Remember when the team played poorly under Torre and he would hold those closed team meetings? Those always used to turn the team around, maybe Girardi should try to do the same thing. I just worry that the team tunes him out most of the time
I'm just saying we are 9 last minute wins from being at the bottom. It's a lot closer than it looks. Were lucky to only be 5 games back,and if this keeps up we won't even be close to the WC.
"Heart and leadership" are both mostly empty platitudes. Basically, my point was that this team has shown an inability to respond well to adversity. That does reflect on the manager and the players. Sabathia has been worked hard and once again ranks in the top 5 in bp's Pitcher Abuse Points despite being overworked every year. That's poor planning by Girardi. Melky Cabrera going down should not put this team in the toilet, either. And Joba so far is an enigma at best. His walks are up and home runs allowed and strike outs are down. When the offense comes back, they will probably be okay...for awhile. If I were a Yankees fan I would just find this incredible disturbing, because good teams should not look this bad over this period of time. Maybe these poor results of late, to go along with the injuries, don't suggest that the Yankees don't want to win,or aren't trying hard, but maybe they do suggest a team that at the moment is incapable of playing good baseball.
Full disclosure: I'm a lifelong sox fan. But I'm also a huge baseball fan and I think this yankee team is fascinating. How the heck cashman keeps his job is amazing to me. the yanks are just bad all around. in the 90's the yanks had good character guys (jeter, oneil, tino etc) that even sox fans admired the players and their work ethic. They played the game the way it was supposed to be played. the character of the team now is a really represented by guys like arod and joba - overrated spoiled brats, cheaters & losers. gerardi seems clueless as to how to manage this team and it seems like the front office tells him what to do. its a recipe for failure. the team plays lackluster uninspired baseball and they make mistakes all the time. what gives? they will soon be in third place and will likely fall to fourth. meanwhile joe torre (the guy the FO decided wasn't good enought to manage the yankees anymore) has the dodgers playing great ball and running away with the NL west. If George was still running the team cashman and gerardi would be gone.
If Girardi goes then Cashman has to go. His track record of misevaluating talent over the last 8 years is downright awful. Anyone can go through a list of the Big name free agents he's brought in over the last 8 years. (Randy Johnson (bust), Kevin Brown (bust), Vazquez (bust), Mussina (bust in the playoffs which is what we brought him in here for), Pavano (biggest bust, never even had enough moxy to play in a game, pathetic bust). And that's only some of the pitchers I mentioned. Go through all of the other position guys and the list keeps growing. And for anyone who thinks these guys brought in weren't the biggest names in the entire league, then you're clearly letting your retrospective bias get the best of you. This is the Yankees, we all know we will outspend everyone to get the biggest names in the game. So don't act like these guys brought in weren't the biggest names available at their position when we brought them here. That's BS and everyone knows it. So if we have brought in the "biggest" names in the game then where the hell is the production on the field? This team needs to be stripped down and built up again. Cashman has gotten a free ride for too long now. The young kid in Boston is making Cash look pitiful. We have a depleted farm system, our young pitchers have been vastly overrated by the talent scouts, and our big payroll guys are sucking (AROD). This all leads to Cashman and only him. I still remember before last season all the Yankees disciples and media were saying Kennedy and Hughes the next big thing. What a crock of shite. Kennedy didn't even look like a major league middle reliever and Hughes went from a "shutdown starter" to a middle relief guy today. This team has been poorly constructed. Cashman got away with it early in his tenure because he INHERITED all of those great players. Now since it's been on him and the old guard is no longer there to make him look good, he has been Pathetic. FIRE CASHMAN!
I should have stopped reading after your full disclosure. I could've guessed the rest. That's the typical Sox fan attitude that surrounds me everyday. You don't happen to be a Sully, do you? Yeah, they're playing Torre. It has nothing to do with having a team stocked with a ridiculous amount of young talent like Kemp, Ethier, Martin, Loney, Billingsley, Kershaw, Belisario, and Broxton and playing in the NL West.
You really can't include Joba in that. And also,as far as the cheater stuff,i'll bet your last 2 championships were built on just as much cheating as Arod and Clemens. It was just very convenient where the report came out of. But the last Sox championship without an asterisk,was probably 1918.
Interestingly enough, this is the first post I've completely agreed with you on in a while. EDIT: Actually, except the last paragraph. I do think it's the case that they're not being led correctly. They're trying too hard, rather than not enough, but that's neither here nor there. It's a manager's job to fix that. That's where I've been coming from. This team hasn't been playing "off" they've been playing like they're outclassed and undertalented to their competition. From a pure talent standpoint, it's hard to argue the Yankees aren't in at least the top-5 teams in baseball. On paper, it's hard to find an actual weakness on this team. (Centerfield, possibly. Wang, maybe. Catcher, only if you discount Cervelli's play.) There's no reason why this team should go an entire game without a run, especially against rookie pitchers. There's no reason why a team that earned the record for consecutive games without an error has committed one in (I believe) every game since the streak ended. That's the problem. It's a team full of underachievers. And not by some small margin. The entire team is playing far below their skill level. That's a problem of management, and personality, and no amount of skill makes up for that. Yeah, I've been a smartass lately, but that's the point I've been trying to make.
And this is where we disagree about how to view these things. There might be no reason for those things to happen, but they happen over the course of a long season. Teams get shut out. Even by rookie pitchers. They haven't committed errors in every game since that errorless streak, either. They've had a few without. And are still one of the better fielding teams in the AL (according to fielding % only). The errorless streak is a bigger fluke than the errors we've seen lately. I agree that they haven't been playing crisp ball lately, and that's more on the manager/coaches than most things... but MY point is that this stuff still happens over the course of a long season. They lost four in a row, and you were ready to write off the season... because they were playing sloppy lifeless ball, and you didn't know that they were going to reel off nine wins in a row... at which point they were in first place, and everyone thought they'd cruise to the AL East title... until they went 4-9 and found themselves five out of first place. Seasons -- even very good seasons -- have ups and downs like this. How/whether they turn it around and to what degree remains to be seen. But this deterministic attitude that some people have been kicking out is crazy to me. I'll say it for the third time: It's like some of you have never seen a baseball season unfold before.
The problem is the pattern. It fits the mold of the teams we've watched over the course of this decade, which is in contrast to the one we watched last decade. Now granted, this could be a matter of selective memory, but I never felt like the Yankees were out of games late when Paul O'Neil, Bernie Williams, and Tino Martinez were in the lineup. These days, you'd think there would be more confidence with guys like Teixeira (Giambi before him) Alex Rodriguez, and Hideki Matsui. Instead, these guys come out and swing at first-pitch balls, including the formerly plate-disciplined Swisher. I see a 3 run deficit in the 7th not as "awesome, now we beat up the pen" but more "shit, it's time for bed." They don't take pitchers into deep pitch counts early in the game. They play sloppy defense, and by sloppy, I mean outright amateurish. When they do get a good offensive game, the pitching shits the bed. When the pitching gives a great performance, the offense shuts down. These are the hallmarks of the teams from the 80s. Lots of nice names in the lineup, but no consistency. Sure, ups and downs happen, but extended downs like this do not bode well for teams with hopes of playoff glory.
Even if they do make the playoffs do you honestly think this team filled with flaws throughout the entire roster and pitching staff can hold up in a short series? If they somehow manage to sneak in the playoffs, they will bow out in the 1st round again. They don't have enough consistency from their starters or middle relievers to hold up in October. I hate to be such a downer but this team is inherently flawed and it starts at the top. They've been exposed for all of their weaknesses (outfield, sp and rp, leaving too many risp, non clutch hitting from stars) It's now going on a decade since our last title (9 years) and while it may be an unheard of thought in NY I think it's time we deconstruct this team and rebuild.
Agreed. This team is looking more and more like those big name, awfully underachieving teams of the 80's. Somewhere along the line over the last 8 years this team's identity of small ball, great defense, timely hitting and great starting pitching has been lost.
I tried to be nice - but now I have to lol at the bitter yankee fans whining about the red sox. face it: your front office sucks and let you guys down; girardi gets out managed regulalr and if this was 30 yrs ago george would have canned his butt weeks ago. your team on the field is mediocre at best and plays with no intensity and no intelligence. if you want to attack other teams that have been kicking the crap out of you at least have some facts on your side. don't come in with some weak a$$ asterisk bs. The sox are on the way to their third WS championship in five years and the yanks are still waiting to win their first WS in this century. Enjoy your whining.
No intelligence? Theres a new one,but not in your world i guess. The Sox are not on their way to another championship,they are currently ahead. Bitter Yankee fans? Your lame ass franchise got the best of us once in my 33 year lifetime...*,and it goes generations beofre that. Go talk shit to fans of teams more on your level,like Chicago. there is no arguing that the Yankees are playing shitty right now. I've been saying it for weeks. But i'll hear it from other Yankee fans,not someone who roots for the ass end of MLB history.
Exactly. Sounds eerily similar to the streak we've just gone on since May 7th. A vicious cycle repeating itself.
More like the head and ass, really. Despite going 86 years without winning one, they are still 4th all time in titles. This franchise seems to have a thing for the start of new centuries. Obviously there's still a huge gap, but right now it's pretty clear that they are the team of this decade and with their scouting department/ current prospects, they are in good shape to start off the next one pretty well too. We're just starting to see the realization of Epstein's goal of a "100 million dollar player development machine" and right now they have an abundance of good pitching on both the major league and ml levels. edit: I sound like tbjf
That IS a matter of selective memory. I guarantee it. Actually, not quite. It's partly selective, but partly based on the fact that those teams won championships, and you got used to them winning championships, so you are less likely to think they're out of it, given the past success. This team has more come from behind victories than any of those championship teams had at this point in the season. Again, the problem is your attitude about the teams, and how that affects your outlook. This isn't any more true than in past years. You can look it up. While also true, no more true of this year than years past. Again, go look it up. And just so you know, the reason I'm telling you to go look it up for yourself is that you're not going to believe me if I tell you. So go see it for yourself.
