The last five nights were enjoyable. They were relaxing. Because the Yankees didn’t play. There was nothing to be upset about all week. I now know what it feels like to be someone who doesn’t care about the Yankees or baseball or sports. It’s refreshing. Unfortunately, that’s not me. Unfortunately, I allow a group of 26 men I have no relation to determine my mood based on if they are able to throw and hit a five-ounce ball better than 29 other group of 26 men.
The “second half” is here and things haven’t been going well for my favorite group of 26 men. They have been a bad baseball team since the beginning of June. They can’t beat teams geographically closest to them. They can’t beat teams expected to be postseason contenders. They are two games behind a team they led by eight games in the standings. They are tied in wins with a team they once led by 12 games in the loss column.
I needed this break from watching the Yankees as much as the Yankees needed a break from playing. But the break is over. There are 66 games left and the Yankees are as close to having a wild-card bye as they are to missing the postseason completely. The relaxing is over. The next nine-and-a-half weeks are going to be physically, emotionally and mentally challenging. Anyone with a checkered medical history should locate the nearest exit and remove themselves from this stretch run.
With Yankees baseball back this weekend in Atlanta, let’s get to some questions from readers to welcome the “second half” of the season.
Will the Yankees ever get back that fire? – Don
I’m assuming you mean the fire and drive to win like the teams of the late-90s and early 2000s had. In order to get have that fire, you have to win, and no one on this current Yankees roster other than Max Fried and Cody Bellinger have won anything, including the manager. The team is full of career losers, managed by a career loser himself.
It’s tiring to hear about how the Yankees have screwed up the Aaron Judge era and his prime by surrounding him with inadequate rosters, as if Judge’s postseason OPS (.768) isn’t 259 points lower than his career regular season OPS (1.027). Judge is as big a reason as anyone for this Yankees era being championship-less, if not the biggest reason. That has to change if this group is ever going to win.
But again, the only way to get back that fire is to win first.
Is having Boone as a manager a liability when it comes to signing free agents? – John
Unfortunately, no. I wish it were. If it were, it would definitely make its way to players and up the chain to the front office. If a star player had an equal offer from the Yankees and another team and chose the other team because of Aaron Boone and told friends of his on the Yankees of his decision, I would like to think that would get to the higher-ups and a change would be made.
But then again, maybe not. The Yankees players know they have a good thing going with Boone. They have a boss who doesn’t hold them accountable publicly, and even if Boone holds them accountable privately, who cares? No player cares if the manager rips them in his office or behind closed doors, especially a veteran with guaranteed money to their name. Boone doesn’t hold his players accountable because Boone isn’t held accountable by Brian Cashman and Cashman isn’t held accountable by Hal Steinbrenner.
Whenever you hear Hal talk about winning and his desire to win, it’s all nonsense. When his father said it, it meant something. When Hal says it, it’s empty. We know this because Hal is one of the biggest advocates for the salary cap in baseball. He wants a salary cap so he has a limit to what he asked to spend. If the Yankees have a cap to what they can spend, they are no longer the Yankees. They have enough trouble constructing a complete roster with unlimited spending allowed. If they are capped, they will become just another team and over time they will be viewed as just another team. I mean the aura of “the Yankees” is already fading. There are kids in high school that have never seen them win a championship. Their are college graduates and working adults that weren’t even in elementary school the last time they won. The Yankees haven’t been the Yankees in a long time. With a salary cap, they would likely never be “the Yankees” again.
Do you think the laissez-faire attitude the team has that has been bred into them by Boone can be reversed by a new manager? – Paul
Of course. The Yankees went from a hard-ass manager, but a career winner in Joe Girardi to an inexperienced, buddy-type who cares more about being friends with his roster than winning with it. The next hire will be closer to Boone than it is to Girardi because front offices don’t want to deal with personalities they can’t run all over, but the new person will likely have managerial experience and been successful in the role. But the personality isn’t the reason why Boone needs to go. It’s part of the reason, but not the reason. The reason he needs to go is because of his in-game decisions.
I love when people ask who the Yankees would replace Boone with as if he’s Joe Torre or Casey Stengel. When the question used to be about who will the Yankees replace Girardi with, do you know how many people answered “Aaron Boone?” Zero. Because Boone had never managed before. Now he’s treated by the organization and media as if he’s some managerial savant rather than being equally at fault with the team’s lack of postseason hitting as to why have failed to win it all in seven seasons under him.
The Yankees easily found Boone because no one else was looking for him. They think he’s great even though he isn’t. So if they want to find someone just like him when he’s eventually replaced, it won’t be hard.
Why is the longest-tenured Yankees manager to never win a championship still employed? – Neil
The same reason the general manager who has never won a championship with a core he constructed is still employed: a lack of accountability and the fictitious idea the Yankees only care about winning championships.
Cashman may have been a Yankees employee when the Yankees drafted Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter and signed and developed Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera, but he wasn’t the general manager. He wasn’t in charge. The Yankees won four times with those five and five teams with the Core Four. Since they have retired, the team hasn’t won. It’s not a coincidence.
Cashman’s first chance at his own core started to come together in 2015 when Luis Severino, Gary Sanchez Greg Bird were called up for the first time. More of his first personal core came up in 2016 with Aaron Judge’s debut, and that winter they traded for Gleyber Torres. That core made everyone think the future would be bright when they went from being expected to miss the postseason in 2017 to reaching Game 7 of the ALCS. But then they failed and failed miserably.
Bird got hurt and was out of the majors by 2020. Severino made 44 starts over five years between 2019 and 2023. Sanchez had an .846 OPS through 2019 and has a .701 OPS since and was off the Yankees after 2021. The Yankees let Torres walk after seven inconsistent, frustrating seasons. The only Yankee from the Baby Bombers and Cashman’s first core of his own to remain is Judge.
Not only did the Baby Bombers fail, but the pieces Cashman gave multi-year deals to and surrounded them with did as well. The Yankees went against their no-extension policy Aaron Hicks and it was a disaster. Chase Headley was awful. Jacoby Ellsbury was a joke. The starting pitching trades for Sonny Gray, J.A. Happy, Lance Lynn, James Paxton and Jameson Taillon all flopped.
Now Cashman is on to his second personal core of young talent. It was supposed to include Juan Soto, but it doesn’t. It’s supposed to be led by Anthony Volpe, but it’s not. Austin Wells hasn’t been inconsistent, Jasson Dominguez still isn’t used as an everyday player and neither is Ben Rice. Cody Bellinger will be 31 next season and Trent Grisham will be 29 and Paul Goldschmidt will be 38 before the end of this season and all three are impending free agents (Bellinger can opt out). Jazz Chisholm has been great since becoming a Yankee (.846 OPS in 111 games) and is under contract through next year, but unless the Yankees go against their no-extension policy like they did for Hicks (and Severino), he will probably leave as a free agent after 2026.
Because Soto is gone, some combination of the current young Yankees needs to work out, or the Yankees better be prepared to offer Kyle Tucker more money than any other team this winter. If they don’t and the Yankees go back to the dark days, Cashman will still be the general manager and Boone will still be the manager as long as the tickets continue to be sold and the merchandise and chicken buckets continue to be bought.
Will Cashman include Spencer Jones, George Lombard Jr. or Cam Schlittler in a deadline deal this year? – Donald
I hope not. The Yankees desperately need a third baseman, but the only one worth parting with pieces like that for is Jose Ramirez and there’s no way he’s available, and it would cost those three and more to get him.
Ryan McMahon leads the league in strikeouts and is nine percent worse than league average for his career despite having played half of his games at Coors Field. Eugenio Suarez is a high-power, high-strikeout right-handed bat and the Yankees already have several of those. I would only want either if the price is meaningless, which it should be.
The Yankees seem to love anchors that weight them down. They demonstrate a stubbornness when it comes to moving on. Why? – John
The Yankees think they are smarter than everyone and they want everyone to know it. They don’t want to give up on players they believed in when everyone said they shouldn’t because it makes them look bad and their owner doesn’t want to pay players to not play, whether they are producing or not.
How many times did the manager and general manager tell us Josh Donaldson would he his old self before he was eventually released? How about Hicks? How about LeMahieu? The same thing is going on with Volpe, who is treated differently than any prospect or player during Cashman’s 28-year tenure as general manger. Every other prospect and player has had to earn their playing time and keep on earning it. Not Volpe. He had a good spring training two-and-a-half years ago and that was enough to negate the entire 2023 and 2024 seasons and more than half of the 2025 season. The Yankees defend him to no end and get irritated and aggressive when they have to defend him. Michael Kay said last week Boone told Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” when he got testy when she asked about Volpe’s performance. One day Volpe will be designated for assignment or traded or released and the Yankees will say it didn’t work out even though they spent years telling us it would.