Brian Cashman coming across a bit defensively yesterday at his media conference. For SU, life-long Yankee fan, having had to endure a listless season of under-performance, lack of intensity, complacency and excuses, I am on the brink (sort of) of not caring anymore going into next season. The Yankees need to win me back over with some moves or at least a plan for how they will get there. I am 100% on board with a rebuild if that is what it takes. Of course, I would prefer a few actually good free agent signings, the Japanese pitcher and jettisoning Stanton and eating some salary in the process. But not my call.

SU was not asked to conduct the audit that is ongoing but these might be helpful stats for the Yankee brass to think about:

1, Average: .225 (ranked 29th out of 30 MLB Clubs)

2. Hits: 1,122 (29th)

3. OPS: .699 (26th)

4. RBIs: 611 (25th)

5. Runs: 634 (26th)

6. HRs: 209 (8th)

7. 2Bs: 198 (30th)

8. 3Bs: 13 (27th)

9. ABs: 4,986 (30th)

SU has done the research and looked it up by going on Chat GPT. This is not “f****** good. Do better and bring me back into the fold. Make the case.

Asking for a friend: assuming the story is true that Ohio State and Rutgers shared Michigan’s signals with Purdue before the Big Ten Championship game last year, is that poor sportsmanship in the eyes of the Big Ten?

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38843207/michigan-says-rutgers-ohio-state-purdue-shared-signs

Again, SU says that Michigan should be penalized by the NCAA for on site videotaping of other teams’ signals. Case closed. But as I am sure we will continue to learn in the days ahead that stealing signals is a sport unto itself in college football, is it poor sportsmanship for teams to share one team’s signals with another team that they are about to face? Or is that just business as usual in the Big Ten and other power conferences where teams do each other favors? Perhaps Ohio State and Rutgers were motivated given their knowledge of what Michigan was doing to them? Could very well be. SU does not know what is common practice among teams. It sounds like the sharing of teams’ signals goes on all over the place.

But where does the NCAA draw the line on this then? Or the Big Ten Commissioner?

The Mets got a great hire for their new manager in Carlos Mendoza. Good for them. He is highly regarded in MLB. Meanwhile, Hal Steinbrenner met with the media today and everyone he talked to said that he had to retain Aaron Boone. SU predicted this long ago. But… he did speak with Nick Swisher and he said that the Yankees should bunt more so look for that in 2024! No doubt Giancarlo Stanton is working on that now in his backyard. I know I am excited for next season!

SU will be daring and will wade into this mess with Michigan and the NCAA and the Big Ten. Here is SU’s take:

1. Michigan violated the NCAA rule about in-stadium videotaping of another team’s signals. Guilty as charged and when the NCAA completes its investigation, they will penalize Michigan. That will take months as the NCAA moves quite slowly – on everything.
2. The Big Ten Commissioner is about to announce its punishment of Michigan separately as he met with the Big Ten football coaches and they were up in arms about stealing signs in person. Rumor has it that Harbaugh gets a 2-game suspension on violating the sportsmanship policy of the Big Ten. Michigan is threatening to file an injunction in court that the Big Ten has to wait for the NCAA to finish its investigation first. We will see how this plays out this week.
3. There is now a new report from the Associated Press that last season, Big Ten assistant coaches were sharing notes on Michigan play signal calling. Basically passing around information, notes, etc. to help one another when they played Michigan last season. Here is the link to that story: https://apnews.com/article/michigan-sign-stealing-452b6a83bb0d0a3707f633af72fe92ac
4. SU asks if that is also a violation of the Big Ten’s sportsmanship policy? Is it appropriate for other schools to share information about a single school based on information they have learned in other games? True, they did not collect that information “in-person” at another stadium (so we assume).

Truth be told, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, SU is much more consumed with what is going on in Israel than this stuff. From what I have read, the large college football programs are obsessed with ensuring that their signals cannot be deciphered, and are also obsessed about decoding their opponents’ signs. I assume they have not done it in person like Michigan did but it is possible that they have but have not been caught.

But that does not matter here. SU’s point is that if they are that obsessed with this and let’s say they play Michigan, and apparently everyone knew Michigan had been doing this for the past 2 years, would you not change up your signals when you play Michigan? It seems that it was common knowledge among many that this was going on. If you are a big-time program, surely you don’t go into the game with your regular signals. However, SU admits I am not an expert on this by any means. I don’t know how much of an advantage this gives you as so many plays involve audibles at the line of scrimmage.

Bottom line: wrong is wrong. According to the rules, you are not allowed to video another team’s signals in another stadium. Michigan will be penalized for that by the NCAA. The Big Ten in their rush to judgment and action needs to decide if this other sharing of information by multiple Big Ten teams is serious or if that is allowed and not “unsportsmanlike.” Does the NCAA or Big Ten look into that? Do teams in other conferences also do that? No doubt more will come out in the weeks to come. Going forward, it’s all an easy fix: use the NFL style helmets.

As some know, SU is a big Djokovic fan – despite his vaccine beliefs and some other things. He is a great champion and is still excelling at 36 years old. This past weekend, he beat Gregor Dimitrov in the finals at the Paris Tournament. Dimitrov had an amazing week and had not been in the finals of a Masters 1000 level tournament in 6 years. He was distraught after losing the finals as you will see in the video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgM69932Gs. Watch what Djokovic did as he was being interviewed on the court.

Class move IMHO. He is always gracious to the opponent – win or lose. Deserves some credit here.

Pro sports is officially dead in New York. How can that be? Watching the Jets and Giants is truly torturous. Thank goodness for the Red Zone Channel. The Knicks will be competitive this year but is their roster much better than last season? Are they getting past Milwaukee or Boston in the playoffs? SU does not follow hockey as closely and perhaps the Rangers will make a run this year or the Devils. The Yankees and Mets have deep pockets but need to build better from within. The New York teams are collectively driving fans to Netflix.