No drama, no magic, no energy. Last night’s Yankee game played out the same way many of their games had since mid-August. Falling behind early felt like a 10-0 hole. SU would liken this to game 6 in the 2003 World Series when Josh Beckett shut out the Yankees 2-0 for the Florida Marlins in the final game of the series. Andy Pettitte kept it close but they just could not score or mount anything. A few observations:
- Jacoby Ellsbury did not deserve to start. For all of September, he hit .200 with no homeruns and 3 rbis. Not bad if you are making $22 million a year. SU never liked this signing: the guy never plays a full season and for the money and production, you could get someone much cheaper. But this is not a movable contract – he will be here for the next several years.
- Brett Gardner is worn down from the season. Can you believe he was an All-Star and was batting .300? Same for McCann who caught too many games which was too bad as John Ryan Murphy is capable.
- Chase Headley and Stephen Drew: this will be SU’s memory of this season. Unproductive, unclutch.
- The 3 core relievers also wore down – especially Betances.
- Tanaka was ok and sure, the umpire was terrible but when you can’t score, everything else is magnified
The one positive from the evening for SU were the frank remarks by Brian Cashman after the game. As he has aged, he has been speaking frankly more and more. That give me hope he will look to make some moves in the off season although truth be told (and at SU, we seek to tell the truth), they have a number of long term contracts that limit what can be done. If Texeiria returns as expected, where do you even play Greg Bird with A-Rod at DH? He has no position. Ackley and Refsnyder can share 2nd base and they can upgrade from Chris Young and get a right-handed hitting 4th outfielder. Severino is exciting with a lot of upside. Maybe you sign David Price? But those long term deals always end badly (see CC Sabathia and the 2 years left on his deal).
Bottom line: this was a boring team. SU needs to be entertained and another year with this roster in 2016 won’t cut it. Time to eat some money and move some people. Get younger. I know – I am a broken record – but I am right about this team and have been from the start.
Look forward to those ratings for the Astros – Royals series!
Let’s Go Mets!
Sports Update Intergalactic 
Of course Cashman will make moves. But which moves? He had a few that in recent years that have gone well. Miller was a good pickup. Not sure he’s much different from Robertson but fine. Didi is also a nice player although having a lefty hitting everyday SS is unusual and contributes to the lefty imbalance in the lineup. But Cashman has made some dumb moves too. The Ellsbury/Beltran/McCann year was a particularly bad one in which he overpaid for a number of players, particularly in a year where he let Cano and Granderson go.
Not being able to move runners was a problem that haunted them all year and especially in games like yesterday. Sure the Astros hit two HRs but when they got someone on first base they tried to manufacture runs. Like the playoff Yankees teams Girardi played on. That’s the kind of thing you need to be able to do when you have players like Gardner and Ellsbury.
A Rod was one of the season’s bright spots but having him clog the DH spot is a problem on a team with many aging players that need to DH periodically. Here’s an idea. Why not see if he can be unloaded to Seattle? Let him finish where he started. Maybe there would be interest. The Yankees could eat some of the salary.
I mentioned it yesterday but the home plate ump was awful last night. I think he was consistently bad but he was exceptionally generous to Keuchel. So many called strikes that were outside the zone when they used the 2D strike zone box and looked even worse when they used the cool 3D thing. It’s curious that he was also behind the plate for the earlier game this season when Keuchel dominated the Yankees. I’m not going to go back and watch that one again but I’d be curious to know what his strike zone looked like then. The announcers were all over it early (and a few mentions late) but eventually they just transitioned to talking about Keuchel’s dominance and how he “set up” hitters. I imagine that most major league pitchers would be able to set up hitters if you give them an extra 4 inches around the strike zone.
And for those of you who will have nightmares about this, the Yankees open the 2016 season……………. at home, against the Astros.