Fundamentals becoming relics of the past in MLB — and it may only get worse

Among the for-better-or-worse elements of the internet is that anyone can become a syndicated columnist, and in my case, for not even a penny more in pay.

But that’s OK as I no longer feel alone in my laments that big league, big-ticket baseball has been senselessly denuded of fundamental winning skills as they’re no longer taught or demanded.

Not a day passes without reading the woeful tales of MLB games from devotees throughout the continent and beyond of games risked or lost to the inability or unwillingness to do the least in service to winning. Other than replying that The Game is suffering from a sustained epidemic of illogically diminished standards, I’ve nothing better.

Here, where there are two teams, we’re able to double our wonder as to why multimillionaire players and their managers do whatever it takes to lose games and disable pitchers.

Still can’t get over Yanks-Guardians, Sunday, won, 8-7, by Cleveland in 10. Josh Naylor scored the tying run on a bobbled infield grounder to Gleyber Torres but it’s not as if Naylor didn’t try to be tagged out by a throw caught chest-high by the catcher.

While the sweep tag was missed, it was a close play only because Naylor didn’t perform the obvious fundamental. He didn’t slide home beneath the tag. He made an easy run — the tying run in the 10th, for crying out loud — into a close play. Astonishing! Or, at least, such used to be.