A Wild Wednesday Ends Well in Cleveland

Four straight series victories to open the season for the Yankees. Keep doing that and they’ll win more than 100 games, and yet will apparently still finish behind the unbeaten Rays. I hope everyone opened and enjoyed the first chapter of Hardball Hyperbole on Wednesday. There are still issues with my emails landing in folders other than the inbox, so please remember to check if you don’t see it when it’s supposed to be there the morning after each series, and now on Wednesdays with Hardball Hyperbole.

My dad and I drove over to Cleveland for the Wednesday matinee and we were treated to quite a game, one that neither of us thought they had a chance in hell of winning given the lineup Aaron Boone was trotting out.

I’m not sure you can put together a combination much worse than this one. The outfield consisted of Franchy Cordero in left, Aaron Hicks - who once again made a strong case for being the worst player in MLB - was in center, and Giancarlo Stanton was in right because Aaron Judge was the DH. The range of those three guys is woefully inadequate, and in the case of Hicks, it sure proved detrimental in the first inning.

Boone had Isiah Kiner-Falefa playing third because D.J. LeMahieu not surprisingly has another injury, and naturally, IKF stayed on brand and made a ridiculous error on a routine grounder. Oswaldo Cabrera was at second base because Gleyber Torres didn’t start due to a minor injury, and Kyle Higashioka was behind the plate. Four of these guys - Hicks, Higashioka, Kiner-Falefa and shortstop Anthony Volpe - all ended the day batting .167 or less. Volpe, with his .143 average, was batting leadoff!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Clarke Schmidt was pitching. Folks, if that was the Yankees every day lineup, they’d be lucky to be a .500 team, especially when you factor in that Judge, Stanton and Anthony Rizzo went a combined 1-for-11.

Yet somehow, they found a way to win against a good Guardians team which for my 87-year-old father Sam and I, capped off a great day. Easy, easy drive both there and back; I found parking just a block away from the ballpark; we walked over and had lunch at the Thirsty Parrot (though the chicken fingers weren’t great); and then our seats were great, first base side behind the Yankees dugout about 25 rows up. Oh, and it was sunny and mid-70s on April 12 in Cleveland.

➤ I found this nugget of information hard to believe, but by winning their fourth straight series to start the season, it was just the fourth time in team history that has happened. Four times! Think of all those great teams from the Ruth/Gehrig, DiMaggio/Berra/Mantle, and Jeter/Rivera eras and this team, which I still don’t think is good enough to win the AL East, is just the fourth one to do that. That’s crazy.

➤ When will it ever end? Torres left the Tuesday game with a groin injury, though thankfully he was able to pinch-run Wednesday and seems to be OK. LeMahieu has a quad issue that kept him out Wednesday, so we’ll see where that goes. And Carlos Rodon, trying to recover from his strained elbow, had back tightness so his return might be delayed. Really, it’s kind of laughable at this point how fragile this team is, year after year after year. Every day, I just expect something new to pop up.

➤ I had to laugh when I saw the scroll come across the TV Tuesday night announcing that the Twins placed Joey Gallo on the IL. Thus, he will be spared the uproarious boos that would have rained down on him during the upcoming four-game series at Yankee Stadium. Honestly, I’ll bet he’s not too disappointed to be missing this one.

Here are my observations on the three games against the Giants.

April 10: Guardians 3, Yankees 2

➤ What an irritating game this was. The Yankees came out swinging against Cleveland ace Shane Bieber and the first four men reached base with Stanton driving home two with a ringing double. And then that was it. What followed were 27 Yankee outs with nary a threat as Bieber settled in and ended up going seven innings allowing no more runs and just two more hits. At one point he retired 13 in a row.

➤ Torres was moved to the leadoff spot and he had another terrific night. He opened the game with a double, later drew a walk, and then led off the eighth with what should have been a single but wound up being a triple when Guardians center fielder Miles Straw made a poor decision to dive and the ball got past him. The Yankees were down 3-2 at the time, and then a travesty unfolded. Judge popped out, and weirdly fidgety reliever James Karinchak - who has to be a little less weirdly fidgety this year because of the pitch timer - made Rizzo and Stanton look foolish in striking them out. Tying run at third with no outs and the Yankees couldn’t get him in. That just can’t happen. The Yankees finished 2-for-10 with RISP.

➤ Why is it that Guardians catcher Mike Zunino, a career .201 hitter, turns into Johnny Bench whenever he plays the Yankees? He had a walk and three doubles in this game, one of which drove in the tying run after Domingo German had walked the first two batters in the fourth.

➤ German had no command and recorded just nine outs before being pulled three batters into the fourth. Only two hits allowed, and one of the two runs was unearned because of his own fielding error, but he walked five guys. He threw 87 pitches and only 49 were strikes. Brutal. With their bullpen so depleted, the Yankees can’t keep having starters fail to get through even five innings like German and Schmidt have now done five times combined.

➤ The only positive to talk about was Colten Brewer’s performance. Wow, didn’t see that coming, but after German shit the bed, Brewer cleaned up the bases loaded, no outs mess German left him in the fourth without allowing another run. And then he pitched two more scoreless innings. Unfortunately, Ian Hamilton didn’t follow suit and his two walks in the seventh led to the winning run. In all, the Yankees pitchers walked nine guys. As I said, just an irritating night all around.

BOX SCORE

April 11: Yankees 11, Guardians 2

➤ This was a wonderfully stress free Tuesday night as the Yankees put up season highs for runs and hits (13). Every starter had at least one hit, and most impressive to me is that only one of those was a home run, the three-run bomb by Cordero that blew open a 3-2 game in the third. The Yankees manufactured the bulk of their runs with good situational hitting as they went 6-for-14 with RISP.

➤ The night did not start well for Gerrit Cole as the first three batters got hits and two runs scored. But just like Bieber the night before, Cole survived the first inning with minimal damage and then was great the rest of the way as he pitched six scoreless after that. Cole only struck out three which was odd, but the Guardians are a very good contact team. His ERA is down to 1.40 through his first three starts, ace material all the way. And the Yankees bullpen really needed the break. All Boone had to do was send out Albert Abreu to close out the final two innings, which is exactly the situation to use Albert Abreu in. Anything else is just scary.

➤ This certainly wasn’t the Yankees’ A lineup, either, but the bench came through: Stanton sat out so Willie Calhoun was the DH and he had a tying RBI single in the third; Hicks played left and went 2-for-4 and scored twice; and Cordero, who is hitting himself into not being a bench player, ripped the big home run giving him a team-high 10 RBI.

➤ Volpe did not start for the first time this season, a needed break as he was batting .129. He did play short in the ninth after Torres left the game and Oswaldo Cabrera moved from short to second.

BOX SCORE

April 12: Yankees 4, Guardians 3

➤ Schmidt did not pitch terribly in this game. As usual he didn’t pitch long, just four innings, but outside of the home run he served up to Amed Rosario in the third, he got burned by a lot of soft contact and the incompetence of Hicks in center field. His final line showed three runs on six hits and a walk, but he was better than he was in his first two starts.

➤ If the Yankees needed yet another reason to swallow the $30 million they still owe Hicks and just cut his ass, it came in the first inning. Leadoff hitter Steven Kwan hit a fly ball to short center and Hicks - probably playing the no-power Kwan to too deep - came running in, got there in time, and failed to catch the ball. After Hicks caught a line drive right to him for the first out, Jose Ramirez followed with a cheap bloop double down the left-field line so runners were on second and third. Next, Josh Naylor hit another weak bloop to center, Hicks again came racing in, got there, and did not make the catch. For Christ’s sake, the franchise is worth $7.1 billion. Are you telling me $30 million is too much to rid themselves of this bum?

➤ That second Hicks misplay set off chaos in Cleveland. At first, the ump said Hicks caught the ball, and with Ramirez having left second base thinking it was a hit, which it was, Hicks threw to second for an apparent double play. Ah, not so fast. The Guardians did not challenge the ruling at first, but then a replay on the scoreboard showed clear evidence that Hicks trapped it, so manager Terry Francona challenged it. However, he did so way after the 15-second time limit in which to do so and shouldn’t have been allowed. Instead, the umps got together and granted the challenge which of course sent Boone into a frenzy, rightfully so, and he got ejected. In the end, the umps made the right call in ruling it a hit, but they botched the challenge process because Francona didn’t ask for one in time. It was a complete fiasco that wasted about 10 minutes of our lives, and when it was over, the Yankees were down 2-0 because a run scored on the Naylor hit, and Josh Bell tacked on an RBI single later.

➤ Guardians rookie starter Peyton Battlefield was making his MLB debut and outside of Volpe’s game-starting double, the Yankees couldn’t touch him for four innings. Finally in the fifth, Cabrera and IKF lashed back-to-back one-out singles and Higashioka followed with a rocket off the wall in right center. Here, more chaos. Myles Straw fielded the ball cleanly and hit cutoff man Andres Gimenez behind second. He turned and fired home trying to get Cabrera, but the ball hit second base ump Larry Vanover in the head and ricocheted toward first so both Cabrera and IKF scored. I can’t ever remember seeing something like that.

➤ Cordero ultimately tied the game at 3-3 in the seventh with another homer, his fourth of the year, and the Yankees improbably took the lead in the ninth against outstanding Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase. With one out, Stanton legged out an infield hit to short, which was shocking, and took second on a throwing error by Rosario. And after Cordero whiffed, Cabrera lined a go-ahead two-out single to right. Scoring on Clase was completely unexpected.

➤ In the bottom half, Clay Holmes decided it was time to impersonate Aroldis Chapman. With one out he hit Will Brennan with a 1-2 pitch, got a groundout, and then walked Oscar Gonzalez and Kwan to load the bases. Finally, on a 2-2 pitch he struck out Rosario to end it. Yeah, it was a hell of a game to have attended.

BOX SCORE

➤ April 13, 1978: Shortly after the Yankees raised their 1977 World Series championship banner out in left field at Yankee Stadium with legends Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris doing the honors, all hell broke loose in the home opener.

Reggie Jackson had once said that if he ever played in New York, he’d have a candy bar named after him. Sure enough, during the offseason following his MVP performance in the World Series, Jackson signed a deal with the Curtiss Candy Company to produce the Reggie! bar.

The Yankees promotional staff thought it would be a good idea on Opening Day to hand out Reggie! bars to the fans as they passed through the turnstiles, though thousands didn’t get to taste them on that day.

In the bottom of the first inning, Jackson crushed a three-run homer off White Sox starter Wilbur Wood and within seconds, the field was covered by Reggie! bars launched from the stands. The game was delayed around five minutes so that workers could collect the candy. Adding to the mayhem, several kids hopped onto the field to grab a few for themselves.

The Reggie! bar led to some pretty good digs at Jackson’s legendary ego. “When you open a Reggie! bar it tells you how good it is” was one. Another was, “It’s the only candy bar that tastes like a hot dog.”

One guy who wasn’t too amused by the whole thing was White Sox manager Bob Lemon, the same Lemon who would become the Yankees manager three months later when George Steinbrenner fired Billy Martin for the first time. “I think it was horse shit,” Lemon said following his team’s 4-2 loss. “It must be a great-tasting bar if they throw it instead of eat it.”

Yankees sit in second place, trail the Rays by four games.

➤ Tampa Bay 12-0: The Rays may never lose. They have now won their first 12 games - sweeps over the putrid A’s, Tigers and Nationals, and now three straight over the probable last-place team in the AL East, the Red Sox. It may be the easiest season-opening schedule in the history of MLB, but to their credit - and you know how hard that is for me to say about the Rays - they have pounded all of these bottom feeders like a good team is supposed to. It’s just maddening that not one of these schlubs has been able to win at least one game. The loathsome Rays will probably finish their sweep of Boston Thursday and then they head to Toronto - an actual major league team - for three over the weekend.

➤ Toronto 8-4: The Blue Jays have beaten Detroit in their first two home games of the season and will look for a sweep Thursday. They were down 3-1 in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday, but of course the Tigers blew it. Some pitcher we’ve never heard of loaded the bases with none out, so in came one we have heard of, ex-Yankee Chasen Shreve, and he promptly gave up two sacrifice flies which tied the game. And then in the 10th, the Tigers couldn’t score, and of course the Jays did as George Springer walked it off with a single. I sure hope these shitty teams play like this when they eventually meet the Yankees.

➤ Baltimore 6-6: Speaking of shitty teams, the Orioles took the first two from the awful A’s but lost 8-4 on Wednesday when Oakland scored four runs in the last two innings to break a tie. In their Tuesday win, the Orioles’ top pitching prospect, Grayson Rodriquez, got knocked around pretty good, but he was taken off the hook when his teammates scored five in the seventh to pull out a 12-8 victory. They still have one more to play Thursday and then Baltimore heads to Chicago for three against the White Sox.

 ➤ Boston 5-7: The planets have to align just right - maybe once in a generation - for me to ever root for a team from Boston. I mean it takes extraordinary circumstances and this week qualified as I was hoping they’d find a way to stop the Tampa Bay train. But through Wednesday they have not. They gave it a go Wednesday night when they rallied from a 6-1 deficit to get within 8-7, but they couldn’t finish it. Adam Duvall was confirmed to have fractured his wrist last weekend so he and his .455 average will be inactive for a couple months at least. The Sox host the Angels for four this weekend.

And while the rest of the division keeps beating up on the dregs of MLB, the Yankees come home to play another good team as they open a four-game set against the 8-4 Twins who lead the AL Central. I know, I know, the new balanced schedule will literally balance everything out this year because eventually, the Yankees will play the same lousy teams the rest of the division has faced. But not yet.

The Twins started 4-0, lost four of six, and now have won two straight which gave them a series win over the White Sox. They walked it off Tuesday on Michael Taylor’s RBI single in the 1oth, then got a great pitching performance from ex-Yankee Sonny Gray Wednesday. However, in that game, utility player Kyle Farmer got hit in the face with a pitch so he’ll be out a little while.

Carlos Correa, who re-signed with Minnesota in the offseason, is off to a slow start hitting .182 with no homers and two RBI, meaning he’s due to heat up. They also signed ex-Red Sox catcher Christian Vasquez and he’s hitting .320 with a .433 on-base. Amazingly, Byron Buxton hasn’t gotten hurt yet and he’s hitting .302. One area the Twins lack is power as their 10 home runs are fourth-fewest in MLB.

The scheduled pitching matchups for the four games, all on YES: Thursday, 7:05, Jhony Brito vs. Joe Ryan; Friday, 7:05, Nestor Cortes vs. Tyler Mahle; Saturday, 1:05, German vs. Kenta Maeda; Sunday, 1:35, Cole vs. Pablo Lopez in what should be a dandy. Cole has been great, and Lopez has a 1.35 ERA in three starts.