August 17, 2023
***
Sal Maiorana, a friend of the site, will be sharing some of his thoughts on the Yankees here on SSTN.
For honest, unfiltered analysis on the New York Yankees, you can subscribe to Sal Maiorana's free Pinstripe People Newsletter at https://salmaiorana.beehiiv.com/subscribe.
***
If you weren’t convinced already, you must be now after that three-game no-show in Atlanta. It’s over for the last-place Yankees. They are now 60-61, under .500 through 121 games for the first time since they were 60-61 on Sept. 5, 1995, a season that started three weeks late because of the 1994 players’ strike.
Well, that went pretty much as I expected. The best team in baseball - and just to clarify, that is most certainly not the Yankees - had their way in a three-game sweep that was so non-competitive, it was actually kind of sad.
The Yankees are literally a team that is walking dead. They have now lost five straight, and in these three games in Atlanta, you could make the case that there are people six feet under who have a stronger pulse than the men of Aaron Boone.
Boone continues to think we’re idiots with his nonstop proclamations that his team is still fighting and competing every night. That is such nonsense at this point because this team is lifeless. If that’s what he considers fighting and competing, add his inability to read the room as another reason why he needs to be fired at season’s end.
The Yankees are an old, tired, past his prime heavyweight leaning against the ropes taking body shot after body shot and offering no response whatsoever, praying for the bell to ring to end the carnage. How else would you explain scoring three runs in this series, none in the last two games?
The Braves are a well-oiled machine, a destructive force that the Yankees were powerless to slow down, let alone stop and defeat. Remember when the Yankees used to be that team? They’d pull into another team’s town, impose their will, their aura, their mystique, and their might, and dominate and move on to the next town and do it all over again.
Not these Yankees. These Yankees served as the homecoming opponent for the Braves in this series. You know, the homecoming opponent is the team that Superstar State schedules when all the alumni are in town and they want to make sure they get an easy win so everyone can have a good time at the post-game party. I may have used that analogy in an earlier newsletter, but hey, it’s getting tough to describe the morbidity of this team in new and inventive ways. I only have so much creativity left in this old, foggy brain.
If you bothered to watch any of these debacles - and if you didn’t that’s why you subscribe because I’ll fill you in - I hope you all paid close attention to the kind of team the Braves are because they are the model franchise in 2023, the team everyone should aspire to be.
They have very good starting pitching (the Yankees didn’t even face their ace, Spencer Strider), a bullpen that isn’t overwhelming but more than reliable, and a long, deep, young, athletic and diverse lineup that just puts stress on the opposing pitcher all night long.
Nine Braves regulars have an OPS of .780 or better. Seriously, nine. The Yankees have one such player: Aaron Judge, and most of that was built before he got hurt because since he’s been back, he really hasn’t done much of anything besides a draw a bunch of harmless walks. For comparison, the 1998 Yankees, who won 114 regular-season games, had eight of their top 11 players with an OPS of .780 or better.
The Braves hit for average, they hit for power, they run the bases well, and they field their positions. It’s just a dream team that we should all be envious of because we know what it’s like to root for a team like that. Those days are long gone though as the Yankees’ World Series drought will reach 14 seasons while the Braves have a great chance to win their second in the last three years.
When the blood letting finally ended Wednesday night, the Yankees may very well have been mumbling that famous quote by Dennis Green, the late football coach, who roared after his Cardinals got steamrolled by the Bears one night, “They are who we thought they were!”
Who are the the Braves? They’re the Harlem Globetrotters and the Yankees are the patsy Washington Generals.
