The Yankees Season Is Over
The Yankees season is over and it ended in just about the worst way a season can end. We were teased with a playoff appearance that much of the year, we thought could be more. In the end, these guys didn’t have the heart.
A big knock on Yankee fans is that we never show up to games but last night that wasn’t the case. The line for bars was a block long and the energy in the stadium for the start of the game was through the roof. Instead of normal corporate types being in the stadium to be seen, we had real Yankee fans, yelling derogatory slurs that you only hear from people that have never left the Bronx. The stage was set, the support was there, but the players weren’t. In a 5 or 7 game series, who knows what happens, but last night the Astros were a better team. The umpire wasn’t helping us, but a championship team fights through that to find a way to win. We could hardly find a hit.
A lot of fans want to be mad at Girardi for last night, but in reality, last night was just a small piece of the larger problem. We wanted Cashman to make a deal at the deadline, but didn’t want to mortgage our future. In today’s game, with more teams staying competitive late in the season, the only way to make a big splash is to give up top prospects and in the long run that will pay off. Maybe David Price wins us a division, but maybe he doesn’t resign with us. After all, he’s expressed disinterest in being a Yankee in the past. Then anything short of a World Series cripples us for years to come. Trade deadline deals that make a big impact are for teams 85% of the way to building a winning team. The Yankees had 150% of the pieces but just too late in their career and with bad contracts that can’t be moved to make room.
That is our problem going forward now. Where does Bird play? The guy is a MLB caliber player and showed it this fall, but with Tex and Arod, theres no where for him to get regular at bats at the big league level. We have Judge ready to come up, but no where to put him day in and day out. Add in our veterans players with the worst contracts getting a year older or being in rehab and it will make for and interesting offseason for the Yankees and their fans.
The year however was not a total bust. No year for the Yankees is a success without a World Series and season is no exception, but this team did overachieve. We shouldn’t have been anywhere near the playoffs, but a strong start put us in a position to weather a collapse to see the post season for the first time since 2012. While the end result sucked, the build up to the game was exciting and gave fans a taste of whats to come with this next generation getting a shot on the big stage.
I’ll do a full team review at the end of the season but for now I want to thank all the Yankee Stoolies who I’ve met at games this year. We were underrepresented for a long time but this year we kicked off Barstool At The Ballpark with the largest Barstool event of the year and we will look to do more next year.
PS: I am so happy I wasn’t the face of the loss on TV like the guy at the top. May have ended it all right there.