DJ LeMahieu was supposed to be a Ray. The Rays offered LeMahieu the chance to be their everyday second baseman for a similar amount of money the Yankees were offering him to not be their starting second baseman. The Yankees couldn’t give LeMahieu their starting second base job with Gleyber Torres at the position and Didi Gregorius blocking Torres from moving to shortstop, but what Cashman could offer LeMahieu was the opportunity to be an everyday player at multiple positions. Before LeMahieu could sign with the Rays, the Yankees improved their offer, flexing the financial might they should always flex when they really, really want a certain player, and LeMahieu became a Yankee rather than a Ray.

Can you imagine the 2019 or 2020 Yankees without LeMahieu? I can’t. Even worse, can you imagine him as a Ray? The Rays already proved themselves to be the better and more complete team than the Yankees this season, so just think about how much better they would be with the unshiftable LeMahieu in their well-balanced lineup and the multi-position LeMahieu as part of their deep position player roster. Cashman likes to refer to the Rays’ lineup as a “Swiss Army Knife” for Kevin Cash to utilize, well, LeMahieu is the most Swiss Army Knife player in the majors. Think about the Yankees without LeMahieu, their only true contact hitter, and think about how not having him would likely mean a full-time role for Tyler Wade.

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On Opening Day 2019, LeMahieu wasn’t even in the starting lineup. He sat on the bench as the Yankees beat up on the Orioles with his Yankees debut coming in the second game of the season. In that game, he started at the unfamiliar third base and batted ninth. Of course, he went 2-for-4 with a double. The following day, he batted ninth again, and again he picked up two hits to go along with two walks.

Through Apr. 19, Aaron Boone and the analytics department batted LeMahieu ninth (two times), seventh (three times), fifth (four times), leadoff (three times), sixth (five times) and third (once). It wasn’t until Apr. 20 when LeMahieu became the Yankees’ permanent leadoff hitter, and even then there were a few games when he was dropped down to second against right-handed starters, so the Yankees could force Aaron Hicks into the leadoff spot.

LeMahieu hit .327/.375/.518 in his first season as a Yankee, was named the starting second baseman for the AL All-Star Team and won his first Silver Slugger award. He set career-highs in hits (197), runs (109), doubles (33), home runs (26) and RBIs (102). He was the Yankees’ MVP and nearly the league MVP, finishing fourth behind Mike Trout (OK), Alex Bregman (OK) and Marcus Semien (not OK). He also nearly became the first player in major league history to win the batting title in both leagues with his .327, but was narrowly beaten by the White Sox’ Tim Anderson who only appeared in 22 fewer games.

In the postseason, he posted a .976 OPS in the three-game ALDS sweep of the Twins and then topped that with a 1.029 OPS in the six-game ALCS loss to the Astros. It was his two-out, ninth-inning heroics that momentarily saved the Yankees’ season before Aroldis Chapman ended in the bottom half of the inning. LeMahieu finished the postseason going 13-for-40 (.325), with three doubles, three home runs, seven RBIs, four walks, a .386 on-base percentage and .625 slugging percentage. He single-handedly tried to carry the Yankees to the World Series with his 1.011 postseason OPS, but unfortunately he was only helped by Gleyber Torres in October.

This season, LeMahieu hit as if the 2019 season never ended. Despite, the nearly nine-month layoff between Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS and his first game in 2020, LeMahieu never stopped hitting. He avenged his batting title loss to Anderson from last season, becoming the first hitter in major league history to win the batting title in both leagues with a .364 average. His 41 runs scored in 50 games were the equivalent of 133 over 162 games and his 10 home runs were the 162-game equivalent to 32. He set career-highs in average, on-base percentage (.421), slugging percentage (.590), OPS (1.011) and OPS+ (177), and led the league in average, on-base percentage, OPS and OPS+. He didn’t have a postseason like he had in 2019, but he still managed to hit .281, recording multiple hits in three of the Yankees’ seven games.

There’s a good chance when LeMahieu struck out (the most unlikely result for a plate appearance of his) against Diego Castillo in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the ALDS it was the last time Yankees fans would have the privilege of watching him hit as a Yankee.

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LeMahieu will become a free agent at the conclusion of the World Series, and given the Yankees’ league-high payroll in 2020 coupled with the loss of revenue from a shortened, fan-less season and the uncertainty of what the 2021 season will look like, you better believe the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees will act as though they’re suddenly poor, and unable to bring back a player they desperately need. Steinbrenner has already said in interviews the Yankees lost more money than any other team in baseball in 2020, conveniently forgetting the Yankees make more money than any other team in baseball every other season.

Without LeMahieu the Yankees’ one-dimensional lineup becomes even more one dimensional and the strikeout-prone Yankees become even more strikeout prone. Without LeMahieu, the Yankees lose their leadoff hitter, though they will happily replace him at the top of the order with Hicks since they have done everything they can to give Hicks that spot, LeMahieu just wouldn’t let them. Without LeMahieu, they lose their starting second baseman, who can also play third base and first base, and without LeMahieu, they lose an easy-to-love fan favorite who has done nothing other than be great as a Yankee.

CC Sabathia recently spoke on his podcast about the Yankees needing more hitters like LeMahieu the way the team needed more hitters like “the other DJ (Derek Jeter” as the former Yankees left-hander put it. The Yankees need more contact hitters who have a B or even C swing when the count isn’t in their favor and can put the ball in play as well as move the runner over from second to third with a ground ball to the right side. The removal of LeMahieu from the Yankees makes the Yankees worse in 2021 than they were in 2020, and in 2020 they weren’t good enough to get out of the division series.

Maybe what should happen will happen and the Yankees re-sign LeMahieu, sign Trevor Bauer and trade for Francisco Lindor. It’s a doable plan, but it’s far-fetched given Steinbrenner already planting the seeds for a lackluster offseason and the idea Yankees’ ownership will be eating bagel bites and Cup Noodles for the foreseeable future because of their 2020 revenue losses. But it’s a plan that would give the Yankees the best rotation and lineup in baseball. Most likely, the Yankees will let LeMahieu leave, re-sign Brett Gardner (again), and go into 2021 with the same lineup minus LeMahieu, and a rotation of 

I can’t imagine the 2021 Yankees without LeMahieu. Or rather, I don’t want to imagine the 2021 Yankees without him. The LeMahieu-less Yankees won’t be pretty. A team that has gone from coming within one win of the World Series three years ago with a future to growing annoying, frustrating and at times truly unlikeable along the way will become even more annoying, frustrating and unlikeable without LeMahieu.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

Brian Cashman is always honest. Usually, he’s brutally honest, even when he doesn’t have to be. His honesty isn’t always accurate, but he’s willing to share how he feels about a player, pitcher or topic when it comes to the team he oversees. His end-of-the-season press conference was no different.

Cashman has been through this before. As Yankees general manager he has now faced the media 19 times following a season which didn’t end with a championship. Nineteen times in 23 seasons he has had to answer questions about why the team he built wasn’t good enough to win the last game of the major league season, and he did this again this week.

On the Yankees’ roster.
“I think we had a championship-caliber team.”

The Yankees were a championship-caliber team … in February. They were a championship-caliber team before Luis Severino needed Tommy John surgery and James Paxton needed back surgery. Had the 2020 season been 162 games, the Yankees would have been without Severino for the entire season, Paxton to open the season (and then again when his elbow gave out like it did in the 60-game season), Aaron Judge for half the season, Aaron Hicks for the half the season and Giancarlo Stanton for half the season. Given the fall off in production from the Replacement Yankees, the Yankees likely would have missed the postseason in a 162-game season and five-team format. They barely made it in the postseason with an eight-team format. The Yankees might have also been a championship-caliber team if they had done a single thing to upgrade their roster at the trade deadline, but they didn’t.

Now the Yankees go into 2021 without Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, and to a much lesser (and better) degree, J.A. Happ. Their rotation is in shambles, and their right-handed heavy lineup proved once again incapable of consistently hitting right-handed pitching in the postseason.

The Yankees had a championship-caliber team in February, but by October they didn’t. They are far away from having one right now for 2021.

On the Rays being better all season.
“Ultimately, we ran up against a team that was better … They proved in the marathon of 60 games they were better and then they proved in the sprint of the division series that they were better.”

The Yankees went 2-8 against the Rays in the regular season and many Yankees fans thought it was fluky because of the Yankees’ injuries, as if the Rays didn’t have to deal with any injuries. It wasn’t fluky.

On Apr. 19, 2019, I wrote Yankees Fans Should Be Worried About the Rays This Season, Not the Red Sox. (A lot of Red Sox fans took exception to it.) The Rays nearly made the playoffs in 2018. They made it in 2019, won the wild-card game over a very good A’s team and then took the Astros to five games in the ALDS. The Rays have been coming for some time and they are now here.

The Rays were the best team in the American League over the 60-game season, and to no surprise, they were the best team in the AL in the postseason.

On the state of the Rays and Yankees.
“They are a better franchise right now than we are.”

It takes a lot for the general manager of the team with the highest payroll in baseball to admit the team he built with baseball’s best financial resources isn’t as good as the team with the 29th payroll in the league. Cashman disregarded payroll as if it means nothing, citing the Rays’ ability to create a plan and stick with it over the last five or six seasons being more meaningful than money. Only the general manager of the most prestigious team in baseball with the deepest pockets would try to say money doesn’t matter when his team isn’t as good as the one with limited money.

Can you imagine how good the Rays would be if they had the brains they do coupled with the Yankees’ finances? It’s essentially what the Dodgers are, and it’s what the Yankees have failed to be for so many years now. The Yankees want to have the Dodgers’ ability to successfully draft and develop players and then use their money to fill holes along the way. But the Yankees aren’t very good at drafting or developing players. They are good at turning other teams’ trash into treasure like they did with Luke Voit and Gio Urshela, but not their own players.

On Aaron Boone saying no to analytics.
“Does he push back? The answer is yes. Not every manager has agreed with suggestions made, but every manager was allowed to plot their own course. I think there is a healthy debate that transpires and an all-in commitment once that decision is ultimately made. In terms of the lineup and in-game strategies, those are the manager’s. It always has been and as long as I’m the general manager, it never will be different.”

Maybe it’s time you stop letting him push back. There are thousands of people who can manage the Yankees and manage them as poorly as Boone. If Cashman wants his staff to tell Boone what to do, what is Boone going to do? Threaten to quit? Oh no! What would the Yankees ever do?!

It’s good to know Aaron Boone is the one who writes out the lineup card and makes in-game pitching decisions. It’s not good that I’m now thinking back to every horrible move he has made over three years and realizing it was his decision all along.

On the front office telling Boone what to do.
“I know there’s that narrative about the manager being a puppet and none of that’s true. I’ve never ordered a manager to do anything specifically and Aaron would be able to testify to that as well as Joe Girardi and Joe Torre. They’ve never been directed at any time by me or our front office to do something they didn’t want to do.”

Boone should be a puppet. Because three years of watching him create lineups with Brett Gardner batting third, Mike Tauchman batting fourth and Gleyber Torres batting eighth coupled with him bringing Jonathan Holder into high-leverage situations, letting Luis Avilan try to close out games against the Rays and continuing to use Michael King as an opener have proven he can’t handle the lineup or in-game strategies. Let Boone be the “manager” of the Yankees. Let him talk to the media and be everyone’s friend in the clubhouse. But take away the lineup card from him and take away the in-game decisions since those are what’s preventing this team from realizing its potential and actually winning a championship.

I think Cashman wanted to make it clear that Boone’s idiotic decisions are his and not the front office’s. That clears Cashman and his team’s name from the inexplicable decisions Boone has made in three years. Though it doesn’t reflect well on Cashman for hiring Boone and continuing to employ him.

On the ALDS Game 2 pitching strategy.
“We didn’t ask Deivi Garcia to do something he wasn’t used to. He was asked to start, right? And we were not going to have a long rope with him, obviously at this stage of his career. It doesn’t mean he could not have pitched well, but again, we were trying to exploit the current roster going into that series. We felt this was the best strategy. We didn’t ask J.A. Happ to do something he wasn’t used to doing. And what do I mean by that? I know he’s a starter, but he’s had 15 career postseason appear in his entire career. You know how many starts he’s had in the postseason? He’s had four. So his whole postseason career is coming out of the pen typically, including last year.”

Why couldn’t Garcia have a long rope at this stage of his career? Anyone watch the NLCS? The Braves’ Ian Anderson had exactly as much major league experience (six starts) as Garcia and look what he did in the postseason. The Astros used a bullpen of nearly all rookies, and look where it got them. I don’t think any Yankees fan needs to be reminded of what Jaret Wright at age 21 did to the Yankees in 1997 or what Josh Beckett at age 21 did to the Yankees in 2003. Garcia gave the Yankees the best chance to win Game 2 and Cashman let Boone utilize a plan which sunk the Yankees’ season.

On using J.A. Happ in Game 2 of the ALDS.
“We tried to put J.A. Happ in the best position he possibly could be in to find a way to navigate what I call that Swiss Army knife lineup, so that Kevin Cash would take some right-handers out of that lineup, so when Happ came in he had better lanes to try to navigate. Didn’t work. It didn’t work. 

No, it didn’t. But it was obvious it wouldn’t work the second Garcia threw a pitch in the game and Happ began warming up. It was a move that was first-guessed and not second-guessed after Happ inevitably pooped his pants on the Petco Park mound by allowing nine baserunners, four earned runs, two home runs and three walks, while also hitting a batter and committing an error in his 2 2/3 innings of work. The best position possible for Happ would have been to not have pitched in the game. 

On if the team’s lost revenue will hinder them in free agency.
“I haven’t had conversations directly with Hal Steinbrenner about how it affects our decision making moving forward.”

I don’t think the Yankees will re-sign DJ LeMahieu. I can see them crying poor and then letting Tyler Wade or Thairo Estrada be the everyday second baseman in 2021. The Yankees are already planting the seeds for this excuse the way Hal Steinbrenner talked about the Yankees losing more money than any other team last week, and the way Cashman has avoided the question which he knows the answer to.

On if Giancarlo Stanton can play the outfield.
“Given the injuries that we’ve experienced with him thus far, I think a safe bet would be to focus with him at the DH level.”

The Giancarlo Stanton contract is a disaster. At the time, it was a great move. The Yankees had come within one win of the World Series and were young and inexpensive and they were adding the NL MVP at a discounted price. But three years later, the Yankees haven’t won anything, Stanton has been hurt nearly the entire time and now he’s only a DH on a team full of players who would be better suited as only being the DH. It’s nice that Stanton hit a bunch of home runs in a postseason in which the Yankees were eliminated in the division series for the second time in three years, but Stanton will be 31 for the 2021 season, and he’s not going to get healthier or better at baseball as his contract progresses.

On what he’s learned from Boone in his three seasons as Yankees manager.
“I think he’s honored who he is every step of the way. I think he’s a real approachable person that connects well with his players, connects well with his co-workers … He’s a very patient, very approachable, very open-mined individual, extremely intelligent, that is willing to put the work in to try to decipher the next move and the best position to be sitting in. And then look at the results for better or for worse. All I continue to see from Aaron Boone the person is everything that I thought I felt from that interview process … he’s made that real. He’s exactly who he is with you in the media, he is with us, and that’s a tremendous skill.”

If I didn’t see these words come out of Cashman’s mouth and just read them, I would think a member of Boone’s family was asked how they feel about Boone. Boone helped ruin three seasons of a championship window and helped eliminate three teams Cashman built, all of which Cashman believes could have won the World Series. If you feel as strongly as Cashman doe that the Yankees had championship-caliber teams for the last three years and then watched the manager you hired make the moves he did over the last three regular seasons and postseason, how can you still say these things about him?

“Willing to put the work in to try to decipher the next move and the best position to be sitting in?” Are we sure Cashman knows who Boone is?

On how hard it is to continue to give this type of end-of-the-season press conference.
“I’d rather be doing this than not making the playoffs first and foremost. We’re playing meaningful games in October, and I’m not going to shy away from how important that is in the very least. Just because we’re here doesn’t guarantee anything. Just because we have the highest payroll doesn’t guarantee us anything.”

Several times Cashman talked about how the Yankees earned their postseason berth. Eight of the AL’s 15 teams got in. When 53 percent of the league goes to the postseason, it’s hard to feel good about your accomplishment, especially when you wouldn’t have reached the postseason under the usual format. The Yankees shouldn’t be proud about making the postseason in 2020.

On the future of the Yankees.
“Ultimately, we have a championship-contending roster. I believe that is a fact. We’re not going to be able to call ourselves champions. That is also a fact.”

It’s a fact that the Yankees won’t be able to call themselves champions for the 11th straight season. (They haven’t even been able to call themselves American League champions in that time.) I don’t necessarily believe they have a championship-contending roster either. They have a good roster. They have a roster capable of beating up on the Orioles and Red Sox and crappy rotations and bullpens over 162 games. They don’t have a roster that can handle elite pitching or a rotation that can handle the league’s top lineups in October.

Here will be the ages of the Yankees currently under contract (who will be counted on) in April 2021:

Zack Britton: 33
Aroldis Chapman: 33
Aaron Hicks: 31
Giancarlo Stanton: 31
Kyle Higashioka: 31
Gerrit Cole: 30
Luke Voit: 30
Chad Green: 29
Aaron Judge: 29
Gio Urshela: 29
Gary Sanchez: 28
Luis Severino: 27
Clint Frazier: 26
Gleyber Torres: 24
Deivi Garcia: 21

(I’m sure they will re-sign Gardner again and he will be 37.)

Three years ago, the young, inexpensive Baby Bombers came within a game of the World Series and the future was as bright as it had been in a long time for the Yankees. Three years later, and they have two ALDS exits, one ALCS exit, and they’re no longer babies, no longer inexpensive and seem to be headed in the wrong direction.

“Championship-contending roster?” Not as it’s currently constructed.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!