Perspective. It is difficult in the best of times, certainly in the worst.
If the Yankees, for example, went 17-11 every month that would be .607 ball and a 98-win pace. Relentlessly being six games over .500 in April and then May and then June … would have led to a 74-48 record going into Monday’s opener of the latest Subway Series and general congratulations for consistent excellence.
But sometimes a dollar and four quarters do not feel like the same total.
Because the Yankees did have a .607 winning percentage going into the Subway Series and, thus, were on pace for 98 wins and did have an eight-game division lead three weeks into August. Yet, they needed an umbrella, not because of the afternoon rain, but due to the dread of a falling sky.
This is what happens when you build expectations with a 120-win pace and a 15 ¹/₂ -game AL East lead. The applause directed toward the front office down to the dugout turns into jeers and recriminations.
So who do you seek for perspective?
“When at the end of August you have an eight-game lead, the team’s gonna be just fine,” Derek Jeter said by phone. “You like to go to the extreme and say it’s panic time and it’s the end of the world, but the reason why you have a 15 ¹/₂-game lead is to deal with stretches like this.”
Jeter put the chances of the Yankees winning the AL East at “99.9 percent” — better than both the projection systems of Baseball Reference (98.4) and Fangraphs (91.2). And why reach out to Jeter? Because he has been here.
In his rookie season, 1996, the Yanks led the AL East by 12 games through July 28 (Game 103) and three days later obtained Cecil Fielder. They roundly were seen as a deadline winner, just like the 2022 team was in the moment. But by Sept. 15, 1996, the lead was down to 2 ¹/₂ games.
In 2000, the Yankees led the AL East by nine games on Sept. 13 (133 games) then went 3-15 to close, looking even more grotesque than the recent Yankee efforts. They held on to the AL East title by 2 ¹/₂ games, in part because the Red Sox only closed 10-9 in the same period — familiar to a bunch of AL East clubs not fully capitalizing on these stumbling 2022 Yankees.
The 1996 and 2000 Yankees went on to win the bookend championships in four titles in five years despite hearing in the downturn much of what these Yankees are hearing.
Of course, Jeter also was a Yankee in 2004 when they became the first (and still only team) to blow a three-games-to-none playoff lead, losing the ALCS (and so much more) to the Red Sox. The largest first-place lead ever blown is 13 games by the 1951 Dodgers, so if these Yankees don’t hold on — like 2004 — there will be an ignominy that stains forever.
Jeter was central to those three Yankee teams. So I reached out to ask whether he had thoughts for weathering the storm when a talented team falls into quicksand with an anvil, when it feels like it will never win again, when the noise and recriminations intensify around it from fans, family and media.
Jeter made clear several times that he does not know the internal dynamics of these Yankees and does not watch every game. So his thoughts were generalized to what he thinks is vital when a big lead is drip, drip, dripping away:
1. Remember you are a good team. “You can’t play 120 games and still have this big of a lead without being a good team. And they are a good team. There’s a lot of teams that would like to have their problems right now — or their issues or their perceived problems and issues, you know — they’ll bounce out of it.”
2. No self-pity. “You can never get caught up in, ‘here we go again,’ ” when falling behind in a game or losing another game.
3. Fixate on your club. “You can’t concern yourself with who’s trying to chase you because you can’t change anything about that. They can’t catch you if you don’t lose, right? It’s entirely up to you. So you have the control. You’re not looking at the scoreboard hoping that someone else loses. You know you’re in the pole position for a reason and (the 2022 Yankees) are in the pole position right now because of what they’ve done up until this point.”
4. Ignore the personal. “It is what are you doing to win that day’s game. If you are focused on winning a game, then it’s a lot easier to play as opposed to focusing on what you’re doing as an individual. … When I played, whether we won or lost, I would say to guys, ‘we’ve got another one tomorrow.’ That’s the mindset, even when things are going good.”
5. It’s not about the manager. “At some point, it’s not up to the manager. The manager puts the best lineup on the field. And he allows his players to go play. Ultimately, it’s up to the players.”
6. It’s not about rah-rah speeches. “There’s no magical words or people would have bottled it up years ago and no team would ever scuffle. Just win a game. I know it sounds simple, but I think sometimes you can get overcomplicated.”
7. Don’t think about the worst-case scenarios. “If you start thinking that way, then you’ve got a real problem. Right? If you start thinking about, ‘Hey, we’re gonna blow something here that’s never been done before,’ then you have a real problem. And it’s just not something that I ever thought about or would allow anyone else to think about or talk about.”
Credit: Source link
