That freaking close
With the way the 2018 season ended, the same can be said for the entire decade since the Bombers last championship season.
October 21st, 2004. That was the last time that I felt this type of pain. I was seven and that morning I cried in school over the loss and the pain. That was the last time the Red Sox danced on the Yankees grave and celebrated a postseason series victory. Seeing the Red Sox celebrate in a shower of champagne brings back the flashbacks of the 2004 team and the hopeless feeling of “this can’t be happening.”
And, with the way with the Gleyber Torres being a shoe lace away from extending the rally and the season, the punch to the stomach is just as painful as the scoring onslaught that occurred in 2004.
Since that terrible day in 2004, things have changed. The Red Sox have broke the curse, won two more times since then, and have become an equal to the Bronx Bombers. In the Bronx, the days of the mid-90’s are far behind us. The success of those teams and the teams in the early 2000’s feel like a lifetime away. Yes, the ’09 team did bring the championship champagne back to the Bronx, but that team was only built to win that year and not for the next dynasty.
Sure, over the course of the 2010’s there has been some playoff moments and success like the Greg Bird solo homer, or the Raul Ibanez clutch home runs against Detroit, the Didi homers against Cleveland, or the long playoff run last year, but there has been plenty moments where the bottom dropped from under and we are looking at the trophy being lifted by someone else. Next year will be 10 years since the 2009 team and with it, an entire generation of Yankee fans not having that championship team to look back on. ’09 seems like it was two decades ago with the lack of playoff success and the near misses in the past two seasons the same questions about the championship drought become loud again. This team is a good team, a team that deserves to win 100 games, but it has a long way to go in order for the World Series trophy returns. Looking down the barrel again, the pain of seeing a great opportunity with talent go by the way side, it brings up the question of when will it be our turn again? What will the moves have to be in order to get another World Series ring? This is an organization that has been built on championship or bust since George Steinbrenner bought it and that tradition continues. The 100 wins is a nice token but with the inability to bring home a championship, that’s all the 100 wins are, a worthless token.
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With the way that the game and the series was managed, the questions about Aaron Boone will surface and the decision to move on from Joe Girardi will be brought back up again. Remember, I was one of the biggest critics of Joe Girardi with how he managed the game and the bullpen. Those same criticisms arose with the way Aaron Boone managed the bullpen within the last two games of this series. In particular, why he let Severino come back out for the fourth when he clearly didn’t have it in game three, or why he didn’t have an arm ready to go to when C.C. got in trouble in tonight’s game, and why he went to Zach Britton instead of Betances in the fourth inning with two right handed hitters due up in tonight’s game.
Both Boone and the Red Sox manager Alex Cora are first year managers, but with the moves that Cora made and the deer in the headlights moments that Boone made Cora looked like the seasoned veteran and Boone the rookie. Boone’s comments about C.C. after the game with Sabathia getting a long lease shows that Boone’s gut in the spur of the moment decisions is not there. That isn’t a bad thing, it is his first year and it would be foolish to call on the dogs, but if the same mistakes are made in the future, there will be a real need to address his ability to manage a championship quality team.
And, as frustrating and saddening as it is, all we can do is look toward the future and 2019 team. the number one thing that must be addressed is the ability of this team to hit with runners on base and in scoring position. That is the backbreaking weakness of this team. The managerial decisions from Boone will work themselves out and only Boone can fix those, but Brian Cashman needs to find players who can put the ball in play and hit with runners on base. The Yanks were 4–26 with runners in scoring position in the series and 6–28 in the postseason. That is not how you win championships. This team was built to hit long balls over the fence, but in the postseason, those homers that fly over the fence in the beginning of May or middle of August, don’t show up when you need them. You need to get the big hits in the postseason and those aren’t always the ones that go out of the ballpark. I don’t know how Cashman and the Yankees address that weakness with the way the lineup is constructed toward the future. Although, one player that will get the blunt criticism this year is Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton had a poor postseason in his very first postseason. Stanton’s performance has shades of Alex Rodriguez who couldn’t get it together in the postseason with the 2009 season being the time where he removed all the monkeys from his back. For Stanton, hopefully that time for him will be next year, but who knows.
With that, the new core of the Yankees has endured the worst part of playoff baseball and the agonizing frustration of falling short of the ultimate goal. This year was supposed to be the year where the team used the Game Seven ALCS loss as fuel to win the 28th title. The young guns can hopefully use this disappointment and frustration to create a winning culture and go on the run that leads to a World Series championship.
On the other side, the two leaders on this team, Brett Gardner and C.C. Sabathia have questions about their futures. Gardner has an option for next season and with McCutchen, Frazier, and other prospects the decision to pick up that option on the 35-year-old vet will be an interesting decision. Sabathia doesn’t have a contract, but he does have something left in the tank, and wants to deliver a World Series championship to the Bronx and compete in the pinstripes next season. Both hopefully be a part of this team next year and if both of them have played their last games as Yankees I’d like to say thank you for everything you’ve done in a Yankee uniform I’ve enjoyed watching every minute of your time hear in the Bronx and best of luck in retirement or where ever your career takes you.
Undoubtedly, it will be a long winter waiting for baseball again. This game is a daily soap opera that takes you on an emotional roller coaster and with the way postseason baseball pulls at the heartstrings, there is a hole when it isn’t on television the want grows day by day. As the winter months go along the pain of coming up short will subside and the hopefulness of the next season will come with overwhelming joy. As hard as it is to say goodbye today, I cannot wait to say hello again.
