White Sox Dave joined me to talk about his team’s slow start, missing out on Manny Machado, and watching Chris Sale win a World Series.
After getting swept in Houston, the Yankees need to win games, and there’s no better team to do that against than the White Sox. Off to an abysmal 3-9 start, the Yankees have a chance to get back over .500 this weekend at home.
White Sox Dave of Barstool Sports Chicago joined me to talk about the White Sox’ bad start, the Yankees’ surprisingly poor start, missing out on Manny Machado, watching Chris Sale win a World Series with the Red Sox, the emergence of Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada, the struggles of Lucas Giolito and when White Sox fans should expect their team to contend.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Like a reliever stretching his arm out to join the rotation, you need to stretch out your life to watch the Yankees play on the West Coast.
The Yankees still have one game in this three-game series left against the Astros and then a nine-game homestand before they go on a nine-game, 10-day West Coast trip. While there are still nine games until the Yankees’ lengthy road trip, it’s time to start planning for it.
What happens when the Yankees play on the West Coast? Their games start three hours they would normally start. On the upcoming trip that begins on April 22, the Yankees will play four games starting after 10 p.m. ET and two starting after 9 p.m. ET. Most people will try to stay up to watch them, but will likely end up falling asleep in the second inning and wake up to the highlights on YES or the encore presentation in the middle of the night. But if you plan on staying up for those games, the plan starts now.
You wouldn’t ask a middle reliever to start a game and expect him to throw 100 pitches or go six-plus innings and you wouldn’t ask the normal Yankees fan who has a job to get up for to suddenly sleep three less hours. That’s where the plan comes in. Like a reliever stretching his arm out to join the rotation, you need to stretch out your life to watch the Yankees play on the West Coast.
Let’s say the average Yankees game gets over at 10:30 and you go to sleep right at the end of the game at 10:30. If you start staying up 15 minutes later per night starting tonight, you will be awake to see the Yankees play the Angels, Giants and Diamondbacks, and you will be awake to see Mike Trout play baseball.
Wednesday, April 10: 10:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11: 10:45 p.m. Friday, April 12: 11:00 p.m. Saturday, April 13: 11:15 p.m. Sunday, April 14: 11:30 p.m. Monday, April 15: 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, April 16: 12:00 a.m. Wednesday, April 17: 12:15 a.m. Thursday, April 18: 12:30 a.m. Friday, April 19: 12:45 a.m. Saturday, April 20: 1:00 a.m. Sunday, April 21: 1:15 a.m. Monday, April 22: 1:30 a.m.
Follow this plan and get stretched out for the next 12 nights. Or if the Yankees are unable to take care of business against the White Sox this weekend and the Royals next weekend, there won’t be a need to stay up and watch them anyway.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
For the second straight year, I don’t have a team to root for in the playoffs, so here are the 16 teams and the order I will be rooting for them over the next two-plus months.
It’s been nearly two years since the Rangers last played in a postseason game. Two years. The worst part is no one knows when they will play their next postseason game.
Unfortunately, the Rangers let their most recent window of opportunity (2011-2016) slam shut without a championship and now they are in a rebuild with their only real high-end talent in the system not even in the system yet. The best prospect the Rangers have isn’t even a player, it’s the No. 2 pick in the 2019 draft, which they miraculously won on Tuesday night. Maybe Jack Hughes or Kappo Kaako will be a true star and the Rangers can win free agency and their slow rebuild can be greatly accelerated. But if it’s not, this likely won’t be the last time I have a “Stanley Cup Dilemma” prior to the Stanley Cup Playoffs starting because I won’t have the Rangers to root for for even a single round in the near future.
Here are the 16 playoff teams and the order I will be rooting for them over the next two-plus months.
1. Sharks Joe Thornton. He’s who I’m rooting for in these playoffs. I want Jumbo Joe to retire with a Stanley Cup and it will be sad if he’s unable to. Outside of pulling for Henrik Lundqvist to win a Cup, which isn’t going to happen as long as he wants to remain with the Rangers, Thornton is the one other play I desperately want to win. Even after reaching the Final three years ago, this team is his best chance to win a championship. If the Sharks can’t win it this year, it’s not going to happen with Thornton on the team.
2. Stars Mats Zuccarello. Like his best friend Lundqvist, Zuccarello’s time in New York was wasted by surrounding a strong core with the worst imaginable defense. Zuccarello loved New York and being a Ranger and trade rumors this season negatively affected both his life both on and off the ice. After the Rangers failed to come to terms with him on a contract extension and traded him, seeing him smile when he scored in his first game with the Stars made me smile. If the Stars win, Zuccarello wins and the Rangers win since they will get Dallas’ first-round pick if the Stars win at least two rounds in the playoffs.
3. Predators The Predators were close two years ago, losing to the Penguins in six games. I have nothing at all against the team (outside of a few bets they lost me this season with some disappointing performances), and P.K. Subban winning it in Nashville wouldn’t go over so well in Montreal.
4. Flames The Flames are fun to watch and Johnny Gaudreau is my favorite player to watch in the entire the league. Everything he does looks effortless and the numbers he has compiled and resume he has built since entering the league with his size is incredible. Unfortunately, the Flames have Mike Smith in goal, so for as much as I would enjoy seeing them win, it’s going to take a lot of offense, and in the postseason, that’s not something that should be relied on.
5. Golden Knights I pulled for the Golden Knights last season in their first season and jumped on their postseason bandwagon as a compilation of players other teams didn’t care to protect. I wanted them to deprive the Capitals of a championship, and they weren’t able to, but I will gladly root for them again.
6. Blues The Blues are the oldest team to never win the Cup. As much as I enjoy championship droughts for teams I despise, I root for them to end for teams I have no relationship with.
7. Avalanche I have always believed the NHL needs to redo their postseason format. There should be more of a reward for winning your division or being the 1-seed in your conference than one extra home game in a seven-game series. The Lightning just completed what is tied for the best regular season of all time and they have to play a dangerous and deep Blue Jackets team in the first round despite dominating for 82 games and six months. The Avalanche winning would mean yet another 8-seed survived the postseason, like the Kings just as recently as seven years ago, and will only further enforce the idea the current format needs to be changed.
8. Jets Winnipeg lost its team to Arizona. Yes, Jets fans got their team back, but they deserve to win for Gary Bettman’s “Let’s put hockey in all the southern states” plan.
9. Maple Leafs The Maple Leafs’ championship drought might not be as long as the Cubs’ and Red Sox’, but to me, it’s actually worse. The Maple Leafs are hockey, and after having gone to Toronto for the season-opening Yankees-Blue Jays series last year, it really hit home how incredible it is the team hasn’t won since 1967. I can’t even imagine what Toronto would be like if the Maple Leafs were to win it all.
The downside is I’m not a Mike Babcock fan, and for the Maple Leafs to win, it means Babcock wins. But at the same time, John Tavares winning the Cup with Toronto would crush Islanders fans, and I’m all for Islanders fans being sad. Also, the Maple Leafs winning would mean they had to beat both the Bruins and Lightning (both teams are at the bottom of this list) to do so, and that works well for my personal fandom.
10. Hurricanes It makes me sick when the Hurricanes wear the Whalers jerseys. Either change your name to the Carolina Whalers or stop bringing up the nostalgia of hockey in Connecticut. The Hurricanes are a constant reminder of the Whalers’ move and they make me sick.
11. Blue Jackets At this point, I don’t care if John Tortorella wins again. Yes, he forced Marian Gaborik out of New York for scoring goals instead of blocking shots, and it was Gaborik who led the Kings in scoring in the playoffs in which they beat the Rangers, but if the Blue Jackets win, a lot of worse options from the East won’t.
12. Penguins I like watching greatness and the Penguins have been just that in the Sidney Crosby era with three championships. So while most Rangers fans despise Crosby and the Penguins, I don’t. He’s a generational talent and on the short list of the best players in the history of the game. I have no problem with him winning a fourth Cup.
13. Capitals In the never-ending Sidney Crosby-Alexander Ovechkin debate, I have always been Team Crosby. Aside from the career points per game and being an all-around complete player, Crosby’s three Cups to Ovechkin’s now one has always served as support for my argument. I can’t have him winning another one, let alone in back-to-back seasons.
14. Islanders You’re probably wondering how the Islanders are only 14th out of 16. You’ll see why. Obviously, no Rangers fan could pull for the Islanders to win it all, and I’m certainly not. The only series in which I would root for the Islanders would be if they’re playing the 16th team in the Eastern Conference finals, and then I would root for the Western Conference champion to win the Cup.
15. Bruins If the Bruins were to win the Cup, it would mean Boston has won the World Series, Super Bowl and Stanley Cup in consecutive. Outside of the Red Sox and Mets meeting in the World Series (since one team would have to win), three straight championships for Boston would be as bad as it gets.
16. Lightning I’m still sick over having to watch three ex-Yankees, who were all painful to watch as Yankees, in Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Nunez and Steve Pearce win a World Series with the Red Sox this past October. All three had a significant hand in beating the Yankees during the regular season and again in the ALDS. I will never get over it.
The same thing nearly happened in the 2014-15 Stanley Cup Playoffs when the Lightning beat the Rangers in Game 7 at the Garden to advance to the Final. Thankfully, the Blackhawks beat the Lightning and Rangers fans were able to avoid having to watch Ryan Callahan, Brian Boyle and Anton Stralman hoist the Cup at the Rangers’ expense.
For the foreseeable future, I have to worry about a similar situation. The Lightning currently have the following ex-Rangers on their team: Callahan, Stralman, Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi and J.T. Miller. I can’t have the Lightning winning the Cup this season or any season in which those names are still on their roster. Sure, the Rangers get the Lightning’s first-round pick if they win the Cup, but I don’t care. After Girardi’s disastrous decline with the Rangers, which included him single-handedly giving away games to the Kings in the Final, the last thing I want is to see him holding the Cup over his head.
Is Aaron Boone in over his head? Why are players getting scheduled off days in the first week of the season? Why is Brett Gardner batting leadoff? This week’s Monday Mail.
That’s how you take care of business against the Orioles. After losing two of three to the Orioles a week ago, the Yankees swept the will-be last-place team this past weekend. Now at 5-4, the Yankees aren’t where I thought they would be following nine games against the Orioles and Tigers, but they appear to be headed in the right direction.
This week’s questions and comments are heavy on Aaron Boone and then there’s the problem with who leads off and why the Yankees didn’t take advantage of the best free-agent class ever and possibly the last star-packed free-agent class ever.
Email your questions to KeefeToTheCity@gmail.com or engage on the Keefe To The City Facebook page or on Twitter to be included in the next Monday Mail.
Aaron Boone needs to go back to calling games for ESPN and the Yankees need to Willie Randolph in as manager so that he can direct this team into the playoffs and beyond! – Mario
No, I didn’t want Aaron Boone to be named the manager of the Yankees prior to 2018. At the time, I thought the Yankees did the right thing by replacing Joe Girardi after 10 years, but had I known the first 176 games (regular season and postseason included) would go the way they have, I would have preferred to just retain Girardi.
Despite winning 100 games last year and the wild-card game, Boone didn’t do a good job. Winning 100 games isn’t much of an accomplishment in a season in which two other American League teams did the same, in a season in which five AL teams lost 89 games or more. The same goes for this season. Which teams are really trying to win in the AL in 2019? The Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Astros, A’s and Angels? Every other team either shed payroll, tried to move their star players to shed payroll, failed to sign any worthy free agents and basically went along with the idea that it’s more profitable to lose than win in baseball’s current state.
This season, Boone has once again gotten off to a rocky start, either unable or unwilling to make changes to his in-game management and actual baseball strategy to improve. Yes, the Yankees have an unheard of amount of players on the injured list, including four of their everyday players, two-fifths of their rotation and their best reliever. But that doesn’t excuse some of the moves Boone has made in the season’s first nine game. None of the simple decisions he could have made were related to the team’s injury problems, rather they were basic baseball moves.
I don’t trust Boone. This team is going to the playoffs in some capacity, and I’m petrified another year will be wasted because of his bullpen management. Boone helped throw away the ALDS last season and he has six months to get this team back there and then manage the way he’s expected to once they get there. I won’t count on him pushing the right buttons until I actually see him to do it.
I also don’t think Willie Randolph is the solution and I don’t think he would ever be considered for the position in the future either.
Are you kidding me? After five days of baseball Aaron Boone believes players need a rest, really? – Rob
It’s pretty ridiculous. The Yankees had two off days after their last exhibition game, played one game and had a day off, played five games and had a day off. And oh yeah, they basically had six months off before all of that.
Guess what? Injuries happen and there’s nothing you can do about them. Having scheduled off days won’t prevent a player from pulling an oblique in the next game or jamming their shoulder sliding back to third a week later. Pulling a starting pitcher after 85 pitches doesn’t mean he won’t tear his elbow on the first pitch of his next start and not using a reliever three days in a row doesn’t mean he won’t land on the injured list at some point anyway. There’s absolutely nothing that can be done to prevent injuries and there’s no exact amount of rest which will help players perform over the course of a season and in the postseason. The Yankees should know this better than any team.
When Aaron Judge said there needed to be more urgency I think he meant Boone. Boone doesn’t manage to win every game. – Stan
Here is the Aaron Judge quote:
“Every game is important because you can go at the end of the year and look back at how many missed opportunities and games that we should have won, but we just didn’t come up with the big hit, a costly error, stuff like that. Every single game is important.”
No, I don’t think Judge was referring to Boone with his words, but he should have been. Judge was simply frustrated with all the men left on base and the errors and sloppy play from the team in the second game of the season.
After coming within a win of the World Series in 2017 and then being embarrassed last October, I’m sure Judge is sick and tired of not getting the job, the way the fans are. Given that it was his gesture which turned “New York, New York” into the Red Sox’ victory song after their ALDS win, I’m sure he wants to erase that backfire as quickly as possible. The way the Red Sox’ destroyed the memory of the 2003 ALCS by beating the Yankees and winning the World Series the following year, the Yankees can erase the embarrassment of the 2018 ALDS by winning the 2019 World Series.
The easiest way to win the World Series is to avoid the one-game playoff and win the division. So Judge’s urgency makes all the sense in the world. The division will be won by which teams beats up on all the crap in the AL. The Yankees have to do a better job than they did last season against the last-place teams.
Fans who watched the moves in the offseason knew they didn’t do enough. Starting pitching not enough, lack of left-handed bats, same hitting coach that couldn’t fix it last season, same pitching coach who time has passed by. – James
I tend not to put too much stock into what the hitting and pitching coaches do, though I believe the pitching coach is more important than the hitting coach. The only hitting coach I ever really cared about or paid attention to was Kevin Long because he seemed to get all the credit whenever a player performed well, and was of any criticism when the team didn’t perform.
The Yankees could have done better this offseason. They could have signed one or both of the 26-year-old generational stars or the best pitcher on the free-agent market. Instead, they spread the money out after getting under the luxury tax and paying all their core players close to league minimum. It was an odd offseason plan and considering all young star players are getting long-term extensions, it might have been their last chance to ever make a significant difference through free agency.
I believe the Yankees missed an enormous opportunity to lengthen their current championship window and put the best possible team on the field. No, they don’t necessarily need any of the Top 3 free agents to win the World Series, but it sure would have helped.
The Yanks are the only team in the majors that Gardner could beat leadoff. He never swings at the first pitch and pitchers know this so they groove a fastball that he could make decent contact on but know he will take it … I was against bringing him back because of his diminished skills, now with the injury-riddled roster he has to bat somewhere, but leadoff? Boone has no clue, the computer spits out the lineup and he posts it. Don’t you just love analytics? – Mark
Brett Gardner has actually been better over the last few games since this question/comment was written, but that doesn’t change the fact that he should never lead off on this team. I hate to get on Gardner because this whole ordeal isn’t his fault. He didn’t offer himself the one-year, $7.5 million deal when there were better options to take his place. And he’s not the one penciling himself in as the leadoff hitter every game. But I need to know who is.
If it’s Boone, it’s strictly incompetence for a manager whose only redeeming quality seems to be that he’s a good buddy for the players. If it’s the front office and analytics team, we have much a bigger problem. The Yankees are driven by analytics and if it’s somehow analytics recommending Gardner as the leadoff hitter then find new math guys because any person, stat or formula saying Gardner should be at the top of the order can’t be trusted. We can’t have someone who creates an algorithm suggesting Gardner bats leadoff on this team also determining which players to target in trades and in free agency free agents the Yankees should target. But Maybe that’s why they passed on Manny FA and Corbin. Maybe it was the stat guys telling Boone who to bring in with the bases loaded in Game 3 of the ALDS.
Either the Yankees have a manager so far in over his head despite having a season under his belt or they have an analytics team which needs a complete overhaul and either way it’s a problem.
Want to be included in the next Monday Mail? Email your questions to KeefeToTheCity@gmail.com or engage on the Keefe To The City Facebook page or on Twitter.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Chris McMonigle of WFAN joined me to talk about our differences in regards to Aaron Boone’s managerial style and, early-season overreactions from Yankees fans.
This past weekend was certainly better than the Yankees’ opening weekend. After losing two of three at home to the Orioles to begin the season, the Yankees swept the Orioles on the road to improve to 5-4 on the season. It’s not exactly the record I envisioned the Yankees having after nine games against the Orioles and Tigers, but they are above .500 though things are about to get tougher with a road trip to Houston.
Chris McMonigle of WFAN and Mike’s On joined me to talk about our differences in regards to Aaron Boone’s managerial style, the scheduled off days for players in early the season, early-season overreactions from the Yankees fan base, the Yankees’ need to win the division and when to officially evaluate the season.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
