Let's Go... Ah, I'll See You in February

This is all I'll say: If you are currently wearing a Mets jersey, the first one you've ever owned, that you did not have two weeks ago, I have no respect for your fandom.

And So, It Goes

I am not pleased about being right. (See below, last two paragraphs.)

As expected, the Yankees checked out after one game--actually, they checked out after one inning--of the playoffs and winter came early this year. That's not at all a surprise because this was never a great team, but it is a disappointment.

But it's time now to move on and consider what the 2016 Yankees will look like six months from now when we'll have forgotten how we feel today and the Boston Red Sox will be the proud new owners of a shiny David Price.

Make no mistake that the Sox will be better next year. The Blue Jays, minus Price, will still be very good but not as good unless there's another free agent pitcher out there they can conjure up. They might very well be the World Champion Blue Jays at that point and such events tend to change things a bit.

So the competition will be intense, which is as it should be. Will Tampa and Baltimore play a role? Yes, but probably not a really big one--the Orioles are losing half their team to free agency and won't open up the bank to keep them. The Rays can always make young pitchers appear but the atmosphere in that horror show in Tampa is poisonous and besides, they don't have any money. So look at it as a three-team race in 2016.

Assuming the Yankees are contending. That's not a certainty at this point.

Before this season began, all the baseball pundits were saying that the Yankees probably wouldn't be much of a factor unless Mr. Rod, Beltran, McCann and Teixeira all had bounce back years, and that wasn't likely to happen. Except it did, for a while. For the first half of the season, Mr. Rod looked like a superstar again, Tex was playing as if he'd never hurt his... what was it that time? McCann never hit for much average but he was knocking them out of the park and after April, Beltran started to hit well and continued to do so until last night.

He was the only one, but that's the way it goes. Tex got hurt, McCann threw out baserunners and gave up the whole hitting thing and Mr. Rod hit 40 or 40 hit him. He looked old and worn out, as a 40-year-old man who hadn't played baseball regularly in two years might look.

Can we expect all of them to do as well next year as they did for the first half of this year? No. Having a perfect storm happen twice consecutively is unrealistic. And if I were Brian Cashman--which I'm undeniably not--I'd be looking at the following solutions to problems.

First: Try to move Brett Gardner to another team for a starting pitcher. I'd say try to trade Jacoby Ellsbury and his injured everything, but at this point the Seven Santini Brothers couldn't move that contract so we move to the next possibility. Gardner is a very good player but for both of the past two seasons he has been a deficit after August 15 and that is not a promising recipe for success, nor can it be expected to change unless he starts playing only four games a week.

Second: Trust the kids. Let Rob Refsnyder be your starting second baseman next year. Thank goodness the Stephen Drew Era has ended, let Dustin Ackley back up everybody on the infield instead of Brendan Ryan and put Refsnyder at second. He hits better than anyone we've seen there since Cano and he does not appear to be a liability defensively, which was what we'd been led to believe.

Greg Bird must be on the major league roster in April. Yes, Teixeira (on the last year of an onerous contract) will presumably be healthy, but Bird has proven he belongs, he has nothing left to prove in AAA and either way, Tex is gone the end of next season, so trading Bird makes no sense. Bring him up and let him play. He was putting up Teixeira-like numbers anyway and can play at first.

Let Beltran be your left-handed DH. He is no longer a viable right fielder. Too many balls that any average outfielder would have caught fall in front of him as he trots on over to pick them up. The man can hit (and next year will be his last with the Yankees), but Mr. Rod needs the days off and Beltran is clearly a DH who has been forced into a fielding position.

See if anyone wants to trade for McCann or Headley. The Yankees would have to eat some money on either deal because they overpaid, but the McCann thing really never made sense with the wealth of young catchers the Yankees have under team control. John Ryan (Please Don't Call Me JR) Murphy hit well and caught well all year. Gary Sanchez is right behind him and so is Austin Romine. Move McCann if you McCan. Headley for some reason forgot he was a Gold Glove third baseman this year and couldn't throw about half the time. His offense never got much better than okay. Maybe that's the future position for Dustin Ackley.

Get more starting pitching. Here's the projected rotation for 2016: Tanaka (ticking time bomb of an elbow), Pineda (always an injury waiting to happen, with flashes of magnificence in between), Nova (probably better the farther he gets from his Tommy John surgery), Sabathia (out of rehab but with a knee that's never going to get better, brace or no brace) and Eovaldi (yeah, he won 14 games but he got all the runs the Yankees scored this year). Adam Warren, the world's most patient man, will be the sixth starter/long relief guy. Or trade bait.

No, the Yankees aren't getting Price. The Red Sox will offer a ridiculous contract and he'll take it. The Yankees won't mind the money but won't want to give him the years, and they'll be right. Who else is available this offseason? You'll hear names like Zack Greinke and Jeff Samardzjia, but that's only because they're hard to spell. Greinke was amazing this year, but has to opt out of an upcoming three years at $71-million, meaning the Yankees would need to offer a contract taking him at the minimum to his age-36 season. They shouldn't do that. Does the name CC Sabathia mean anything to you? Samardzjia was good this year, not great. I wouldn't get too excited about Johnny Cueto, either. He's not helping himself since being traded to Kansas City at the deadline.

So what's our roster likely to look like in 2016? This is pure speculation:

Starting pitchers:

CC Sabathia
Masahiro Tanaka
Nathan Eovaldi
Michael Pineda
Ivan Nova
Luis Severino

Bullpen:

Andrew Miller
Dellin Betances
Justin Wilson
Adam Warren
Tony Sipp (what the hell)
James Pazos
Caleb Cotham

Outfielders:

Jacoby Ellsbury
Brett Gardner
Carlos Beltran
Slade Heathcott

Infielders:

Mark Teixeira
Rob Refsnyder
Didi Gregorius
Chase Headley
Dustin Ackley

Catchers

Brian McCann (because I really don't believe Cashman will do anything that bold)
John Ryan Murphy

In other words, much like this year. Only older.

Before the One-Game Play-In

Quite often as I read back on these posts I see that I don't write much when the Yankees are doing well. Maybe it's superstition that I'll ruin the mojo or something (although I'm not really that kind of fan), or maybe it's just that I get more passionate when I see things that I think need changing.

But tonight, with a day to prepare Monday and then the one-game play-in Tuesday night (I already exchanged my theater tickets), I think it's time to say that this has actually been a pretty good season. The team was in first place for a good while, was close for even longer, and secured a playoff spot for the first time since Derek Jeter broke his ankle playing Detroit. Those were all good things.

Also a refreshing change of pace was the confidence shown in some emerging Yankee farmhands. Yes, Toronto got Tulo and David Price at the trade deadline and the Yankees ended up with Dustin Ackley. Know what? We also got Luis Severino, who seems to be the real deal and Greg Bird, who did one heck of a Mark Teixeira impression--but with a higher batting average and not as much defensive flash--in something much longer than a cameo. I would have no problem with Greg Bird as my starting first baseman in the playoffs and beyond.

And guess what? That Ackley guy nobody ever heard of turned out to be pretty good and so did Rob Refsnyder, who's my second baseman next year when Cashman calls and asks. Which he won't, but what the hell.

Didi Gregorius, who looked a lot like Rich McKinney the first six weeks or so of the season, became an asset, making all the routine plays and some of the really tough ones and hitting better than respectably. He's not Derek Jeter. Neither is anyone else except Derek Jeter. That's okay. Cashman did well with that one.

Did some of the team age in August and September? Unquestionably. Mr. Rod remembered he was 40 years old right around the time he became 40 years old and maybe the undercover substances just weren't kicking in like they used to. Brian McCann threw lots of runners out and forgot how to hit for power or average in the last month of the season. As a right fielder, Carlos Beltran makes a hell of a DH.

CC Sabathia came back from that knee thing some people thought would end not just his season but his career and actually pitched quite well, but he's never going to dominate and he'll never see the seventh inning again. Dellin Betances suddenly turned all human on us the last few weeks after pitching something like 3000 innings this year. Chasen Shreve just vanished. There's someone wearing his uniform number now who appears to work for the other side.

It's not time yet to consider next year. It's not even time to consider next week. Right now, there is just Tuesday. But before we get to that, let's revel a little. A team that was picked by more than one to finish last secured a playoff spot. We had some great moments and some really fun personalities for a while.

We also had the past two weeks of truly awful baseball and that's not inspiring going into the do-or-die part of the season, but that's not the point just now.

It's been an entertaining, and if you measure some ways, successful six months. After the past two years that had to recommend themselves only with the farewell tours of two irreplaceable players, that's not nothing by a long shot.

My prediction for Tuesday? The Astros will win. Keuchel and his beard are more intimidating than Tanaka and his scary hamstring. The Yankees aren't hitting Orioles starters with ERAs over 5. Tanaka's been having problems in the first and second innings. This one will be over early. It gets late early out there.

Look, I wasn't going to stay positive the whole time. You can't expect a complete change of personality.