YANKEE FANS, THIS ONE INCLUDED, FELT NOTHING
but disgust for Randy Johnson's underwheliming geriatric performance in pinstripes. But you know he was never this bad, never nearly this bad. Mussina gave up 7 runs, all earned in 6.1 innings, an all too typical outing that leaves his ERA at 6.56 for the season. The thing is he is not giving the Yankees any real chance of winning when he takes the hill. It is a measure of Torre's knee-jerk managerial idiocy that the only logical step, the one I have been urging, will be taken much too late, say in August, if at all. Steinbrenner has been blasted, including here, for his preference for players in his own age group, but Torre's the one who simply refuses to recognize that the walkers and the artificial hips might be a sign they can't do the job anymore. What is really striking though is that the pundits, who have been recently opining that the Yankees "look old" (they might have said "look their age"), never include Mussina among feeble and infirm even though his play suggests he's the one most ready for the home. At least the fans are waking up; they booed him off the mound tonight. How long, do you think, before we get scolded by the pund-ass-cracy, for our ingratitude and our spleen, a la AROD?
While the"Moose" clearly needs to be "put down," he didn't lose this game alone. That bubgaboo, inept situational hitting reared its head once again. The Yankees had the bases loaded in the fifth and the eighth and got just 2 runs, both on fielder's choice outs that killed the rally. In the ninth, they got runners on 1st and 2nd with noone out and came away with nothing. I think Giambi's refusal/inability to bunt or hit the other way to force other teams out of that shift is a metaphor for the Yankees' incapacity to exploit offensive opportunities.
Finally, in the stopped clock is right twice a day department, slow Joe noted that once your in this kind of hole, it's all about winning series and the pressure is on to do that tommorow. Indeed. The yankees lost 2 of 3 to a weak Seattle team, followed by losing 2 of 3 to an offensively challenged White Sox team, followed by losing 2 of 3 to their crosstown rivals. It's as if their urgency is so limited they can only bestir themselves to salvage one game out of each encounter, which somehow allows the to think they'll be alwright, even as the cascade of lost series makes their position, if not their attitude, ever more desparate. Well, as far as I can tell, this is the wall they should be feeling at their backs. If they lose tomorrow night and wind up the series falling yet another game behind, to 11.5, I think the division is practically and psychically out of reach and the wild card perilously close to being so.
But on the bright side, if they lose tomorrow night, I think there is a very good chance George will fire....no, not Torre, but, that's right, Cashboy. I think George is begiining to feel nostalgic for the old days of scalping his employees for their failures but doesn't wish to disturb his investment in Roger Clemens by removing the man Rocket wants to pitch for. So I think Cashboy just may get the axe. There is a double irony here: A) Cashboy would be fired as a surrogate for the man whose job he has been ardently protecting recently--not least by saying don't blame him, blame me; B) Cashboy is probably right; he should be the first to lose his position. There was a time when Torre did some extraordinary things for this franchise, admittedly all too long ago. There was never a time Cashboy did anything all that great and the things he has done wrong are as egregious as they are numerous.
While the"Moose" clearly needs to be "put down," he didn't lose this game alone. That bubgaboo, inept situational hitting reared its head once again. The Yankees had the bases loaded in the fifth and the eighth and got just 2 runs, both on fielder's choice outs that killed the rally. In the ninth, they got runners on 1st and 2nd with noone out and came away with nothing. I think Giambi's refusal/inability to bunt or hit the other way to force other teams out of that shift is a metaphor for the Yankees' incapacity to exploit offensive opportunities.
Finally, in the stopped clock is right twice a day department, slow Joe noted that once your in this kind of hole, it's all about winning series and the pressure is on to do that tommorow. Indeed. The yankees lost 2 of 3 to a weak Seattle team, followed by losing 2 of 3 to an offensively challenged White Sox team, followed by losing 2 of 3 to their crosstown rivals. It's as if their urgency is so limited they can only bestir themselves to salvage one game out of each encounter, which somehow allows the to think they'll be alwright, even as the cascade of lost series makes their position, if not their attitude, ever more desparate. Well, as far as I can tell, this is the wall they should be feeling at their backs. If they lose tomorrow night and wind up the series falling yet another game behind, to 11.5, I think the division is practically and psychically out of reach and the wild card perilously close to being so.
But on the bright side, if they lose tomorrow night, I think there is a very good chance George will fire....no, not Torre, but, that's right, Cashboy. I think George is begiining to feel nostalgic for the old days of scalping his employees for their failures but doesn't wish to disturb his investment in Roger Clemens by removing the man Rocket wants to pitch for. So I think Cashboy just may get the axe. There is a double irony here: A) Cashboy would be fired as a surrogate for the man whose job he has been ardently protecting recently--not least by saying don't blame him, blame me; B) Cashboy is probably right; he should be the first to lose his position. There was a time when Torre did some extraordinary things for this franchise, admittedly all too long ago. There was never a time Cashboy did anything all that great and the things he has done wrong are as egregious as they are numerous.
posted by joe valente | 12:07 AM
1 Comments:
On the flip side of the Yankees managing to take only one game per series, an idex of how impressive this Sox team is turning out to be is how consistently they've been winning every series. They haven't run off a 20 game win streak (yet) or anything that dramatic. But if it's a 4 game series, they take 3, if it's a 3 game series, they take 2. It's the kind of efficient consistency we saw from the 98 Yankees and 01 Mariners. I'm not saying they're going to challenge 114 wins or anything. It's way to early, and they've got problems that are bound to emerge. But they are in that kind unflappable groove now.
Di Salvo has earned to right o more starts. Let's all hope for a hamstring or other such thing for Moose. it's the only way Torre will keep him out of the rotation. If in some alternate universe the Yankees make the playoffs this year, and Hughes or DiSalvo or Clippard had made 20 quality starts to get them there, while Mosse had toiled at 6+ era, there can be now doubt he'd still get a start and the kid would get sent to the pen.
Gone are the days when Torre would sit a beloved David Cone for the good of the team, as in the 2000 world series, for an at that moment marginally more effective starter like Neagle. Things have decayed so much he won't even sit an asshole who would throw Torre and the whole organization under a bus as soon as a give up 7 runs in 6 innings for a dynamic, high spirited gamer whose pitched 2 gems and kept the team in every game he's started.
Joe V. famously invoked the concept of Götterdämmerung in one of his classic diagnoses of the organization last year. When will Torre and Cashman commit a liebestod? I guess it won't happen because they have found utlimate fulfillment of their dreams of a static team in this life...
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