Big Zoo took over for Big Mac overnight after the Fourth of July, and he was right there with a lot of WFAN personalities that aren’t Chris McMonigle: to Ed Arzooman, the Yankees just aren’t built to win a championship.
“I saw something today in the Bronx that doesn't happen very often, and that was the Yankees looking absolutely pitiful and getting swept by the Cincinnati Reds – and it's disgusting,” Zoo said. “It's disgusting for a Yankees team that started out this season the way that they did with the pitching, with the way that the hitting started to come along, to all of a sudden fall back into becoming the same old Yankees that we have known, and for the most part can't stand, for the last three, four, five seasons. They're rearing their ugly heads right back in.”
The Yankees are 5-14 in their last nineteen games, and out of 12 games this season where the Yankees have allowed eight or more runs, 10 have come in the last five weeks. The starters are flailing right now, but the bullpen ain’t helping either – and even with all the shuffling of the deck chairs of late, it might be time for some new ones.
“I don't think the issues here in the long-term are with the starting pitching as much as they are in the bullpen, because this group might be the ugliest that we have seen out of the Yankees in a very, very, very long time,” Zoo said. “And, it's not gonna get a lot better, because if you're going and counting on guys coming back from injuries like Effross or Trivino, you're just not gonna have it. These guys, they're just not the right guys to come back and help your bullpen right now. Brian Cashman has to go out and make those moves.”
Oh, and Cash? Zoo thinks that goes for the lineup, too.
“Brian Cashman hasn't really done that too much over the past couple of years and that goes into everything else that I'm talking about here. When you look at this lineup, what were we talking about earlier in the season?” Zoo asked. “Everybody's coming alive around Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, and now they're all relying upon Soto and Judge like they seem to do every single season. I look at this team and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but when I see DJ LeMahieu out there at third base, when I see Gleyber Torres at second base doing what he's doing as a butcher in the field, when Anthony Volpe, as great as he is, is slumping the way he is, and there are is just nothing being done in this lineup, it’s hard for me to feel like this team is going to be any different than any teams of the past couple of seasons for the Yankees.”
And that’s when Zoo’s prediction came out.
“They just feel like the same losers and they're gonna go out the same type of losing way, and it comes down to the fact that they just don't have the team,” Zoo said. “I said it last year, and I think this is true right now: this team and this franchise is based off of, ‘hey, look, we have Juan Soto, we have Gerrit Cole, we have the superstars that attract the eyes and that can win games and that can get you to a certain level.’ But when it comes to winning a championship, the Yankees aren't actually serious about it because they don't put the right teams together. Brian Cashman doesn't actually look when he is putting together a team and say, ‘hmm, you know, this piece fits properly here or there.’ No, he just goes out and gets, for the most part, the best available player, or a guy who has good SABRmetrics or analytics, and it’s maddening, because these moves are very short-sighted and they're not done with really any rhyme or reason for the most part. The Yankees have become what the Knicks have been for 20 years: a place for people to go, for tourists to come. They're gonna fill up the house every single time because it's a Yankee Stadium, and you're going to sell the jerseys because it's the Yankee pinstripes. It's the same old Yankees because these guys don't have any reason not to be – they’re not built to win a championship, they’re built to sell tickets.”
Zoo then got into examples with the Giancarlo Stanton trade being exhibit number one – and you can listen to his whole open above!