The Yankees’ season has been over for the three weeks. It feels like it’s been three months.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When you bring back your manager for a fifth season after four underachieving, mostly miserable seasons, it means the roster has to be changed. However, I don’t think the Yankees will actually make real changes to their roster. The team had the same payroll in 2021 that it had 16 years ago despite the exponential increase in ticket prices, merchandise and concessions costs and the amount of income they have brought in on broadcast rights over that time.

Will they get a shortstop? Sure. Brian Cashman said as much in his end-of-the-season press conference. Does that mean Carlos Correa or even Corey Seager? Probably not. They will cost money and a lot of it, and the last thing the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees want to do is spend more money. It’s why Rougned Odor was a Yankee in 2021. It’s why the early-season bench had Jay Bruce, Mike Tauchman and Mike Ford on it. It’s why the Yankees gave up more prospects to acquire Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo in order to get the Cubs and Rangers to cover the monetary ends of the deals. The Yankees like free. They like cheap. Every once in a while they will sprinkle in a big-money contract to make fans think they are still the Yankees. But they’re not.

2. My expectations for this offseason are low because Hal Steinbrenner has made them low. Hal would like to win, but he doesn’t need to win. If the Yankees happen to win, great! If they don’t, oh well! As long as the Yankees continue to turn a profit (and they will never not turn a profit), he’s happy. The annual statements he releases about being unsatisfied or unhappy with the team coming up short of a championship or the fans deserving more have about as much credibility Aaron Boone’s evaluation of his starting pitcher in postgame press conferences. When Hal’s father said it, it meant something because it’s how he truly felt.

Whether the Yankees won the World Series or had what George considered “a failure” and didn’t win the World Series, immediately following the end of the season, he would be back in Tampa planning how to win the next season. There was no grace period. There was no time off. Winning consumed him and taking a day to celebrate the team’s recent achievement would be one less day he had to try to achieve the same level of success the following season. His son just took two weeks to simply decide if he should bring back the same manager whose teams have produced one division title, one wild-card game embarrassment, two ALDS losses, one ALCS appearance and two postseason exits at the hands of the rival Red Sox in four years. Hal brought him back and Boone will now be the first manager in franchise history to go into his fifth season without a championship.

3. In another time, Boone wouldn’t have survived this offseason as Yankees manager with George in charge because he wouldn’t have survived the previous two either. George had his faults as an owner, but every move he made was made with one goal in mind: to win. He didn’t always make the right or best decision, but he made every decision believing it would increase the Yankees’ chances of winning. His son couldn’t be less like him in that regard. (After coming one win away from winning the pennant in 2017, Hal cut payroll by $50 million for 2018). Likely because of that, George didn’t want to leave the team to Hal. George wanted to leave the Yankees to his son-in-law, likely knowing what would happen if Hal took over. And that’s what’s happening now.

4. A wild-card game appearance as the second wild-card team is an embarrassment for the Yankees and should be treated that way. In a season in which they were expected to go to the World Series and were a heavy favorite to win the American League, they finished third in the AL East and fifth in the AL. It’s why I nearly threw up when Brian Cashman said, “We’re proud of the many successes we had this year … We were once again a postseason contender.”

The Yankees played an extra nine miserable innings this season and that somehow qualifies them as a “contender.” I wish the Yankee had missed out on the postseason completely rather than getting humiliated by the Red Sox for the third in the last three times the teams have met in the postseason since 2004, just like I wish the Yankees had lost the 2018 wild-card game knowing what took place in the ALDS.

5. The Yankees were never going to win that game three weeks ago. I wrote as much. Not with Gerrit Cole pooping his pants in the first inning on the Fenway Park mound, completely failing to show up with the season on the line after failing to show up for all of September. Not with the offense doing its latest October disappearing act, which has become a staple of these Yankees over the last five seasons. Not with Boone giving every pitcher in the game one extra batter to see if they could magically find it on a night when all of Fenway reminded us all that the Yankees do in fact suck.

6. Over the last 21 days, I have had to watch the Red Sox upset the Rays and the Astros laugh the overrated White Sox out of the playoffs. If not for Jose Altuve’s series-changing home run in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the ALCS, the Red Sox would be hosting the Braves on Tuesday night on their way to their fifth championship in 18 seasons. As much as I hate Altuve, I’m thankful he saved me from having to watch yet another Red Sox roster and yet another Red Sox general manager win a championship, while the Yankees continue to run in place.

7. Boone loves to say how “slim the margin” is between the Yankees and the teams that actually do have success in the postseason. Cashman loves to say the “postseason is a crapshoot” and success in it is “random.” That must be why the Astros are in the World Series for the third time in five years after reaching the ALCS in every season since 2017. It must be why the Astros and Red Sox just met in the ALCS for the second time in four years and why the Red Sox came two wins away from going to the World Series for the fourth time since 2004. The Dodgers must just be really, really, really lucky to have appeared in the NLCS six times since 2013 and what a random coincidence the Dodgers and Braves just met in the NLCS for the second straight year.

Unfortunately, I find myself rooting for the Astros in the World Series because of Cashman’s belief. If the Braves win as an 88-win club that didn’t get over .500 for the first time until August, it will only give credence to Cashman’s idea the baseball playoffs are nothing more than a roll of the dice. I doubt he thought that when the team he inherited in 1998 won 114 regular-season games and the World Series and then the next two World Series, appearing in the Fall Classic in five of his first six seasons as general manager. I don’t think Cashman was attributing postseason success in the late-’90s and early-2000s to shear luck after taking over Gene Michael’s creation.

8. It’s been 12 years since the Yankees last appeared in the World Series, and it seems like even more with all of the ALCS losses (2010, 2012, 2017 and 2019), ALDS losses (2011, 2018 and 2020) and wild-card game losses (2015 and 2021) since. Add in the team’s one division title since over the last 10 seasons and 2009 seems like so long it almost feels fake.

The eight-year championship drought from 2001-2008 felt like an eternity while it was happening. The current drought has now been four years longer with no end in sight. The three-year contract for Boone proves Hal is OK with that. Giving a loser another three years to lose and another three years (with an option for a fourth!) to make losing even more acceptable within the organization is an immensely regrettable decision.

9. But these are the Yankees I root for, for better or worse. Mainly for worse. A team that spends all summer talking about turning corners that never appear, getting on a roll that never comes and how tomorrow is a new day until there’s no more tomorrow the way there wasn’t after the wild-card game in Boston or Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS or Game 6 of the 2019 ALDS or Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. (I won’t lump Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS in as that way pre-Boone. Back when there was hope and promise with this core.)

10. At least once a day I think back to how I felt when the Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. The loss didn’t hurt. I wasn’t angry or frustrated or disappointed. I was excited. I wanted the next day to be Opening Day because that’s how promising the future looked for these Yankees. Now here we are four seasons and four years later and the team has gone from coming within a game of the World Series to having their postseason last four batters in the wild-card game. They have never gotten back to within a game of the World Series and have suffered excruciating and humiliating postseason exits since.

I can’t believe how I felt just about four years ago and how I feel today with the Astros and Braves still playing and about to play for a championship. I envy Astros fans and Braves fan and I miss the feeling they’re feeling. Unless the Yankees drastically change their roster, I don’t know the next time I will experience that feeling.

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It’s been almost a week since the end of the Yankees’ season and it sucks.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ season has been over for six days and it seems like 60 days. It’s bad enough the Yankees were eliminated by the Red Sox for the second time in four postseasons and the third straight time since 2004, but now it’s miserable having to watch the Red Sox (who continue to overachieve) play the Rays (who were absolutely screwed over in Game 3 of the ALDS) and the Astros (who are one win away from their fifth straight ALCS and would already be in it if Dusty Baker had called me for advice on whether or not to pitch Yimi Garcia) play the White Sox (who are comically proving why the AL Central shouldn’t get an automatic postseason berth). There isn’t a good answer on who to root for in the American League, so I guess the National League it is.

2. On CC Sabathia’s most recent podcast, he gave an outstanding summary of the difference between the Yankees and Red Sox:

“Our core lost to a team in 2018 that is not even the same Red Sox. They went on to win the World Series with Mookie, Jackie Bradley, Benintendi. They traded all them dudes. We still got the same core. We come back to Boston fucking three years later and lose to a fucking completely different core of players that they have raised up in three years. How does that happen? What the fuck are we doing wrong and they’re doing right that in a three-year span they win the World Series and then a completely different core whoop our ass in the fucking wild-card game?”

3. The Yankees’ remaining position players from 2017 are Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks. Judge was the team’s best player this season, Sanchez was on the bench for the team’s elimination game for a second straight season, Gardner was forced into an everyday role (yet again) because of injuries (to Hicks and Clint Frazier) and Hicks once again missed the majority of the season. The Yankees added Giancarlo Stanton, called up Gleyber Torres and traded for Luke Voit in 2018. They signed DJ LeMahieu and Gio Urshela emerged in 2019. That’s the “core.” Some of them were injured and most of them underperformed yet again.

4. The roster has to change. After the team’s wild-card loss, Gardner mentioned having the chance to “run it back” with the same roster in 2022. That can’t be an option and shouldn’t even be a thought. This team hasn’t been good enough to win for four straight seasons (not including 2017 since that was an unexpected postseason run) and they’re not even close. They aren’t getting to the World Series and losing because they’re short a starter or a big bat. They’re not one player away. They’re a-lot-of-the-roster away. No matter what Aaron Boone idiotically says about “how the league has closed the gap on the Yankees.” There has always been a gap for his Yankees.

5. The problem is while it shouldn’t be an option or a thought, “running it back” is most likely what the Yankees do. There’s only so much that can change on the roster due to contracts and value, but the parts that are changeable need to change. Judge isn’t going anywhere. Stanton still has 37 years left on his contract. LeMahieu is signed through 2026. Hicks was given a seven-year deal in 2019. (If the Yankees have the opportunity to move Hicks, they need to do it no matter the return.) That leaves Torres (who you can’t trade right now because his value is so low), Gallo, (who the Yankees have under contract for next year) and Urshela.

6. Barring an unforeseen trade, the Yankees are going to keep the 24-year-old Torres and play him at second base and see if the player from 2018-2019 and the player he was the final month of the season can return. In the most important regular-season games without LeMahieu, they did bat him leadoff after all. The Yankees love Gallo. They love his “true outcome” hitting profile and his defense. They didn’t finally successfully trade for him just to let him go after two months of him. That leaves Urshela. He’s cheap, which the Yankees love, but I think it’s time to move on.

7. Unfortunately, I think Sanchez has played his last game as a Yankee. Sitting on the bench in a win-or-go-home postseason game for the second straight year was likely the end. The Yankees (or their manager) thinking it’s best to play Kyle Higashioka who hit the equivalent of a great NL-hitting pitcher over the last few months of the season will always be puzzling. Even though I’m a Sanchez fan, and even though he had the third-highest OPS among AL catchers in what was “another down year,” at this point I hope the Yankees move on from him. Make Higashioka the starter or sign some limited-skill free agent and let the fans see how enjoyable that is. I hope Sanchez ends up somewhere like San Diego, grows out a beard and hits 35-plus home runs in helping the Padres win the World Series.

8. I thought this team’s ceiling was an ALDS appearance. Another one-and-done postseason series exit. And maybe, just maybe if everything fell into place and they got a lucky bounce here or there they could squeeze out an ALCS appearance. Their ceiling ended up being the wild-card game, and clinching their appearance in it came down to the final at-bat in the final game of the regular season.

9. Every day I sign online, I pray I see some version of the phrase: Source: Yankees expected to move on from Boone. I haven’t seen it yet and the longer it goes without me seeing it, I fear I won’t see it. The Mets announced they were moving on from Luis Rojas the day after the season ended. We’re on Day 6 over here and nothing. I understand Boone’s contract hasn’t technically expired, but if the Yankees were going to move on from him, there would be some sort of report or leak by now I would think. This seems like the type of decision that has already been made, so there shouldn’t be a hold up. Either announce you’re moving on or announce an extension.

10. If the Yankees bring back Boone, it will be an awful decision and a worse decision than when they hired him originally. He has done nothing to prove he deserves the job he was wrongfully given. Continuing to employ him as manager would compound the mistake the Yankees made nearly four years ago. If he’s around to give an end-of-the-season press conference, which should be any day now then you know he’s coming back. If only Brian Cashman gives one then the Yankees have made the right decision and the first step in fixing the team and getting back to the World Series.

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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!