The Rangers lost Game 1 to the Hurricanes after being thoroughly outplayed. Henrik Lundqvist did all he could, but I’m sure to many it wasn’t enough.
You could take Saturday’s Rangers game and insert it into any of the last 15 Rangers seasons and it would fit seamlessly. A Rangers postseason game in which the team is thoroughly dominated, needs Henrik Lundqvist to stand on his head to have a chance and attemps a comeback a little too late? It was a game straight out of the Rangers’ post-lockout era, and unfortunately, it came against a team they have grown accustomed to beating, and a team they should beat.
In the first minute of Game 1 of the Rangers’ Stanley Cup qualifying series against the Hurricanes, Jesper Fast took a big hit from former teammate Brady Skjei. It was a big enough hit that Fast, arguably the Rangers’ best defensive player, was lost on the ice for the remainder of his shift. Most likely concussed from the hit, Fast stayed on the ice long enough to find his way back into the defensive zone where he stayed flat-footed because of his head injury and never thought to watch for or pick up Jacob Slavin joining the forecheck by creating a backdoor lane to the net. A cross-zone pass to Slavin and a perfect shot over Lundqvist’s right shoulder gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 just 61 seconds into the game. Fast never returned.
The game was officiated like a September preseason game in which the league is trying to display how infractions will be called for the upcoming season. And while there hasn’t been hockey in nearly four months and we are much closer to the start of a new season than we normally are to a postseason, calling 16 minor penalities in a playoff game is simply absurd. The entire first two periods were played with special teams and the more penalties the Rangers took, the more Artemi Panarin sat on the bench. And the more he sat on the bench, the more ice time Brett Howden and Greg McKegg received.
Like the regular season, it wasn’t until the Rangers’ chance of winning was approaching impossible that David Quinn began to make line decisions with urgency. It wasn’t until the Rangers trailed by two goals with about two minutes to go in the game that he finally gave in to putting Panarin and Mika Zibanejad on the ice together to kill a penalty and try to create offense. The desperation move from Quinn paid off as the two were able to control the puck in the Hurricanes’ zone and both assist on the Rangers’ second goal from the unlikely stick of Marc Staal.
The Rangers played the way they played for the first half of the regular season, abandoning the style of play that led to them going on the type of run needed to now be part of the 24-team tournament. Their play was chaotic in the first period as they let the Hurricanes dominate possession, and if not for Lundqvist, the game would have been over before the first intermission. Unfortunately, I can see Quinn going to Igor Shesterkin in Game 2 on Sunday, even though Lundqvist earned the right to play and deserves to play the next game after his performance in Game 1. But like the faction of fans who probably think the three goals against were Lundqvist’s fault and he’s the reason the team is already down in the best-of-5 series, Quinn will say the team needs a spark and he’ll go to Shesterkin. It’s illogical and unfair, but it’s the way Quinn makes decisions. The same way he thinks Howden or McKegg are better options than Panarin or Zibanejad at any point in a hockey game.
After going 4-0 against the Hurricanes this season, the Hurricanes finally solved the Rangers. Or at least they finally held on against the Rangers. Game 1 was nearly identical to most of the Rangers-Hurricanes games this season with the Rangers getting thoroughly outplayes. The only difference was the final score. In the regular season, the Rangers were always able to get even better goaltending than they did on Saturday and they were always able to find the net when they needed to. Without Lundqvist somehow playing better than he did, which might not have been humanly possible, and without puck luck, the Rangers experienced the fate they were able to avoid against Carolina earlier this year.
The Rangers need to win Game 2. They don’t have to win Game 2, though if they don’t, their season will be on the brink of elimation. The five-month wait for Rangers hockey can’t only last a few days, but if the Rangers continue to play like they did on Saturday, it will.
Two games against the Orioles meant two wins for the Yankees as they finally finished their wild season-opening road trip.
The Yankees played the Orioles the last two nights, so without checking, we all know the Yankees won the last two nights. The winning streak against the Orioles from 2019 has carried over into 2020, and I don’t know if it will end until 2021.
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. Last season, the Yankees beat the Orioles on Opening Day before losing two straight to them. That was the last time the Yankees lost to the Orioles. The Yankees finished the season by winning 16 straight against the Orioles and going undefeated at Camden Yards. After these last two days, the Yanekes have now won 18 straight against the Orioles and 12 straight at Camden Yards. The Orioles are bad, very, very, very, very bad, and this trend of the Yankees beating up on them isn’t going away anytime soon. At some point, the Yankees will lose to the Orioles to break the streak, but in terms of beating up on them for 13-plus wins a season, that’s going to happen for at least the next few years. The Yankees have eight scheduled games left against the Orioles this season. Normally, visualizing a perfect 10-0 record against an opponent is outlandish, but I don’t think it is here. I think anything less than 8-2 against the Orioles this season is unacceptable, and that might be setting the bar too low.
2. Gerrit Cole wasn’t sharp again in his second Yankees start. He walked the first batter of his night and gave up a run in the first inning. Whenever someone reaches base against him, it feels weird. When a run is scored against him it feels almost fake. But in his first two starts, Cole hasn’t looked like himself, hasn’t thrown like himself and hasn’t resembled the pitcher who became the best pitcher in the world last year. Despite not being anywhere near the level he can and will be at, this is his line after starts against Washington and Baltimore: 11.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 12 K, 2 HR, 3.09 ERA, 0.686 WHIP. It’s rather frightening that Cole has pitched as “bad” as he will pitch all season and has put together numbers like that. His ability to grind out very good performances when he doesn’t have his best stuff is what separates him from nearly every other pitcher in the world, and it’s why these two starts from him are about as “bad” as it will get for him.
3. Why was Cole sent out for the seventh inning with a six-run lead and nine outs to get against the awful Orioles? Each pitcher has so many pitches in their arm over their career and the Yankees shouldn’t be willing to waste any of Cole’s, especially with a lead like that against a team like that. Cole was at 90 pitches, and while he didn’t look tired, this is what would have been his line had he been done after the sixth: 6 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. Instead he finished with this line: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7 K, 1 HR. It wasn’t necessary for him to return for one more inning, not when the Yankees currently have 11 relievers on the roster. If Aaron Boone was somehow worried about the Orioles scoring six runs before making nine outs, he could have turned to Chad Green, Adam Ottavino, Tommy Kahnle or Zack Britton, who had all pitched once so far this season, and who had all pitched once since Game 6 of the ALCS on Oct. 19, 2019. Boone wasn’t worried about blowing the lead though even after the Orioles made it a three-run game as he went to Luis Avilan after Cole.
4. Can Boone and the Yankees play the everyday lineup every day? Is it that hard? This isn’t a six-month, 162-game grind. It’s a two-month, 60-game sprint. While I get that the change to the postseason format made it virutally impossible for the Yankees to miss the postseason, playing more games at Yankee Stadium than on the road in October isn’t nothing. You would think after settling for not having the best record in the American League many times over the lazt 11 years, in which this team hasn’t won a championship and hasn’t even been to the World Series would change the Yankees’ mind about having regular-season urgency, but it hasn’t.
5. Not even this wild, pandemic-threatened season can change the Yankees’ mind. After unexpectedly having Monday and Tuesday off because of the threat of the Phillies being sick, the Yankees had as many off days as games played this season (three) and still don’t feel the need to play their everyday expected lineup every day. Maybe things would be different if the league didn’t change the postseason format to allow 53 perent of the teams into the postseason. Maybe then the Yankees would be playing like winning the division and finishing with the best record is worth something (which it is). I don’t think they would though.
6. Now in his third year as Yankees manager, Boone hasn’t improved with his bullpen managment at all. He actually might have gotten worse. In the second game of the series, leading by a run, Boone turned to Jonathan Loaisiga for the sixth inning following the rain delay. Fine. Loaisiga walked the first two batters he faced, but got out of it with a strikeout and double play. Then he went back to Loaisiga for the seventh. OK. Loaisiga put up another zero. Then he went back to Loaisiga for the eighth. Nope. Loaisiga gave up a two-run home run and the Yankees had blown a 5-0 lead. Ottavino had been used before the rain delay, so he wasn’t available. But that meant there were still nine relievers available aside from Ottavino and Loaisiga. Three of those relievers were Green, Kahnle and Britton, who had all pitched in one game this season, and again, one game since Game 6 of teh ALCS. Boone reported after the game that Kahnle wasn’t available, so that gets him off the hook for not using Kahnle, but not for not using Green. Thankfully, Aaron Judge hit a three-run home run in the top of the ninth and the Yankees retook the lead and went on to win when Britton finally came in and ended the game, but Boone’s bullpen management shouldn’t be forgotten because it’s this exact type of management that cost the Yankees the 2018 ALDS and could cost them again in the postseason. Boone stayed on 16 with the dealer showing a 10, and when the dealer turned over a 5 and pulled an 8 to bust, Boone won and so he thought he made the right decsion. I’m happy the Yankees won. I’m not happy that today Boone believes he made the right call because Judge saved him.
7. The Yankees have a starting pitching problem. Through five games, Cole pitched twice, James Paxton pitched and was pulled in the second inning, the Yankees had a bullpen game and Happ lasted four innings and was awful. Jordan Montomgery will finally pitch on Friday, and he was very good in spring training and Summer Camp, but again it’s spring training and Summer Camp, and Masahiro Tanaka will pitch on Saturday, and I trust him completely. But the Yankees kind of need Montgomery to be good because I don’t know when or if Paxton will bounce back after his back procedure and Happ might have a good start here and there along the way, but he’s finished. Back in February, the Yankees had the best offense and bullpen in baseball and a rotation of Cole, Severino, Paxton, Tanaka and Happ/Montgomery. Tanaka was going to be the fourth strarter! Now they have a rotation of Cole, Tanaka, hope Montgomery is good, hope Paxton can figure out how to throw hard again and hope Happ can give you a handful of quality starts. I have a bad feeling it will be another October of debating who to start in Game 3 because after Cole and Tanaka the Yankees might not have a third starter yet again.
8. DJ LeMahieu is so good it’s absurd. There hasn’t been a time when LeMahieu has been bad as a Yankee. Even with only a 1-for-5 peformance on Thursday, LeMahieu is batting .412 with a 1.059 OPS, and he does it so quietly. RBI single here, base knock there, solo home run here, clutch hit there. With the game so much about strikeouts and home runs these days, it’s refreshing to have a hitter on your team who rarely strikes out, is so hard to get out in general and can put just about any ball in play, and oh yeah, can play nearly everywehre on the infield. D(erek) J(eter) LeMahieu has been a perfect Yankee.
9. As President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club (and possibly the only remaining member of the club with his start to the season), I’m going to refrain from commenting on Sanchez’s offense through five games. I’m going to refer to the five-game sample size for now, but with each passing day without a hit and another game with multipe strikeouts, it’s becoming harder and harder to defend Sanchez. To put it as nicely as possible, his at-bats have been ugly. He’s had a few line drives that have been hit right at fielders, but for the most part it’s been swinging and missing, and it feels like he’s 0-2 before he steps in the box. I don’t know what Sanchez’s plan at the plate is, and right now, it doesn’t look like he has one other than to hope he gets a mistake fastball, even if what he thinks looks like a mistake fastball ends up being a slider low and away. Fortunately for Sanchez, the Yankees are winning because Sanchez is a popular target for criticism even when the team is winning, so if the Yankees were 2-3 or 1-4, he would be hearing it to the point that those who thought Austin Romine should start over him because of his defense would think Kyle Higashioka should start over him for his offense.
10. Sanchez isn’t the only hitless one on the team as Brett Gardner is also hitless, but got Thursday night off, though I’m guessing we will see Gardner back in the lineup on Friday. I’m not worried about either Sanchez or Gardner. They will come around. If I had to pick between the two for who I’m more worried about, I would pick Gardner based on his age and his decline over the last few years (minus the inflated home run numbers because of the super baseball). It would be nice if the two broke out on Friday or at least got a hit, so Michael Kay could stop talking about them being 0-for-2020.
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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!
The Yankees went to Washington D.C. and took two out of three from the defending champion Nationals. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
The Yankees went to Washington D.C. and took two out of three from the defending champion Nationals. The return of baseball has been enjoyable, though there have been times (like the first five innings of Sunday) when I didn’t miss the increased blood pressure and frustation over lineup choices, poor at-bats and comical bullpen management. Thankfully, Gleyber Torres saved the Yankees from losing the rubber game and from starting the season off in disappointing fashion.
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.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. It’s rare when I agree with an Aaron Boone lineup or whoever in the front office actually creates the lineup, so I wasn’t surprised at myself for getting upset about the first lineup of the season. This season, every game counts as 2.7 games and it needs to be played that way. So why was Brett Gardner batting fifth on Opening Day? Why? Because he bats left-handed and Max Scherzer throws with his right arm, as if that matters even the slightest bit when you’re talking about a future Hall of Fame pitcher? Did the Yankees not learn their lesson in the postseason when batting Gardner third took away at-bats from Gleyber Torres in key situations? I have no problem with Gardner playing, but the highest he should ever be batting is seventh. Not fifth. Not ahead of Gary Sanchez (even if Sanchez looked like he drank a six pack in the clubhouse before the game at the plate this weekend). Stop trying to make Gardner into something he’s not and don’t be fooled by last year’s “super ball” stats and the artificial 28 home runs. Gardner batted ninth on Saturday (where he belongs) and Aaron Hicks was batting fifth (as a lefty against a right-handed starter), so it’s obvious the Yankees will bat a lefty fifth no matter what. Any left-handed bat, no matter their ability will bat fifth.
2. Continuing the gripe about unnecessary rest, there’s no reason DJ LeMahieu couldn’t have been in the Opening Day lineup. Sitting on the bench and watching baseball isn’t going to get him the at-bats and live game action he needs after missing a large portion of Summer Camp. Even if LeMahieu weren’t at his best, it would have been no different than having Aaron Hicks lead off against Max Scherzer. Aaron Boone claimed LeMahieu needed more baseball activities before being in the starting lineup, and I guess on Friday’s off day, he magically went from not ready to play to leading off on Saturday.
3. The Yankees played Game 6 of the ALCS on Oct. 19. Their next real game was on July 24. That’s more than nine months between games and then there was another day off before the second game of the season. After playing only two games with more than nine months off, Gardner, Hicks and Gary Sanchez were all out of the lineup on Sunday. If you want to say Sanchez was out because of the day game after the night game, OK. I mean it’s not OK, but I can accept it. Hicks and Gardner were replaced by Miguel Andujar and Mike Tauchman. Andujar needs the at-bats, but Tauchman? A left-handed hitter against Patrick Corbin? If this was a scheduled day off for the three then this is the most egregious scheduled day off of all time given the amount of games played over the last nine months and the amount of games in the 2020 season. If the three were given the day off because of their poor performance in the first two games, then the Yankees can never cite “sample size” again as a reason or excuse for making any decision. Sure enough, all three of the everyday Yankees eventually found their way into the game anyway, nullifying the rest they were being given.
4. The Yankees chose to send Clint Frazier down rather than Tauchman before Sunday’s game, even though they were facing the left-handed Patrick Corbin and were prepared to let Tauchman face him. Tauchman went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts. The Yankees have essentially admitted Frazier is a major league player who they don’t have a roster spot for. But they do have a roster spot for him, they’re just choosing not to give it to him. Frazier’s inability to be healthy at the right time over the last few years and his defensive miscues cost him a chance at a starting role and I don’t see how he ever gets playing time in 2020. He’s blocked by Hicks, Gardner, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton (if he’s allowed to play the outfield). And then the Yankees obsession with Tauchman and their wanting to play Andujar in the outfield has him blocked as well. Frazier is either the sixth or seventh outfielder on the depth chart depending on how Stanton is viewed and while the Yankees’ injury history suggests their depth will be tested, it’s going to take 2019-like injuries for Frazier to play.
5. Before Luis Severino went down with Tommy John surgery, the Yankees had the best team in baseball on paper. Even without Severino, the Yankees were still probably going to have the best team in baseball on paper, just not as good as they would have been with him. But for as talented and deep this Yankees roster is, starting pitching is once again the team’s glaring weakness. It’s enough of a weakness that the team went into the season with a bullpen game lined up for the third game of the season. James Paxton better figure out how to regain the arm extension he says he’s missing because the Yankees can’t go into the postseason with Gerrit Cole and Masahiro Tanaka and then hope that J.A. Happ will be his 2018 self or that Jordan Montgomery will worthy enough after coming back from surgery. Paxton’s second inning on Saturday was painful to watch as he couldn’t put any hitters away with diminished velocity, allowing all five hitters in the frame to reach base. If not for Michael King’s performance to clean up the bases-loaded, no-out mess, Paxton’s ERA might have never recovered in a shortened season in which he will make at most 12 starts. The Yankees need Paxton to figure it out for their championship chances and he needs to figure it out for his own bank account as an impending free agent.
6. Sunday’s game felt like a game the Yankees were destined to lose. Every Yankees line drive was finding a glove and every Nationals dribbler was turning into a base hit. When Asdrubal Cabrera beat out the closest bang-bang play of all time at first base in the ninth, I had a feeling the Yankees were going to blow what was going to be an unexpected comeback win. The game showed the Yankees aren’t going to be managed with urgency in a 60-game season. They’re going to play the same way they would if this were a six-month season. The lineup proved it and using David Hale after Jonathan Loaisiga proved it.
7. Before Adam Ottavino entered Sunday’s game, the Yankees had used Hale twice, Jonathan Holder, Ben Heller and Luis Avilan before using Ottavino, Chad Green, Tommy Kahle or Zack Britton this season. Can we stop with Triple H (Hale, Holder and Heller)? (Heller was sent down, so we can stop with him for now.) Clarke Schmidt or Deivi Garcia aren’t better roster choices than Hale or Holder? If the Yankees were keeping them at Scranton in the event of needing a starter, wouldn’t one of them have started on Sunday? I don’t care about roster limits since there are more than enough people eligible to lose their spot (I just named three). The Yankees should have the best overall roster to win now. As Michael Kay mentioned on Sunday, the Yankees are the second oldest team in the league after the Nationals. The difference is the Nationals won in their championship window and the Yankees haven’t, and the Yankees aren’t going to get any younger or less expensive in the coming years.
8. The days between Cole starts feel as long as this spring and early summer felt, and this feeling is coming after a Cole start in which he didn’t even look good. And his version of not looking good is one run and one hit over five innings. (For other pitcher’s versions of not looking good, see Paxton’s start in D.C.). Cole’s next start will be against the Phillies and then he will get his first taste of Yankees-Red Sox. It will be a small taste since he will be in New York and without fans, but it’s a taste nonetheless. As I wrote on Friday, it feels good to once again have a pitcher who, when given any sort of lead, has essentially won the game before the game has ended. The Yankees haven’t had that in more than two years when Luis Severino was the best pitcher in the league for the first half of 2018, and before Severino, the Yankees hadn’t had that since the first four seasons of Sabathia’s Yankees career. But for as good as Severino was that season and has been at times and for as great as Sabathia was from 2009-2012, it feels different with Cole. While, the other two felt like sure-thing wins every fifth day, Cole feels like an automatic win every fifth day, with the game being played out as a formality.
9. I hate the eight-team format. More than half of the teams in the league will make the playoffs now and there’s no advtantage for the higher seeds to host entire first-round, best-of-3 series at home in an empty stadium. I also hate it because I have a feeling it will be here to stay. Once the league and owners cash in on having an expanded postseason field, they’re not going to go backwards and settle for less money. The owners proved they don’t actually care about the sport or the integrity of the game over the last few months. If it were up to them, they would let every team in the postseason and just play one enormous and ridiculous tournament. If you think the “this is only for 2020” line holds any weight, then you must have forgotten which sport and league we’re dealing with: a sport and league that announced these changes seconds before the first pitch of the season.
10. Life is starting to feel somewhat normal again with baseball back. On Opening Night it felt weird watching baseball after having not watched a real, meaningful game in more than nine months, and the off day after the rain-shortened opener didn’t help. But with games on back-to-back days this weekend, the first day game after a night game and no off days for a while, baseball is becoming part of everyday life again. It feels right.
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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!
On Thursday night, the Yankees won a game in July, and for the first time in a long time, life felt somewhat normal.
My initial thought when Giancarlo Stanton made contact with a first-inning pitch from Max Scherzer, which resulted in a two-run home run and 2-0 Yankees lead: Game over. Sure, it might have been a bit premature to think the Yankees had already clinched a victory in the first few minutes of the first inning of the first game of the season against the defending champion Nationals with the Nationals having yet to bat, but it really wasn’t. Not when you know the Yankees have Gerrit Cole pitching. Thursday night’s season-opening, rain-shortened 4-1 win for the Yankees felt even easier than their 2019 Opening Day win over the eventual 108-loss Orioles felt, and it was all because of the combination of scoring first and having Cole on the mound.
Michael Kay frequently mentions the old adage that a starting pitching will have great stuff in one-third of their starts, bad stuff in one-third of their starts and will have average stuff with the need to grind through the other one-third of their starts. I don’t know that Cole ever truly has “bad” stuff, and the adage clearly didn’t apply to him in 2019 with Houston when he finished the season 16-0, but on Thursday night, Cole was teetering on the border of having bad stuff and needing to grind though the start, and somehow he finished the game by allowing one hit and one earned run over five innings.
For as weird as it was to see Cole wearing the Yankees’ road gray uniform, it was even weirder to see him unable to throw strikes. Cole was missing with every pitch early on, going to a 3-1 count against the Nationals’ leadoff hitter Trea Turner before Turner helped him out by swinging at what would have been ball 4. Cole then fell behind Adam Eaton 2-0, and after evening up the count, Eaton was able to barely stay alive by just making contact on a third straight foul ball. The seventh pitch of the at-bat ended up in the seats for a home run.
For a brief moment, I had flashbacks of CC Sabathia losing in Baltimore on Opening Day 2009 in his Yankees debut before remembering Anthony Rendon is no longer a National, Juan Soto is currently out and Starlin Castro would be batting third in the game. Even though Cole would throw a first-pitch ball to three of the four hitters in the first inning (Castro, like always, swung at the first pitch of his at-bat), he was able to get through the inning and the top of the Nationals lineup (though their “top” was exactly a top) with just the one mistake to Eaton.
In the second, Cole hit Eric Thames with a slider, but after that hit-by-pitch, Cole only allowed one baserunner over the game’s final four innings (a fifth-inning Asdrubal Cabrera walk). Cole never really looked like himself or like the pitcher who became the best pitcher in the world with the Nationals. (Sorry, Mets fans.) Cole’s final line: 5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR. That very well could be the worst Cole looks all season and he still managed to allow one hit and one earned run over five innings.
It feels good to once again have a pitcher who, when given any sort of lead, has essentially won the game before the game has ended. The Yankees haven’t had that in more than two years when Luis Severino was the best pitcher in the league for the first half of 2018, and before Severino, the Yankees hadn’t had that since the first four seasons of Sabathia’s Yankees career. But for as good as Severino was that season and has been at times and for as great as Sabathia was from 2009-2012, it feels different with Cole. While, the other two felt like sure-thing wins every fifth day, Cole feels like an automatic win every fifth day, with the game being played out as a formality.
The early lead Cole was given was increased by an Aaron Judge RBI double and a Stanton RBI single. I know there’s a lot being made about Stanton being slimmer in an attempt to stay healthy and increase production, and it showed in the first game of the season, even if it’s the smallest of sample sizes. I want the weight loss and physique adjustment by Stanton to be real and I want him to be the player the Yankees thought they were being handed by the Marlins before 2018, but I was in Toronto on Opening Day 2018 and saw him hit two majestic home runs and got lost in the idea of him being a perennial MVP presence in the middle of the order for the Yankees. I won’t let myself fall for that again, especially given everything that happened with him last season. For now, I’m cautiously optimistic the real Stanton could be on the 2020 Yankees.
The Yankees started the season with a win, Cole dominated with nowhere close to his best stuff, not only did Stanton play, but he provided power and clutch hitting, and even Tyler Wade looked like a major leaguer.
On Thursday night, the Yankees won a game in July, and for the first time in a long time, life felt somewhat normal.
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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!
The Yankees lost one year of their championship window last season. They can’t afford to lose to another year of it this season.
No one expected the 2016 Yankees to be any good. And they weren’t.
They got off to a 9-17 start, and it was obvious they had to tear apart the team and play prospects, and by this time every fan wanted them to do just that. Free agency had been the Yankees’ strategy since the early 2000s and a way for the team to plug holes on their sinking ship. It worked at times as they were able to tread water, have winning seasons and reach the playoffs, but over the previous 15 years, they had won one championship. Eventually you need to start over. Eventually you need a new boat. The game had changed too much and the Yankees needed a new boat and Yankees fans wanted a new boat.
At the end of play on July 6, 2016, the Yankees were 41-43 and it looked like they would certainly be sellers at the deadline in three weeks, but ownership wasn’t on board. The Yankees then went on an 11-5 run through July 26, and were now in striking distance of a wild-card spot — only four games back — and ownership hadn’t budged on selling and giving up on the season for future seasons.
The Yankees then lost their next four games, one in Houston and a three-game sweep in Tampa Bay. It was the best thing to happen to the organization since the Astros, Indians, Expos, Orioles and Reds passed on Derek Jeter in the 1992 draft, allowing the Yankees to select him with the sixth-overall pick. The losing streak pushed the Yankees out of reasonable contention, ownership gave Brian Cashman the green light to trade his veteran assets and begin the transition into “rebuilding mode”.
Andrew Miller (Indians), Aroldis Chapman (Cubs), Carlos Beltran (Rangers) and Ivan Nova (Pirates) were all traded, and Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira announced their retirements. Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge were called up to become everyday players, and in the process, Brian McCann was relegated to backup duty, which would lead to his offseason trade to the Astros. The Yankees had finally decided to show off the depth in their farm system, and thanks to that four-game losing streak at the end of July, the depth only got deeper with the top prospects they received in return.
The 2017 Yankees weren’t supposed to be good either, picked by many to finish near or at the bottom of the AL East in what was certainly going to be a rebuilding season. But there ended up being no “rebuilding”. The Yankees seemingly hit on every prospect who reached the majors and the team went from preseason dud to postseason bound, winning 91 games and putting up a plus-198 run differential.
The 2017 Yankees overcame a 3-0 first-inning deficit in the wild-card game. They overcame an 0-2 series hole to the 102-win Indians to advance to the ALCS. They overcame another 0-2 series hole to the Astros to bring a 3-2 series lead to Houston for Games 6 and 7. Ultimately, they came one win shy of reaching the World Series for the first time in eight years.
For 2018, the Yankees essentially replaced Chase Headley, Starlin Castro and Jacoby Ellsbury with Giancarlo Stanton (the reigning NL MVP), Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres and the Aaron Hicks who was drafted in the first round. But once again, they came up short in the postseason.
The 2017 postseason loss wasn’t crushing. Rather it was an exhilarating ride, being back at a raucous Stadium seemingly every night in October and watching a young, homegrown core get within a game of the World Series. The 2018 postseason loss, on the other hand, was crushing. After once again winning the wild-card game, and taking a game in Boston, the Yankees became the favorite in what had become a best-of-3 with two games at the Stadium where they didn’t lose. Not only did they lose both, they were embarrassed in every facet of the game, especially managing, and their rival celebrated on their field en route to a championship season.
Because of the way the season ended and the team it ended against, 2018 is viewed as a disaster, and rightfully so. But if you go back to 2016, 2017 and 2018 were never supposed to be about the Yankees. They were supposed to be about the Indians and Astros and Red Sox and Cubs and Dodgers, and they were. The timeline Yankees fans were given and expected prior to Opening Day 2016 was always 2019, these Yankees just happened to arrive early. The 2017 and 2018 Yankees gave us two unexpected years of championship contention even if it didn’t end with a championship.
Going back three years, 2019 was always circled as the first season the Yankees would truly contend for a championship, and they did. But in what has become a decade-long trend, the team fell short with inconsistent starting pitching in October coupled with an inability to get a timely hit. Two years after losing to the Astros in the ALCS in seven games, the Yankees lost to them again, this time in six games, losing four of the final five games of the series for the franchise’s fourth ALCS over the last 10 years. Ultimately, the first season of the Yankees’ championship window came and went without a championship.
This season was to be the Yankees’ best chance at ending their championship drought, but things started to unravel in spring training with Luis Severino going down for the season, James Paxton needing a back procedure, and the entire starting outfield of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks expected to miss as much as the first half of the season. The shutdown in mid-March allowed for Paxton, Judge, Stanton and Hicks to heal, but it turned a 162-game season in which the Yankees’ depth would separate them from the rest of the division and likely league into a 60-game season in which any team can put together a two-month run. The Yankees might still be the odds-on favorite for 2020, but the odds have declined with the condensed schedule and the uncertainty of what this season will hold.
60 games or 162 games, the 2020 is still a real season and it still counts and the players, coaching staff and front office should be held accountable. The World Series champion will be the World Series champion with no asterisk and no “but …” for them in the history books. It’s still a season of the Yankees’ current window of opportunity that they won’t get back.
The grace period with these Yankees ended before last season. This season is the the second season of the window of opportunity for this core to win a championship or championships. There’s no more consolation prize for coming within a game of the World Series or winning 100 games and then getting blown out by your storied rival. There’s no more excuses and no more “Next year”. These Yankees were expected to truly contend in 2019 and it’s now 2020.
The championship grace period is over. It’s long over. This October will be 11 years since the Yankees last reached the World Series and last won it. Every season with this group which doesn’t end with a championship will be a missed opportunity and they have already missed one.
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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!
