Jobu says goodbye to one of the worst Yankees of recent memory, Vernon Wells.

Boyz II Men was one of my favorite R&B groups growing up. I still enjoy many of their songs, and often sing them in the shower and felt the need to dedicate one of my favorites to Vernon Wells, who was designated for assignment last week, when the Yankees made their signing of reliever Matt Thornton official. I would have gotten to this earlier, but all the A-Rod news happened and we had to cover it. With that being said, let’s all say goodbye to Vernon Wells as only Boyz II Men could.

The great Wanya Morris sang it best in 1991:

 How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad.

In the case of Vernon Wells, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The good times that made us laugh lasted exactly until May 15th. Up until that day, Wells was slashing .301/.357/.538 with 10 homers and 23 RBI in 38 games. Big League Clu and I even called him a lifesaver in a post on this very blog! That was the end of the laughter. From then on, aka “the bad times,” Wells slashed .199/.243/.253 with 1 homer and 27 RBI in 92 games. At one point, he went 64 games without hitting the ball over the fence. The one homer he did hit was an opposite field “bomb” that bounced off the top of the short porch wall in Yankee Stadium’s “cavernous” right field. In case you didn’t catch that, the words in quotations are meant to be completely sarcastic. Wells was putrid in the final four months of the season; and only injuries, and Joe Girardi‘s stubbornness, kept him in the lineup.

Let’s go back to the song, this time to Nathan Morris, who so eloquently sang:

I don’t know where this road 
Is going to lead
All I know is where we’ve been
And what we’ve been through. 

I know exactly where this road is leading, Yankees fans. The Yankees currently have eight outfielders on the 40-Man roster: Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran, Alfonso Soriano, Ichiro Suzuki, Zoilo Almonte, Ramon Flores and Slade Heathcott. I would take any one of those guys on the opening day roster over Wells, and Heathcott and Flores haven’t played above AA. This road will lead us to a time where we don’t have to watch a corpse play 130 games for the Yankees (mostly because Ichiro won’t get into that many games). Seriously, did you see the stats from before? Wells was the pits! If it hadn’t been for that first month-and-a-half, he would probably have hit under .200 for the year with a max of two or three homers. Awful waffle. Where we’ve been is hell, and what we’ve been through is torture. Now, we are once again free.

And finally, let’s wrap it up. Back to Wanya for the finish:

And I’ll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

No matter who the fifth outfielder is, whether it’s a decrepitly aging Ichiro, or an unproven kid like Almonte (in the event of Ichiro getting traded or released), I will have the memories to be my sunshine after the rain. No, not the memories of Vernon Wells in pinstripes, the memories of this tweet:

Thank you @Yankees for the opportunity to be a part of such a storied franchise. #Blessed #NextChapter

— Vernon Wells (@VernonWells10) January 10, 2014

This memory will be my sunshine, because I’ll always know that it’s possible that, no matter how bad a player plays for my Yankees, that there’s a chance they could let him go…eventually. That will get me through the 2014 season. My only regret is that I’m going to have to find someone else to feature on the Roster Spot Watch for 2014. I had Vernon pencilled in for a monthly post. Anybody seen Ichiro lately?

Take it on home, Boyz…

Featured image courtesy of: USATSI