Former major league pitcher and 15-year veteran Ron Villone talks about pitching for the Yankees and Chris McMonigle of WFAN talks about what should worry Yankees fans this season.
Chris McMonigle of WFAN and Mike’s On joined me to talk about what should worry Yankees fans about a first-place team, how the bullpen will be used in the postseason, which starting pitcher the team should trade for this month, if it’s more important to get Luis Severino or Dellin Betances back and what the playoff rotation would currently be.
At the 50:40 mark, former Yankees pitcher Ron Villone joined me to talk about pitching for 12 major league teams in 15 seasons, pitching for the team he grew up watching in the Yankees, pitching three and four days in a row under Joe Torre, what happened to the Yankees in the 2006 ALDS, the way relief pitchers are handled in today’s game and transitioning his career to pitching coach with the Cubs.
There are three things that worry me about the Yankees for the 2019 postseason. They aren’t minor worries, they are keep-me-up-at-night worries.
I left Yankee Stadium just before midnight on Oct. 3, 2006 as River Ave. filled with chants of “SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP!” The Yankees had cruised to an 8-4 win in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Tigers, backed by a 5-for-5, two-double, two-home run night from Derek Jeter and a two-run home run from Jason Giambi, and the 56,291 at the Stadium were pouring onto the street making it known how they thought the best-of-5 series would go.
The Yankees had won 97 games, easily winning the AL East by 10 games. Their starting pitching had been shaky all season, but their offense was so ridiculous and overflowing with talent that defending AL MVP Alex Rodriguez was batting sixth, Robinson Cano hit .342 in the regular season and was batting ninth and Gary Sheffield had to learn how to play first base to keep his bat in the lineup. Their lineup for that Game 1 win:
Johnny Damon, CF Derek Jeter, SS Bobby Abreu, RF Gary Sheffield, 1B Jason Giambi, DH, Alex Rodriguez, 3B Hideki Matsui, LF Jorge Posada, C Robinson Cano, 2B
The 2006 Yankees were the best team in baseball. They should have won the pennant and then would have faced an 83-win Cardinals team in the World Series, a team which started Jeff Weaver twice and Jeff Suppan once in the World Series. The Yankees should have won the World Series. They didn’t because they had been built only to win in the regular season, the same way they have been many times between 2004 and 2018. The Yankees had the league’s best lineup and one of the best of all time, but the organization failed to address their need for starting pitching, and when the bats went quiet, the season ended against Kenny Rogers and Jeremy Bonderman.
The Yankees could have won that World Series with a rotation that featured 43-year-old Randy Johnson and his 5.00 ERA and Jaret Wright and his 1.525 WHIP, just like they could have won any of the seasons between 2004 and 2018, when they were giving postseason starts to less-than-ideal options. Rarely during those 15 years did the Yankees go into the playoffs with a pitching edge, relying on their always-stacked offense and mediocre starting pitching to be enough, and only once was it enough. Since 2004, the Yankees have had many chances to win championships, but nearly every season, they have entered the postseason as just another team in the crapshoot that is baseball’s postseason, infrequently putting together the best possible team to give them an advantage over the rest of the field.
The Yankees have tried in recent years to build a team which can win in both the regular season and postseason by creating a super bullpen, capable of shortening games to four or five innings. The strategy nearly got them to the World Series in 2017 before the bats went quiet in Games 6 and 7 in Houston, and it might have worked in 2018 if the manager had used his best relievers with the season on the line. So far, the Yankees’ decision to focus and spend on building the best possible bullpen while piecing together a rotation filled with inconsistency and injury concerns hasn’t worked out, and there’s a chance they could be headed for the same fate this season.
The Yankees are once again the best team in baseball. The Dodgers’ win percentage might suggest differently, but the Yankees are tied in the loss column with the back-to-back World Series loser despite being without their best starting pitcher and best reliever all season, having their best player miss two months, losing their starting third baseman for the entire season, getting nine games out of last season’s leading home run hitter, playing without their starting centerfielder for the first six weeks and their starting shortstop for the first third of the season. They have also watched their catcher, first baseman, three other starting pitchers and their should-be fourth outfielder all also land on the injured list. Yeah, the Yankees are the best team in baseball.
The Yankees might be the best team in baseball, but as currently constructed, they aren’t the best team for October baseball. There aren’t many playoff scenarios in which they will have the edge with their rotation and there are lineups as good and possibly more balanced than theirs. Right now, the Yankees would be just one of the teams in the postseason, and not the team, with the same chance as any of the other teams to win.
There are three things that worry me about the Yankees for the 2019 postseason. They aren’t minor worries, they are keep-me-up-at-night worries.
1. The rotation. Last week, I wrote I want the Yankees to trade for Madison Bumgarner, and they should want to too. If Luis Severino is unable to return and be his old self, the Yankees would go with Masahiro Tanaka (who I trust as a much as anyone I ever trusted in October) in Game 1 and then the right-handed A.J. Burnett in James Paxton in Game 2. After that, maybe it’s Domingo German if his nonsensical innings limit allows, or it’s a combination of CC Sabathia, J.A. Happ and Chad Green the Opener. Excuse me, while I quickly search Amazon for a respirator.
2. The lineup. The Yankees’ lineup the last couple years reminds me of that Yankees lineup which lost to the Tigers. It’s a lot of power and a lot of big names that easily beats up on average starting pitching for six months, but when it sees good to great starting pitching every night in the playoffs, it disappears. I envision the lineup chasing sliders low and away in October because I watched it the last two Octobers. To make matters worse, the Yankees only left-handed bats are Aaron Hicks and Didi Gregorius, and neither belongs higher than sixth in the order, though I’m sure the Yankees will force them higher to break up the righties even though they are undeserving.
3. The manager. Brian Cashman built Aaron Boone a super bullpen for last October, featuring Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman, David Robertson, Zack Britton and Chad Green. But in the most important bullpen spots in the postseason, Boone either went to his bullpen too late or went to Lance Lynn instead. Buying someone a Ferrari doesn’t make sense if they either don’t know how to drive or are going to opt to drive their old, beat-up Acura anyway. Boone demonstrated all of last season he didn’t know how to manage a bullpen and it reared its ugly head at the worst possible time. This season, he has made the same egregious mistakes as last season, and I’m petrified he could be the Yankees’ most-feared opponent in October.
The Yankees could win the World Series with their current roster though their chances would certainly increase if Severino, Betances and Giancarlo Stanton all returned and all returned at their normal performance level. It’s quite possible the Yankees feel they are essentially acquiring an ace, the best reliever in baseball and the 2017 NL MVP at the deadline, and therefore, they will stand pat with their current roster. But Severino is one setback away from not being able to start a game this season and Betances is getting dangerously close to having his free-agent season be lost. As for Stanton, who knows if and when he will come back as the most recent update had him still not ready to resume baseball activities. Stanton’s situation is the least dire and least important, but with two weeks to go until the trade deadline, the Yankees have to plan as if they won’t have Severino or Betances this season.
The Yankees are going to the postseason and they are going as AL East champions. There are 70 games left for them to prepare for October, try to get and remain healthy and line up their rotation for the ALDS. Everything they do between now and Game 162 is for the playoffs. The first thing they have to do is address their rotation.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
Former Yankee and three-time World Series champion Shane Spencer talks about September 1998 and Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes talks about which starting pitcher the Yankees should trade for.
Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the Yankees clinching the division before the All-Star break, what the Yankees’ postseason rotation would be right now, which starting pitcher the Yankees should trade for this month, grading Aaron Boone’s first half, why Clint Frazier is still in the minors and being realists as Yankees fans.
At the 50:16 mark, former Yankee and three-time World Series champion Shane Spencer joined me to talk about growing up a Padres fan in San Diego and getting drafted by the Yankees, his memorable September 1998, his approach at the plate, winning the World Series against his hometown Padres, the 2001 World Series, his success against Curt Schilling, the breakdown of the Flip Play, his relationship with Paul O’Neill, coming up through the minors with the Core Four and how the team changed in 2002.
The Yankees need to stop playing the long game which cost them the last two seasons and focus on the season at hand. Madison Bumgarner is the best option, and his price tag shouldn’t detract the Yankees.
The last time Madison Bumgarner made a full season worth of starts was three years ago in 2016. That season, he threw 226 2/3 innings and led the league with 912 batters faced before pitching a complete-game shutout of the Mets in the National League Wild-Card Game. After adding to his historic postseason resume, the eventual champion Cubs beat him up for three runs and eight baserunners over five innings in the NLDS.
“Three years ago” is a long time in baseball. When you think about the Yankees, three years ago today, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira were still on the team, the Yankees had given opportunities for playing time to Dustin Ackley and Ike Davis, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi and Ivan Nova were in the rotation and Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge had yet to be called up for good. A lot changes over the course of three calendar years in baseball.
Bumgarner is no longer the pitcher he once was, and the pitcher who made four straight All-Star Games from 2013-16, making 31-plus starts per season, pitching to a 2.86 ERA, striking out 9.4 batters and allowing 7.3 hits per nine innings. He’s still good, even very good, and at times dominant, though it’s not a given every time he takes the mound the way it was. But 1,750 career regular-season innings and 102 1/3 career postseason innings will do that to an arm, especially one that reaches the majors at the age of 19.
I believe Bumgarner is better than he’s pitched on the awful, crappy, losing Giants teams he’s been a part of since 2017. Since 2017, the Giants have lost 98 games, 89 games and are on pace to lose 87 games this season. Progress! They are buried in the NL East where they are 17 1/2 games back, and while they are only 5 1/2 games back of the second wild card in the NL, there are seven teams ahead of them and the only teams behind them are the Mets and Marlins. The Giants aren’t going anywhere this season, and in a division with the Dodgers, competitive Diamondbacks and Rockies, and on-the-rise Padres, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Bumgarner is an impending free agent and has been the face of the Giants and a member of three championship teams. If I were a Giants fan, I wouldn’t want the team to trade him, and because of what he’s meant to the organization, he belongs in a Giants uniform for his entire career. But I’m not a Giants fan. I’m a Yankees fan. And I don’t care what Bumgarner has done for the Giants and it won’t bother me if he loses the only uniform he has ever known for the pinstripes.
I don’t care about money owed or years of control remaining. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series in going on 10 years and haven’t even been to it in that amount of time either. They have had several opportunities since their last championship to return to the World Series, and each time they failed to make the move to put them over the top.
The Yankees held on to Eduardo Nunez when they could have had Cliff Lee in 2010, only to release Nunez at the end of spring training four seasons later, and Lee proved to be the difference in the ALCS, shutting the Yankees down in Game 3. In 2017, they chose not to take on Justin Verlander’s contract in a straight salary dump from the Tigers and he went to Houston and beat the Yankees in Games 2 and 6 of the ALCS, single-handedly winning the series for the Astros. In 2018, a year after coming within one win of the World Series, the organization cut payroll by $50 million, only to then not go on the expected free-agent spending spree everyone had been anticipating they would for at least three years.
Nothing is guaranteed in this game. No one thought the Yankees would be without Luis Severino and Dellin Betances all season, lose Miguel Andujar for the year, get only nine games from Giancarlo Stanton in the first half, have Aaron Hicks miss the first two months, lose Aaron Judge for two months, be without Didi Gregorius for the first third of the season, and watch Gary Sanchez, Luke Voit, James Paxton, CC Sabathia, Domingo German and Clint Frazier all spend time on the injured list at some point. No one thought the Yankees could compete with a replacement lineup for the first six weeks and with players like Mike Tauchman, Mike Ford, Cameron Maybin and Kendrys Morales getting regular at-bats. Somehow, the Yankees have overcome every bit of adversity they have been faced with, including poor lineup and in-game decisions from their own manager (come on, I had to throw that in there), and have built a comfortable lead in the division, one in which it would take a catastrophic collapse to blow. But that doesn’t mean the Yankees would have the same season next season if this many injuries cropped up and it doesn’t mean they will have the same season next season if not a single player landed on the injured list all year. This level of success can’t be counted on from season to season.
The Yankees could win the World Series with their current roster the same way they could have won the World Series with their rosters in 2017 and 2018. But they didn’t in those seasons, and right now, there’s nothing separating them from the rest of the contenders. Unless Severino returns this season and is his usual self, there’s no potential postseason series in which the Yankees will have the better starting pitching. And if Severino doesn’t return, who’s going to start in the postseason? Sure, I trust Masahiro Tanaka more than anyone in October, but James Paxton in his first postseason after what’s been a disappointing first half? J.A. Happ after what he’s done since Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS? Domingo German, who will probably be shut down way before the playoffs because of his innings limit? CC Sabathia on the last legs of his 19-year career? An opener? No, no, no, no and no.
The Yankees need a starting pitcher and they’re going to add one, but it needs to be Bumgarner. Marcus Stroman is hurt, Zack Wheeler has impressive metrics but his actual performance has been anything but, and the idea of having to trust Matt Boyd in a short series doesn’t sit well with me. That leaves us with Bumgarner, the only one of the group who has actually has a resume worth trading for.
I realize the Yankees aren’t getting the unhittable World Series hero, who helped the Giants to three championships in five seasons. That’s not to say he won’t see a bump in production and some sort of career rejuvenation with the Yankees, pitching for a first-place team down the stretch and in October. There’s no way to measure how playing for a losing and last-place team for three straight years after having World Series aspirations for the previous seven impacts performance, but it must. It certainly did for Verlander. There’s no sure-thing in the trade market this season, unless Brian Cashman is able to pull off a deal for a pitcher whose name has yet to be mentioned by anyone.
I worry about this Yankees core and this current championship window frequently, fearful that 2017 might have been their best chance to win it all with this group, and they didn’t because they let the Astros take on Verlander’s salary. I pray my worrying is nothing more than me worrying about the Yankees like I always do and that one day I will look back and laugh at how ridiculous I was for thinking a championship might evade this group.
The Yankees need to stop playing the long game which cost them the last two seasons and focus on the season at hand, one in which they are the best team in baseball. Given the available names out there, Bumgarner is the best and most experienced option, and his price tag shouldn’t detract the Yankees.
Over the last decade, the Yankees have cost themselves trips to the World Series and potential championships by overvaluing their prospects and being unwilling to take on salary in July. They can’t do either this July or it could be a third straight missed opportunity at a championship and another year wasted with these Yankees.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
Major League Baseball has its All-Star teams and I have my All-Animosity Team. This season’s roster features a new generation of players to dislike.
It’s been a while since I put out the All-Animosity Team and because of it, this year’s team is full of new names.
I’ll always remember the teams which featured David Wright, Josh Beckett, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Adrian Gonzalez, Chone Figgins, Kevin Youkilis, Robert Andino, Carl Crawford, Manny Ramirez, Matt Wieters, Delmon Young, B.J. Upton (when he went by B.J.), Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Jose Bautista, Magglio Ordonez and many others. But I also like having a new generation of players to have animosity for.
The standards to be considered for the team are simple and only one of the following three requirements needs to be met:
1. The player crushes the Yankees.
2. The player plays for the Red Sox or Mets.
3. I don’t like the person. (When I say, “I don’t like the person” or if I say, “I hate someone” I mean I don’t like the person who wears a uniform and plays or manages for a Major League Baseball team and not the actual person away from the game. I’m sure some of the people on this list are nice people. I’m glad we got that out of the way since I can already see Player X’s fan base in an uproar about me hating someone who does so much for the community.)
Here is the 2019 All-Animosity Team.
C: Brian McCann After having Jorge Posada and Russell Martin for 14 years, sitting through a second straight season of Chris Stewart (.211/.293/.272), Austin Romine (.207/.255/.296) and John Ryan Murphy (.154/.185/.192) wasn’t going to happen again. Francisco Cervelli had been good for the Yankees in 2013 (.269/.377/.500), but once again, injuries ruined his season and he played in just 17 games. The Yankees couldn’t sit around and wait for the 27-year-old to prove he could stay healthy and be a starting catcher in the league, and I didn’t blame them. So the Yankees went out and gave Brian McCann a five-year, $85 million deal.
There wasn’t a Yankees fan who was against the signing of McCann, including me. Sure, the Yankees were essentially handing out a five-year, $85 million deal to a position they had the strongest organizational depth at, but after the catching woes of 2013, every Yankees fan wanted the All-Star as their catcher. I didn’t want to sit through another season of the team playing with no power and an automatic out at the position.
Unfortunately, McCann’s tenure with the Yankees didn’t go as planned. In three seasons, he averaged 23 home runs, but he also batted .235/.313/.418, becoming yet another Yankees left-handed hitter who couldn’t beat the shift. The emergence of Gary Sanchez in the final months of the 2016 season relegated McCann to the bench, and for as popular as the decision was to sign McCann, the decisions to bench him for Sanchez and trade him were even more popular. The Yankees traded McCann to the Astros after the season for a pair of minor-league pitchers. They also agreed to cover $5.5 million of his salary in 2017 and again in 2018, paying McCann $11 million to not play for them.
Sure enough, the Yankees faced McCann in the 2017 ALCS, paying him to play against them for a trip to the World Series. And sure enough, in Game 6, McCann delivered a huge RBI double against Luis Severino after going 0-for-10 with four strikeouts to begin the series.
1B: Steve Pearce Steve Pearce had one of the shortest and worst stints as a Yankee when he played for the team seven years ago. Once Pearce left the Yankees, he played for every other AL East team and shoved it right up the Yankees’ ass.
Pearce was an awful Yankee. Yes, his time with the Yankees was a very small sample size of 12 games and 30 plate appearances, but in those plate appearances, he hit .160/.300/.280 with one home run and four RBIs. That was back in 2012 when the Yankees were trying to win the division and avoid the first year of the wild-card format, so his at-bats were coming at a crucial time. Since then, Pearce has gone on to play for the Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays and Red Sox moving around the AL East and destroying the Yankees at every opportunity. Here is how he has done against the Yankees since they removed him from the team.
Aside from 2015, Pearce has essentially been David Ortiz 2.0 against the Yankees.
It didn’t surprise me at all when Pearce single-handedly put the Yankees away in the division race back in August and it was business as usual when he went 4-for-12 against the Yankees in the ALDS. It was just the icing on the cake when he hit three home runs and drove in eight in five games in the World Series en route to being named World Series MVP.
2B: Jose Altuve Jose Altuve is my favorite non-Yankees player and there aren’t many of those. But when he plays against the Yankees, he’s a .291 hitter and that’s enough to put him on this team.
Altuve went 8-for-25 (.320) with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the 2017 ALCS with all of his hits coming at home and both of his home runs coming in Games 6 and 7. In Games 3, 4 and 5 at Yankee Stadium, Altuve went 0-for-10 with three walks as the Astros couldn’t solve playing in New York, and if the two teams meet again in the 2019 ALCS, the Yankees are going to want to have home-field advantage.
It’s weird to have a player I actually like, enjoy watching and admire on this team. I thought about replacing him with someone else at second base and then I remembered his four home runs in the Astros’ three-game sweep of the Yankees in April and decided his production against the Yankees has been too much to leave him off.
3B: Rafael Devers The moment Rafael Devers hit that two-strike, opposite-field home run off Aroldis Chapman in 2017, I knew I had a problem. I also knew the All-Animosity Team had a third baseman for the next decade.
After his impressive 58-game rookie season, Devers looked lost last season batting .240/.298/.433 in 121 games and I got ahead of myself thinking the 21-year-old might be a bust. This season, he has a .923 OPS and is on pace for 30 home runs and 47 doubles.
I don’t get scared when Devers is at the plate the way I do when Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi or J.D. Martinez, but we’re getting there, and within two years, there’s a good chance he will be the scariest of them all.
SS: Eduardo Nunez I don’t know if I will ever hate a player more than Nunez. Well, it’s not so much him I hate because it’s not his fault he’s not very good, it’s Brian Cashman and the Yankees’ fault for thinking he was going to be the heir to Derek Jeter at shortstop. Instead, Nunez couldn’t play shortstop, couldn’t play any infield position really, and was eventually moved to the outfield before being let go by the Yankees for absolutely nothing. In 2014, the Yankees were willing to give Nunez’s job to Yangervis Solarte, who at the time had never played in the majors, rather than go through another season with Nunez.
It was Cashman’s awful evaluation of Nunez that cost the Yankees back-to-back World Series appearances and possibly back-to-back championships. Had Cashman been willing to part with Nunez, Cliff Lee would have been a Yankee. If Lee is a Yankee, he isn’t a Ranger and doesn’t beat the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS, and the Yankees don’t lose the pennant in six games. Cashman kept hanging on to the bad-ball hitter waiting for him to figure how to field a ground ball or show any semblance of discipline at the plate, and it never happened.
Sure enough, it was Nunez coming up like a Gold Glove winner in the ALDS, and sure enough, it was Nunez connecting with a ball at his laces to hit for a three-run home run in Game 1 of the World Series. As hard as it is to accept the Red Sox winning another World Series, it’s even harder to know Nunez was a part of it. “Eduardo Nunez is a champion” is something I never thought I would write.
LF: Trey Mancini Trey Mancini is the last actual major leaguer playing for the Orioles, and for some reason when the Yankees play the Orioles, they still let him beat them. Mancini is batting .271/.321/.521 with three home runs and six extra-base hits against the Yankees this season. The numbers aren’t at a Steve Pearce level, but they are built around timely hits in unfortunate situations.
I hope the Orioles finish the selloff they have been conducting since last season and send Mancini to the National League at the trade deadline. It will be one less bat to worry about in the division and will leave the Orioles with no bats to worry about for the foreseeable future.
CF: Kevin Kiemaier I was at my parents’ house over the holiday weekend, watching the Yankees-Rays series with my dad when Kevin Kiemaier came up. My dad commented how Kiemaier always plays well against the Yankees and I agreed by explaining how he sucks, yet he seems to always hit against them. On the very next pitch, Kiermaier hit a line-drive single with two strikes, winning the left-on-left matchup against CC Sabathia,
The thing about Kiermaier is that he isn’t good offensively. He’s a career .254/.311/.423 hitter who plays Gold Glove defense in center field. Against the Yankees, he’s even worse than his career numbers, batting .237/.289/.385, but for some reason there’s this perception he crushes the Yankees even if it couldn’t be less true. Maybe it’s because 14 percent of his 64 career home runs have come against the Yankees or maybe all those bloop singles of his have come in big moments. I know my dad and I aren’t alone in thinking this and we’re going to be thinking it through at least 2022 when his contract ends or 2023 if his team option is picked up.
RF: Randal Grichuk How did Randal Grichuk end up on this team full of All-Stars, award-winning players and ex-Yankees? Well, in six games this season, Grichuk is batting .400/.444/.800 with a double, three home runs and 5 RBIs against the Yankees. Add in the five home runs he hit against the Yankees in 16 games last season and you know why he’s on this team.
Grichuk is barely a major leaguer when he plays against the 28 other teams not named the Yankees and he’s a Hall of Famer against the Yankees. He essentially hits against the Yankees the way Ortiz, Evan Longoria, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Manny Machado used to.
DH: Pete Alonso Pete Alonso is good for baseball, but he’s also good for the Mets, and that’s why he’s on the team.
I’m upset Alonso is serving as a bright spot in another lost and disastrous Mets season, I’m disappointed Alonso beat Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the Home Run Derby and I’m worried he might beat Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record of 52. With Michael Conforto turning out to be nothing special, I thought it might be a while until the Mets had a new face of the franchise from a position player standpoint and then Alonso had to come along and be one of the game’s elite power hitters. I have a feeling Alonso is going to be on this team for a long, long time.
SP: Justin Verlander I haven’t liked Justin Verlander since Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS. The Yankees’ decision to not trade for his enormous contract at the 2017 August deadline, letting him go to the Astros and single-handedly decide the ALCS, made me like him less (though it made me like the Yankees’ financial decisions even less).
It pains me that Verlander was finally able to get over the championship hump in 2017 after years of losing in the ALCS and World Series and it pains me even more that his championship came after he won both Games 2 and 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees. Unfortunately, Verlander’s championship can never be taken away from him, and the only thing that will make it hurt less is if the Yankees beat the outspoken right-hander in the ALCS en route to their own championship. The way things are going for both teams, the Yankees could have a chance to do that this season.
RP: Nathan Eovaldi Nathan Eovaldi isn’t a relief pitcher … yet. He’s supposedly going to pitch out of the bullpen when he returns to the Red Sox, and that’s enough to make him eligibile to be teh relief pitcher on this team.
Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and can’t strike anyone out and that’s exactly what Eovaldi is. The Dodgers gave up on him and the Marlins gave up on him despite him being 24 years old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and he didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.
Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches per inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.
When Eovaldi returned to baseball last season and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in the team’s history.
Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero”.) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion and I’ll never get over it.
Manager: Dave Roberts If Dave Roberts is unsuccessful in his attempt to steal second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees win that series and most likely the World Series, and who knows, maybe the Red Sox still haven’t won a championship since 1918. Without that steal, Roberts isn’t a household name in the baseball world and he most likely isn’t the manager of the Dodgers.
It was Roberts’s bullpen decisions in the 2018 World Series which led to another Red Sox championship as he continually gave the ball to Ryan Madson, forgetting it was 2019 and not 2009. The right-handed reliever somehow appeared in four of the five games in the series despite allowing all seven of his inherited runners to score. It was also Roberts who decided not to start Cody Bellinger in Games 1, 2 and 5 and Max Muncy in Games 1 and 2, choosing to not have arguably his best two hitters in the lineup for the entire game. Roberts is now responsible for two Red Sox championships.
I dream about the Yankees playing the Dodgers in the 2019 World Series and the Yankees handing Roberts his third straight World Series loss. But if the Yankees and Dodgers do play in the World Series, I won’t have to dream about the Yankees winning, Roberts’s managing will take care of it for me.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
