Roll making this hard sell
THE YANKEES trading Aroldis Chapman to the National League is probably a good idea. That way, they won’t have to face him until the World Series. We kid, of course, so don’t flood my email inbox or Twitter feed based on that facetious opener.
Even with Chapman, no one was predicting a trip to the Fall Classic here based on one nice week following more than three months of mediocrity.
But with discussions with the Cubs gaining steam Sunday night toward a swap of the fireball closer for A-ball shortstop prospect Gleyber Torres and possibly more, it’s good to know a successful home stand that concluded with another quality series win over the skidding Giants didn’t totally muddy the waters for Brian Cashman as the Yanks move within one week of the Aug. 1 non-waivers trade deadline.
At the very least, none of us will be subjected to too many more of these incessant “they have to sell” or “no wait, they should buy” opinion pieces.
A few wins certainly didn’t change my mind about the appeal of staging a bidding war and scoring a hot prospect or two for Chapman, with several contending teams besides the Cubs (Indians, Nationals and Giants among them) lining up for a chance to acquire the pending free agent and a true difference maker in the bullpen.
Just ask Nats fans today what they’d give up for Chapman, especially after Jonathan Papelbon’s latest implosion on and off the mound on Sunday. And especially because the back end of the Yanks’ pen still would remain a strength, with two All-Star relievers already in-house to replace the lightningbolt lefty.
Yes, the Yanks just completed a week in which they went 5-2 against first-place outfits Baltimore and San Francisco, and you can tack on another win if you count last Sunday’s series-finale against Boston.
That’s six of eight wins against purported playoff-bound teams — although the Giants looked like anything but a crisp unit in all facets throughout the weekend — and nine of 14 since the series before the All-Star break in Cleveland.
It all sounds wonderful and encouraging, to be sure.
And yet it still doesn’t feel like it’s quite enough, right?
“No, I think that’s a pretty good home stand when you consider the teams we played and we lost the first two,” Joe Girardi argued. “I know there’s speculation and there’s been discussion. … But my thought process doesn’t change. I’m managing to win.”
It was Al Green, of course, who first sang “Let’s Stay Together,” but Girardi certainly didn’t dance around the question when asked what he thought about his players — Dellin Betances, Brett Gardner, Brian McCann, Mark Teixeira and others — expressing a firm desire to keep the team intact before the deadline.
“We don’t want to be broken up,” Girardi said. “We want a chance to fight and fight and fight.”
The Yanks unquestionably, finally, have pitched better of late, allowing just 13 runs over this 6-2 stretch. Some of the new baseball math still scares the heck out of me, but that comes out to 1.63 runs per game, a workable number for even the most feeble of offensive clubs.
Such stats rarely feel sustainable, of course. Then again, if Ivan Nova and Sunday’s starter Nate Eovaldi are going to throw as effectively as they have in their respective past couple of outings, the big arms at the back of the bullpen just might have plenty of chances to close out games over the final two-plus months.
Which brings us to Chapman, unavailable to pitch on Sunday after hurling a boatload of those 100-plus mph heaters over the previous two games. Betances and Andrew Miller were in the same situation, leaving Girardi to entrust the final 2.1 innings to recalled Triple-A starter Chad Green. (He was just fine, by the way.)
“If the team wants to trade me they have the last say,” Chapman said through a translator. “If I get traded I’ve just got to keep playing.” s will whichever Yankees are left behind, perhaps beginning as early as Monday in Houston. “I like the way we’ve played recently and we’re very much in this,” Gardner contended. “There’s no point in me sitting here and campaigning for us to stay together.
“Considering what we did the first couple of months, it doesn’t take a whole lot for us to play our best baseball . ... But I like where we’re at. And I feel a lot better than where we were two weeks ago.”