"In some sense the Yankees are always measuring themselves against the
Red Sox, which so far makes 2016 nothing short of their worst nightmare.
It’s not just because the Sox have bashed their way to the top of the
AL East, leading the league in runs scored, but the way they’re doing
it, led by a trio of young position players age 23, 23 and 26, bodes
well for a bright future in Boston, as well as the present.
Yes, in Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr., the Red
Sox might just have the makings of a young nucleus around which they’ll
win multiple championships, in the manner of Derek Jeter’s Core Four.
And though their pitching doesn’t hold as much promise, the Sox
received a boost on Tuesday night from highly touted 23-year-old Eduardo
Rodriguez, who returned from a season-long knee injury with a flourish
against the Orioles."
Sorry, but in the era of two wild cards, the Yankees can maybe sneak in with 85 wins. Which they don't seem likely to attain, but the point is, they sure don't have to catch the Red Sox.
So then, I'll take the Yankees with Tanaka and the bullpen.
Then, it's hope for the best in October, just like if they won 110 games instead of 85.
"In short, this has been a season to forget on many levels for the
Yankees, in particular because it’s hard to see them closing the gap
between themselves and the Red Sox anytime soon.
All of which should make their decision to be sellers in the coming
weeks easy. And while they don’t have a lot of tradeable assets, free
agent-to-be Aroldis Chapman is a no-brainer, and Carlos Beltran is a
proven clutch post-season hitter."
For what?
A fifth-round draft pick?
Or a couple of future superstars?
Because I would trade the whole team for two future superstars. Who's trading these players to the Yankees?
"In any case, the struggles of Judge and Severino have raised more
questions about the future toward which the Yankees are pointing.
So it’s time for the Yankees to start looking to deal. It’s the only
way they will close the glaring gap in young talent between themselves
in the Red Sox."
OK: Yankees stink, 2016 season is shot, the young saviors are disappointing.
You still haven't explained who the Yankees are getting in return and why any team would trade useful players to the Yankees.
Beltran is old, Chapman is a rental.
The other teams have the Yankees over a barrel and they know it.
"David Ortiz is spoiling it for the rest of the 40-year-olds in baseball.
Big Papi is putting together an insane, MVP-level year for the Red Sox
during his farewell season. With a .337 average, 1.146 OPS, 14 home runs
and 47 RBI, Ortiz looks like a slugger 10-15 years his junior.
This isn't normal."
The rest of the article is old news: ARod stinks.
ARod won't play every day ... I agree this is probably a good move, just to keep him energetic enough to hit an occasional HR.
When you look at the other hitters in this lineup, it's not as if he's taking at-bats away from Mattingly.
As ARod slogs towards Ruth using this disastrous all-or-nothing approach that he has employed for the past 10 years or so ... the man hasn't batted .300 since 2008, steroids or not ... one may turn their attention back to the Mitchell Report and wonder exactly how Ortiz looks like an abnormal slugger 10-15 years his junior.
How a sports writer could come so close to connecting the dots without actually connecting the dots.
"Rodriguez
returned Thursday after spending three weeks on the disabled list with a
strained hamstring, but he is just 1 for 16 with nine strikeouts since
returning. (The one hit was a booming 441-foot home run.) He is hitting
.170 and was given Monday off.
Teixeira,
who had spent the past five days out of the lineup with a stiff neck,
was back in the lineup on Monday, but his season has been even more
troubling. He has not hit a home run in 36 games and 125 at-bats, the
longest droughts of his 14-year career."
It's not trading Chapman and it's not Swisher at first base.
What do you think the Yankees would get for Chapman? Who's about to become a free agent? Who is going to trade a bunch of future stars in exchange for same saves down the stretch?
Consensus is to give Beltran the DH spot and stick with Hicks in RF.
The thing is, Aaron Hicks also stinks. So does Chase Headley. Worst of them all is the pitiful Mark Teixeira ... so bad that I don't think Yankee fans even want to boo him ... they want to laugh at him ... mock him with "MVP" chants.
So it's perplexing to see the criticism constantly leveled at Jacoby Ellsbury and Alex Rodriguez. This skewed criticism simply doesn't reflect reality.
Nobody is really going to fight the notion of taking 200 at-bats away from ARod. But who are you going to give them to? Hicks has a good arm, but it's going to get tiring to watch him stand at home plate and pointlessly attempt to hit major league pitching.
If the goal is to keep ARod fresh, that's probably Girardi's plan, anyway.
But until you find an OFer better than Hicks or Ackley, you may as well continue to put ARod up there and tell him to swing really hard in case the pitcher throws one into his bat.
"I love the idea that the Yankees are in great shape — at least according to the coverage — because some rich, old long-term contracts are coming off the books.
So, like, Yankee fans think the next round of contracts is going to be great?
Why?"
It's not the "next round of contracts" that Yankee fans are looking forward to with optimism. It's the promise of the players in the minor leagues. Which could turn out to be a lot of unrealized hype, of course, but since you asked, I can try to briefly explain.
It's a course correction... and a coherent plan ... maybe the only feasible plan ... and it's a plan of patience and clear-headedness that the Yankees are finally sticking to.
1) Fill the roster ASAP with talented young players who are inexpensive.
2) Clear salary in two years when the Contracts of Diminishing Returns are up.
3) Use the extra cash to fill in the roster with free agents. Cashman has seemingly learned his lesson about long-term contracts in the PED-diminished era.
"That is where Harvey now finds himself. He has a 5.77 E.R.A. and has not pitched more than six innings in a start all season. Collins would not even commit to starting him next week, when his turn comes up again at Nationals Park. He said Harvey’s confidence was sapped.
'I’m not happy about it,' Harvey said of his performance. 'I know nobody else is.'"
Not Bob Feller, not Dizzy Dean, not Lefty Grove, not Carl Hubbell, but 'Satchel Paige.'
Joe's unflinching response in 1939 to the inquiry of 'the best pitcher he ever faced' stunned a group of stadium reporters.
While Joe DiMaggio was no social crusader, he knew great pitching.
Like many other major leaguers, he faced Paige during interracial barnstorming exhibitions that were not uncommon in the off-season.
About Paige, sports writer Joe Posnanski writes:
'(He was) unhittable for the better part of 15 years. One pitch. It's a lot like Mariano Rivera, except he wasn't doing it for one inning at a time. He was pitching complete games.'
Let that sink in for a minute."
I can see where this is heading.
I have no reason to slag on Satchel Freaking Paige. The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that Paidge didn't have to face the best white players. His brilliance is undeniable; his domination of the Major Leagues is probable, bust also largely boosted by the imagination.
"If the prospect of facing Mariano for nine innings seems frightening, try adding Hilton Smith's nasty curveball the next day. In 1941, the Kansas City Royals did not exist, but Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League did — and Hall of Famers Paige and Smith formed the greatest 1-2 punch in ALL of baseball — and arguably, baseball history.
Joe DiMaggio never had to face the Kansas City Monarchs in 1941. Or any Negro League team."
This is an under-reported phenomenon, I agree.
The best thing about modern-day American Major League Baseball is that it attracts the best talent from all over the world. I totally love watching players from all over the country and all over the world, assembled on the same team, competing with and against one another. It's just cool.
"As usual, the impact of DiMaggio's actual whites-only playing field was not discussed. This comes five years after a slew of celebrations for The Streak's 70th anniversary. In 2011, The Sporting News staff voted '56' as sport's greatest record. Kostya Kennedy's '56: The Last Magic Number in Sports' became a New York Times best seller, and its publisher, Sports Illustrated, gave Joe it's cover. It was called 'Baseball's Holy Grail,' and at ESPN, it was called 'the most romantic record' for its 'aura,' 'magic,' and penetration into 'the cornfields of American culture.'"
Very few players have gotten to 40 games in a row, much less 56.
Of course DiMaggio played with some advantages -- inferior fielding equipment, tired pitchers who threw 300 innings, easier travel schedules, cultural aversion to intentional walks and fielding shifts and stacked bullpens.
He also played with some disadvantages -- inferior batting technology, inferior training techniques, soft baseballs, bad scouting.
If you compare DiMaggio's accomplishment to all the players who've tried to hit baseballs in the professional ranks, you can't help but be amazed.
"Finding critical dissent on baseball's 'Jim Crow Era' is hard to come by amongst an almost exclusively white mainstream baseball media. When sports announcer Bob Costas held a baseball panel to discuss the 'legitimacy' of Barry Bonds' passing of Hank Aaron's career home run record in 2007, he invited a comedian — and not a sports journalist — to address the relevance of race."
I definitely agree that there's a certain Old White Man element in baseball lore, up to the present day. The references to "Field of Dreams" juxtaposed with the anger at Bautista's bat flip ... like Shoeless Joe is a hero and Joey Bats is a criminal.
I can also see how all the Baseball Poets and their weird Pastoral Nostalgia does not reflect reality -- especially to a black man who was denied equal access.
But here's the thing: Joe D. could flat-out rake. "The 'white ball' benefits of Joe's streak is not the same as Babe Ruth — whose home run totals would still remain historic had they landed closer to Willie Mays territory (660 HRs). The career totals of Ruth, Ty Cobb, or Walter Johnson were inflated from great to greater.
But Joe DiMaggio’s streak wasn't merely inflated by the times, it was created by them.
Without the influence of Performance-Enhancing Whiteness, it would simply not have happened."
That is hard to imagine. DiMaggio could never get a well-timed hit off of a black pitcher?
"During his streak, DiMaggio faced a Hall of Famer pitcher in his prime only two times in 56 games (Bob Feller twice). He would likely see Paige and Smith in four to eight games during his streak. If Negro League aces Leon Day (Newark Eagles) and Raymond Brown (Homestead Grays) also pitched in white baseball's American League, DiMaggio would likely face 8-to-16 games against prime Hall of Fame-level pitching."
So Leon Day never gave up a hit?
"Utley — who is white — was shut down by a Cuban, an American, and a Puerto Rican. But in 1941, Major League Baseball did not split such hairs — all three would have been banned. Period. (Only a very small number of white and light-skinned Latinos were permitted in 1941.)
Did any media notice?
If 2006 were 1941, Chase Utley's streak would live to see another day."
Uhhh ... this makes no sense and I am stopping now.
The exploration of Jim Crow baseball is important, under-reported, and interesting.
The attempt to say what "woulda happened" in a specific example, on a specific day, is total nonsense. Maybe the Streak was just a Black Swan event.
Cohen was very underwhelmed by a 2-out, 2-strike RBI single by Prodigal Murphy. The "net negative" who's batting .400.
Cohen's lack of enthusiasm is not simply because he's unwilling to be proven wrong. It's because he never gives the Mets' opponent any credit. To a degree that's detrimental to his ability to broadcast the happenings in a baseball game.
Also ... despite the hype ... lots of empty seats in Citi Field for the big series with the Nationals.
That's why Bartolo Colon won't lose his cult hero status. Because, for a player who is so fat and so old, he has shown remarkable endurance and production.
What would it take to put 2 and 2 together?
What would it take to see the obvious reason for his remarkable endurance and production?
"After that neither teams' offense could push any runs across. Thankfully for the Yankees, Tidrow was doing a good job in long relief. In this case, it was very long relief. On August 25, 1976, Dick Tidrow pitched 10.2 innings out of the bullpen. He allowed just four hits and didn't allow a run. After allowing a lead-off single to Steve Byre to start the 18th, he was finally replaced.
Grant Jackson was brought in to relieve Tidrow. He got out of the 18th and then threw a 1-2-3 inning in the 19th. Oscar Gamble led off the bottom of the 19th with a single. After a bunt moved him into scoring position, he eventually scored when Mickey Rivers singled.
Dick Tidrow's relief outing is not the longest in Yankees' history. It is the longest scoreless relief outing in Yankees' history, however. And given the way that bullpens are used today, I don't think it's a record that is in any danger of being broken."
Mark Teixeira is a victim of all different kinds of cognitive dissonance:
"'My whole career has been about back-spinning the ball, hitting the
ball in the air and home runs,' Teixeira said. 'I’m just not doing that
right now.'
... 'It’s pretty simple, I’ve got to put the ball in the air more,' Teixeira said. 'Now, it’s a matter of doing it.'"
... I don't think the Yankee managers understand the frustration of the fans:
"Here's something to mull over between now and July 15, the next time the Yankees face the Red Sox: Should Joe Girardi pull a Joe Maddon when it comes to Big Papi?
David Ortiz has crushed the Yanks this year, smashing five homers in six games and batting .333 with a 1.343 OPS.
Maddon, of course, is the Cubs' manager who essentially took the bat out of the hands of perhaps baseball's most dangerous hitter over the weekend — Washington's Bryce Harper.
Harper walked 13 times in a four-game series against the Cubs and the Cubs won every game. Harper did not even have an official at-bat in his last 12 plate appearances, walking 10 times, getting hit by a pitch and hitting a sac fly, which the Elias Sports Bureau says is a record.
Big Papi was just 3-for-13 in the just-completed series at the Stadium won by the Yanks. But all three hits were homers, including two solo shots off Luis Severino Sunday night."
I don't know if it's actually possible to just "pitch better" ... or if you can really "pitch around" a batter ... or if the Yankee pitchers need to pick their spots (these were mostly solo HRs) ... or if McCann doesn't know how to call a game ... or why the Yankees are unwilling to plunk him in the butt once or twice over the past 15 years.
So I don't know if I have a solution to the problem.
Steroid-addled 40-year-olds are difficult to get out in major league baseball games.
The gripe amongst a lot of Yankee fans is that there is a certain conciliatory attitude towards an opponent ... an opponent who consistently crushes the Yankees ... an opponent with a history of cheating and boorish behavior.
"Technically, the Yankees didn't trade Robinson Cano for Jacoby Ellsbury after the 2013 season. But due to the circumstances of how Cano — a future Hall of Fame second baseman — was allowed to walk away in free agency and was effectively replaced by Ellsbury, their careers will forever be linked in the Bronx."
Funny, this linkage never really dawned on me.
"That's turning into more and more of an uncomfortable comparison for the Yankees.
While Cano's contract (10 years, $240 million) could become an albatross in a few years, a case can be made that Ellsbury's deal (seven years, $153 million) is already trending in that direction. This season represents just the third year of the respective deals, but the early returns — including team success in 2016 — are overwhelming in the favor of Cano."
I don't think it's overwhelming.
Yankees have won one more game over the time period and Cano's cumulative WAR is 11.9 instead of 5.7.
"Cano: 344 games, .301/.357/.467, .824 OPS, 135 OPS+, 11.9 WAR
Ellsbury: 287 games, .264/.323/.386, .709 OPS, 99 OPS+, 5.7 WAR
It's not even a contest. Even with Cano's down year due to an abdominal injury in 2015, he's been the far more productive player since the start of 2014."
So there you go.
I look at the same data and say it's less than three wins per year. Not overwhelming, even if WAR isn't the best indicator, and neither is team wins (Yankees have one more than Seattle during the same time period).
I simply don't understand the fixation on Ellsbury.
Tanaka has a cumulative WAR of 8.0 over that time period. I say the Yankees signed Tanaka instead of Cano ... and only lost 1.5 games per year.
Have Ellsbury earned their money relative to Cano? No. But I don't think it's overwhelming, especially when the total contract is taken into account.
But obviously, more importantly for the Yankees was avoiding that $100 million post-35 albatrosses that are hanging around so many of the players on their current roster. So maybe it's too early to tell who gets the last laugh.
As for the 2016 Yankees, once again, it's obvious to me that Ellsbury isn't their biggest payroll thief.
"[Wright] did not give up his second hit until the seventh inning, when Starlin
Castro led off with a double. McCann followed with a deep flyout to
right field, moving Castro to third base, and it appeared that the
Yankees were finally catching up to Wright’s fluttering pitches.
Trailing
by 1-0 in the count to Mark Teixeira, Wright threw a knuckleball that
bobbled out of catcher Ryan Hanigan’s mitt. Seeing the ball on the
ground, Castro broke prematurely for home. Hanigan quickly recovered and
threw Castro out as he retreated to third.
"The Yankees have won a couple in a row now against the Red Sox, as they try to dig themselves and fight themselves out of an early-season hole. And they need to keep winning, because if they don’t you wonder what the ballpark might look like a few months from now." The Yankees' economics are fine. Better than they ought to be considering the product they're putting on the field. "Or maybe they think they can start to fill those empty blue seats near the field that sometimes look like the most expensive unclaimed real estate in New York City, with Alex Rodriguez’s creaky, inauthentic run at Babe Ruth, and dazzling late-inning relief pitchers." Nobody cares about ARod or the bullpen. Most of the 2016 tickets are already sold ... the daily attendance numbers are inflated for sure ... and the Stadium is kinda dead. But fans still show up out of habit or because Yankee Stadium is a tourist attraction. Baseball is fun. You root for your bad team and hope they win today. "But at a time when the Mets are so much fun to watch, because of star young pitchers even when they’re not pitching like stars, and home run hitters, the Yankees aren’t. They haven’t been really fun to watch for a while." I agree, the Yankees are boring. The Mets are better and more exciting. CitiField will be packed for the upcoming Nationals series. But, truth be told, CitiField is half empty most of the time. Or half full, if you work for the Mets PR Dept. "By all measure, the Steinbrenner in charge of the team is a very good guy, just one who seems to have no reichcal passion for baseball and no love for New York City." I don't think "reichcal" is a word. I think somebody mis-typed "real." "So it’s not just Rodriguez’s insane contract that is the problem here, all that contract does is provide cover. Chase Headley is working on a four-year, $52 million deal, just because sometimes you think everybody is with the Yankees. Brett Gardner is working on the same basic contract. And Brian McCann was going to be the new Thurman Munson." ARod's contract doesn't provide cover for anyone paying attention. It's columnists like Lupica who have fixated on ARod while ignoring all the other players on the Yankees ... and, even now, Lupica inexplicably excludes Beltran, Teixeira, and Sabathia from his List of Busts.
Ellsbury is his fixation and, though a bust for sure, Ellsbury is probably the best overall player in the starting eight. I know it's a low bar, but I'm serious. So if you think he's the biggest Yankee bust of all time ... or even the biggest bust on the current roster ... just look at the guys sitting on the bench to his left and right.
"The Yankees, when healthy, even though with the Jurassic Park All-Stars that is a very fluid situation, start two players under the age of 30, Gregorius and Castro. But every time somebody goes down, the way Rodriguez and Sabathia did this week, people act shocked." Who are the people who acted shocked? If anyone acted shocked, they were surely being sarcastic. I also don't think anybody really cares because they're not very good baseball players anymore. "Maybe one of these days, maybe the Yankees need to think about throwing Aaron Judge into the pool the way the Mets threw Michael Conforto into the pool a year ago, and see if he can swim. Or if he is one more guy out of the farm system who doesn’t turn out to be the next Ruth or Mantle." This isn't genius stuff. The future isn't just Judge, Gregorius, and Castro. The future is Judge, Gregorius, Castro, Severino, Tanaka, Eovaldi, Pineda, Refsnyder, and Bird. Myself and most fans are ready to make the transition rather than watching stubborn old players swing for the fences and hit into the shift. Severino's horrible start is way more troubling than the combined 2016 disasters of every player over the age of 35. If Severino can make adjustments and turn it around, he may be a future ace. If he can't, then good luck with Plan B.
They fired an untalented employee who was also a jerk:
"ESPN is a private company; it had every right to fire Schilling because it didn’t like a few of his social-media posts. (And never mind what it let Keith Olbermann get away with all those years.)
The network can censor its own content as it chooses, too — however petty and childish that choice reveals it to be."
Right.
Which is why they're not Stalinist at all.
"But it’s a darned strange way to show 'progressive' values."
ESPN.
Formerly "Entertainment and Sports Programming Network."
Not a word about a devotion to progressive values, or even politeness and civility, for that matter.
Schilling was fired because his bosses told him to cut it out and he refused to cut it out. The transgender bathroom issue was not the first time. Though, yeah, if tolerance of transgender people qualifies as "progressive" values, then maybe ESPN just fired Schilling for this one-off.
Sure, Schilling has made enough money and he doesn't care. But Schilling's argument seems to be that his employer's insistence that he behave in a certain way is stifling and inappropriate ... even un-American.
What Schilling doesn't realize is that's what a job is. Everybody's job, all day, every day. Everybody who works for somebody else, anyway.
Headley should be benched or waived ... if for no other reason than to throw a bone to the fans who still pay attention to this team.
Gregorius is a bigger problem. A year ago at this time, we all chalked up his deficiencies to the strain of replacing Jeter. A surge in the second half set up a promising 2016.
Then this horrible regression, suggesting a player who is not really devoted to his craft.
Did anybody on the Yankees take note of how the Red Sox "hitters" beat the Yankees last night? Lefties hitting to the opposite field?:
"What has given the Yankees such a home advantage for nine decades — the short right-field porch — is now a detriment.
In the age of ever-expanding shifts, the Yankees’ lack of offensive diversification has made them arguably the most easily defended team in the majors.
'It definitely hurts us,' general manager Brian Cashman admitted."
Ummm ... you sound stupid.
"Before the heavy shifting, the Yankees could fill their lineup with pull-oriented lefty hitters and gain the advantage in their home park of not only plenty of homers, but also when a ball was hit well, singles and doubles.
But put five defenders to the right of second base and try to find a hole, especially at Yankee Stadium. It is one thing to have three infielders and two outfielders shading that way in a roomy right side like at Kauffman Stadium or Turner Field. It still is effective, but not like at Yankee Stadium, which has the least square footage of any right-field area in the majors. Thus, opponents have more defenders arrayed in a small space and, well, good luck to a Yankees lefty pull batter getting a hit that does not land over the fence."
I can't think of a solution to this problem.
Can anybody think of a solution to this problem?
"But what already is entrenched could not be changed. Carlos Beltran, Chase Headley, Brian McCann and Mark Teixeira are among the 30 lefty hitters shifted against most often (all shift stats provided by Baseball Info Solutions)."
What is already entrenched could not be changed.
Or ... just throwing this out there ... cuckoo idea ... all those guys can occasionally hit the ball on the ground to the left side of the infield?
"With lefty Chasen Shreve and Betances throwing in the bullpen, Joe Girardi opted to stick with Tanaka to face the left-handed hitting Bradley after he gave up consecutive one-out, opposite-field singles to left-handed hitters Travis Shaw and Brock Holt.
'The split really didn’t do much, and he hit it off the wall,' Girardi said of Bradley’s double that erased a 2-0 Yankees lead.
...
Girardi had stayed with Tanaka against Bradley, who was 0-for-2 and 1-for-13 against the right-hander."
99th pitch of the night. Easy call to go to the bullpen. I truly think Girardi paid attention to the previous 1-for-13.
Yes, it would be different if the useless offense could score easy runs that rookie pitchers and inept defensive teams attempt to give away ... if these batters were trained to hit for the situation ... but that point of emphasis is long overdue and now it's too late.
"The real drugs to talk about with Dee Gordon, the son of a Major
League ballplayer, aren't exogenous Testosterone and Costebol. The drugs
to talk about, now that another star player has been banged for 80
games because he was dumb enough to believe some chemist or doctor or
some guy he met at the gym, are these: entitlement and insecurity and
greed.
That
is the drug cocktail for any athlete who thinks he is going to be the
one to cheat the game and beat the game at the same time, and it remains
both powerful and addictive, even in a sport like baseball, where
testing works."
The real drugs are Testosterone and Costebol.
Testing doesn't work in baseball.
Other than those minor corrections, you are right on, Mike Lupica.
"And the only thing dumber than the belief from someone like Gordon -- a
streak of light on a baseball player, the defending National League
batting champion -- that you will never get caught is the statement you
release after you do get caught."
I think it's funny because Gordon only has 8 career HRs. "You also have to know something else: They take it thinking that if
they do get caught, as shocked as Gordon was this week and Colabello was
last week, they will ride it out and come back and still get paid. It
happened that way with Melky Cabrera. It happened that way with Jhonny
Peralta, a Biogenesis All-Star. And the players who don't take the stuff
look at this and see ballplayers getting rewarded for a form of fraud.
The word Bob Costas uses about the numbers put into the books by guys
using the stuff is 'inauthentic.' He is absolutely right.
One of these days, you wonder if the cost of getting caught using
drugs will be one simple act that might actually get everybody's
attention once and for all: Your contract going from guaranteed to
unguaranteed. Jim Duquette, a former baseball executive, now a
broadcaster, once again talked about that on Friday. Because, really,
what law has ever been passed in this country that says a guaranteed
contract in sports is supposed to survive a nuclear attack?"
It's embarrassing to get suspended 80 games. Gordon lost some of his $50 million. From a cost-benefit standpoint, the benefits seem to outweigh the costs.
The Yankees are not 10 games out of first place ... yet:
"The Yankees enter the weekend ranked 14th in runs scored, slugging
percentage and hits and dead last in extra-base hits. They have scored
three-or-fewer runs in 15 of their 20 games, going 3-12 in those
contests. Even worse, they’ve been held to two-or-fewer runs 10 times
already this season, losing all 10 games.
'It’s been a struggle for the last 15 games, hitting the ball,' Girardi
said. 'I think our at-bats were good (Wednesday), and if you put good
at-bats, eventually that’s going to change.'
If there’s a silver lining for the Yankees, it’s that their awful start
— which has guaranteed them their first losing April since 2008 —
hasn’t buried them in the standings. They left Texas trailing the
first-place Orioles by only four games, so they’re not facing the type
of massive holes that teams such as the Twins (nine games out in the AL
Central) and Braves (10.5 games out in the NL East) have already dug for
themselves."
Come back and talk to ARod after 80 games: “If it doesn’t break us, it’s going to make us stronger in the long run,” said Alex Rodriguez, who went 3-for-3 with a home run
as he returned to the lineup after missing two games with a minor
oblique injury. “It’s tough, but we have to keep perspective... If it
was 80 games, it would be a lot tougher to swallow.”
Not our fault:
“You usually go through stretches throughout the season where things go
this way,” said Chase Headley, whose 0-for-3 left him with only two hits
in his last 24 at-bats. “This one has been prolonged a little bit; some
of it our fault, some not our fault.”
Girardi's players don't play hard for him:
“Do you want me just to flip it upside down? What do you want me to do?”
Girardi said. “Twenty games is one-eighth of the season. If every
manager changed the lineup after three or four guys were struggling,
you’d be changing the lineup all the time. That’s why it’s a long season
and you go by numbers over a long period of time. I think it’s way too
early for that. I don’t know what your ideas are. Do you want me to hit
(Ronald) Torreyes fourth?”
It's not September yet:
“Obviously, you hope to be over .500 every month, but I’d rather have
that in April than September,” Headley said. “We’re going to keep
fighting. We’re going to play better. We know we are. Hopefully it’s
sooner than later.”
Maybe the Yankees batters would bat over .250 if the opponents weren't allowed to use the shift:
"Joe Girardi employs infield shifts regularly, doing his best to give his infielders a chance to defend against hitters of all kinds.
But if it were up to the Yankees manager, those shifts would disappear like a Mark Teixeira grounder in short right field.
Asked whether he would make shifts illegal if he were the sport’s commissioner, Girardi wasted no time in answering, 'Absolutely.'
'I think it’s an illegal defense, like basketball,' Girardi said. 'Guard your man; guard your spot. If I was commissioner, they would be illegal.'
'As long as it’s legal, I’m going to play it.'
Girardi’s shift on Nomar Mazara Monday night helped the rookie outfielder shoot a ball through the hole at shortstop, ending Nathan Eovaldi’s no-hitter in the seventh inning. Girardi didn’t second-guess his decision, though he hated to see Eovaldi’s bid for history end in such fashion.
'I think the field was built this way for a reason,' Girardi said. 'Two on one side, two on the other.'"
I don't follow Girardi's logic. It's embarrassing that Yankee batters can't figure it out.
Strikes out way too much for the rather weak power output. Pretty good speed. A decent number of walks, boosting a low batting average. Good stolen base percentage.
It's basically Brett Gardner without the good fielding and without any ability to hit in the clutch.
"No one's looking at the standings at this point," McCann said. "We're
trying to play better baseball, trying to have better at-bats and play
better defense"
Gardner aka "Gardy":
"We'd much rather be 9-5 than 5-9, but we'd also rather go on a rough stretch like this in April than September."
"Sure, Alex Rodriguez went deep in the second inning Sunday, crushing an
86 mile-per-hour fastball from Hisashi Iwakuma into the left-field
seats on the same day Joe Girardi demoted A-Rod from third to sixth in
the lineup.
The homer snapped an 0-for-19 skid -- just two outs shy of matching the
two longest droughts of Rodriguez's career-- and gave Masahiro Tanaka a
lift in a win the Yankees' sorely needed after all their recent
offensive stumbles.
But does it change the overall conversation about the Yankees' 40-year-old designated hitter?"
Yes?
"No, not yet."
Drats. Wrong again.
"He needs a few more blasts like that one before it's easy to believe
he's fully out of his slump and will again be the lineup force he was
for much of last year when he authored a comeback season from his drug
suspension that included 33 home runs."
Sure, I guess you're right.
But, hey! Don't 41-year-old sluggers get the benefit of the doubt?
"Hey, sluggers with baggage who will be 41 during the season don't get the benefit of the doubt all the time. Sorry."
"This is fast turning into the Yankees’ worst nightmare. Not that Alex
Rodriguez is finished but he’s hitting .100 now, after going 0-for-5 on
Saturday, and no matter how many times a player has been through a slow
start, the ugly numbers make them start squeezing the sawdust from the
bat and press like crazy.
For A-Rod, in particular, he has a history of being at his worst when
he wants it a little too much and tries too hard, as he did in so many
postseasons for the Yankees before he got hot and carried them in
October of 2009."
His postseasons have been worse post-2009 than pre-2009. Not that facts matter in the least to John Harper when discussing ARod ... or baseball ... or things on Planet Earth.
"Now he’s 40 and he knows a slow start makes questions about his age
inevitable. The thing is, his numbers regarding line-drive percentage
and hard-hit balls were good going into Saturday, which indicated he had
some luck coming to him, but none of that matters once a slump gets in
your head."
We know what to expect by now.
Trying to hit a HR every time up, striking out way too much, low batting average, low on-base%, little impact on the base paths, no fielding.
"Now he’s 40 and he knows a slow start makes questions about his age
inevitable. The thing is, his numbers regarding line-drive percentage
and hard-hit balls were good going into Saturday, which indicated he had
some luck coming to him, but none of that matters once a slump gets in
your head."
ARod's bat started slowing down a long time ago.
Don't throw him a fastball down the middle of the plate. If you do, he can still do damage.
But if you throw a pitch that appears to be a fastball ... and it isn't a fastball ... which, in baseball parlance, is known as a "pitch" ... he will start the bat early and try to hit a HR and miss the pitch.
Strike one, strike two, strike three, grimace, walk back to the dugout.
"Anyway, the point is it can’t be all about A-Rod.
Then again, if A-Rod is hitting bombs, even at 40, everyone up and down
the lineup tends to relax a bit, and chances are in that case they
wouldn’t be leaving entire villages on base every day."
Oh, jeez.
"However, you also can’t ignore the fact that A-Rod seemed to run out of
gas late last season, and had a very quiet spring training as well.
Still, I think it’s a slump that’s largely mental now, not because it’s
A-Rod but because that happens in April. It’s just that for him,
especially — and the Yankees — that’s the worst-case scenario."
He's going to hit better than .100. Let's all agree on that. You could blindfold a pitcher and send him to the plate with a bat in his hand and he would hit better than .100.
But ARod is a DH who is batting third.
Look around MLB.
He may be the worst DH and the worst #3 hitter.
If the Yankees are relying on a serious resurgence ... .900 OPS or something similar over an extended period of time ... then the Yankees are doomed.
He is going to slowly be demoted down the lineup and I am guessing DiDi and Castro will be promoted. It's not much of a plan if Ellsbury and others don't contribute, but it's the only plan.
"OK, well, two pieces of advice for the Mets ace, if I may:"
You may not.
"Good God, get off Twitter, already. You’ve got the life people would kill for: you’re young, rich, supremely talented, enjoying a glamorous Joe Namath lifestyle in the big city, with a shoe collection that would make Kim Kardashian blush, as you yourself said recently."
No.
"Not to mention you’re the New York bureau chief of Derek Jeter’s Players’ Tribune; between that responsibility and trying to pitch the Mets back to the World Series, you shouldn’t even have time for Twitter."
Not to mention since NY bureau chief of the Players' Tribune is not a real job ... but good job using your column to troll Matt Harvey.
"Secondly, develop a thicker skin. Johnny Franco used to yell at me, 'Why does your paper hate me so much?' when a back page headline blared 'Down The John' after he blew a save, but he didn’t stop talking to the media because of it. Usually he was smart enough to laugh it off."
Please talk to me.
Pleeeeeease.
Harvey just needs to pitch well. Harvey doesn't need to answer to John Harper.
The Mets should try to do what the Royals did ... and that's win the World Series:
"So it starts up again on Sunday night in Kansas City, just over five months — just that — from when the Mets didn’t make it back to Kansas City for Game 6, five months after Eric Hosmer broke for home and Lucas Duda’s throw went sailing towards Manhattan. We start to find out tonight, the beginning of a trip to October that sometimes feels longer than a Presidential campaign, if the Mets can do what the Royals did:
Not just make it back to the World Series, but win it all the way the Royals did, 30 years after the Royals had last won a World Series in 1985. The last time the Mets won the Series also happens to be 30 years ago, in the loud and amazing and unforgettable baseball season of 1986."
So do what the Royals did? Just wanted to confirm.
Oh, and this has nothing to do with the Presidential campaign, but good cultural reference.
"I am standing with Mattingly at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter this spring, as he watches his Marlins take the field, two decades after his playing career ended for him with that last, loud roar against the Mariners. We are talking about his back, and I mention that everything changed for him with an awkward swing on a cold night in Milwaukee.
Mattingly shakes his head, and says that his back problems began all the way back in high school, but that he played at a time when nobody told you that too much time in the cage and too many swings could catch up with you, and your back, at the back end of your career.
'When I was a kid, I’d just go to the chiropractor,' Mattingly says, and he’d just pop it back in.'"
Soooooo ... what does Don Mattingly have to do with the 2016 Mets? Who are trying to win the World Series? Like the Royals did?
"It is stenosis that now informs Wright’s career, and what is left of it for the captain of the Mets. It is stenosis that has stolen some of his bat speed and some of his prime, and requires hours of preparation just to get him on the field. If you are a Mets fan, you know how high you can grade on paranoia, even in the best of times. But anybody who’s sure how many games David Wright plays at third base this season, raise a hand."
David Wright had 17 RBIs last year and is a career .198 hitter in the playoffs. I don't think any Mets fan expects more than, say, 60 RBIs from Wright this season. The Mets can make the World Series without David Wright ... they already did.
Is this just a convoluted way to connect this story to Don Mattingly?
Just so you can tell the world that you had a conversation with Don Mattingly?
"Even with those questions about their captain, the Mets don’t just bring promise to Opening Night, and as much excitement to a new season as they have had since 1987."
Perhaps. I know you write the same Opening Day article every year, so it's hard to tell when you're being sincere.
"There is an old baseball expression that covers this, and not just for a team as promising as the ’16 Mets: Stuff happens, even when you have Harvey and deGrom and Syndergaard and Matz, and have Zack Wheeler coming back."
Yup, that's an old baseball expression. "Stuff happens, even when you have Harvey and deGrom and Syndergaard and Matz, and have Zack Wheeler coming back."
Leo Durocher popularized this particular old baseball expression, and nobody knew what he was talking about. Because Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz, and Wheeler hadn't even been born yet.
"We now officially know how the Royals came all the way back from the disappointment of October of 2014, all the way to their own big 30th anniversary celebration. Now the Mets try to do the same. The team the Mets play Sunday night is the team they want to be."
That article was as long as a Presidential election and as stiff as Don Mattingly's back.
"Pablo Sandoval lost his job as startingg third baseman to Travis Shaw on Thursday. Sandoval, now a backup with a $95 million deal, shared his thoughts on Red Sox manager John Farrell’s decision to bench him for Opening Day.
'We talked about it. I’m happy with the decision,' Sandoval said, via WEEI.com. 'They made the decision. It’s the right decision to help the team win. I’m going to be happy. I’m going to be ready on the bench, get ready for anything. I’m going to get ready during the season to do my job.' "
I don't think you're supposed to be quite that gracious about it.
Think about the meaning of words that you are using:
"Alex Rodriguez's 2017 retirement plan − this is, if he really does retire
− means he’ll be eligible for baseball’s Hall of Fame ballot in late
2022, but it’s unlikely he’ll get into Cooperstown if previous voting
patterns hold true."
Agreed.
In a way, this is old news ... tired news ... in another way, it's irrelevant because we're talking about 2022.
"That’s because A-Rod, like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, has
first-ballot baseball numbers but a close association with
performance-enhancing drug use that tends to alienate Hall of Fame
voters. The voters have repeatedly rejected Bonds and Clemens since they
became eligible in 2013."
I just coughed. It sounded like "Mike Piazza," but it was a cough.
"With 75% of the vote necessary for inclusion, Bonds got on 44.3% of the
ballots last year and Clemens got on 45.2. Those numbers could rise if
voters become more forgiving about doping, but A-Rod took doping, and
the effort to cover it up, to the next level."
1) ARod almost undoubtedly did not take doping to the next level. I'd say ARod took doping to the normal level.
2) As for the degree of ARod's cover up, does Nathaniel Vinto know something the rest of us don't know? I'd say ARod had one of the most ineffective steroid cover ups in MLB history. You know how I know? Because he's one of the few MLB players who was caught.
The numbered list of Daily News ARod stories, intended to prove ARod's unique stature as the PED King of the Hill, merely highlights the journalistic deficiencies of the Daily News.
Where are the rest of the players on the Mitchell list? Nobody is willing to give them up? Or you're just not searching?
You have the nerve to bring up the Hall of Fame, when you know that steroid users have already been inducted? If you don't know, then you should know. You're the journalist, right? Right???
I mean, here is a list from Wikipedia. ARod doesn't stand out. The Daily News says he stands out, but that's just because the Daily News decided he stands out.
Like, did you even know that Wally Joyner took steroids? Say it ain't so,Wally World!
We don't know how many players actually took the cover up to the next level ... that's because they were never caught. That is kinda what "cover up" means.
I know it's Spring Training, but I can instantly think of two similar botched plays by Cespedes while he has played for the Mets ... and one of them was in the World Series ... and Cespedes has only played about 60 games for the Mets.
"Alex Rodriguez was doing so well staying out of the headlines too,
rehabilitating his image, but now out of nowhere he looks and sounds
like the old A-Rod, letting the world know that he’s retiring after the
2017 season.
What, a one-year retirement tour wouldn’t have been enough?"
That report has already been disputed, but who cares?
Nobody, that's who.
"Yes, he’s inviting snark again, something A-Rod seemingly had worked
hard to avoid by staying on message since his return from suspension."
Worked hard at avoiding snark?
Or worked hard at avoiding inviting snark?
That sounds like quite a burden in either case. I'd hate to avoid snark ... or invite snark, for that matter ... or even avoiding inviting snark.
"So it’s possible he answered the question from an ESPN reporter on
Wednesday without really thinking of the stir it would create. A-Rod did
make a point later to backtrack a bit, telling Daily News beat writer
Mark Feinsand that nothing regarding retirement was a certainty.
Whatever he meant to say, the retirement talk raises the obvious
question about whether his image rehab can affect his Hall of Fame case."
It has been a long time since Sabathia has been a good pitcher.
The entire time, he has been talking endlessly about how he is emulating Pettitte and adapting his pitching style to accommodate a lack of a mid-90s fastball.
"Major League Baseball rescinded Chase Utley’s two-game suspension Sunday so you can pretty much circle May 9 as the date when Utley will get the real penalty for the dirty slide that broke Ruben Tejada’s leg last October.
That’s when the Mets start a four-game series in Los Angeles with Utley’s Dodgers. Think there’ll be another installment of baseball’s particular brand of frontier justice?
You bet.
By not suspending Utley — he deserved something, didn’t he? — you could argue MLB has passed the buck on disciplining Utley and made the Met pitchers mete it out. There’ll be pressure on them to adhere to one of baseball’s old codes. That’s the way players think."
So if Utley had served a two-game suspension and missed two games against, let's say the Colorado Rockies.
That two-game suspension would have satisfied the Mets?
Jacoby Ellsbury hit a stand-up triple in Spring Training:
"The two most important legs in the Yankees’ universe carried Jacoby Ellsbury from home plate to first base, on to second and then third for a stand-up triple.
As the leadoff hitter and center fielder toured the bases in the fifth inning against the Red Sox at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Saturday, manager Joe Girardi had a degree of concern."
Jaromir Jagr is having a good year at an advanced age. Gretzky recently marveled and pointed out, when asked, that, sure -- if Jagr had stayed healthy and whatnot, he could have broken Gretzky's goal record.
Which is why the hard part is actually doing it.
Kal Daniels was on the path to the Hall of Fame after his second season.
"Teixeira acknowledges he is not getting to 3,000 hits, but has his eyes on 500 homers (he is at 394). He has finished in the top 11 in MVP voting just twice. His OPS-plus is much like other excellent two-way first basemen Keith Hernandez and John Olerud, neither of whom ever reached even 11 percent in Hall voting.
Teixeira says he wants to play another five yearsand will have to produce a lot of greatness in what should be his twilight to have a strong Hall shot.
'It’s a natural thing as a baseball player to at least think about the Hall,' Teixeira said. 'It is, after all, the ultimate goal.' "
Yes.
I believe Mark Teixeira will absolutely enter the Hall of Fame if he wants to.
I even found a website that will help him accomplish this ultimate goal.
Randy Levine met today with Scott Cutler, President of StubHub, and had a good
and productive meeting. It lasted about an hour and they agreed to
continue talking. There is nothing to announce at this current moment.
But this is ridiculous: "When Ortiz, 40, makes his final Yankee Stadium appearance on Sept. 29, this is what he wants, and it speaks volumes about Ortiz the player, the competitor, the enemy, the star.
'You know what I want most of all?' Big Papi told The Post on Tuesday at JetBlue Park. 'I would love it if the fans at Yankee Stadium gave me a standing ovation.' "
...
Ortiz deeply respects the fans, even those from other teams who boo him, because it shows how much they love the game and their team. Yankees fans can show Ortiz respect in that final game.
Cheer for Big Papi. Chant his nickname. Send him out with class."
The writers sure love David Ortiz.
I am not sure why ... an obvious steroid cheat, not really classy by any useful definition of the term ... just a pretty good interview sometimes. Maybe that's why.
Tormented the Yankees for a while. That might be the real reason.
Like that Reese's peanut butter cup commercial ... except you substitute rancid sushi for a chocolate bar:
"It is a good thing that sports doesn’t work the way politics does. If it did, the Carolina Panthers would have flown straight back to Charlotte after the Broncos threw them down the stairs in the Super Bowl and thrown themselves a victory parade."
Nah. That would be silly. That would be the Mets, of course:
"You know the moment I’ll remember most in New York sports, before the last night of the baseball season went wrong?
I’ll remember what it felt like and sounded like at Citi Field when the
Mets were still ahead in Game 5, and they were three outs away from
going back to Kansas City.
I’ll remember what it felt like and sounded like when Matt Harvey came
out of the dugout to pitch the top of the 9th, because I would have done
the same thing Terry Collins did that night, and send him the hell out
there.
Harvey walked the leadoff guy, of course, and should have been gone right there.
Before long Duda was throwing wide and Hosmer was on his way home, and you know what happened later.
The other team was just better.
Not a lot better.
Just enough.
This was the time in baseball New York when Citi Field finally sounded the way old Shea did across the parking lot.
It would have been great to win it all, of course it would, are you kidding?
But how could you ever walk away feeling like losers after a run like that?"
Probably because the other team scored more runs. Not that I'm a sabermetrician or anything, but isn't that how it works?
You didn't even win the World Series. Imagine how much he'd run his mouth if he had:
"I'm not going to sit there today and look at all of these (expletive)
numbers and try to predict this guy is going to be a great player. OPS
this. OPS that. GPS. LCSs. DSDs. You know who has good numbers? Good
(expletive) players.
"That's why to me the (Yoenis) Cespedes signing was good for us. He
changed our team last year. He makes our lineup legitimate. This guy is
going to hit 25 to 30 homers. He's going to drive in 100 runs. That's
what he does.
"Those are the numbers I like.''
As if Yoenis Cespedes had a bad OPS.
OPS is just on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, for crying out loud.
Getting closer to journalism (journalesque?), but it's still baffling.
I also seriously wonder if Lupica understands the meaning of simple words, such as "but":
"Here is the way Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports described what happened to Jenrry Mejia of the Mets on Friday:
'(Mejia) was in the major leagues with the New York Mets at 20. He was established in their bullpen at 24. He was suspended twice after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs at 25. And on Friday afternoon, at 26 years old, Jenrry Mejia became the first player — major or minor leagues — to be banned for life because of a third positive test.' "
Tim Brown of Yahoo sports!
Congratulations to Tim Brown of Yahoo sports. You got an actual real-life mention in a Lupica column.
I'm curious what Lupica has to say about Tim Brown's milquetoast observation. It's just the basics ... who and what ... not a whole lot to comment on.
"That’s it, and that’s all."
Ummm ... here's the whole article by Tim Brown of Yahoo sports.
Couple of things:
1) It's 2016. Hyperlinks have been around for 20 years. Use a hyperlink when you cite another online article. That way, your audience can see for themselves that it's not all that Tim Brown wrote.
2) Lupica lied. While there's not much to Tim Brown's article, there's a lot more than two paragraphs, and I really think Lupica intentionally misrepresented the work of a fellow sports writer.
"Maybe Mejia himself can’t explain why he would keep going back to
banned substances, knowing the possible consequences of continued drug
use.
Maybe he was willing to take the chance, because he was afraid that he
couldn’t perform without the drugs, and ended up throwing away his
career, before he is anywhere near the age of 30."
Maybe so.
Is this going anywhere?
"But then Alex Rodriguez, who I keep reading is the toast of the town
now, went looking for Anthony Bosch after his career and his reputation
had survived being outed as a user of baseball drugs by Sports
Illustrated once."
1) ARod is not the toast of the town. You keep reading he's the toast of the town, but you can't cite one article that praises ARod. Because ARod isn't the toast of the town.
2) This is not a "but." "But" is one of the first words a child learns. I seriously can't figure out this transition to ARod. "Maybe Mejia did this ... but probably not ... because ARod did the same thing."
"Rodriguez, so clearly full of his own fears and insecurities, didn’t lose his career.
But he nearly did."
ARod didn't lose his career. But he nearly did. Hard stop.
That's it?
This is what I think Lupica is trying to say:
ARod's 200-game suspension was not enough of a deterrent to Mejia.
While Mejia was foolish, ARod was also foolish in a similar way.
Tim Brown of Yahoo sports shouldn't have commented on Mejia's foolishness without immediately referencing ARod's foolishness.
Since ARod is now the toast of the town, unknown Mets closer Mejia had every reason to expect that, following his lifetime suspension, he'd also become the toast of the town.
None of this is logical, of course, but I'm trying my best here, folks.
No hand-wringing for the children ... no tiny violins playing for the AAA relievers who never got a shot ...
"It didn’t have to be some morality statement; these days no one raises an eyebrow when suspended PED users get a second chance, and plenty of teams have cashed in by taking chances on them.
Heck, the Mets wanted to sign Jhonny Peralta and Nelson Cruz a couple of years ago. But it doesn’t mean they would have been hypocritical had they dealt harshly with Mejia, considering the circumstances."
The Daily News spent so much time and effort chasing down ARod that when the story died, the Daily News fired most of its sportswriters.
"But that’s not really the point. The Mets put their misplaced faith in Mejia and they were rewarded with more embarrassment. They should have known better."
That's all you're gonna get, folks: "The Mets shoulda known better."
I don't think anybody is accusing the Mets of hypocrisy. The Daily News, on the other hand ...
Followed by this doozy: "The Panthers will have the two best players on the field in Super Bowl 50 Sunday night. That means Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly ..." Screech. Full stop. Nothing against Kuechly, but give me a break.
There's a lot of words about the Big Game and I sure didn't read all of them. But I don't see a bottom line prediction anywhere. What a joke.
He says "no kidding," but he really is kidding. It just isn't funny:
"Before long, we will start to hear that 'Pride of the Yankees II,' the inspirational story of Alex Rodriguez’s comeback, is in development in Hollywood.
I think Jay Z should play him.
No kidding, eventually we’re going to start hearing that this guy is more beloved than Yogi was."
Guffaw.
Let me help you with your Hollywood options:
"That Art of Standing Around: The Story of 2015 Gold Glove Winner Yoenis Cespedes"
"It Ain't Cheating if They Don't Catch You: The Mike Piazza Story"
"No Rings and No MVPs: Let Me Call a Sports Radio Show and Explain How This is David Wright's Breakout Year"
"Cocaine, Cocaine, and More Cocaine: The Mets Ring of Honor"
"Not as Smart as You Think You Are and Shut Up About the DH Already: The Life and Times of Gary Cohen"
"Annuities and the Future Value of Money: Explaining Bobby Bonilla's Contract"
Once again, I conclude that nobody watches baseball on TV: "When the Mets came to terms with Yoenis Cespedes, Sandy Alderson did not only ink a bona fide game changer, he signed a player who is a TV ratings changer — something the Yankees, as of today, do not have."
Nobody will watch regular season baseball games to see Yoenis Cespedes.
"In 2015, before the Mets acquired Cespedes from Detroit, SportsNet New York was averaging a 2.25 household rating, 202,911 total viewers, on its Mets telecasts. Once Cespedes arrived in Queens, the average rating increased by nearly a full point and total viewership increased by over 100,000 viewers."
Exactly.
A paltry 300,000 viewers.
"Who on the current Yankees roster can produce those kind of results? Alex Rodriguez? That’s doubtful. Last season, on the comeback trail, A-Rod was a curiosity. This season, his story is not as compelling, unless the Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network uses him in the booth when he’s not playing. Perhaps the Bombers’ Trio Grande — relievers Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman — will quickly turn into eyeball magnets."
It will be easy for the YES Network to attract more viewers than Mets games.
Just put on some replays of NFL games.
Or maybe a live feed of Isaac Mizrahi selling new slippers in a variety of colors.
"Cespedes is backed by a charismatic choir, the best young starting pitchers in baseball, major attractions in their own right. This gives the Mets a good chance of pushing the ratings needle to the max from jump street on a nightly basis.
Still, the ultimate ratings generator is winning — no matter who is doing it. Success is what eventually captures the 'floaters,' front running fans (and there are a significant number of them) who glom on to the hot baseball team in town and jack up the TV ratings.
Now, they lean Mets. After all, they did make it to the World Series.
With Yoenis Cespedes."
These floaters that Raissman always talks about ... where are they? The Mets got a 3.0 with the floaters.
The Mets will get big ratings when they play the Yankees, the Nationals, and if they have a rematch with the Royals (Opening Day, of course). The rest of the time, regular season baseball games get tiny ratings.
Cespedes is not a monumental superstar by any means. He is, like, the 4th-best LFer. He isn't the second coming of Babe Ruth.
"There is only one team, still, in baseball history that spent more than
$200 million on baseball players and actually won the Series. That was
the 2009 New York Yankees. Their payroll that year was around $210
million. They have spent more than $200 million a year for every year
since that (the way they did for the five years before that), and
haven’t won since."
This is very difficult to explain to stupid people, but this does not prove that spending a lot of money hurts a team's chances of winning the World Series.
Only one team can win the World Series every year, understand?
Another way to look at this test: In the 11 years under discussion, the Yankees won the World Series 1 out of 11 tries. The other 29 teams combined won the World Series 10 times out of 319 tries.
Who has a better World Series winning percentage? The Yankees or the Not Yankees?
Even the conclusion is off: "The Yankees haven't won since."
The Yankees have not been under .500 in 20 years. The Yankees draw 3 million fans every year. I know the marketing spiel, but if you really think Hank and Hal expect to win the World Series every year, then you are stupid.
The product has slipped quite a bit, but the brand is incredibly strong and people therefore keep buying the product.
How did the brand gain so much strength? It certainly wasn't because the Yankees signed a lot of inexpensive players.
"The closest thing to a dynasty in baseball over the past several years
are the San Francisco Giants, who have won three World Series in the
last six seasons. The most money they spent in any of those years was
when they were a little over $150 million. The Mets aren’t there now
that Yoenis Cespedes is coming back, but they’re close enough. And maybe
the people in charge aren’t the dumbest and cheapest in the world after
all."
$150 million isn't chump change, but I think we can all agree that the baseball GM discussion has become overwhelming and tiring. Maybe the contract sizes should be secret and we can all just try to enjoy the game on the field.
"And the team that beat them in the World Series in a five-game series
that looked and felt and even sounded a lot closer than that, the
Royals, a team that has a batting order that is like barbed wire and
enough pitching and plays a beautiful game of baseball, they were at
$110 million in 2015 when they won their first World Series in three
decades."
Right.
Don't ignore the last sentence ... "first World Series in three decades."
I wonder if Lupica understands that this hurts his small-payroll argument or if he's just ignoring all the conflicting data.
"Here is what Tyler Kepner, the fine baseball columnist for the Times, wrote on Saturday:
'Can Mets fans finally trust that the stewards of their team might know a bit about how to run a franchise?' "
I have nothing to add to this observation, but I think it's the first time I have ever seen Mike Lupica credit another person. It's usually "people are saying" or "lots of people" or "some people" or he just makes stuff up.
Can it be that Mike Lupica has suddenly adopted first-class journalistic techniques?
"The great myth of modern baseball, despite all the evidence, is that
there’s only one way to win the World Series lottery, and that is by
spending an insane amount of money. It doesn’t work that way anymore. An
amazing thing has now happened with the Mets: Six months later, Sandy
Alderson surprises you again with Yoenis Cespedes. Amazin’."
That's more like it! Garbage journalistic techniques. The "great myth" that isn't a great myth at all.
The bottom ten in payroll in 2015? Guess what? Only one of them even
made the playoffs. That was the Pirates at $85 million ... and that's
with ten freaking teams making the playoffs.
I actually agree that the Mets played this nicely. It's essentially a one-year mega-contract that will avoid the long-term commitments that quickly lose their value as the players age without help from PEDs.
But it's oddly important for Lupica to act like the Mets are still a small payroll team ... $27.5 million for one player for one year isn't something a small payroll team can do ... and it's even odder that it's important for Lupica to try to make a case that a small payroll teams are outperforming high payroll teams. They aren't.
"But by taking the three-year deal at an average of $25 million per year — including a rather staggering $27.5 million in 2016 — he is making significantly more per season than either Upton or Jason Heyward, which saves some face for both him and his agents.
'That was hugely important to him,' said a source close to the situation. 'He needed to feel wanted, and $25 million a year does that for him.' "
The contract itself sounds like a good compromise for both sides in terms of overall contract side and protections for both parties.
Yes, Cespedes turned away future guaranteed earnings of $25 million ... which is incomprehensible to most of us. But he's also getting a ridiculous amount of money up front ... I don't know how the Nationals offer was constructed, but it's a 37.5% raise over the $20 million annual average contract offer ... and Cespedes gets an opt-out clause after one year.
Though it shouldn't shock anyone at this point, the implication from the quote from the "source close to the situation" is that Cespedes didn't feel wanted by an offer of $100 million.
I know, I know. I'm thinking the same thing. Someone ought to make me feel unwanted with 1% of that offer.
Mike Lupica has been swimming in this ocean for so long, he doesn't see the water:
"I keep wondering why all the people who are such experts on baseball drugs now didn’t tell us a whole lot more about them back in the 1990s when they had the chance."
A so-called senior online sports editor at the Daily News recently posted an article about Alex Rodriguez looking at cheerleaders at a Lakers game. Woodward and Bernstein would be proud.
Mike Lupica himself wrote a book about McGwire and Sosa. That was in the 1990s. Why didn't you tell us a lot more back in the 1990s?
Or, more to the point, forget about the 1990s ... why don't you conduct some contemporary investigations? Spend 2 weeks and $50,000 hunting down the dealers for Pedro and Piazza?
You surely won't find something unless you look for it. So why aren't you looking for it? Why do you condemn some players and protect others?
Yeah ... the light bulb goes on ... why do you protect some players and condemn others? Why isn't the Daily News obsessed about Mejia? He plays baseball right here in New York! He was suspended two times in one baseball season! I mean, listen, fellas ... he has friends, he has cousins, he has dealers, he was in New York this whole time. Look under a rock and see what you find, huh?
What about Tim Peterson? If I mentioned the name "Tim Peterson" to the Daily News sports writing staff, their reaction would be just like yours: "Who?"
This guy. Mets minor leaguer suspended for 80 games. Just happened.
So why doesn't anybody in the sports journalism business in New York find out where this guy got his PEDs? Was his supplier the only supplier in supplier history who had exactly one client? Where are the other customers and how deep does this go in the Mets organization? And what is your justification for ignoring all other PED users with all the ink you've spent on ARod?
How does this easily identifiable bias fit into your understanding of the ethics you learned in journalism school?
What do you think will happen when Lupica takes on MLB HOF voting?
It isn't pretty.
He's a never-was mystified by the death of an institution:
"Who passed the law that everybody who does have a Hall of Fame vote in baseball has to explain his/her ballot to us?"
The first principle of journalism is the search for information. Why would any journalist or columnist take an anti-explanation stance? Lupica's job is to cook omelets, but he's anti-egg.
As the baseball HOF strains itself to retain any relevancy to new baseball fans, the only hope is to meet the fans halfway. You can't fool us anymore. The information is widely available and you're no longer the gatekeepers.
Lupica also doesn't know the meaning of the words "irony" and "moralizing":
"You think any of the people accusing Hall of Fame voters of being judgmental and self-righteous about steroid users ever process how judgmental and self-righteous they’re being?
Of course that would involve a level of self-awareness — or at least irony — that is almost impossible to find in the media sometimes.
But it really is my favorite part of the whole process, the moralizers accusing anybody who disagrees with them … of moralizing!"
Lupica is accusing others in his field of lacking self-awareness ... and I just spit coffee all over my laptop.
I will briefly take the bait here and explain what Lupica chooses not to see.
It's difficult to address Lupica's non-specific grievances, because they are non-specific. All HOF voters are individuals and so are their critics. But I'll try to explain the other side in general terms.
1. HOF voters are often inconsistent and perplexing.
2. HOF voters use steroids as an excuse to exclude players they don't like. That's not a valid anti-cheater ethical position.
3. HOF voters invoke the morals clause when it comes to surly interviewees who used steroids. Meanwhile, the HOF is full of racists, wife beaters, drug users, and cheaters.
It's OK if HOF voters are judgmental and moralizing. The problem is, their judgment is off and their moralizing is insincere.
So when the headline shouts "no juice," the headline is incorrect.
I don't know for sure that Piazza took steroids, but I'm not an idiot. I don't have to prove it in a Court of Law, I just have to intelligently observe what is right in front of my face.
For 100 years, human beings were not blasting baseballs 450 feet to the opposite field, and then suddenly a 65th-round draft pick is doing it on the regular.
Next year will be interesting not because of Manny (no chance), but because of writer favorite Pudge Rodriguez throwing things for a loop. A 'roid-head who didn't actually hit an unseemly number of HRs and who was an "old school" favorite for a long time. So we'll see how dedicated the voters are to their dubious anti-'roid principles.
This blurb also caught my eye:
"Starting pitchers Curt Schilling (39.2% to 52.3%) and Mike Mussina
(24.6% to 43%) and longtime Seattle DH Edgar Martinez (27.0% to 43.4%)
also made sizable gains from last year."
Edgar Martinez at age 37: .324/423/.579, 37 HRs, 145 RBIs, 31 doubles, 100 runs.
Ken Griffey Jr. at age 37: .277/.372/.496, 30 HRs, 93 RBIs, 24 doubles, 78 runs.
Edgar Martinez at age 40: .296/.406/.489, 24 HRs, 98 RBIs, 25 doubles, 72 runs.
Ken Griffey Jr. at age 40: .184/.250/.204, 0 HRs, 7 RBIs, 0 doubles, 6 runs, quit baseball and drove home to Florida in the middle of a road trip.
So when you make a case for Edgar Martinez's HOF candidacy, you are making a case for a man who used PEDs.
Without the benefit of PEDs, 37-year-old men playing professional baseball don't hit 37 HRs and drive in 145 runs.
I'm not saying in the history of the world, no one else has accomplished this. Hank Aaron also accomplished this. Babe Ruth.
There might be somebody else, like, in the history of baseball ... Honus Wagner won a batting title at age 37 in 1911 ... led the league in an unheard-of stat now known as OPS.
So that's three in the history of baseball who were pretty darned good, and I didn't find anybody else, though my search wasn't particularly exhaustive ... and those three are among the game's ultimate immortals ... and Edgar Martinez was probably the best of the bunch at age 37 ... and I didn't check Edgar's steroid-era contemporaries, because I know a lot of them were putting up extraordinary numbers late in their careers.
C'mon, man. Think about it.
We shouldn't be ashamed to use our brains. That's what they're there for.
Piazza took PEDs, Edgar took PEDs, lots of players during this time period took PEDs.
Please, when you vote these people into the HOF, at least do it with your eyes wide open.
"Only Aroldis Chapman and the mother of his child know what happened last fall when Chapman allegedly roughed up this young woman and fired off some shots in his garage and eventually had her hiding in the bushes outside their home.
Nobody knows how Major League Baseball, because of new penalties relating to domestic violence, will deal with Chapman, and whether he will start his Yankee career suspended."
Excellent investigative journalism. "Nobody knows anything, before or after reading my column."
"But what we know for sure about Mr. Chapman is this:
In a pretty short amount of time, we have now gone from Mariano Rivera to him."
Of all the projected cataclysms that faced the mid-2010s Yankees, the replacement of Mariano Rivera has gone ridiculously smoothly.
Remember Rafael Soriano? 42 saves in 2012. 2.26 ERA. David Robertson 39 saves and 3.08 ERA in 2014. Miller, of course, was great last year, with support from Betances and others.
So Chapman will be the fourth primary closer for the Yankees since 2011 who is not Mariano Rivera. So far, so good.
Before I get to strategic baseball discussions that fans care about, let me fully address Chapman's potential character problems: Shrug.
Now on to actual baseball:
1) The Yankee bullpen was already their strength. I think it's sometimes wise to enhance a strength rather than focus on fixing a deficiency.
2) Most observers agree that Girardi's biggest strength is bullpen management. Cashman likely had this in mind when he made this decision to align his team's roster strengths with his manager's strengths.
3) It's time to change the game. Six-man rotations, 25 starts, 5 or 6 innings per start, stay fresh for September and the playoffs.
I know the old school will mock the idea of 150 innings, but it's not so much a matter of toughness or injury avoidance, it's a matter of effectiveness.
The Mets also have an effective model with a deep starting staff. But think about how hard it is to assemble a team like that and how tenuous their success is, even with lots of youth and depth. You expect starting pitchers to go on the DL nowadays.
Relief pitchers are fungible (like that word?).
The league is going to move in this direction, anyways. The Yankees ought to beat everybody else to the punch.
But a man who works for the Daily News proposed this nonsense ... and this man is paid money to publicly express his observations regarding professional sports.
As for my personal opinion, I don't think Wheeler is all that good, anyway.
"It might actually happen. With 112 ballots made public
so far in the BBWAA vote for the Hall of Fame, Ken Griffey Jr. has been
named on all of them. While around 350 ballots remain to be seen,
there’s a chance one of the finest baseball players of his generation
could go into Cooperstown, for the first time, with 100 percent of the
vote."
If not Griffey, then Jeter may be the first to finally break this tradition.
Not to say that this means that either of them are the greatest player ever ... it's just a tradition that isn't cute or interesting anymore.