Yankee4Life

I got to agree with you here. Too many people these days are afraid to make a move without consulting their phone. We have a service here in the U.S. called Tracfone and it is a cell phone service where you buy minutes to stay on the plan. I renew it every ninety days. I have about 4,900 minutes on mine and that is because I don’t use the damned thing all the time. I don’t run to Tiktok to look at the new videos and I am not on Facebook or anything else. I use my head and can function all day without a phone in my hand. Looking back at this I still do not understand Stengel’s thoughts here. He pinch hits McDougald, who has been in the league since 1951 and who also was the A.L. Rookie of the Year that season for a pitcher!! And it worked! What the hell? Casey Stengel was known for making moves like this. Analytics I am sorry to say is making me respect the way this team operates less and less.

You find more about this in this thread.

10 out of 10, 33 seconds. Hold it...a good score and a good time? Me? 😄

I have an online photo album of baseball that I have been working on for years and I must have at least two thousand pictures in it by now. I am always looking around for more interesting photos to add to it and I use a lot of different search tools to find the ones I want. I am amazed at the variety of results I can get going from Google to Yahoo to DuckDuckGo to the not so well known ones such as Swisscows, Searx and Mojeez. Anyway, I am not writing this about grabbing photos. It’s about the story behind one photo that I found yesterday that had Billy Martin turning a double play in a July game against the Orioles in 1956. What first stirred my interest in this particular photo was a sign behind Martin that I am guessing had to be from some airline that advertised trips to Florida and Cuba. That’s nice I said but again this is not why I am writing this. It was the story of how the Yankees won this game that amazed me. The date of this game was Tuesday, July 3, 1956 so naturally I made a beeline to Retrosheet and I looked up the hows and whys of this game. I found out that the game went twelve innings but how the Yankees won it made me say to myself that it would never happen in today’s game and especially with the modern day Yankees who are so afraid of making a move that may go against their precious analytics. This is what happened. Casey Stengel was the manager. With one out and runners on first and third he sent up pitcher Tommy Byrne to hit for pitcher Tom Sturdivant. Byrne hit .269 in 1956 so I can follow Stengel’s reasoning here. The Orioles intentionally walked Byrne to load the bases. Gil McDougald was the next hitter - but hold on! Stengel called McDougald back and sent up Mickey McDermott to hit for him. If any of you have the Total Classics series, especially TC 1951 or 1955 for example you will say to yourself “wasn’t McDermott a pitcher?” Yes he was. Stengel sent up a pitcher, who by the way hit only .212 in 1956 to hit for Gil McDougald, who, if you take a glance at the boxscore, was 2 for 5 in the game. Not too shabby. McDermott proceeded to single to right field and the winning run scored. Stengel was known as "the Ol' Perfessor" and I suppose this was just another example of him outsmarting everyone else. He had me shaking my head because I have no idea why this happened. Consider: If McDermott made an out or got into a double play the Yanks would have had to go on to the 13th without a shortstop. The aging Phil Rizzuto was still on the bench but he was almost on his way out. In fact he was released the next month. What made Stengel do this? What did he see? What was wrong with McDougald at that point? Was his bench beat up at the time where he had no choice but to use two pitchers as pinch hitters? Also, if they went on to the 13th Stengel would have lost two pitchers to put in the game. Ok, ok, Y4L. What’s your point? You will tell me that this game was sixty-nine years ago! Baseball was different then Y4L! You don’t have to tell me that. My point is this. Stengel managed by instinct. Whatever that instinct was it won the game for him. Aaron Boone doesn’t know the meaning of instinct. Baseball is a game of copycats. If someone comes up with something you can bet before long everyone else will do it like when Tony Larussa and pitching coach Dave Duncan began the strict pitch count thing. Now it is widely accepted. Or when Tampa Bay came up with that “opener” move that they used when they did not have anyone to start a game for them. Now they all do it. I’m waiting for the next move where the pitch count is not widely accepted anymore and maybe just maybe pitchers injuries will begin to decrease. There is room for some analytics but not when it takes over a game and managers are forced to always follow it. By the way, here is the picture that caused all this trouble.

7 out of 10, 76 seconds. Some puzzlers today but it was ok except for the time again. I did that once. 0 out of 10.

Thank you for this! Well, not just for me but for the ones who read this thread. It was just another way I had to show how great the history of this game is. And honestly I forgot all about this game.

October 9, 1958: Yankees rally late to beat Braves in Game 7 of World Series Bill Skowron's three-run homer in the eighth gave the Yankees a 6 - 2 lead. The New York Yankees broke a 2-2 tie with four runs in the eighth inning of Game Seven to win the 1958 World Series, reversing the result from the previous year, capturing the Bronx Bombers’ sixth title of the 1950s, and becoming the first team to win a Series by taking the final two games on the road after dropping three of the first four games. Former Yankee and 1957 World Series hero Lew Burdette toed the rubber for the Milwaukee Braves. Ominously, “[o]nly Burdette draws a cheer when the lineups are announced.” He started well, retiring the first three batters. The 1956 World Series hero Don Larsen, by contrast, struggled from the start, giving up a single to Red Schoendienst and a walk to Bill Bruton. Batting third in the order in place of Eddie Mathews for the first time in the Series (Mathews, with only four hits in the first six games, was dropped down to sixth in the order), Frank Torre advanced both runners with a sacrifice. Hank Aaron walked, and Wes Covington put the home team on top with an RBI groundout. New York manager Casey Stengel risked a big inning by ordering the slumping Mathews intentionally walked, but Larsen escaped deeper trouble by fanning Del Crandall. The Yankees recovered quickly thanks to more shoddy defense from Milwaukee. (The Braves had made four errors in Game Six.) After Yogi Berra walked to start the second, “the usually good-fielding Frank Torre messed up two balls around first base”; his consecutive errors on tosses to Burdette covering first loaded the bases with none out. Bill Skowron drove home the tying run with a groundout to short, and then Tony Kubek put New York ahead with a sacrifice fly to Covington. Burdette retired Larsen on a grounder to Schoendienst, but had to feel frustrated at yielding two runs on one walk and two errors. Larsen had his lone good inning in the bottom of the second before Burdette pitched around a double by Gil McDougald in the top of the third. Larsen did not survive the third. Bruton singled, Torre popped out, and Aaron singled Bruton to second. Stengel wasted no time in pulling Larsen, who may have had elbow problems. On came Bob Turley, who, after getting crushed in Game Two, had won Game Five and saved Game Six. Turley got Covington out on a weak tapper in front of the plate. Then after a second intentional walk to Mathews, “Crandall lined a shot off Turley’s glove. The ball was deflected away from second. The alert McDougald, who had started toward the bag when the ball was hit, changed his direction swiftly and with a neat pickup and peg rubbed out Crandall to end the inning.” The Yankees looked to widen the margin in the fourth with an Elston Howard single and stolen base. Jerry Lumpe’s grounder to third failed to advance the runner, however, rendering Skowron’s fly to Bruton harmless. Mirroring Stengel’s strategy and getting the same good result, Milwaukee manager Fred Haney ordered Kubek walked, and Turley hit into a force to end the threat. Neither team had a batter reach again until the bottom of the fifth. Torre walked with one out, but Aaron bounced into a second-to-first double play. Burdette had retired seven in a row when the Braves batted in the bottom of the sixth. With two out, the struggling Crandall, who had stranded six baserunners in his first two plate appearances, homered with nobody on to tie the game, 2-2. Skowron broke Burdette’s steak with a leadoff single in the seventh. Moose went to second with two out thanks to a Turley sacrifice, but Burdette got Bauer to pop to Mathews to keep the score tied heading into the home half of the seventh. Turley got three Milwaukee grounders in a quick frame. After Skowron’s single, Burdette put down the next five Yankees in a row and seemingly had his ex-mates under control. The syndicated columnist Red Smith described Burdette as “a large, perhaps insanitary West Virginia hillbilly with a dry wit and a moist delivery, who pitches with his arm and head and heart and tongue. Employing all the weapons which nature, a combative temperament and 32 years of living have given him, he … held New York off for seven innings … virtually unaided.” But the game, season, and Series quickly unraveled for the Braves. With two outs in the eighth, Berra doubled (“He hit a bad pitch, high and inside,” according to Burdette) on a hit “that lacked only a couple of feet of being a tiebreaking home run. Howard immediately drove him in with a bounding single that barely eluded Johnny Logan’s reach behind second” to give New York a 3-2 lead. Andy Carey, who had replaced Lumpe in the bottom of the sixth, “lined a single off Eddie Mathews’ glove” to put two on with two out for Skowron. Moose hit a crushing blow, a three-run homer to bust open the game and give the Yankees a formidable 6-2 lead. “It was a lousy pitch that I gave Skowron,” Burdette said after the game. “It was a slider — the same thing he looked bad on before — but this one I got in too high.” Skowron confessed, “It probably would have been an out in Yankee [S]tadium.” Kubek struck out to end the disastrous inning for Milwaukee, which found itself in a deep late-game hole. “One run the Braves could have gotten back … if that was all they needed for a tie, but four runs killed them as certainly as Cain slew Abel.” Pitching “faster, according to Yogi Berra, who caught him, than he had been in the past,” Turley made quick work of the Braves’ 3-4-5 hitters with a 1-2-3 eighth. Don McMahon struck out the first two New York batters in the ninth before giving up a single to McDougald and a walk to Mickey Mantle, but Berra’s groundout stranded both. Milwaukee needed four to tie in the bottom of the ninth. Mathews worked a walk, but Crandall and Johnny Logan both flied out. A Joe Adcock pinch-hit single put two on with two out for Schoendienst. Bruton represented the tying run on deck. Red “rifled a liner at [center fielder] Mickey Mantle. On the mound, Turley raised both hands to shoulder level and waited anxiously. Master Mickey enveloped the ball. Turley’s arms shot overhead in exultation. He leaped off the ground, almost as if defying the law of gravity.” In a syndicated column, former catching great Roy Campanella wrote, “Burdette didn’t deserve such a fate. He really pitched his heart out and would have won if the Braves gave him any kind of support.” But just as the Yankees had gotten revenge on Brooklyn by beating the Dodgers in 1956 after losing in 1955, New York flipped the script on Burdette and Milwaukee by winning in 1958 after losing in 1957. The Milwaukee Braves would never again make a World Series, and a Milwaukee team would not appear in the World Series again until 1982. It all fell apart for Lew Burdette and the Braves in game seven.

10 out of 10, 40 seconds. Ok, but I needed to be a bit faster.

7 out of 10, 57 seconds. Good Lord some of these questions. 😬

7 out of 10, 88 seconds. Honestly I don't know how I got seven right.

1971 Total Classics

7 out of 10, 87 seconds. The game had mercy on me today by giving me one baseball question and two football ones. The rest was dumb luck.

6 out of 10, 74 seconds. It all fell apart at the end. And tomorrow will be no better.

I did the same thing. One wrong click.

9 out of 10, 35 seconds. Another day of falling for the same thing that hurts me time and again. I read a question so fast that I don't read it all the way and it cost me. I will just sit back today and watch a lot of you fly past me.

7 out of 10, 86 seconds. There were some tricky ones today. Another great job!

9 out of 10, 42 seconds. Awful, awful day. I missed an obvious one and secondly my time was bad.

I have often considered that at times.

October 5, 1947: Dodgers beat Yankees to send World Series to decisive seventh game Al Gionfriddo, right after his famous catch in game six. The Brooklyn Dodgers had their backs to the wall. After coming back from a two-game deficit in the World Series, they lost the fifth game to the New York Yankees at Ebbets Field. Now they were back at Yankee Stadium and needed to win to keep the Series alive. After Spec Shea’s four-hit complete game at Ebbets Field the previous day, the Yankees needed just one more victory to claim another championship. With the two teams returning to Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees had taken Games One and Two, they had to feel confident. Yankees manager Bucky Harris planned to start Allie Reynolds. Reynolds had led the Yankees to a 10-3 victory in Game Two with his complete-game performance. “I’ll pitch Reynolds. … No, I’m not figuring on a seventh game. We’ve got ’em now,” Harris told reporters by way of expressing the Yankees’ confidence. Burt Shotton, the Dodgers manager, had sent 18 pitchers to the mound in the first five games with no starter lasting through five innings. Vic Lombardi had told Shotton he was ready to pitch in the fourth game but the only action Lombardi saw was pinch-running. Ralph Branca had also told Shotton that he was ready to take the mound. Shotton told both pitchers, “I suppose both of you boys want to pitch today. But I can only use one of you.” After Branca pitched 2 innings in Game Three, it was Lombardi’s turn. He had pitched four innings four days earlier, giving up five earned runs on nine Yankees hits in a 10-3 loss. Shotton hoped that Lombardi would last longer when given his second chance in the Series. The Dodgers jumped on the Yankees right out of the gate. The first three batters singled to load the bases. When cleanup hitter Dixie Walker grounded into a double play, Eddie Stanky crossed the plate with the first Dodgers run. Then Sherm Lollar allowed a passed ball, and Pee Wee Reese scooted home for the second Brooklyn run. In the third, consecutive doubles by Reese, Jackie Robinson, and Walker plated two more runs. At this point Harris sent Reynolds to the bench and replaced him with Karl Drews, who got the next two outs. Lombardi made it unscathed through the first two innings, but the Yankees got on the scoreboard in the third, sending four runners across the plate to tie the game. Lollar led off with a double and reached third on a wild pitch. Spider Jorgensen fumbled Snuffy Stirnweiss’s sharp groundball, and Lollar scored. The next three batters singled, one run scored, and Shotton decided it was time to go to the bullpen. Branca, the winner of the Game One, took over for Lombardi. He didn’t have any better success than Lombardi: Billy Johnson and pinch-hitter Bobby Brown each singled. By the time Branca retired the side the Yankees had tied the game. Branca gave up a leadoff single to Aaron Robinson in the bottom of the fourth. After he struck out the next two batters, Tommy Henrich singled. Yogi Berra, who had entered the game in left field when Johnny Lindell was pulled with an injury, followed and hit the ball down the right-field line. “The Bums screamed to the high heavens that the umpires were blind in calling Berra’s single fair,” reported the New York Times. But the umpire disagreed and the Yankees took the lead, 5-4. The Yankees pitchers kept the Dodgers in check until the sixth inning. With left-hander Joe Page on the mound, Bruce Edwards led off with a single. Carl Furillo followed with a double to put two runners in scoring position. Shotton now sent right-handed batter Cookie Lavagetto to bat for Jorgensen. He lifted a fly ball to Berra in left field that brought home the tying run. Shotton went to his bench again and sent right-hander Bobby Bragan to pinch-hit for Branca. Bragan doubled to left field to score the go-ahead run. He was replaced by pinch-runner Dan Bankhead. Stanky followed with a single and reached second when Yankees catcher Robinson let Berra’s throw bounce over his head for an error. Harris removed Page and called Bobo Newsom out of the bullpen to stop the bleeding. Newsom gave up a single to Reese that scored Bankhead and Stanky. The Dodgers’ four runs allowed them to reclaim the lead, 8-5. In the bottom of the inning, “The Bombers came within an eyelash of tying the score again.” Joe Hatten, the third Dodgers pitcher, walked Stirnweiss and then gave a two-out single to Berra. Joe DiMaggio then sent a tremendous blast that many thought would leave the park. Rookie Al Gionfriddo made a leaping catch that “robbed Jolting Joe of his greatest moment.” Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News described it this way: “Little Al, hydrant high and running like a bunny with his tail afire, raced back, back, back. He finally turned and stuck out his gloved right hand as the ball was about to clear the bullpen barrier for a homer. He grabbed it and held it — a great one-hand catch. The crowd roared in appreciation.” The catch stunned the Yankees. As DiMaggio took his place in center field, he was described as “walking inconsolably in circles, doubtless wondering if he could believe his senses.” Vic Raschi, the fifth Yankees pitcher, got the Dodgers out in order in the top of the seventh. Hatten stayed on the mound for the Dodgers. With one out, he walked two Yankees. After another out, Ralph Houk pinch-hit for Raschi and singled to load the bases. But Hatten snuffed the Yankees’ opportunity when he got Stirnweiss to fly to center field. Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler conferred with the umpires at the end of the inning. With the shadows falling quickly over the ballpark, they decided that if the game was tied at the end of the ninth inning the lights at Yankee Stadium would be turned on in order to allow the game to be completed. Neither team scored in the eighth inning. After the Dodgers failed to build on the lead in the top of the ninth, the Yankees were down to their final three outs. Hatten, who had managed to squirm out of one challenge in the seventh, suddenly found himself in trouble again. Bill Johnson led off with a single and George McQuinn walked. With the tying run coming to the plate, Shotton went to his bullpen again and called on Hugh Casey. It was Casey’s fifth appearance in the series. Casey got Phil Rizzuto to fly out to center. Aaron Robinson followed with a single to left that loaded the bases. Lonny Frey pinch-hit for pitcher Butch Wensloff. He grounded to Jackie Robinson at first whose only play was to get a force out at second, and a run scored. With the tying runs on base, Stirnweiss hit a weak groundball that Casey handled easily and tossed to Jackie Robinson at first to end the game. The 8-6 victory tied the Series at three games apiece and sent it to a seventh game the next day. Both teams emptied their benches. Shotton threw “17 players into the steaming cauldron of combat, four of them pitchers.” The Yankees sent 21 players into the game but it was still not enough to catch the Dodgers. “Well, somebody’s gonna win tomorrow,” Harris said after the game. “You can’t beat those catches. That DiMaggio drive looked like a sure home run until Gionfriddo came up with an almost impossible catch.” With their backs to the wall, the Dodgers had tied the Series. It was the 11th time the World Series would go the distance. National League teams had won seven of those Game Sevens. The Dodgers had to feel like they were the “darlings of the baseball gods” after this victory. They just needed to win the next day and years of frustration would disappear. Joe Dimaggio, during the 1947 World Series.

You are not kidding but that would never happen because the guy makes too much sense and they could never have that in their organization.

5 out of 10, 64 seconds. I survived another week of the terrible twos (Tuesday and Thursday.) Getting five right today is tremendous for me.

And that is what drives me nuts. You and I and Jim and KC see this and we are just baseball fans that do not get paid a nickel by the Yankees for our time or input. But we see what the problem is. That is the difference.

It sure did Jim and the first thing I thought of was why don't the Yankees realize this obvious fact themselves? Do you remember the Orioles from Earl Weaver's time there? Ken Singleton said in a reprinted article that is included in a Thomas Boswell book that the Orioles worked on fundamentals so much and they got so good at it that other teams would almost get mad at them because they never threw to the wrong base. They were that good in doing the little things. This is the main reason why they don't win. They'll pound bad pitching with homers by Judge and company but when the post season begins they are up against tougher pitching. And we all know what a failure Judge is in October.

10 out of 10, 57 seconds. This was one of the few days where reading all those baseball books and biographies helped me out.

Oh boy, this article says it all. Why do all these Yankees seasons start to crack at the same time of year? by Joel Sherman of the New York Post “Listen, if you can’t spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, you are the sucker.” – Mike McDermott in the opening line of “Rounders” The Yankees began an eight-game stretch Monday against a trio of teams that played poorly enough in July to fall from contention to sellers. It opens with their historic patsy, the Twins, at home, then three on the road in St. Louis and then two in their Steinbrenner Field home away from home against the Rays. To end this month, the Yankees have a seven-game stretch against the Nationals and White Sox, the worst teams in the majors in the non-Rockies division. To end this season, the Yankees have 13 games (the last six at home) against the White Sox and the two biggest sellers at the deadline, the Twins and Orioles. This has always been the hope lingering for the Yankees, a soft schedule to get right on, to get fat on, to surge into the playoffs on. Except we are well beyond the halfway mark of this season and have to ask: “Are the Yankees the suckers?” They might look around a table and see soft landing spots against big deadline sellers and wretched foes. But their opponents might look back and not see the Yankees as we have come to know them, but a bad team in those uniforms. Cody Bellinger and Anthony Volpe chase down a hit that falls between them in the Yankees’ 7-1 loss to the Astros on Aug. 10, 2025. And the key might be: Can the Yankees look in the mirror and see themselves as they actually are and not how they expect to be or delude themselves into seeing? Because even if they salvage this season, there are a lot of internal questions that must be asked if Hal Steinbrenner keeps the leadership infrastructure intact or disassembles it. One question that certainly needs to be answered is why has the team endured a middle-months dive for four straight years now. Once is a blip. Twice perhaps coincidence. But this is four times. The Yankees went into the Twins series with a 20-31 record in their past 51 games, a stretch from June 13 through this past weekend. That is nearly one-third of a season with a .392 winning percentage. If you think it is a long season and playing one-third with that bad of a record is common even for winning teams then know this: In the 30 seasons since 1996, the Yankees have had that bad of a record over 51 games within a season three times: Aaron Boone’s 2022 Yankees. Aaron Boone’s 2023 Yankees. Aaron Boone’s 2025 Yankees. The Yankees have made a habit of struggling through the middle of the season under Aaron Boone. The 2024 Yankees were not bad for quite that long, but had a 10-23 stretch from June 14-July 26 that stands alone as the worst 33-game span in the organization’s past three decades. And check those dates. Because the 2022 Yankees had multiple 20-31 stretches from July 7-Sept. 5 in a 53-game period in which they were a combined 22-31. The 2023 Yankees had multiple 20-31 or worse stretches from June 21-Aug. 29 in a 59-game period in which they were 24-35. And the 51-game downturn that the Yankees carried into this workweek began on June 13. So in the past four years, there has been roughly one-third of the season three times and a 20 percent segment in the other in which the Yankees went bad, and the start dates are June 13, June 14, June 21 and July 7. Can the Yankees really look at this trend, which never happened to this extent or length under Joe Torre and Joe Girardi, and just go about business as usual after the season? Maybe. The Yankees made the playoffs in 2022 and 2024 despite the nosedives and might still make it this season. And perhaps that is the salve to suggest they know how to play the long game and will go into the bunker and convince themselves they know best. But these midseason collapses should be screaming to the Yankees about an underlying problem that demands self-examination, including from outside eyes and voices. And let’s be frank, it is probably not an analytics firm such as the one the Yankees hired to audit them during the 2024 season — because the Yankees only play baseball worse since that group came, dropped its findings and left. I will take my shot at this, sans an analytics or scouting department to assist. First, I think there are not usually simple, single-prong answers. For example, baked into this is an expanded version of the playoff system that, say, Torre and Girardi never encountered. More teams are trying to be at least competent, and therefore there are fewer total soft spots in a schedule and perhaps even longer stretches that can be problematic. This version of Yankee Stadium is not as intimidating to opponents as the previous one and, at times, has become harsher than ever when it is going wrong for the home side. But it feels like those and a few others are incremental issues. I think the bigger problem is mindset. The Yankees are built around home runs and heroes, a H and H philosophy that melds with the big-picture analytics strategy that has encased the organization. Namely, if you are among the top five or so in homers and have at least two superstar plow horses performing at elite levels, that all but assures winning at least 55 percent of games most years and getting into the playoffs — and if you get into the playoffs enough, there will be years in which health and randomized high-end performance will line up well and you will get a championship parade. The Yankees have won a lot of games waiting for Aaron Judge homers, but have also been susceptible to losing to more resourceful teams. It is casino baseball. It is counting cards brought to the diamond, and the Yankees are far from the only team that practices this. It is playing a system and not worrying what the games look like or why you lose as long as you win 55 percent of the hands/games annually. By philosophy, it works. In the past eight years, the Yankees have finished first in the AL in homers four times, second twice, third once and sixth once. They lead the majors this year. Aaron Judge is a metronome of being in AL MVP consideration, and Gerrit Cole was often the same for Cy Young. In a year when Cole missed a few months like last year, Juan Soto played high-end sidekick to Judge. This year for the first few months it was Max Fried. What this does, though, is create a savior culture with the Yankees. They will be saved by the homer. They will be saved by their superstars. They can talk about working on other elements of the game. And I bet they are points of emphasis in spring training. But look when these downturns are occurring: They start each year about one-third of the way through the season. To play the game correctly — to treat 90 feet on both sides of the ball as a precious commodity — takes a fierce, relentless commitment to items such as concentration, hustle and repetition. It is not sexy. And you can see how over time these past few years the Yankees slip in these areas as the games mount. I think it is because what wins out is the casino philosophy. If you let it become tiresome or boring or secondary, doing little things right every day can become physically arduous and mentally tedious. It is easier over time just to wait for the homers and the heroes. Anthony Volpe and the Yankees have become exceedingly reliant on generating runs by hitting the ball over the fence. Unless it is really part of the culture. Unless it is more than box-checking that you are practicing cutoff plays or pitchers fielding practice and you are treating this with the elevated care that it could determine who wins a championship or not. It is why I do not think the playoffs are a complete crapshoot as the Yankees and so many others might say. The Yankees of the post-Core Four era — a period when they took on analytics as their totem to follow no matter what — get eliminated in the playoffs regularly by a team that outplays them at baseball. The Astros have done it four times. The Dodgers did it last year as the Yankees lost the World Series as much as Los Angeles won it. Now, this very easily can become analytics vs. old school, and I am not here to do that. If you told me to pick one or the other, I would take the analytics. In 2025, if you are not ahead of the curve in understanding every area that can unlock advantages, you will be way behind. Maximizing performance is vital. But I feel what has been lost is maximizing performance beyond measurables such as swing velocity, exit velocity, vertical break of pitches, etc. If Moneyball at its core was based on capitalizing on inefficiency and what is undervalued, then improving on and demanding higher baseball IQs in real time in games is that. The Brewers are embodying it this year with the best record in the sport and a sweep this past weekend of the Mets in a series in which their ace (Freddy Peralta) did not pitch and their best everyday player (Jackson Chourio) and rookie starting phenom (Jacob Misiorowski) are both on the IL. These Brewers get victories in two ways: they win or you lose (see Saturday night vs. the Mets as a prime example). They force you to beat them to win; they are not going to be co-conspirators. You have to win to win. They limit the opponent to 27 outs and seem to extend their own allotment to 30 outs by forcing mistakes by playing hard and with relentless detail. And I also don’t want to turn this into homers vs. finesse offense, such as bunts and hit-and-runs. Because if I can only have one of those, I would take homers. It is the only sure way to a run or two or three or four. There is nothing more valuable on the field than a homer. But when I return to thinking about the Yankees, there is a difference between treating the home run as a vital weapon and as a deity that will save you from all. There are times the ball will not go over the fence or that the opponent will defuse your stars. Then what? For example, the Astros do as good a job of negating Judge as anyone. He has batted .199 against Houston in 50 regular-season games and .200 in 17 playoff games. It is part of the symptom that makes the Yankees easier marks against the Astros: Judge doesn’t do it on a team waiting for Judge. Judge missed 43 games in 2023 from June 4 to July 27 due to a toe injury. That coincided with the annual downswing and led to the only missed playoff season of the Boone era. The 2025 Yankees are in a period in which neither Judge nor Fried is excelling. And it is as if both arms have been removed from the team, as if they had no other way to assemble a win or avoid a loss. After an All-Star-worthy first half, Max Fried has pitched to a 5.73 ERA over his past four starts. Because — among other things — the Yankees do not turn double plays well or steal bases often or with a high success rate or deliver productive outs with great frequency. You get the idea. This is about how valuable every 90 feet is. The stuff that gets you wins in the cracks when the ball isn’t going over the fence. I just think when you have people in charge who put blinders on considering all the emotions of the game, you are losing something. Think about what it does to your dugout, the opposing dugout, a home crowd or a visiting crowd when you hustle a double or a triple or execute a bunt and force a misplay. You can say that is ephemeral or unquantifiable or made up, but how do you ignore that when the Yankees turn bad for weeks (even months) at a time that their collective confidence wanes and they become more susceptible to opponents pressuring them into physical and mental miscues on both sides of the ball? Again, it is either your culture to care about this or not. I’d rather hit a homer than drop a well-timed bunt, but why can’t you have both? Why can’t a team with the Yankees’ largesse embrace a world in which they can win with a hammer or a feather? And I would remember that even the analytics are ever evolving and/or wrong in places. Because the Yankees stuck with Gleyber Torres at shortstop for quite a while based on what they saw on paper, not with their eyes. The same with Gary Sanchez behind the plate. The same with having an overly right-handed-hitting lineup. These were multi-year mistakes, and the Yankees were like the Titanic turning too slowly in groupthink to avoid the iceberg. Ryan McMahon has brought an attention to detail on offense and defense that the Yankees were lacking before acquiring him before the trade deadline. And the problem is institutionalized to some degree, if not to a large degree. Because the Yankees have gotten more lefty, more athletic and more defense-oriented over the past year-plus, and it simply does not manifest at a high enough level in games. Beyond his obvious high-end talent, Cody Bellinger is a superb baseball player with great feel for the game on both sides. Paul Goldschmidt, too. Ryan McMahon seems to have that gene as well. And yet … Here are the Yankees going through a sustained death spiral period for a fourth straight year. The new blood can’t give a full transfusion if the body is unwilling to accept it. It leaves the Yankees bystanders to their own problems. They remain spectators waiting for homers and heroes. Maybe they will still get enough of both from here to the finish line and, as they did in 2022 and 2024, overcome this midseason nosedive to reach the playoffs. But this shouldn’t be ignored. There is something wrong with how the Yankees collectively attack the game that is leading to being vulnerable to extended regular-season swoons and more susceptible to October elimination. At some point, you sit at the table and have to lose your arrogance and figure out you might be the sucker.