Unfortunately, the Yankees will no longer have the luxury of seeing David Price multiple times during the regular season. There won’t be anymore video game-related injury excuses or last-minute scratches or early exits for the $217 million pitcher against the Yankees.
Early in the 2018 season, David Price was scheduled to start against the Yankees before being mysteriously scratched. The reasons for the surprise missed scheduled start varied from wrist tightness to hand numbness to tenderness, but when Price was able to return to the mound and start just a few days later, it was obvious what the reason for him being scratched was: the Yankees.
Not even a month prior to his scratch on April 11, Price lasted only an inning against the Yankees, and not even two months after the scratch, Price would have his worst performance against the Yankees on July 1 on Sunday Night Baseball. Price’s line from that July 1 start: 3.1 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 5 HR. The Yankees produced five home runs without Gary Sanchez, who has hit Price better than any other major leaguer. Price would pick up a no-decision against the Yankees on Aug. 5 and then was embarrassed once more by them on Sept. 19 (5.1 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 4 BB, 2 K, 3 HR).
That season, his miserable history against the Yankees culminated in Game 2 of the ALDS when he was once again lit up. Ten pitches into the game Aaron Judge sent a 1-2 pitch high over the Green Monster in left-center where few have ever hit a ball, and then leading off the second, Sanchez crushed the third pitch of the inning over the Monster as well. Price didn’t make it through the second inning as he was pulled after recording only five outs (1.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 HR), leaving the game with two runners. After his departure, Judge barreled up Joe Kelly, but the 109.8 mph line drive was hit directly at Betts otherwise Price’s final line would have been much worse than it already was.
The last time the Yankees got to face Price as a Red Sox was on Aug. 4 of this past season, and he put together his usual performance, unable to last three innings at Yankee Stadium (2.2 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 2 HR).
Price leaves Boston and the American League with the current Yankees roster having a .317/.383/.639 line against him in 231 plate appearances. That’s a 1.022 OPS. Within the overall performance are some memorable individual performances:
(Aaron Hicks, Gleyber Torres, Gio Urshela Miguela Andujar and Kyle Higashioka have also homered off Price.)
Unfortunately, the Yankees will no longer have the luxury of seeing Price multiple times during the regular season. There won’t be anymore video game-related injury excuses or last-minute scratches or early exits for the $217 million pitcher against the Yankees.
The Yankees won’t have a chance to see him until 2022 — in the last year of his contract — when the Yankees next play the NL West in the regular season, unless the Yankees and Dodgers meet in the World Series. If they do finally meet in the World Series, the Dodgers will want to begin whichever game he starts with their bullpen up.
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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!
Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the regular season once again becoming a formality.
Next week spring training begins. Baseball is back even if it’s just beat writers live-tweeting intrasquad games and batting practice, reading about pitchers’ fielding practice and back-field infield drills and watching videos of bullpen sessions recorded on a phone through the spacing of a chain-link fence.
Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the possibility of Nolan Arenado becoming a Yankee, how easy it will be for the Yankees to win the division and more than 102 games, the mess the Red Sox are in, staying positive with Aaron Boone’s managerial style and what Giancarlo Stanton needs to do to win back Yankees fans.
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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!
Because I’m a nice person, I’m going to give Giancarlo Stanton a clean slate for the 2020 season. I’m going to be positive when it comes to Stanton for as long as he lets me be positive.
Spring training begins next week. NEXT WEEK! The offseason is long as it is, and it’s made even longer when the postseason ends on a pennant-winning, walk-off home run. But baseball is almost here, even if it’s not real, meaningful baseball.
To follow the format of Off Day Dreaming from the actual season, I decided to do a weekly Yankees thoughts blog to lead us into the season until the first Off Day Dreaming the day after Opening Day.
1. Because I’m a nice person, I’m going to give Giancarlo Stanton a clean slate for the 2020 season. No sarcasm to start the season, no snarky comments, no “Ladies and gentlemen” tweets on Opening Day. I’m going to be positive when it comes to Stanton for as long as he lets me be positive.
The Yankees were able to win 103 regular-season games and get to within two wins of the World Series without him, so he’s almost become a luxury at this point. I don’t want to say whatever Stanton gives the Yankees is a bonus the way it is for someone like Brett Gardner, but the Yankees proved he’s not crucial to their success the way Aaron Judge is.
Even though I will try to maintain a clean slate for Stanton, he has unforunately entered A-Rod territory at the Stadium in which the cleanliness of his slate is only as good as his most recent at-bat. Once you reach that territory, there’s no going back. Stanton could have the kind of postseason A-Rod did in 2009, and it won’t matter. He just needs to realize it, and somehow “clear the mechanism” like Billy Chapel when he’s playing at home and not let the inevitable boos affect him the way they clearly have in his first two seasons as a Yankee.
2. Nolan Arenado is still on the Rockies, which means he hasn’t been traded yet, which means the Yankees can still trade for him. Rockies owner Dick Manfort tried to downplay the rift between Arenado and general manager Jeff Bridich, but the rift is real and it exists. If it weren’t, Arenado wouldn’t have said the things he said this offseason about the Rockies and rumors wouldn’t be flying around about him potentially going to the Cardinals.
Here’s what I said last week in If the Yankees Can Get Nolan Arenado, Go Get Him: When a player like Arenado is made available, you don’t let him go somewhere else. And when a player like Arenado is made available and you’re the odds-on favorite to win the World Series in the middle of a championship window in the middle of a championship drought, you make sure he doesn’t go anywhere else.
I understand it’s most likely not going to happen, but it should happen. Arenado will essentially only cost money, which incase you forgot because the Yankees sometimes forget, is the organization’s greatest resource. Any player or prospect the Yankees would have to add would either be blocked for playing time by the trade, no longer part of the team’s plans anyway, far enough away from the majors to know if they will actually reach the majors or possibly Deivi Garcia. But you don’t let Deivi Garcia prevent you from getting Nolan Arenado. (Then again, Brian Cashman let Eduardo Nunez prevent him from getting Cliff Lee.)
3. The pictures on social media of Gary Sanchez over the last few weeks have shown a leaner, more fit and muscular Sanchez. Without seeing his face, you would never know it’s Sanchez. I’m not sure if Sanchez started eating vegetables, went the Joe Torre route of cutting out soda or just hit the weights harder, but it’s clear he had a goal of coming to spring training with a different look, and he has it. Is this new diet or workout regimen an attempt to stay off the injured list or prevent passed balls or possibly create even more power? I have no idea, but Sanchez is currently the favorite to win the most “(Player name) came to camp in the best shape of his life” headlines over the next two weeks.
4. I was watching MLB Network on Monday and there was a discussion on the top shortstops in baseball. Gleyber Torres was ranked sixth. Most likely this list was created with the idea of creating buzz and making Yankees fans (which there are more of than any other team) upset enough to talk about or write about, kind of like what I’m doing here. I may be writing about it, but I’m not upset about it. I find it more comical than anything. At least it’s not as egregious as ESPN ranking the Yankees as having the ninth-best offense in the majors.
5. The Yankees’ No. 4 starter is Masahiro Tanaka. The first pitcher in history to allow two earned runs or less in each of his first seven postseason starts is the Yankees’ No. 4 starter.
6. The Yankees had to bring J.A. Happ back last season based on his 2018 with the team after the trade deadline and because they decided to not sign any other free-agent starter. But after last season and with no one knowing what the state of the baseball will be for this season, I’m holding out for Happ to get traded before spring training. I understand you can never have enough pitching, except when you’re talking about a 37-year-old coming off the worst season of his career and set to earn $17 million. As long as Happ is on the team, he’s going to start. It will take a long, long time for him to removed from the rotation, the way it always takes the Yankees a long, long time to make a move like that, and if he’s not starting and not doing well as a starter he has no place on the team. Pitching twice a month out of the bullpen in mop-up duty while taking home nearly $3 million a month isn’t ideal.
7. Curtis Granderson retired from baseball the other day and if you told me on the day the Yankees traded for Granderson that he wouldn’t win a World Series, I would have gladly taken that bet. The Yankees had just won the World Series when they traded for him and were essentially returning the same exact roster the following season. But as a Yankee, Granderson experienced two ALCS losses and a five-game ALDS loss, as the Yankees were eliminated twice in those series by his former team. Granderson played for a long time, played for a lot of good teams and made a lot of money, but he should have a won a ring, and he should have won it with the Yankees. If not for the aforementioned keeping of Nunez for Lee, he would have won at least one.
8. Not only do the Yankees have the best team in baseball and not only are they the favorite to win the World Series, but at the same time as the Yankees’ core is entering it’s prime, the Red Sox are holding an Everything Must Go! sale and will likely move the team’s best player before spring training begins. Not only are the big-market and rich-beyond-anyone’s-wildest-dreams Red Sox adamant about trading Mookie Betts so they don’t have to pay, they also don’t have a manager and have yet to receive the results of the commissioner’s investigation into their sign stealing under their former manager. 2020 is going to be great.
9. The Yankees rarely ever get off to a good start. It seems like every season they are around .500 a few weeks into the season before going on a run, and this isn’t a recent trend, it’s been going on for years. Last season, the Yankees opened against the Orioles and lost two of three, then went on to lose two of three to the Tigers, got swept by the Astros and lost two of three to the White Sox and were 10-10 through 20 games. The year before, they were 9-9 through 18 games. Let’s not do that again this season.
It would be good for both the Yankees and my overall health if they took advantage of their early-season schedule this year. The Yankees open the season with three games in Baltimore followed by three in Tampa Bay and then open at home with three against Toronto and four against Baltimore. You can’t ask for a better schedule to start the season than that.
10. The Yankees over/under win total right now it at 102. It’s the highest it’s been since 2009 when I believe it was at 100. Last year, it was at 96.5 following a 100-win season, and the Yankees won 103 games. Every expected starter except for Torres and DJ LeMahieu missed time last season and the team won 103 games. Expecting a team to win more than 100 games is a lot, but in the current state of baseball where spending money and trying to win isn’t on every team’s agenda, it’s easier than ever to do so.
The AL East has already been won. The Rays’ ceiling can’t compete with this Yankees team, the Red Sox are in the process of cutting payroll, the Blue Jays are still a few years away and the Orioles … well, they would be lucky to win 60 games this season. This Yankees team is better than the last two and the division is much worse than it was the last two years. The Yankees are going to win more than 102 games.
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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!
When a player like Nolan Arenado is made available and you’re in the middle of a championship window in the middle of a championship drought, you make sure he doesn’t go anywhere else.
Deivi Garcia? Goodbye. Miguel Andujar? See ya. Gio Urshela? Good luck. Clint Frazier? So long. Any young, major-league ready Yankee not named Gleyber Torres? Take care. If it means acquiring Nolan Arenado, it doesn’t matter which prospect goes. It might not be good for baseball that Arenado signed an eight-year, $260 million extension with the Rockies not even a year ago (Feb. 26, 2019) and they’re already trying to get out from under the contract, but it’s good for the Yankees.
A trade for Arenado makes all the sense in the world for the Yankees since they are already close to exceeding the third luxury-tax threshold in their quest to reach the World Series in more than a decade. Yes, they are already the World Series favorite with Urshela at third base coming off the only above-average offensive season of his career and with Andujar returning from season-ending shoulder surgery. But they would be adding the best all-around third baseman in the game in Arenado, for essentially only money, which incase you forgot because the Yankees sometimes forget, is the organization’s greatest resource. Any player or prospect the Yankees would have to add would either be blocked for playing time by the trade, no longer part of the team’s plans anyway, far enough away from the majors to know if they will actually reach the majors or they would be Garcia. And for as excited as I am to see Garcia either in the rotation or in the bullpen, if it means getting Arenado then I’m more than fine with seeing Garcia in the Rockies’ rotation or bullpen.
In Arenado, the Yankees would be getting a career .295/.351/.546 hitter who averages 40 doubles, 36 home runs and 115 RBIs a year, and a defensive third baseman who has never not won the Gold Glove during his seven years in the majors. If you thought Urshela was a breath of fresh air from Andujar with his fielding, Arenado makes Urshela look like Andujar. (Maybe that was a little mean.) Arenado might have inferior career numbers away from Coors Field though it’s hard to find a Rockies hitter who hasn’t experienced similar issues. There was a fear DJ LeMahieu would sink in the American League and away from Coors, and he went out and had a career year playing half his games in Yankee Stadium, finishing fourth for the AL MVP.
As for the Opening Day lineup with Arenado in it, please only keep reading if you have access to a cold shower in the next few minutes:
1. DJ LeMahieu, 2B 2. Aaron Judge, RF 3. Nolan Arenado, 3B 4. Giancarlo Stanton, DH 5. Gleyber Torres, SS 6. Gary Sanchez, C 7. Mike Tauchman, LF 8. Luke Voit, 1B 9. Brett Gardner, CF
(Yes, Aaron Boone would bat Voit behind Tauchman to break up the lefties, so he could have some sort of input on the lineup.)
That lineup features a 23-year-old superstar coming off a 38-home run, .871 OPS season batting fifth. It has the best power-hitting hitting catcher who hit 34 home runs in only 106 games last year batting sixth. It has last season’s Opening Day 3-hitter who had a .901 OPS through June 29 before suffering a season-crushing abdomen injury batting eighth. It has Boone’s choice to bat third in the postseason batting ninth. Yes, the last one was a joke, but in reality, anything Gardner gives you, and I mean anything, is a bonus in this order. And whenever Aaron Hicks returns (don’t count on an early return from his surgery rehab timeline), the lineup will be even deeper, which seems impossible. Sure, it’s right-handed heavy, but it’s going to be that way whether Arenado is in it or Urshela or Andujar, so it might as well be with the perennial MVP candidate, All-Star and Silver Slugger.
I can’t help but think the Yankees aren’t done this offseason. Signing Gerrit Cole and re-signing Gardner can’t be all they are going to do to improve, even if signing Cole was the equivalent of signing two front-end starters since it takes him away from their biggest competition in the Astros. I do believe Cole is enough to get the Yankees back to the World Series, but enough has never been enough for the Yankees. Having David Cone and Andy Pettitte didn’t stop them from trading for Roger Clemens, and getting Clemens didn’t stop them from signing Mike Mussina. When they had Pettitte, Clemens and Mussina, it didn’t stop them from bringing David Wells back. A lineup with Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui and Robinson Cano wasn’t enough to prevent them from acquiring Bobby Abreu. Signing CC Sabathia didn’t keep them from also signing A.J. Burnett and then Mark Teixeira, and none of those signings kept them from offering Cliff Lee the most money a couple offseasons later. Two months after the Baby Bombers went to Game 7 of the ALCS and Aaron Judge finished second for AL MVP as a right fielder, they still went out and acquired the NL MVP in Giancarlo Stanton who also plays right field. The Yankees have (nearly) always used their embarrassment of riches in their favor. Have two aces? Go get another one. Have too many bats for not enough lineup spots? Teach one of them to play first base. Have a 6-foot-7, 25-year-old, MVP-candidate right fielder? Trade for a 6-foot-6, 28-year-old, MVP-winning right fielder.
This October will be 11 years since the Yankees last reached the World Series, let alone won it. Their core is entering their prime just as the Red Sox are holding an Everything Must Go! sale, the Rays’ ceiling still isn’t enough, the Blue Jays are a few years away and the Orioles are … well, they’re the Orioles. The division is the Yankees once again and it’s their’s for the foreseeable future. The regular season has become the formality it was from 1995 through 2012, serving as a six-month rehearsal to win 11 games in October. October still might be a crapshoot where nothing is guaranteed and the only thing you can do is put the best possible roster together and hope to get a few timely hits and big outs, but a trade for Arenado would add a few percentage points in the Yankees’ favor before they roll.
When a player like Arenado is made available, you don’t let him go somewhere else. And when a player like Arenado is made available and you’re the odds-on favorite to win the World Series in the middle of a championship window in the middle of a championship drought, you make sure he doesn’t go anywhere else.
The Yankees have the pieces and finances to have a Number 28 batting third and playing third for them on Opening Day as they go for Number 28. Enough isn’t enough.
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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 moment Jose Altuve made contact in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the ALCS, I was ready for next season. I’m always ready for next season. I hate the offseason.
The moment Jose Altuve made contact in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the ALCS, I was ready for next season. I’m always ready for next season. I hate the offseason.
The winter gauntlet that is January and February has an added day this year, and with still over a month until the clocks are set forward, Punxsutawney Phil better not see his shadow next Sunday. The cold of winter isn’t helped by Yankees players using social media to post videos of themselves hitting or working on their game outside in sunny Florida while I’m walking my dog Charlie in below-freezing temperatures praying he will find the right spot to poop before I lose all feeling in my fingers.
The offseason once again hasn’t been helped by the Rangers as they fade in the standings (even if this season was never supposed to be about the playoffs) and are on their way to a third straight postseason-less year, and it certainly wasn’t helped by the Giants since they last played a meaningful game when the 2019 Yankees were still playing.
We’re close to baseball, even if it’s just beat writers live-tweeting intrasquad games and batting practice. Reading about pitchers’ fielding practice and back-field infield drills and watching videos of bullpen sessions recorded on a phone through the spacing of a chain-link fence never sounded so good.
I welcome the daily updates about the battle for third base, what’s going on at first base and the overreaction to how good or bad Miguel Andujar looks at third base, first base and left field. I look forward to finding out if Aaron Boone will feel the need to stick a left-handed hitter in between the powerful righties for a third straight season and hearing about all the players who reported to camp in the “best shape of their life.” I want to lose it over the last position player and last reliever selected for the 25-man roster and I want to be irrationally upset over the order of the rotation to open the regular season. That’s how ready I am for baseball.
The wait is almost over. Even if there is snow in the forecast this week, we’re close. The sun is setting after 5 p.m., pitchers and catchers officially report in 15 days and position players five days after that.
I’m more than ready for the return of Yankees baseball. I have been since Oct. 19.
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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!
