The Basement View

  Back at it again, another year another Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, I still don’t have an actual vote, but we’ll continue to work toward the BBWAA! Let’s not waste any time let’s dive right into a sneaky juicy ballot: 1. Alex Rodriguez Like Clemmons, Bonds, and to a lesser extent Curt Schilling, you cannot tell the story of baseball without Alex Rodriguez. For 20 years Alex Rodriguez had his fingerprints all over the framework of baseball. Rodriguez has the 5 th most home runs of all-time, yes aided by steroids, but those juiced home runs still count. A-Rod also has the 4 th most RBI’s ever, and more hits than Dave Winfield, Ichiro, and Rickey Henderson. As well as over 300 stolen bases and a .295 career average. To some, A-Rod is the most talented player they have ever seen. All of that is before you add up the World Series ring and three MVP awards. And when major of star players are lucky to play 140 games, Rodriguez played over 150 games nine seasons and possibly could h...

  The Jets season ended tonight against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jets season ended because a team that is championship level decided to stay with Zach Wilson at quarterback. The roll of the dice that the Jets took on Zach Wilson with the second overall pick a draft ago came back with a final statement on Thursday Night and that statement is: “Zach Wilson is a BUST as a New York Jet.” The decision to stick with Wilson is a decision that might get a good General Manager, Joe Douglas, and a good Head Coach, Robert Saleh, fired earlier than they ultimately should. In a must win game at home Zach Wilson had a final line of 9/18 for 92 yards and an interception. As well as only scoring drive that Wilson contributed was the opening drive for the Jets that lost yardage and resulted in the only three points of the game for Gang Green. The decision to draft Zach Wilson is a decision that could be a move that stops this talented Jets team from living up to their full potential. The decis...

  It’s time for the Jets to move on from Zach Wilson. His time as a Jet has come to an end. No matter what the former number two overall pick does on Thursday Night Football against the Jacksonville Jaguars, he could play like Patrick Mahomes against Jacksonville—he still must go. And this is not to say that Zach Wilson is a bust. There are two former Jet quarterbacks who are playing well for other teams this season and additionally, we’ve seen countless other quarterbacks figure it out in a place where they weren’t drafted and years down the line. It is time for Woody Johnson, Joe Douglas, and Robert Saleh to admit they got it wrong with Wilson and move quickly to sign a veteran quarterback to help steward this team to their fullest potential. I’m not saying anything Jets fans don’t already know if their hearts—the only thing holding the 2022-23 New York Jets back is the quarterback under center. Zach Wilson is a big part of that but even with folk hero Mike White, he was the sign...

Aaron Judge is back. The New York Yankees have resigned the 2022 AL MVP to a nine-year $360 Million deal Wednesday morning pending a physical. However, Judge’s return to the Bronx is MUCH more than that. The Yankee right fielder is the heart and soul of the Bomber clubhouse and the fanbase. He is the presumed captain of the franchise. And for about seven minutes late Tuesday afternoon Aaron Judge was a San Francisco Giant, throwing away the legacy Judge built as a Yankee, and the doomsday situation that the Yankee faithful feared was reality… or so it seemed. The claim that Aaron Judge—or should I say Arson Judge was going home to the Bay was just that—a claim. Yankee owner Hal Steinbrenner made a statement rather than just hearsay; by putting the money behind the words he said in an early offseason interview. For a large part of the younger Steinbrenner’s ownership of the Yankees the label around the spending habits of the Bronx Bombers were painted “CHEAP” in big red spray paint acro...

No more excuses. No shoulda, woulda, coulda. No “the roof open kind of killed us.” No that bad call changed the series.   No, we were so close to making this a series. None of that. No more excuses. Isn’t that what the Yankees themselves proclaimed on Opening Day earlier this year in front of all us fans? There is now less room than there was before. The way the Yankees 2022 season came to a close should tell Hal Steinbrenner all he needs to know about the state of his ballclub. Now, it's time for change! Whether that includes the decision makers like Brian Cashman and his front office staff or the man delivering the data from the front office, the manager Aaron Boone, time will tell, but the players on the field do need to change. Say what you will about both Boone and Cashman—they aren’t playing the in the games. The players are and the players need to be better. No amount of health would have saved this Yankee team from the result Houston dished out. As good as D.J. LeMahie...

 Summer has given to Labor Day and what that means it’s time for football. It’s also time for my yearly picks for Team Wins Over/Under’s. I haven’t done that well in the past year but with all things considered I think Vegas has finally stumbled with NFL win totals. So, here goes nothing, here’s six picks for the upcoming season that I think are locks in win totals: ALL OF THESE ODDS ARE COURTESY OF DRAFTKINGS SPORTSBOOK Kansas City O/U 10.5: OVER (-120) Why are people sleeping on the Kansas City Chiefs? I understand they haven’t delivered on being the dynasty that they were declared to be following Super Bowl LIV. However, to be fair to the Chiefs, nobody has repeated since the beginning of the 21 st century. On top of that, Patrick Mahomes becoming “the best quarterback to ever pick up a football” hasn’t happened yet, and who could live up to the unbelievable expectations that were handed their way? Parlay that with the AFC West getting immensely better with Davante Adams,...

  The Brooklyn Nets got swept out of the playoffs. If I wrote that sentence in 2013, it’d make some sense to me. Writing it when the Nets have Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in 2022 is troubling. The Boston Celtics out coached and out played Brooklyn in every aspect of the game. Brooklyn was the title favorite at the beginning of the year and for majority of the regular season—even with everything that went wrong for the Nets. The consensus favorite got swept out of the first round. Brooklyn’s “Super team” assembled in the summer of 2019 has failed in three straight seasons. Make whatever excuse you want, they have failed. This point is extremely interesting for what the immediate future might hold for the Nets. We’ve seen in the past and the present; perceived great teams drastically under preform and get bounced in the playoffs. Even teams with all-time players. However, we’ve never seen a situation like this. Brooklyn right now seems like a pot on the stove that’s about to boil o...

  It is only May when I write this, so we are only at about the two-mile marker through this marathon that is a baseball season, but baseball in New York is the best in the league, actually in both leagues! The beginning of this season has reminded me of two books I’ve read over the past few years. The first being Mike Lupica’s and William Goldman’s fantastic recollection of the 1987 New York sports year named “Wait ‘Til Next Year.” The reasoning for that is both the Mets and Yankees have been great at the start of the season. New York doesn’t have the defending World Series champions in the city, but record wise, the city that never sleeps has two of the best teams in the American and National League. We have stars preforming in the bright lights and us fans are geared up for an exciting summer. The second book this season reminds me of is John Feinstein’s “Living on the Black” which details the 2007 season of two great pitchers in New York, Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine. Those two...

  Yankees banking on IF's after a lackluster offseason The fan unrest is not about Anthony Rizzo. It has nothing to do with Anthony Rizzo. When the 32-year-old first baseman trots onto the first base foul line on Opening Day, he will get thunderous cheers. Yankee fans are not upset with Anthony Rizzo—we have no reason to be.  This is about Hal Steinbrenner not being his father. This is the kid Steinbrenner not being man enough to pay for a World Series. If you have a problem with that, grow up.  Even if you try to win through the draft, eventually you have to have to pay people. This is about analytical nerds and shareholders building up a wall in front of the Steinbrenner family vault. We are no longer the Big, Bad, New York Yankees that we once were. The team that set the mark and put fear into other teams’ eyes is gone. What is in its place is a shell of the former dynasty. A franchise with a lost identity. Instead of opening the wallet and paying for players who are k...