The new-look Yankees beat the Phillies on Tuesday for their third straight win.
The Yankees have won three straight games, and they have done so with a new-look lineup, forced on them by injury and protocol issues. Their new style of play has worked, and they have cut into their division and wild card deficits.
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The Yankees beat the Red Sox. It only took until their eight game against them of the season, but they did it. The Yankees won the weekend series and have now won six of nine.
The Yankees beat the Red Sox. It only took until their eight game against them of the season, but they did it. The Yankees won the weekend series and have now won six of nine to inch closer to holding a postseason spot.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. The weekend didn’t start well. A rainout on Thursday caused a postponement, though that was far from the worst Yankees news to begin the second half of the season. Luke Voit was placed on the injured list for a third time this season, and Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela, Kyle Higashioka, Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes and Wandy Peralta were placed on the COVID-19 IL and would be out at least 10 days. Add in Clint Frazier still being out with vision issues, Miguel Andujar’s absence for a wrist strain, a finger contusion for Michael King and Darren O’Day’s season-ending hamstring injury and the 2021 Yankees had become the 2021 RailRiders. (To make matters worse, Tim Locastro tore his ACL in left field on Friday and then Trey Amburgey suffered a hamstring injury on Sunday.)
This type of injury bug and protocol misfortune is “adversity,” a word Aaron Boone has used frequently and improperly this season to define the team’s horrific play against the Red Sox, Rays, Tigers, Mets and all of their improbable losses, of which there have been too many to keep track of. None of that was adversity. That was just a bad team playing badly and being managed badly. Adversity is the lineup used on Sunday, featuring Amburgey, Chris Gittens, Ryan LaMarre and Greg Allen, and a roster that now has Rougned Odor being as important as Robinson Cano once was compared to some of the other names the Yankees are turning to.
2. On Friday, against a left-handed starter, Boone batted Odor third. Then 48 hours later, against a left-handed starter, with less roster options and inferior personnel, Boone batted Odor seventh. Nothing the Yankees manager does makes sense. Nothing.
3. The Yankees losing all of these players made it easy to understand how they were shut out on Friday, dominated once again by Eduardo Rodriguez, who gets knocked around by every other team he faces. The Yankees produced three hits, gave Jordan Montgomery yet another game without any run support and fell to 0-7 against the Red Sox. After Friday’s game, if the Yankees hadn’t played a game against the Red Sox this season, they would have been only one game back in the loss column. Instead, they were eight. The Red Sox, of all teams, have single-handedly ruined the Yankees’ season to date.
Both Trey Amburgey and Hoy Jun Park made their major league debuts on Friday night. In typical Yankees fashion, Park played right field, a position he has NEVER played professionally. That’s just Boone putting his players in the best possible position to succeed again.
4. The Yankees should have traded Luke Voit in the offseason. His value was never going to be higher than it was after leading the league with 22 home runs in the shortened 2020 season. Now he’s on the IL for the third time this season, though when he has played this season, he’s been pretty awful: .241/.328/.370.
Voit played in 118 games in 2019, hurting himself while unnecessarily going for two in London then was left off the postseason roster after his performance declined following the injury. He managed to play in 56 of the 60 games in 2020, but this season, he has played in 29 of 92 games (32 percent). Next season, Voit will turn 31 before spring training, and as an oft-injured, right-handed first baseman who’s not good defensively, the Yankees really missed the opportunity to get something for him and to move one of their abundance of right-handed bats.
5. I believe the Red Sox aren’t good. Their starting pitching makes the Yankees look like mid-90s Braves, their lineup has three hitters and their bullpen is far from reliable. On Saturday and Sunday, we saw the Red Sox I feel are the real Red Sox, a team that lost both games to the Makeshift Yankees and scored only two runs in 15 innings.
6. It turns out Gerrit Cole can pitch to Gary Sanchez. Amazing. Not only that but Cole was infinitely better with Sanchez catching him against the Red Sox (6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 11 K) than he was with Kyle Higashioka catching him a few Sundays ago in Boston (LINE).
Cole needing to have his security blanket in Higashioka always catch him (and yes, it’s Cole’s decision, not Boone’s), has made me think less of him since someone of his stature and ability and reputation shouldn’t need a personal catcher. It was good to finally see the best pitcher on the team throwing to the best catcher on the team, and it working out yet again. It worked out because it doesn’t matter who catches Cole. No catcher has that much of an impact (if any at all) on a pitcher’s ability, and certainly not one of Cole’s level.
7. The rain-shortened game on Saturday may have saved the Yankees’ season. It was a miracle they scored three runs in the game, and had the game continued, Cole would have come out following a delay (because of the delay and because he was at 96 pitches), and the Yankees’ bullpen would have had to get nine outs to hold a two-run lead with one viable option (Chad Green). If the rest of that game gets played, there’s a good chance the Yankees lose, fall to 0-8 against the Red Sox, lose yet another series and suffered their third straight loss since the debacle in Houston on July 11. If the Yankees go on to reach the postseason or doing anything special this season, we can look back at the six-inning win over the Red Sox that made it possible.
8. Boone mismanaging the sixth inning on Sunday night was inevitable. Two times through the order, Taillon had shut out the Red Sox, and even though the 2-3-4 hitters were due up in the sixth and even though the numbers against Taillon a third time through the order look like Mickey Mantle’s 1956 season, Boone was fooled by what he had seen to that point in the game, completely disregarding the numbers and everything Taillon has done in a Yankees uniform.
Taillon was able to strike out Alex Verdugo, the most inferior of the heart of the Red Sox’ order, but J.D. Martinez singled on an 0-2 pitch and then on the seventh pitch of his at-bat, Xander Bogaerts doubled to right field. Suddenly, the Red Sox had second and third and no outs and the tying run at the plate in Rafael Devers, who owns the Yankees. While all of this unfolded, Green was warmed up and ready to enter game.
Boone decided to go to Green for Devers, bringing him into a rather unpleasant situation, rather than just giving him a clean inning. Thankfully, he struck out Devers and got Hunter Renfroe to ground out to end the inning.
The majority of Boone’s nonsensical bullpen management has been hidden since 2018 because he has been able to call on Green or Zack Britton or Aroldis Chapman or Dellin Betances or Adam Ottavino or Tommy Kahnle. The Red Sox didn’t score in the sixth inning on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean Boone made the right call. Far from it.
9. Giancarlo Stanton’s presence on the Yankees is a problem. Not only because of his immovable contract, but because he isn’t good and he can only be the designated hitter, which means when someone needs a “half-day off” they have to come completely out of the lineup. Over teh weekend, Boone said Stanton playing the outfield is “on the horizon” as they continue to stretch him out to play nine innings of a baseball game in the outfield, in which he may not actually have to do anything. You would think Stanton is training to run a marathon.
Stanton sucks. It’s painful watching his at-bats and him running into a middle-middle fastball and hitting it 500 feet every other week isn’t nearly enough. I don’t know how this is going to go on for the next six years.
Stanton was 0-for-12 with five strikeouts against the Red Sox over the weekend, and is now 3-for-30 (all singles) with 15 strikeouts against them this season.
In 18 games from April 1 to April 25, Stanton hit .186/.250/.414. Then in eight games from April 26 to May 5, he hit .571/.595/.943. In the 46 games he has played since May 6, he has hit .220/.342/.719. On the season, he’s hitting .258/.350/.462. Those numbers aren’t good and are the only somewhat respectable because of those eight games at the end of April and beginning of May. Stanton has been good for an eight-game stretch in 92 games. Six more years of this.
10. The Yankees won the series against the Red Sox and have now won three straight series, going 6-3 over their last nine games. It’s a start, but it can’t end. They now need to do to the Phillies what the Phillies did to them in Philadelphia in two games and then go to Boston and beat the Red Sox again. The Yankees need to win four of the six games they play this week. There’s no alternative. In order to keep their postseason aspirations alive, they can’t do any worse than that, and they will have to do it with the most Makeshift Yankees lineup since mid-2013.
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This is it for the Yankees: their last chance. Play badly in next 10 games, and the season will be over with two months left.
This is it for the Yankees: their last chance. The Yankees have pissed away every opportunity this season to meet expectations and now they are down to their last one with eight of their next 10 games against the Red Sox. Play badly in these 10 games, and their season will be over with still two months to play.
Michael Hurley of CBS Boston joined me to talk about managerial changes since Red Sox fans have seen a lot of them over the last 10 years. The Red Sox have made five managerial changes and have had four managers since the start of the 2011 season. Meanwhile, Yankees fans have only had three managers since the start of the 1996 season. That could and should be four managers since the start of the 1996 season if things don’t change over the next 73 games.
Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every game during the season.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
The Yankees are out of chances to turn their season around. When the second “half” begins on Thursday, they have to win games at an incredible pace or they won’t reach the postseason. Here are
The Yankees are out of chances to turn their season around. When the second “half” begins on Thursday, they have to win games at an incredible pace or they won’t reach the postseason.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. I went to the first game of the Subway Series. Why? Like I wrote after the Yankees were swept by the Red Sox in Boston, I still think there is time (though not much) to turn it around. Again, I’m like Rudy’s fellow scout team member in Rudy who tells him, “I’m under the delusion that I might get a chance to run out that tunnel.”
What a mistake that was going to the game. The Yankees produced yet another piss poor, disgusting effort and when I walked out of the Stadium during the top of the sixth, the Yankees had allowed five runs in the inning, were losing 8-0 and the offense hadn’t produced a single hit. I was back home before the game ended and felt sorry for the thousands of Yankees fans who decided to stay through the end of the team’s latest slopfest.
2. The following day, on the Fourth of July, the Yankees might as well have been playing spring training games given how much I was into a Subway Series doubleheader. I couldn’t have cared less about watching Sunday’s comical seven-inning doubleheaders. There are sold-out stadiums across the league and the Stadium had 40,000-plus people on Saturday, and yet the league can’t play actual full-length games? It’s a joke.
Thankfully, I didn’t give a shit if the Yankees won the first game on Sunday because they didn’t. Gerrit Cole let everyone down once again and given his performance in that game and over the last month it seemed like he might be a huge problem going forward if unable to use sun screen or Vaseline or Spider Tack or Silly Putty or Play-Doh to get outs. Thankfully, he put the idea he can’t pitch without some foreign substance to rest with his dominant start against the Astros over the weekend.
3. Unfortunately, about 19 hours later, Cole’s complete-game, 12-strikeout start was erased by his manager’s inability to make even the most elementary decisions as a major league manager. Boone pissed away a five-run, ninth-inning lead in the series and first “half” finale, as the Yankees fell to 3-9 when they have a chance to sweep.
“It’s another gut punch, and we’ve had a number of those, obviously, here in the first half,” Boone said after the loss. “We’ve gotten off the mat each and every time and we’ve gotta do it again and understand what’s at stake starting Thursday.”
The amount of gut punches the Yankees have taken would cause irreparable harm, internal bleeding and possibly death. I guess that’s why they’re on the brink of no longer having a season.
When exactly have the Yankees “gotten off the mat’ from the guy punches they have taken. They are three games over .500, have the fourth-worst offense in the AL and a plus-1 run differential. They have been down on the mat all season.
4. With a five-run lead in the ninth, Boone stuck with Domingo German who had used as a reliever in the game. German allowed two baserunners to begin the ninth and with runners on second and third and no outs, Boone turned to Chad Green. Why not Aroldis Chapman, the highest-paid closer in the history of baseball?
“I want to pick those situations where Chapman gets a clean outing under his belt,” Boone said about his closer who has allowed 14 earned runs in his last 6 2/3 innings. “Once it became a save situation I wanted to go with Greeny.”
A five-run, ninth-inning lead is about as perfect of a soft landing spot for a pitcher who hasn’t been able to get anyone out for the last month like Chapman, no matter the opponent. If Chapman can’t get three outs before giving up five runs having only pitched twice in the last 12 days, then there’s no place for him on the Yankees, owed money or not. Instead of going to Chapman, Boone went with Green, and didn’t go to him until the score represented a “save situation.” Yes, the Yankees manager made his final bullpen decision on Sunday based on a meaningless stat.
Sunday was July 11. Over the previous week, Green had pitched in four games, including both games of the July 4 doubleheader.
Sunday, (Game 1): 2 pitches
Sunday (Game 2): 35 pitches
Wednesday: 18 pitches
Friday: 26 pitches
Green had pitched multiple innings in two of his four appearances, going three innings in the second game on Sunday and two innings on Friday. He was asked to do so because Chapman can no longer throw strikes or get outs, Zack Britton is hurt, Darren O’Day is hurt, Jonathan Loaisiga wasn’t available due to protocol, Justin Wilson is awful, Luis Cessa is … well, Luis Cessa and Adam Ottavino is being paid by the Yankees to pitch for the Red Sox. Boone had used Green for multiple-inning outings 14 times already in 2021, including six times in April and four times in the first nine games of the season. Boone didn’t “bring along” Green as the season went on because the Yankees have been trying to save their season since Opening Day and the overuse finally caught up with Green. Take the unavailability of anyone else to get outs against the Astros and add Boone’s inability to manage the situation and understand the workload he has given Green and you get a recipe for disaster. The type of disaster that took place in Houston on Sunday.
5. After the Yankees lost to the Astros in the 2019 ALCS, Britton said the bullpen was overworked, and they were. Out of the 55 innings in that series Yankees pitchers pitched, the bullpen pitched 31 1/3 of them. Britton, Ottavino and Tommy Kahnle pitched in five of the six games and Green pitched in four. Green was used in relief in three of the first five games of the series and then as an opener in the sixth game, in which he gave up a three-run home run to Yuli Gurriel in the first inning.
In three of the last four games Green has pitched against the Astros, he has allowed a crushing three-run home run. The one to Gurriel in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS, the one to Altuve on May 6 of this season to give the Astros their only win of that series and the one to Altuve this past Sunday to give the Astros their only win of that series. The difference between the Yankees being 6-0 and 4-2 against the Astros this season is two Jose Altuve three-run home runs.
Green allowed back-to-back doubles and a single and then finally recorded the first out of the inning on a lineout. The 6-7-8-9 hitters were squaring him up and Boone never thought of not letting him face Altuve, who had already hit a three-run home run off him two months prior.
“He was obviously a little bit off with command, leaving some stuff up early,” Boone said. “I thought he rallied there and found it a little bit.”
Rallied? Found it? What exactly did he find other than Altuve running the bases following yet another walk-off home run against the Boone Yankees with the team ripping his jersey off and laughing in the face of the Yankees, who they absolutely own both on the field and in trash talk.
6. “I’ve said it a handful of times how much some of them have stung, and obviously, as well as we played this week to not finish it off right there is difficult,” Boone said. “But we’ve gotta rally from the adversity of it.”
Someone should really let Boone know what “adversity” means because he uses it incorrectly nearly every day. “Adversity” means “misfortune.” The 2021 Yankees haven’t been misfortunate. The players and pitchers have underachieved, they have been poorly managed and poorly constructed by the front office. The 2021 Yankees have faced zero adversity. They have just been a team with expectations that hasn’t met those expectations. Big difference.
“We’ve got a lot at stake starting on Thursday,” Boone said. “And it’s in our hands.”
The Yankees had a lot at stake beginning on Thursday, April 1, not Thursday, July 15, but they failed to recognize that because there’s always tomorrow with their manager. No loss seems to affect his mood or create any sense of urgency with the team and that’s how to get two first-round exits, an ALCS loss in which the team lost four of the final five games of the series and this horrific season under his watch.
7. Starting on Thursday, the Yankees have 73 games left, and they need to win 50 of them. I wish I were joking. The 46-43 Yankees need to now go 50-23.
There is still a path to the postseason for the Yankees, even if it’s currently covered in leaves, debris and litter with several seemingly immovable boulders blocking their way. For as improbable of a path it is, there’s still a path. There won’t be for much longer.
I have done a rough outline of how the Yankees can win 50 games and get to 96 wins on the season over the next two-and-a-half months:
Red Sox: 10-4
Phillies: 1-1
Rays: 4-2
Marlins: 2-1
Orioles: 7-2
Mariners: 3-1
Royals: 2-1
White Sox: 2-1
Angels: 3-1
Twins: 3-1
Braves: 1-1
A’s: 2-2
Blue Jays: 4-3
Mets: 2-1
Indians: 2-1
Rangers: 2-1
Doable? Unlikely. Impossible? No.
8. Right now, the Yankees have a 9.3 percent chance to win the division and a 41.1 percent chance to make the playoffs. The division odds seem right, the odds of making the playoffs seem high, considering they need to pass the Blue Jays and Mariners just to be the first team outside the postseason picture.
Here are the teams ahead of the Yankees and what their records would be if they play .500 baseball the rest of the season (or one-game-over-.500 if they have an odd amount of games remaining).
Red Sox: 91-71
Rays: 89-73
A’s: 87-75
For the Yankees to win 91 games, they would need to go 45-28 (.616).
For the Yankees to win 89 games, they would need to go 43-30 (.589).
For the Yankees to win 87 games, they would need to go 41-32 (.562).
In all three of those scenarios, the Yankees would have to play better than they have this season (.517), while the Red Sox would simply have to go 36-35, the Rays 36-36 and the A’s 35-35. I think the Red Sox are the most likely of those three teams to have a bad second “half” and play .500 baseball, but it’s unlikely any of the three will drop that low.
9. Each loss is extremely detrimental to the fragile math the Yankees are working with now and a loss occurring when the Yankees need to get three outs before allowing five runs is crushing. You can tell yourself the Yankees still won the series in Houston, taking two of three, which is no easy task, but Sunday’s loss essentially erased Friday’s and Saturday’s wins, and turned what would have been a great 5-1 road trip and three straight wins into the break into a 4-2 trip with the latest worst loss of the season hanging over the Yankees’ break with eight of their next 10 games against the Red Sox.
Winning three-game series and taking two of four in four-game series is no longer good enough. Fifty wins in 73 games is a .685 winning percentage. That’s more than winning each three-game series and taking two of four in the four-game series the rest of the way. The Yankees need to finish teams off in the final games of series the way they weren’t able to in Houston or in Seattle and the way they haven’t been able to do in nine of the 12 series they have had a chance to sweep this season.
10. The Yankees need to rebound from their 0-6 start against the Red Sox in the final 13 games with them. They need to beat the Phillies in New York the way the Phillies beat them in Philadelphia. They need to find a way to win four out of six from the Rays and at least four out of seven from the Blue Jays. They need to beat up on the truly bad opponents they have left in the Orioles, Marlins, Twins and Rangers. They need to find a way to win games in Oakland (something they haven’t been capable of for a long time) beat the Mets at Citi Field in games Jacob deGrom isn’t starting, beat the now-Ronald Acuna-less Braves and the average Mariners and Angels.
I’m not sure if this team, this roster and this manager can do all that, but if these Yankees want to erase the embarrassing first three-and-a-half months of this season and reach the postseason, they don’t have a choice. It’s their only path now.
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The All-Star break means the announcement of this season’s All-Animosity Team.
The All-Star break is here, which means the season is “half” over. For the Yankees, it’s actually 55 percent over with 73 games left, and they likely need to win 50 of those 73 games to have a chance at the division and might need to win that many just to play in the one-game, wild card game. Don’t tell Aaron Boone that though. He thinks the season is endless without a finite number of games to be played. At least that’s the way he talks after each loss, and there have been a lot of them.
Another All-Star break means another All-Animosity Team. 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 2021 All-Animosity Team.
C: Danny Jansen
If you’re wondering who Danny Jansen is, you’re not alone. Jansen is the Blue Jays’ catcher with the career .201 batting average, .290 on-base percentage and .358 slugging percentage. He’s as light of a hitter as you can be in the majors and still be in the majors. So why is that no Yankees pitcher can get him out?
In 228 career games, Jansen is a .201/.290/.358 hitter with 26 home runs and 80 RBIs. In 25 games against the Yankees, he’s a .316/.416/.605 hitter with six home runs and 15 RBIs. On a team with Vladimir Gurrero Jr., Bo Bichette, George Springer, Teoscar Hernandez, Cavan Biggio and Rowdy Tellez, I would rather have any of those players up in a big spot against the Yankees than Jansen.
1B: Pete Alonso
I will never get over Pete Alonso breaking Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record in a season in which the actual baseball was manufactured so differently that Brett Gardner hit 28 home runs. Alonso never should have hit 53 home runs and never should have broken Judge’s record of 52.
To be honest, I like Alonso. I like his personality, I like how he loves competing in the Home Run Derby, and I like how he won the 2021 Home Run Derby when I had him at +600 to win. I just don’t like that he plays for the Mets.
2B: Jose Altuve
Jose Altuve used to be my favorite non-Yankees player. That was before October 2019 and the uncovering of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.
After hitting .320/.414/.560 with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2017 ALCS win over the Yankees, Altuve hit .348/.444/1.097 with a double, two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2019 ALCS win over the Yankees. He’s also responsible for ending the Yankees’ season with a walk-off, pennant-winning home run in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS.
I used to enjoy watching Altuve play (when not playing the Yankees) and admired his ability for his stature. Now I watch him hoping he will fail, though he rarely does, and certainly doesn’t against the Yankees, as his two three-run home runs this season of Chad Green are responsible for the Yankees’ only two losses to the Astros.
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 in 2017, Devers looked lost last in 2018, batting .240/.298/.433 in 121 games and I got ahead of myself thinking the 21-year-old might be a bust. In 2019, he hit .311/.361/.555 with a league-leading 54 doubles to go along with 32 home runs 115 RBIs. He already has 10 career home runs against the Yankees in only 58 games, and has driven in nine runs against them in six games this season.
Devers is going to be on this team for a long, long time. That is, until he’s set to free agency and the Red Sox cry poor and trade him like they did Mookie Betts. I can only dream that will happen.
SS: Carlos Correa
While Altuve and Alex Bregman were hiding behind their prepared statements and vague responses to questions about the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal following the 2019 season, Correa was busy talking to anyone who would listen. The only problem was a lot of what he said was outrageous.
Add in his ridiculous .939 career OPS against the Yankees in the regular season, his .913 OPS against them in the 2017 ALCS and his two home runs in the 2019 ALCS, including his walk-off in Game 2, and Correa is an easy fit to pencil in at short on this team.
LF: Trey Mancini
After being left off the 2020 roster, so he could beat cancer rather than play baseball, it’s good to have Mancini back on this team because it means he’s healthy and it means he’s playing baseball again.
Since the Manny Machado trade and until the emergence of Cedric Mullins, Mancini was the only actual major leaguer playing for the Orioles. Despite this, the Yankees would still allow Mancini to beat them. He’s the last person I want up in a big spot when the Yankees play the Orioles as he always seems to find a gap at the most inopportune times.
CF: Kevin Kiermaier
Kiermaier is a career .247/.306/.408 hitter, but against the Yankees it seems like he’s Ken Griffey Jr. Thirteen of his 73 career home runs (18 percent) have come against the Yankees, and in 2020, Kiermaier drew game-changing walks, hit big home runs against Masahiro Tanaka and Gerrit Cole and continued to play Gold Glove defense to help the Rays easily win the division.
Normally, I want Yankees pitching to face as many hitters with Kiermaier’s numbers as possible, but not Kiermaier. I’m looking forward to his contract with the Rays ending in 2022, and hopefully the team option for 2023 isn’t picked up.
RF: Randal Grichuk
How, for a second straight year, did Randal Grichuk end up on this team full of All-Stars, award-winning players and ex-Yankees? Well, in 2018, he hit five home runs in 16 games against the Yankees. In 2019, he had two doubles, eight home runs, 15 RBIs and a .938 OPS in 19 games against the Yankees. This season, he’s added another two home runs and four total extra-base hits, including his 10th inning double on Opening Day to give the Blue Jays the lead in a game they would win to launch arguably the worst Yankees’ season in nearly 30 years.
Grichuk is barely a major leaguer when he plays against the 28 other teams not named the Yankees, but 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: Alex Bregman
The first thing I used to think about when thinking about Bregman was how hard it is to retire him at the plate. Now when I think of him, I think of him standing there at the Astros’ fan fest after the 2019 season and giving the same rehearsed answer over and over about the team’s sign-stealing scandal with that smirk on his face and the sarcastic laugh he kept giving the media. The easiest of players to root against.
SP: Nathan Eovaldi
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 then the Marlins gave up on him as a 24-year-old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and 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 to get through each 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 in 2018 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, continues to beat the Yankees’ poorly-designed, all-right-handed lineup and I’ll never get over it.
RP: Adam Ottavino
I actually like Ottavino. I don’t like what him being on the Red Sox symbolizes, and him being on the Red Sox symbolizes the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, who are so petrified of the luxury tax they would rather pay players to play for their rival than exceed the luxury.
I have enjoyed watching Ottavino embarrass the Yankees all-right-handed lineup this season, while being paid by the Yankees to do so. Rather than keep Ottavino in the last year of this three-year contract, re-sign the reliable Tanaka and sign Darren O’Day, Justin Wilson, Brett Gardner and Corey Kluber, the Yankees chose only to sign the latter players. In return, they have received 10 2/3 innings from O’Day, 14 2/3 innings from Wilson, a .614 OPS from Gardner and 10 starts from Kluber.
Manager: Aaron Boone
No Yankees player is allowed to be on the All-Animosity Team, even though there have been a lot of players over the years who have been deserving of a roster spot. A manager on the other hand …
Boone doesn’t play for the Yankees, and since I have often said Boone is the Yankees’ most difficult obstacle to winning the World Series, moreso than any other team, why shouldn’t he be on the team?
It’s hard to envision the Yankees ever winning a championship with Boone as manager. He has managed the team to one division title in three seasons, two first-round exits and an ALCS loss, in which the Yankees won one of the last five games of that ALCS. He has the Yankees buried in the division standings this season and needing to pass two teams in the wild card standings just to be the first team outside the postseason picture.
With each mounting loss, Boone talks about needing to overcome adversity, even though the word “adversity” means “misfortune” and the Yankees haven’t experienced any misfortune. They have been healthier than they have been in four years, are greatly underachieving and being managed like a dive bar that needs to be shut down, rebuilt and rebranded by Jon Taffer. The Yankees haven’t experienced any adversity.
Either the Yankees go 50-23 and reach the postseason or Boone is no longer the manager of the Yankees and I’ll need a new manager for the 2022 All-Animosity Team. Either way, the result is a good one. (Unless the Yankees don’t reach the postseason and the team keeps him as manager, in which case I will no longer watch baseball.)
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