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Author: Neil Keefe

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Jan 1, 2021

My New Year’s Resolution (Again): Don’t Get Upset with Aaron Boone

I’m doubling down on my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions for 2021, all of which revolve around Aaron Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them.

Sometimes I wish I were a casual Yankees fan. The kind of fan who will maybe attend a game or two in a season because it’s something to do. The kind of fan who is surprised to find a mid-week afternoon game on TV and will stop and take in an inning or two before moving on to watch another channel. The kind of fan who knows the names of two or three players on the roster and still asks, “Hey, where is (player’s name)?” five-plus years after they played their final game for the Yankees. The kind of fan who doesn’t let the results of Major League Baseball games affect and impact their mood, emotions, health, happiness and general well-being.

Life would be so much easier if I were one of those fans. It really would. I think about the idea of being a casual fan at the end of any season that ends in failure, and over the last 11 years, every season has ended that way with the exception of 2017, only because that season at least represented a bright and glorious future, like a recently bought, but yet-to-be-developed piece of waterfront property. That piece of undeveloped waterfront property is still sitting there undeveloped and is now home to idle heavy machinery used to build on the land even though the signs and permits on the temporary fence still read: COMING SPRING 2018. That bright and glorious future has led to a four-game, first-round exit, including the worst home postseason loss in franchise history to the team’s hated rival, losing four out of the last five in the ALCS for the team’s fourth ALCS loss in as many tries over 10 years, and another first-round exit, this time to the team with the second-to-last payroll in the league.

This past postseason really bothered me. It still bothers me. Today is 12 weeks since the Yankees were eliminated in Game 5 of the ALDS and there hasn’t been a day in these last 12 weeks when I didn’t spend some part of it reflecting on Game 2 and the pre-planned decision to pull Deivi Garcia after one inning for J.A. Happ. There have been times over these three months when my wife will ask me what’s wrong and I try to play it off as nothing or respond that there isn’t anything bothering me. But something is wrong. I’m thinking about hearing “Happ is warming up in the bullpen” as Garcia delivers his first pitch of Game 2.

We now know the final decision to follow through on that idiotic decision belonged to Aaron Boone. How Boone was allowed to single-handedly ruin the season and how Brian Cashman and his front office staff of baseball lifers and Ivy League graduates sat back and allowed it to happen is something I will never understand. Boone and Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference defense of the decision made even less sense than their same press conferences two years prior when they had to try to BS their way through questions about how what happened in Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS. They somehow survived with runaround answers as to why Luis Severino didn’t know the start time of Game 3, why he was left in to the load the bases with no outs in the third inning of the game, why Boone turned to the last relief option in the bullpen to get out of the bases-loaded jam, why Boone let CC Sabathia pitch for as long as he did in Game 4, and why the Yankees manager lacked simple baseball comprehension and bullpen deployment skills.

A year ago, I decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t get so worked up about Boone and his daily disasters, not all of which are even related to in-game moments. Boone has lied to the media about everything from player availability to player injuries only to be outed as a liar within minutes or hours after his lies. He has made irresponsible bullpen decisions and inexcusable lineup choices in three years, and each season when I complain about his managerial ability, I’m told by fellow Yankees fans not to worry because he would never manage the way he does in the regular season in the postseason, and each season, he’s even worse in the postseason, like a managerial Nick Swisher.

This year, I’m doubling down on my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions, all of which revolve around Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them. They’re not going to be easy to keep up, but in order to prevent me from tossing and turning in the early hours of the morning more than I already do with a three-month-old in the house, I think I have to at least try once again to keep them.

Resolution 1: Don’t Get Upset Over the Lineup
After three full seasons of Boone as manager, we have enough data to know he has no idea how to build the best possible lineup. We now know thanks to Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference that Boone has full authority and final say on the lineup card delivered to the home plate umpire. We now know it was his decision to play Brett Gardner over Clint Frazier in the postseason and Kyle Higashioka over Gary Sanchez, and it was his decision to twice use Mike Ford as a pinch hitter in October after deeming him not good enough to be a Yankee for all of September.

I need to take a deep breath when I see Gardner (who’s not yet a Yankee for 2021 but will most certainly be) or Aaron Hicks batting in the middle of the order as Boone forces a left-handed bat to separate the team’s right-handed hitters. Boone has been Yankees manager for 384 regular-season games and managed the Yankees for 324 regular-season games and 21 postseason games and I shouldn’t expect him to suddenly create lineups that make sense.

Resolution 2: Don’t Get Upset About Scheduled Off Days
The 2019 Yankees played their last game on October 19. Opening Day 2020 was on July 25. The 2020 regular season was only 60 games. Despite playing no games for nearly nine months and then only playing 60 games in nearly a full calendar year, that didn’t stop Boone from implement his load management nonsense.

After setting the all-time record for most players placed on the injured list in a single season in 2019, the Yankees continued to manage their roster and lineup in 2020 as if they had somehow solved injury prevention. The Yankees’ scheduled days off and extra and unnecessary rest for their position players is out of control, and unfortunately, it’s not going to change. If anything, it’s only going to get worse.

The Yankees aren’t going to go out of their way to win the division or home-field advantage in the postseason. They believe just getting into the postseason is enough and they don’t care about giving away games as long as they just get in. It’s been working well for them for the last 11 seasons.

Resolution 3: Don’t Get Upset About Bullpen Usage
This will be the hardest of them all. I can deal with the lineup decisions (to a degree) and the scheduled off days (to a lesser degree). The bullpen decisions though? This resolution has less of a chance of happening than Giancarlo Stanton does of a playing an injury-free season.

By the final game of the season, the Yankees’ bullpen had three trustworthy arms. The problem was they only had one starter capable of going six innings. In 2021, they will likely enter the season with three trustworthy relivers, and one of those three, the highest-paid reliever in the league has allowed a season-ending home run in both of the last two seasons. The only reason I’m even considering this resolution is because the bullpen might be so fragile that it won’t be Boone’s fault when the lesser arms blow leads and ruin games.

I understand these resolutions are rather meaningless since I can easily see myself breaking at least one or possibly all three within the first week of the season. I’m really going to try to achieve them, but I know Boone will make it impossible.

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

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Blogs

Dec 14, 2020

Giants’ Season Just About Over Thanks to Daniel Jones

Now those are the New York Football Giants. In the biggest regular-season game for the franchise in the last eight years, the Giants were embarrassed, routed at home by a Cardinals team on a three-game slide.

Now those are the New York Football Giants. In the biggest regular-season game for the franchise in the last eight years, the Giants were embarrassed, routed at home by a Cardinals team on a three-game slide. The Giants lost 26-7 and it wasn’t even that close, if a 19-point game can be close.

The Giants fought for four straight games to find what had been a lost season through the first eight games. They beat Washington because that’s the one team Daniel Jones can truly beat (he has seven career wins as a starter with four of them against Washington), ended their eight-game losing streak to Philadelphia (which they should have ended three weeks earlier if not for Evan Engram’s should-have-been-game-ending drop), held on in Cincinnati (with Colt McCoy appearing in his sixth game in five years) and pulled off the biggest upset of the NFL season in Seattle with McCoy starting. All of that was erased in three hours on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.

I spent the majority of Sunday’s game watching with the volume on very, very low with my wife and son sleeping in the same room. I had to keep my frustrations and my Giants Sunday F-bombs on low as well. The Giants had reeled me back in on the 2020 season after their improbable win over the Seahawks a week ago, but I was quickly reminded that the Giants are still a long way away from going anywhere, and they will likely never go anywhere with Jones as their quarterback.

There are no excuses for Jones’ play, including his recent hamstring injury. He was deemed healthy enough to play, and he said he was healthy enough to play. It wasn’t the right decision to play him, but it was the decision, and it needs to be criticized and he needs to be criticized given how awful he played.

Jones ruined the game for the Giants and it started on the game’s opening drive when he fumbled away possession for the eighth time this season. Jones is very good at ruining games. It’s actually what he does better than anything else on a football field. This season, he has thrown or fumbled away games against Pittsburgh, Dallas, Tampa Bay, and now, Arizona. In a league designed for passing plays and high-scoring affairs, Jones has thrown only eight touchdown passes and the Giants have scored more than 23 points twice. He’s lost as many fumbles this season as he has thrown touchdowns. He hasn’t thrown for a touchdown in any of his last three games after having not thrown for any in the four games from Weeks 2 through 5. How a supposed franchise quarterback could have zero touchdown passes in seven of 12 games played and still be considered the franchise quarterback is difficult to comprehend.

Then again, this is a team that while trailing by two scores in the third quarter of a crucial game, and facing a third-and-1 at their own 16, decided to call for a deep ball. Rather than try to pick up the one yard on the ground, Jason Garrett decided to let Jones, who was having trouble completing even the shortest and simplest of passes through two-plus quarters, heave the ball down the field. Finding a second-half groove like he had last Sunday, Wayne Gallman had picked up 31 yards on his first four carries, and yet, Garrett let Jones overthrow Sterling Shepard, who wasn’t even able to get a finger on the ball despite laying completely out. This decision was made even worse when on the next two Giants drive, still trailing by two scores and needing to preserve the clock, Garrett called for first-down running plays. As a result of Jones’ putrid play, Garrett’s puzzling play calling and the latest special teams letdown (this one by Dion Lewis), the Giants no longer control their own destiny.

While the Giants’ offense was failing to get the ball across the 50 for an entire half, the Cowboys were on their way to beating the Bengals. And while, the Giants’ players were answering questions about their lackluster effort and the coaching staff was answering for their irresponsible decision to start Jones, the Eagles were on their way to upsetting the NFC’s first-place Saints in Jalen Hurts’ first career start, and Washington was on its way to a second straight road upset, this time over the 49ers.

The Giants’ postseason odds dropped to 24 percent after their loss and Washington’s win, but they might as well be zero if Jones continues to play. I wrote last week that I didn’t think the Giants would have won in Seattle if Jones had played because of his game-ruining nature, and after his performance against the Cardinals, my belief was proved right. Jones isn’t leading this team to a win over the Browns or Ravens the next two weeks, let alone the Cowboys in the season finale. And because of Washington’s four-game winning streak, and the Week 14 wins for Dallas and Philadelphia, the Giants will likely have to win all three of their remaining games to win the NFC East and reach the playoffs. Even winning out might no longer be enough.

Last week, I wrote the following:

I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. That’s what the Giants do. And if they are to go 1-3 or 0-4 between now and Week 17, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are. I’ll be upset with myself for caring about them again this season when I should have known better.

So I’m not upset with the Giants (well, except for the decision to start Jones). I’m not mad or angry, and I’m certainly not surprised. I would have been surprised if what happened against the Cardinals didn’t happen, and the Giants had done something un-Giants-like and won a big game.

I knew Sunday’s game was coming and I still allowed the 2020 Giants back into my life. That won’t happen again.

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Blogs • Giants

Dec 11, 2020

Giants Have Reeled Me Back In

I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. If they are to go 1-3 or 0-4, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are.

I went into this Giants season wanting things to be different. Deep down, I didn’t actually think they would be, but I just really wanted a football season. Not a season that’s over when there are still leaves on the trees in the Northeast, and not a season that ends before the Major League Baseball postseason begins. I wanted what I have had twice in the last nine years, and that’s a football season that carries into December. I wanted something I have had once in the last nine years: a 17th Giants game.

The Giants kicked off their 2020 season as I was entering my 16th consecutive hour sitting in a hospital chair waiting for my wife to give birth. Just as the game and the season were starting, it was time for the baby to come out.

Five or six hours later, I’m not sure exactly what time it was, other than that it was the early hours of Tuesday, Sept. 15, I was sitting in the dark eating saltine and graham crackers and chugging water out of Dixie cups like I was Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway returning home, not having seen food in a very long time. The hospital cafeteria was closed and my only options were to either wait a few more hours for breakfast before crushing the hospital’s surprisingly exceptional French toast or to try to make a meal out of the airplane-like snacks the nurse was able to gather for me.

I wasn’t tired, and with the blinds drawn in the room, without a clock I would have had no way of knowing what time of day, or even what day it was, as if I had been in trapped in a casino. The last nearly 24 hours were a blur. I had been up for nearly all of them. It was now early Tuesday morning, and I had essentially been up since Sunday morning.

On Sunday afternoon, during the Week 1 “Witching Hour” of the 1 p.m. games and right as the 4 p.m. slate was about to begin, we were instructed to go the hospital as it appeared as though my wife was in labor. We raced to the hospital, I dropped my wife off at the entrance and then while flying around the parking lot looking for an empty space, of which there was one, I tried to force my car into a into a very tight window, like an inexcusable Daniel Jones throw, and hit the car to my right. The car ended up belonging to my wife’s delivery nurse who couldn’t have been nicer about the incident, and a few weeks later, it was resolved for only $250, which I likely would have lost anyway on the 4 p.m. games if I hadn’t been in transit to the hospital as they were being played.

My wife wasn’t going to be admitted until they ran some tests, and because she had yet to be admitted, under COVID precautions, I couldn’t enter the hospital until she was admitted. The woman in the hospital lobby told me I could wait outside. So I did that, pacing the sidewalk for 30 minutes before going to the car. I ended up spending the next four-and-a-half hours in the car (good thing I didn’t “wait just outside the door” like the hospital front desk woman suggested), before it was determined my wife was in very early labor, but wasn’t far enough along to admit her.

We got back home at 9 p.m. and by midnight the contractions started to pick up. I spent the next three hours meticulously timing them as if I were the one holding the stopwatch at the NFL Combine, and around 3 a.m., it was back to the hospital. By 4 a.m., we were in the delivery room. They had my wife doing squats on a exercise ball, while I sat in the corner trying not to suffer the same type of back injury Aaron Hicks would have if he had had to sit in that same chair for as long as I did.

Fast forward nearly 24 hours and there I was sitting in the dark in a slightly upgraded hospital chair. Despite being in the previous chair which made a Metro North seat seem like the recliners Joey and Chandler had in their apartment for upwards of 16 hours, I had avoided the type of back injury Hicks had suffered from a 27-minute spring training coach bus ride that kept him out for nearly three months of the 2019 Yankees season. I tried to quietly chew and crunch on my packets of crackers while my wife slept in an enormous and luxurious-looking hospital bed (which I would find my way into for a few quicks naps over the next two days), and next to her, our newborn son was out cold, swaddled tightly with a winter hat on, somehow full off less than a shot of Similac. I curled up in my folding chair bed to watch Giants-Steelers, which I had recorded.

The Giants lost. They could have won, and should have won, but they didn’t, in what has become the never-ending theme with the franchise for just about an entire decade. They couldn’t punch it in on first-and-goal from the 3 after a Steelers’ muffed punt in the first quarter, then with a seven-point lead and a chance to make it a two-score game, Jones threw an interception, and later in the game, while trailing, with a chance to take the lead back, Jones threw another essentially game-ending interception. It was the type of loss that led ownership to inexplicably move on from Tom Coughlin, got Ben McAdoo fired midseason and ran Pat Shurmur out of town after two atrocious seasons. On their fourth head coach in six seasons, the Joe Judge era was starting the same way the previous three had their eras end. A head coach I finally liked or wanted to like was overseeing yet another 0-1 start to the season, while Jones, who I was against the Giants drafting and have remained against, ruined yet another game.

Six days later, the Giants lost in Chicago by four points and lost their best player for the season. 0-2. A week after that they were blown out by the defending NFC champions by 27 points. 0-3. A week after only managing to score nine points at home against the 49ers, the Giants scored nine points for the second straight week in a loss in Los Angeles to the Rams.

The Giants were 0-4 and I couldn’t care less about them. I desperately wanted things to be different under Judge and I wanted things to be different knowing for the foreseeable future my family’s life would indefinitely be spent at home with only occasional and necessary trips out of the house. Once the Yankees season would end (and it ended early again), I knew the 2020-2021 NHL season might not start on the planned Jan. 1 date and might never start at all. I was relying on the Giants to provide a sports world escape and the only source of entertainment that didn’t require wiping spit up or newborn poop, and instead, they were the laughingstock of the NFL, having become the worst team in the league over the last four seasons. I decided, like in recent seasons, I would watch the games with no actual emotional or monetary investment in them. My only reason for watching them had become wanting everyone to progress other than the quarterback to progress, so that maybe by spring 2021 they would have another general manager and another quarterback.

In Week 5, the Giants held a 14-3 first-quarter lead over the Cowboys, but by halftime they trailed 24-20. With a late 34-31 lead and Dak Prescott now out of the game and the season, the Giants allowed Andy Dalton to orchestrate an 11-play drive to tie the game at 34. With 1:56 left in the game, the Giants had the ball and a chance to win the game. Instead, after gaining 15 yards, they punted. The Cowboys took over with 52 seconds left and went 72 yards to set up a game-winning, 34-yard field goal. 0-5.

The Giants would finally get their first win under Judge a week later with a one-point, 20-19 win over Washington, made possible by Ron Rivera’s idiotic decision to go for 2 at the end of the fourth quarter rather than kick the extra point and go to overtime. But a week later, the Giants were back to losing games in the most Giants way possible. Leading by 11 with 6:17 left on Thursday Night Football in Philadelphia, the Giants would blow their two-score lead and lose thanks to their usual late-game defensive collapse coupled with Evan Engram dropping a wide-open pass off his hands, which would have allowed the Giants to run out the clock. 1-6.

Eleven days later on Monday Night Football, the Giants led the Buccaneers 7-3 after the first, 14-6 at half and 17-15 after the third. But Jones showed up just in time to ruin another game with two second-half interceptions. Despite Jones’ awful second-half play, the Giants scored a touchdown with 28 seconds left to pull within a two-point conversion of tying the game. The attempt obviously failed.

At 1-7, the Giants were on their way to once again picking at the top of the draft (if they could get some help from the Jets and Jaguars) or near the top of the draft (if they just continued to play as badly as they already had). The Giants had the fourth pick in the most recent draft, the sixth pick in 2019 and the second pick in 2018. After going 3-9 in 12 starts last season, Jones was now 4-16 as an NFL starter. Three of his four career wins had come against Washington, and the other in his first career start when the Buccaneers’ kicker missed a field goal and two extra points to give the Giants a one-point win.

In Week 9, Jones and the Giants played the only team they seem able to beat in Washington and they beat them once again. 2-7. The following week, the Giants beat the Eagles the way they should have three weeks prior. 3-7. Somehow, the Giants were only a half-game out of first place in NFC East because of the failures of the rest of the division, and I started to think, Hmm … maybe. But I had thought Hmm … maybe in past seasons where the Giants were still mathematically involved in the awful NFC East only to be let down with a heartbreaking performance along the way. I wanted to be back in on the Giants, but I knew I would be setting myself up for unnecessary angst over the next six weeks. 

A season-ending injury to Joe Burrow made the Giants a road favorite in Cincinnati in Week 12, and they eked out a two-point win. 4-7. But they also lost Jones to a hamstring injury, and after Eli Manning didn’t miss a game for an injury from 2004 through 2019, Jones was now going to miss his third of 25 games as starter. For as much of a non-Jones fan I have been, he was still a much better option (I think?) than Colt McCoy, who has barely played in actual games over the last 10 years. I chalked up the Week 13 game in Seattle with McCoy starting against the best home team in the league as a loss, thinking the Giants would have do damage over their final four games to reach the playoffs.

But the Giants defense showed up in Seattle in a way they haven’t in at least five years. Despite being a double-digit underdog, the Giants won 17-12 behind a serviceable McCoy performance. (Given Jones’ knack for turnovers, I’m not sure the Giants win if he plays in Seattle.) Because they’re the Giants and not everything can go their way for a weekend, even though the Eagles and Cowboys would lose their games, Washington pulled off their own upset, knocking off the undefeated Steelers in Pittsburgh. Now also 5-7, the only thing separating the Giants and Washington is the Giants’ 2-0 head-to-head record over them. (Thanks for going for 2, Rivera!)

Five weeks ago, at 1-7, the 2020 season was as lost as any Giants season has been since Coughlin stood at a podium and acted as though he were leaving on his volition as tears streamed down Manning’s face in the audience. At 1-7, the Giants were headed to another losing, postseason-less season, and one that would surely end in the overdue firing of Dave Gettleman. But now? At 5-7? On a four-game winning streak? There’s already talk about Gettleman returning in 2021 because of the team’s recent play and the way their young players have developed, as if the final four weeks are automatically going to go the Giants’ way, as if the last decade hasn’t taught anyone anything about the Giants.

The Giants are in first place and control their own destiny, but standing between them and the destiny of playing a 17th game this season are the Cardinals, Ravens, Browns and Cowboys. Aside from the Cowboys in Week 17, it’s as bad as it could get without having the Chiefs or Saints in there. I would feel a lot better if the Giants had yet to play the Bears or one of the Eagles games or even the Steelers or Buccaneers. The Cardinals are fighting for their own postseason berth, as are the Ravens, and the Browns just dismantled the Titans in Tennessee. The only game the Giants will be favored in is against the Cowboys, and the Cowboys will undoubtedly want to spoil their rival’s postseason chances in the final game of the season. The Giants already let Dalton beat them once this season.

I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. That’s what the Giants do. And if they are to go 1-3 or 0-4 between now and Week 17, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are. I’ll be upset with myself for caring about them again this season when I should have known better.

The Giants have reeled me back in. I actually look forward to Sunday now. It’s no longer the end of the weekend, and the day in which I eat only foods covered in barbecue and buffalo sauce while drinking for 10-plus hours straight and losing money because of things like the Vikings losing to the Cowboys or the Ravens losing to the Patriots. Sunday is for the Giants again, and now it’s for real, meaningful December games again.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Dec 9, 2020

Yankees Thoughts: The Offseason Sucks

It’s been two months since the Yankees last played. A long two months.

It’s been two months since the Yankees last played. Two months today, actually, and it’s been a long two months. After the Yankees bowed out in Game 5 of the ALDS to the Rays, I had to watch the Astros fail to match the Red Sox’ historic 2004 ALCS comeback leaving the Yankees as the only team in baseball to ever blow a 3-0 series and then I had to watch the Dodgers overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NLCS and go on to win the World Series with my wife taunting me along the way. Yes, I’m (begrudgingly) happy my wife got to experience her favorite team winning a championship, but I have had to hear about it multiple times a day since. It’s not going to end anytime soon, and her daily wearing of 2020 world champion apparel isn’t helping. Two months down, more than two months to go until spring training. That is if spring training happens as scheduled which is about as sure of a thing as Clint Frazier playing over Brett Gardner (who isn’t even currently a Yankee) in 2021.

We’re long past the point of the offseason where click bait headlines are even remotely intriguing. The endless stories and “reports” about nearly every team being tied to a free agent are tiresome and in just a few weeks, we have had to hear about whether or not the Yankees will tender Gary Sanchez (no-brainer), if they will re-sign DJ LeMahieu (they better), that they might be interested in Yadier Molina (please, no), or maybe James McCann (pass), and that Michael Brantley is their Plan B if LeMahieu goes elsewhere (is it the 2018-19 offseason?) It’s not going to end anytime soon. Not until every last viable free agent is off the board.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It’s going to be a dark day in the Keefe household if DJ LeMahieu doesn’t sign with the Yankees. If I didn’t have the responsiblity of taking care of another human now, I would have already bought blackout shades and curtains for my windows in the event LeMahieu signs elsewhere, so I could just stay in bed and watch his endless videos of his beautiful inside-out swing until Opening Day.

There’s no reason for the Yankees to not sign LeMahieu. None at all. The Yankees’ current championship window has already started to close, and it will close that much faster without LeMahieu on the team. All it will cost to bring him back is money, and reminder: the Yankees make more money than any other team in baseball.

I stay up at night thinking about the Yankees’ lineup without LeMahieu and how many strikeouts it would become capable of. I fear Aaron Hicks becoming the everyday leadoff hitter and what will happen to the infield defense with the removal of the team’s best (sorry, Aaron Judge) and most versatile player.

2. The idea Michael Brantley could be the Yankees’ Plan B if they don’t bring back LeMahieu is appalling. Brantley was a good idea … before the 2019 season, when the Yankees could have signed him to replace Brett Gardner and provide his All-Star-caliber offense for them instead of the eventual American League-champion Astros. I wrote and spoke endlessly about wanting Brantley on the Yankees instead of Gardner to no avail. Now Brantley is two years older and is better suited to be the designated hitter, which doesn’t really work on a team full of players best suited to be the designated hitter. If this were two years ago, I would be willing to go pick Brantley up myself. But to sign him because you cheapen out on signing your best player, no thanks.

3. There was never a question if the Yankees would tender Gary Sanchez a contract. Did that stop any media outlet from creating the headline “Yankees give Sanchez a contract” after he was officially given a new contract? Of course not! For as bad as Sanchez was in 2020, the Yankees were never going to let him walk for nothing. They aren’t the suddenly poor Cubs.

I will never stop believing the 2016 and 2017 versions of Sanchez still exist. I won’t stop because we see it at times. We saw it as recently as Game 2 against the Indians when he single-handedly saved the game, the series and the Yankees’ season (before he was unnecessarily benched for Kyle Higashioka).

I get that there are a lot of Yankees fans who have given up on Sanchez and who want to see Higashioka hit routine ground balls to short for an entire season in 2021. I have done my part in trying to rid the world of the fan clubs of Austin Romine (who posted a .582 OPS in 2020) and Higashioka (who walks less than every position player in the majors and some pitchers). It’s up to Sanchez to make them all look like the idiots they are.

4. The Yankees need starting pitching. This isn’t “the Yankees need starting pitching because you can never have enough starting pitching.” This is “the Yankees need starting pitching because right now their rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery, Deivi Garcia, Clarke Schmidt and … Michael King?”

Montgomery, the Yankees didn’t trust to start a postseason game until he absolutely had to. Garcia, the Yankees allowed to pitch one postseason inning. Schmidt, the Yankees didn’t give a major league start to until the last game of the regular season, choosing to continue to start or “open” with King over him, who was anywhere from bad to abysmal in all of his appearances. Luis Severino isn’t expected back until midseason, and Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ are all free agents. There’s a 100 percent chance the Yankees will enter the 2021 postseason with their rotation completely up for debate. It wouldn’t be October without the Yankees not having clear-cut options for Games 2 and 3 of a series.

5. Now just because they need starting pitching doesn’t mean they should sign Trevor Bauer. I don’t want the Yankees to sign Bauer. Let the Mets sign him and J.T. Realmuto and George Springer. As long as they don’t sign LeMahieu.

I understand Bauer won the 2020 NL Cy Young in an 11-start season, but I also understand he had a combined 4.48 ERA (4.34 FIP) in 2019 and has put together one great “full” season (2.21 ERA in 28 starts in 2018). It’s going to cost an undeserved amount of money to sign Bauer and put him on a team and in a clubhouse with Cole, who he has a known past and rift with. It doesn’t matter that the rift is from their college days at UCLA, what does matter is that Bauer is the only one to talk about it since. And he has talked about it because he wants as many options as possible as landing spots, and it would be wise to make sure the team that makes the most money in the sport isn’t excluded as a potential landing spot. I have never heard Cole comment on his relationship with Bauer and have never heard him say it’s water under the bridge or that they were young or that it was a long time ago. That’s probably because not such a long time ago, Bauer accused Cole of cheating or doctoring his pitches on Twitter after his success in Houston. There seems to still be something there, and Bauer isn’t good enough to not care about whatever is there.

Bauer is a good pitcher, who can be great at times. But he hasn’t been great enough to get the kind of contract he’s going to get this winter. And he’s not nearly great enough to force his personality into the New York market, and into’s Cole’s rotation and clubhouse.

6. There was a recent report the Blue Jays are interested with reuniting with Happ. This needs to happen. The Blue Jays already committed to Robbie Ray and have Hyun-Jin Ryu on a multi-year deal. Add Happ to the rotation and that’s three left-handed starters the Yankees will have a chance to see in the six series between the teams (if there’s a 162-game season). The Yankees crush left-handed pitching (because they still don’t have any left-handed-only hitters not named Gardner), and adding Happ’s quickly-declining fastball and inability to go five innings, and the path to the AL East title gets that much easier. Happ also owes the Yankees many, many wins from the last two seasons, and what better to make up his awful 2019 and 2020 than by pitching against the Yankees in 2021.

7. Charlie Morton signed with the Braves. The same Charlie Morton I wanted the Yankees to sign instead of Happ before 2019. The same Charlie Morton many Yankees fans told me was never an option because he would only pitch for the Rays to be close to his Tampa home. Last time I checked, Atlanta isn’t another name for Tampa. Atlanta is in Georgia. Tampa is in Florida. Atlanta to Tampa is an hour-plus flight or six-and-a-half-hour drive.

I have long said if the Yankees gave Morton more money than the Rays did he would have been a Yankee, and his decision to sign with the Braves proves it. The Yankees train in Tampa. They play three series a year in Tampa. New York to Tampa is a two-and-a-half-hour flight. Morton could have been a Yankee. And if he had been, maybe the Yankees’ World Series drought isn’t going on 12 years.

All Morton did with the Rays was go 18-8 with a 3.33 ERA and 282 strikeouts in 232 2/3 innngs in the regular season. In two postseasons with the Rays, here’s what he did in six starts: 30 IP, 26 H, 9 R, 7 ER, 10 BB, 36 K, 2 HR, 2.10 ERA, 1.200 WHIP. Yeah, the Yankees were better off letting Chad Green “open” Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS and let J.A. Happ do whatever you want to call what he did in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS than they would have been with Morton. Morton went on to solidify himself as the best Game 7 pitcher in baseball history and the Yankees went on to two more early postseason exits.

In the last three-plus calendar years, the Yankees have passed on taking on Justin Verlander’s contract, including Clint Frazier or Miguel Andujar in a trade for Cole, signing Patrick Corbin and signing Morton. Verlander, Cole and Morton all went on to beat the Yankees in October and Corbin went on to win the World Series in his first season with the Nationals.

8. In Brian Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference, he mentioned Gio Urshela having a bone chip in his right elbow that wouldn’t need surgery. In a tale as old as time, Urshela underwent surgery this past week to remove the bone chip and will be sidelined for three months. That means if everything goes right, Urshela will be able to play baseball in early March, giving him nearly a month to get ready for the 2021 (if it begins on April 1). But the last time everything went right for the Yankees was 11 years ago.

I don’t know what to say about the Yankees and their handling of injuries anymore. In 2019, they set the all-time single-season record for players placed on the injured list. They followed that up by not properly diagnosing Paxton’s back injury from September 2019 until February 2020, Severino’s elbow issue from October 2019 until February 2020 and Judge’s collapsed lung/broken rib suffered in September 2019 until the spring of 2020. These all came after Hicks rehabbed a torn elbow ligament on his own in the second half of 2019, and talked his way onto the 2019 postseason roster, before eventually needing Tommy John surgery.

Now if Urshela’s rehab has a single setback, the Yankees will have a third straight season affected by their inability to properly diagnose and treat injuries.

9. The Yankees spent the last three seasons letting Jonathan Holder ruin important games. It started in the third game of Aaron Boone’s tenure as manager in Game 3 of the 2018 regular season and it never ended.

Holder was allowed to pitch in the most important game of the 2018 regular season, the first game of a four-game August series in Boston with the division on the line. Holder faced seven batters and didn’t retire any of them. His line: 0.0 IP, 5 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. In June of 2019, Holder set the kind of record no one wants to hold, allowing another five earned runs without recording an out against the Blue Jays: 0.0 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 HR.

Like every other mediore-to-bad Yankee, Holder inexplicably had his fans, and they never enjoyed my criticism of the right-hander who the Yankees never fully realized was incapable of getting big outs or preventing the elite arms from having to warm up or come into games they had no business being a part of. I like to think the fans infatuated with Holder and Hicks and Higashioka are the same who loved Romine and Swisher.

Rather than offer Holder a contract that is equivalent to couch change for the Yankees, the Yankees didn’t tender him a contract. In a season in which the Yankees would let Luis Avilan try to close out the Rays one day and then designate him for assignment the next, let Miguel Andujar pinch hit for Mike Tauchman in the ninth inning one day and then send him down the next, deem Mike Ford not good enough to be a Yankee in September but able to pinch hit in two postseason games with Sanchez and Frazier on the bench, the Yankees let Holder ruin games for one more season before deciding to not re-sign him.

10. Last week, Cashman said, “I’ve had three managers: 10 [years] with Joe Torre, 10 with Girardi and hopefully 10 more with Boone.”

I don’t think I can handle 10 more years of Boone. Unless there’s multiple championships over that 10 years. Another 10 years of Boone would take us through the 2030 season. 2030! The moment the Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury I began to count the days until he would no longer be a Yankee, and that was only a seven-year contract, which became a six-year contract, and because of his inevitable injuries, he only played in four of the years. That was nothing compared to what 10 years is.

Cashman doesn’t speak publicly about a manager or player unless he feels he has to, and he’s brutally honest when he does. So if he’s willing to go out of his way to publicly say he wants Boone as manager for 10 years, Boone will be manager as long as Cashman is general manager. It’s not good that mismanagement, especially in October, is acceptable, and that despite it in two of his three postseasons as Yankees manager Cashman is still publicly saying he wants Boone as manager for another 10 years.

A lot would have to change for me to be OK with Boone being Yankees manager for another decade. A lot.

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

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason • Yankees Thoughts

Oct 30, 2020

Yankees Thoughts: First Two Offseason Moves

Zack Britton will be a Yankee in 2021 and 2022. As of now, Brett Gardner isn’t a Yankee, but that’s likely to change the way it has in recent offseasons.

Zack Britton

This past season, I wrote Yankees Thoughts following each Yankees series. I wanted to do something similar this offseason since it’s once again an important offseason for the Yankees in their current championship window as the urgency to win a championship with this Yankees team continues to grow.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Despite Hal Steinbrenner claiming the Yankees lost more revenue than any other team in baseball in 2020 (and conveniently leaving out that the Yankees make more than any othe team in normal seasons), the Yankees did what they had to do in bringing Zack Britton back for 2021 and 2022. And yes, they had to do it.

After trying to navigate the posteason with only three trustworthy bullpen arms (and at times not even that), Britton was the best and most trustworthy of them all. The other two were Chad Green, who faltered at times, like he has in each of his four postseasons with the Yankees, and Aroldis Chapman, who once again allowed a season-ending home run. After Britton, Green and Chapman, it was Adam Ottavino, who the Yankees clearly no longer have faith in, Jonathan Loaisiga, who the Yankees inexplicably promoted to high-leverage situations, Luis Cessa, who is still Luis Cessa, and then a wide array of fringe major league arms like Jonathan Holder and Nick Nelson, who you don’t want to see in a regular-season game let alone in a postseason game. The decision to let the homegrown star in Dellin Betances leave via free agency coupled with Tommy Kahnle’s season-ending Tommy John surgery really screwed up the Yankees’ Rays-like strategy to go to their bullpen whenever they wanted.

2. Bringing back the team’s best reliever when all it would cost is money (something the Yankees still make more of than any other team even as they have planted the seeds they won’t want to spend this offseason) was a no-brainer. Britton has gotten better and better the farther removed he has gotten from his Achillies injury, and after an up-and-down 2018 season with the Yankees following a trade deadline deal, Britton has been his old self (minus those 32 walks in 61 1/3 innings in 2019). As a left-handed reliever who can get both righties and lefties out, at $14 million, he’s a (pre-pandemic) bargain and with his ability to keep the ball in the park (his -6.8 launch angle was the lowest in the league this season), two more years of Britton even at age 33 and 34 is well worth it.

3. According to MLB.com, the Yankees declined Brett Gardner’s $10 million option for 2021. Gardner gets $2.5 million for being “bought out” of his option, which is a nice little gift for a player who had a horrendous regular season and who has now made roughly $85 million in his career. Gardner will be back though. The buyout was just a way for the Yankees to save some money, as they will “ultimately” (I had to get Aaron Boone’s favorite word in here) bring their longest-tenured player back for a 14th season.

After 2018, I didn’t want Gardner back. He had hit 236/.322/.368, posting the worst batting average and on-base percentage and second-worst slugging percentage of his career to go along with the worst OPS (.690) of his career. It didn’t make sense to re-sign a 35-year-old after putting up the worst statistical season of his career, is the streakiest hitter of all time and whose game is based around his legs. Gardner had played himself out of an everyday job when the Yankees traded for Andrew McCutchen, and yet, the team still thought they should re-sign him with a better option in Michael Brantley (who I begged for) available. Gardner only ended up playing in the 2018 ALDS because of an injury to Aaron Hicks (shocker) and he went 0-for-8 with three walks, looking incapable of putting the ball in play against elite pitching.

When Major League Baseball decided to completely change the construction of the baseball, it saved Gardner’s career. He mashed a career-high 28 home runs in 2019 and went from fourth outfielder to starting outfielder after Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Hicks all missed signifcant time. His trademark high on-base percentage was still awful (.325), but his flyball outs from the year before were never leaving the park at a record rate for him. His power emergence at age 35 led to Boone idiotically batting him third in the postseason.

4. This season, Gardner was putrid until the final two weeks of the regular season. The player I have referred to as “The Streak” for many years now couldn’t get on one of his patented hot streaks until right before the postseason. And though Boone and the Yankees have admitted they don’t believe in hot streaks or a player being “hot,” they must have changed their theory on the old baseball adage as Gardner’s final two weeks of the regular season were enough for him to start in the postseason over Clint Frazier, who had experienced a breakout and consistent regular season both offensively and defensively and who single-handedly carried the offense at times over the two-month season. When Judge and Stanton went down (like they always do) and Hicks was unproductive and Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on, it was Frazier who saved the outfield production and possibly the season. But a handful of Gardner at-bats against Blue Jays pitching was enough for Frazier’s season to be disregarded.

Two years ago I didn’t want Gardner back, but now I do. Tauchman can’t be trusted to be the the team’s fourth outfielder going on 30 with one great six-week run on his major league resume, and it’s inevitable Judge and Hicks will miss time and Brian Cashman admitted Stanton is no longer an outfield option. So I want Gardner back. As long as he’s not in the starting lineup over Frazier 11 months from now.

5. Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ are now all free agents, which means right now, the Yankees’ 2021 Opening Day rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery and Deivi Garcia. Montgomery, the Yankees didn’t trust to use in the postseason until it became a necessity, and Garcia, the Yankees only allowed to pitch for one inning in the postseason with Cashman citing “this stage of his career” as a reason to not let him truly start a postsason game (ask the Braves’ Ian Anderson who had the same six career regular-season starts before this postseason how important “this stage of his career” was in October). After those three, it’s Clarke Schmidt, who the Yankees didn’t give a major league start to until the last game of the regular season as they continued to choose to go with Michael King as an opener over their top-rated pitching prospect. If the season starts on time (enormous “if”), the Yankees won’t have Luis Severino back until June at the absolute earliest. The Yankees desperately need starting pitching.

6. I would re-sign Tanaka. Two bad postseason starts aside, he’s still a good pitcher, who I still trust, and who the Yankees need. I would let Paxton and his injury-plagued career walk, seeing as though I was against trading for him when it happened. (If only the Yankees had an inexpensive, left-handed rotation option. Oh that’s right, they traded that pitcher in Justus Sheffield for 34 Paxton starts around two injured-list stints, back surgery, lost velocity and one mediocre postseason.) I would obviously let Happ walk and block his and his agent’s phone number as well.

Luckily for the Yankees, one of the game’s best pitchers is a free agent in Trevor Bauer. All it will take to make him a Yankee is money (once again, something the Yankees make more of than any other team). Bauer makes too much sense for the Yankees. A rotation featuing Bauer, Cole and Severino would give the Yankees the best rotation (when healthy) in the league. (Though I guess signing Bauer is also dependent upon the current status of his relationship with Cole which was supposedly rocky when the two were at UCLA together).

In reality, the Yankees will re-sign Tanaka, because they don’t really have a choice, and then count on Severino coming back and being his dominant self right away, even though there’s a history of most pitchers not pitching like their usual selves until their second sesason removed from Tommy John surgery.

I fully expect the Yankees to once again have an incomplete rotation come October 2021 with the annual debate on who should start Games 2 and 3 in a postseason series.

7. At some point in each of the last 25 days, I have thought about Game 2 of the ALDS. This past week, I watched the video of Michael Kay ripping the Yankees on the YES postgame show following Game 2 and I also listened to CC Sabathia’s similar rant on his podcast. All this did was make me more angry than ever about a baseball game that is now nearly four weeks old. I still cant believe the Yankees did what they did in that game. I can’t belive Cashman allowed Boone to make such an important and wrong decision, which was first-guessed at the time by everyone and not second-guessed after the poor result. Happ’s legacy as a Yankee will be that he was great in the regular season post-deadline in 2018, lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS in the first inning, was horrible in the 2019 regular season, gave up a walk-off home run out of the bullpen to lose Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS, spent an inconsistent 2020 regular season openly complaining about his usage and his contract option and then pooped his pants on the Petco Park mound in the postseason against a nearly all-left-handed lineup.

8. Charlie Morton shut down the Yankees in the ALDS after shutting them down as an Astro in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS and he has now emerged as the best Game 7 pitcher in baseball history. The Yankees could have had Morton. I know there’s the idea Morton was only going to pitch for the Rays to be close to his Florida home, but I don’t buy it. The Yankees gave Happ more money than they gave Morton and had they given Morton the money they gave Happ or better (he was worth more), he would have been a Yankee. There’s no way he takes less money to pitch for the Rays. Not when the Yankees train in Tampa near his home. Not when the Yankees play three series per year in Tampa. Not when a flight from New York to Tampa is three hours at most. The Yankees could have had Morton and they chose Happ. Well, first, they could have had Patrick Corbin, and they chose to not give him the extra year he wanted, then they picked Happ over Morton. Both Corbin and Morton have pitched in the last two World Series.

9. Dusty Baker is 71. Tony La Russa is 72. Baker manages a team that came within a win of their third World Series in four years and La Russa now manages a team that was nearly the 1-seed in the American League, reached the postseason for the first time in 12 years and is set up to be the dominant team in the AL Central for the forseeable future. While the Yankees (Boone), Red Sox (Alex Cora), Mets (Carlos Beltran then Luis Rojas), Dodgers (Dave Roberts) and many other teams have turned to managers with no experience seen to be able to be easily molded by the front office as “puppets” (though Cashman said at his end-of-the-season press conference that Boone “isn’t a puppet”), two of the best rosters in baseball have gone against the grain of the new-age young and inexperienced manager.

No, I don’t want the Yankees to hire someone like Baker or La Russa. I just think it’s interesting teams are reverting back to old-school managers now. The Yankees need to make a managerial change. They aren’t going to, but they need to. But I wouldn’t have wanted them to hire either as their next manager.

10. For all the praise I have given Kevin Cash this season, he ruined his team’s season in Game 6 of the World Series. I understand the “third time through the order” and giving teams different looks, but there’s no justifable reason for taking Blake Snell out of that game after he had shut down the Dodgers for five innings and the top of the order, which was due up, was 0-for-6 with six strikeouts against him.

Both Cash and Dave Roberts made Boone-type moves in the World Series and the Dodgers are very lucky Roberts didn’t manage them to third their World Series loss in four years after his decisions in 2017 and 2018.

It’s good to know other teams deal with the same nonsensical decision making the Yankees are hampered with. It’s not good to know so many managers can’t make the simple, logical and right move in a big spot.

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

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