4 people working hardest to ruin 2022 Yankees season

Before we get started … is anyone, right now, actively working to make the 2022 New York Yankees‘ season better rather than ruin it?

Giancarlo Stanton ended 2021 with positive momentum. Gerrit Cole didn’t, but he’s theoretically on a mission from God to prove his worth. DJ LeMahieu’s gotten healthy. So had Jonathan Loaisiga. Joey Gallo, Lifelong Yankee Fan, doesn’t want to go down as a two-month joke.

But, beyond that, there isn’t a lot that looks better now than when the sun set on 2021. Even Aaron Judge, entering his final year before free agency, has probably had his brainpower unwittingly split between helping his team and helping himself.

Seriously, please, can someone extend this man? Even by accident? Like, can some fan prank him into at least believing he’s signed an extension before the season gets started?

Now that the CBA talks between MLB and the MLBPA have at least some version of momentum behind them, the concerns of early December have moved from the rearview to the windshield for Yankee fans.

There might be a season after all, and it might be between 150-162 games. In that case, the Yankees are going to have to work on being better than the fourth-best team in their own rough-and-tumble division, and us fans can get right back to blaming the people who let us down before MLB locked down.

With a free agency frenzy on our horizon — all packed into just a few weeks! — it’s time to remember the fearsome foursome that’s threatening to ruin the 2022 season, whenever it begins.

These 4 people have teamed up to ruin the 2022 Yankees season.

4. Aroldis Chapman (in a Contract Year)

Either he’ll be spectacular while looking for a new deal, which will force the Yankees to overpay him once again, or he’ll continue his 2021 backward momentum and be a fickle question mark at the end of every hard-fought Yankee game! Who’s to say which one is more likely?

We’re to say. It’s the failure one.

Just below the collective failure of the vaunted offense, Aroldis Chapman and Chad Green are likely the two most responsible men for the wins that were ticked off our ledger at the last possible moment. Is it fair to blame the bullpen? Not entirely. Is it easy and accurate? Absolutely! More so than any other Yankees team in recent history, the 2021 team lost a stunning amount of victories that already felt banked, thanks in large part to Green’s overuse and propensity for the long ball, as well as Chapman’s unique ability to completely lose any semblance of ability about three or four times per month during the summer.

When Green struggles, he looks like he’s operating at 85%. When Chapman struggles, he looks like he’s been Space Jammed.

Entering 2022, Chapman will be 34 years old and will no longer be the unmatched flamethrower he was when the Yankees traded for him under dubious circumstances. When 2021 began, he looked as comfortable as ever, actually, defying the odds with a new splitter that seemed like it was from another planet. It had worked! Chapman had reinvented himself! He really was a pitcher and not a thrower! Except…

April and May went ridiculously well; Chapman struck out 20 batters in eight shutout innings in the season-opening month, then allowed just a single earned run (on a homer) in 12 May outings. Nobody’s perfect, but Chapman was close.

Until … he suffered … some sort of nebulous finger injury that never really resolved itself? His June was catastrophic. He went from Randy Johnson to Randy Jackson. His 11.42 ERA in 11 games that month carried into July’s still-bad 4.00 ERA as he tried to reset himself nearly from scratch in the middle of a season. It was everything we’ve grown used to from Chapman in recent seasons ratcheted up to 1.000. Of course, he’ll never be Mariano Rivera, but the least the “greatest modern closer” could be is generally meltdown-proof. Nope. And now he’s another year older.

Chapman ended 2021 with a home ERA of 4.71 with 26 walks in 28.1 innings in the Bronx. Odds are, if you paid to see Aroldis Chapman in 2021, he didn’t show up. So what’s he planning for the encore?

3. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette (TIED)

Spoiler alert for 2022: nobody’s keeping the Toronto Blue Jays out of the playoffs this time.

Hell, we’re still confused about how the brutal-to-watch 2021 version of the Yankees kept them out of the playoffs last time. Really shouldn’t have happened. Without August’s win streak, the Yanks finish like six or seven games back.

Toronto has reloaded for 2022, but however far they go, they’ll be carried by the big bat of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., as well as the big bat of Bo Bichette, but only whenever they’re playing the Yankees. We can trust Vladdy to bring the wood no matter who the opponent, but we can only guarantee Bichette will get loose if he’s spying pinstripes or road grays on the mound.

In the clutch last season, Bichette hit .340 with runners in scoring position (exemplary!), but against the Yankees overall, he smashed .342 with eight bombs in 19 games. Essentially, the shortstop clutched up whenever situations got tight, and treated every Yankees at-bat with the same gravitas. Against the Red Sox? .361 in 18 games with four homers. Alright! Less pop, but still effective.

Against the Rays? .187 with a pair of homers in 19 games. And … there’s your playoff race right there. If Bichette could treat Tampa like the Yanks and Sox, we’d have a chance. As of now, we’re torpedoed.

Guerrero Jr.? Coming off the worst season of his young career, the kid posted 6.8 WAR and 48 bombs as a defense-limited first baseman in 2021, near-impossible totals for someone that’s theoretically garnering almost all of his value with the bat. He terrorized nearly everyone with the bat, hitting .315 with a 1.050 OPS with RISP and posted OPS marks of 1.214, .971, and .951 against the Sox, Yanks and Rays, respectively.

He’s likely only getting better. And, as long as Bichette figures out how to pound the baseball equally well against Tampa, the Yankees still have a chance to sneak in over the Rays and Red Sox.

You know how the cookie crumbles here, though. Somehow, the stuck-in-the-mud Yanks will be the ones left on the outside looking in after Toronto realizes their potential this season. Because the Bombers’ roster got worse this offseason! Thanks in large part to…

1. Rob Manfred

Hey, uh, are we going to play a season in 2022? Because that would be a pretty interesting way to ruin a season.

MLB’s ownership made it clear this week that they’d be willing to sacrifice games in the name of charging to the finish line with something resembling their CBA proposal. Correct us if we’re wrong, but an entity that loved baseball would probably prefer to avoid that at all costs.

Rob Manfred does not love baseball very much. He’d love for it to be over quicker and to look better in nationally-televised showcases than it does on a sleepy August evening in Baltimore. He wants runners on second as soon as he can get them. He wants 14 teams in the playoffs, followed by a playoff selection show, followed by 16 teams in the playoffs the next year. He’s the one who’s clearly flirting with a neutral-site World Series, neutering the Yankees’ home field advantage once and for all. He’s the one messing with the baseballs while shrouded in secrecy, taking Gio Urshela, Gleyber Torres and DJ LeMahieu out of their rhythms.

Oh, and wait! He’s the one who changed the Spider Tack rules mid-stream, flipped Gerrit Cole’s life around, and helped tear Tyler Glasnow’s UCL.

Also, not for nothing, but he really wants you to hear all about how his crown jewel David Ortiz’s positive steroid test might’ve been a little weird actually. But no one else’s.

But, perhaps most frustratingly of all, he’s the one with the master plan to kneecap MLB’s 2022 season before it ever begins, which would mark the third straight Yankees season following the Cole signing that’s been at least partially derailed by something completely beyond the team’s control.

Couldn’t have happened to a better Commish. We don’t deserve it, though.

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