YANKEES IN THE DUMPSTER WITH NO WAY OUT

Sigh. 

I could just leave it there with the headline telling you the whole story. But that's just it, the story is still being written. And the outlook does not does not have promise. I realize it is a long season, but the dumpster is pretty deep and dark, with no escape hatch. It is like the trash compactor in the 1977 Star Wars movie. Smelly garbage with other scary surprises in-store for this team. Yea, the Yankees are down n the dumpster with no apparent way out.

It is bad when the YES Network took to promoting Jack Curry's newest book, The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever  instead of calling what quickly became another boring Yankee, lifeless game. Part of the problem with this team is that they are living in the past, assuming because they are the Yankees they can be what they were. 1998 was an incredible team with tremendous run support and consistent pitching. This team is just the opposite. They are injury-prone. They don't produce runs in fact their average runs per game for the season is under four and in the last three games it is under two according to Team Rankings. And their pitching both from the bullpen and from the starting rotation is simply not there. 

Despite revamping the training activities for this team, the 2023 Yankees appear to be made of glass again, just as they were over the last few seasons. And then they look to stack the team with sub-par players and it just does not work. "Certain guys have to do certain things on the field in order to be good," said Paul O'Neill during the broadcast. Despite Domingo German's terrific performance in Monday's game, they simply could not close the game out with a victory. Clay Holmes could not do his job, hence, O'Neill's comment. That stuff just did not happen in 1998.

New York entered Tuesday night's game against the Guardians with a 15-15 record and in last place in the AL East. The Yankee ace, Gerrit Cole, aware of his slumping team, knew he was in trouble when Cleveland grabbed an early lead in Tuesday's game, scoring two runs by the third inning. Luckily the bats woke up in the 7th and 8th innings and Michael King did his job to give the Yankees their first win in four days, 4-2 over Cleveland. But I am still not impressed. 

It is interesting to note that Carlos Rodon, their very expensive off season acquisition has yet to throw his first pitch for the 2023 season. Can't say I blame him. Unless he is absolutely perfect, there is no way this guy will want to pitch his first game with a team that cannot score runs. 

"He can't get over the hump of the back," Boone told reporters. "So having other people look at it, he's kind of continued to throw through all of this, but just getting to that place we need to get him to, that hasn't happened. So just trying to continue to get those answers," reported Fox Sports.

So where are we? In the dumpster. Where are we going? To the garbage dump. Anyway to get out of this funk? No, not in the short term. With eight pitchers on the IL, current pitching staff not able to do those "certain things" as O'Neill stated and Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the IL while Aaron Hicks continues his mediocre mindless baseball, this team is going nowhere but down deeper into the abyss. 

Wish I could be more positive, but unfortunately not even Harrison Bader is going to be able to bail this team out at this point. Maybe the Anthony Rizzo Mandalorian bobble head can bring some life into this team. I will let you know when I get there, next Friday. But for now, we suffer all the way to Tampa Bay this weekend. But before that maybe we could pull out a series win against Cleveland just to give us a sliver of hope. 

--Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Senior Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof