PFP Never Lies

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Brian Cashman, Aaron Boone and Matt Blake will come to spring training in February with their iPads loaded with information once again and false promises.

Here is some advice, fellas.

Put down the iPads and do some actual work on the field.

Matt Blake is a pitching strategist, not a pitching fundamentalist. PFP, Pitcher Fielding Practice, is a vital part of mound work, not just spin and velocity.

Aaron Boone rarely holds any Yankee accountable for the repeated Little League mistakes of his team. He is not a managerial taskmaster in any sense of the word.

He’s lost.

Brian Cashman does not see the baseball big picture and keeps running out the same type of players who make the same terrible mistakes. Yes, they hit home runs, but they don’t have a clue on how to run the bases, how to defend like a World Series team should defend, how to make the most basic of plays in crunch time.

The fifth inning of Game 5 Wednesday night will forever go down as the worst World Series inning any team has put together in the history of the game. The fact that the meltdown came with a 5-0 lead makes it even more embarrassing as the Dodgers came back to win, 7-6 and take the World Series in five games.

The Yankees simply did not belong on the same field as the Dodgers. Cue Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

 “Booney, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the AL Central anymore.’’

 “Booney, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the AL Central anymore.’’

If you know the game, you could see this coming, but I must admit I was startled by the level of ineptitude considering the easy degree of difficulty on basic plays in that fifth inning.

Aaron Judge, who should be in right field, not centerfield, dropped the simplest of weak fly balls because he took his eyes off the ball to sneak a peek at the baserunner at first base, Enrique Hernandez.

Anthony Volpe, who owns a Gold Glove, rushed his throw to third base and spiked the baseball. Hernandez, who did a fantastic job hustling to second after Judge’s error to beat the throw, also did a great job of running to third base and, if you notice, he contorted his sliding body a little toward shortstop to cut down the angle that Volpe had to make that throw to Jazz Chisholm Jr., a middle infielder playing out of position at third.

That was just one of many little things done right by the Dodgers.

And now, the biggest and worst play of all, a play where the only degree of difficulty was hustle. Gerrit Cole, who essentially is Yankees pitching coach and ace, never broke toward first base on Mookie Betts’ spinning ground ball to slow-footed first baseman Anthony Rizzo with the bases loaded. You can call it a “little roller up along first’’ as Vin Scully once called another famous ground ball by another guy named Mookie.

This hustling Mookie was safe at first and the Dodgers scored their first run of the night. If Cole had covered first, that would have been the third out of the inning with the Yankees leading 5-0.

Cole thought he had pitched his way out of disaster, striking out both Gavin Lux and one-armed Shohei Ohtani. Cole let down his guard. The ball was hit to first and Cole simply did not bust it to the bag like every pitcher has been taught to do in the history of the game. Cole loafed and was actually breaking toward the dugout while Rizzo sat back on the spinning ball. Rizzo assumed Cole would be at the bag for the flip. Rizzo did not want to be another Bill Buckner.

Cole forgot it was a team game, and his weakest of excuses after the game to reporters was nauseating and a slap in the face to all Yankee fans.

“I took a bad angle to the ball,’’ Cole told reporters. “I wasn’t sure really, off the bat how hard he hit it. I took a direct angle to it as if to cut it off. By the time the ball got by me I was not in a position to cover first. Neither of us were based on the spin of the baseball. Just a bad read off the bat.’’

What a crock.

It is not about the read off the bat, Cole, it is about breaking right away toward first on any ball hit in that direction, something pitchers are taught to do – or at least used to be taught to do – before iPad pitching coaches arrived on the scene.

My phone blew up with veteran baseball men reaching out because of the lack of basic fundamentals all across baseball’s new Nerd World and Cole’s Blunder.

I spoke with a former longtime pitching coach on Thursday who broke it all down.

“That inning was the culmination of an organization that does not pay attention to all the little things,’’ he told BallNine. “Little things matter, they really, really matter.’’

Little things like Pitcher Fielding Practice done right.

When I read Cole’s quote back to the pitching coach, he sighed deeply and said, “Oh my gosh. Kevin, from the first day I ever did PFP in pro baseball, when you release a pitch and the ball is hit that way, you bust your ass. You bust your ass to the bag and then you read the play. Is the first baseman going to make the play himself or do you have to be there? But when you bust your ass, you are always in the right position to be at the bag. That’s what lost because that is not done every day in spring training the way it once was when if you didn’t bust your ass, somebody got on your ass. So, it became ingrained in you.’’

Aaron Boone doesn’t get on anybody’s ass. It’s kumbaya time all the time in Yankees Club Med from the first day to the last day, the worst defensive inning in World Series history.

“When something is no longer made important, it isn’t executed,’’ the former pitching coach told me. “Covering the bag, hitting cutoff men, taking infield, being in the right position for cutoffs, running the bases.’’

On X, former 20-game winner and three-time All Star pitcher Roy Oswalt wrote: “The Yankees left baseball fundamentals at the door tonight. Truly embarrassed for them!”

And let’s be clear, after the bonehead play by Cole, he gave up a two-out, two-strike, two-run single to Freddie Freeman, a two-out, two-strike, two-run double to Teoscar Hernandez, a walk to Max Muncy, who did not get a hit the entire World Series, before finally getting Hernandez to ground out for the final out of the fifth inning.

The damage was done, a 5-0 lead disappeared, and the game was tied, 5-5.

Cole also made a second basic blunder in the inning no one mentioned, a second brain fart. On Hernandez’ double to center that sailed over the head of Judge, Cole lazily stood in front of the mound. He never went to back up home or any base. Rizzo was also late getting over for the cutoff. Rizzo just barely snagged the throw while Cole comically did the splits in front of the mound.

“Re-watch that and go, is that the bleeping Keystone Kops out there,’’ the baseball man said.

Yes, the pinstriped Keystone Kops.

Another example of not doing the little things in a big situation.

Another example of Cashman and Boone’s Yankees asleep at the wheel when it comes to basic baseball maneuvers with this all happening not in a game against an AL Central Division pushover, but against the mighty Dodgers, who, to their credit, took nothing for granted and hustled on every play, running the bases hard and playing stellar defense, things champions do.

And shockingly, even though Cole threw 39 pitches in that inning, pitching coach Matt Blake never came to the mound to give him a breather. Manager Aaron Boone never came to the mound to give Cole the chance to reset. Boone just stood on the top step guzzling water and shoveling sunflower seeds into his mouth. Blake looked down at his notes.

In Game 1, Cole, it was reported on Thursday, essentially took himself out of the game after only 88 pitches, saying he was “gassed’’ and that created the burnout of the bullpen. Gerrit Cole, the $324 million man, tapped out.

Later, Boone made one of the worst decisions in World Series history, choosing to bring in Nestor Cortes, who had not pitched in 37 days, who then gave up the 10th-inning walk-off grand slam to Series MVP Freddie Freeman that created the Dodgers winning momentum of the Series.

What a humiliating fifth inning all around in Game 5, an inning that will be remembered forever as an inning on how NOT to play baseball, an inning where errors, and errors of omission were made on the simplest of baseball plays, plays any team that pays attention to the little things, can do in their sleep.

A Little League inning on the biggest baseball stage of them all.

More from the veteran, knowledgeable pitching coach, who has been saying for a long time that he could tell there is a lack of respect from the Yankees pitchers toward Blake, “Especially Cole,’’ he noted.

“The fact is because of that lack of respect relationship; Blake did not come out. If my pitchers didn’t like me, I didn’t give a bleep, because I was going to do my job and go out there and give him a breather and I was going to weigh in and he might actually listen to something that I said like, ‘Hey let’s just make a good pitch down in the strike zone and get a bleeping ground ball, instead of a line drive somewhere.’ ’’

It is called coaching, not allowing the inmates to run the asylum.

The Yankees were assembled as a team of stars and youngsters who hit home runs, a team that does not lean on fundamentals. The Yankees base-running throughout the World Series was Keystone Kops-like as well. And that tells me they don’t work on base-running. The Dodgers took the extra base whenever possible. The Yankees were going backward on the bases at times. Incredible.

The Yankees don’t play a game again until they face the vagabond Rays on Feb. 21 at Steinbrenner Field. When the Yankees pitchers and catchers report to spring training, the first day there is PFP, the YES cameras had better be rolling to see how they approach that most basic of defensive maneuvers.

The Yankees could not win it all even with the gift of of having multi-talented Juan Soto, who is now a free agent, dropped into their laps. The Yankees could not win even though the Dodgers only had three starting pitchers, and Jack Flaherty was abysmal in Game 5, giving the Yankees two straight bullpen games to attack the Dodgers.

The Yankees could not win Game 5 even though they were at home and hit three home runs to go up 5-0 and the Dodgers’ patchwork pitchers walked nine batters. The Yankees were1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. Dodgers’ pitchers seemed to go 3-2 on every batter.

They were the home run hitting, do little else Yankees, yet again, the template of a Brian Cashman team, a team that couldn’t put the ball in play, a team that couldn’t play defense, a team that couldn’t run the bases.

“The Yankees don’t work on it,’’ said a scout who sees the Yankees regularly, throughout the organization at all levels. “They take a team infield maybe once a week (in the minors). You never see any team fundamentals happening. It is what it is. I’m watching all the blunders now on the MLB app from the fifth inning. Geez.”

To his credit, FOX announcer Joe Davis called it like it was in that fifth inning: “Atrocious defense from the Yankees.’’

Throughout the series John Smoltz made it clear the Dodgers were doing the little things right, and the Yankees were not. Smoltz said the Dodgers “Never assume,’’ and that is a credit to Dave Roberts and their organization.

What is the old baseball adage?

Never give a team six outs in an inning in the World Series.

Remember this Nerds, PFP never lies. There is no spin rate or velocity to PFP, no laptop, no spreadsheet.

You either bust your ass to first base or you stand their befuddled, pointing a finger to nowhere like Cole did. For all his immense pitching talents, the simplest of maneuvers tripped up Gerrit Cole and the Yankees.

Put away the iPads and get on the field.