The Yankees Suck & Nearly Everyone Should Be Fired ASAP

I can’t watch this team anymore. It’s too pathetic. They simply cannot hit and score runs. They hit into more double plays than anyone else. Their fielding sucks. There’s no fire and no passion.

Gone are the days when Derek Jeter enjoyed himself out there on a daily basis and won all the time. Gone is the winning attitude I remember from David Wells, who got pulled from a game where they led by something like 15-1 after he finally gave up a run in the 8th inning or thereabouts, and his response to being pulled was to smash the phone in the dugout because he wanted to finish the game.

What do we get now? Half the lineup hitting below .200 and it’s JUNE. Inning killing strikeouts & shrugs as they lumber back to the dugout going 0-for-4 day after day.

What other team would still have Gardner or Frazier or Odor in the lineup at this point? Why does the lineup change order with every game? Why do players continually suck or go on the injured list every other day?

All this crap began when Boone took over. He should be fired. Now. This minute. Right when you’re reading this sentence. If it were George and not Hal Steinbrenner running the team, he would have been canned after this disaster of a weekend sweep by the Tigers, one of the worst teams in the league (the Yankees currently challenging them for that title). But instead we get another in the endless series of post-game pressers where Boone discusses how he’ll figure it out at some point. Add a few “Gee, all the data says we should be better than this” moments and you can see what’s going on.

He won’t figure out shit. He sucks as a manager. And the analytics schmucks who keep handing him whatever math they’ve pulled out their asses are also part of the problem, since they’re the ones actually running things. They’re the ones who built a lineup of 21st century Dave Kingmans, who either hit a solo homerun since no one else can get on base, or far more often just strike out.

I’ve said before that the training & conditioning coaches/staff should all be fired due to the incredible frequency of injuries to the team, and that still stands. Add to them the hitting coach.

I’d start by firing manager & coaches and then seeing what happened with the performance of the team. If it kept going like this, I’d go beyond my earlier opinions on getting rid of Sanchez and blow the entire team apart.

The only bright spot has been the pitching. But when you score less than 3 runs in 29 of your first 50 games, that good pitching is going to be wasted in barely holding on to a .500 record, basically where they are right now. The only team in the majors with fewer runs in more games are the Pirates.

Next up are series with Tampa and then Boston. I hope they get swept by both and score next to nothing. I hope they suck bad enough in the next few weeks that Boone & the inept coaching staff are finally booted and things can turn around. If not, there’s no way a team that came within a game of getting into the World Series before being cheated out of it will get that far again for the foreseeable future.

These games are painful to watch. And after a bullshit 60 game season and with covid bullshit finally ending, it’s even more painful to finally get baseball back with live crowds growing and have to watch a Yankee team that’s reminding me of the mid 80s group that always looked good on paper in April but sucked once things got going and wasted any strong performances by their best players like Mattingly then or Gerrit Cole now.

Bah.

Random Thoughts 2/5/20

Item one: Pitchers & catchers haven’t even reported yet, and the Yankees reported today that pitcher James Paxton underwent back surgery to remove a tiny cyst and will be out for TWO TO THREE MONTHS.

Do the months November, December and January exist? Why the hell did they wait until now to do this surgery?

They replaced the pitching and hitting coaches last November. WHEN WILL THEY REPLACE THIS PATHETIC INCOMPETENT MEDICAL AND TRAINING STAFF who can’t prevent injuries?

That team is looking at somewhere around 110 wins if they stay healthy. And those morons are ALREADY messing it up before spring training even begins.

Item Two: Last night, I dreamed that John Wayne told me that he’d been to an educational conference up in Seattle and that Bill Gates kept talking about me and what I could do to help out with school choice. Wayne told me he also thought I was just the guy to do it, and that I had what it took as a man even if I “hung around with nerds,” in his words.

Not sure why I had that particular dream. I hadn’t been watching John Wayne movies, nor have I been in discussions or arguments over school choice issues recently.

Perhaps John Wayne has actually visited me in my dreams from beyond the afterlife, although I’d think he’d have better things do spend eternity on than wonky crap with Bill Gates & then seeking me out as if I’m the anointed one. On the other hand, maybe that’s his way out of purgatory. I’ll try to see if dreaming up a conversation with St. Thomas Aquinas tonight clears up that issue, and as long as I have the saint’s ear, I’ll ask him what the Yankees’ injury prognosis for the 2020 season is.

He probably roots for the Cardinals anyway.

Oh, I just crack myself up.

Item 3: RIP, Kirk Douglas. One of the last great old time movie stars. Here’s hoping you meet up with John Wayne and have some bourbon, come to think of it. Maybe you’ll turn up in my dreams someday, maybe it’ll be about tariffs or infrastructure instead of school choice, or maybe you’ll just ring my doorbell and try to sell me Girl Scout cookies.

Whatever it is, I hope that it’s like what must have been in your contract for countless movies, and you get to take your shirt off and scream at me.

“TRY THE SAMOAS, YOU DEGENERATE SADISTIC OLD MAN! AND YOU CAN GO TO HELL BEFORE I SELL YOU THIN MINTS NOW OR EVER AGAIN!”

To which I’d respond “I’m Spartacus!”

Then I’d tell him not to fight with Von Ellstein and direct “The Proud Land” himself. It’ll be a sure bomb that way.

Another Unemotional World Series, I Guess

I don’t know if there’s some sort of baseball award for most blown opportunities in a series, but the Yankees really deserve it for this year’s ALCS.

I won’t bother researching the Bill James stats or whatever they are to see if they set a record for men left on base or for the lowest batting average with runners in scoring position… but it sure feels like it. And defensively they were certainly erratic.

And give it up to the Astros – they took advantage of every mistake, made the most of practically every opportunity they had, sparkled in the field, and simply carried themselves like the team to beat. Too many of the Yankees looked confused and tired. A lot of times you can predict the winners of these things just by sensing the mood and attitude.

So I’ll watch what looks like to be a great matchup between the Astros and Nationals. Both teams have a pair of amazing starting pitchers, and I wonder if Nats manager Dave Martinez will do what he did to the Dodgers and stagger his pair of aces so that they don’t face the aces on the Astros. I guess we’ll see.

I’d have to give the edge to the Astros (who I figured to win it all once they signed Greinke, to be honest… but I have to root for my team and hope for the best… that’s what fandom is all about). The Astros have better hitting and balance, and probably a more reliable bullpen.

Yankees off-season will be interesting. I’m thinking they let Encanarcion go. Sabathia is retiring. I’m not sure if they’ll re-sign Gregorius with Andujar due back & the team overflowing with infielders, although I’d love to see him return. But with Urshela becoming what he has, and Voit doing well, and the wonderful addition of LeMehieu (probably the best move they made) along with future HOF Gleyber Torres out there… well, it’s a bit crowded.

What would I like to see in the off-season? Well, signing Garret Cole would sure be nice, although right now the 2020 starting rotation looks to be Severino – Tanaka – German – Paxton – Montgomery, and that’s not too bad. Bettances should return to the bullpen, too. But they can spend a billion dollars on free agents for all I care. I’m not paying for tickets and get to watch free on TV. Spend, spend, spend, I say!

Although all the “ifs” involved in that or any roster set up rely on avoiding the never-ending injuries that plagued nearly the entire team this year, so I think what I really want to see during the offseason is what I’ve wanted to see since maybe late April, that being for them to FIRE THE ENTIRE GOD DAMN STRENGTH AND TRAINING STAFF. Whatever the hell they’re doing, they’re doing in wrong. Guys miss half the year injured, like Judge – or the entire year like Stanton, only to come back and strain themselves AGAIN doing ordinary baseball stuff like running to first or swinging a bat. It’s ridiculous.

Another off-season move they should seriously consider is trading Gary Sanchez for pitching and prospects. They have other catchers who are perfectly fine, and the more I watched him this post-season the more I think he costs more than he provides, even when he hit better this year.

Cutting loose Jacoby Ellsbury and Greg Bird might be imminent as well.

So now to watch the World Series as merely a fan of the sport. Less stressful to be sure, but I don’t think it will affect my alcohol consumption during the games.

These Are The Times That Try Fans’ Souls

Watching the Yankees the past week has been an emotional chore. They’ve set a team record by allowing more than 73 runs in their last 7 games, not exactly the sort of record you want to set.

They can still score runs, if not enough to win, and they had some nice comebacks against the Twins, early on in this ongoing slog. But the Red Sox decimated them.

The pitching? Awful. Just awful. No one consistently pitches effectively. While sporting a weak starting rotation all year, they managed to finesse a wonderful record by a stars-all-align combo of people like German stepping up, across-the-board solid performances by overused bullpen names, and a lot of breaks going their way.

But these are the sorts of things that catch up with a team down the post-All Star break stretch, through August, when team pitching strength really makes the difference in which teams fade, collapse, or get to the finish line strong, ready for October battles between strong starting rotations.

Every team I can think of that started out the first half or 2/3 of the year looking amazing and then falling apart and collapsing by the end of the season all have the same thing in common: weak pitching. The ’64 Phillies overused their 2 main starters and blew a 6 1/2 game lead with only 12 to play. The ’69 Cubs, ’78 Red Sox, ’07 Mets, ’11 Red Sox… all cruised along early in the season, only to wither and fall by the wayside during the August-September stretch, all because of mediocre to poor pitching.

This week makes me think the 2019 Yankees could be added to this list – they got a 9 game lead right now, flirted with the best overall record in baseball, looked good against likely October competition like Houston, Tampa or Minnesota… but this past week… ugh. They look like crap.

CRAP I TELLS YA!

They have no stopper in the starting rotation. You won’t find a Guidry to chalk up a majority 25 wins after a Yankee loss like in ’78. When the bullpen door opens, Rivera will not appear to ensure the game is over, victory secured. Their best starter, German, seems effective but his win-loss record is a tad deceptive since they’ve come back in a few games where he got blown out early. Guidry he is not.

I thought they might stand pat before the trade deadline, but now it’s looking very likely they deal before the stroke of midnight July 31 for a starter, and the other teams know the price is going up for the Yankees when they’re playing like this. They’ll most likely give up some of the younger players and prospects I like just to get some above .500 pitcher with an ERA below 5, and that’s not good.

Severino, Montgomery and Bettances might come back before season’s end… but the odds of any of them being in top form after being injured so long are slim.

Can they rebound from this week’s doldrums? Sure, anything is possible. Signing some solid starter who rallies a clubhouse might happen. Standing pat, getting players back from the IL and coming together might happen.

I might also win the lottery. You never know. But in the meantime, Houston, Minnesota and Cleveland must be licking their chops.

Halls Of Fame Exist For Guys Like These

While sports heads constantly argue back and forth with hot, cold and lukewarm takes on who-was-better-than-who, it’s practically unheard of for someone to pretty much be unanimously accepted as the Best EVER at their particular position in the sport.

I can’t think of anyone making a serious argument for anyone other then Mariano Rivera as the best closer of all time, both in the regular and especially in the post-season. When the bullpen door opened and “Enter Sandman” blasted over the speakers at Yankee Stadium as Rivera took the mound to protect an 8th or 9th inning lead, you could see the opposing dugout simply shrug since they knew the game was over. The man was practically unhittable.

Yeah, I know… he’d been gotten to in a few key games in the post-season, like in the ’97 playoffs, ’01 series and ’04 against the Red Sox… nobody’s perfect. The Yankees winning championships in that period boiled down to whether or not Rivera got saves, and he most often did.

Most closers don’t last as long as he did, unless they’re knuckleballers like Hoyt Wilhelm. 18 seasons of consistency from closers is just unheard of – most of ’em have a few stellar seasons and then blow their arms out, or fail to fool hitters, or just lose control. The history of baseball is littered with guys who had one to a few amazing seasons as a lights-out closer and then vanished – I can think of all the ones I remember over the years – Bill Campbell, Eric Gagne, Tom Niedenfuer, Rawly Eastwick… the list goes on. And then there were the ones who had the staying power, the ones who most often made in into the Hall like Rivera: Eckersley, Sutter, Hoffman… but even those guys weren’t as good as Rivera.

Practically every other position in baseball presents a debate over who was the best ever: Catcher? Berra or Cochrane? Wait, what about Bench? Fisk? Maybe shortstop is easier… Wagner? Jeter? No, no… maybe Ripken. How can you compare different baseball eras, some will say. Even the greatest ever gets debated, by those in the Ruth camp and those offering various alternatives for assorted reasons.

Happy Mother’s Day! And now… Clint Frazier’s Mother’s Day Cat Cleats

I was already rooting for this guy to be one of the big slugging outfielders on my team, but now I might have to make him my new favorite Yankee.

Meet crazy cat man Clint Frazier! And a happy mother’s day to you all.

(Winter) Baseball Is Back!

Baseball exhibitions started up this weekend, and I actually spent time watching most of the first two Yankee games, mostly to see which veterans looked like they were getting in shape for the upcoming season, and seeing what minor league/rookie prospects the Yanks might have in the offing. I mean, who knew about Miguel Andujar at this point last year amirite?

And look at the Spring Training Schedule, where only the final 4 games are technically played during Spring. It’s really Winter baseball down there in Florida, but at least it makes me look forward to the Spring.

The first two games gave me little to go on in terms of Yankee prospects this year. Except for making “Mr. March!” jokes at Greg Bird’s expense, I guess. Some of the AAA players trying to make the team look like good prospects, tho. If we assume the PED screening is working honestly, I wonder if there are the beginning signs of a correlation between a shrinking number of boys going out for football and a growing number of really huge dudes showing up in baseball. I think we’ll see ’em soon, in any case.

If you recognize the pic above, you’re as big a baseball geek as me. And since I didn’t feel like digging out my old Strat-O-Matic board game from 1972 that I’ve got shelved up in the board game collection, I began reading online to see if there were a modern day MacOS equivalent baseball simulator, where you can play manager to current & historic teams.

Strat-O-Matic only makes a Windows version of their games, something that surprised me. You’d think they’d be more competitive.

But YE GODS did I find one that I can recommend to my fellow baseball nerds. Out Of The Park baseball will not only replay last year’s MLB stats but also comes with a historic database going back over a hundred years. It includes minor leagues, world baseball, and historic negro league teams, too. I’ve been playing with the demo and figured out how to match different teams in the same year, but not across time yet…. I played a 1932 match between the Yankees of that year (Gehrig, Ruth, Ruffing, Gomez, etc) against the Pittsburgh Crawfords (Satchell Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, et al), basically two of the all-time greatest teams… and it played out pretty well. But pitting the ’32 Crawfords against the ’98 Yankees or the ’32 Yankees against last year’s Red Sox…well, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Out of The Park is FAR more elaborate than Strat-O-Matic, both a boon and a hinderance, though. OOTP runs a league for the entire season, has you as manager & general manager promote/demote players, deal with injuries, keeps track of relievers’ stresses, allows you to trade players, sign other executives…. it got overwhelming at times when all I wanted to do was match up a couple of historic teams and see how the stats would play out with my managerial strategery on one side. With Strat-O-Matic, you’d grab 2 card sets of teams and go. OOTP doesn’t provide any intuitive shortcuts, although maybe I still haven’t found them and I’m only playing the demo version so far, anyway.

So far, it’s played a lot of accurate games. Bucky Dent hit a winning walk-off homerun for the ’77 Yankees to defeat the ’77 Brewers. And I put Aroldis Chapman in to close & save a one run lead over the 2018 Red Sox, and he promptly walked the bases full and gave up a hit to lose the game. Now THAT’S realism!

I’ll play around with managing other teams, or seeing if I can just play one-shot games without loading all the general manager stuff. I can come up with endless combos and matchups I’d love to see, whether it’s 1968 Bob Gibson pitching to 1921 Babe Ruth or seeing if I can make Nolan Ryan bean Ty Cobb a few times. This thing certainly looks like baseball nerd nirvana.

I’ll play with the demo some more, and I’ll spring for the full version at some point, although I know how much of an awesome timewasting thing it will wind up being. But I can’t help myself! I NEED BASEBALL REHAB.

Was This Really THIRTY FOUR YEARS AGO Today??? Oy Vey!

It just seems a lot more recent.

Even after the Sox finally got their century-long revenge against the Yankees in 2004.

We’re gonna get a 1 game playoff by design this year, between the wild cards in each league. I’m not crazy about the idea since the entire baseball season is based on winning series of games between teams. It ought to be a 3 game series with a shortened season, perhaps back to 154 games.

Someday they’ll figure it out & get their precious TV revenue, but in the meantime, an entire season for someone will come down to some random moment like Bucky Dent’s unlikely homerun in that October 2, 1978 playoff.

I thought it was great when I watched it live when I was a kid. Now…. I gotta admit, I think it ought to be a 3 game series.

As long as the Yanks win it, of course!

Here’s to October baseball!

Not-So-Random Baseball Card Of The Day: 1978 Ron Guidry

In witnessing what’s looking more and more like the Great Yankee Collapse of September 2012 (The Mayans predicted it, right?), I keep thinking back to 1978, the great long march comeback from 14 1/2 games behind in July, the Red Sox implosion of August, and the amazing reliability of Ron Guidry that season to go out and win game after game.

Guidry’s career season of 1978 remains phenomenal. 25 wins, 3 losses. A great number of those wins came after Yankee losses. A lot of them ended Yankee losing streaks. He won 13 games in a row before losing one in July.

The guy was virtually unbeatable. I don’t think any pitcher has dominated the league as much since Guidry’s ’78 season, something that evoked the way Bob Gibson totally shut down his opposition in 1968, even forcing a rule change about pitcher’s mound height.

I got to see part of it in person when he 2-hit shutout the Red Sox about this time in ’78, after the Yankees had caught them and moved ahead in the standings.  Got to sit a few rows right behind the dugout on the first base line, thanks to my friend’s Providence cop dad gonnections for primo tickets in the middle of a pennant race. The Sox battled back throughout September, forcing the legendary playoff game that led up to that fateful Bucky Dent-enforces-the-bambino’s-curse at-bat. You know the rest.

They never would have been there without Guidry. My favorite player from that late ’70s Yankee team. They gave him the Cy Young, but not the MVP he deserved. Jim Rice got that, sorta like when Scorcese finally won his Oscar but for the wrong movie.

And where is that kind of performance on the 2012 Yankees? Well, it’s either left on base during any number of failed non-rallies inbetween make-or-break home runs, or it’s on what’s been a large revolving door of a disabled list all season, one that’s catching up with them down the homestretch where they’ll be battling the Rays and the (WTF?) Orioles for a playoff berth. And even if they make the post-season, their season-long inability to win games without hitting a ton of homeruns will, I think, be the killer.

There’s no stopper on the mound. No go-to victory guy. Kuroda and Sabathia have both tried as the workhorses, but it’s falling short. I have a strong feeling that my October will be mostly football this year.

A New Feature Here At Wagstaff Central: Random Thoughts On Baseball Cards

After reading this news item in recent days, where some lucky bastard found a box filled with 1910 mint condition baseball cards in grandpa’s long forgotten attic stash, I started thinking about my own baseball card collection, boxed up & closeted for years now.

If you want to hear how lucky I am, you might have heard me screaming obscenities after today’s 7th race at Hollywood Park. So much for my Pick 6, Pick 4 AND Place Pick All. I’d done just fine before my pick went in the toilet. BAH.

Anyway, as a kid, I bought cards constantly, by the ten cent pack of course, throwing away the gum & then organizing them in an old shoebox. Eventually, I started ordering the complete sets of Topps cards via ads in the back of The Sporting News. I’d but older cards at flea markets when they’d turn up, but then the economy went bust in the late ’70s, and baby boomer-yuppie shitwheels decided to plunge their investment dollars into what was once a hobby only, turning it into a business. Money flooded in & inflation took off. Prices of old time stars shot up – both good and bad for yours truly. A lot of my cards were certainly worth a lot of money, but I’d never sell them. And now getting cards of past players I’d want to add to my collection meant spending real dough.

I was going off to college at this point. I still followed baseball, but for several years, I stopped buying cards altogether. For a while in the late ’80s, I bought more complete sets, although at that point, there were so many competing brands of cards besides Topps that it all got confusing. And when I realized I only boxed the damn things up and put ’em in a closet, it really wasn’t much fun.

Even now, after the bubble in the card market burst and a lot of the older cards are more affordable… there’s just something more fun in happening upon them, as opposed to finding one on ebay.

But what IS fun is looking through tall my old cards now and either reliving my childhood, or reliving the memories I have of some of these players or the era they played in. So, I’ll be posting pics of old cards I find in my collection that I have something to say about. It also gives me an excuse to organize all the crap piling up in the increasing Fibber McGee-ness of my closet.

So let’s get started with one of my favorite cards, ever:

Ah, yes, Oscar Gamble, in his bid to win the Larry Fine lookalike contest. You don’t see a lot of cap versus hair battles being fought by the post-Michael Jordan shaved head’s are cool generation. Guys with long hair like Manny Ramirez or Andrew McCutchen keep theirs under control under their caps pretty well. Oscar Gamble will forever be associated with the picture on his 1976 Topps Traded card (what other decade could have possibly produced this?)

Gamble was a good player though. When the Yanks picked him up from Cleveland, he became an important part of their 1976 pennant win. The Yanks had spent 12 years in the wilderness after probably the most amazing championship run in the history of sports, dominating the AL pretty much since the early 1920s without a major gap. Steinbrenner had begun to spend his money, and the team began to turn around.

The sad thing, though, was how the outfield kept rotating due to George’s checkbook – we went from Bobby Bonds to Gamble and eventually to Reggie, and that didn’t last for more than a few seasons. The more recent Jeter-Rivera era of competitive Yankee baseball might be as loaded with big-money signings, but it seems the stars hang around longer & there’s far less clubhouse drama.

There’s also less hair.

Gamble went to the White Sox the very next year, probably his best as a slugger, with career highs in both homers (31) and average (.297) – but he’d return to the Yankees from 1979-1984 as a platoon outfielder, and remained a decent off-the-bench slugger during what would become an even longer drought for Yankee fans.

Here’s what Oscar Gamble is up to now, never mind his hair. He sounds like a decent guy.

C’mon, Jeter…. grow that fro….