Sunday, April 12, 2015

I know lots of Yankee fans. Zero of them are talking about Alex Rodriguez.

"We were reminded on Thursday afternoon in Washington, as we if we needed reminding, what we missed when the Mets lost Matt Harvey for more than a season and so did baseball.

We saw at the same time that he is the ace of the city and the biggest baseball star of the city, famous because of his surgically repaired right arm and his fastball and the breaking balls he drops on hitters as a different way of dropping a hammer on them."

Great pitcher who, like many great pitchers, throws both fastballs and breaking balls.


"The Yankees? Here is all you need to know about the Yankees and their own opening week to the baseball season: The big story for them was Alex Rodriguez, a soon-to-be-40 hitter who also missed last season, just for far different reasons than Matt Harvey did."

That is all you need to know, says the alleged reporter.

There is a lot more to know, by the way. Talk about the fielding ineptitude and RISP BA ineptitude.


"The guy Yankee fans are talking about after the first week of the season is a guy the people who run their team didn’t even want batting third by the fourth game."

Nobody is talking about ARod.

You are obsessed, but don't pin that obsession on the rest of us.

ARod is pretty much a washed-up DH. Fantasy leagues leave him undrafted.

The things Yankee fans are talking about? It's all ugly and bad.

ARod has likely been the Yankees' best hitter through five games, despite striking out half the time. This observation does not indicate that ARod has played particulary well, it simply illustrates how bad everyone else has been.


"This doesn’t mean that the Mets are going to be better than the Yankees, or that Harvey’s brilliance will be enough to carry his team through the summer. It doesn’t mean that Harvey really will turn out to be their Seaver, at least in the short run, and carry the Mets back to October for the first time since 2006, when they were as close as they were to not just making the World Series, but probably winning it that year."

I think the true NY Baseball Nightmare is coming true. At least for the first ten games. A combined 3-7 record, with the mediocre Mets technically "better" than the awful Yankees.

(The Mets were probably going top win the World Series in 2006, by the way. So, you know ... we might as well give them rings and throw a ticker tape parade. Because probably and almost.)


"A friend of mine, a Mets fans, asked the other day if I would trade the Mets’ starting rotation for Washington’s, which starts with Max Scherzer and is deep and talented and is supposed to take the Nationals all the way to the World Series this year. I said I would not. Because the Mets have Matt Harvey and, even with Strasburg, the Nationals do not."

I wouldn't trade Matt Harvey for all 25 players on the Yankees' roster.

I would keep Ellsbury, Gardner, Tanaka, Pineda, Miller, and Betances if I was allowed to. The other 19 players are garbage, and those 6 are replaceable enough ... maybe not Tanaka and Pineda. They're young enough and talented enough to hold on to. So it would be Harvey, Tanaka, Pineda, and 22 minor leaguers, and I'd take my chances.



"He is that kind of show. The Yankees, with the Red Sox in town, were a different kind of show on Friday night and into Saturday morning, playing 19 innings against the Red Sox, fighting back in the bottom of the ninth, and the bottom of the 16th, and the bottom of the 18th to tie the game three different times. They did not just show you a lot of fight in that game, they showed you a lot of arm. And their most important arm, Tanaka’s, will be on display on Sunday night."

Tanaka is something to talk about, something you need to know, that isn't Alex Rodriguez.


"It doesn’t mean they can’t compete in the AL East. But they better win it if they want to start making the playoffs again, because you have to believe that at least one wild card will come out of the AL Central again, and maybe two. They better be better than the Red Sox, who are never afraid to tear the thing down and start all over again, because now they have done it twice in the last five years."

I think there is a possibility that the Yankees will never be over .500 the entire season.




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