Yankees – Page 150 – Keefe To The City

Oct 15, 2018

Didi Gregorius Replacement Options

The Didi Gregorius injury changes how the Yankees planned to operate this offseason and it hurts his own personal value since he will become a free agent after missing part of the season due to elbow surgery.

Have you ever sat down for a test and had to bullshit your way through the essay questions, so you ramble on and on about nothing just to fill space, giving no actual answer? That’s how Aaron Boone handled his end-of-the-season press conference.

The Yankees manager said nothing insightful and somehow still believes he made the right decisions with his bullpen in the playoffs. The only good thing to come from Boone having absolutely no clue what he was doing in the ALDS is that a lot of Boone supporters, both fans and media, now wonder if he is actually the right person for the job. It only took them nearly the entire season from what Boone displayed that first weekend in Toronto to realize the manager of the Yankees should probably have some managerial or coaching experience prior at any level before being handed a win-now team.

After 15 minutes of nothing from Boone, he took the final question of his press conference, and then Yankees public relations man Jason Zillo said the following:

“We’re going to have Cash in here in a few minutes, but in fairness to you guys (at this point Boone turns to Zillo like he remembers something and points at Zillo), there’s not a great point to drop this in, but I want Aaron to be able to respond to it. Didi had an MRI yesterday. He will undergo Tommy John surgery at a yet to be determined time …”

Boone spoke about nothing for 15 minutes and forgot to mention that the team’s starting shortstop and only left-handed, non-switch-hitting bat in their lineup played in the ALDS with a torn throwing elbow and is going to miss a large portion of 2019 following surgery on that elbow. How is it even possible Boone nearly let this slide without talking about it during his part of the press conference? Was he just going to leave if not for Zillo bringing it up? Judging by Boone’s reaction Zillo bringing it up, it sure seemed like Boone was going to walk out without having mentioned this incredibly significant news.

Boone said Didi Gregorius hurt his arm on a throw when he played a ball off the Green Monster in Game 2 of the ALDS. How did a shortstop play a ball off the left-field wall? Well, in the seventh inning, Ian Kinsler hit a ball off the wall that Andrew McCutchen played as if he had no basic knowledge or understanding of geometry. The ball bounced past McCutchen and to Gregorius, who threw it back in. (The image at the top is Gregorius getting ready to make the throw that tore his elbow.)

Boone is an idiot, but we already knew that. The real news is that the Yankees are going to be without Gregorius for some amount of time in 2019 and possibly the majority of 2019. And here I was thinking the 2019 Yankees would be better than the 2018 Yankees. The 2019 Yankees can still be better than the 2018 Yankees, but it just got that much harder to make that possible.

The Yankees have a few options with how they can handle this.

Option 1
The Yankees could keep Gleyber Torres at second base, if that’s where they feel he will play moving forward in his career, and use someone like Adeiny Hechavarria or someone with his defense-first skillset to play shortstop and bat ninth (unless Boone goes into 2019 thinking Torres should continue to bat ninth no matter what). I certainly don’t want the Yankees to play any part of next season with a near-automatic out like Hechavarria in the lineup, let alone possibly the majority of next season, so this would be the worst-case scenario for me.

Option 2
The Yankees could sign Manny Machado. This would mean while Gregorius is out, Machado could play short, Torres second and Miguel Andujar third. Or Machado third, Torres short and Andujar first or outfield. The first step to this process would be to sign Machado and then determine where Andujar’s future is. Gregorius is going to be a free agent at the end of this season, so maybe Machado plays third for 2019 and then shortstop in the years to follow, or maybe the Yankees also sign Gregorius, and Machado plays third and Gregorius plays short for the foreseeable future. That would mean Andujar becomes an outfielder or a first baseman. I wouldn’t hate this scenario, but it’s not my favorite.

Option 3
If the Yankees are going to sign either Machado or Bryce Harper, I would rather they sign Harper. The Yankees desperately need a middle-of-the-order left-handed bat and I would rather have Harper for the next decade than Machado. Signing Harper would mean Option 1 above would be less of an issue since having either a defense-first player at either short or second (whichever Torres isn’t at) would be negated in the lineup by the addition of Harper’s bat. If Harper isn’t an option for the Yankees because of the regrettable decision to add Giancarlo Stanton for 10 years then Option 2 becomes my favorite option because I do want either Machado or Harper (or both!).

Option 4
The unknown. The Yankees could do something not listed here. (This will likely be what happens since no one is expecting it.)

This Yankees offseason is so unpredictable and there are so many avenues they can take to set themselves up for the next decade that it actually hurts my head to think about. The Gregorius injury comes at a terrible time because it changes the course of how the Yankees planned to operate this offseason and it hurts his own personal value since he will become a free agent after missing part of the season due to elbow surgery.

The Yankees have an opportunity this winter to build on what began at the 2016 trade deadline and to put themselves in position to sustain success for a long period of time. The construction of their infield without Gregorius is now their first major decision of the offseason. They can’t get it wrong.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Oct 11, 2018

The Yankees Weren’t Good Enough Once Again

The Yankees’ World Series drought is now at nine years after the team’s disappointing performance in the postseason.

There have been a lot of times in the Brian Cashman era where I thought the Yankees were the best team in the league and they still didn’t win the World Series. In some of those seasons, they didn’t even make it out of the ALDS. This season, though, the Yankees weren’t the best team. They had the most talent. They just weren’t the best team.

The best team doesn’t have a manager who single-handedly swings a series for the worst or starting pitching that gets outpitched or a lineup that gets shut down by mediocre pitching. The Yankees had all these things and it’s why their real postseason lasted four games and why they had to play a game before the real postseason.

Top to bottom, one through 25 on the roster, I still believe the Yankees had the most talent, and on paper, should have won the division and should have represented the American League in the World Series. Underachievement, injuries and poor decisions forced them into the wild-card game, and those three negative traits eliminated them in four games against the Red Sox.

Just like that, the season is over. The grind that began in Tampa back in February and became official in Toronto is March is over, and for the ninth straight season, the Yankees’ season will end without a championship. The last nine seasons haven’t even provided a World Series appearance. The eight-year championship drought from 2001-08 has now been surpassed.

The final week or so of the regular season coupled with their impressive win over the A’s in the wild-card game and their effort in Boston in Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS served as a facade for the team’s real problems. The lineup was too right-handed heavy and was then shut down by two right-handed pitchers in Nathan Eovaldi and Rick Porcello. Their starting pitching was untrustworthy as seen by the disastrous starts of J.A. Happ, Luis Severino and CC Sabathia. And their manager’s lack of any managerial or coaching experience at any level was exposed on the postseason stage. When the Yankees failed to hit home runs, they failed to score, which put pressure on their rotation and forced their clueless manager to make meaningful decisions. When the Yankees failed to hit home runs, they failed to win. That’s not to say relying on home runs is wrong. It’s just that having home runs as your only source of offense is. And outside of Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez’s power display in Boston, the Yankees couldn’t score.

The Yankees supposedly arrived ahead of schedule in 2017. They were picked to finish close to or last in the AL East and they wound up winning the first wild card, winning the wild-card game, coming back down 2-0 against the Indians in the ALDS and coming within a win of the World Series. Their unexpected postseason run made them the AL favorite for 2019 and they fell short of those expectations. Well short. They blew their division chances in August, barely hung on to the first wild-card spot, and then after winning home-field advantage from the Red Sox in ALDS, they suffered the most embarrassing postseason loss in the team’s history as they would lose both home games in the series.

This season was a step back for a team whose natural progression should have been at least a second straight ALCS appearance, if not a World Series appearance. Yes, the MLB postseason is a crapshoot, and just reaching the ALDS should be enough, but not when you’re built like the Yankees. Not when you reach the ALCS, come within a game of the World Series and then add the NL MVP and swap out Starlin Castro and Chase Headley for Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar. That should have been enough to close the one-win gap the Yankees weren’t able to close when they went to Houston for Games 6 and 7 up 3-2 in the series. Instead, the gap is now even bigger than a year ago.

In the nine years since their last championship, the Yankees have three ALCS losses, two ALDS losses, a wild-card loss and three postseason-less seasons. Where do they go from here? I really don’t know. The team has many paths it can take this offseason, so that a year from now they are still playing games and not holding exit interviews and end-of-the-season press conferences. They have decisions to make on CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner. They have rotation spots to fill from within or outside the organization. They have to figure out who will be their first baseman and how they can add left-handed balance to the lineup. And on top of all that, they have to make the right choices when it comes to the best free-agent class in history. If you believe that the Yankees did arrive early in 2017 and that these last two seasons were just experience-building years then 2019 is truly the first year of this current team’s window of opportunity, and it can’t be wasted.

Success can be fleeting in baseball and nothing is guaranteed. On paper, the Yankees should be as good, if not better in 2019 than they were in 2018. But on paper, the 2018 Yankees should have been the best team in baseball, and their season ended short of their goal once again.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Oct 9, 2018

Yankees-Red Sox ALDS Game 3: Embarrassment

Every aspect of the Yankees from the starting pitching to the bullpen to the offense to the defense to the manager was an embarrassment, and now as a result, the Yankees are facing elimination.

Embarrassment. That’s all there really is to say about this game. Every aspect of the Yankees from the starting pitching to the bullpen to the offense to the defense to the manager was an embarrassment, and now as a result, the Yankees are facing elimination.

Not even a week ago, I gave Aaron Boone a clean slate for the previous six-plus months after his team reached the real playoffs: the ALDS. But that clean slate didn’t last long.

Luis Severino didn’t have it on Monday night and it was obvious from the first pitch of the game. Mookie Betts jumped on a first-pitch fastball and sent it to the warning track in center field, and off the bat, I thought it was gone. Severino was able to pitch around a two-out walk in the inning, but two of three outs ended up on the warning track.

In the second inning, Severino lost a seven-pitch battle to Rafael Devers that resulted in a line drive to right field, which somehow wasn’t a double, for the third hard-hit ball put in play out of the four batters who put the ball in play. After a steal, a groundout and a defensive miscue by Severino, the Red Sox had a 1-0 lead.

A 1-0 lead in Yankee Stadium against Nathan Eovaldi and the Red Sox bullpen with eight at-bats left isn’t a big deal, and when Giancarlo Stanton led off the bottom of the second with a single, I thought they might get the run right back. But Didi Gregorius decided to bunt for a hit rather than try to hit the ball in the gap or over the wall, and he was thrown out. The inning would end with nothing.

Severino had thrown 44 pitches in the first two innings, and Boone was going back to him in the third inning with the top of the order due up. At the time, it wasn’t necessarily the wrong move, but given how hard Severino had been hit in the first two, there was certainly reason to think it was time to go to the bullpen.

Betts and Andrew Benintendi led off the third with back-to-back line-drive singles and J.D. Martinez hit another ball to wall in left-center that looked like it had a chance. If you didn’t think Severino should be out of the game to start the inning, he should have certainly been relieved now with the Yankees down 2-0. Xander Bogaerts singled and a Devers groundout made it 3-0 before Steve Pearce hit a deep fly ball to center field for the third out of the inning.

The one-run deficit had turned to three and it was obvious Severino had nothing. Nearly every out had been a line drive right at a fielder and the fact the score was only 3-0 and not worse was a miracle. There was no way he could go back in the game for the fourth. Except the Yankees manager is Aaron Boone.

Boone sent Severino back out for the fourth, trailing 3-0, and No. 7 hitter Brock Holt and No. 8 Christian Vazquez hit back-to-back singles on the first two pitches of the inning, and no one was warming up in the Yankees bullpen. Then No. 9 hitter Jackie Bradley Jr. walked. Bases loaded and no one out. Boone’s decision had put the game from within reach to possibly getting out of hand in the fourth inning. Why did he bring Severino back out for the fourth?

“Just hoping he could get something started to get through the bottom of the lineup there, and then we were going to have Lynn ready for Betts no matter what. And then once the first two guys got on there, thinking Bradley’s in a bunting situation, so we’re going to take an out and then go to the pen there. But it just snowballed on him, and then Lance had a little bit of trouble obviously coming in there. So it just turned into a really bad inning for us.”

So Boone thought Severino would magically find his game in the fourth inning after struggling through the first three and being fortunate to have many of his line drives hit at fielders. Then he had already determined he wanted the last pitcher on the postseason roster to face the AL MVP. Then he assumed Bradley was going to bunt, despite not having sacrifice bunted since the 2015 season. And finally, he thought Lynn “had a little bit of trouble”. To me, walking in a run on the first batter you face and then allowing a bases-clearing double on the second batter you face is more than “a little bit of trouble”.

But even after Boone let Severino load the bases, the game still could have been saved with a couple of big strikeouts by either Dellin Betances, David Robertson or Chad Green. Instead, Boone went to the last pitcher on the postseason roster. Why didn’t he go to one of his elite relievers with the game on the line?

“Well, because with Dellin we only had for an inning we figured tonight. In hindsight, we certainly could have started the fourth inning with Robbie or something, but we really felt like Sevy could at least get us a couple outs in that fourth inning before turning it over to Lynn and then we could roll out our guys. But we just couldn’t stop the bleeding at all. That was the thinking behind it.”

Apparently, the Yankees determined before a postseason game that their best pitcher would only be available for one inning. If that’s not nonsensical enough, the Yankees had an off day the day before, and on top of that, Betances had pitched twice in the last nine days, throwing 53 pitches. But he was going to be limited to one inning in Game 3 of the ALDS? And how about Boone using “in hindsight” there as if these moves are only now being second-guessed and as if not everyone in the world thought they were awful decisions at the time. Boone would go on to use “in hindsight” again in his postgame press conference. But nothing might be worse than the idea that he was going to try to steal a few more outs with a laboring Severino and only start to “roll out” the elite relievers after Lynn pitched. Good thing Betances and Robertson are rested now with the Yankees facing elimination.

Lynn walked in a run and then allowed a bases-clearing double, and the game was over. Now trailing 7-0, Lynn would end up recording one out before Boone decided to go to Green, the same way he had decided to go with Jonathan Holder over Green in the first game between these two teams in August that led to the division race unraveling. By the end of the inning, the Red Sox led 10-0, and not even Eovaldi and the Red Sox bullpen would blow the game.

The Yankees would go on to lose 16-1 and pitch Austin Romine in the ninth inning because the first eight innings hadn’t been embarrassing enough. Severino didn’t show up, Boone continued to prove he has no business being a major league manager, Lynn turned back into the Lynn that was available at the trade deadline, Green couldn’t stop the bleeding and the offense didn’t show up before the game got out of hand.

The Yankees now have to win Game 4, and the only way I can see them doing that is to score enough runs that Boone’s decision-making won’t impact the game. Put the game out of reach and don’t allow him to potentially make costly pitching decisions.

After winning a game in Boston and returning home with Severino against Eovaldi, the Red Sox feeling the pressure and the Stadium crowd behind them, I said it would be a disaster if the Yankees now blew this series. And if they lose one more game, it will be a disaster.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Oct 8, 2018

It Will Now Be a Disaster If Yankees Lose ALDS

Everything is set up for the Yankees now in the ALDS, and if they screw it up, it will be a complete letdown. They have favorable matchups on the field and they have the Stadium crowd behind them.

The Yankees took care of business in Boston by winning one of the first two games of the ALDS and now return to Yankee Stadium and have home-field advantage in what is now best-of-3.

Everything is in the Yankees’ favor and if they screw it up, it will be a complete letdown. They have favorable starting pitching matchups in Games 3 and 4, they have the deeper lineup and bullpen and they have the raucous Stadium crowd that can see the clear path to a second straight ALCS set up for them.

Now that the ALDS is tied up, I decided to email Michael Hurley of CBS Boston for one of our usual email exchanges.

Keefe: I remember reading a story about Derek Lowe’s car getting destroyed after he blew a save as Red Sox closer. I have to imagine there was extra security surrounding the Red Sox players’ parking lot following Game 2 of the ALDS. Or maybe, David Price was smart enough to get a ride to Fenway Park the other night.

I know there is a big movement around the idea that “being clutch” isn’t a real thing or doesn’t exist, but as a Yankees fan who lived through the David Ortiz Red Sox era, no stat, data or mathematical or scientific fact will ever be able to get me to believe that “being clutch” isn’t real. It’s not a coincidence that great players and pitchers can be great throughout the regular season and in the days right before the start of the postseason and then suddenly be unable to perform. October is different. It’s 100 percent different. Just ask Ortiz or Derek Jeter or Scott Brosius or Curt Schilling, and on the other end, ask Alex Rodriguez or Nick Swisher or Mark Teixeira or Clayton Kershaw or Bryce Harper, or in this case Price.

There’s no way Price can have any fans or supporters left in Boston. He wasn’t unable to win a postseason game with the Rays, Tigers or Blue Jays, and still hasn’t with the Red Sox, despite saying in his introductory press conference in Boston that he had saved all his postseason wins for this team. Game 2 was his latest postseason failure as he was pulled after five outs, forcing his bullpen to get 22 outs and handing over home-field advantage to the Yankees.

Unfortunately, I had to leave Boston early in the morning on Sunday, but I would have liked to stay around for the day-after breakdown of Price by Red Sox fans in the city. What’s the mood in Boston after Game 2?

Hurley: Well first of all, David Price drives a car that is the closest thing a civilian can get to an armored tank. Come to think of it, I suppose that’s not a coincidence. but we need not worry about his safety, so as long as he drives that thing. (Seriously, Google it.)

The mood in Boston is, I think, the way it feels in any city after a playoff loss. That is to say, it feels like it’s the end of the world, that there’s no hope, and that it’s all over. A hundred-and-eight wins for nothing. What a waste.

All of that will obviously change significantly if the Red Sox can roll into Yankee Stadium and take back the series lead in Game 3. But based on that atmosphere from the wild card game, doing that doesn’t feel like it’ll be easy.

As for Price, what a disaster. Just, what an unmitigated disaster. The Red Sox traded Jon Lester after knowing that he was nails. From April through October, nails. Helped you win two World Series. But had to get rid of him because you don’t pay pitchers premium money when they’re over 30. But, whoops, a second straight last-place finish, and maybe it’s time to give the richest pitcher contract ever to David Price, eight months shy of his 30th birthday. Let’s see how that works out. Brilliant.

I agree with you on clutch, but what I find fascinating is that Price was able to close out Game 7 of an ALCS as a reliever, and he’s been really good as a postseason reliever (he threw 6.2 scoreless innings last October). But he’s just crumbled as a starter. I’ve always thought of it as a “you have it or you don’t” type of thing when it comes to ability to perform in huge moments. But David Price is just a unique individual. He’s got a unique elbow, and he’s got some unique psychological factors going on.

Keefe: I have never thought this Red Sox team was as good as their record. Yes, they won 108 games and are the “best” regular-season team in Red Sox history, I just don’t see it.

The top of the order with Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and J.D. Martinez is the best 1-2-3 in the majors, but the rest of the lineup? Sure, Steve Pearce is the right-handed Ortiz against the Yankees, but he doesn’t hit like that against the rest of the league. Xander Bogaerts? He’s OK. Mitch Moreland? Eduardo Nunez? Ian Kinsler? Sandy Leon? Jackie Bradley Jr.? They are all average to bad hitters.

The rotation has Chris Sale, who is one of the best pitchers in the league when healthy, and David Price, who is a great regular-season pitcher. But Rick Porcello is just OK, I saw enough of Nathan Eovaldi as a Yankee to know he’s awful and Eduardo Rodriguez wasn’t good enough to beat out Eovaldi for a postseason start. Where is Drew Pomeranz?

The bullpen has Craig Kimbrel and … um … that’s it. Craig Kimbrel.

I think the Red Sox are all the proof anyone needs to know that winning 100 games in 2018 was no great accomplishment. The majority of the league was just so, so bad this season and the Red Sox were able to get fat off the Orioles and interleague, which is why they won the division and the Yankees didn’t. But the best Red Sox team in history? No way.

Hurley: Yeah, that’s generally true. You’re off the mark about Xander Bogaerts, who led all AL shortstops in OPS, doubles, and RBIs. But the rest of that assessment is pretty accurate.

I’ve looked at this year as just having some inflation with regard to the win totals. I guess with masterminds like Buck Showalter running baseball teams, it’s been easy for good teams to rack up victories. I don’t know the exact equation, but I think you can safely lop off 10 wins from the good teams to compare them to teams from years past.

This would probably be a good opportunity to rant and rave about how the 91-win Indians were gifted a trip to the ALDS despite playing 76 games against the awful AL Central while posting sub-.500 records vs. both the AL East and AL West, all while the 100-win Yankees and 97-win A’s had to play a do-or-die exhibition game for TV ratings. BUT I WILL WITHHOLD FROM THAT COMPLAINT FOR THE TIME BEING.

Keefe: I think we are the only two people in the world who feel the current MLB postseason format is bad. Everyone seems to love it because it gives them two extra days of playoff baseball and it keeps more teams and cities involved during the regular season longer. You know what I love? The best teams playing for a championship. That’s what I love. But hey, JUST WIN YOUR DIVISION!

OK, maybe I’m wrong about Bogaerts. Let’s group him in with Betts, Benintendi, Martinez and Pearce. (Any non-Yankees fan has no idea why Pearce is being group in with All-Star players). Mitch Moreland, Eduardo Nunez, Ian Kinsler, Sandy Leon, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Rafael Devers are 4-for-29 with a walk so far in the series. That’s not great.

The Red Sox are asking Nathan Eovaldi and Rick Porcello to go into Yankee Stadium and send the series back to Boston for a Game 5 on Thursday. I understand Eovaldi had some success since being traded to the Red Sox, but I saw 48 starts and 51 games from Eovaldi when he was a Yankee and I know he sucks. Red Sox fans have reminded me of his eight shutout innings against them in the August four-game sweep, but that Yankees lineup was without Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Andrew McCutch and Luke Voit, who is 1998 Shane Spencer. Never trust a pitcher who throws 100 and at times over 100 and can’t average a strikeout per inning. Eovaldi throws as hard as anyone in the league and 640 career strikeouts in 850 innings. He can’t be trusted.

The more I look at these teams, and not just from the two-game sample size, but from a full-season standpoint, the more my opinion that the Yankees are a better team from top to bottom. Their lineup is deeper, their rotation is deeper and their bullpen is deeper. If the Yankees lose the series, Yankees fans should be upset because they lost to a lesser team. Red Sox fans will be upset because of the regular season they had and because it’s the Yankees, but they would be losing to a better team. But if the Red Sox do lose, I don’t think fans in Boston will look at it like that.

Hurley: I mean, I follow you on Twitter, so I know how you feel about most Yankees. So I’m not surprised to see how much you still hate Eovaldi.

I’m not going to sit here and say that Eovaldi is great by any stretch, but if you’re going to bring up the August Yankee lineup, then you should at least mention the lineup on Sept. 18, when Eovaldi pitched six scoreless innings. That day featured everyone except 1998 Shane Spencer, and he pitched pretty well. It was the bullpen that blew that one.

I’m not sure I wholly buy that the Yankees are a better team. In spring training I went position by position. Some of the names in that story are ancient history — Hanley Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, Greg Bird, Brandon Drury — but it was a pretty close comparison. I gave the edge to Stanton over Martinez, which was wrong. I gave the edge to Judge over Betts, which ended up being wrong. I gave the edge to Gregorius over Bogaerts, which was wrong. I think the only spots where you can definitively say the Yankees are better is at catcher, center field, third base, second base, and obviously the bullpen.

None of that really matters though, when Eduardo Rodriguez decides to just not cover first base in a playoff game. And none of it really matters when the bottom third of the Yankees’ lineup reaches base five times, while the top four batters in the Red Sox’ order goes a combined 2-for-15 with one walk. Going back to your first point about clutch, maybe the Yankees are just wired better for moments like this. Mookie Betts’ career regular-season OPS is .888. Mookie Betts’ career postseason OPS is .666. Not great! Meanwhile Aaron Judge is somehow muscling home runs to the opposite field on inside curveballs from Craig Kimbrel. (Seriously, how the hell did he do that?)

Keefe: It’s not most Yankees, it’s only Aaron Boone (during the regular season), Sonny Gray, Shane Robinson, A.J. Cole and Shane Robinson and none of them are on postseason roster. And Jonathan Holder too, but thankfully, he hasn’t pitched yet in this series.

Judge is amazing. No one with his body type (well, no one close to having his body type since he’s the only one to ever be built like that and reach the majors) has ever had his success and everything about the way he is built says he shouldn’t be this good. But he is, and he seems to only be getting better. Betts and Martinez had incredible seasons and one of them (likely Betts) will be the AL MVP, but Judge should also get votes and attention. Look at how bad the team was from when he got hurt at the end of July until he came back near the end of September. And look at what he has done in the postseason so far.

I think everyone was on board with your idea that Stanton was better than Martinez outside of the true Red Sox homers, who likely have bricks with their name on it inside Fenway Park. But Stanton was a disappointment while Martinez filled the void left by Ortiz after 2016. There are a lot of Yankees fans who somehow defend Stanton’s season (.266/.343/.509 with 30 home runs and 100 RBIs) while forgetting his salary and that he was basically Barry Bonds last year. I thought him playing 81 games in Yankee Stadium would enhance his 59-home run season, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. You can count on one hand the amount of big hits he had this season with most of them coming when games were out of hand. I bet on a lot of baseball and saw him play a lot with the Marlins, but apparently not enough to realize that he’s essentially just a bigger version of Starlin Castro with no plate discipline.

Stanton’s true colors have shown up in the three-game postseason. He hit a mammoth solo home run when the Yankees were already well on their way to a win in the wild-card game, and in Boston, he struck out four times in Game 1 (once with the bases loaded and no outs) and weakly grounded out in a big spot in Game 2 (it would have been a double play if he actually hit it hard). Thankfully, he was saved by Gary Sanchez’s home run, which landed in Back Bay.

I know the answer isn’t Stanton, but which Yankees hitter are Red Sox fans most scared of in a big spot? For me and Red Sox hitters, it’s Steve Pearce and then J.D. Martinez and then Eduardo Nunez. W

hy Nunez? Because he was an awful Yankee and at some point in this series will likely have a big hit.

Hurley: Judge is the obvious answer when it comes to frightening Yankees. That one speaks for itself.

But — maybe this is just me — but I also randomly put Brett Gardner on that list. He objectively stinks, and the fact that he’s been a starting outfielder for the New York Yankees for like 10 years is amazing to me. Generally, hustle only gets you so far.

Anyway. He’s a pain in the ass at the plate. I know Kimbrel got him swinging in Game 1, but I feel like he’s liable at any point to slap a perfect pitch the other way for a game-tying double, setting up the top of the order to win the game.

Friggin’ Brett Gardner. I’m already annoyed by this inevitability.

I wouldn’t worry about Nunez though. He was in the lineup over Devers for his defense. Didn’t really work out.

Keefe: Before the series, I predicted the Yankees would win in four games. I thought they would lose Game 1 against Sale, rock Price in Game 2 and then return home to continue their home postseason win streak with Red Sox fans not getting to see the 2018 Red Sox play another game at Fenway Park.

So far, the series has unfolded exactly I envisioned, and the Yankees have a chance to win the series at home. It’s unusual for me to be so confident about Yankees-Red Sox games, let alone Yankees-Red Sox postseason games, but I am. Maybe I will be let down and Eovaldi will shut them down in Game 3 and their season will end in Game 4, but I really don’t see that happening (so now it will happen). Yankees in 4.

What was your prediction before the series and has it changed?

Hurley: I don’t really make predictions. Not because I’m above them or anything. Just because I’m always wrong.

So I don’t know what will happen in Game 3. But I’d say, if the Yankees win, the series is over. If the Red Sox win, the series is still not over. If that makes sense.

I don’t give the Red Sox much of a chance of climbing out of a 2-1 hole. But I could easily see the Yankees winning Game 4 and the bumming everyone out at Fenway Park in Game 5.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Oct 7, 2018

Yankees-Red Sox ALDS Game 2: The Gary Sanchez Game

Gary Sanchez erased the last six-plus months by single-handedly winning Game 2 in Boston and the Yankees now have control of the ALDS with home-field advantage.

I wasn’t nervous when I woke up on Saturday morning. I knew the Yankees had to win Game 2 later that night to avoid putting themselves on the brink of elimination the way they had after two games in last year’s ALDS, but I wasn’t worried. It felt weird to not be nervous or worried about a Yankees-Red Sox playoff game, but I hadn’t been the night before for Game 1 and I wasn’t on Saturday for Game 2.

A lot of optimism and confidence for this series came from the idea that I still was unsure how the Red Sox won 108 games. I mean technically I know how they won 108 games, they beat up on and piled up wins against the bad teams (and there were a lot of them this season) while the Yankees struggled to. But when you look at their 25-man roster as a whole it’s puzzling how this team could be the best regular-season Red Sox team in history. I guess that just shows you how bad most of Major League Baseball was this season.

As the game drew closer, I still wasn’t nervous or worried and when I sat down in my seat at Fenway Park, after glancing over toward the Pesky Pole, I was completely confident the Yankees would win Game 2.

The Yankees as a team were batting .300/.365/.544 in 269 career plate appearances against David Price, and the highest-paid pitcher in history had never won a playoff game, not with the Rays, Tigers, Blue Jays or Red Sox. Now he was being asked to beat the Yankees, who he rarely ever beat, in the playoffs, where he never had won, to prevent his team from going to the Bronx tied 1-1 with Rick Porcello and Nathan Eovaldi most likely starting the next two games. Why wouldn’t I be glowing with confidence?

Ten pitches into the game, my confidence was rewarded as Aaron Judge sent a 1-2 pitch high over the Green Monster in left-center field where few have ever hit a ball. The Yankees had an early 1-0 lead and all of the Red Sox fans who had talked themselves into Price finally showing up in the playoffs were quietly sitting down as Fenway Park turned into a church.

Gary Sanchez entered the game 6-for-13 in his career against Price with five home runs and 11 RBIs, and leading off the second, he crushed the third pitch of the inning over the Monster to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. The exact game I had envisioned was unfolding as the Yankees’ right-handed power was knocking Price around and the career postseason failure was laying another egg in October. As Sanchez’s home run was still in the air and headed for Back Bay, Fenway Park broke out in a “Yankees suck” chant, another embarrassing moment for the fan base.

After a pair of ground outs, Gleyber Torres and Brett Gardner put together back-to-back walks and then Andrew McCutchen lined a single to left field to score the Yankees’ third run. That was it for Price as Alex Cora took the ball from him and gave it to Joe Kelly with Price still responsible for the two runners on. Luckily for Price, Judge’s 109.8 mph line drive off Kelly was hit right at Mookie Betts in right field or his pitching line for the night would have been even worse that it was and it was still really bad: 1.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 HR.

Price had most likely wished he had been scratched from the start with a mysterious injury or illness the way he had earlier in the season when he took himself out of a start at Yankee Stadium because of a video game-related injury. But instead, he had recorded five outs and allowed three hits, two walks, two home runs, three runs and forced his bad bullpen to get 22 outs. I guess $217 million doesn’t buy you what it used to.

Masahiro Tanaka did what he has always done in the postseason as he kept putting up zeros, giving the offense a chance to extend their 3-0 lead. But unlike Game 1, the Yankees weren’t able to push across any runs despite four baserunners in three innings against Kelly, Ryan Brasier and Brandon Workman. Xander Bogaerts hit a solo home run in the fourth to make it a 3-1 game, and at the end of the sixth with the game still 3-1, I started to feel uneasy. The Yankees had been unable to tack on to their early three-run lead, which had become a two-run lead, and I began to wonder if this would be a reversal of the previous night with the Red Sox now looking to slowly get back in the game.

I have defended Sanchez all season. I have supported him through his historically-awful offensive season, his injuries, his passed balls and the perception that he is lazy and doesn’t hustle. I have stood by the franchise catcher because that’s what he is: a franchise catcher. When healthy, he’s the best catcher in the world and we saw that for the last two months of 2016 and all of 2017. One bad injury-plagued season shouldn’t be enough for Yankees fans to turn on him and call for Austin Romine to start or for the Yankees to trade Sanchez for someone like J.T. Realmuto. Game 2 of the ALDS should end all of the anti-Sanchez crap.

Cora must have felt he had gotten enough out of his actual relievers after three scoreless innings, so he called on starter Eduardo Rodriguez with two outs in the sixth and Rodriguez had retired both batters in the inning. Rodriguez was back out for the seventh, but after Judge singled to lead off the inning, Luke Voit drew a walk and the Red Sox’ left-hander, who was pitching in an unfamiliar role was in a serious jam. With two on and no one out, the Yankees had the middle of their order coming up and a chance to break the game open and tie the series. To no surprise, Giancarlo Stanton did what everyone expected him to do by weakly grounding out, and thankfully it was weakly as it was nearly a double play, and that brought up Sanchez with Judge on third and Stanton on first.

Sanchez got ahead 2-0 on Rodriguez and than swung through a pitch outside the zone, clearly trying to break the game open. Now a 2-1 count, Rodriguez challenged Sanchez, and this time he didn’t miss, destroying a 93-mph fastball for a 479-foot, three-run home run. Sanchez had given the Yankees a 6-1 lead, his bat accounting for four of the six runs, and had erased his struggles of the last six-plus months. The Red Sox were now down five runs with nine outs to their name, but that didn’t stop Fenway Park from chanting “Yankees suck” following Sanchez’s second home run of the game had just ripped out the heart of Red Sox fans.

The game was essentially over, and despite the run allowed in the bottom of the seventh, it was. Dellin Betances, Zach Britton and Aroldis Chapman combined to allow one run over four innings, and the Yankees won Game 2 of the series, 6-2.

My personal strategy for the series was going exactly as planned. The Yankees had won a game in Boston and were heading, where these Yankees don’t lose in October, with their best starting pitcher going in Game 3 and with home-field advantage for what is now a three-game series. The 108-win, best regular-season Red Sox team in history? They’re in a lot of trouble.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.