A DREAM COME TRUE:  “YANKEE FAN TODAY TOMORROW FOREVER”

Finally, the Yankees signed an ace!!  Every offseason and every trading deadline most Yankees’ fans (including me) have expressed a strong desire for the Yankees to sign a premium starting pitcher.  Well, the Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman have finally inked such a deal for one of the best 3 starting pitchers in today’s game…Gerrit Cole.  The deal is generically valued at $324 million for 9 years.  Last year, Gerrit had a 0.895 WHIP (anything below 1.0 is superb) and struck out 326 batters!  He just turned 29, so he’s just begun his prime years as a starting pitcher. As for the playoffs, his performance is amongst the best of all time, including a WHIP of 0.868.

With Paxton supposedly resolving his pitching flaws (briefly demonstrated in the latter half of last season once he was forced to use his overwhelming curveball), with Tanaka also proving to be a top-notch playoff pitcher, and with the “potential” of Severino’s health bringing him back to where he was prior to the injuries, the Yankees have a heck of a starting pitching rotation.  In fact, many of the so-called experts have already judged them to have the best starting pitching in the game!  When’s the last time you ever heard that declaration from them?

Also, remember that every major additional transaction to a team also creates a subtraction from the team he left.  In this case, it’s the cheating Astros who suffer the consequences.  The Yankees coveted Gerrit Cole since 2008 during the MLB Draft and tried to trade for him in 2017.  Now, thankfully, he’s a Yankee! 

PEEK-A-BOOOOOOOOOO!

Well, another year whereby the Yankees lost to the Astros – this time 4 games to 2.  Most of the games were close, but the Yankees did discover one key thing that would inevitably disable the Astros when they ultimately faced the Nationals for the World Series Championship.  That key thing was the Yankees’ accusation (which later became fact) that the Astros were cheating via the usage of a TV camera and then a manual signal to their hitters identifying the pitches.  Coincidentally (cough, cough), right after the Yankees accusation, the Astros would only then win one more game in their own ballpark, which ended up being a nail-biter.  The Nationals would later win every World Series game in Houston (and vice-versa).

The Astros, by the way, are currently being investigated by the MLB Commissioner’s Office based on several of their former players (initially identified by one of their former pitchers, Mike Fiers) who have confirmed that the Astros used a TV camera and other accompanying tools to identify pitches to their batters.  MLB has since interviewed almost 60 witnesses and reviewed over 70,000 emails!  The Commissioner (Rob Manfred) has already admitted to a “discipline” being weighed.  They are investigating this past season and the two prior seasons (yes, that obviously includes 2017 when the Astros, again, had defeated the Yankees in the playoffs.

While I am clearly and rightfully griping about the Astros’ cheating efforts, the Yankees certainly contributed to their own demise during the playoffs this past October.  Mainly, they continually failed to hit in the clutch during the series.  For that to have persistently happened, there’s no excuse!  Yes, the Astros cheated, but if the Yankees had produced RBIs with the multitude of runners who were left stranded, they may have overtaken the cheating.