I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

Is April 11th too early to start questioning the moves the Yankees made in the off-season? If not, is three games too soon to send mixed signals to a player who should be an integral part of your season? Does anyone really need a day off by Game 4?

While the Yankees were impressive over the weekend, taking 2 of 3 from the rival Red Sox, the opening week of the season provides no respite. Ahead of tonight's game against Toronto, manager Aaron Boone released the following lineup:

Worth noting are two items highlighted in red. The first has D.J. LeMahieu leading off, supplanting this weekend's lead-off hitter, Josh Donaldson. It was an interesting choice, using the power-hitting Donaldson as a lead-off batter. LeMahieu, on the other hand, has been used primarily as the #1 batter in the lineup so that makes sense. That said, does Donaldson need a day off already, against his former team, no less?

More puzzling, perhaps, is the insertion of utility-man Marwin Gonzalez at shortstop. Gonzalez played well in the spring, and certainly deserves an opportunity to play. Unfortunately, Gonzalez sees the field at the direct expense of the new Yankees shortstop, Isiah Kiner-Falefa. 

Perhaps I'm reading into this too much, but a 3-game sample size is a bit small to be sending a vote of no-confidence to your (ostensibly) starting shortstop. Kiner-Falefa wasn't great against Boston, managing only a single hit in 11 at-bats. But that's hardly worth a trip to the bench in Week 1 of a very long baseball season.

Back to Donaldson. Day off or otherwise, with Donaldson out of the lineup, it underscores the very basic problem with the makeup of the 2022 Yankees: they have lots of guys at DH. Whether it's Stanton, an adventure in the outfield, or LeMahieu, a man without a position, or Donaldson, a 3B by trade but not necessarily in practice, Boone must play a daily game of musical chairs with his lineup. 

One vitally important note about that practice, that even the most novice fantasy baseball players can tell you: if you have a guy who isn't in the lineup every day, there's probably a better player somewhere else who could take his place. (I don't see Juan Soto sitting out too many games for Yadiel Hernandez.) While it affords Boone some flexibility to have super-subs like LeMaheiu and Gonzalez to deploy on a nightly basis, it also means that someone else is NOT going to play. On certain nights, with Stanton in the outfield, or with Kiner-Falefa out of the lineup, the Yankee defense may suffer. 

Baseball is great because over the course of 162 games, any and all conjectures will either be borne out or disproven. Statistics will ultimately write the story: games played, runs produced, games won. Yet even then, the post-season awaits those teams good enough to qualify. And as is often the case, a team built to withstand 162 games -- malleable lineups, with subs available up and down -- is not necessarily the team built to win a short playoff series. But we'll have to wait until October before we start complaining about that.

The Rocket Man Fizzles Out

"Brian McNamee? Um, who?"

To almost no one's surprise, the 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame induction class was announced and Roger Clemens wasn't on the list. Along with Barry Bonds, Clemens has served as the poster-boy for the Steroid Era in baseball. Neither superstar had been able to crack the 75% barrier over the past 10 years, and with this last ballot, both fall short.

Much has been written over the years about Clemens, Bonds, steroids and the Hall. But this year, their last year of eligibility, has seen a slew of articles lamenting other writers' collective stance on accused steroid users. One even wrote that it would be a failure of the Hall of Fame if Bonds wasn't inducted.

But I'm not here to talk about Bonds. This is a Clemens story. Specifically, a story about how the voters got it right. That while Roger Clemens was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball in the late '80s, by 1996 his skills had diminished.

In order to put everything into perspective, one first needs to understand just how dominant Clemens was in his prime. Here are some of the mind-blowing stats Clemens put up between 1986 and 1992:

• Three Cy Young awards
• 2.66 ERA
• 1.09 WHIP
• 136-63 record (.683 win %)
• Averaged 257 IP and 239 K's
• Led the AL in ERA four times
• Led the AL in K's twice

But starting in 1993, the Rocket began to fade. To be clear: this wasn't a blip or an aberration. This was a steady and consistent decline from the level of excellence he'd established. From' 93 to '96, Clemens was no longer the best pitcher in baseball:

• ERA jumped more than a full run to 3.77
• WHIP rose to 1.29
• Two losing seasons, and a record of 40-39
• Averaged only 186 IP, over a 70-inning drop

By the end of the '96 season, fans were wondering if Clemens had pitched his last game in Boston. He had. But then a funny thing happened. Roger Clemens, age 31 and trending downward, got better. And not just a little better.

In his two seasons in Toronto, Clemens was even more dominant than he was in Boston. Back-to-back Cy Young awards. Leading the league in Wins, ERA and strikeouts. Almost 500 innings pitched in just two seasons. It was a remarkable turnaround. But eventually, we all understood how it had happened. 

Roger Clemens had pitched 13 seasons in the major leagues by 1996, and had won 192 games and three Cy Young awards. Assuming his continued decline, Clemens would have been lucky to hang around for 4 or 5 more seasons and rack up perhaps another 50 wins. It's entirely possible that his resume -- 240 wins, the Cy Youngs, that truly dominant 7-year stretch -- might have been enough to earn a ticket to Cooperstown. But we'll never know. 

Instead, Clemens employed a steroid and PED regimen that turned him into the Barry Bonds of pitching: an other-worldly presence who defied not only age, but explanation. Until the truth came out, and the Baseball Writers decided that cheaters don't belong in the Hall. In the end, Clemens only has himself to blame. 

If It Walks Like a .500 Team...

Frustration in the Bronx

It's June 15th, and the Yankees sit in 4th place in the American League East with a record of 33-32. They are not playing well, having lost 13 of their last 18 games, including a brief, 2-game sweep at the hands of the Phillies. Despite all that, the Yankees haven't given up. At least not in the press:

"I don't think there's any getting used to freakin' losing." -- Aaron Boone

 "Really, the one thing we can do is focus on our work and our preparation, understanding we do have a lot of games ahead of us." -- Domingo German

"We’ve got quite a bit of season left. We do have a little bit of time left to figure that out." -- Brett Gardner 

The Yankees are saying the right things, but is there really "quite a bit of season left" to play? New York has played 65 games in 2021. That represents about 40% of the entire season. How late is too late to turn it around? To quote an old coach from another sport:

“You are what your record says you are.” -- Bill Parcells

And right now, the record says that the Yankees are a .500 team. If the season ended today, not only would the Yankees finish 9 games out in the East behind the Rays, but 4 games out of even the second Wildcard. Is this simply what the 2021 Yankees have to offer? 

In April, it was easy to write off the Yankees' slow start. Only 22 games into the season, there was still plenty of time to right the ship, for the silent bats to awaken. But here we are in June, and the same issues still plague the team: 27th in runs scored, 27th batting with RISP, grounding into the most rally-killing double-plays.

Ever reliant on the home run, even that has failed the team. Though the "Bronx Bombers" are tied for 13th in baseball in homers -- a marked improvement since April -- they are rarely game-changers. Of the 80 home runs the Yanks have hit, 54 of them were solo shots, the 4th-most with the bases empty. Somewhere, Earl Weaver is shaking his head.

Beyond the rah-rah, beyond the speeches and the promises to get grindin', lies a reality that the Yankees need to face: this team, as presently constituted, is not good enough. An over-abundance of strikeout prone, right-handed hitters has doomed the lineup. Injuries and inconsistencies have led to a decline on the mound. The Yankees were 5th in ERA in April, 6th in May. Thus far in June, the Yankees team ERA is 5.38, 22nd in baseball. 

The Yankees also fall on the wrong side of history. Since 1996, the first season with the Wild Card, 85 of the 144 teams that eventually won their division held at least a share of that division lead entering June 1st, nearly 60% of the time. Simply put, good teams that sit atop the division by mid-season tend to stay there. Conversely, there are probably many reasons why a 33-32 team doesn't suddenly climb the standings. Not that it can't happen, but logic tells us otherwise.

If the Yankees continue to slide and miss the playoffs in 2021, what happens next? Will Hal Steinbrenner finally be motivated to make a change in the front office? Will 12 years without a title be a long enough drought for a franchise that spends like a champion? It remains to be seen what happens the rest of the way, and perhaps over a long, cold off-season in the Bronx.

Don't Throw the Boone Out with the Bathwater

Much is being said about the terrible state of the Yankees in 2021, and rightfully so. After a loss to a middling Orioles team last night, the Yankees suffered the indignity of falling into last place in the A.L. East with a record of 9-13. The calendar says that it’s almost May, which by definition would be past the point of dismissing a slow start by saying "It’s only April." As Yogi Berra once said, "It gets late early out there."

While it's perfectly fine to get on the Yankees, I'm also hearing a lot of chatter about their manager, Aaron Boone. Yes, the same Aaron Boone who won 203 games in his first two seasons as the New York manager and has guided the Yankees to the postseason all three years he's been at the helm. Unfortunately for Boone, when a team is slumping as the Yanks are now, the manager is an easy target. But is he the right one?

Of the four major sports, a baseball manager probably has the least effect on a game's outcome. Cumulatively over a 162-game season, even a bad manager will only cost his team a few games versus a "true tactician" pulling the levers. Even the most maligned manager's decisions, typically involving a pitching change (or lack thereof), ultimately come down to whether the player executes or not. Second guessing may be a part of sports, but no manager ever puts a player into a situation where he doesn’t expect that player to succeed.

Bottom line: the players with the NY on their caps and bats in their hands are not getting the job done this season. The Yankees are ranked dead-last in MLB in batting average, a woeful .203 as a team. They are 27th in runs scored, and sport an anemic .650 OPS. Only the Detroit Tigers, who not coincidentally own the worst record in baseball, have had less success at the plate. By contrast, the surprising Red Sox lead the majors in OPS: the team's whopping .795 mark has certainly contributed to their 5th-best record in baseball and first place standing in the East. 

Another popular angle to attack Boone is his seemingly rigid reliance on analytics. Every move he makes, from his lineup to the pitching matchups or to defensive shifts, can be tied back to a mathematical model. Worse, from the average fan's standpoint, is the contention that Boone can't make a decision without checking upstairs first. 

Whether or not Boone is Brian Cashman's puppet is a different debate, but we can all agree that OF COURSE Boone shares Cashman's analytical outlook. That's why he was hired, and why Joe Girardi is managing in Philadelphia. Anyone who thinks that Boone's hypothetical replacement would not follow in lockstep with the Yankee GM is being foolish. (If you'd like to argue that Cashman shouldn't be the GM, well, I've got a lot of columns that support that premise.)

I'm not saying that Boone is the reincarnation of Casey Stengel, or that he doesn't sometimes leave us scratching our heads. It's just that as managers go, Aaron Boone is not the reason the Yankees are 9-13. The players in that lineup are not hitting. Reclamation pitching projects might pitch well for a few innings, but ultimately the bullpen will bear the brunt. To put it another way, don't blame the chef for your meal if the guy buying the groceries keeps shopping on the "Clearance" shelves.