Yes, the 11-inning loss to the Red Sox was a bone-crushing, debilitating, awful defeat. Yeah, seven games out in this division with August right in front of us is pretty demoralizing. And yes, the pitching is starting to catch up with the hitting in the not-so-good department.
It's time, friends. There's no quick fix here. The cavalry is not coming over the hill anytime soon, and "over the hill" seems way too appropriate a word for what might be coming. As of today, the Yankees could field a lineup of disabled players that most teams would envy:
Jeter 6
Nix 4
Teixeira 3
Granderson 8
Rodriguez 5
Almonte 7
Youkilis DH
Cervelli 2
Phelps/Pineda 1
Throw yourself in a right fielder, and that's some team. But it's not coming to the Bronx anytime soon. In fact, Teixeira won't be back this year, Mr. Rod could be back anytime between tomorrow and forever, and Granderson and Youkilis will surely be gone by Opening Day 2014, if not sooner.
So it's time. Time to take a cold, hard look (with the Coors Cold Hard Look Freeze-Cam!) at this year's Yankees and say, you did a nice job keeping hope alive, boys, but it ain't gonna stick. Pick up your consolation prizes at the door.
It's time to start thinking about next year.
Without any cries of, "But wait, a trade of Joba for Miguel Cabrera is in the works," or "Jeter will be back and carry the team all by himself!", the truth is this Yankee team has overachieved to be THIS tood, and this good isn't that good. The game last night epitomized exactly where the problems are:
1. The Yankees don't hit for power at ALL. Imagine saying those words in any other season.
2. The starting pitching is beginning to crumble. Aside from Hiroki Kuroda, you don't know what you're getting on any given night.
3. When the Yankees have opportunities and don't cash in, you're in for a long night.
4. Joba Chamberlain has sunk so low on the depth chart that another team would have to be a few steps beyond desperate to trade for him.
5. The Travis Hafner and Vernon Wells experiments have failed. The team getting the placebo (Raul Ibanez, Nick Swisher, Russell Martin) was cured.
With that in mind, next year isn't looking a whole lot better.
Presumably, we'll be starting with a healthy Derek Jeter. That's always a plus, but it'll be a healthy Derek Jeter pushing 40, and while it's always a bad idea to count him out, you can't change the laws of physics, even if Mr. Scott did it once a week from 1966-1969.
Beyond that, we'll probably also have a healthy Mark Teixeira, which is also very good, but not what it used to be. A healthy Alex Rodriguez might not exist anymore, and even if it does, one serving a 100-game (or more!) suspension can be Superman and isn't going to help.
What will (probably) be lost this winter: Curtis Granderson, Jayson Nix, Andy Pettitte, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Travis Hafner, Kevin Youkilis, Hiroki Kuroda (that'll hurt)
and Mariano Rivera.
Not all of that is awful. Hughes needs to pitch in a larger home ballpark. Chamberlain just needs to go. Hafner was barely ever here. Youkilis really wasn't ever here.
Pettitte should retire. He's done enough, and all he can do now is add a sour taste to leave in the mouths of Yankee fans. He should probably retire now and not wait until the end of the year. If Hughes isn't traded--and few teams will want a rental on him--David Phelps is coming back and Michael Pineda, if there really IS a Michael Pineda, is said to be waiting in the wings. There are young arms in the bullpen who were slated to be starters; maybe they could get a chance.
What will (probably) be coming back for 2014: Wells, Ichiro, Chris Stewart, Eduardo Nunez, Brett Gardner (he of great speed and no will to steal), Almonte, Phelps, Ivan Nova, most of the bullpen (sans Rivera) and Joe Girardi (probably--his contract is expiring, too, and his phone will ring).
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, and given the Yankees' uncharacteristic insistence on (relative) thrift for next year, we shouldn't be expecting that high-priced free agent on the horizon, no matter who it might be.
No, things are not looking good, folks. Is Raul Mondesi available?
Monday, July 22, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Dear Yankees:
That's it? That's how you want us to think about this team until Friday, when you go play the Red Sox in Boston?
There are times I almost wish you HADN'T overachieved the first couple of months this season. We had no expectations going into April. We expected you to do badly--everybody was hurt, even the people filling in for the hurt people were hurt, and then as time went on more people got hurt. It got to the point that it seemed dangerous just to watch the game on TV.
And then Lyle Overbay started getting clutch hits. Vernon Wells came out of the gate looking like the guy we hated to see when he was playing in Toronto. Travis Hafner hit a home run against his old team on Opening Day.
But don't forget the pitching! Andy Pettitte began April by forgetting it wasn't 1998. He made opposing hitters look foolish. Yeah, we were a little concerned about Sabathia's loss of velocity, but hey, the Yankees were in first place--that's right, pundits, the team you picked for last was at the top of the division.
So this past stretch of games, really all through June and much of July, has been a cruel joke. Seriously: if you were going to play like this, raising our expectations was just plain mean.
Let's see how things went during HOPE Week, shall we?
The moment fans had waited breathlessly (certainly not patiently) for all these months arrived, a day early. Yes, Derek Jeter was coming back, and even if he couldn't single handedly lift the team out of its hideous offensive doldrums, he could certainly provide a glimpse of what real Yankee teams are supposed to look like.
That lasted three at-bats, a total of maybe two-and-a-half hours. Then Jeter couldn't leg out his last grounder, was pinch hit for in the eighth inning, and--most ominously of all---didn't rise out of the dugout when the game was won to congratulate his teammates. Something, surely, was wrong.
And it was. Like Granderson and Teixeira before him, Jeter had returned merely to injure himself again. It's considered a "mild" strain, but you can hear in the choice of words that nobody expects the captain to play in Boston. Who knows how long after that, and even when he does come back, can he stay healthy?
Then there are the continuing adventures of Mr. Rod, who went to see the MLB officials about his little misunderstanding in Florida, reportedly left stunned and shaken by the meeting, and then immediately didn't go to the minor league game in which he was scheduled to rehab whichever hip it is that's bothering him these days. The game was rained out anyway, but the brass was (understandably) pissed off.
Talk is Mr. Rod is being offered a plea bargain by the officials at Major League Baseball, which amounts to: Don't play until 2015. At all. And maybe we'll talk reinstatement then. Baseball journalists who are trustworthy report he's considering it.
To end the "first half" of the season on a high note, the Yankees played without question their sloppiest, wobbliest, most inept game of this and maybe a few other years today. Errors, both official ones and those we spectators could see, came by the cartload. Sabathia couldn't figure out what those men with the sticks in front of that white dish were doing there, so he assumed he was supposed to throw the object in his hand to a spot where they could hit it as hard as possible. By the time he was trying to catch a popup that landed just past his outstretched glove, the game had taken on the quality of farce.
Bad farce.
This is, finally, the team we had expected before the season began. And in all likelihood, it is at least fundamentally the team we will see for the rest of the year. Brian Cashman will make phone calls, but a real game-changing deal seems extremely unlikely. The best we might expect is that Jeter will get himself healthy in the next couple of weeks and come back to provide some normalcy, but not much. We can watch him be Jeter, watch Mo go out in the classiest style in history (because he can do so no other way) on those rare occasions when he'll be able to close a game, and perhaps if we're really really good, Francisco Cervelli will come back and hit .240.
It just would have been so much easier to take if there hadn't been that hopeful stretch at the beginning of the season.
There are times I almost wish you HADN'T overachieved the first couple of months this season. We had no expectations going into April. We expected you to do badly--everybody was hurt, even the people filling in for the hurt people were hurt, and then as time went on more people got hurt. It got to the point that it seemed dangerous just to watch the game on TV.
And then Lyle Overbay started getting clutch hits. Vernon Wells came out of the gate looking like the guy we hated to see when he was playing in Toronto. Travis Hafner hit a home run against his old team on Opening Day.
But don't forget the pitching! Andy Pettitte began April by forgetting it wasn't 1998. He made opposing hitters look foolish. Yeah, we were a little concerned about Sabathia's loss of velocity, but hey, the Yankees were in first place--that's right, pundits, the team you picked for last was at the top of the division.
So this past stretch of games, really all through June and much of July, has been a cruel joke. Seriously: if you were going to play like this, raising our expectations was just plain mean.
Let's see how things went during HOPE Week, shall we?
The moment fans had waited breathlessly (certainly not patiently) for all these months arrived, a day early. Yes, Derek Jeter was coming back, and even if he couldn't single handedly lift the team out of its hideous offensive doldrums, he could certainly provide a glimpse of what real Yankee teams are supposed to look like.
That lasted three at-bats, a total of maybe two-and-a-half hours. Then Jeter couldn't leg out his last grounder, was pinch hit for in the eighth inning, and--most ominously of all---didn't rise out of the dugout when the game was won to congratulate his teammates. Something, surely, was wrong.
And it was. Like Granderson and Teixeira before him, Jeter had returned merely to injure himself again. It's considered a "mild" strain, but you can hear in the choice of words that nobody expects the captain to play in Boston. Who knows how long after that, and even when he does come back, can he stay healthy?
Then there are the continuing adventures of Mr. Rod, who went to see the MLB officials about his little misunderstanding in Florida, reportedly left stunned and shaken by the meeting, and then immediately didn't go to the minor league game in which he was scheduled to rehab whichever hip it is that's bothering him these days. The game was rained out anyway, but the brass was (understandably) pissed off.
Talk is Mr. Rod is being offered a plea bargain by the officials at Major League Baseball, which amounts to: Don't play until 2015. At all. And maybe we'll talk reinstatement then. Baseball journalists who are trustworthy report he's considering it.
To end the "first half" of the season on a high note, the Yankees played without question their sloppiest, wobbliest, most inept game of this and maybe a few other years today. Errors, both official ones and those we spectators could see, came by the cartload. Sabathia couldn't figure out what those men with the sticks in front of that white dish were doing there, so he assumed he was supposed to throw the object in his hand to a spot where they could hit it as hard as possible. By the time he was trying to catch a popup that landed just past his outstretched glove, the game had taken on the quality of farce.
Bad farce.
This is, finally, the team we had expected before the season began. And in all likelihood, it is at least fundamentally the team we will see for the rest of the year. Brian Cashman will make phone calls, but a real game-changing deal seems extremely unlikely. The best we might expect is that Jeter will get himself healthy in the next couple of weeks and come back to provide some normalcy, but not much. We can watch him be Jeter, watch Mo go out in the classiest style in history (because he can do so no other way) on those rare occasions when he'll be able to close a game, and perhaps if we're really really good, Francisco Cervelli will come back and hit .240.
It just would have been so much easier to take if there hadn't been that hopeful stretch at the beginning of the season.
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