The Flagrant Fan

Sad news

2019-11-27T22:57:00.001-05:00

Good evening. This is Jayne, William's wife. It is with deepest sorrow that I have to inform you that William passed away November 11th. Needless to say, it was quite unexpected.

I did want to say thank you to all of you who read and commented on his posts. His love of baseball was unsurpassed and he enjoyed so much coming here to write his blog for you to read.

He will be missed by many, he was a one in a million man. Irreplaceable.

So to all his readers, live, laugh and love. There are no promises of tomorrow so make each day count like it's your last. I know that sounds kind of morbid, but appreciate what you have, the little things as well as the big. Don't ever be afraid to tell someone you love them or to give a hug. You never know when you might not have that chance again. Take nothing for granted and be grateful for all your blessings.

Praying you all have a wonderful holiday tomorrow and apologizing that my timing isn't so great--writing this before a holiday. But I didn't want him to just "disappear" without letting you know why.

God bless you all!

Sincerely,

Jayne Tasker

The Flagrant Fan's Baseball Off Season Survival Guide

2019-11-07T13:11:00.001-05:00

The World Series is over and the Washington Nationals are the surprise toast of the baseball world (unless you love political-mongering). Spring Training is months away, and if you are like me, you only have a secondary interest in the NFL and non-interest in the other sports. How do we survive this time without baseball? And while we are surviving, how do we filter through all the rumors and noise of the off season? Well, I've been doing this a long time and here's my survival guide to help you through.

Missing Baseball

The worst thing about this time of year is missing the games themselves. Let's face it, during the season, the beauty of baseball is its constant presence. Just about every day, there is a game to watch, to think about, to pour over the box score and watch the highlights. Suddenly, the season ends and we are left with the violence and politics of the NFL and the "load management" of the new NBA. Or you have hockey. Meh. That's just me. If you like all those things, I encourage you to enjoy yourself. But this article is not really about you.

If you are a baseball lifer and baseball is your favorite sport (or only sport), then this time of year is a drag. Here are some tips:

Go back on MLB.com and re-watch old games. It is not the same, but it helps.
Spend your free time pouring over baseball-reference.com. Here you have every box score since time began. What endless fun!
Play Strat-O-Matic baseball or join a league. I just joined one and I am looking forward to it.
Learn your favorite teams' prospects. Who had good years, who got bumped up several levels. Dream about their potential and future.

These are just a few tips of learning to cope without baseball every day.

Curbing Expectations

Let's face it, every fan wants to know what their team is going to do over the winter to improve your team. You want that big free agent or that sensational trade that will fill you with excitement for the coming season. Slow your heart rate down. Some moves do not seem that much and turn out to be and the odds of your team getting the biggest studs on the market are slight.

I will mention two or three players that were greeted by ho-hums by fans and the media when the deals happened: DJ LeMahieu, Howie Kendrick and Jake Odorizzi. Now imagine their teams without them this past season? Front offices are often filled with talented evaluators who, surprisingly, know what they are doing. Think about Yankee fans last off season who said, "DJ LeMahieu? Who? Where is he going to play?"

Often, a move that fans are very excited about fizzles under the glare of reality. Giancarlo Stanton, David Price and Andrew Miller come to mind.

And what about those huge free agents on the market? The reality is that your favorite team has a one in thirty shot of landing a Gerrit Cole. Well, if you eliminate the historically cheap teams like the Royals, the Rays and some others, then perhaps the odds are more like one in twenty. The thing is, one team's fan base is going to be very excited and two-dozen others are going to be disappointed. My way of coping is to manage my expectations and not get excited unless there is an actual signing and then not getting too concerned about my team having to go different routes.

Do NOT Listen To Rumors!

Since we miss baseball, our minds have to fixate on something and so we buy into the rumor mill and every single article and tweet that speculates about who is going where. The fact is, we will not know until we know....yanno?

There is an entire site devoted to MLB rumors. You know who they are. Every sports site in the world right now is featuring their predictions and speculations of who is going where. Do not get sucked into this stuff. It is meaningless. They do not know as much as you and I do not know. Heck, we still get surprised when a team signs a manager we never expected. Things will play out when they play out. This is one time when you want to be a reactionary and not a speculator.

There is one prominent baseball journalist who is suspected of supposedly being fed false information by Scott Boras. Not only are those rumors wrong, but they are intentionally wrong whether or not this baseball hack is aware he is being used or not. To be sure, he is probably not the only one. Misinformation and misdirection is a part of the scheme of agents. What better way to drive up prices for their clients than creating a competitive climate (whether it exists or not)?

Baseball sites need one thing and they need them desperately: clicks! Every site needs clicks to either make money or to be relevant. Me, I've given up trying that gig. I am like John Lennon watching the wheel spin round and round. These sites need clicks even more now because there is no on-the-field news they can report.

And so, those clicks are speculation, rumors, predictions and all this supposedly knowledgeable reporting that is based on air. Again, no one knows and no one will know until a free agent signs with his new team. And even then, when a new round of speculation begins on what the signing means, do not get sucked in and manage those expectations.

The bottom line here is that surviving these three excruciating months without baseball is to get your buzzes where you can by looking at stuff that has already happened, manage expectations and shield yourself from the rumor mill. Before you know it, we will know who is going to play for our teams and rosters will show up in Florida and Arizona again to start the cycle all over in gloriously new circumstances. If you need a hug, let me know.

Cole Or Strasburg Critical For The Yankees?

2019-10-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

I have had a week to mourn the passing of the 2019 New York Yankees season. The sting is slight and if the Nationals can finish off the Astros, then all the better. While I congratulate the Astros fans for their season and World Series appearance, I hate that team with a passion. There is not a rational reason for the feeling. Hey, I am a fan and a fan just randomly feels stuff. With all that said, I can finally start to ponder next year and what the Yankees will do between now and then. I will start with a few categories for members of the 2019 team:

Things I am hoping will happen:

Buying out Edwin Encarnacion
Trading Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier.
Releasing Greg Bird, Jacoby Ellsbury and most of the bottom of 2019's bullpen
Cleaning house of the conditioning team and starting over.
Losing Larry Rothschild
Calling it a prospect career for Chance Adams

Things I am semi-okay about happening:

Things I would be unhappy about:

Losing Dellin Betances
Losing Ben Heller

Let me offer some insight into those feelings. There are times when emotions overrule common sense. I call it the "Aubrey Huff Rule." Remember the year Huff had in 2010? And then he had a great post-season and he was everyone's hero. Never mind that his year was an outlier or that he was aging. The Giants resigned him and he went south...fast. Brett Gardner and Didi Gregorius are those two guys for me. They are both great team players. They are both full of great Yankee moments. But, perhaps their time has passed despite Gardner's surprising (or not with the baseball) homer total and Didi's big series against the Twins. I think that JA Happ was an Aubrey Huff Rule-break by the Yankees. Now, they are stuck with him.

Mike Tauchman is the new Brett Gardner. Losing Didi puts DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres at the positions they belong. I hate to see them go. But I hated to see Bernie Williams go too.

Edwin Encarnacion also had some nice moments for the 2019 Yankees. But Giancarlo Stanton is going to play a lot at the DH spot and if the Yankees can get a combo of Luke Voit healthy along with Mike Ford, you have all you need for the DH and first base. Of course, if JD Martinez opts out of his deal with the Red Sox, you can get creative if you want to. Cameron would be a decent outfield backup, but I am okay if that does not happen. Austin Romine is not exciting at all, but his last two years at backup catcher have been above league average and not too many teams can say that.

As good as the Yankee bullpen was all year, Dellin Betances was a huge loss and I think it was felt in a lot more ways than most people think. You add Betances to that mix and the relievers can be spread out more over games and not depend on the same four. I think Ben Heller is a heck of an option in there too. And he is a lot more affordable than Betances. I still think Betances is worth a two or three year deal, which he would take after missing an entire season.

As for Larry Rothschild, look at the fact that Lance Lynn got better after he left the Yankees as did Sonny Gray. Whatever magic sauce the Astros use to up their pitchers' velocity and spin rate has to come from a fresh face and not Rothschild.

All that said, the only question is finding a replacement for Aaron Hicks. Which leads me to ask what possessed the Yankees to give him that long-term deal with his injury history.

The big story line all winter will be about the Yankees going after Gerrit Cole or Stephen Strasburg. I would love the latter but there is no chance the Yankees get the former. All indications are that Cole wants to go home to California.

What if the Yankees get neither? Is that a disaster? I don't think so. Have we already given up on Jordan Montgomery? I think we have and should not. After Domingo German serves his suspension, you are left with a rotation of James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, Luis Severino, Jordan Montgomery, and Domingo German with JA Happ and Jonathan Loaisiga in the mix if you want to banish German, which is understandable. I think that can be a pretty strong rotation.

I think the Yankees should forget their stats a little bit about the third time through an order and work hard at getting the starters to be efficient and go for six innings at least per start. You cannot ask or think that the bullpen (no matter how good they are) can get twelve or more outs per game. And, please, no more "Openers!"

If the Yankees can swing a big deal with Cole or Strasburg, sure, go for it, but, again, unless you have new life in the pitching leadership (coaching) department, will those guys continue to dominate and is it ever smart to give a starting pitcher $300 million? So much can happen during that term. CC Sabathia worked out fine, but the Yankees did not get more than three (out of ten) of his peak years.

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What went wrong in the ALCS? I agree with Aaron Boone that the Astros made one or two plays better than the Yankees did in each of the losses. The Yankees were a few big hits away from having a chance in that series.

I will say this in hindsight. To me what really hurt the Yankees was a lack of continuity going from the Twins in the ALDS to the Astros in the ALCS. Think back to the Twins series. The Yankees used the same lineup in all three games. And that lineup raked except for Encarnacion, who was probably rushed back with the hope that he would be able to hit and hit for power. He was not. Mike Ford would have been a better choice.

Now jump to the Astros' series. Aaron Hicks was added in. Giancarlo Stanton was injured out and Boone shuffled his lineup in each game. That was a mistake in my opinion. Hicks did hit that big three-run homer in the first game. But that was it. He was not a factor (except negative) the rest of the way. Gleyber Torres should have batted third in every game. He did not. Hicks had one single the rest of the way. Yes, he did walk four times and saw a lot of pitches. I will give him that.

The Yankees had zero continuity in the lineup during the regular season. Injuries had a small part of that. But the constant lineup tinkering has got to stop in 2020. The Yankees got away with it during the season because it was a marathon and not a sprint. Even so, I think the Yankees would have had a better record with less rest days and more continuity in the lineup. Consider that Gleyber Torres had more than fifteen starts at five different lineup positions and ten in a sixth. Ridiculous.

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The F chant toward Jose Altuve and the abuse to Zack Greinke were terrible things. As a fan of the Yankees, such behavior was embarrassing and made all Yankee fans the object of derision and scorn. Not all Yankee fans are so insensitive and classless. It stinks to be lumped into the hate the actions of a few caused for all fans.

MLB Playoffs: Is It Too Easy For Davy To Beat Goliath?

2019-10-10T10:52:00.001-04:00

The New York Yankees emerged from the four division series as the only team that had an easy time moving on. Of course, for Yankee fans, that was a lot of fun. For Twins' fans, not so much. But the other three series have been utterly fascinating while going the distance. We had a blowout Game Five in Atlanta as the Cardinals surprisingly moved on. And we had heartbreak in Los Angeles for Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers. Tonight we find out who will emerge from the remaining division series as those scrappy Rays take the Astros to the limit.

The five-game series format of the division series does post angst of whether it is the best format for this stage of the Major League Baseball season. It seems to make it easier that the best team can be beaten in the frenzy. The Dodgers were easily the best team in the National League and they are going home. If the Rays pull off the impossible and beat the Astros tonight, then the best team in the American League will go home. That is a big "If" of course. But if it does, that means that both of the bests and most favored in their respective leagues will end their seasons against wildcard teams.

The wildcard gives those teams the sense of being the underdog with absolutely no pressure. The underdog is not expected to win. So they can play with abandon while the Number One seeds have all the pressure to go the distance because of the expectations. Since the five-game format does lead to such excitement, and because nobody wants to play baseball in the snow, I would leave that format as is, but I would make one tweak.

There has to be a bigger benefit for a top seed against a wildcard team. There has to be a premium for having the best record and winning a division. A wildcard team does not have home field advantage with the 2-2-1 format. But I think the format still gives a wildcard team a route to get a playoff series win. If the wildcard wins its two games at home, then you are guaranteed a Game Five (unless the wildcard team took one of the first two on the road). And anything can happen in a Game Five as we have seen.

I propose that the wildcard team only gets one home game out of the five. Again, there needs to be a reason to win a division and have the best record. Would a team such as the Yankees have fought harder down the stretch for the best record in the AL if they knew it meant four home games in the division series? I think so. As for the wildcard team, there has to be a real disadvantage for not winning a division. I think a 2-1-2 format does that.

This will never happen, of course, as there would be an outcry from the Nationals or the Rays about lost revenue. But my answer to them would be, "Then win the division!" If you think about it, the wildcard teams have just as much of a shot as the Twins and Cardinals received. I don't think that's right. There has to be a real benefit for winning the division and a real cost for not winning a division.

The National League Championship Series will feature the unlikely match-up of the Nationals against the Cardinals with the Cardinals getting a 4-3 home field advantage. I am not sure I would mess with that as a seven-game series seems to benefit the best team. But if a wildcard was involved, you could make it a 5-2 split something like 2-2-3. But, again, the seven-game format does make it harder for the emotional edge a five-game series gives a team as an underdog.

The American League is yet to be determined. And even though my Yankees are involved, I would want them to play the Astros. You want the two best teams slugging it out. There is a reason a heavyweight fight draws more than a welterweight. Plus, having half the games (or three of them) in that abomination of a stadium in St. Pete is not good for baseball. Plus, the Yankees have played the Rays 19 times already. Enough already! Facing the Rays in the ALCS is like playing Whack-A-Mole after winning the division over them in the first place.

It has been a fascinating playoffs already. And the buzz is good for baseball. You cannot ask for much better than having three of the four series go the distance. On the other hand, you want the best teams slugging it out in the Championship Series and the current format only gives division winners a slight advantage of making that happen. With apologies to wildcard teams and not denigrating the accomplishment of making it as a wildcard team, there should be a bigger penalty for not winning the division. We need to make it harder for Davy to beat Goliath.

Yankees Look In Mirror At Twins

2019-10-03T16:11:00.000-04:00

The Tampa Bay Rays already blew up my playoff bracket before it had much of a start. No longer needing to worry about my picks, I can concentrate on this ALDS between the Yankees and the Twins. With a five-game series, all conventional wisdom is blown away and the outcome is nearly impossible to predict. What can easily be said is that the Yankees and the Twins are so similar in structure that they could be the same image in a mirror.

Both teams have tremendous power as the Twins broke the season home run record this year and the Yankees finished one behind. The loss of the record (which really doesn't matter except for bragging rights) is another example of how the Yankees' last week of the season was atrocious. The Twins, on the other hand, finished super strong and barely ran out of time to catch up to the Yankees' win-loss record.

Both teams have very good managers. All Aaron Boone has done is win a hundred games in both of his seasons. Rocco Baldelli took the Twins to a hundred wins in his first season. One of them, probably Baldelli, will get Manager Of The Year. There is no advantage to be had here. The Yankees had a better record against teams over .500 and won the season series against the Twins and have historically beat the Twins in post season play. But all of those facts are meaningless heading into this series.

The pitching seems about as even as the offense. The Twins have had some bright spots in their rotation but no "stopper." The same can be said for the Yankees unless either James Paxton or Luis Severino are really on their games.

Boone recently announced that the rotation for the Yankees will start with Paxton, then Masahiro Tanaka at home in Game 2, and then Severino in Game 3 in Minneapolis. I am happy with that rotation and also happy (though sad) that CC Sabathia will not make the playoff roster (at least in this round). Tanaka is much better at home and Severino will give the Twins a new wrinkle they haven't seen in their home ballpark. In a short series, will the Yankees want to mess around with an "Opener" or a JA Happ in Game 4? Perhaps there will be enough days off for Paxton to pitch the second time.

One would immediately think that the Yankees have a big edge in the bullpen. I do not see it that way when it comes to the Twins. Their top four guys had great seasons with high strikeout rates and they walk less batters than their Yankee counterparts. For the Yankees to win, they need to win early.

Again, the offenses for both teams are a wash. The Yankees look like they will have the most bashable lineup of the season ready for the Twins with Edwin Encarnacion ready to play. They need him as he can be a game changer. The Twins' only question is whether Max Kepler is healthy and it looks like he will be.

I believe that one edge the Yankees have is defense. The Twins made the second most errors in the American League and all of their infield guys are in negative runs statistics. They lose a lot on defense with Byron Buxton out as it leaves the Twins without a true center fielder. The Twins do not throw out stolen base attempts on par with league average. The Yankees do.

The Twins were a much better team on the road this season than they were at home. That somewhat negates the home field advantage the Yankees hold. So really, there is no clear cut favorite in this series. Both teams are so similar and so close that it will come down to the bounce of the ball and which team makes the best plays and can do the best job pitching in the series.

What would you do with the Yankees' lineup? I have played a few scenarios in my head and like Sanchez as the DH with Romine behind the plate. But Romine would be a weaker play in the lineup.
I guess I would go something like this:

D.J. LeMaheau 1B,
Aaron Judge - RF
Edwin Encarnacion - DH
Gleyber Torres - 2B
Giancarlo Stanton - LF
Gary Sanchez - C
Brett Gardner - CF
Gio Urshela - 3B
Didi Gregorius - SS

I do think that the Twins were the best possible outcome for a first series match-up for the Yankees. The Astros are going to be tough no matter what. I was really afraid the Yankees facing Oakland and am less so of Tampa Bay. All that said, playing the Twins is no walk in the park. If the Yankees do not pitch well, this series will end up poorly.