The Dynasty Crumbles - the 2013 MFY Thread

[Frayed Knot]

Yanx are suddenly winning (4 in a row; 5 of their last 6) and even starting to hit (additions of Granderson & Soriano) while the rest of the AL East is in the midst of a tough stretch: Boston is 2-4; Tampa 1-6 (and they had to pull one out in the 9th last night not to be staring at a 7-games losing streak); and Baltimore was just swept in Arizona

Now I'm still not all that worried about them winning the East. They're still far enough behind Boston and with two other teams ahead of them there would have to be some kind of sustained and coordinated multi-team collapse in conjunction with a NYY surge. So unless they continue this mini-streak they're on during the long stretch of games they've got coming up all within the AL East: 3 each vs Boston, Tampa & Baltimore, plus 7 w/Toronto (against whom they are 8-1) then I think we're OK on that front.

But what's disturbing is that they're starting to win games in funky ways.
- Mariano blows three straight saves ... and the Yanx win two of them anyway
- they've won games started by Verlander & Weaver in the last week. Weaver last night gave up 4 in the 1st after two were out and none on, then 4 more in the 2nd after two-out/1-on
- Soriano has 7 HRs/17 RBI in 66 ABs (vs 17/51 in 382 prior to the trade) continuing the trend of sucking to raking which seems almost automatic with MFY mid-season deals
- and it's still annoying that they're maintaining a five-.500 record with their negative run differential that even two straight blowout wins didn't erase

... and then there are those two Wild Cards

The AL WC is shaping up as six into two situation (after that group there's a 7-game gap to Seattle) with the Yanx currently sitting 6th of that group behind TB, OAK, BAL, CLE, KC, currently 5.5 & 5.0 games in back of leaders Tampa & Oakland

[Edgy MD]

Orioles went through a groin-kick sweep by the D-Backs at the same time the Mets were getting robbed by the Dodgers. Tough breaks all around this week.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Former MFY guilty of sexually assaulting teen girls. The jury came back very quickly on this one.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/08/former_mlb_player_chad_curtis_3.html

[Edgy MD]

Wow, he denied the whole thing. Lotsa folks backed him too. (Seems like they mostly got him on lesser charges, though. Fondling and kissing.)

You covered a teacher-molesting-girls case that seemed like a slam dunk but came back innocent, didn't you?

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Edgy MD wrote: Wow, he denied the whole thing. Lotsa folks backed him too. You covered a teacher-molesting-girls case that seemed like a slam dunk but came back innocent, didn't you?

Your memory is amazing. I did, a former Flint teacher who was allowed to resign when accusations surfaced, then went to Miami and faced charges for incidents down there.

That was an amazing case. He was married to a former student. He was accused of having affairs with a student and her mother at the same time. The prosecution had a tape of a telephone conversation where he spoke about how much he loved the girl. The public defenders didn't put up much of a defense, saying only that the former victims -- one of whom became a prosecutor -- were jealous and banding together to sue the school district. His closing arguments were repeating "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and "Show me the money!"

When the verdict came back, the courtroom went nuts. When things calmed down, I went to the public defender for a comment. He said, "Dave, we have a 'guilty' statement already typed up. We didn't even prepare something for 'not guilty.'"

He is, in fact, in a Michigan prison today, after other victims stepped forward and the prosecutor was able to reason that the statue of limitations was on hold while he was in Florida.

I did interview Curtis a couple times for a story I was doing about a superintendent up here accused of wrongdoing. Curtis and he were tight. He wasn't overly pleasant to talk to. Didn't like the media.

On a side note, I think Curtis was one of the players singled out by Vecsey as a 'transient Yankee" or something like that.

[Edgy MD]

One of my closest friends had a relationship with a teacher starting when she was 16. She let's him stay in touch with her even now that she's twice that age, even after he married a younger student he traded her in for. She doesn't see how badly he fucked up her life, but it's as plain as day.

[Frayed Knot]

Yanx have signed recently released Mark Reynolds.

Desperate? Sure. But you'd be desperate too for RH punch if you had the Yanx track record for this year.

Soriano = 7 HRs in 71 ABs - 1 HR/7 ABs
NYY RH minus Soriano: 29 HRs in 1,764 ABs; ABs/HR = 61

[MFS62]

Frayed Knot wrote: Yanx have signed recently released Mark Reynolds.

And he went 2-5 with a homer and 3 RBI tonight.
sigh.

Later

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Sigh. The Yankees are going to come back and win the division and hoist the World Series trophy in October. 28 rings, baby.

[Ceetar]

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/08/alex-rodriguez-has-a-bizarre-post-game-ritual/ (follow through the other link for more gifs)

Apparently It's a "thing" for A-Rod/players to collect batting helmets from walk-offs. (Someone on Twitter said it was a Bride/Bouquet thing) And Apparently A-Rod takes this very very seriously.

[HahnSolo]

Chris Stewart with a 3-run bomb and they lead the Blue Jays 7-4 in the 8th inning of game 1 of a day-nighter. The Blue Jays never miss an opportunity to roll over and play dead when they come to the Bronx.

These fuckers are going to make a playoff run (and probably make it), arent they?

[Frayed Knot]

And the Jays were up 4-0 by the 2nd inning too!!

[G-Fafif]

I'm a little nervous about the dynasty pausing from its crumble lately.

[Frayed Knot]

Yanx now 11-1 vs Toronto this season, with another one this afternoon and a few more next week.

I flicked by last night's game in just a few spots and kept tuning in right before disasters were hitting.
- first time was just as Ichoro was getting his 4,000th. OK, no problem there, I have nothing against Ichiro and only the most idiotic of YLDBs aren't going to know that 95% of these came elsewhere. At the time it was 1-0 Jays
- that was it until the 8th when I flicked back about a half-second before Soriano was hitting a tie-breaking 2R HR in the 8th off Dickey-face who had apparently pitched well right up to that point (it was 2-2). Since the trade Soriano has been hitting HRs at a rate that would net over 60 in a full (600 AB) season. His rate with the Cubs was less than half that.
- so I figure that's it for that game so I turned it off again only to check back in during top 9 just as some idiot from Toronto is getting picked off of 2nd after doubling against Mariano!! You're down two runs jerk-off (Rajai Davis) where exactly were you going? Naturally the 3rd out quickly followed.

The Yanx recent run of scoring has brought their RS/RA ratio back to dead even - and they are an annoying 9 games over .500 despite that mediocrity.


I felt like the ultimate jinx last night. I watched a total of no more than two minutes of the game but was witness to just about all the bad stuff. The only good thing I really missed in between was Josh Thole's 1st HR of the year and apparently a decent outing by RA, y'know, except for the parts that I saw.

[HahnSolo]

I was at my sisters and only watched a little, but I saw Thole's HR. We all know Thole is no power guy, but he hit the ball a mile past the RF fence.

Also saw Reyes get tossed arguing a called third strike. Looked low, but probably too close to take, and certainly not worth arguing to the point that it gets you kicked out.

[Frayed Knot]

HahnSolo wrote: ... but he hit the ball a mile past the RF fence.

So we're talking, what, 340 ft, 350?

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Frayed Knot wrote: HahnSolo wrote: ... but he hit the ball a mile past the RF fence. So we're talking, what, 340 ft, 350?

Bad ass.

[G-Fafif]

Can the Blue Jays be any more useless? Just give us back our shortstop and go away.

[Edgy MD]

You don't want our knuckleballing philosopher back? Our banjo-hitting catcher? Our rightfielder that we barely handled as we fillped him in a three-way? Our manager who never made it out of Norfolk?

[MFS62]

Ichiro with 4,000 (combined Japanese and Major League) hits.

Domo.

You're a class act.

Later

[MFS62]

Oops.
Dupe.

Later

[HahnSolo]

Since the new Toilet opened in 2009, the Blue Jays are a scintillating 11-35 in the Bronx.

[Frayed Knot]

RA was nice enough to beat the Yanx tonight in Toronto for the Jays second win against the MFYs all season.

The remaining Yanx schedule has me a bit worried.
Still five [crossout:1xai2wju]games[/crossout:1xai2wju] walkovers remaining with the Jays after tonight. Also three vs the awful White Sox, three against the sinking Giants, and they finish with a set vs the worst team over the last three seasons now, Houston. That's 14 games vs dead last place clubs. Mix in 7 more against the barely treading water Orioles (.500 since July 1) and that's not too tough a road.
The only tough part comes via 10 games total vs the BoSox (7) and Rays (3)

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Yup. OTOH, one modest win streak by any of those clubs will kill the MFYs.

[Frayed Knot]

I'm not worried so much about the division. Conceivably they could catch either Boston or Tampa but they're not catching both.

But I want them shut out of the WC too and I'm not sure I trust Baltimore, Cleveland or Oakland (KC has already fallen out) to not waddle along at .500 or below like each has been doing all of August. Yanx are currently just 2.0, 2.5, and 4.5 games behind those teams respectively and much of that can be made up in a good weekend.

The good news, like you said, is that one decent hot streak by somebody might do the trick since the Skanks will either have to catch and pass all three from that group, or two of them plus the Sox/Rays loser. The easiest way to root for this is to become a real big Orioles fan in September because they alone could ice this with those seven head-to-heads.

[Ceetar]

correlary is one good losing streak by the Yankees. They just had their hot streak with the Jays sweep, and it didn't get them there.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

This may sound a little weird, but if teams like the O's will let the MFYs sneak past them into the second WC, I kindasorta wouldn't mind if they got it.

There's absolutely no way this team sneaks by Boston, Tampa, and/or Detroit, and I kind of relish the side of themselves that MFY fans show with a marginal playoff team/early exit-- mild bragging upon clinching ("we didn't even EXPECT this"), followed by booing and a half-empty Fascism Palace as elimination draws nigh.

[Frayed Knot]

Nah, funk that!
Don't want to give them even the possibility of slipping past a team in a short series (they did just take two of three from Detroit last week) and don't want to give their fans the opportunity to crow about having made the playoffs despite a negative run differential plus 87 separate injuries to the starting line-up, many of which hovered on the verge of life and death for weeks on end.
In fact, I'm hoping for a nine-game losing streak starting tonight that will essentially settle the whole deal.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm with Frayed Knot. Let them go home at the end of September.

[Vic Sage]

Not only do i want them to fall short of the playoffs, I hope the architect of their Nurembergian stadium, Howard Roark, decides that the Yankees are unworthy of his edifice and blows it to kingdom come on the night that 2 other teams are playing in the WS. The Yanks should then have to play their next few seasons at their A-ball park in Staten Island.