Yankees Suck posts

Was it better or worse that the Yankees got that 9th inning? Did it make it more painful for Yankee fans (“So close!”) or less (“At least we put a scare in the bastards!”)? And what the hell is up with Craig Kimbrel? He's lights out against most everyone else but with the Yankees he's got the yips. Here's his regular season numbers against other AL East teams:

Actually that Baltimore line is even nuttier, isn't it? A lot of it to do with this Sept. 26 game. And his overall line, while good, isn't near his standard. Last year, his K-BB ratio was 126-14. This year? 96-31. 

Tonight, he came in with a 4-1 lead and went: Walk, single, strikeout. Walk, HBP, sac fly (to the warning track). Now it's 4-3, 2 outs, men on 1st and 2nd, and Gleber Torres at the plate. He hits a slow nubber to third. Helluva play by both Nunez to field it and Pearce to scoop it and stay on the bag. Baseball is a game of inches. And in those inches went the Yankees' season.

Good riddance.  

Here's the legion of honor this century:

• 2000: Oakland A's, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets
• 2001: Oakland A's, Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks
• 2002: Los Angeles Angels
• 2003: Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, Florida Marlins
• 2004: Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox
• 2005: Los Angeles Angels
• 2006: Detroit Tigers
• 2007: Cleveland Indians
• 2008: n/a
• 2009: Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Philadelphia Phillies
• 2010: Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers
• 2011: Detroit Tigers
• 2012: Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers
• 2013: n/a
• 2014: n/a
• 2015: Houston Astros
• 2016: n/a
• 2017: Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros
• 2018: Oakland A's, Boston Red Sox

The top postseason Yankee killers this century have been: Detroit (3-0), Astros (2-0), Angels (2-1) and Red Sox (2-1). The schleppers? Twins (0-5), A's (0-3), Mariners (0-2).

But enough. The important thing is they‘re gone. Start spreadin’ the news.

A great moment of national unity occurred over the weekend. I‘ll let Boston Globe sportswriter Pete Abraham explain:

Our great country is divided. But the Red Sox and Mets fans at Fenway Park just joined together to chant “Yankees suck.”

Truly heartwarming.

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) September 15, 2018

Truly. You can see it here.

A reader recently asked me about my “team with the longest postseason drought” post from a few years back, and wondered about extra data on the subject. I sent him what I had, but it meant going through it again, and looking at all of those numbers again. It ain’t pretty:

• Of the 113 World Series in MLB history the Yankees have won 27. That's 23.9%. The second-most titles belongs to the St. Louis Cardinals, who have 11, or 9.27%. It's not even close. It's not even half.
• The Yanks average a World Series championship ever 4.19 years. They average a pennant every 2.83 years. More than one in three World Series involves the Yankees. On the bottom end of the scale, the Phillies and Indians average a World Series championship every 56.5 years. 
• It used to be worse. During the Yankees heyday, from 1921 to 1964, they won 20 World Series titles and 29 pennants. That's 66% (29/44) of the AL pennants available during those years. The second-most pennants during this time? The Tigers with 4. Then it went: Athletics and Senators: 3; Indians: 2; and White Sox, Red Sox and Browns/Orioles with one each. No wonder Joe Hardy was willing to sell his soul to the devil. 
• If you‘re curious who’s got the most pennants and titles since the Yankees heyday, here's your answer: the Yankees. Since 1965, they‘ve won 11 pennants and 7 titles. Second is the Cardinals with 9 and 4. Yanks aren’t dominating as much, but they still dominate. 
• OK. So what about flat-out postseason appearances throughout MLB history? Who has the most there? Well, the Cards finish third with 28. Dodgers have 31. Yankees? 53. 

I was in Minneapolis over the weekend visiting family, and when I landed late Thursday night and was waiting for a taxi, I noticed the administrator behind the plastic-glass was wearing an all-black Twins cap. “Why all-black?” I asked. He said the company only allowed black caps, so he got an all-black Twins one. I nodded. “Tough year this year,” I said. He nodded. Then I added, “But thanks for beating the Yankees twice this week.” He smiled a bit, shook his head, said: “I hate the Yankees, man.” 

All together now...

Tie game. 

Sometimes there's justice. For a day. 

At New Yankee Stadium yesterday, that $1 billion boondoggle that swept aside great baseball history, the New York Yankees took a 7-5 lead into the 9th inning against the lowly Detroit Tigers, and had their $5.1 million set-up man, Dellin Betances, on the mound, because their $15 million closer, Aroldis Chapman, was on the DL. With one out, Betances gave up a 2-run homer to Victor Martinez—a line shot that just cleared the wall in right. The next batter was shortstop Niko Goodrum, 26, and earning $500k, which is a lot for you and me, but which is only about twice the Major League minimum, and of course 1/10 what Betances is making. Is that a spur for these guys? “Hey, you‘re not 10 times better than me!” Either way, Goodrum clobbered it to right, too, a long, towering shot that snaked just inside the right-field foul pole for the 8-7 Tigers lead. 

Now the Tigers turned to their closer, one-time Yankee Shane Greene, earning $1.9 million. And he set them down in order: Gardner, who’s making $11 mil, Hicks at $2.8, and then the big bat, their key off-season acquisition, Giancarlo Stanton, all $25 million of him, who flied out to center. Game, set, match. And the Yankee faithful shuffled out in defeat. 

Glorious. 

The Yankees fell to 8.5 games behind the front-running Boston Red Sox in the American League East, but that's a bit deceiving. It makes it look like they‘re having a so-so year. They actually have the second-best record in the AL. Wait, scratch that. They have the second-best record in the Majors. That’s right. Despite all the injuries they‘ve had, despite the sense of gloom in the Bronx, they’re basically the second-best team in baseball. And then they picked up former NL MVP Andrew McCutchen. And October's around the corner, where anything can happen. 

But we'll always have yesterday.

In the Trump era, you grab joy where you can, and this isn't a bad one for me today. It wasn't just that the Yankees lost, 3-1, it‘s how they lost:

That’s a thing of beauty. Yanks down by 2, get the bases loaded with nobody out ... and then can't get the ball in play: foul out, strike out, strike out. Better, the pitcher who did this to them is Adam Kolarek, who's 29, in only his second MLB season, came in with a 6.00 ERA, and somehow managed to nab the save. His first. In his career. Helluva way to start out, kid.  

The win also gave the Rays their first series victory at Yankee Stadium since 2014, and, at 8-7, they‘re now one of two AL teams that have a winning record against the Baby Bombers. BoSox are 8-5.

If it almost feels over for the Yanks, it’s not. Yes, they‘re an astonishing 10.5 games back of Boston in the AL East, but they still have the second-best record in baseball. How nuts is that? It means that unless the A’s and Mariners can both steamroll past NYY for the two wildcard spots, and they're 3 and 5.5 games back respectively, Yanks are in the postseason again, where almost anything can happen.

But in the meantime: FO, K, K. Mm-wah.

“I confess it: There is some resentment. But it never degenerates into emulousness or envy. No one elsewhere wants to root for a team like the Yankees. The notion is appalling. Could any franchise be more devoid of romance? What has it ever represented but the brute power of money? One can admire the St. Louis Cardinals' magnificent history, or cherish fond memories of the great Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds or Oakland A's teams of the past. But no morally sane soul could delight in that graceless enormity in the Bronx, or its supremacy over smaller markets. It is an intrinsically depraved pleasure, like a taste for bearbaiting. And certainly none of us wants to be anything like Yankees fans — especially after seeing them at close quarters. ...

”Not that the horror is easy to recall clearly. The trauma is too violent. Memory cringes, whines, tries to slink away. One recollects only a kaleidoscopic flux of gruesomely fragmentary impressions, too outlandish to be perfectly accurate, too vivid to be entirely false: nightmarish revenants from the dim haunts of the collective unconscious ... monstrous, abortive shapes emerging from the abysmal murk of evolutionary history ... things pre-hominid, even pre-mammalian ... forms never quite resolving into discrete organisms, spilling over and into one another, making it uncertain where one ends and another begins. ... It really is awful.“

— David Bentley Hart, ”The New York Yankees Are a Moral Abomination," in The New York Times

This was a headline a few days ago on ESPN.com:

It took me a second to realize that Yankees pitcher Luis Severino wasn't chasing the single-season strikeout record (Nolan Ryan, 383, 1973), but the Yankees' single-season strikeout record (Ron Guidry, 248, 1978), which, in 1978, didn't even lead the Majors (J.R. Richard's 303), nor his league (Nolan Ryan's 260). In fact, the all-time Yankees mark simply tied 39-year-old Phil Niekro for third place that year. That's what's being trumpeted. That's the great glory Severino is pursuing. 

This is a headline how? A player is on pace to break a mediocre team record. Baseball Reference lists Guidry's mark as the 186th most strikeouts a pitcher has had in a season. If you remove 19th-century records, as you should, it's still tied for 127th. That's it. That's the mark Severino might break. 

Hell, this season, Severino is ninth in the Majors in strikeouts. Ninth.

Headlines like these are yet another reason people hate the Yankees. No other team gets this treatment. 

Got this from an anonymous reader the other day: 

i stg if you say anything about the yankees again i will hit you with the quadruple roundhouse spinning back fist to the femur, yankees are love, yankees are life. sir dont make me swing

Took me a moment to realize “stg” meant “swear to god.” Initially I thought he was just so filled with rage he couldn't type straight.  

The funny part? It was from an 8-year-old post. This one. Dude, I've said much worse since. Please consult my Yankees Suck posts. Some good stuff in there. 

Jordan Shusterman, a writer over at Cut4.com, has a piece from earlier this month called “Let's appreciate how long Ichiro has been playing professional baseball.” It's mostly timeline, and not bad, although my version would include different historic markers. But I like this one: Shohei Otani was born two years after Ichiro began playing professional baseball with the Orix BlueWave. How about that?

But that's not the best historic marker. This one is.

It's the combo of words and images. Jeter seems to be celebrating with us that he's leaving. It's like, Thank god! 

In reality, Jeter was celebrating because his last at-bat at Yankee Stadium yielded a game-winning single. It was a meaningless game—the Yanks missed the post-season by a big margin that year—so why such excitement? Because it helped secure his legacy and legend. It was another “Derek Jeter moment.” It was all about him. 

But if you put the above on a T-shirt, I'd wear it. It's the only Derek Jeter T-shirt I'd be caught dead in.

From David Schoenfield's ESPN article “The Evil Empire is Back! Why the Yankees being good is great for baseball”:

“The last three or four years had obviously been tough,” he said. “We made the playoffs a couple years ago and lost in the wild-card game to the Astros, but for the Yankees and our fans, it had been a disappointment, and nobody [was] more disappointed than the players inside this room.”

The he in the he said is Brett Gardner, who can drop and give me twenty. The above reads like a Wall Street exec saying the last few years have been rough because they‘ve only made 50 million instead of the 100 they were used to. Oh, and sorry, David, but can’t agree with your subhed. Suggested edit: “Why the Yankees being dangerous again is shitty for baseball.”

From Billy Witz's New York Times' post-mortem on the 2017 Yankees' season-ending loss to the Houston Astros in Game 7 of the ALCS:

It was the second consecutive game in which [Brian] McCann, who was traded by the Yankees to the Astros for a pair of low-level prospects last winter, had delivered a critical run-scoring double.

In a particularly painful twist, the Yankees are paying $5.5 million of McCann’s salary this year — and will do the same next season. The Yankees paid at least 15 players on their postseason roster less than they gave McCann this season.

Count 'em down:

• 2000: Oakland A's, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets
• 2001: Oakland A's, Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks
• 2002: Anaheim Angels
• 2003: Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, Florida Marlins
• 2004: Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox
• 2005: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• 2006: Detroit Tigers
• 2007: Cleveland Indians
• 2008: n/a
• 2009: Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Philadelphia Phillies
• 2010: Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers
• 2011: Detroit Tigers
• 2012: Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers
• 2013: n/a
• 2014: n/a
• 2015: Houston Astros
• 2016: n/a
• 2017: Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros

In terms of the post-season, then, you gotta tip your cap to the Detroit Tigers. They've faced the Yankees three times and eliminated them three times. That's the way to do it, kids.

Astros? Twice and twice.

Angels were the first real Yankee killers of the 20th century, knocking them out in '02 and '05. But then '09. Oh well.

Every other Yankee killer is a one-fer: Diamondbacks, Marlins, BoSox (1-1), Indians (1-1), Rangers.  

(The team you don't want the Yankees to face in the post? The Twins, obviously, who are a woeful 0-5. A's and M's also suck: 0-2.)

Extra points to the D-backs and the Red Sox, for making it so, so painful. Send 'em out, Carey:

Key play: Bird clipped in the 5th. As The Wire‘s Omar said, “Just Bird to me.” 

I can’t lie. I couldn't watch Game 7.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had plans to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum with our friends Vinny and LoLo and we stayed until around 5:00 (gametime), and then we went out for drinks and dinner until around 7:30. I could‘ve watched then. But I didn’t. I didn't even go online. I left my phone off. Like all the way off. The day before a friend, who was a Yankees fan, texted me some snide comment mid-game, and I didn't want to know, so I turned the whole thing off that night and the next night. I didn't want to jinx it.

This is partly the result of what happened Tuesday night. Patricia and I were on our way to dinner before seeing “Ragtime” at the 5th Avenue Theater (full disclosure: it's rare when we get out this much), and beforehand I checked the score on ESPN.com: 4-0, Astros, in the 7th. Great! They'd be up three games to one with one more to win. But then I saw something on Twitter. Something about how someone, Joe Musgrove or someone, was supposed to be the Astros' Andrew Miller and it hadn't happened. I went back to ESPN.com with an awful feeling in my stomach. Yep. It was now 4-3 in the bottom of the 8th, one out, and the Yankees had runners on first and third. Then it was 4-4 in the bottom of the 8th, one out, and the Yankees had runners on first and third. Then it was 6-4, Yankees. Then it was over and the series was tied, 2-2, and the Yankees had momentum. 

All because I'd checked the score on ESPN.com. 

I don't know why baseball fans are like this but some part of me was thinking that. No, not thinking. Feeling. Stupidly feeling. I just had that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. So when the games went back to Houston, with the Yankees up 3-2, I decided not to watch. I didn't want to jinx anything. Last night, when P and I got home, I suggested we watch “Minority Report,” which I hadn't seen since it was released, and which some people feel is a great movie. (It's not.) Before then, Patricia wanted to show me a video of something someone shared on Facebook, something about corgis, and I told her no, not going to look. Couldn't risk it. Couldn't risk even that proximity to social media. Instead the movie. We watched half of it, before I grew tired, got in bed, read a bit of “The Snowman,” fell asleep with Jellybean on my chest. Woke up, fed Jellybean, made coffee, brushed my teeth while listening to NPR, and in the midst of the usual horrid Trump news, they gave us their World Series announcement.

They took their sweet time getting there, but even that was a good sign. If the Yankees had won, after all, that would be the lead. Yankees Yankees Yankees. Instead, they announced that the World Series would begin on Tuesday evening (right...) with the Los Angeles Dodgers representing the National League (OK...) and representing the American League (c'mon already...) ... the Houston Astros, who beat ... 

It was all I could do, at 6 AM in our condo on First Hill in Seattle, not to scream for joy. 

This is what that means. Instead of the New York Yankees winning their 41st pennant (second-best team has 20) and having the opportunity to win their 28th World Series (second-best team has 11), the Houston Astros won their second pennant and have the opportunity to win their first World Series.

Meaning, on this Sunday morning, in this awful Trump era, in this awful year of 2017, there is a little justice in the world.

Thank you, Astros.

Imagine if the Houston Astros hadn't done its job, we'd be getting Yankees vs. Red Sox in the ALCS again. Lord.

Last night the Cleveland Indians didn't do its job and so “for the first time since 2012” (as SI intoned on Twitter), the New York Yankees are going to the ALCS. Yeah, that five-year-long wandering in the wilderness they went through; I don't know how their fans stuck it out.

Overall, it will be the Yankees' eighth ALCS this century. Since 2000, we‘ve had 18 LCSes and the Yankees have been in eight of them. The Indians remain stuck on three. Scratch that: two. This will be Houston’s third LCS this century, and its first in the American League. The team with the most is the Cardinals, who have nine.  

But to Yankee fans, those aren't the numbers that matter. The numbers that matter are 40 and 27. As in pennants and rings. They‘ve been stuck on those since 2009 and want to move on. They want to add to them. Continually. Ad nauseum. And in case you don’t know, the team with the most rings after the Yankees is the Cardinals, who have ... 11. The team with the most pennants after the Yankees is the Giants, who have ... 20. So no one's close. The Yankees have most and want more. 

Last night, watching all of this at the QL, our local bar, with too much drink in me and surrounded by too few people who cared about the game, I thought of the famous slogan from the early 1960s: “Rooting for the New York Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel.” Meaning a powerful, faceless, pointless entity. A machine that kept producing this product on an assembly line. Rah.

I thought of the update while stewing (stewed) at the QL: Rooting for the New York Yankees is like rooting for white people. When I got home I plastered it all over Twitter. I interrupted Yankees fans online celebrations with it. Many didn't get the reference, of course, and thought to educate me by bringing up all the non-white players on the team.

In the remaining LDS, I'm rooting for the Nats (with zero LCS appearances and zero pennants) over the Cubs (last year's feel-good story). Mostly, though, I'm just rooting for Houston. To end it already.

Right now there's some mainstream-media confusion as to who is the underdog (and thus who you should root for) in tonight's winner-take-all American League Division Series matchup between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians. 

Cleveland, you see, went to the World Series last year. They forced a Game 7. They were one measly run from winning it all. And this year they set a modern record by winning 22 straight games. They had the best record in the American League. They's a powerhouse. 

The Yankees, meanwhile, haven't won it all since way back in 2009. (I can barely see back that far.) The team, for once, is not totally made up of high-priced free agents (although it's still got its share of those), but its heart is a couple of young, hungry, powerful players, like 6' 8“ monstrosity Aaron Judge, and 1930s Warner Bros. gangster Gary Sanchez. They've been dubbed the ”Baby Bombers," which is a cute name, and they do cute things. After a player hits a homerun, for example, the others, rather than congratulate him, conduct a mock press conference in the dugout. And they've turned a hapless Tampa Bay Ray fan's sign of disapproval, a thumbs down gesture after a Todd Frazier homerun, into a talisman. Now when they do good things, they use this gesture with each other. Shows that fan of that team that never won anything.

So, for some in the media, the Yankees are not completely the Goliath here. If you squint, like until your eyes are completley shut, they're a little bit of David. 

In this frame of reference, both teams are due. The Yankees have won 27 World Series championships throughout their storied career, which is an average of one every 4.15 years. And it's been eight years now, nearly twice that. Their fans are bereft. 

The Indians have won two World Series championships throughout their less-than-storied career, which is an average of one every 56 years. They last won it all in 1948, which is longer than 56 years. But is it twice that? No. So whose fans are truly bereft? 

A few more stats to continue the discussion. I posted these on Facebook yesterday.

Before baseball's expansion era began, meaning from 1903 to 1960, the New York Yankees won 25 pennants. That's 44% of all possible pennants they could've won during this period. The second-best AL team (the Athletics) won 8 pennants—or 14%. 

The Cleveland Indians won 3.

Once the expansion era began, and the number of league rivals grew from eight to 10 to 12 to 14, and now 15, the Yankees couldn't dominate the way they once did—but they still dominated. Since '61, they've won 15 pennants. That's 27% of all possible pennants they could've won during this period.
The second-best AL team during this era (Orioles, BoSox, A's) won 6 pennants—or 11%. 

The Cleveland Indians won 3.

But here's the best measure of the success, or not, of the two teams. Warning: There's some math involved.  

In both eras, i.e., from 1903 to today, the Yankees, with their 27 rings, have won 24% of all available World Series titles, while the Indians, with their two, have won 1.8%. So for the Yankees to reach the Indians' current percentage level of titles to opportunties, i.e., that 1.8%, they need to not win a World Series title for a while. How long? 

The answer is approximately 1,350 years. Until the year 3366. 

Essentially that's how much misery the Yankees and their fans have to make up in order to to reach the current misery-level index of the Cleveland Indians and their fans. Just a thousand years. And change. 

That's also my answer as to when I might begin to root for them. If the Yankees haven't won another World Series title by the year 3366, I'll consider it. I might throw them a bone. Until then, nah. Until then, I have another hand gesture for the Baby Bombers and their fans. It's a little less polite than the one used in Tampa Bay.

The other day I was looking through an old notebook from a trip Patricia and I took to Prague, Vienna, etc., in the summer of 2014, and came across this conversation we had the morning after we arrived in Salzburg, Austria. It wasn't about Mozart:

Me: Wow. Weirdest dream last night.
She: What about?
Me: OK, this will sound silly, but the Yankees were in the postseason against the Oakland A's. They'd won the first two games and were ahead in the third game, 22-6, and it was just awful. This awful feeling.
She: (Laughs) My nightmares are always about monsters and mean people.
Me: (Pause) So are mine.

Last night, in the one-game American League wildcard playoff, the Twins took a 3-0 lead against the Yankees in the top of the 1st, Yanks tied it in the bottom of the 1st, and went ahead for good in the bottom of the 2nd. The rest played out as normal. The Twins knocked out the Yankees starting pitcher sooner than any Yankees starting pitcher has ever been knocked out in the post-season, and they lost the game, 8-4. And the shocking thing was how unshocking it all was. Twins go up 3-0 and the thought was, “So how are they going to blow it?” I could tell from the player's faces on the bench. They weren't loose; they weren't having fun; they didn't have fire in the belly. They were tight. That team needs some Eric Hosmers or Sal Perezes or Tino Martinezes on it. The guys that whoop it up or burn. Or both.