Guest Post (And non football-related): The falling apart of the Yankees

This is from the much-aggrieved View From North America, who’s writing this about the falling apart of his favorite baseball team. As a sympathy note, we let him post it here. Sorry it’s not about college football. But it might save him.

Any Yankees fan worth their salt could have told you that this was going to happen sooner or later.

There had been enough miracle seasons, where the Yankees had scraped their pinstriped behinds into the play-offs, and done just enough to scrape through a AL Central team and then lose in the ALCS.

The team hadn’t been World Series standard for years, and everyone knew it.

And although New York Yankees fans are burning rage at the moment as the team slumped to yet another series loss (they haven’t had a winning series since June 30th, and have only convincingly beaten bottom-dwellers Oakland and Kansas City this season), the below .500 record should not have been much of a surprise this year.

Here are the reasons:

1) Injuries

People had talked over and over about how the payroll wasn’t performing, and that might be true, but that’s the only factor, then those people are snorting more cocaine than Wall Street in 1986.

There’s an injury curse, and the Yankees need some serious opposite-way juju to get everyone healthy (Maybe in 2025).

We have seen injuries during the season for: DJ LeMahieu (twice), Anthony Rizzo (concussions, which impacted his ability to hit for two months but only came on recently) and Giancarlo Stanton. We’ve also seen Nestor Cortes (twice for long periods of time), Domingo German (twice, the second time for a drunken rage that stuck him in rehab), Carlos Rodon (he only had 6 mostly-goddawful starts this season before getting injured), Luis Severino (most of the season), Jose Trevino (the best defensive catcher, 50% of it), Jake Bauers (arrived as a FA, made a great play, injured himself, now mired in a slump) and the league’s best defensive centrefielder in Harrison Bader. Then there was Josh Donaldson, who’s averaging a mighty .142 with 15 hits and 10 HRs this season…and only played 33 games all year long (he was also hated, but that’s another story). Then throw in the all-season injuries to Frankie Montas, Scott Effross and Lou Trivino, and you’ve basically been fighting fires with a 50% Triple-A line-up.

Oh, and then there was Aaron Judge, who had signed a monumental contract in the offseason, but managed to injury himself sliding into third base (10 day injury), and then out for nearly two months after making one of the catches of the season against the Los Angeles Dodgers that effectively cost the team season (they were awful with Judge playing and even worse without him!).

The impact has been severe for the team, and for the group in general.

2) The lack of leadership – inside the clubhouse

The Aaron Judge injury was a massive factor. It was always going to be with the best hitter in the league. But you expected senior players like Rizzo, Stanton and LeMahieu to pick up the slack and get everyone going, like Luke Voit did in 2020, when the team was absolutely terrible. There have been dozens of images of the players laughing amongst themselves as the team fell towards oblivion in yet another series. The problem with the team is that there’s zero leadership. Rizzo was meant to be that guy, but his lack of form post-collision with Fernando Tatis (which turned out to be a long-term concussion), meant that he wasn’t going to do it. All we’ve had is players shrug their shoulders, and leave Aaron Boone to spout out “Hey, we’re trying to do good things”. As for Judge? The man’s a ‘quiet’ leader at the best of times. But when you’re out for two months and the team’s biggest player, shouldn’t you have gone to Florida to rehab the toe for a couple of months instead of being a 6ft 7 distraction? While that would have pissed off the New York media, it might have said to the team: “Well, now someone else needs to step up.” Instead, they were leaning on an immovable object.

3) Bad management – Outside the clubhouse

Aaron Boone is a pariah, and it’s almost certain he’s out the door at the end of the season, if not before. If he doesn’t, the Bronx will burn.

But it’s not all his fault. It’s Brian Cashman and his own team. The analysis is fairly simple: Get a left fielder. Get a left-handed hitter who can take advantage of the short porch. Oh, and use the kids at Triple-A – Regardless of what Yankees fans did.

Cashman’s ‘analytics team’ (I say this in the loosest of terms) have changed the line-up so much this season that it’s nigh-on impossible to work out where someone’s going to be on a certain day. And that’s just me as a fan. How about the uncertainty as a player? On the other side, look at the Atlanta Braves line-up. Four players on the team have played every game this season, and the line-up is exactly the same day by day. Everyone knows their danged job.

They should have fired Dillon Lawson a lot earlier than they did. It was evident from the first two months of the season that the Yankees hitters were making the same mistakes as they did last season when everything was falling apart. They were striking out too much and not working counts enough, leaving starting pitchers in for longer. Also, they were terrible at scoring people when they had half a chance to do so. It was so bad it had almost become a meme. But they kept loyal until booting him for a guy in Sean Casey who had zero experience in the Majors, but was a buddy of Aaron Boone’s. The offense has gone nowhere. Why not get someone else with MLB experience at the post, or even experience in the minors?

4) Listening to Yankees fans

This is underrated, but Manchester United (also one of the biggest names in world sport who last won a Premier League title in 2012 and a Champions League title in 2008) have had the same issue: Pay attention to what the fans want, and then get the player. For Manchester United, it’s about transfer fees, and for the Yankees, it’s for ginormous contracts.

This year was the case of Carlos Rodon, who was injury-prone even before he came along. In the offseason he was given a 6-year, $162 million contract. And he was injured most of this. When he came back, he sucked…and got injured again.

Last season’s example would be this: Andrew Benintendi last year. At Kansas City he was spectacular, hitting .320. He was also a left fielder, which meant he could access the all-important short-porch at Yankee Stadium. He came to the Yankees, fell to .254, and as things were improving for him….he got injured. Another example? Frankie Montas. He was a stud in Oakland, holding opponents to a .225 batting average with a 2.56 ERA. The Twitstorm to try and get him was immense. But the analytics department seemed to lose this fact: He was garbage away from the stadium. Hitters averaged 8 HRs every 21 innings away from Oakland (that number was going to fly up at Yankee Stadium, one of the most hitter-friendly parks in MLB), had an earned run average of over 10 and hitters hit him more than 30% of the time. Oh, and he got injured, too.

At the All-Star Break, when things were pretty much dead ANYWAY, the Yankees refused to deal any of their prospects, which infuriated the fans, but if you really look at it, there weren’t many players worth giving up the house for, especially for a three month rental.

5) The lack of a left-fielder

Oswaldo Cabrera, Greg Allen, Jake Bauers are NOT the answer. Also, the decision to put Stanton out in the field is some kind of joke. He is not quick.

6) The weirdness of it all

And as a footnote, this season has been really ****ing weird. The injury to Nestor Cortes early on in the season was a function of the new pitch clock rules. This has been the case for most ballclubs (just ask Tampa Bay).

But for the Yankees, it’s been especially weird because the bullpen – after a horrible stretch just after the All-Star Break, has been pretty incredible. Their 3.14 ERA is best in the majors and it’s not even close (the second best is 3.44) despite the fact that the chaps have been incredibly taxed all season long. Therefore, it shouldn’t been that much of a surprise when Clay Holmes choked away the lead about Florida last week. The bullpen held Atlanta to 3 runs over the last three games. Zero.

And to highlight all of this, there was the matter of Domingo German, who threw a perfect game against Oakland. And about six weeks later, was put into rehab for drunkenly throwing a coach and telling one of the pitching teammates he was going to AAA.

Sometimes, you can’t help but laugh.