"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

It’s All in the Cards

I was probably seven years old when I bought my first pack of baseball cards from the Melrose Market in Southfield, Michigan. It would’ve been in 1977, and card collecting couldn’t really have been called a hobby back then.

We’d rip open our packs desperately looking for players we knew, then we’d sort them by team, wrap each team in a rubber band, and toss them all into a shoebox. In the five decades since then, the hobby exploded (in the 1980s), imploded (in the 90s), and enjoyed an unlikely resurgence (during the pandemic).

In the 46 years since I bought my first pack, everything has changed about the hobby. What once was simple — open the packs and collect the cards — has become an elaborate enterprise that resembles a lottery more than anything else. Collectors today don’t complete sets. In fact, most are only interested in the limited run insert cards that are randomly shuffled into the packs. The common cards are about as interesting to collectors today as the crisp pieces of gum were years ago.

I’ve got several crates of cards out in the garage, most worth nothing at all, but there are a few treasures that will bring in some money when I eventually sell them. The starting lineup of the 1961 Yankees, rookie cards of all the Hall of Famers who debuted in the 1980s, and some of Derek Jeter’s most desirable cards. It’s been twenty-five years since I was actively collecting, but every spring I’ll make a point to buy a few packs of the latest set, just to see what they look like and to get a taste of the glorious anticipation that shoots from your fingertips to your brain as you open a pack of cards. Say what you will about the hobby and the foolishness of paying actual money for small pieces of cardboard, but there’s really no feeling quite like opening a pack of baseball cards.

So when I finished my grocery shopping this morning, I turned the cart towards the back of the store to the hobby section, and I found what I was looking for — Topps 2023 Series One. A box with seven packs inside, price tag $24.99. Let’s open a pack together…

J.T. Realmuto, Phillies
It’s a nice card. Realmuto seems to have just hit a walk off, and he’s looking into the dugout and pumping his fist. And those home Phillies jerseys with the red pinstripes are definitely in the running for second-best uniforms in baseball.

Zack Thompson, Cardinals
Nothing special here. The standard mid-windup photo that most pitchers get.

Kris Bryant, Rockies
On the one hand, why in the world did the Cubs trade this guy? On the other, maybe they were right.

Tanner Rainey, Nationals
See Zack Thompson, but with a boring uniform. Why teams started using their spring training unis in actual games is completely beyond me.

Bobby Witt, Jr., Royals
The best thing about this card is the Topps All-Star Rookie trophy cup in the corner. Topps went away from logos like this for a while, but it was a nice move to bring them back. I loved these when I was a kid. Still do.

Alex Cobb, Giants
The Giants home uniform is another one of my favorites, so it’s too bad that they’ve also fallen victim to the alternate jersey disease. Here Cobb is wearing white pants with a hideous orange jersey, not the classic cream. Such a shame.

Josh Naylor, Guardians
He’s not rocking the baby, but he is celebrating like he’s just done something important. Even though he’s never really done anything important.

Matt Chapman, Blue Jays
It’s like the pack was watching the game today and is taunting me.

Rafael Devers, Red Sox
This is an insert card, but a worthless one. For some reason Topps is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the 1988 set, possibly the lowest point in the company’s history. (You could argue that 1987 is their most worthless set, but it doesn’t really matter.) Anyway, Devers is depicted here on the 1988 design, which is hardly memorable.

Ozzie Albies, Braves (Stars of MLB)
This is another insert, and it isn’t too interesting. Apparently it’s worth 75¢, which seems about right.

Shane Bieber, Guardians
When Bieber was great, he was probably the most uninteresting great pitcher we’ve seen in the past forty years. Greg Maddux was about as exciting as a metronome, but somehow he made that interesting. Bieber? Not so much. Boring pitcher, boring card.

Kevin Gausman, Blue Jays.
More taunting. Here he’s depicted just after releasing the ball, with his long hair flying out from under his hat, reminiscent of the guy in the Maxell tape ad from so long ago.

Sandy Alcantara, Marlins
Probably the best pitcher that no one’s ever heard of. The last column on the back of his card is WAR. Once upon a time we got games, innings pitched, wins, losses, hits, walks, strikeouts, and saves — and that seemed like a lot of information.

Darick Hall, Phillies
Never heard of him before today.

And that’s it. Kind of a dud of a pack. No Yankees, no superstars. But I’ve got six more packs to go…

The Sho Comes to Town

The Angels have to be the biggest mystery in baseball, and not just because they’ve claimed three different locations without once moving stadiums. These Los Angeles California Angels of Anaheim claim the distinction of having a centerfielder who will likely sit comfortably among the top ten players of all-time once his career is done, along with another player who is unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

But even with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in the same dugout, the Angels have ranged from abysmal to mediocre over the past several years. Either player should be the face of baseball, but if you never play games in October, not even the marketing machine of Major League Baseball can help you.

Over in the other dugout, the Yankees are facing problems of their own. Yes, Gerrit Cole appears to be the best pitcher on the planet. Yes, Aaron Judge is still as great as we’d like him to be. Yes, Anthony Volpe is living up to the hype. (Don’t worry about that batting average; he’ll be fine.)

But what about Josh Donaldson? What about the back end of the rotation? What about Giancarlo Stanton and his right-on-time hamstring injury? Questions abound. Thank goodness we’ve got five more months to answer them.

And So It Begins…

And just like that, here we are again. I’ve written about this many times here, but I still haven’t gotten used to how quickly the season rolls back around again. When I was a boy, the stretch of time between October and April was interminable. I was interested in football and basketball, but really just as placeholders for my true love. Long before the James Earl Jones soliloquy, baseball was marking the time for me.

In December and January I would catch an article in the sports section about a trade or a free agent signing, in March I’d begin to see baseball cards and preview magazines in the grocery store, and then finally, at long last, there would be baseball. Back then it would likely be weeks before I might get to see a Yankee game on television out here in California, but just knowing that my heroes were back playing in the Bronx was enough. The boxscores that popped up in the morning paper were the daffodils in my flower bed; signs of spring signaling the end of a long, cold winter.

Things are different now. After fifty-three trips around the sun, each orbit seems shorter than the last, so last season’s exploits are still fresh. Aaron Judge’s 62nd home run seems to have just landed, and the team’s eventual (and disturbingly annual) demise at the hands of the Houston Astros couldn’t have been more than a month ago.

But even if I haven’t been counting the days through a long off-season, today is no less exciting, because today we have baseball. Today we’ll see Aaron Judge take his first swings, and wouldn’t it be great if he picked up where he left off and launched a ball deep into the left field stands? We’ll watch as Gerrit Cole takes the mound, and wouldn’t it be comforting if he threw seven shutout innings and struck out twelve?

Oh, and we’ve got the added fun of watching a young kid at shortstop, the team’s top prospect and the jewel of the organization. As hard as it is for me to believe, it was almost three decades ago that Derek Jeter opened his rookie season as the starting shortstop in the spring of 1996, and today we’ll get to watch Anthony Volpe. It isn’t fair to compare him to one of the greatest ever to wear the pinstripes, but this is what we do. This is the way.

We can’t possibly know what the next six months will bring, but today brings baseball, and that’s always enough.

The Eternal Hope

If it’s true that hope springs eternal, we can agree that no hope springs as eternal as the hope of spring training.

Can it possibly be that the season starts this week? The biblical rains out here in Southern California have pushed the spring so far from my mind that I only just now realized that the vernal equinox has come and gone, so how can Opening Day be only four days away?

If you’ve been paying attention to the Yankees through February and March, you no doubt enjoyed the spring tease of Jasson Domínguez. With Harrison Bader set to begin the season on the injured list (more on that crowded room in a bit), there was part of me that hoped the Yankees would take a page from the Atlanta Braves’ book and just give the centerfield job to the young phenom, but I knew that would never happen. Sending the Martian back to the minors for another year of development was obviously the right move, but it wasn’t the exciting one.

Speaking of minor leaguers with potential, where do you come down on the Oswald Peraza vs. Anthony Volpe debate? After his successful September stint last season, most observers assumed that Peraza would emerge as the starting shortstop this spring, but then the Yankees let it slip that Volpe, the organization’s top prospect (and the #5 overall according to MLB Pipeline) would be part of a competition that would also include last year’s starter, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa.

Our friend IKF quickly became an afterthought — he’ll be on the roster, but likely as a super-utilityman — and the battle currently comes down to the 22-year-old Peraza and the 21-year-old Volpe. To call it a battle at this point, however, is a bit generous. Peraza has struggled while Volpe has starred, currently hitting .314 with a gaudy 1.064 OPS and five stolen bases over 51 spring training at bats.

If Volpe were 24 instead of 21, this wouldn’t even be a conversation, but some worry that pushing a prospect to the Bronx after only 89 AAA at bats could be a problem. Brendan Kuty and Chris Kirschner debate the competition in the Athletic and include this statement regarding the possible pitfalls of choosing Volpe over Peraza: “If Volpe fails early, the team will face ridicule for promoting him too soon.”

That seems ridiculous to me. There’s obviously no guarantee that Volpe will enjoy the same success in April and May as he has in March, but there’s also no reason not to give him the chance. I’m sorry that I’m about to be the thousandth person you know to point this out, but we’re talking about an organization that passed on a parade of all-star (and a couple Hall of Fame) shortstops that were available through trade or free agency precisely because Anthony Volpe was waiting in the wings. They also refused to include him in trades that would’ve bolstered last season’s playoff run. If they really think that highly of him, and since he’s spent the past month living up to that hype, he should be the starting shortstop this Thursday afternoon.

But wouldn’t it be nice if that were the only story worth talking about? Sadly, the Yankees could probably pull 72-year-old Mario Mendoza out of retirement and give him the shortstop job, and the team’s biggest concern would still be the starting rotation. Once the clear strength of the team and one of the best rotations in baseball, the Yankees’ projected starting five of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Luís Severino, Nestor Cortés, and Frankie Montas might never materialize. Rodon, Severino, and Montas will all begin the season on the IL, leaving Cole and Cortés to head a group that will also include Clarke Schmidt, Domingo Germán, and someone else. To quote a former manager, it’s not what you want.

But who knows? Maybe Aaron Judge will hit another 62 home runs, Giancarlo Stanton will play 145 games, Aaron Hicks will turn the clock back to 2018, D.J. LeMahieu will look like he did in 2020, and Josh Donaldson will prove that last season was an aberration. If all that happens, the rotation concerns won’t matter as much, will they? It’s spring, right? When else can we be so hopeful?

It’s (Basically) Spring Again…

It might as well be anyway if you live in the Northeast.  The weather has been as changeable as a Coinstar machine, so why not start the festivities in mid-February? Well, I dunno about Florida’s weather, but it seems the Yanks are all in and ready to work… well, except for a couple of key IL entries like Frankie Montas and Nestor Cortes; no insignificant absences from the playing field to be sure.  Considering where the team has put themselves in regards to the tax threshold, one can’t really blame them for not following in their crosstown rivals and treating that line like a cigar smoke ring, especially since the talent/money ratio doesn’t really add up for now.

At any rate, I’m certain you all were waiting for a chance to discuss doings of yours and theirs, so have at it. The training wheels will come off sooner than we know, so enjoy the talk and let’s see where they walk…

And, So … ?

 

What with all the activity in December, January is a decidedly less dramatic month for the Hot Stove.

What’s keeping you warm?

Happy New Year! (TL;DR)

It’s been a minute. Maybe a minute-and-a-half?

Whatever the case may be, as we turn the page on a new year, we continue to scour the sports pages and sports blogs (yes, you do) in search of the latest iota of information, inspiration and motivation to believe that ‘next year’ is going to be different than ‘this year’, especially if this year saw you repeat the same ending from the year before, the year before that and so on.

How many times does the record (record? CD? MP3? concussion?) have to skip before we hear the rest of the song or we simply skip to the next track?

Well if you’ve followed the Yankees up to this point, you probably already know that answer.  We’ve seen the Yankees throw huge wads of cash at certain players while totally avoiding others; like a hobbyist restoring a classic car, they tinker with certain parts while keeping the style and shape intact; maybe polishing it up to make it look nice, take it for a spin until it breaks down, take it back to the garage and tinker with it some more, repeat.  The Yankees always seem to have the makings of a great (if not super) team, but that team always seems to break down before they get to the World Series.  Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  Playoff-bound, but insecure at best.

That said, you cannot say (anymore, at least) that the Yanks, i.e. Hal Steinbrenner and Family, are, um, “Cheap!” as has been thrown around the horn more times than Tinker-Evers-Chance.  No (reasonable) fan can look at how much the Yanks pay for key players on the current roster and accuse them of being the Bronx Wilpons, no matter how many high-priced vets their new nemesis Steve Cohen comfortably gobbles up like familiar hedge fund assets.  The problem that we as (again, reasonable) fans have with the Yankees’ spending is the allocation.

Of course, you can call up the local radio hotheaded hosts and talk until you’re blue in the face about this, and the narrative will not change, but just between you and me I don’t think Hal and his stepbrother Cashman like the idea of being labelled anything that doesn’t correspond with “genius”.  Too bad, because to this point that conjecture has been very hit-and-miss.  The fact is, while they have certainly pinpointed and extracted unseen or unexploited talent from other organizations and have even developed their own through aggressive drafting strategies, the gambles they’ve lost have been ignominious, self-inflicted and to a certain extent debilitating.

By most accounts, the Yanks have one of the strongest farm systems in baseball, and it’s a well-known fact that they spend well to recruit and develop talent to their system. But having a great system does very little good if you only use it except as an “in case of emergency, break glass” option (or a way to maintain and extend team control over elevated young players for an ethically-challenging and legally-inordinate amount of time). But then, there is the strange flip-side behavior of HODLing various prospects who, in due time, fail to develop into full-time contributors on the 40-man roster, never mind in the lineup or rotation.  It’s one thing to have high expectations, but then to not offer them consistency throughout the season for years on end is obtuse, which leads us to another problem:

The way several times the Yanks have painted themselves into a corner with strikingly bad contracts on borderline has-been/never-were vets they used microscopes and tweezers to pluck a shred of overlooked value from… this seems to be an organizational blind spot with either Cashman or his advisors; how they sign or trade for players who have shown either a spark of promise in a little time or consistency in other places for a long time, yet that consistency ends within a year or two of putting on pinstripes.  Some would call it a blatant misallocation of funds, some would call it pure bad luck.  All I know is that with this and the unwillingness to move prospects in deals (while failing to utilize or develop them in a reasonable amount of time to address those weaknesses) has prevented the Yanks from making solid moves to shore-up weaknesses in their lineup or rotation.

Sometimes they got lucky, like with Jose Treviño as their new No.1 catcher who not only had a marked effect on the pitchers’ productivity, but also had a bigger bat than they expected.  However, that was in response to a puzzling move to acquire a promising, yet equally unheralded catcher to replace the former blue-chip prospect and former All-Star catcher they had who had fallen so far into the gutter as a productive player and clubhouse guy in general that they had to not only get rid of him, but absorb a seriously and indisputably bad contract and worse overall presence as their third baseman; that also to make up for the weakness at that position they fell into with promising, but inconsistent/unlucky signings to fill that and other holes.

How far does this rabbit hole go down, you ask? Let’s not go there, or we’ll have to dig up names like Jacoby Ellsbury who, were it not for a slight indulgence that opened up the escape hatch for the front office, would still be on this roster for the next three seasons.  And that’s tangentially in relation to the long-gone and until recent years lamented Robinson Cano!

But soft, let us look yonder towards the future and take leave of our past frustrations.  What’s done is done as they would have us believe (underlined by Cashman’s recent extension and continued duties), and we gloss over the present confluence of talent heading into the new year…

Aaron Judge is the the new King of New York (with apologies to teammate Michael King, and to say nothing of the Emperor-in-making or New Clothes HQ’d in Flushing), and perhaps the only reason I’ve decided to remain a Yankee fan and a baseball fan in general.  I’ll be quite honest, I was ready to walk away from not only the Yankees, but baseball altogether if the Yankees decided not to pursue him as hard as they did. They knew he is what makes them relevant to anything these days.  Not Cole, not Stanton, not Gleyber, not Severino, not Loáisiga(sp!), not Rizzo, not Nasty Nestor, not “The Best Framer in Baseball” Treviño, not the idea of new Baby Bombers in the Ozwaldo Twins or Volpe or Jones or other Whatchamacallits, not the ever-present threat of Brett Gardner’s dirty uniform leading off and starting in left (although even that might be a slight upgrade at the present) and certainly not the existential threat that Cashman will convince Hal to go for it and sign Carlos Correa from under Cohen’s suddenly wary nose, thus giving us a replacement for the dread of Scott Proctor’s Arm with My Leg!!

Nope. It’s all about Judge; for you, for me and the whole world. Judge playing for any other team would have meant the end of believing in any player being anything more than an asset, any team being a team but instead just a business organization first and last.  Judge, being a homegrown player for any team and staying would be an affirmation to a large degree in the eternity and resiliancy of baseball in the face of contemporary and ever-evolving trends, a bastion of consistency and the rewarding of greatness by the very family that raised you.

That he happens to be a Yankee means more than most people are willing to admit firsthand.  Of course the Yankees are the hated (perceived) rivals of every other team in existense, according to traditional baseball fans at least.  Of course they are considered the Most Moneyed Team Of All and the big bad wolves who just might come and steal your most precious All Star either in free agency or with with a bargain trade for “overblown” prospects.  Even though we all know that’s not been true for decades now, we still believe in the Evil Empire mythos, not the least because the front office still plays with this jargon in some of their press conferences and releases to the media-at-large.

But this, signing Judge and keeping him a Yankee-for-Life (ostensibly) and deifying that signing by anointing him as the new captain gives life to baseball on a mitochondrial level.  How often do we see star players, superstar players at that, stay with the team they were raised with? The Yanks have three players that stand out as traveling mercenaries either by choice (Cole, Rizzo) or by circumstance to a degree (Stanton).  And of all the Baby Bombers that were supposed to revolutionize the Yankees’ new focus on core-and-dynasty building through analytics, the only ones left standing today are Severino (who is a free agent after this season, btw) and Judge…

Yunnow, there was a time when the Yankees were much concerned about the conundrum of being able to afford the embarrassment of riches they were grooming.  Instead, they gave it all to one guy. The thing is though, that guy took an enormous risk, bet on himself… and hit the (mouthallmighty!!) jackpot. The strange thing about this though, he did it with the team he came up with. He could have gotten even more if he listened to San Diego. He could have been much closer to home and family playing for the team he rooted for growing up with San Francisco. He even could have been more generous with his loyalty and signed an extension instead of betting his professional career on one season.

But he didn’t, and I applaud him for it. For all the things the Yankees could have done and actually did with and to him over the years, from (perceived*) service-time manipulation to capitalizing on his rookie fame, the many times he was placed on the IR, which compelled the limiting of his playing time directly or indirectly (in an “abundance of caution”) to staging themselves as the heroes during negotiations before the Season of All Seasons desecnded upon the masses, Judge had every right and reason to hold the organization over a barrel and squeeze every drop of juice from their cold, dead bank accounts.  And he did it with class! As far as we know (being reasonable fans), he was the Consummate Teammate™; hero of the proletariat, striking back at the ever-capitalist bourgeoisie ownership and its middling, confounding bureaucracy… yeah, okay.

As comment boards around the interwebs foamed with gnashing teeth and ever dropping temperatures from the shade from largely anonymous individuals or entities who identify as fans, i.e. HATERS speaking ill of the rich getting richer, those awful Yankees, they’ll eventually admit that viscerally it makes sense for a player to not only stay with the one team he’s always known out of a sense of loyalty, but to what having that loyalty rewarded immensely (by hook and by crook, regardless) says; speaking to his name, there is a semblance of justice in the world that we can relate to, even if only in our dreams.

Before anyone says it, I was going to try to figure out how to work in David Justice, Justus Sheffield, Lawyer Malloy, Babe Ruth, Harrison Bader, Joe Ginsberg and other subversive distractions from this feel-good musing, but it’s just too much to ask you all to suspend your disbelief at such an audacious attempt at a Dad-joke >;)

That’s all I will say for now; as much as I’m certain you miss me either by sentiment or by lack of proper aim, but I’ve said all this to say: I’m sorry I’ve not been around as much, I’m glad to have not been compelled to give up my fandom over the machinations of modern baseball, and although I likely will continue posting intermittently (ces’t la vie), I will be alongside you all in spirit, pushing this team over the top.  May this new year bring us all joy and reward.  Welcome aboard the Crazy Train, Carlos Rodón!

(Insert Stylized Parenthetical Here)

 

Judgment Day

I. The Waiting

When I woke up on Wednesday morning and checked my phone, the notification screen was full. The latest was from Twitter, from someone who seemed to be talking about an Aaron Judge deal. I found the truth within about thirty seconds — forty-five minutes earlier, Judge had indeed decided to return to the Yankees and had agreed to what we’ve been told will be a nine-year contract for $360 million. I already had a handful of texts from East Coast friends, and within the hour I’d get a few more from folks out here in California who thought of me when they heard the news. It was a whirlwind.

It been a long, strange journey that started before the Astros were done celebrating their victory over the Yankees in the ALCS. What would Judge do? With the Judge camp somehow as leak-free as a Flex Tape commercial, the baseball world was left to tea leaves and idle speculation. First we believed that the boos he heard in his final game at the Stadium might push him towards leaving, but when Anthony Rizzo signed we thought it meant he was staying. When he accepted his American League MVP award and joked good-naturedly with Giancarlo Stanton, it was another positive sign — of course he wanted to stay and play with his good friend, Big G.

But baseball is a business. We know this intellectually, but sometimes a baseball hero can turn an intellectual fan back into a ten-year-old, and we can forget the magnitude of the millions being offered to these players. Likely no fan base in sports is more guilty of this than the Yankee Universe, where we often drastically overestimate the power of pinstripe tradition and history. Most of us would probably give up a few years of our lives to experience any of the fantasies we’ve seen play out over the past few decades. To stand in right field and listen as an entire stadium chanted our name, to lace a single to right field for a game-winning RBI in our final at bat, to walk off the mound one last time and sob on a friend’s shoulder because the dream has come to a close. To stand before a microphone in the middle of the diamond and somehow try to explain what it means to have your jersey number hung alongside Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio.

We’ve convinced ourselves that all of those moments meant more precisely because of where they happened, not just how they happened. We’ve convinced ourselves that being a Yankee means more, and so it’s confusing when players — the businessmen whose salaries are paid for with the turnstiles we spin, the jerseys we buy, and the remotes we click — consider leaving. Why in the world would they?

And so when we first heard whispers of an offer from the Giants, it wasn’t overly concerning. Of course he has to talk to other teams, we reminded ourselves. It’s part of the process. He has to gauge his worth on the open market, but that’s all it is.

As the days went by and there was still no positive news, we tucked ourselves in and spun our own tales to keep us from panicking. Does he want to be Derek Jeter or Robinson Canó?

And then Tuesday happened. Most baseball observers still believed that the Yankees were the frontrunners to retain Judge’s services, but on the second day of the winter meetings, we suddenly began hearing reports that the San Francisco Giants were making a strong push, and we even heard numbers that were far larger than the Yankees’ last offer of $305 or $310 million. Things were getting interesting.

Weeks earlier I had set up Twitter alerts on my phone for all the relevant Yankee writers, and that was in addition to my standard alerts from ESPN and the Athletic. My phone was buzzing like a beehive all week, but it was never about Judge, always about a rumored deal for number three starter in the National League Central. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Thankfully I was in the middle of basketball practice when Jon Heyman sent off his infamous “Arson Judge appears headed to Giants” tweet, so I didn’t have to live in that seven-minute universe in which the Yankees’ had allowed their best player to leave, but it certainly seemed like something bad was brewing. Where there’s Arson, after all, there is usually fire. I was convinced — or at least almost convinced — that he was gone.


II. The Truth

Aaron Judge is more than just the numbers. Let’s set aside his historic 2022 for a moment and look back to his rookie season of 2017. That was the year when we knew he was different. Judge can only be compared to Derek Jeter, but not even Jeter had the immediate emotional impact that Judge did when he arrived. Jeter was a good player, a Rookie of the Year winner like Judge, but in 1996 he wasn’t yet the team’s biggest star.

In 2017, the Yankees had Chris Carter at first base, Starlin Castro at second, and Chase Headley at third. Honest. Judge opened the season in right field, and after hitting ten home runs in April and seven more in May, he wasn’t just the tallest Yankee, he was the biggest. The Judge’s Chambers was still a season or two away, but fans at the Stadium were already wearing robes and powdered wigs in the stands. Each game was a celebration, each at bat was an event.

When the Yankees came out to the West Coast in June, Judge was hitting .347 with 21 home runs, but when my son and I headed out to Anaheim for the opening game of the series, I was still stunned by what I saw. There are always thousands of Yankee fans at these games, but this time there were as many Judge jerseys as Jeter. A few rows in front of us sat a family of five, each wearing a navy blue Judge 99 t-shirt. With each Judge at bat, someone in the crowd would yell out “All Rise!” and we dutifully stood for every pitch. Three thousand miles from Yankee Stadium, these fans who had planned ahead and ordered their gear in anticipation of their hero’s arrival all knew exactly how to worship. And when Judge hit his 22nd home run that night, the celebration in the unofficial Yankee section along the right field line in Anaheim Stadium was raucous. The MVP chants bounced around the stadium as Judge jogged around the bases with his head down, likely already thinking about his next at bat.

If Brian Cashman or Hal Steinbrenner had been in the stands with us that night, they’d have offered him a lifetime contract on the spot. It was his 86th career game, but he was already the face of the franchise.


III. The Resolution

When I went to bed on Tuesday night I was resolved to the fact that none of this had mattered. Aaron Judge would be blasting baseballs into the San Francisco Bay in 2023, but before he ever played a game in his new home, he and the Giants would open their season on the road… playing the Yankees in his old home. I fell asleep imagining this cruelest of twists, and I wondered if fans would cheer him for his six years of greatness or jeer him for having the temerity to leave it all behind. I cursed myself for caring so much.

And then it was morning.

For the next nine years the Yankees will be paying Aaron Judge for a season neither he nor anyone else will produce again, and that’s okay with me. I truly hope that he’s able to carry the team to a World Series championship or two, but I won’t be terribly disappointed if he doesn’t. For me, the true victory came on Wednesday morning with the realization that for the next nine years I’ll be able to watch Aaron Judge play for my favorite team. My son and I will go to as many games as we can, he in his Judge jersey and I in my Jeter, matching countless father-son combos in the Bronx and beyond.

All Rise.

Heating Up


The Hot Stove is simmering.

The Envelope, Please…

Tonight gives the 2022 MVP awards…

Anthony Rizzo, Drinks Are On the House

Rizzo returns.

The Whirled Serious

The Phillies swiped Game One from the Astros in Houston and hope to do more damage tonight.

Course, the damage has already been done to the Yanks, and the seasons ends with Aaron Judge inexplicably getting jeered at home, and Hal Steinbrenner giving Aaron Boone a vote of confidence as manager. Surely, all is not settled in Yankeeland.

Meanwhile, the championship with the Astros and the Phillies.

Never mind the hot stove:

Let’s Go Base-Ball!

If This Is It

The Yanks are down 3-0. Here’s hoping they can make us happy at least once more. One they lose, the panic about signing Aaron Judge, followed by Aaron Boone’s inevitable dismissal will set off a long, weird off-season.

Never mind hot stove:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Dread Not

The most difficult part of the playoffs from a fan’s perspective is that the narratives are crafted so quickly that they become fact before anyone has a chance to question them. After two games in Houston most people have decided that these Astros are simply too good for the Yankees, that their dominant pitching staff is untouchable, that the Yankee bullpen is a dumpster fire, that this team from the Bronx simply isn’t very good.

Perhaps it’s time to back away from the ledge and remember that we’re talking about two games, and those two games weren’t all bad. Consider, for example, that the mighty Astros only scored seven runs in those two games, and that the three runs they scored on Thursday night came courtesy of one mistake — a two-out, two-strike fastball that Luís Severino wasn’t able to get up in the zone. There’s also the fact that Aaron Judge nearly grabbed Game Two right back with a laser that might’ve been a home run were it not for the winds that were whipping through Minute Maid Park.

A quick note about those two balls, Alex Bregman’s towering fly ball that landed in the seats for a three-run home run and Judge’s line drive that was caught at the wall by Kyle Tucker. Those two balls determined the game, so the postgame analysis naturally focused on the differences between the two, and the Yankees came out looking a bit petulant as one after another they stood in line to tell us that they thought Judge’s ball was going out. (In their defense, they had to answer the questions.) Severino even went so far as to say the Astros had been lucky because Bregman’s ball had been only 91 MPH off the bat while Judge’s had been 106. (Ever the diplomat, Judge said he never thought it was going out. He had hit it to the wrong part of the yard.)

Alex Eisert at Fangraphs provides some quick analysis on the data behind those two balls:

After the game, Severino expressed surprise that Bregman’s looping 91.8 mph fly left the park and Aaron Judge’s 106.3 mph shot to right didn’t. He mentioned the wind as a factor; the roof was open at Minute Maid, and the swirling air currents may have brought balls back into the park in right field but lifted out those hit to left. Yet, it’s hard to discern the ultimate impact environmental factors had on the game’s outcome; there were plenty of Astros who flied out to deep right as well, notably Peña, who hit a 99.2-mph, 22-degree drive that stayed in the yard. Besides the wind, batted ball spin may have caused Judge’s knock to fall short.

The whole discussion was interesting because it pointed out how exit velocity and launch angle haven’t just changed the way the game is played but the way it’s perceived. When you’re sitting in ballpark, every ball hit in the air looks like it’s going to be a home run, so we’ve all quickly learned to watch the outfielders, not the ball. Knowledgeable fans have been doing that for generations, but the players don’t do that anymore. With stadium scoreboards posting exit velocity and launch angle the instant a ball is struck, all eyes in the dugout immediately look to those magic numbers. It’s no longer the crack of the bat but the flash of the scoreboard that triggers celebration in one dugout and despair in the other. The game has changed.

Today will determine whether or not this series changes. If I’m being honest, I’ll admit that the narrative being written right now actually isn’t based on just games one and two. We all know that Houston beat the Yankees five out of seven games this season, without Yankee pitchers throwing a single pitch while holding the lead, and we all bear the scars of 2017 and 2019. These Astros, whether cheating or not, have ripped our hearts out of our collective chests over and over.

Ah, but this is baseball, and sometimes the action doesn’t follow the script — just ask the Dodgers and Mets. Gerrit Cole pitched and won the biggest game of his Yankee career six days ago in Cleveland, and today he takes the mound for a game that’s probably even bigger. (No, it’s not an elimination game, but to my knowledge no team has ever come back to win an ALCS after being down 0-3, right?)

I have faith in Cole because I have to. There is no other choice.

There are a few tweaks to the lineup — Rizzo moving into the leadoff spot, Carpenter back at DH, and Cabrera at short. I’ve gotten used to Boone’s constant shuffling of the batting order, so I have no thoughts on that, but I wonder about playing Matt Carpenter. He looks hopelessly lost, bringing to mind the days of Gary Sánchez. The only hope is that he might run into one and accidentally put a ball into the seats. Here’s hoping. Anyway…

Let’s-Go-Yank-Ees!

  1. Rizzo, 1B
  2. Judge, RF
  3. Stanton, LF
  4. Torres, 2B
  5. Carpenter, DH
  6. Bader, CF
  7. Donaldson, 3B
  8. Cabrera, SS
  9. Trevino, C

Grab-and-Go

Yanks still have a chance to swipe a game in Houston—and yes, Game 1 was within reach, a missed opportunity, dammit.

Sevi on the hill tonight.

Never mind the brisket:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

What, Nu? Again

Ah, the Yanks and Astros play for the American League pennant. Just like it was drawn up. Sure, the Astros should be able to wipe the floor with these Yanks but stranger things have happened.

We’ll be here rooting.

Never mind the hangover:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Game Five in the Bronx

Nail-biting time for the Yanks and Guardians in the Bronx tonight. The weather looks lousy. The fans will be noisy. We will be rooting.

Never mind the Hot Stove:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

 

On the Edge

Last night’s game was difficult.

There are any number of things that could’ve been done differently, and all of them were hashed out and beaten into the ground in the minutes and hours after the Cleveland Guardians scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Yankees 5-3 and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series.

There were questions about bullpen usage and defensive strategy, but we never got any actual answers from Aaron Boone. Rookie Clarke Schmidt, and not All-Star Clay Holmes, was tasked with getting the final three outs of the most important game the Yankees had played up until that point in the season. When asked about it afterwards, Boone said that Holmes was only available in an emergency. When Holmes was asked about it, he said that he had showed up at the park prepared to pitch. When Luís Severino was asked about it, he said that Holmes was the closer, so of course he was surprised. Then he expanded: “You’ll have to ask Boonie and Blake about that.”

It was a bad look. The Yankee house was burning, and everyone one was taking turns tossing kerosene on each other.

Some also wondered about Oswaldo Cabrera’s play in left field. He had had a great game and certainly would’ve earned first-paragraph mention in most recaps had things not imploded in the ninth inning. His double ahead of Aaron Judge’s home run was important, and his own two-run home run in the fifth inning gave the Yankees the lead in a game they were poised to win.

But for the second time this series we saw him make a tentative approach on a ball hit in front of them, and this time it started that rally in the ninth. Why, people asked, was Aaron Hicks on the roster if not to play defense in the ninth inning of a two-run game? That double was a ball that Hicks likely would’ve caught.

There were also questions about shortstop Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, who continues to struggle in the field. He botched a ball that led to a run in the second inning, then misplayed a grounder that should’ve been the third out of the sixth inning. Instead, Severino was lifted early and the Guardians plated a run.

Boone wouldn’t admit concern about either Cabrera’s defense in left or IKF’s fielding at short, but tonight’s lineup indicates something different; IKF is out, Cabrera is at short, and Hicks is in left. Too little too late? We’ll see.

If you’ve made the mistake of wandering through Yankee twitter in the last twelve hours, you know that the natives are restless. I get that, but there’s one theme that I disagree with. When the Phillies play the Padres in the NLCS, Bryce Harper will be facing Manny Machado, and many Yankee fans are convinced that one of those two players would’ve been the balm to heal all these wounds. (This summer it was Carlos Correa, but since the Twins didn’t make the playoffs, I suppose people have forgotten about him.)

The reality is that this is baseball, and this is the playoff structure that baseball wants. The 162-game regular season tells us who the best teams are, but that isn’t exciting enough for Rob Manfred and his minions. They don’t believe that October provides enough drama on its own; they want ALL the drama. But it’s a double-edged sword. The scene in San Diego last night was epic. I apologize for using that word, but that’s truly what it was. It was everything that baseball wants.

But on the other hand, by allowing a team into the playoffs after finishing 22 games out of first place, baseball now moves to the LCS without one of the greatest regular season teams in the history of the sport. They will see this as validation of the expanded playoff system, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. If they expand to 24 teams, there will be upsets galore and even more excitement — precisely because this is baseball. Anyone acn beat anyone in a short series, and that’s exactly what they want. They want the drama.

Will the Yankees be the next victim of this? Or will Gerrit Cole do what he was paid to do? Tune in tonight and find out.

Let’s-Go-Yan-Kees!

  1. Torres, 2b
  2. Judge, rf
  3. Rizzo, 1b
  4. Stanton, dh
  5. Donaldson, 3b
  6. Cabrera, ss
  7. Bader, cf
  8. Trevino, c
  9. Hicks, lf

Guardians

  1. Slap hitter, lf
  2. Slap hitter, ss
  3. José Ramirez, 3b
  4. Homer or nothing hitter, dh
  5. Rookie, rf
  6. Slap hitter, 2b
  7. Slap hitter, 1b
  8. Slow slap hitter, c
  9. Bloop hitter, cf

Welcome to the Playoffs

New York Yankees starting pitcher Luis Severino throws during the first inning in Game 3 of a baseball American League Division Series against the Minnesota Twins, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)

Game 2 in the Bronx did not go the Yankees’ way, and not just because of the final result on the scoreboard. It was one of those games when line drives off Yankee bats were caught, but bloops and flares off Guardian bats found the grass.

In a well-pitched game on both sides, there were a handful of moments that determined the game. With a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the third, Josh Donaldson stood at the plate with two outs and runners on second and third. He ripped a ball to left field that would likely have scored two and might even have chased Cleveland starter Shane Bieber from the game, but left fielder Steven Kwan was able to race in and grab it for the final out. Later, with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth, Kyle Higashioka looked for just a moment as if he would be the hero, but his line drive was snagged by third baseman Jose Ramirez, and again the Yankees were turned away.

Finally, in the top of the tenth inning, Aaron Boone sent Jameson Taillon (and not Clarke Schmidt) to the mound, a questionable decision considering Taillon had never before appeared in relief. The result was predictable, if not the manner in which things played out. First there was a bloop to left by Ramirez, a ball that Oswaldo Cabrera might’ve been able to catch were it not for a moment’s hesitation towards the end. The hustling Ramirez forced a desperate throw to second from Donaldson, and when that throw sailed into right field, Ramirez ended up a-huggin’ third. Oscar Gonzalez followed that with another bloop, this one falling in front of Aaron Judge in right, and the Guardians had their lead. (Josh Naylor followed with a double that was an absolute rocket, but it was the bloops that had done in Taillon.)

The Yankees were never going to go 11-0 in the postseason, and they probably weren’t even going to sweep the Guardians. This isn’t the time to panic. Luis Severino takes the mound today, and it’s been more than two weeks since he last allowed a base hit! Yesterday’s loss does nothing to change the fact that the Yankees are a better team than the Guardians, or that Severino is a better and more experienced pitcher than Cleveland’s Triston McKenzie. Tonight’s game is pivotal, but this isn’t doomsday. Come in off the ledge and watch the game. It’ll be fun!

Let’s-G0-Yank-ees!

Friday Matinee


Game Two gives a rare afternoon playoff game in the Bronx.

Yanks looking to stay ahead of the Guardians and not turn this into some kind of soggy, misbegotten weekend of horrors in Cleveland.

Never mind the doubts:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

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"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver