HAL'S SEARCH FOR YANKEE MANAGER CONTINUES

Kathy Willens/AP Photo

The first weekend without baseball.....and it sucks. I am ready for some hot stove and moves to be made so feel free to announce Brian Cashman's new contract anytime now. Then maybe we can finally get this new Yankee manager signed too and get the 2018 Yankee team in motion. The sooner these things happen the faster baseball officially comes back....right?

Photo: Gabe Kapler / Getty Images

Well, it's wishful thinking anyway. The field of Yankee managerial candidates dropped by a few in the past week:

• The guy I thought was one of the top favorites for the gig, Joe Espada has a new job as third base and bench coach for the World Champion Houston Astros.

• Former LA Dodgers director of player development, Gabe Kapler is now the new manager for the Philadephia Phillies

• Another former bench coach and World Series Champion, Dave Martinez says Goodbye to the Chicago Cubs and heads to Washington as the new Nationals manager.

So who is still in the running? Well, new rumors are swirling after a veteran major league scout talked to NJ.com and said he thinks that Brad Ausmus is going to be Cashman's next choice despite all of the predictions of some saying the Yankees will hire a young, analytical guy that Cashman has close connections to.

This scout believes the Yankees will hire a guy with major league experience with another team and has "thick skin." Sounds like this scout likes a guy that can coddle and kick a guy in the pants if needed....and he thinks Ausmus is that guy.

On paper, Ausmus may not look like the ideal candidate to replace Joe Girardi. After all, Girardi had a 910-710 record as Yankees manager and won a pennant and won a World series title. Ausmus on the other hand managed the Detroit Tigers from 2014-2017 posting a 314-322 record and 2015 and 2017 he finished with losing seasons. How could that possibly translate to a good candidate to replace Girardi?

Honestly, I think Ausmus wasn't set up for success in Detroit and Peter Gammons agrees, you can read that HERE. Ausmus had an aging roster that was inconsistent and a subpar farm system. He simply didn't have the right team to work with yet he was expected to win. Dave Dombrowski should share some of the brunt of the failures here. He was in charge of giving Ausmus the tools to help him win and he simply didn't do it. Gammon's quote of  "Dombrowski has long viewed his role not as trades and acquisitions, but organizational-building" is an eye-opening account of what he and perhaps other outsiders perceive what his role was in the Tigers organization. I don't care how much organizational-building" you do....if you don't have the right people you aren't growing at all. The GM did not give his manager the tools he needed to do his job which is especially hard to ignore when Ausmus had no previous managerial experience.

Photo: NJ.com

I don't foresee that happening in New York. Cashman has been very clear on his expectations and how he plans to accomplish them and he has followed through on them. He has a very different approach and maybe Ausmus is the guy for the job. One MLB scout thinks so and Ausmus is certainly trending in the news so maybe the Yankees are interested?

Who knows if there is any truth to Ausmus and his connection to the Yankees but as the pool of candidates get smaller the rumors become harder to ignore.

Would you want to hire Ausmus and give him a chance here? Tell us why or why not.



--Jeana Bellezza

BYB Managing Editor 
Follow me on Twitter: @NYPrincessJ

THE STANDINGS ARE WRONG, THE RED SOX ARE LOSERS

I feel bad for the Red Sox. They have gone from the chicken and beer scandal to making racial statements about how Masahiro Tanaka should't have a translator and needs to learn "baseball language" to cheaters and disgracing the game. They got caught with their hand in the baseball cookie jar again. This team is a PR nightmare.

I'm a blunt girl. I call it like I see it and I don't mince words. From now on I will no longer associate the Red Sox and Yankees as one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. Instead, I will associate it as a team that disgraced the game and does not value integrity and the Yankees. The Yankees are by no means perfect and have had their own indiscretions (a.k.a Alex Rodriguez) but not like this.

So now we all know that the Red Sox cheated. They stole signs and THIS is how they did it. To be clear, my beef here is with using technology to steal signs. Granted, stealing signs has been a part of baseball for a long time and it is an art. I'm okay with that. If there is a runner on second base and the catcher doesn’t hide his signs well enough and the runner figures it out then that's on the catcher. If the third base coach doesn’t change his signs and someone in the dugout picks up on it, then blame the coach. That's HIS fault the other team figured it out but when sign-stealing goes high tech and team personnel (not players) get involved that is poor sportsmanship and disgraceful. It sends a bad message to fans, the league and worst of all young impressionable kids....which is a whole other topic that I won't even get into.

Photo of: Jon Jochim

And if using technology to gain an unfair advantage isn't enough for you to top it all off, Red Sox personnel blatantly decides he is too good to follow league rules. Just by wearing an Apple Watch in the dugout, Red Sox assistant athletic trainer Jon Jochim was in violation of the MLB decree against having a device capable of texting in the dugout. This rule is communicated to all 30 teams before the start of the season and even posted around all of the stadiums for internal use. Rules clearly state no electronic devices are allowed in the dugouts except for league issued iPads that have limitations (like the Internet) so teams can review plays thanks to Instant Replay nowadays. Players can't have their phones in the dugouts, or in the tunnel but Jochim is too good for MLB rules. He may not be the Red Sox manager, but he is still a leader in that organization.....and a poor one at that.

Since the series Brian Cashman filed a detailed complaint with the commissioner's office and Rob Manfred is reportedly investigating. He also held a press conference at Fenway Park (shocker!) on it that you can find HERE and unsurprisingly he is remaining neutral. The Red Sox made a weak attempt to defend themselves by filing their own complaint against the Yankees on Tuesday claiming that YES Network uses a camera to steal signs and relay that information for the Yankees to use. There is no evidence to support this so it makes the Red Sox look even more pathetic.

So now that the Red Sox have been caught red handed they should suffer some sort of consequence but what exactly? Based on Manfred's interview anything is possible but I have a hard time believing that they would strip the Red Sox of a division title if they got it (please no) or even wins. I guess MLB could give them a big fine or take away a draft pick or two. No matter what though, I can't imagine the punishment fitting the crime.

It's sad that the Red Sox have to cheat to be competitive. They can't just play the game the right way....with integrity. It's sad that leadership ALLOWS scandals to surround the Red Sox and it stems from two people. First, it comes from GM Dave Dombrowski who defended his team as I would expect. "Do I think sign-stealing is wrong? No, I don't. People are trying to win however they can. It’s an edge they are trying to gain. Sometimes your sophistication of signs can make a difference." All fine, but then he started to sound like a whining kid, "this is not new, this has been something that has been going on for 10-12 days. Something like that. Maybe two weeks. The Yankees decide they want to give it today, for whatever reason. I think maybe because it just so happened the commissioner is in town today. I’m not sure there is a direct correlation to that." Oh quit trying to cover it up Dombrowski, you DO think there is correlation to that. You just won't man up to it. That's bad but the bigger criminal here is owner John Henry. This is Henry's team. It's HIS culture he has built with the idea that winning at any cost including cheating is acceptable. They don't love the game. Red Sox leadership needs a lesson on ethics.

I don't care what the AL East standings say. The Red Sox are losers. They may be at the top of the leader board but they had to cheat to get there. They don't have what it takes to win fairly and have lost all credibility. It's sad you have to cheat Dirty Sox.....but you lost the series and you will lose at the end of the season too.



--Jeana Bellezza

BYB Managing Editor 
Follow me on Twitter: @NYPrincessJ

BYB 'Family Member' Merchandise (2017)

CHRIS SALE IN FENWAY PARK? GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

(Aug. 13, 2016 - Source: Rob Foldy/Getty Images North America)

Now that everyone’s had some time to recover from the shock and awe of Boston’s big move for Chris Sale, don’t go all "Felix Lopez" and start dumping your precious pinstripe memorabilia just yet.

Somewhere between the ominous conventional wisdom summed up in the New York Post’s Yankees spent $99M and didn’t do the one thing they needed and the New York Times slightly more nuanced Yankees’ Three-Year Plan: Keep Building, Then Collect, there lies a lot of wiggle room between a Yankee team that doesn’t have much of a chance in a division that now includes Sale, and one that just may surprise and compete sometime between next year and 2019. And no matter which side of the fan’s water glass test you might land – half-full or half-empty -- there’s always the unexpected, and the breaks can go either way for every team.  As for myself, call me crazy, a hopeless optimist or just a flat-out Yankee homer jackass, but even on the subject of Sale there a few warm thoughts to be found on a cold winter day. Check this out...

(July 11, 2016 - Source: Harry How/Getty Images North America)

Neil Greenberg, stat maven extraordinaire of the Washington Post, in a piece entitled Chris Sale is a great addition for the Red Sox. There’s just one problem, points out that Sale is moving from the 21st most hitter-friendly park to the 4th-most hitter friendly park, adding: “Since 2010, hitters produced a fly ball against Sale on 35.4 percent of balls put in play — one of the highest rates among pitchers with at least 750 innings during that span.” 

An accompanying chart of his fly balls at Guaranteed Rate Field overlaying Fenway show a bunch of his routine fly outs and doubles would’ve cleared the Green Monster in Boston for dingers. 

(Oct. 6, 2016 - Source: Jason Miller/Getty Images North America)

He further pointed out how David Price likewise saw his home run rate double and ERA spike dramatically since moving into the cozy confines there.

Is Sale a great addition to their staff? Heck yeah. Do the Yankees still need to bolster their rotation? Unquestionably. But even if you want to bow down to the Sox for their bold move, don’t lay down quite yet. 

(Aug. 15, 2015 - Source: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images North America)

As their GM Dave Dombrowski explained the day the deal was done: “Nothing is guaranteed in life. You don’t even make these moves, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to win by any means, but I think you keep taking a chance and going for it as much as you possibly can and hopefully it works for you some day.”

Or it doesn’t.

Only the Green Monster and the trade deadline know for sure.

 --Barry Millman
BYB Writer
Follow me on Twitter:  @nyyankeefanfore