 55-65-1

Blogs • Rangers

Oct 29, 2019

Rangers’ Roster Should Better Reflect Rebuild

I don’t know what to make of this Rangers team, and unfortunately, neither does the front office or coaching staff. The Rangers’ roster is being managed and their games are being coached with no real plan.

I really thought the Rangers were going to turn it around after Thursday’s impressive win over the Sabres. I really did. It’s not that I thought there wouldn’t be other losing streaks this season or that the Rangers would go on the kind of run they want on in early 2015. But I did think we would see consistent, full-game efforts from the team moving forward. That optimism lasted a little more than one period.

I didn’t expect the Rangers to necessarily beat the Bruins, even without Tuukka Rask playing. I did, however, expect them to play a competitive game, considering the Bruins had played at home the night before. The Rangers were barely competitive on Sunday night and barely looked like they were from the same league as the Bruins playing their second game in as many cities in as many nights. The Rangers might have led 1-0 after a period on a Micheal Haley goal of all goals, but the score was no way indicative of how the first period went. It was a game straight of the Henrik Lundqvist era as Number 30 played like it was 2011-12 and the defense gave up high-percentage and quality scoring chances like it was as well. To think Rangers fans would long for the overhyped defense of Lundqvist’s prime whose bad contracts led to this rebuild in the first place.

The Bruins dominated the first period and their domination paid off 11 seconds into the second when they tied it up on a call which I will never understand how it wasn’t goalie interference. Fifty-seven seconds later they had the lead and by the end of the period they were up 4-1 and Lundqvist’s night was done after essentially playing a game of Rebound for two periods. Fourty-three seconds into the third, Zdeno Chara welcomed Alexander Georgiev to the game with the Bruins’ fifth unanswered goal and the rout was on. The Rangers lost for the sixth time in seven games and lost by three goals for the fourth time this season. It was the type of game you could expect from a young, inexperienced team against a team that came within one win of winning the Stanley Cup, but not when you remember how the Rangers played and looked on Thursday against Buffalo.

I don’t know what to make of this Rangers team, and unfortunately, neither does the front office or coaching staff. I didn’t expect them to contend for a championship or necessarily even compete for a postseason spot a year and a half after they said they were going to move any tradeable asset and start over. But after opening the season with back-to-back wins and after seeing the type of game they are capable of playing against Buffalo, I thought we would see more of that. I thought we would see a young team grow and gain experience, while being fun to watch. I didn’t think 2019-20 would be a continuation of 2018-19 with no progress.

The Rangers’ roster is being managed and their games are being coached with no real plan. Players who are the foundation of the rebuild are having their minutes given to less deserving players and players who need and deserve NHL experience are having their roster spots given to less talented players for unknown reasons. Rather than go full rebuild and put the most talented team on the ice, no matter how young or inexperienced the team might then be, the Rangers are more worried with playing veterans even if those veterans aren’t part of the future and even if those veterans are playing out of position.

It would be one thing if this strategy were working, if the Rangers were winning with a head-scratching bottom six, while letting first-round picks with nothing left to prove in the AHL continue to need to prove they have earned their shot, but they’re not. The Rangers aren’t winning with their current roster and lineup construction, and their choices are coming at a cost of stunting the growth of their high-end prospects. With each game that comes off the 2019-20 schedule in which the team isn’t giving roster spots and ice time to the players they expect to be the architects of this rebuild, they’re hurting themselves for 2020-21 and beyond.

Maybe so much shouldn’t be made of the Rangers’ impressive four-goal win over the Sabres and that game should be viewed as the type of anomaly that can happen in a salary-cap league over 82 games, especially since it was sandwiched between a five-game losing streak and the worst effort of the season. But it’s hard to act like that game didn’t happen and now wonder how the Rangers can duplicate that effort moving forward.

This rebuild was always going to be a true rebuild and wasn’t going to happen on the fly. The Rangers miraculously acquiring the second overall pick and landing the offseason’s top free agent wrongfully sped up the timeline in the eyes of fans and altered the expectations of many. After nearly a month of play, the expectation for success for the Rangers this season is returning to where it should have been all along: none.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 28, 2019

Giants-Lions Week 8 Thoughts: Another Disappointment

Another game and another loss for the Giants. Losses have become expected for this team and expectations are being met every week.

I expected the Giants to lose on Sunday because that’s what the Giants have done for the last seven seasons: lose. Because I no longer expect the Giants to win from week to week and because I expect them to either get embarrassed, blown out or collapse, it’s made watching them easier. It hasn’t been enjoyable, it’s just been stress-free and care-free not expecting them to win the way they used to eight-plus years ago. It’s relaxing to watch the Giants play and not care about the outcome of their games since the outcomes for their games for the rest of the season don’t matter and because the outcomes of their game are mostly losses.

When Daniel Jones thew a backwards pass to no one that the Lions were able to pick up and run in for a touchdown, I laughed. When the Giants subsequently went three-and-out and the Lions converted a third-and-15 for a 49-yard pass, I laughed. When Aldrick Rosas missed an extra point for a chance to tie the game at 14, I laughed. When the Giants turned it over on downs twice later in the game and did just enough to nearly complete the two-score comeback, but still lost, I laughed. I did a lot of laughing watching the Giants because that’s all there is to do at this point. Laugh at an organization that’s become a joke.

A week after not being prepared for the Cardinals despite a 10-day layoff, the Giants dug themselves a 14-point deficit in the first quarter. The offense put up 19 points (and it would have been 20 if not for Rosas’ miss), which was the second-most they have scored this season, only having scored more in their Week 3 win over the Buccaneers when they put up 32. The defense allowed another quarterback to throw for over 300 yards against them (342).

It was another winnable game for the Giants that they lost. It’s a theme that become all too familiar over the last few years for a team that simply doesn’t know how to win. The Giants are now 2-6 this season and 7-17 under Pat Shurmur, the biggest loser of them all. And even though their second-half schedule is much easier than their first, I don’t expect the team to suddenly change its culture or identity and start winning. Not with this head coach.

The loss to the Lions was another game off the schedule. Another game gone in this miserable season and another game closer to next season when maybe the Giants will have a new head coach. For the rest of this season though, expect more games like Sunday: winnable games that slip away.