An Abysmal Performance as The Yankees Lose in 12 to the Guardians

All I can say is I hope you appreciate the effort I put into this FREE newsletter because the Yankees are doing the impossible - they are making me hate baseball. This loss to the Guardians just about sucked the life out of me, and I’m guessing at least a few of you felt the same way. Lets get to it.

Aug. 20: Guardians 9, Yankees 5 (12)

Folks, my patience with this team have just about run out. It has become so utterly unenjoyable to watch the Yankees play that this newsletter has become not the hobby or passion project that it was always intended to be, but a job, and that’s not good.

This has not been fun. I try to give you a great product every day, but honestly, it has become laborious to do this because it requires me to watch this team play, and I just don’t have much more willingness to do that.

Tuesday night, the Yankees played so terribly in every possible way, there were teams who they watched play Sunday at the Little League World Series tournament who would have beaten them. This game was such a comedy of errors, filled with such flat out disgusting baseball, just an eye-popping shit show, that it makes you shake your head in wonderment that the Yankees, now losers of three in a row, are somehow 20 games over .500.

Wow, this was something else, four hours and five minutes of sheer aggravation, almost all of it a direct result of the Yankees being unable to execute the most fundamental of baseball skills.

“Especially when you’re not driving in a ton of runs and killing the ball, you gotta do everything perfect,” said the delusional dipshit manager, Aaron Boone. “They made a couple more plays. When you’re in a tight game like that, you gotta pull those games out.”

This is the first time all season where I’m sitting here, and I really don’t know how to encapsulate everything that happened in this game. Really, it’s an overwhelming undertaking, but here goes.

Here are my observations:

➤ Luis Gil was horrible, and then he got hurt, and his exit began a long, long, long night for the bullpen which had to get 27 outs and is now trashed for Wednesday night. Gil left with a back injury, and ya know what, it might be for the best if he’s done for the year. He has not been good for quite a while, his great start to the season is a long ago memory, and with him having thrown four times more innings than he had thrown in his entire career, it might be prudent to just shut him down. During three awful innings he gave up three runs on three hits and six walks as he had command of nothing, and he hasn’t had command at all in the bulk of his recent starts. Is he really a guy you can trust to make a postseason start?

➤ Things started well on offense after two horrible games against the Tigers when they scored two runs total. In the top of the first, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge hit back-to-back solo homers for a quick 2-0 lead against Guardians starter Matthew Boyd who was making just his second MLB start since returning from Tommy John surgery. I wish I had turned the game off right there.

➤ Gil gave up a run each in the second, third and fourth to lose the lead. The first run scored when DJ LeMahieu - who may have played the worst game of his career - fielded a grounder with a runner at third, hesitated before throwing home, and the runner barely beat the tag. Another run came on a solo homer by No. 9 hitter Bryan Rocchio. It was the 19th home run the Yankees have allowed to an opposing team’s No. 9 hitter this season, most in MLB and five more than any other team has.

➤ The Yankees tied it at 3-3 in the fourth when Jose Trevino walked and scored from first on a double by Anthony Volpe, a stunning development since he was 4-for-43 going into the at bat. Volpe then stole third with no outs so with three chances to take the lead, LeMahieu and Oswald Peraza struck out and Gleyber Torres grounded out. Unbelievable, but oh my, that was just the beginning of the misery for the offense. For the next seven innings it was crickets for the Yankees and by the end of the night they were 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position. Between that Volpe hit and Alex Verdugo’s sixth putrid at bat which ended the game, there was so much that happened, I’m sure I’m forgetting some of it, which isn’t a bad thing for my sanity, but I’ll try to recap it all.

➤ Top of the fifth inning: Tim Hill got the first two outs, then allowed two singles and a walk to load the bases before be finally got Steven Kwan to line out to center.

➤ Top of the sixth: Mark Leiter struck out Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor, but could he get his first 1-2-3 inning as a Yankee? Nope. Walked the next guy, then tried to pick him off and that didn’t go well. It wasn’t a great throw, but it was also a play LeMahieu should have made as it went off his glove. Had he just caught the ball, the runner was out by a mile. Instead, he wound up at third and Leiter was lucky to escape when he got a pop out to end it.

➤ Bottom of the sixth: Example No. 5,234 why Boone is a lousy in-game manager. Trevino set a new single-game career high by walking for the third time, and then Volpe singled, giving him his first multi-hit game since Aug. 3. With side-arming righty Nick Sandlin on the mound, it was a clear-cut situation to pinch hit lefty Ben Rice for LeMahieu who continues to be one of the worst batters in MLB. Nope. And DJ predictably grounded into a soul-crushing, inning-ending double play. Boone is just terrible. I’ll never change my mind on that. Cleveland’s Stephen Vogt is a first-year manager and he ran laps around Boone.

➤ Bottom of the eighth: Giancarlo Stanton, who is in one of his typical dead zone slumps, walked, so Boone sent Trent Grisham into pinch run, meaning Grisham was now in the game, meaning trouble. He should have advanced to second when a pitch got away from the catcher, but he stayed put, and that certainly mattered moments later. Pinch-hitter Austin Wells hit a rocket off the center-field wall that, had it gone two more feet, would have been a two-run homer. Nope. Off the wall, and Grisham got his useless ass thrown out at the plate. Third base coach Luis Rojas briefly put up the stop sign but then waved him home and Grisham said that caused him to hesitate when he reached third and that’s all it took. The Guardians completed a great relay and catcher Bo Naylor made a great tag to prevent the go-ahead run from scoring. Of course, had Grisham been alert and moved up on the passed ball, he would have scored standing up. The little things always kill the Yankees because they’re so flawed in the basic fundamentals.

➤ Top of the ninth: Hey, Clay Holmes didn’t suck. He struck out the side, but tapping the brakes a little, of course it wasn’t 1-2-3 because he also walked a guy.

➤ Bottom of the 9th: Emmanuel Clase didn’t suck, but that was expected because he’s the best closer in the game. And because the Yankees made him throw only nine pitches, now he was available to pitch the 10th which meant there was no way they were scoring.

➤ Top of the 10th: Jake Cousins got burned by an incredible bunt that somehow stayed fair, so the Guardians had men on first and third with no outs. But Cousins got the tough Kwan to strike out, and after intentionally walking Jose Ramirez, he got Josh Naylor to ground into a double play. Great job by Cousins.

➤ Bottom of the 10th: That exciting escape meant nothing because Clase went back out and laughed at the Yankees. He got Soto to ground out and automatic runner Gleyber Torres took third. That took the bat out of Judge’s hands because he was intentionally walked. So that left it up to Grisham and Verdugo and as you might expect, they both failed. All Grisham needed to do was hit a god damn fly ball. Instead he popped up on the infield. Verdugo grounded out, something he does so often, that play should be renamed Verdugoed out.

➤ Top of the 11th: Cousins did another fabulous job to keep the game tied, giving the Yankees another chance to win with a runner start at second to start the 11th.

➤ Bottom of the 11th: Naturally, the Yankees failed. Jesus Christ, why is everything so god damn hard for this team? Wells hit a rocket to right and if it went five feet further, it was game over. Instead, Daniel Schneemann made a great catch as automatic runner Verdugo took third, where, of course, he stayed. The Guardians intentionally walked Volpe because they knew a guy hitting less than .100 over the last two weeks was still more dangerous than the next batter LeMahieu. Easy decision, and it was not shocking when LeMahieu struck out, and then Oswaldo Cabrera flied out to deep center and yet another chance to win died.

➤ Top of the 12th: Tim Mayza and Michael Tonkin, the last two pitchers available, combined to allow six runs on five hits and two walks, with some laughable defense mixed in from Soto, LeMahieu, Tonkin, Cabrera and Verdugo contributing to the meltdown as well. Words can’t describe how brutal this 20 or so minutes were.

➤ Bottom of the 12th: Just when they needed it most - down six runs and the stadium three-fourths empty with everyone who left booing on their way out - Judge hit a two-run double, the Yankees only hit with runners in scoring position all night. Gotta love those meaningless garbage runs.

➤ LeMahieu and Verdugo are a combined 5-for-77 (.065) in the last seven games. They’ve hit 11 balls out of the infield in that time. And yet they play just about every day because Boone loves their at bats and he’s sure they’ve both got it in them to get going. For the season LeMahieu is hitting .189 with a .512 OPS. The lowest qualified OPS in MLB is .573 by KeBryan Hayes of the Pirates. If LeMahieu had enough at bats to qualify, he would rank dead last.

➤ The Yankees pitchers issued 14 walks, their most in a game since 1993.

➤ The Guardians were 7-for-24 with runners in scoring position, and much of that came in the 12th, so they weren’t exactly great, either. There were a combined 32 men left on base, 16 pitchers were used, and there were 23 walks which helped make this the longest game by time in the majors this year.

➤ The Yankees are now 4-8 in extra innings this season, and the reason is simple. They can’t get a god damn man home from third base. It’s really as simple as that.

➤ The bottom line: I can’t believe I wasted four hours of my life on this shit. I can’t believe I wasted nearly 1,900 words on this shit.