Baseball is dead. I know because I saw it murdered in cold blood on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, ground zero for one of the most lackluster postseason exits in history.
As a Yankees fan, maybe that’s a little harsh. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s okay, because Derek Jeter isn’t on the roster anymore and I don’t have to care as much as I used to.
Maybe all of that is true. Tuesday night still sucked.
The Houston Astros, a team that many casual fans believe is still in the National League, rolled in to the Bronx for a one-game Wild Card playoff, and in just over three hours wringed the neck and strangled the final breath out of the New York Yankees, a team whose fans and organizations will be left scratching their heads wondering what the 2015 season was ever for—if they had been paying attention to the regular season, that is.
All of these losses are relative. On paper, the Yankees exceeded expectations this season. They weren’t supposed to sniff a third-place finish, let alone be leading the American League East by seven games back on July 28. They settled for a Wild Card berth—a miracle, in every way.
After serving a year-long suspension, Alex Rodriguez, the beleaguered pariah/relic of a third baseman, inexplicably managed to resurrect his dormant career by hitting more home runs (33) in any season since 2008 at the ripe age of 40. Mark Teixeira, 35, erupted in similar fashion (.255, 31, 79) before succumbing to a season-ending shin fracture in August. This, sprinkled in with All-Star-quality first-half performances by Brett Gardner and Dellin Betances, second half resurgences of Carlos Beltran and newcomer Didi Gregorius, and a handful of stellar outings by starting pitchers Michael Pineda, Masahiro Tanaka, and Nathan Eovaldi, not to mention rookie Luis Severino and closer Andrew Miller, was just enough to unlock a place in October (even Stephen Drew had a couple of big hits. Stephen DREW!). It was unexpected, but the Yanks were back in the postseason for the first time in three years.
And, as a Yankees fan, once your team is in, expectations change.
Even when the Yankees backed in to the playoffs bruised and blindfolded having lost six of their last seven games (a simultaneous Astros loss on the final day of the regular season the only reason Tuesday night’s Wild Card game wasn’t being played in Houston—as if that mattered; in hindsight the Yankees probably wish the game had been at Minute Maid Park. At least they might have avoided the cacophony of boos), fans like me were still reminded of the 2000 club that lost 15 of its last 18, hobbled into the playoffs, and won the World Series in five games over the cross-town Mets.
Clearly, however, these are not the same Yankees, nor the same fans.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but one-game playoff or not, Tuesday night was still a postseason showdown at Yankee Stadium. Yet the conspicuous swaths of empty seats scattered around the stadium and behind each team’s respective dugouts said otherwise. The blatant lack of enthusiasm within the ballpark throughout much of the game was palpable, even in front of a television screen.
Tanaka, who was introduced over the PA system moments before he took the mound for the biggest start of his MLB career, looked visibly nervous, exhaling a deep, apprehensive breath of air when ESPN’s cameras found him warming in the bullpen. He confirmed this sentiment by dealing two straight balls to begin his outing, walking three on the night, and serving up a pair of titanic home runs on the first pitch of an inning to Colby Rasmus and Carlos Gomez, ESPN’s infuriating behind-the-batter camera angles (barely) capturing each bone-crushing bomb.
Nothing felt right about this game from the get-go, especially ESPN’s production. Not that the trio of Dan Shulman, John Kruk, and pioneer Jessica Mendoza do a crumby job. On the contrary, they do rather well; it’s just that we haven’t seen ESPN do playoff baseball in the Bronx for a while. I couldn’t help but think that Joe Buck’s voice might have had a reverse effect on the Yankees anemic offense that mustered a measly three base hits.
But Joe Buck wasn’t there. And neither were the Yankees.
Even the team’s $153 Million man, Jacoby Ellsbury—a career .301 postseason hitter and two-time World Series champion—was benched against the magnificent Dallas Keuchel in the most important game of the center fielder’s Yankee career to date (he eventually pinch hit for Chris Young in the 8th and popped out to shortstop).
Keuchel, a Cy Young favorite who was working on three days rest for the first time in his career, flustered his opponents all night and closed out the 2015 season against the Yankees without allowing a single run in 22 innings of work. The 27-year-old left-hander became the first pitcher to notch a scoreless postseason start on three days rest since Josh Beckett did it in 2003, coincidentally the last year the Yankees were eliminated from the postseason in a shutout at home…courtesy of, you guessed it, Beckett.
Tuesday night felt a lot like 2003, a full 12 years ago. The ignominious result and the deafening silence that accompanied it were the same: the Yankees lost an elimination game at home, and they didn’t score any runs. It was just the fifth time in franchise history that they were eliminated via a shutout.
But these Yankees are different. Who are these guys? Justin Wilson? Greg Bird? Rob Refsnyder? The diehards know, of course, but the vast majority does not. It’s a confounding time, to say the very least, when A-Rod is the lone player to which Yankee fans have any strong emotional attachment, and, this season notwithstanding, an enormous percentage of that emotion can best be described as some combination of resentment and vitriol. Rodriguez finished Tuesday’s game 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
But it wasn’t Rodriguez’ fault the Yankees lost. Nor should the blame be put on Tanaka, who pitched well enough to keep New York in it. It was simply the Yankees as a whole: they didn’t belong in Tuesday night’s game. They were frauds, but accidental, or rather unintentional frauds to be sure. They overachieved all season long, and then ran out of gas a couple of miles from the finish line. They didn’t have the strength, depth, or willpower to push their depleted vehicle the rest of the way; they would have very likely been run over by other oncoming cars had they even tried.
It should be noted that the Yankees’ 87-75 record this season wouldn’t have been enough to get them into last year’s playoffs. Their untimely late-season plummet also did little to inspire their fan base, despite a season whose expectations were abnormally low. Had it not been for the Twins and Angels sputtering in similar fashions, New York may not have made the playoffs at all.
Perhaps that explains the pervasive pessimism surrounding Joe Girardi’s squad leading up to Tuesday night. The most optimistic I found myself all night was a tossup between a leadoff single by Gregorius in the sixth, or when Beltran led off the ninth and I thanked my lucky stars the outfielder couldn’t end the Yankees’ season staring at an Adam Wainwright curveball. He struck out anyway, this time swinging.
So now Jets and Giants fans (well, half of them anyway—don’t forget about the Mets!) can breathe a collective resounding sigh of relief knowing that a Yankees playoff run won’t somehow interfere with their sacred Sundays. CC Sabathia can do the same—at least he won’t be tempted to pop celebratory bottles of champagne had these Yankees somehow gone on to win an extremely improbable championship.
When interviewed about Sabathia’s checking into an alcohol rehabilitation center on Monday, Rodriguez told a reporter: “We play for CC now.” It sure didn’t look like it.
But then again, it wasn’t their fault. They played over their heads all season long and clearly weren’t cut out to compete in these playoffs. Hell, my eight best friends and I could have showed up to Yankees Stadium on Tuesday night and scored zero runs in nine innings.
Maybe it would have been different had the one-game playoff been a best of three series. And let’s be honest: Major League Baseball will probably one day make that a reality when you consider the ridiculousness of a grueling 162-game season coming down to nine innings for all the marbles, or the even more ludicrous notion of two teams playing a one-game playoff…to get into…the one-game playoff, which is precisely what the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers did in 2013.
But this Yankees team didn’t look up for it. They looked effaced and deflated. And because of that, a team that was dressed like what you imagine the UTEP college baseball team might look like is moving on to meet the Royals in the ALDS. The Astros earned the win, just like the Yankees earned the loss. New York has now tied a franchise record with five straight postseason defeats.
Following Tuesday night’s game, a friend of mine and fellow Yankee fan admitted to me via text that they were in mourning the moment Rasmus launched the game’s first home run that made it 1-0 in the 2nd inning, and rightly so. These were not the Yankees of old. They were overachievers, yes, but they were also charlatans, who had about as much business being in this game as the Marlins (hey, they have Ichiro! A familiar face! Yay!). But unfortunately for them and the sport of baseball, nobody noticed until Tuesday night—163 games too late it seems.
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