The Yankees had the opportunity to put together a clear favorite roster in the American League for 2022. They instead chose to put together a roster that could be really good if an abundance of things go their way.
The Yankees had the opportunity to put together a clear favorite roster in the American League for 2022. They instead chose to put together a roster that could be really good if an abundance of things go their way.
Frank Marco of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the Yankees’ offseason moves and why there is optimism for the roster and team they have built.
The Yankees’ 2022 season is one enormous gamble. It didn’t have to be this way. The Yankees could have put together as sure of a thing possible from an on-paper roster standpoint.
The Yankees’ 2022 season is one enormous gamble. It didn’t have to be this way. The Yankees could have put together as sure of a thing possible from an on-paper roster standpoint. They could have used their financial might and the fact they generate more revenue than any of the other 29 teams in the majors and play in the biggest market in the country to their advantage. They could have finally put together the best possible roster to end their going-on-13-year championship drought. If it didn’t work out on the field, at least they would have done everything in their power to attempt to win.
Instead, the Yankees purposely created one prodigious parlay for the 2022 season. Rather than spend the way their revenue streams allow and needing only health to be on their side to be the favorite to win the American League pennant, overall health is now just one of a lengthy list of things the Yankees need to hit on to win with the roster they have constructed.
At the Yankees’ 2021 end-of-the-season press conference on Oct. 19, Brian Cashman openly admitted the 2021 team was “unwatchable.” The Yankees had been the odds-on favorite to win the AL, and they instead finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division. In lieu of making wholesale changes to a declining roster and culture that had only gone backward in each season since 2017, Cashman’s first move for 2022 was to extend Aaron Boone. Boone had been handed the keys to a team that came within one win of the World Series, and crashed it before leaving the driveway. Under him, the Yankees suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history while falling to the Red Sox in four games in the 2018; lost four of the final five games of the 2019 ALCS; were embarrassed by the 28th-highest payroll Rays in the 2020 ALDS and were eliminated by the Red Sox for a second time in his tenure in the 2021 wild-card game before’s the game’s second commercial break. Cashman and the Yankees hired the inexperienced, in-over-his-head Boone, watched him fail miserably for four years and then decided to double down on their disastrous hire by giving him a new three-year deal with a fourth-year option. Boone, who never won anything as a player, has now done the same as manager. His Yankees have produced one division title and an 11-11 postseason record with no World Series appearances in four seasons.
When the Boone extension was announced, I desperately tried to talk myself into Boone with better players in 2022. If the Yankees could go out and dominate the free-agent market or make a blockbuster trade then maybe the team could outperform their own manager. At least that’s what I told myself. A complete roster and improved rotation would prevent Boone’s frequent illogical lineups and horrifying bullpen decisions. His in-game decisions wouldn’t have as much of an impact on the team’s success, and the Yankees could win in spite of his presence. I thought this was a real possibility because of Cashman’s comments at that press conference.
“I’m going to be looking to upgrade,” Cashman said that day. “There are some areas of weakness that have popped up in a lot of categories.
“Here’s the biggest key. Go to the marketplace, whether it’s the free-agent marketplace, or go to the trade market and see how we can solve that with what’s available in the marketplace. And obviously there will be some legitimate choices to reconfigure in certain categories.”
Cashman’s admission of needing to upgrade the roster either through the “free-agent marketplace” or the “trade market” had me thinking about some combination of Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Max Scherzer and Matt Olson in pinstripes. The 2021 season had been a colossal failure, Cashman had recognized and admitted it, and he was going to make sure it didn’t happen again. He said as much. Or so I thought.
Not a single one of those five names is now a Yankee. The Yankees sat out on the pre-lockout signing frenzy and remained on the sidelines for the post-lockout signings. They chose not to participate in the A’s firesale, which has included losing their manager (who I would have loved to be the Yankees’ manager) to the Padres, trading Olson to the Braves, Chris Bassitt to the Mets, Matt Chapman to the Blue Jays, and most recently Sean Manaea to the Padres. All four of those players (and the manager) would have improved the Yankees.
With a boat that has been taking on water since the 2017 ALCS, rather than get a new boat, the Yankees decided to once again patch the latest holes, hoping it can get them to where they want to go. It’s a strategy that hasn’t worked over the last four offseasons, but they used it for a fifth straight offseason. Four-plus years ago the Yankees had a young, inexpensive core on the rise. Now what’s left of that core is older, expensive, oft-injured and mostly in decline, and they have never gotten as close to winning it all as they were when they went to Houston needing to win one of two games.
Cashman admitted the Yankees would need to find a shortstop, so they chose the 20-year-old unproven Anthony Volpe and the 21-year-old unproven Oswald Peraza over the 27-year-old proven Seager and the 27-year-old proven Correa. Over the last four offseasons, Hal Steinbrenner has proven he would rather produce his own Seager or Correa or Manny Machado or Bryce Harper than pay the actual Seager, Correa, Machado or Harper. And that’s nice in theory, but those four are superstars and there’s a very slim chance either Volpe or Peraza turn into any of them. The Yankees passed on Machado because they had Gleyber Torres. They passed on Harper because they would eventually have to pay Aaron Judge (who they still haven’t paid), Giancarlo Stanton (who they don’t let play the outfield), Aaron Hicks (who has barely played baseball over the last four years) and Clint Frazier (who the Yankees released for nothing in return this offseason). I pray multiple times each day that both Volpe and Peraza into Seager or Correa. I also know how math and statistics work and understand how low the odds are of even one of them becoming an above-average, everyday major leaguer, let alone a star or superstar.
Volpe will turn 21 this month and has never played above High-A. Peraza is 21 and has played 87 games above High-A. When Seager was 21, he was batting third in the postseason for the Dodgers. When Correa was 21, he was batting third and winning Rookie of the Year for the Astros and eliminating the Yankees from the postseason. When Machado was 21, he was in his third year in the majors, had hit 51 doubles in a season and had an All-Star Game and Gold Glove to his name. When Harper was 21, he had played three seasons and 357 games, hit 65 home runs and been a two-time All-Star and Rookie of the Year.
In choosing Volpe and Peraza over Seager and Correa, Cashman traded with the Twins to acquire the light-hitting, all-glove Isiah Kiner-Falefa. The Rangers had traded Kiner-Falefa to the Twins after the lockout because before the lockout they had signed Seager to a $325 million deal. The Rangers, yes, the 106-loss, last-place Rangers didn’t want to build around Kiner-Falefa, so they signed Seager. They also didn’t want the inexpensive defense-first Kiner-Falefa playing second for them, so they also signed Marcus Semien for $175 million. The Rangers chose to give Seager and Semien a combined half-billion dollars rather than roster and play Kiner-Falefa.
These are the same Rangers who happily paid Rougned Odor to not play baseball for them in 2021 despite owing him $27 million and knowing they would be a last-place team. And these are the same Yankees who happily traded (yes, traded an actual person) for Odor in the first week of the 2021 season and then rostered and played him for the entire season, even giving him two at-bats in the one-game playoff against the Red Sox.
In the trade for Kiner-Falefa, the Yankees also acquired 36-year-old former superstar Josh Donaldson and the $48 million owed to him, along with 23-year-old catcher Ben Rortvedt who is all defense and no bat (and I mean no bat). In exchange for the three players, the Yankees gave up Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela.
Rather than keep Sanchez and have a left side of the infield of Seager and Urshela or Correa and Urshela, they chose to move on from the second-best power-hitting catcher in baseball and create a left side of Kiner-Falefa and Donaldson, and in turn have arguably the worst catching tandem in the majors. At best, the trade was an even swap of productivity. At worst, it prevented the Yankees from signing an in-their-prime shortstop and forced them to take on $48 million for a player who has missed 32 percent of the last four seasons. The Yankees have shied away from paying in-their-prime stars because they didn’t want to pay for their late-‘30s seasons. But here they are paying for Donaldson’s late-‘30s seasons without also getting his prime seasons. The Blue Jays got those prime years from Donaldson and they used them to beat up on the Yankees.
The Yankees’ need for a shortstop came from the team giving up on Torres at the position after completely misevaluating him as a shortstop over 2020 and 2021. I keep reading and hearing about how the Yankees can methodically find at-bats for DJ LeMahieu. I have a solution: make LeMahieu an everyday player.
It’s inexplicable that Torres could play over LeMahieu. This isn’t the beginning of 2019 when Torres was coming off an unbelievable rookie season and LeMahieu was signed as a super utility player and wasn’t in the 2019 Opening Day lineup. This is the beginning of 2022, and Torres has been barely a playable option since the start of the shortened 2020 season.
Yes, LeMahieu is coming off a disastrous 2021 season in which he hit .268/.349/.362 with 10 home runs and 24 doubles. He also played through a hernia that required surgery and forced him to miss the one-game playoff and would have kept him out of the rest of the postseason if the Yankees’ postseason had lasted longer than nine innings. For as bad as LeMahieu was last year, Torres was worse: .259/.331/.366 with nine home runs and 22 RBIs. And Torres has no injury excuse or offseason surgery to fall back on. He just sucked and has sucked since he showed up to Spring Training 2.0 out of shape in July 2020, sending his career into a tailspin.
The Yankees are in this position because they watched Torres play shortstop like an overweight slob seven beers deep each night for two months in 2020 (the overweight part was true) and chalked it up to a shortened season and small sample size. Believing Torres was still the shortstop of the future despite never showing he was capable of being that, the Yankees gave LeMahieu a six-year, $90 million contract after 2020 to be their second baseman of the future. Then after 143 games in 2021, the Yankees decided enough was enough after Torres’ fielding single-handedly carried the Yankees to the most humiliating loss of the season on Sunday Night Baseball against the Mets. With 19 games left in the season and on the outside looking in on the postseason, the Yankees finally moved Gio Urshela to short, a move they claimed all season they would never make.
Now because the Yankees still trusted Torres after 2020 and paid LeMahieu, only to give up on Torres the following season, the Yankees have to choose between LeMahieu or Torres, and it seems like the Yankees are choosing Torres, who was last good two-and-a-half years ago, over the better, more reliable LeMahieu, who still has five years left on his current contract and is owed $75 million. The Yankees are picking Torres over LeMahieu after already picking Boone over Sanchez and Volpe and Peraza over Seager and Correa. They also picked a reunion with Anthony Rizzo over Freeman and Olson.
Rizzo is a good player. He’s also coming off the worst season of his career since his rookie year nine years ago. The general perception is that his two months as a Yankee were great, when in reality, they weren’t. Rizzo homered in his first two games with the Yankees in Miami and then homered twice over the next six weeks.
In the outfield, knowing Hicks can’t stay healthy (he’s missed 62 percent of the last three seasons), and knowing that in the last 28 months he’s had his elbow and wrist surgically repaired, and knowing that he’s now 32 years old, the Yankees created center-field depth by … doing nothing. That’s right, the Yankees are counting on Hicks to play a full season for the first time in his 10-year major-league career. They are also counting on “full” seasons from Judge and Stanton for the second straight year. (Judge played 148 games in 2021 and Stanton 139.) But if any of them should get hurt, the Yankees did give a major-league deal to Tim Locastro, who is coming off a torn ACL suffered eight-and-a-half months ago.
The Yankees went in the 2021 season with a rotation of Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery and reclamation projects in Corey Kluber, Jameson Taillon and Scumbag Domingo German. In early February 2021, Cashman said he believed in that rotation “in theory.” Kluber had spent the previous two years not pitching for health reasons and made only 16 starts as a Yankee, averaging five innings per start. Taillon made the most starts (29) he had made in three years, but still injured his ankle and needed offseason surgery. German was awful and then got injured. The patchwork Opening Day rotation Cashman built was mostly bad and mostly injured and in the 13th game of the season, the Yankees didn’t have a starter to face the Rays and instead used Nick Nelson as an opener. Eleven pitches into that eventual loss, the Yankees trailed 2-0 with a runner on second and still no outs. If you think a game on April 16 is meaningless, the Yankees didn’t clinch a postseason berth until the final pitch of their regular season in Game 162, and because of losses like that April 16 one had to play the one-game playoff at Fenway Park.
If not for the breakout season from Nestor Cortes, the Yankees’ rotation would have been in shambles. Cortes entered 2021 having pitched to a career 6.72 ERA and 6.69 FIP. He pitched in 22 games for the 2021, starting 14, with a 2.90 ERA and 1.075 WHIP. The Yankees are going into 2022 thinking the 93 innings innings from Cortes in 2021 are the real Cortes and not everything in his career prior to 2021.
They have Cole and Montgomery they can count on for health and production. Between those two in the rotation plans is Luis Severino, who has pitched 23 2/3 innings since the end of 2018 and last started a game in the 2019 ALCS. After Severino, there’s Taillon, coming off ankle surgery, and Cortes, coming off his one good season in the majors.
It would be unrealistic to think the Yankees could navigate an entire season with five starters (then again, unrealistic thinking is their thing), so they will undoubtedly need to rely on starting pitching depth to get them through 2021. Last season, including openers, they used 15 “starting” pitchers, including the legendary Andrew Heaney and Asher Wojciechowski. The Yankees’ current starting pitching depth consists of Clarke Schmidt, Luis Gil and Deivi Garcia.
The oft-injured Schmidt who was the Yankees’ first-round pick in 2017 is now 26 years old and has thrown 12 2/3 career major-league innings. In those 12 2/3 innings, he has allowed 13 earned runs and 31 baserunners.
Gil made six starts for the 2021 Yankees and was impressive at times. He also walked 5.8 batters per nine innings, which is even higher than his 5.3 walks per nine in his minor-league career.
Garcia showed flashes of brilliance with the Yankees in 2020. They also chose to use him as an opener instead of a starter in the pivotal Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, and he spent nearly all of 2021 in Triple-A, pitching to a 6.85 ERA and putting 177 baserunners on in 90 2/3 innings.
The Yankees added to their starting pitching depth this offseason by signing … no one. OK, I shouldn’t say no one. They did sign Shelby Miller to a minor-league contract last week. Since 2016, Miller has made 36 starts and 61 appearances, pitching to a 7.04 ERA, 5.38 FIP and 1.773 WHIP. I have recorded a video to play in my absence in the event he ever throws a pitch for the New York Yankees. It starts with “If you’re watching this video then you already know I’m no longer a baseball fan …”
The bullpen will be good because the Yankees’ bullpen is always good. The problem is how Boone uses his bullpen and how early into the season he will burn out his elite options. Everyone remembers Chad Green giving up go-ahead home runs in seemingly every appearance in the second half of last season. No one remembers Boone using Green for multiple innings on April 1, April 3, April 7, April 11, and April 18. Through 15 games, Boone used Green for more than an inning five times!
So the bullpen can be counted on for 2022 (as long as Boone doesn’t destroy it. Cole can be counted on (well, except against the Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays). Montgomery can be counted on to give you a good No. 3-type season. After that? The Yankees will get to where they think they can go if …
Judge stays healthy, which he has done once (2021) since 2017 …
Stanton stays healthy, which he has done once (2021) since 2018 …
Joey Gallo hits closer to his .821 career OPS and not the .707 OPS he posted in 58 games as a Yankee last season …
Hicks somehow stays healthy (this is the least likely thing to happen of all the things listed here) …
LeMahieu rebounds from his awful 2021 and hernia surgery …
Torres rebounds from his last 676 plate appearances …
Rizzo slows his obvious decline …
Donaldson stays healthy all year, which he has done one-and-a-half times since 2016 …
Kiner-Falefa isn’t an automatic out at the plate …
Higashioka, Rortvedt and Jose Trevino aren’t the worst offensive catching tandem in the majors …
Severino stays healthy for the first time since 2018 …
Taillon avoids yet another injury …
Cortes proves 2021 wasn’t an anomaly and that that’s who he truly is …
Some combination of Schmidt, Gil and Garcia provide adequate production when called upon …
The Yankees don’t need to hit on all of those things to win the division, the pennant and a championship, which is what ownership, the front office, the manager and now also Donaldson have all said is possible with this roster. But they do need to hit on a lot of those things to do so. It didn’t have to be this way. The Yankees’ 2022 season didn’t have to be one longshot parlay. Unfortunately, it is.
For four-and-a-half-years I have thought the Yankees came within one win of reaching the 2017 World Series. Apparently, I have been wrong. Brian Cashman says the Yankees won the 2017 World Series.
When the Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS, I was exhausted. The Yankees had consumed every waking hour of my life for the 23 consecutive days, and with late start times, long games and crowded train rides home, nearly every hour of those 23 days was a waking hour.
The Yankees had an opportunity to win one of two games in Houston to advance to the World Series, and they didn’t. Four seasons and four-and-a-half calendar year later, that’s the closest these Yankees have gotten to getting the franchise back to the World Series, let alone winning the World Series. Or so I have thought. Brian Cashman tells me and all Yankees fans that the Yankees didn’t actually lose to the Astros in the 2017 ALCS, and the organization’s World Series drought isn’t going on 13 years in 2022.
“The only thing that stopped [us] was something that was so illegal and horrific,” Cashman told The Athletic. “So I get offended when I start hearing we haven’t been to the World Series since ’09. Because I’m like, ‘Well, I think we actually did it the right way.’ Pulled it down, brought it back up. Drafted well, traded well, developed well, signed well. The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off.”
Spoken like a true loser. When Cashman inherited the general manager position, the Yankees won a record 114 regular-season games and then went 11-2 in the postseason to win their second championship in three seasons and what would eventually amount to four championships in five seasons. Since the 2000 World Series win over the Mets, the Yankees have won once in 21 years.
Yes, the Astros cheated by illegally stealing signs during the 2017 season. I don’t know how that explains the Yankees scoring one run in Game 1, one run in Game 2, one run in Game 6 and no runs in Game 7. I don’t know how winning the American League means the Yankees would have beaten the Dodgers.
“It does bother me when people say we haven’t been to the World Series since ’09,” Cashman said. “We did it all right, by building it to a certain level that could have gotten us to a World Series — if not for something else. But hey! We’re back at it. Every year, we’re still back at it. We’ve been qualifying for the postseason, and we’re going to take this team as far as we can get it, and hopefully we can push through.”
How dare anyone criticize the Yankees’ lack of championships since 2000! They have qualified for the postseason! They’re taking this team as a far it can go (which is a humiliating ALDS loss to the Red Sox, another ALCS loss to the Astros, an ALDS loss to the 28th-highest payroll Rays and a degrading wild-card game loss to the Red Sox)!
“People are like ‘Oh, we haven’t been to a World Series … and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s as true a statement as it could be,'” Cashman said. “We had a World Series team. And either you get it done or you don’t. People don’t want to hear that. I get it. But that’s real to me. I think it’s real to all of us.”
If “having a World Series team” is good enough for Cashman and not actually needing to win the World Series then it explains the team’s decisions post-2017. Since losing Games 6 and 7 in Houston and coming within one win of the World Series with a young, inexpensive core, the Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi for the inexperienced and idiotic Aaron Boone, cut payroll by more than $30 million for the following season, and for the last four offseasons have passed on every single star position player available on the free-agent market. All while boasting the same payroll in 2021 they had in 2005 despite exponential growth in revenues during that 17-year period.
“The fans, they’re fanatics for a reason,” Cashman said. “They don’t really care about how it all adds up. They just want to be the last team standing. As do we. But my job, and our front office’s job, is to find a way within the current restrictions that we have, and the options that are available: ‘OK, what can we come up with that solves these problems, as fast as possible?'”
There should be no “restrictions” when it comes to the Yankees. They’re the Yankees! Back in October, Cashman spoke about how the 2021 Yankees were “unwatchable” and needed “upgrades” and how there were many “legitimate options” to add to the roster. He signed zero free agents, traded for an all-glove shortstop and a 36-year-old former superstar, constructed the worst starting catching situation in the league and re-signed a first baseman whose stock is coming off the worst year of his career since his rookie season nine years prior. Problems solved!
“We believe if we get there, we’re good enough to run the table,” Cashman said. “The Braves showed it last year. All due respect. They’re world champs. But were they the odds-on favorite? Or the second? Or the third? Or whatever, entering that process. And the answer was ‘No.'”
Last season, the Yankees were the odds-on favorite to win the AL and finally get back to the World Series. As the odds-on favorite, they finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division, and their postseason only lasted nine innings. (It really only last lasted four batters into the bottom of the first of those nine innings.) The Yankees’ financial position allows them to be able to to put together the best possible roster to win a championship each season. They shouldn’t have to settle for “getting hot” in October or having a miraculous month like the Braves did.
“I’m past it now,” Cashman said. “But it does bother me when it comes up. We built something that — I can’t tell you we would have won. I can’t tell you we would have beat the Dodgers. But I do feel pretty confident that that team [the Astros] wasn’t stopping us, if it wasn’t for those advantages. That’s all.”
‘I’m past it now, but I’m going to reference it over and over in an on-the-record conversation with a prominent media outlet. But I’m totally over it. Really, I am. And I can’t tell you we would have won, but we definitely would have won. In fact, we did win. So no, there’s no World Series ‘drought‘ for the New York Yankees.
That’s how that last answer from Cashman read. What an embarrassing interview to give, especially for someone who has experienced real success in the league, even if the majority of that success came more than 20 years ago.
I’m embarrassed for Cashman. These statements were the lowest point of his tenure as general manager of the Yankees, and he once traded Ted Lilly for Jeff Weaver, traded Tyler Clippard for Jonathan Albaladejo, signed Kei Igawa, chose Nick Johnson over Hideki Matsui, traded for Javier Vazquez twice, let his belief in Eduardo Nunez prevent him from acquiring Cliff Lee, gave Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million, hired Aaron Boone and extended Aaron Boone.
I’m embarrassed for Hal Steinbrenner because if Cashman believes what he told The Athletic then he has undoubtedly sold that steaming pile of crap to Steinbrenner, who can’t be sold on signing 26-year-old superstars, but can be sold on extending Boone and can be easily persuaded to believe the team is better than they are, like he was last year.
The Yankees’ lack of creating new franchise memories for the last two decades has forced the team to give just about everyone from the ’90s dynasty a plaque in Monument Park. It has now even led to Paul O’Neill getting his No. 21 retired. (I love O’Neill as much as anyone, but he shouldn’t be getting his number retired. He was a good, even great Yankee. He wasn’t a legendary, iconic Yankee, which should be the measuring stick for such an honor.) The Yankees couldn’t have been happier when Derek Jeter recently left his position with the Marlins, as earlier this week the team already began promoting a night at the Stadium to honor Jeter’s Hall of Fame induction (he was elected two years ago and inducted nearly a year ago) with No. 2 throwing out the first pitch. I can hear Paul Olden’s voice on a promo between innings this season:
Fans, come out to the Stadium on Sept. 9 and remember when the Yankees actually won championships and didn’t have to make them up as the team honors Derek Jeter as the Yankees celebrate his Hall of Fame induction with the Captain throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
When will it end? Will No. 24 come out of circulation for a Tino Martinez number retirement ceremony in 2023? If you’re retiring 21 for O’Neill, how can you not retire 36 for David Cone? Does Scott Brosius get a plaque behind the center-field wall? Does David Wells? When does A.J. Burnett get his day?
Now that the Yankees have pushed the limit on Monument Park additions and because they have failed to successfully field a championship team (and not just a championship-caliber team) since 2009, winning just once in 21 years, they have resorted to making up championship seasons, like Cashman did for 2017. I look forward to when they start having promotional nights to honor the 2017 “championship” team. For these Yankees, it might be the closest they ever get to actually winning.
The Yankees’ roster is worse than it was the last time they played a game, but the owner of the team doesn’t think it is.
The Yankees are a mess. The front office has taken a roster that wasn’t good enough to clinch a postseason berth until the final at-bat of the regular season last year, and a roster whose postseason lasted nine innings, and they have made it worse. Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t think that’s what happened, and he said as much on Wednesday.
After breaking down Steinbrenner’s comments to the media, White Sox Dave of Barstool Sports joined me to talk about the offseason and his perspective of the Yankees as a fan of a team that has already clinched a playoff berth.
The Yankees have taken a roster that wasn’t good enough to reach the postseason until the final at-bat of the regular season and wasn’t good enough to win a postseason game and they have made it worse.
On Monday, after making a puzzling trade to acquire Josh Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Ben Rortvedt for Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela, Brian Cashman spoke about the odd deal.
“We appreciate what Gio has done,” Cashman said to Meredith Marakovits. “But he’s not Josh Donaldson.”
Despite choosing to trade for Kiner-Falefa rather than sign Corey Seager, Carlos Correa or Trevor Story, and despite not adding a single starting pitcher, and despite not trading for Matt Olson or participating in the Athletics’ firesale in any capacity, the Yankees still had a chance to semi-save their disastrous offseason by bringing Freddie Freeman to the Bronx. Instead, they chose to sign Anthony Rizzo to a two-year deal.
I appreciate what Anthony Rizzo has done, but he’s not Freddie Freeman. He’s not close to being Freeman.
In terms of age, Freeman is 13 months younger. In terms of career, Freeman has posted a 43.1 WAR to Rizzo’s 36.8. In terms of postseason performance, Freeman has hit .290/.393/.523 in 42 games and Rizzo has hit .207/.283/.387 in 40 games. In terms of recent production, Freeman is coming off a 4.7 WAR season and Rizzo a 1.7.
In 2021, Freeman hit .300/.393/.503 with 31 home runs, led the league in runs scored (120), won his third straight Silver Slugger, was an All-Star for the third straight time, and finished in the Top 9 in NL MVP voting for the fourth time in four years (a year after winning the award). Rizzo posted his worst full-season OPS (.783) since his first full season in the majors (2013). He hit a career-low 21 home runs, drove in a career-worst 61 runs and had the second-worst on-base and slugging percentages of his career. As a Yankee, Rizzo hit .249/.340/.428, homered in his first two games on July 30 and July 31 and then hit two home runs over the next six weeks.
The Yankees reset their luxury tax penalty prior to this offseason and there was the hope they would use the reset to their advantage. They could go to the “marketplace” (Cashman’s favorite word) with their financial might and all it would cost them to make impressive roster upgrades would be money. Money. That’s it. The resource they make more of than the league’s other 29 teams.
Instead of using their financial power to bring in the “legitimate options” (a phrase Cashman used at his mid-October, end-of-the-season press conference), the Yankees have traded for a light-hitting stopgap shortstop, acquired a 36-year-old former superstar third baseman who has played 135 games in just two of the last five years and is owed $48 million, created the worst starting catching tandem in the majors and now signed a 32-year-old first baseman who’s coming off his worst full season since his first full season nine years ago. In each of these moves, the Yankees had the option to use the free-agent marketplace to their advantage and plug holes created by their past poor roster construction. In each move, they failed to do so.
The Yankees could have signed Seager, Correa or Story to be their everyday shortstop. Signing any of the three would have instantly made the Yankees better and would have pleased a fanbase that has watched the team half-ass its way to building rosters, resulting in early-postseason exits in three of the last four years. By signing one of the star shortstops in the best shortstop free-agent class of all time, the Yankees then would have been able to keep both Urshela and Sanchez and used the $48 million they now owe to Donaldson toward paying their new shortstop. A Seager-Urshela, Correa-Urshela or Story-Urshela left side of the infield and Sanchez at catcher is a much better situation than Kiner-Falefa and Donaldson at short and third and Kyle Higashioka and Rortvedt behind the plate. The Yankees instead chose to make the deal with the Twins, a deal that makes them worse, and you would have to lie to yourself in a way that Aaron Boone lies daily to Yankees fans to think the Yankees got better after Sunday night’s trade.
After watching the Braves trade for Olson, the Yankees were left with signing either Freeman or Rizzo to play first (since they have tried to trade Luke Voit for a full calendar year). Once again, rather than using their financial strength as a strength, they passed up the top-shelf choice for a good, but not great option. Rather than reinvigorate the fanbase and show that while the front office is committed to either Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe as their future shortstop, they still mean business when it comes to other positions. Now the Yankees are out on Freeman. Just like they are out on Seager, Correa and Story (just like they were out on other free-agent stars in their prime like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado). Just like they have been out on the starting pitching market as a whole this offseason.
Rizzo isn’t an upgrade and doesn’t bring change to the Yankees’ roster that was the preseason favorite to win the American League and ended up finishing fifth in the AL and third in their own division and played nine innings of postseason baseball. He was part of that roster. A Yankees team that failed miserably to meet expectations in 2021 has exchanged Sanchez and Urshela for Kiner-Falefa, Donaldson and Rortvedt for 2022.
The Yankees didn’t use their luxury-tax reset to build the best possible roster. They haven’t upgraded the roster with the “legitimate options” Cashman referred to in October. They have taken a roster that wasn’t good enough to reach the postseason until the final at-bat of the regular season and wasn’t good enough to win a postseason game and they have made it worse.
