The great comedian George Carlin was a Yankee Fan, and he would have had a few words for the Yankees' performance in the American League Division Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
At least seven words.
And I don't think his words would have included this line, from his next-most famous routine: "Baseball begins in the Spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the Fall, when everything is dying!"
But the Yankees' season did die last night. Cause of death: Apathy. The players seemed like they just didn't give a damn. The whole series seemed like that:
* Game 1: Gertit Cole pitched pretty well, but he allowed 1 home run, and the Yankees got one hit. 1-0.
* Game 2: Cam Schlittler was undone by his defense, and Aaron Boone panicked and took him out too early. 5-2. And in both games, Tropicana Field was sold out. I guarantee you: The vast majority of those people were not Tampa Bay Rays fans. They were people living in Florida who root for other teams, people who couldn't give much of a damn about the Rays, but hate the Yankees.
* Game 3: This was one of those "Let's see who wants to be here next season" games. Seemed like very few do. Max Fried was really good for 5 innings, but, still coming back from injury, he hasn't been able to go 6, and gave up a home run. 4-3. Sweep.
It wasn't much of an effort. It was unacceptable.
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So, who needs to stay, and who needs to go? In descending order of how much they need to stay, here are the position players:
* Aaron Judge: Stay. But he must be kept healthy.
* Giancarlo Stanton: Stay. But he must be kept healthy.
* Ben Rice: Stay. He was the American League's most valuable player, in lower-case letters and possibly upcoming in Capital letters, this season. He carried the team most of the season, when Judge and Stanton were injured.
* Cody Bellinger: Stay. He hits, he fields, he wins.
* Spencer Jones: Stay. He could be the center fielder of the future.
* Paul Goldschmidt: Stay. Yes, he's 39. He can still hit. There was a stretch this season where he practically carried the team. Whether he should still be the starting 1st baseman is another matter, but he can still be a DH or a valuable pinch-hitter.
* George Lombard Jr.: Stay. He'll be 21 until next June. He needs a little seasoning, but he's going to be our shortstop of the future.
* Jasson Domínguez: Stay. He'll be 24 when Spring Training starts, presuming it starts on schedule. It's way too soon to give up on "The Martian."
* Anthony Volpe: Stay. Yes, I know, his fielding is questionable. But moving him to 2nd base is looking like it might solve 2 problems: Where to put him, and who to put there.
* Luis García Jr.: Stay. There was not enough of a sample size to dump him, and what we saw of him looked worth keeping.
* Heliot Ramos: Tough call, but I'm going to say Stay. He didn't hit enough, but he's younger than the next 2 entries, and we only need him to improve his contact hitting a little, to regain the power he showed with the San Francisco Giants. And we only need him as a reserve outfielder.
* Ali Sánchez: Tough call, but I'm gong to say Stay -- mainly because, right now, he's the best-hitting catcher we've got.
* Jazz Chisholm Jr.: Tough call, but I'm going to say Go. Good guy, some power, but we need an upgrade at 2nd base. We may already have won in Volpe.
* Trent Grisham: Tough call, but I'm going to say Go. Good guy, some power, but we need an upgrade in center field. We may already have one in Jones.
* José Caballero: Go. His defensive versatility doesn't make him a great defensive player, and it gets canceled out by is inability to hit.
* Amed Rosario: Go. Same details as Caballero. We don't need one guy like that, let alone two.
* Max Schuemann: Go. The outfield equivalent of the last 2 guys.
* Randal Grichuk: Go. Same as Schuemann.
* Ryan McMahon: Go. He batted .213. Good guy, good fielder, can't hit, and switching him to another position would not help.
* Oswaldo Cabrera: Go. One of Brian Cashman's precious "prospects" that didn't pan out. He's injury-prone. And, as Yogi Berra might have said if he'd lived, "Even when he can play, he can't play."
* Austin Wells: Go. I don't care how good a guy is, how good a teammate a guy is, or how good a fielder a player is: A .186 batting average is a hole in the lineup, and he has to go.
* J.C. Escarra: Go: Same category, and his .188 average is only slightly higher.
The starting rotation should be Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, and either Will Warren or Ryan Weathers. That's in order of current worthiness, not necessarily in the order in which they should pitch. All should stay, but all of them must be kept healthy.
In the cases of Warren and Weathers, one will be in the rotation, while the other is the first man out of the bullpen, unless one of the other 4 starters gets hurt, in which case the one in the bullpen once again becomes a rotation slot-filler. In other words, starter-wise, we're set: For the first time in ages, the Yankees do not need to go out of their way to get a good starting pitcher.
Here are the relief pitchers:
* David Bednar: Stay. Ideally, we would have a better closer, and he'd be the 8th-inning man.
* Paul Blackburn: Stay. Like Bednar, he looks good to be the guy to get to The Guy, if somebody better than Bednar were The Guy.
* Brent Headrick: Stay. His WHIP is a little too high for a reliever, and if he became trade bait for something we need, I wouldn't get upset.
* Clarke Schmidt: Stay. He deserves another shot if for no other reason than that he's been hurt. He turns 31 during Spring Training. He could have several more years left. And I don't want Cashman to turn him into the next Nathan Eovaldi, starting for some other team and beating the Yankees, maybe a few times. But if he is going to stay with us, he'll be a reliever and maybe a spot starter.
* Luis Gil: Stay. He had a bad year, but he was coming back from injury, and -- if you're an Arsenal fan, you'll get the joke -- he's 28 until he's 29. (Next June.) He's still got a chance.
* Yerry de los Santos: Stay. Despite his injury, he pitched well when he could pitch at all.
* Elmer Rodríguez: Stay. He had a rough rookie season, but he's only 23. He can get better.
* Angel Chivilli and...
* Yovanny Cruz: Stay. Both were good when they weresn't hurt.
* Alexander Cornielle: Stay. He's only pitched in 1 major league game, on September 25, and he got hit hard. But he's 25, and pitched well in Class AAA. He deserves another shot.
* John Schreiber: Stay. He only pitched in 11 games, but was decent.
* Kervin Castro: Stay. He'll be 28 at Spring Training, so he's no longer a prospect, but he showed something in his 5 major league games this season.
* Justin Topa: Stay. He'll turn 36 during Spring Training, and only faced 16 batters this season, but might be worth it.
* Ryan Yarbrough: Go. A 3.69 ERA is too high for a reliever.
* Fernando Cruz: Go. No reason to keep him.
* Tim Hill: Go. A WHIP of 1.142 is good, but a 4.60 ERA is unacceptable for a reliever. If we need a lefty reliever, that's Headrick for now.
* Camilo Doval, Jake Bird, Michael Fulmer, Brendan Beck, Bradley Hanner: Go. Absolute dregs, all of them. None of these men even deserves to be on a major league roster, especially that of the Yankees.
So: 2027 Yankee needs -- assuming there is a 2027 MLB season -- in descending order: Catcher, closer, 3rd base, 2nd base.
*
After last night's game, Ben Rice said, "As far as I'm concerned, it's a failure, since we weren't able to get the job done." He was right.
Jazz Chisholm said, "It sucks to not finish it off." This is true. He also said, "This is where I want to be." He didn't play like it this season."
Aaron Judge said, "That's not good enough here in New York. We're the Yankees. You got to go out there and expect championships and go all in every year."
And Aaron Boone said, "The ending is terrible. It's the worst."
They're all saying the right things.
Brian Cashman said nothing. This is on him. 17 years, 1 Pennant, no World Series wins. 26 years, 4 Pennants, 1 World Series win.
Hal Steinbrenner also said nothing. This is on him, too. He needs to say something. He needs to say it to Boone, and he needs to say it to Cashman: "Goodbye."
After all, as I've said before: Firing Boone does nothing. Cashman will just hire another errand boy to do his bidding. Hal has to fire both of them, the way his father George would have, years ago.
One more time: If you fire the doll, but you keep the ventriloquist, then you are the dummy.
UPDATE: This afternoon, on Pardon the Interruption, Tony Kornheiser said Boone shouldn't be fired, because he was hampered by the Judge injury. But he also pointed out that, in postseason series, Boone is 7-0 against teams with a lesser record than the Yankees, and 1-8 against teams with the same or better record.
Answer me this: Why have the Yankees played nine postseason series in Boone's nine seasons as manager where the opposing team has an equal or better record? Follow-up question: Why have they only been able to pull the upset once? Follow-up to the follow-up: Wouldn't a better manager be able to pull the upset more than once?
One last question. It's the classic Vince Lombardi question: What the hell's goin' on out here?
2 comments:
I didn't know Fulmer is still pitching. That said, I'd be lying if I say I'm a bit bummed, especially when they couldn't even win a single game. The whole thing feels like another wasted season even with Judge's injury being factored. TBH, I'm feeling really salty but I honestly hope the Rays loses even if expecting the unpredictable White Sox to do it would be pushing it. Only upside of the season is that the pitching did an admirable job in trying to save the season from becoming like 2023. Honestly had Bednar been anything like our precious closers like Williams and that second half save blower Holmes, the season might even turn up worse than 2023. At least Judge will be able to take his time to recover since the last thing we need is a Walton like situation with the Blazers.
In fact, Stanton is pretty much in this stage for some time, the guy is even more fragile than Chad Pennington who at least had an excuse of playing football. I mean a hit on Stanton would have shatter him to bits where Clemens would then pick up the pieces and toss them right at Piazza. We'd be lucky to even have him on the field even half the time even as a DH.
Now for the younger guys, I hope they take steps to improve, especially Lombard Jr. Dominguez (though the site YBB seem to be rooting for him and Volpe to fail), and Spencer Jones. Volpe for me feels like one of the players who may thrive with a change of scenery though, even before his injury last year whenever the pressure is on, he would botch the play. It's like he fell off from his gold glove season and got worse since then. I still believe in his potential but he may have to do it with another team even if 2nd base experiment is intriguing.
Here's hoping the Brewers succeeds against the Dodgers, unlike last year where despite sweeping them in the regular season match ups, they freaking died in the rematch in the NLCS.
Do you think the Yankees should look into the trade market for a new catcher?
What's needed to be said, Boone's postseason track record as a manager would have sunk the team in 2000 and 2001 postseason, making Moneyball look credible in the process. I would love to be wrong about Boone if it means winning a title but he really did little to help his case.
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