Gary Sanchez has something going on with a sore back. No problem, Gary. Take a seat for a few days, says master enabler, Aaron Boone. Say what?
Gary Sanchez has suffered yet another flesh wound that will remove him from the Yankees lineup for a few days.
This time it’s a sore back (as it marks the first time Sanchez has lost time for something above his waist.
Not surprisingly, the Yankee’s in-house enabler of late, Aaron Boone rationalized, “I think it’s kind of normal wear and tear, first back-to-backs kind of thing.”
Normal wear and tear? – it’s freakin’ March, not August.
Is Gary Sanchez injury-prone – or are injuries prone to Gary Sanchez?
There’s a subtle difference between the two and Aaron Judge who broke a rib on a diving catch which, according to WebMD, can typically be avoided by following this protocol:
- Always warm up your legs and groin muscles before physical activity. …
- Wear shoes with good support that fit well.
- Always increase the intensity of your physical activity slowly — no more than a 10% increase a week.
Now, consider that last year, Gary Sanchez had two stints on the injured list, with a left groin strain and a left calf strain. In 2018, Sanchez played in just 89 games due to two separate right groin strains. And in ’17, Sanchez missed a month early in the season due to a torn right biceps.
But which team should need a full-time babysitter to ensure pre-game protocol is adhered to? Certainly not Brett Gardner, DJ LeMahieu, Gerrit Cole, and many other professional athletes on the Yankees.
Here’s the Burn Though
Here’s the burn, though. The box score for Friday night’s game shows Sanchez didn’t move well when he was charged with a passed ball and was behind the plate for three wild pitches.
What was that all about?
According to Gary Sanchez, it wasn’t my fault, and it might be a result of catching instructor Tanner Swanson’s new approach.
The very sensible idea is to get Sanchez setting up lower to the ground with a leg stretched out to the opposite side of the plate from the hitter to help him frame lower pitches better and steal strikes.
Ouch, that hurts, Aaron.
Gary Sanchez does not annoy me as much as the current Yankees brass does.
Girardi Delivers Some Tough Love
Joe Girardi looms as the sole Yankees official who has figured out Gary Sanchez.
Sanchez is not someone who at the age of a child who is nine months old and stands up and walks. He needs training wheels every step of the way.
It was Girardi who, (finally) blew a gasket in the Yankees dugout with live YES cameras documenting the scene, delivered some tough love to Sanchez by calling out his retarded efforts to block swing and miss pitches thrown in the dirt by Luis Severino.
No one in the Yankees organization came to the defense of Girardi.
Instead, the Yankees launched a widespread PR effort to demonstrate the “hard work” their prodigal son was putting in daily.
Girardi’s reward for his attempt to deliver a wake-up call to Gary Sanchez? Dismissal. The teacher gets fired, and the student returns to class.
Yankee fans should shudder at the thought that Gary Sanchez is being relied on to fill the power gap, whether temporary or ongoing, vacated by Judge and Stanton.
Sanchez And The Yankees: When You Wish Upon A Star…
Do you believe it? I wish I could, but I would never bet the house on it happening.
For all that Aaron Boone is, and it’s a lot, the one thing he doesn’t appear to have, or be is the man ready to deliver a healthy dose of reality to the player or two who doesn’t fit the mold of the team he inherited.
Gary Sanchez, for reasons someone else can figure out, can’t be treated like most of the Yankees roster.
He needs a kick in the butt (thank you, Joe Girardi – you tried) to stay the course over the long haul of a major league season – geared ultimately to withstand the pressures of the hype engendered on him by the Yankees.
A Final Note That Taps Into the Core
I’m exhausted by Gary Sanchez. What surprises me most, though, is the Yankees “handling” him with kid gloves – for three years now – and we’ve come to a player who should not be a lost lamb in the sea at the age of 27.
What separates the DNA of Gary Sanchez from Gleyber Torres, who’s only 23 but appearing to go on to 33, who knows?
But eventually, the salient point has to begin with a question – at this level of baseball – what have you done for me lately?
And if the Yankees answer it truthfully, the answer has to be not a whole lot.
It’s a Yankees Pandemic Though…
It’s not only Gary Sanchez. The cancer is pervasive throughout the Yankees organization as it pertains to their influence on the offseason training regimen of their players.
What follows sounds good, but it’s not:
In fact, Gary Sanchez’s body transformation was so wild that people couldn’t help but think he trained with a superhero this offseason to get ready for the 2020 MLB season. Nick Dimengo, brobilesports.com
Brian Cashman, Aaron Boone – name the person in the Yankees organization in charge and formulating whatever it is Sanchez did over the winter – aside from his self-medicated program,
And if you can’t and you have a player operating off the reservation – what is your answer to that?
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
