September 7, 2024

105 thoughts on “Yankees (54-34) vs. Reds (41-45) Thursday, July 4, 2024, 1:05 PM EDT”

  1. Yay Rice leading off. RAB:
    Next mission is getting Verdugo out of the cleanup spot. He’s hitting .229/.270/.360 since May 1st and .233/.288/.378 over the last 365 days. If the infield wasn’t so bad, we’d be talking about the Yankees needing a new LF at the deadline.

    1. Against the next LHP Rice 1B, Davis DH, Jones LF, Verdugo sits, Gleyber cleanup. Not much you can do with this mediocre/horrible roster unfortunately.

    3. They really do have to stop treating Verdugo like he’s some untouchable guy. The whole POINT of getting him was that he was going to be a fill-in until The Martian was ready, so to treat him like he’s this great player is very annoying.

      As to the trade market, Cash historically doesn’t make moves this early. I am sure he’ll make a move, I just don’t know what he’ll do. The trade market isn’t great right now, not with, like, 24 out of 30 teams still in the playoff hunt.

  2. Question: did someone write something about having to bring Dominguez UP after his previous injury before you could officially put him back in MiL? Does that mean that this injury counts against service time?

  3. My only hope is that at the end of another sad end to the season Hal finally jettisons CashBoone. Each loss brings me closer to my dream because they are not going to win a WS with these two guys running the show.

    Happy Independence Day to the greatest country ever created. (I didn’t say perfect but definitely the greatest. Muhammad Ali wasn’t undefeated.)

  4. Kirschner Since becoming the team’s leadoff hitter, no regular Yankee has a worse OBP than Anthony Volpe. No leadoff hitter is generating softer contact.
    He’s a contact hitter who doesn’t have elite contact skills. On a faulty approach that needs to change.

    Our idiot manager said he wanted to shake the lineup a bit today. Doesn’t mean Volpe won’t go back but he’s liked Rice’s ABs.

    And if as he said last night he’s trusting his coaches that’s a big indictment of Boone and Rowland. If you have a good approach and you’re just not getting hits and walks that’s on you but if your plan and approach suck there’s plenty of blame to go around.

    1. Yeah, exactly, like I’ve been saying with LeMahieu lately, I’ve been impressed by his hard hit balls, even if they’re outs. Volpe, meanwhile, has been making very SOFT contact, suggesting he isn’t actually making a plan like he says he is.

    2. You KNOW he’s liked Rice’s at bats. You know it because he’s already started benching him after particularly good games. Boone has no higher sign of admiration.

    3. Or they’ve given him a plan that’s not the kind of plan his abilities let him execute. Also possible, and also something we’ve seen.

  5. All those DPs random or an inability to recognize pitches you need to lay off of in certain situations? Yankees 83, San Diego 79, Toronto 71.

    1. More guys on base = more double plays. Especially if the guys on base don’t steal.
      Especially if the batters hit hard hit ground balls and don’t run well.
      Etc

  6. Stroman clearly doesn’t have it at all, so I’ll be very impressed to see him work through this. I think he actually CAN, unlike, say, Rodon, who would be toast if his stuff wasn’t there.

  9. The more I think about it, the more irritated I am at them platooning Rice. I mean, what the fuck, dudes? Your team is a piece of shit, and you’re platooning the one exciting young player you have!?

  10. I don’t think it is any coincidence that when the Yankees were leading the Majors in first inning runs scored, they were winning a lot. And now…they’re not, and they’re, well, you know, not.

  15. August 1st the Yankees are behind/ahead of the townies?
    September 1st the Yankees are a- fighting for the division lead; b in the thick of the wild card race; c need a miracle to make the WC.
    Baseball Reference gets the last laugh.

  16. Subtract Soto and Judge and the Yankees are an expansion team featuring Volpe as their best prospect and Gleyber as the semi washed up star.

    1. At this point, maybe Rice.

      Well, I presume we’re not counting players currently on the IL.

  20. Montas can throw five different pitches when he’s not injured for the entire duration your brilliant gm picks him up for.

    Impressive!

  22. Expansion Yankees hitless thru nine and no one bats an eyelash. But at least they’re all sticking to the approach and following the plan.

  24. The Expansion Yankees have been unlucky because they faced hot Atlanta, Boston and Mets teams as well as a Cincy team that had lost 6 straight series and was due.

  27. What a fucking weird ass schedule, by the way, that after this series, the Yankees play the Red Sox, then the Rays, then the Orioles, then the Rays, then the Red Sox (with the Mets mixed in there for two games). It reads like someone forgot to balance out the schedule, and had to quickly cram in a bunch of AL East games.

    1. i’m no kenneth long but on that closeup it seems like there’s some extra motion in his front leg that can be simplified?

      or he’s just zooming right through the torres character arc.

  36. Blake is a genius. Rowson is a genius. Boone is one of the top 5 managers in baseball. And Cashman made this all happen. He’s a far better GM than we complaining Expansion Yankee fans deserve.

  37. Stroman hasn’t had it all day. Once he walked Elly, he should have been pulled. Boone was just playing with fire at that point.

    I know he didn’t have his best stuff, but fuck, Stroman, why the fuck DON’T you have your best stuff? What KEEPS you from having good stuff on any given day? With the rest of the rotation in shambles, you can’t afford to NOT have your best stuff!

    1. Yeah, he clearly was off today. They should have just thanked him for the innings he DID give him, and stop trying to push their luck. Instead, they allowed him to blow the game over.

      Of course, once the game was a guaranteed loss, THEN their hitters get a bit loose. It’s such a fucking joke.

    1. i really don’t blame the kids. it’s the useless people between them and soto/judge that have been the problem.

  42. This team is like an illustration of platitudes.

    A. “When you hit like crazy and allow almost no runs, you’ll win a lot.”

    B. “If you have no pitching and no hitting, you’re going to lose.”

    The only odd thing is that A and B are the same team, in the same 1/2 season. With limited roster turn-over. Largely the same players.

  43. I just can’t get over how pathetic Volpe is. They played the infield in, like morons, and the only thing that you could fuck the Yankees is if Volpe hit a weak ground ball and…well, you know.

  44. I actually like Tim Hill a bit. Jake Cousins, though, is just garbage, and I have no idea why Boone thinks he is anything.

    The hilarious thing is that the Yankees could improve the team just by not using the absolutely shittiest relievers possible.

  46. Imagine entering the game with two outs in the 7th inning, with runners on first and second, and you walk the first batter you face. Then give up a bases-clearing triple. I mean, your keycard shouldn’t work at the team facility the next day, right?

  47. Message to the front office: don’t panic. Just a little bump in the road. Nothing’s really going wrong. The fans are amateurs, of course they don’t get it. Chicken-little leaguers. It’s all just SSS. The team is fine, just fine. Just wait it out. For a decade or so, or at least until Judge won’t be part of any winning that may happen after you retire or die (since you can’t be fired). Don’t actually take action. Stay cool.

    1. I think the strategy of plucking out dudes with live arms and seeing what Blake can do with them is a smart one. The problem is that they just give him such shitty options. That he has been able to make Tonkin and Weaver studs (and Hill has looked much better as a Yankee) is already super impressive, why do you keep straining the guy’s abilities by giving him guys like Cousins and Bickford?

      And, of course, why in the world is Caleb Ferguson still on this team!?

    2. Really, the key should be: X amount of guys Blake can tinker with, but have them there to ACCENTUATE the already talented guys in the bullpen. Tonkin, for instance, was able to be developed because they had other guys who were doing well.

      Now, they have Tonkin and Weaver, and that’s it. So the Jake Cousins of the world have to actually pitch, and even if Blake CAN unlock something in Cousins, it’s not going to be right away.

  51. Marlins third base coach seemingly had an aneurysm, sending home the possible winning run from second on a single when there was no way he was scoring, and he was thrown out by a mile. So instead of one out, runners on the corners, a win a sac fly away, it was a runner on second with two outs, and the Red Sox got out of it to head to the 10th for their inevitable extra innings victory.

  55. The Astros win again. Like ships passing in the night, one day this season we’ll wake up and see them with a better record than the Yankees.

    1. That’s like the worst.
      Really the worst. Just awful.
      And it so is going to happen.

    3. The Red Sox not only going to win, but they are going to win in an excruciatingly painful way, with the Marlins #2 and #3 hitters striking out with the winning run on third base and one out in the 10th inning.

  58. I can’t take this kind of move anymore. I have nothing personally against J.D. Davis, but he should be vaporized.
    Does Cashman really think that you can just pick up also-rans right and left and a bunch of them really are going to turn into studs?
    You actually have to go out there and get players who are actually good. And you may have to give something up to get them. That’s how this works, you dumbass.

    1. The other teams have to actually be willing to trade you their good players, and with the entire National League basically in playoff contention right now, that isn’t happening.

  62. Time to stop watching and move on to list making of the has-beens that cashman picked up hoping to look like a genius but failed. Vernon Wells, hafner, youkilis, andruw Jones, etc.
    then lists of pitchers he thought could help but stunk
    Kevin Brown, Jared Wright, Sonny gray, Montas, kei igawa, etc
    Then we create our own playoffs to determine the eventual winner of the worst move he ever made.

    I’m betting no GM in the history of the game has wasted as much $ on crap as Cashman. And yet he’s still here. Wasting the best years of the best player we’ve seen in years.

  63. The Red Sox are interesting, in that they’re not that good, except that none of their guys fucking SUCK, so any one of them could get a hit in a big spot, while the Yankees are just three guys who can get a hit PERIOD.

    1. Just play Wells and Rice every day. This isn’t hard, except for CashBoone that is. No more Volpe leading off too, not with his 687 OPS.

  64. An underrated good thing about early in the season was that the roster was full, and so there was no room for Boone to make decisions. He just had the same guys every game, and that worked. As soon as he has the chance to make moves each game, he WILL make the shittiest move each time.

    1. To be fair, I made that point (and you agreed) about a month ago. After the 2nd or 3rd game after the sudden shift from WINNING to LOSING. It was evident THAT QUICKLY.
      (No, TRUMP doesn’t own allcaps.)

      UPD: “a month ago”<–or "forever ago". I can't tell the difference anymore!

  65. I was out for the second half, catching up on the 5th.

    Kay was surprised the Reds infield was in up 3 saying it was something about their best relievers not being available without mentioning that it was probably because Volpe is not good at hitting.

    Paul mentioned that with the infield in you have to see if the ball goes through the infield. Girardi had said the same thing last week. Our manager has no such restrictions.

    Paul thought if it came down to a battle of the pens, we’d win. Hah!

    2. So opposing teams have done a deep dive after he had a nice streak, and now he’s awful at the plate and no adjustments needed from him until the season is over. What arrogance.

    4. Yeah, I don’t get that at all. What happened to “constantly making adjustments”? Wasn’t Volpe’s big thing that he came to each level, found the adjustment, and prospered?
      Who says “I’m not going to make adjustments?!”

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