Blogs – Page 35 – Keefe To The City

Jan 24, 2023

Brian Cashman Still Believes in Aaron Hicks

Spring training is now three weeks away, Opening Day is as close to today as today is removed from Thanksgiving and Hicks is still a Yankee.

As I watched Aaron Hicks be helped off the field in Game 5 of the 2022 ALDS, I figured it was the last time I would ever watch him play for the Yankees. He was only on the postseason roster because of injuries to others and was only playing in an actual postseason game because of those injuries.

Hicks had spent the summer hitting into double plays with the bases loaded, stranding every runner at third with less than two outs, going two-month stretches between home runs and misplaying balls in both center field and left field. Each time he lost a starting role because of underperformance he found his way back into the lineup because of injuries. He was benched more times than Clarke Schmidt and Ron Marinaccio were unnecessarily sent down, and no benching was more embarrassing then when he misplayed a ball in left field and was pulled from the lineup midgame by the most player-friendly manager in the sport. The same player-friendly manager who has still never seen any of his starting pitchers have a bad day and who will tell you with a straight face Isiah Kiner-Falefa is one of the best shortstops in the game and that Aroldis Chapman is good a clubhouse culture guy.

It’s been more than three months since Hicks was helped off the field and since the Yankees’ season ended the same way it has in every season in which Hicks has been part of the core: without a championship. With each passing day that Hicks is still listed on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, the chances I saw his last moment in pinstripes diminish. Spring training is now three weeks away, Opening Day is about as close to today as today is removed from Thanksgiving and Hicks is still a Yankee.

The only path to removing Hicks from the Yankees has been and continues to be to release him. No team wants Hicks and the $31,357,144 owed to him. No team wants a 33-year-old outfielder who is coming off a .216/.330/.313 season in which he was benched multiple times and answered being benched by performing even worse than the performance that led to the benching. No team wants a player who has missed 40 percent of his team’s games over the last seven years or an outfield bat that has hit 30 home runs total in the last four years.

The Yankees owe Hicks $31,357,144 and there’s nothing they can do about it. If any of the other 29 teams were willing to eat even $1 million of that owed amount, he would likely have been gone by now. But no team wants him. This isn’t a pay David Justice to play for the A’s or pay A.J. Burnett to play for the Pirates or pay Brian McCann to play for the Braves. This is more like a pay Jacoby Ellsbury to do nothing. The Yankees have certainly come to terms that the remaining money on Hicks’ deal is a sunk cost since the last two years have been a sunk cost.

The Yankees believe if they’re going to have to release him for nothing to remove him from the roster, they might as well start the season with him and in terms of his production, hope to catch lightning in a bottle, and then catch lightning in a second, bigger bottle and put that first bottle of lightning in that bigger bottle, and then catch lightning in an even bigger bottle a third time and put the first two bottles of lightning in that third bottle.

Releasing Hicks would mean eating that $31,357,144. The Steinbrenners just gave $360 million of their inheritance to Aaron Judge and another $162 million to Carlos Rodon. They had to save somewhere this offseason and that somewhere is left field. Paying Hicks more than $31 million to not play baseball is not an option. That’s why Brian Cashman didn’t surprise me with his comments on MLB Network on Monday. All he did was confirm what I already knew.

“I suspect he will be the guy that emerges [in left field],” Cashman said, “Because he is still really talented and everything is there.”

At best, the last time Hicks was “really talented” was during the shortened 2020 season. (He would have missed more than half that season if it had started on time recovering from offseason Tommy John surgery). Weeks before the 2021 season started, Hicks was anointed the Yankees’ No. 3 hitter. After 32 games, he needed season-ending wrist surgery. Then in 2022, Hicks hit his first home run of the season on April 12 and his second on June 9. From July 10 through the end of the season, he hit two home runs in 190 plate appearances, batting .183/.290/.244.

If you’re of the belief that the further removed Hicks gets from the wrist surgery, the more his power will improve because the same thing happened to Mark Teixeira, that would mean you think Hicks’ power pre-surgery was comparable to Teixeira’s prior to his own surgery. That’s not grasping at straws. That’s grasping at air.

Here is a more comparable player to Hicks based on 162-game averages:

Hicks: .231/.330/.387, 21 doubles, 19 home runs, 65 RBIs

Player X: .238/.329/.427, 29 doubles, 19 home runs, 64 RBIs

Player X is Clint, sorry, Jackson Frazier. Frazier was released by the Yankees for nothing and designated for assignment by the shitty Cubs. Hicks is going to start in left field on Opening Day for a team that thinks they can win the World Series.

“Hopefully we can get the Aaron Hicks we know is in there back as a consistent player for us,” Cashman continued.

Who exactly is the “Aaron Hicks we know is in there?” Is it the Hicks, whose best offensive seasons were a product of the juiced baseball, (just like Gleyber Torres)? Is it the Hicks who has played in 623 of a possible 1,032 regular-season games (60 percent) as a Yankee? Is it the Hicks who has had a wrist and elbow surgically repaired in the last three years and who has had season-ending injuries in three of the last four years? Is it the Hicks whose injuries and underachieving forced the Yankees to trade prospects for Joey Gallo then trade more prospects for Andrew Benintendi and trade rotation depth in Jordan Montgomery for Harrison Bader?

I think the Hicks we know is in there is the Hicks who lost his starting role multiple times for lack of performance and who was pulled during a game for a lack of effort. It’s the Hicks who told The Athletic this last August:

“If I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is.”

If I were ownership or the front office I would expect a little more fire and motivation about being in the lineup, especially from a player who is under contract through at least 2025 before eventually being bought out for $1 million in 2016 to not play baseball for the Yankees. Saying it’s “cool” if you play “but it is what it is” if you don’t doesn’t make Hicks sound like a good teammate and team-first guy, it makes him sound like a loser. Hicks talks like a guy who signed a seven-year, $70 million guaranteed contract because he is that guy.

I have long wanted Hicks off the Yankees, and was vehemently against the extension he was offered in 2019. (The keyword there is “offered.” The extension and the endless treatment of him as if he’s Bernie Williams 2.0 is all on the Yankees. They created this mess. What is Hicks supposed to do? Not accept $70 million to play baseball?) I have been appalled year after year in their belief he could stay healthy and be productive and be counted on to be an everyday player for the Yankees. But after his performance and effort last season, his maintaining a roster spot this offseason and Cashman’s comments this week, this is way past being appalled.

Hicks isn’t going to get the chance to be the starting left fielder because the Yankees believe in him. He’s going to get the chance because of owed money and then because there’s no other option.

Owed money is king for the Yankees and controls all decision making. The Yankees would rather lose than have owed money sitting on the bench in favor of a better, less expensive player. When envisioning a possible Yankees lineup, the first thing you need to do is scrap everything related to on-the-field play and go right to the payroll.

Hicks checks that box with the money he still has coming to him. And to further help his case, there’s currently no other options.

The Yankees don’t want to pigeonhole Oswaldo Cabrera into one position. After unsuccessfully trying to turn Tyler Wade into their own Ben Zobrist, they want Cabrera to fit that role. They would rather have Cabrera play a different position around the field each day to give other regulars unnecessary rest, even if it means playing an unplayable Hicks in left field every day to prove they are smarter and more cutting edge than other teams. That leaves Estevan Florial or Willie Calhoun.

The Yankees have never been willing to give an extended look to Florial, and as recently as last August they called him up to what Aaron Boone said was “to play every day” only to then not play him. As for Calhoun, his best chance at playing baseball in New York this coming summer prior to getting a contract with the Yankees was with the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League. The Yankees are set to have their highest payroll in organization history and don’t have a true answer at one of their everyday positions.

“We certainly have our lines out on certain opportunities,” Cashman said, “But trying to match up is never easy.”

That’s Cashman’s way of saying he has unsuccessfully tried to move Hicks and has unsuccessfully tried to sign or trade for an actual left fielder.

“If it happens in February or March, so be it,” Cashman said. “But if not, we are prepared to go with what we have.”

What they have is going into yet another season with a hole in left field.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

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

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason • Yankees Thoughts

Jan 12, 2023

Yankees Thoughts: Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa Still Yankees

Pitchers and catchers report in a month, and position players shortly after that. Baseball is almost here, even if real meaningful baseball isn’t here until the end of March. Here are 10 thoughts on the

Pitchers and catchers report in a month, and position players shortly after that. Baseball is almost here, even if real meaningful baseball isn’t here until the end of March.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I’m excited for the return of Yankees baseball because I’m always excited for the return of Yankees baseball, though my excitement is somewhat diminished compared to what it normally is at this point in the calendar because I know what I’m getting myself into. Watch a good movie once and it’s encapsulating. Watch it a second time and it’s still good, though that first-view feeling is gone. By the third time, you’re reciting lines. By the fourth time, you’re on your phone outside of your favorite scenes, and by the fifth time, you’re nodding in and out as you watch it. I know I’m about to spend the next nearly full calendar year, writing, talking, reading and spending thousands of hours investing my time into a team and roster whose ceiling remains the same: losing to the Astros in the playoffs. I have seen this movie before. I just saw it less than three months ago, and I know how it ends.

The reason I’m willing to spend those thousands of hours letting a game in which one man throws a five-ounce white ball at another man holding a rounded wooden stick is because of the hope that this season will somehow be different, and that the team of 26 men I happened to grow up closest to can throw that white ball better and use that rounded wooden stick better than the other 29 teams. I watch the Yankees each season hoping they win the last game of the major league season. Growing up, that hope was often fulfilled. Over the last 22 years, it’s been fulfilled once, and over the last 13 years, it hasn’t been fulfilled at all. Now I feel like Rudy’s scout team teammate who tells him the only reason he hasn’t quit is that he’s “under the delusion he might get a chance to run out of that tunnel.”

2. That’s how I feel about these Yankees. A roster that shocked everyone with their run to Game 7 of the ALCS in 2017 has never gotten as far again. The Baby Bombers are no longer babies, and the majority of the original core either plays for other teams or doesn’t play baseball at all, and would gladly pay for even one more at-bat in the majors. The only two position players still on the Yankees from that 2017 ALCS Game 7 lineup are Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks, and if Judge isn’t the only remaining Yankee from that lineup come Opening Day 2023, it will be a problem.

3. Hicks is about to get 10-5 rights as a major leaguer with 10 years in the league and five years with the same team, which will kick in a full no-trade clause. The Yankees have been trying to move his unmovable contract since last year and have been unable to, so imagine how much harder it will be once Hicks can decide if he’s moved at all or where he can be moved to.

I can’t believe no team wants Hicks and the $31,357,144 owed to him. No team wants a 33-year-old center fielder who is coming off a .216/.330/.313 season in which he was benched at least three times, who has played in 60 percent of his team’s games in the last seven years, who has had season-ending injuries in four of the last five years, who has had his elbow and wrists surgically repaired within the last four years and who has hit 30 home runs total in the last four years? How could no team want a player who told The Athletic last season, “If I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is.”

4. Unfortunately, that no-trade is going to kick in. As of right now, the Yankees owe Hicks the $31,357,144 and there’s nothing they can do about it. If any of the other 29 teams was willing to eat even $1 million of that owed amount, he would likely have been gone by now. But no team wants him. This isn’t a pay David Justice to play for the A’s or pay A.J. Burnett to play for the Pirates or pay Brian McCann to play for the Braves. This is more like a pay Jacoby Ellsbury to do nothing. The Yankees have certainly come to terms that the remaining money on Hicks’ deal is a sunk cost since the last two years have been a sunk cost. If they’re going to have to release him for nothing to remove him from the roster, they might as well start the season with him and in terms of his production, hope to catch lightning in a bottle, and then catch lightning in a second, bigger bottle and put that first bottle of lightning in that bigger bottle, and then catch lightning in an even bigger bottle a third time and put the first two bottles of lightning in that third bottle.

5. The alternatives right now are either Oswaldo Cabrera (who the Yankees clearly don’t want to have to pigeonhole into one position, as Brian Cashman seems to finally have his answer to Ben Zobrist, the answer he thought he had in the failed Tyler Wade experiment), Estevan Florial (who the Yankees have never been willing to give an extended look to, and as recently as last August called him up to what Aaron Boone said was “to play every day” only to then not play him) or Willie Calhoun, whose best chance at playing baseball in New York this summer prior to getting a contract with the Yankees was with the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League. The Yankees are set to have their highest payroll in organization history and don’t have a true answer at one of their everyday positions.

Hal Steinbrenner is OK with it. He’s more than OK with it. He was able to re-sign his cash cow in Judge, so he doesn’t have to pay to have the Judge’s Chambers in right field renovated, but he does have to pay $360 million of his father’s money over the next nearly decade. That money has to come from somewhere (it doesn’t actually, but the Steinbrenners will make you believe it does), so skimping out on having a major-league-capable left fielder is where it has come from at this point.

6. I say “as of now” and “currently” and “at this point” leaving open the possibility that the Yankees make a trade that fills their left field void between now and Opening Day, but we all know it’s unlikely the Yankees’ roster is any different on March than it is today.

The Yankees are no better today than they were when the Astros took their American League champions team picture on the Yankee Stadium infield while the Yankees were answering questions in their clubhouse about why they yet again couldn’t score runs in the postseason. At the beginning of January, I went around the field with a brief summary of each expected Yankees starting position player. It’s not pretty. If you’re a Yankees fan with a heart condition, I don’t recommend reading it. The most frightening situation isn’t even left field. It’s the entire left side of the infield.

7. I literally feel sick when I have to write or talk about Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Josh Donaldson. I’m not exaggerating. I feel like I just ate from a questionable street meat cart on 6th Avenue and am now going to need to find a somewhat respectable public toilet to build a 15-layer toilet paper nest on just having to type their names. The fact this duo makes up the left side of the infield, came over in the same trade and are nearly universally (“nearly” only because there are a lot of boomer Yankees fans who think Kiner-Falefa is good at baseball) despised by Yankees fans is oddly beautiful in the way a tornado is. They are going to be standing side by side and saluting the Bleacher Creatures during Roll Call on March 30 against the Giants. If you think otherwise, you clearly don’t know how the Yankees conduct business.

Owed money is king for the Yankees and controls all decision making. The Yankees would rather lose than have owed money sitting on the bench in favor of a better, less expensive player, and they would rather watch countless runners get left on third base with less than two outs than release owed money for nothing. When envisioning a possible Yankees lineup, the first thing you need to do is scrap everything related to on-the-field play and go right to the payroll.

8. Kiner-Falefa is on the books for $6 million in 2023. That’s $6 million of guaranteed money, which is a lot more than the league minimum Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe will command, so you can pencil in Kiner-Falefa at short. (Be on the lookout for the first day of spring training quotes talking about how hard Kiner-Falefa worked tirelessly over the winter on his defense. And don’t forget about the secret Yankees metrics Boone and Cashman referenced throughout 2022 that rate Kiner-Falefa as one of the best defenders in the game.)

Kiner-Falefa ended up being the worst everyday non-catcher Yankee to get a full season of at-bats in the Cashman era (and one of the worst in the history of the 100-year-old franchise). Kiner-Falefa’s defense on routine plays was as bad as his bat, and after single-handedly trying to advance the Guardians in the ALDS, he was benched by the manager who spent the summer defending him by citing vague and secret defensive metrics. These metrics were so powerful that it led to Cashman hiring Brian Sabean to find out what has been going on in Cashman’s player evaluation department. Sabean told the media his first assignment is to watch every postseason game from this past October and share his evaluation with Cashman. I hope he has some TUMS readily available while watching the offense, some Pepto Bismol while watching the defense and a barf bag for the in-game management.

9. Donaldson is owed $21.75 million in base salary in 2023 and has an $8 million buyout attached to him for 2024. There’s a better chance the Yankees figure out how to efficiently conduct Stadium entrance security than there is that Donaldson isn’t bought out in 2024. That means Donaldson remains a $29.75 million investment for the Yankees. I have made a lot of foolish purchases in my life. The Tubthumper album from Chumbawama in 1997 comes to mind. But that cost my sixth grade self, what, $14? Maybe $15. (I should have used that money on a safer investment like buying more Pogs.) The Yankees willingly traded for Donaldson and took on the entire $51.5 million owed to him to acquire Kiner-Falefa. Teams do crazy shit like that when they are getting an elite player in return. Pay off this overpaid sunk cost for us and we will give you the player you covet. The Dodgers took on David Price’s remaining contract to get Mookie Betts. The Yankees coveted Kiner-Falefa, a player the Rangers spent half-a-billion dollars to avoid playing (by signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien), and a player the Twins immediately flipped to the Yankees (and then used the money saved on Donaldson to sign Carlos Correa). The Yankees coveted him so much, they were willing to take on more than the entire team payrolls of the A’s and Orioles to make it happen.

Donaldson is going to play because of owed money. There’s no circumstance in which he will be benched for underperformance. If he wasn’t benched last year when he posted career lows in runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and had the highest strikeout rate of his career, what exactly would he need to do to get benched in 2023? If he were to have a sub-.500 OPS around Memorial Day, Boone would still deflect questions about Donaldson batting fifth with how great his defense has been as if defense doesn’t grow on trees.

10. As currently constructed (again with the “as currently constructed” as if it’s going to change), I know the hours I will put into this season are likely to be wasted if measuring the season as championship or bust, which I do. Even if the Yankees were the best team on paper, winning it all would still be unlikely, and they aren’t close to being the best team on paper. At best, they are same team they were 12 weeks ago, and most likely, they are worse. They have 11 weeks left to change to that.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

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

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Jan 1, 2023

New Year, Same Yankees Lineup

I never believed Hal Steinbrenner when he told Aaron Judge he had the payroll flexibility to re-sign him and add more to the roster to essentially close the four-win postseason gap between the Yankees and Astros. And because I don’t believe a word this Steinbrenner says — unless he’s talking about how to implement harsher luxury-tax penalties, which in turn are bad for his franchise’s chances of winning then every word he says is the truth — I’m not surprised that the Yankees’ lineup is the same it was two-plus months ago when they were laughed out of the postseason for the third time in six years by the Astros. Actually, it’s not the same, it’s worse.

That lineup at least had the potential to have a healthy Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi. The 2023 lineup will have neither, and the only addition made to it this offseason has been to re-sign Judge, a move for which Steinbrenner has been praised. Yes, the owner of the highest-valued franchise in the league that makes more money than all the other teams has been celebrated for retaining the team’s star player, in what should be a given. Steinbrenner has been referred as some kind of folk hero or legend for getting on the phone during his Italy vacation to speak with Judge and eventually agree to give him $360 million of the money he inherited from his father. (Steinbrenner scheduling a European vacation during baseball’s Winter Meetings, which is the single-most important event of the offseason, tells you all you need to know about his level of interest in operating the team his father didn’t want to leave to him.)

The Yankees did add Carlos Rodon this offseason, which is nice, but unless he’s going to bat fourth and hit .350 in the postseason, all that signing did is make the Yankees stronger at an area that’s already a strength. The Yankees went from having a great rotation to having the best in baseball, but the Yankees haven’t been eliminated from the postseason because of their pitching since Chien-Ming Wang was the team’s so-called ace. These Yankees don’t get eliminated because of their pitching, they get eliminated because of their hitting, or lack thereof.

If you think there’s still a lot of time left in the offseason, there’s not. The Yankees’ roster you see today is most likely the one on Opening Day. The lineup you’re used to seeing underachieve and disappoint is getting yet another chance to “get over the hump” the team’s manager claims the team has been “close” to getting over in his five season as manager, only to come up shorter each time.

Leaving catcher out of it, let’s go around the field, and look at a lineup littered with health and production issues.

Number 48, Anthony Rizzo, Number 48
As expected, Rizzo opted out the $16 million he was owed for 2023 and turned it into two years and $40 million from the Yankees. He missed 20 percent of last season with nagging back problems. I’m sure those will only get better, not worse as he enters his mid-30s.

Number 26, DJ LeMahieu, Number 26
LeMahieu missed 23 percent of last season with a foot fracture that sapped his power and turned his bat into Isiah Kiner-Falefa 2.0. He has been rehabbing the foot fracture, but he still may need to have surgery on it, and if he does, he will be forced to miss a significant portion of 2023.

Number 25, Gleyber Torres, Number 25
From the end of July through early September, Torres had the lowest OPS in baseball. Yes, all of baseball. I wanted the Yankees to trade Torres last offseason. They didn’t. I wanted them to trade him at the deadline. They didn’t. I want them to trade him this offseason. They haven’t. I’m sure Torres will still be a Yankee in 2023, will have stretches where he tricks many (not including myself) into thinking he has regained his 2018-19 path to stardom, but will mostly be a disappointment.

Number 12, Isiah-Kiner Falefa, Number 12
I spent an inordinate amount of time in 2022 writing and talking about the Yankees’ shortstop, who failed to make any routine play look easy (and failed to make many routine plays) and posted a .642 OPS. He did all he could to single-handedly eliminate the Yankees in the ALDS and his manager and biggest fan seemed fine in letting him do so until he played shortstop like he was blindfolded in Game 3. Boone benched him for the rest of the ALDS, but ultimately (have to get Boone’s favorite buzz word in here, especially when talking about his favorite player) went back to him with the season on the line in Game 4 of the ALCS.

As long as Kiner-Falefa is a Yankee, he will be the starting shortstop, and if you think otherwise, you don’t know how these Yankees operate. Owed money is more important than talent and production, and Kiner-Falefa is owed $6 million in 2023, not the league minimum, which is what Oswaldo Peraza or Anthony Volpe would command. Unless he’s traded, get ready for more IKF!

Number 28, Josh Donaldson, Number 28
Boone and Brian Cashman have scoffed at the idea the Yankees need a new third baseman for 2023. They have acted stunned when asked about Donaldson’s abilities, completely befuddled that anyone could think Donaldson isn’t the right man for the job. To the credit of Boone and Cashman, Donaldson did just come off a season in which despite being healthy all season, he posted career lows in runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and had the highest strikeout rate of his career. Why wouldn’t he be the team’s starting third baseman in 2023?

Number … (checks notes) … the Yankees don’t have a left fielder.
That’s right, the Yankees don’t have a left fielder. There were plenty of free-agent options to fill this void and the Yankees passed on every single one of them. They didn’t miss out because they were waiting on Judge or Rodon, they were never going to be in on any of them. By giving Judge $360 million to play right field, ownership would have to skimp somewhere else, even though there’s no salary cap.

You might be thinking, ‘Couldn’t they just put more of the profit they make back into the team in hopes that by constructing the best possible roster, they will then play more playoff games, possibly win a championship and increase their profits astronomically?’ You must be new around here. Maybe you’re thinking, ‘Can’t they just increase food, beverage and merchandise sales?’ Oh don’t worry, they’re going to do that. But while they do that, they will try to sell you on an Aaron Hicks resurgence in left field. Again, owed money gets the first crack at any position, and Hicks is owed a lot of money. He’s under contract for this season and next season and the season after, and then in the season after that, the Yankees will pay him a $1 million buyout to not play for them.

But let’s say the Yankees are able to dump Hicks’ disastrous deal on someone. (Even dumping $1 of it on some other team has to be considered a win at this point.) And yes, the Yankees are going to do everything they can to move Hicks because he will achieve 10-5 rights this season and therefore a full no-trade clause will go into effect. Then he will be a Yankee until they release him and he can finally go do what he wants every day, which is to play golf. If Hicks goes then I think you will see the majority of Oswaldo Cabrera’s time in left field, but the Yankees seem more inclined to use him at a different position every day in the Ben Zobrist-type role they envisioned Tyler Wade fulfilling.

If it’s not Cabrera then it’s Estevan Florial? The outfield prospect the Yankees have been reluctant to ever give more than a handful-of-games look at. If it’s not Florial, well, the Yankees just signed Willie Calhoun to a minor-league deal. Calhoun’s lone good season in the majors came in 2019 when he hit 21 home runs with an .848 OPS. If you believe in stats from 2019, just know with the baseball juiced that season, Torres hit 38 home runs, Brett Gardner hit 28 and Ketel Marte hit 32.

Number 22, Harrison Bader, Number 22
Bader was pretty dreadful in his small 14-game, regular-season sample size as a Yankee (.217/.245/.283), but then he became the team’s best and most reliable hitter in the postseason, going 10-for-30 with five home runs in nine games.

Bader was sold to Yankees fans as an all-glove, no-bat center fielder, who would fit in nicely at the bottom of the order. That’s nice and a good piece to have, except when you also have an all-glove, no-bat shortstop, third baseman, left fielder and catcher, you have an offensive problem, and the Yankees have a major offensive problem, which is why I’m writing this.

Number 99, Aaron Judge, Number 99
He’s the most important player on the team, and he was just paid to be that player. If he’s not, it won’t matter what anyone else does on the current roster.

Number 27, Giancarlo Stanton, Number 27
Giancarlo Stanton missed 32 percent of the season. In five seasons, he has missed 37 percent of the Yankees’ games. I’m sure as he too enters his mid-30s, he will be healthier than he was in his late-20s and early-30s. When he did play, he was bad, hitting .211/.297/.462.

With six weeks to go until spring training, that’s the Yankees lineup. To summarize, their first baseman missed one-fifth of last season with debilitating back problems; their second baseman is still rehabbing a foot fracture from last summer that may need surgery; their other second baseman was the worst hitter in baseball for a six-week stretch and they unsuccessfully tried to trade him at the deadline; their shortstop was benched in the postseason and was the worst at his position in the majors; their third baseman experienced career lows in every offensive statistic; they don’t have a left fielder; no one knows what to expect from center field; their right fielder is the best hitter in the league and their designated hitter is coming off the worst “full” season of his career.

In November and December, I went to bed each night praying I would wake up to a flurry of free-agent signings to improve the roster, using the team’s greatest and endless resource to do so: money. But now that every elite free agent is signed, I go to bed each night praying that a trade or trades will be made to improve this roster.

As of now, I know how the regular season will play out, but most importantly, and sadly, I know how the postseason will play out. I have seen this same core and lineup enough to know what their ceiling is, and with spring training around the corner, it’s still an ALCS loss to the Astros.

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

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Dec 8, 2022

Relief Over Yankees Re-Signing Aaron Judge

The Yankees re-signed Aaron Judge, but they’re no better today than they were seven weeks ago when they were swept by the Astros.

The Yankees had to re-sign Aaron Judge. They had no choice. As an organization, they backed themselves into this position by not extending him between 2017 and 2021 and by not giving him what he was looking for prior to Opening Day 2022, which was certainly not a nine-year, $360 million deal. (Though their pre-Opening Day 2022 offer was extremely fair.) And then the perfect storm of events for Judge took place leading to him getting the highest average annual salary of any position player in history and a deal that makes him a Yankee through his age 39 season.

Judge had an all-time offensive season, carried the Yankees for six months, broke the American League home run record and won AL MVP. To support his free-agent case, the Yankees were embarrassed in the ALCS by the Astros and his hometown Giants followed up a 107-win season with 81 wins, losing the AL West by 30 games. Then within the last week, whatever backup plan the Yankees had if Judge left was ruined when Jacob deGrom, Justin Verlander and Trea Turner all came off the board. Turner signing before Judge only helped Judge as the new Phillie’s 11-year deal meant the eight-year offer out to Judge wasn’t going to get it done. The elite free-agent options were disappearing, and the Yankees had only one choice: finally give Judge what he wants, which was way, way, way more than what he wanted in early April.

The Yankees’ nonsensical “no extension” policy cost them hundreds of millions of dollars with Judge. Not that I care. No Yankees fan should care. Why should anyone other than the Steinbrenners care about their finances? (Finances they inherited from their father from a franchise they inherited from their father, a franchise their father didn’t want them to run.) If Judge got 15 years and $1.5 billion from the Yankees, only two groups of people should care: the Judges and the Steinbrenners. In a salary cap-less league, the money doesn’t matter. The years don’t matter. Having the best possible roster in the given season it all that matters.

Somehow along the way, baseball owners fooled the public into thinking luxury-tax penalties would sink franchises. There’s no market smaller than San Diego and in the last four years, the Padres gave $340 million to Fernando Tatis, $300 million to Manny Machado, $100 million to Jose Musgrove, traded for Yu Darvish’s $21 million average annual salary, tried to give Turner $342 million this week, tried to give Judge $400 million this week and finally were able to sign Xander Bogaerts for $280 million. If the Padres of all teams can spend the way they do, it’s disturbing to think what the Yankees could truly afford to spend compared to what they actually spend.

The Steinbrenners knew they had to keep Judge, not because it would help them win a championship, but because it would help them financially. Since Game 4 of the ALCS, the Yankees have sent countless emails for 2023 ticket offers, using Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu as the images in these emails. I like Stanton and love LeMahieu, but those two aren’t “putting fannies in the seats” like George Steinbrenner used to say. Hal Steinbrenner can act like not winning the World Series for a 13th straight year bothers him and keeps him up at night, but it’s all for show. To Hal, the Yankees had a successful season. They made his family hundreds of millions of dollars, and reaching the postseason was just icing on the cake. Getting five home playoff games (and a sixth when they screwed over everyone for Game 5 of the ALDS) was the cherry on top.

Judge alone won’t help the Yankees overcome the Astros and win the World Series. Steinbrenner said he told Judge the Yankees would be able to re-sign him and more this offseason. So far the Yankees gave Anthony Rizzo a new contract and brought back Tommy Kahnle. The four-win ALCS gap hasn’t been closed. If it has moved, if anything, it’s moved more in the Astros’ favor.

It doesn’t matter that Verlander left the Astros for the Mets. The Astros still boast Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers Jr. and Christian Javier in their rotation, and were able to win the AL in 2021 without Verlander. The Astros can just plug his rotation spot with either Luis Garcia or Jose Urquidy, neither of which made the Astros’ postseason rotation. (Both made 28 starts in 2022 with Garcia pitching to a 3.72 ERA and Urquidy a 3.94 ERA.) The Astros are also returning their World Series-winning offense in addition to Jose Abreu (who they recently gave a three-year deal too).

It feels like the Yankees are going to re-sign Andrew Benintendi, which would be nice since it would put an end to any idea Aaron Hicks could be a Yankee in 2023, but all it does is bring back another piece from a Yankees team that wasn’t good enough. A piece that missed the final month of the season and the postseason due to a second hamate surgery, a surgery that is known to sap power for some time after.

The best thing the Yankees have going for them is that the rest of the AL seems to be content with doing nothing this offseason. The Red Sox let Bogaerts leave. The Rays gave Zach Eflin the biggest free-agent contract in franchise history. The Blue Jays traded away Teoscar Hernandez. The White Sox’ big splash has been signing Mike Clevinger. I guess the Rangers made a statement by signing deGrom, but they then canceled that out by signing Andrew Heaney. Turner stayed in the NL. Bogaerts went to the NL. Verlander went to the NL. Wilson Contreras stayed in the NL. Mitch Haniger went to the NL.

It’s helpful nearly all of the free-agent talent has gone to the NL over the AL, but it doesn’t make me feel better about the Yankees’ offseason, which is shaping up to be returning nearly the same exact roster and core that for a fifth straight season just proved to not be good enough.

I’m not excited the Yankees re-signed Judge. I’m relieved. No one should be celebrating the team that makes more money than any other team being able to retain their own homegrown free agent. Eating money to move Aaron Hicks or Josh Donaldson would get me excited. Moving on from Isiah Kiner-Falefa? Signing Carlos Rodon? Trading for Bryan Reynolds? Giving an everyday spot to Anthony Volpe or Oswald Peraza out of spring training? Now we’re talking. That would get me excited. Those are moves that would begin to close the gap that has grown progressively wider since the 2017 ALCS.

The Winter Meetings are over, but the offseason has really just begun. There’s just over two months until pitchers and catchers report for the the Steinbrenners to make good on their promise to Judge that they could sign him and more this offseason. Having two months to make good on that promise doesn’t mean I think it will actually happen, just that they have two months to make it happen. Right now, they’re the same old Yankees: good enough to make the postseason, but not good enough to win it. For Yankees fans, it’s not good enough. It’s about time it isn’t for the Steinbrenners either.

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

Blogs • Yankees

Nov 10, 2022

Hal Steinbrenner Gives Brian Cashman Lifetime Contract

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 past 23 days, and with late start times, long games

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 past 23 days, and with late start times, long games and crowded train rides home, nearly every hour of those 23 days was a waking hour.

In that ALCS, the Yankees had an opportunity to win one of two games in Houston to advance to the World Series, and they didn’t. Five seasons and five calendar years later, that’s the closest these Yankees have come to getting the franchise back to the World Series, let alone winning the World Series. Or so I thought.

A week before Opening Day 2022, Brian Cashman spoke with The Athletic at spring training as part of a disturbing interview that was his lowest moment as Yankees general manager.

“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, Cashman tried to make claim to the 2017 championship, as if the Yankees scoring three runs total in the four games in Houston in the ALCS had nothing to do with it, acting as if his Yankees would have just walked all over the Dodgers in the World Series.

“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, a second ALCS loss to the Astros, an ALDS loss to the 28th-highest payroll Rays, a degrading wild-card game loss to the Red Sox and now a third ALCS loss and sweep at the hands of the Astros, who thoroughly and utterly embarrassed the Yankees last month)! But hey! They’re back at it. Every year, they’re still back at it!

And “it” is the postseason. In a time when 40 percent of the league reaches the postseason and teams hovering around .500 are involved in the postseason race until the final weeks of the season, reaching the playoffs is considered championship-like for the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees.

“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 five offseasons have passed on every single star position player available on the free-agent market. All while boasting nearly the same payroll over the last 17 years, 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! In October 2021, after the Yankees’ postseason lasted nine innings (though really not even a full inning with Xander Bogaerts’ two-run, first inning home run), 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 added zero “legitimate options” to the roster.

“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.’”

In 2021, 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. The Yankees’ financial position allows them to be able 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.

That Cashman quote is why I rooted for the Astros over the Phillies this season. (Yeah, I said it. I rooted for the Astros.) The Phillies were an 87-win team, the 6-seed in the NL, and including the AL, they were the last seed in the entire postseason field. Had they been able to upset the Astros, it would have only given more credence to Cashman and the Yankees’ belief that the postseason is a crapshoot and a month of random luck. Except it’s not. If it were, the Astros wouldn’t have just played in their second straight World Series and fourth in six years after having a six straight ALCS appearances. If it were, then the Yankees teams that have allowed Cashman to maintain his position within the organization for a quarter of a century weren’t in fact good, but just the luckiest collection of baseball players on the planet in the late 90s and early 2000s.

For a general manager that hasn’t produced a single World Series appearance in 13 seasons and just one in the last 19 seasons, who once traded Ted Lilly for Jeff Weaver, who traded Tyler Clippard for Jonathan Albaladejo, who signed Kei Igawa, who chose Nick Johnson over Hideki Matsui, who traded for Javier Vazquez twice, who let his belief in Eduardo Nunez prevent him from acquiring Cliff Lee, who gave Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million, who hired Boone and extended Boone, who took on $50 million owed to Josh Donaldson simply to acquire Isiah Kiner-Falefa, that interview was the lowest moment of his tenure as Yankees general manager. That is, until last week.

The moment Gleyber Torres caught the final out of the 2022 ALDS against the Guardians, I knew Cashman and Boone would be back. As I walked out of Yankee Stadium that Tuesday evening, I knew the tandem would return no matter what happened in the ALCS. What I should have truly realized was that it didn’t matter what happened in the ALDS against the Guardians. The moment the Yankees clinched a postseason berth, the tandem would return.

I don’t know that not reaching the postseason would have been enough to move on from them either. I don’t know that blowing the single-largest game lead in baseball history would have led to organizational change for the Yankees. When the Yankees’ once-15 1/2-game lead was down to one game and Boone was slapping tables in postgame press conferences and stunningly telling the media they would “have a hell of story to write if the Yankees blow this thing,” I know it didn’t matter to Cashman, and I’m quite sure it didn’t matter to ownership either. But if it did, that was the Yankees fans’ chance at change. Endure the worst regular-season embarrassment in baseball history to go along with the team’s ownership of the worst postseason embarrassment in the game’s history, and maybe, just maybe it would result in the kind of organizational change I wrote was needed after the 2021 season.

Once the Yankees reached the postseason, once they barely survived the inferior Guardians who took them to a winner-take-all Game 5 and had the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning of that Game 5, and once they reached the ALCS, nothing mattered. The Yankees couldn’t have been less of a challenge for the Astros, and it didn’t matter.

“I think I’m living proof and our ownership is living proof of the fact that people don’t get let go because of results,” Cashman said in what was his new low moment as Yankees general manager, a moment that will likely never be topped.

The New York Yankees: Where people don’t get let go because of results.

Because of that admission from Cashman, nothing mattered from a win-loss perspective for the 2022 Yankees. It didn’t matter that the Yankees were swept by the Astros. It didn’t matter that in the two home games in the series, they were shut out in one and blew a three-run lead in the other. It didn’t matter that they struck out 50 times in the series. It didn’t matter that they became the first team in Major League Baseball postseason history to have a three-game span with 12 hits or fewer, 40-plus strikeouts and three losses. It didn’t matter that they set the MLB record for most consecutive games in postseason history with six hits or fewer at 10 straight games. It didn’t matter that they recorded the lowest team batting average through eight postseason games in MLB history. It didn’t matter that they used three different starting shortstops in the four-game ALCS and changed their leadoff hitter and left fielder each game in the series. None of it mattered because like Cashman told the media on three different occasions in his annual end-of-the-season press conference (while the baseball season is still going), the reason the Yankees lost to the Astros was injuries.

On Opening Day, the Yankees shared their slogan for 2023:

“No moral victories. No excuses. No storylines. No narratives. Talk is cheap.”

If you’re a fan of the Red Sox, Astros or Mets, or simply a baseball fan who hates the Yankees, the Yankees’ decision to make that the 2023 team motto was too perfect. There was a 100 percent chance it would come back to haunt the Yankees, just like the decision by Boone and the team’s mental conditioning coach to use the franchise’s collapse in the 2004 ALCS as motivation prior to Game 4 of this past ALCS.

Excuses have become the foundation for which these Yankees are built on. That’s because the man hired by Cashman to manage the team has an endless list of them. His Yankees always seem to run into a hot lineup, a starting pitcher having his best day who kept his offense off balance and a shutdown bullpen that was a tough matchup. His starting pitcher always seems to have “good stuff,” but made just one or two “mistakes.” His bats are always just about to come around based on their recent quality of at-bats. And his bullpen seems to always be on the brink of straightening things out.

After Boone played for tomorrow in Game 1 of the ALCS and gave away a tie game against Justin Verlander in the sixth inning in Houston, the Yankees had to have Game 2. When the Yankees lost Game 2, the team spent their postgame session with the media saying how they should have won if not for the wind, the same way their general manager told the media the team should have won the 2017 World Series. The same way their manager “Annie” Boone talks about “tomorrow” the way the Broadway character sang about it, the players have followed the act their management has led them on. So when Boone spends every October talking about how “close” these Yankees are to winning a championship (like he did again this year, even though they have never been as close as they were the season before he took over), the players believe it. They don’t believe it’s their fault when they don’t win in October. It’s never on the roster or the person who constructed the roster or the person who manages the roster. It’s always on something else: sign stealing, start times, the wind, the weather, a roof being open, bad luck, a small sample size or an unlucky bounce.

“I think Aaron did a great job,” Cashman said last week about his manager’s season, a season in which Boone publicly admitted to hearing “Fire Boone” chants during the team’s home games. And why wouldn’t he say that? Boone was handpicked by Cashman and sold to ownership as the right guy to oversee the Baby Bombers. Those Baby Bombers are no longer babies, and nearly all of them are no longer Bombers. Aaron Judge is a free agent. Gary Sanchez was traded. Greg Bird, Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier were let go for nothing. Torres’ career has fallen apart since the end of 2019 and the Yankees unsuccessfully tried to trade him this past July at the deadline. Luis Severino’s 2023 option was picked up earlier this week, and there’s a good chance he will be the only Baby Bomber left.

Yes, that would mean Judge is no longer a Yankee in 2023, and that’s not only a very real possibility, it’s the likely possibility. The Yankees are now one of 30 teams Judge can sign with.

“If you could wave a magic wand,” Cashman said at the general manager meetings earlier this week, “We would secure Aaron Judge and retain him and have him signed and happy in the fold as soon as possible.”

The Yankees didn’t need to possess a magic wand for Judge to be a Yankee, and it never needed to come to this. This being Judge being a free agent and this being the Yankees now having to overpay to re-sign him for what’s left of his prime and his entire decline. The Yankees could have extended Judge during or after his 2017 Rookie of the Year campaign. They could have done the same in 2018. Or 2019. Or 2020. Or 2021. Or 2022. They didn’t. So now their general manager is searching for a fictional piece of equipment to bring back the Yankees’ best player.

“As George Steinbrenner would say, ‘Fannies in the seats,'” Cashman said about Judge last week. “People want to go watch that guy play.”

You know what else George Steinbrenner said? “Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next.”

Steinbrenner said that in 1998. The same year Cashman inherited a team and core that would win the World Series that season, again the next season, again the season after that, and reach the World Series in two of the next three seasons after that. Back then, the Yankees weren’t preaching that “process” is more important than “results.” They didn’t need to because the only result they knew was winning. They didn’t to have speak and act like losers. The same type of loser Derek Jeter referenced in his documentary this past summer: the kind of people who make excuses for their shortcomings. The last time the Yankees appeared in the World Series was with the core that Cashman inherited. You want to give him credit for being part of Gene Michael’s team that helped create that core? Fine. Then give him the same blame for the late-80s and early-90s Yankees teams that were the laughingstock of the AL because he was part of the organization then as well.

After these Yankees came within a game of the 2017 World Series, Cashman persuaded ownership to move on from Girardi, who had won big as both a player and manager for the Yankees. It took one interview for Cashman to sell ownership on the inexperienced Boone (who had never won coached or managed at any level and had never experienced winning either), and all other candidate interviews were canceled.

Since then, the Yankees have passed on every available free-agent position player. They said no to then-26-year-old Manny Machado because they had Andujar at third base and plans for Torres at shortstop. (Andujar was released this season and Torres was removed from shortstop last season.) They chose not to even meet with then-26-year-old Bryce Harper because Cashman told the media the generational superstar wasn’t “a fit” for the Yankees since the team’s outfield was crowded. That crowded outfield was Judge (who was never extended and is now a free agent), Stanton (who isn’t allowed to play the outfield), Aaron Hicks (who has had a season-ending injury in three of the four years since Harper was a free agent) and Jacoby Ellsbury and Clint Frazier (who were both released for nothing). This past offseason, Cashman chose not to sign any of the big-name free-agent shortstops, and instead willingly took on the $50 million owed to Josh Donaldson just to acquire the light-hitting, not-really-a-shortstop Isiah-Kiner Falefa, who ended up getting benched in the postseason. Asked about Kiner-Falefa’s miserable season last week, Cashman said, “Kiner-Falefa was kind of along the lines of what we expected.” He expected a .642 OPS from an everyday player and one of the worst defensive shortstops in the league who would lose his job in the postseason? Is that part of the “process” Cashman says leads the Yankees these days?

What exactly is the process? It should be to build a team from within and fill in areas of need through free agency with the franchise’s financial might. But it’s not. If the Yankees were at full strength in the postseason, and DJ LeMahieu, Andrew Benintendi and Matt Carpenter were all healthy and available, Judge would have been the only homegrown player in the lineup.

The Yankees don’t have a process, and if they believe they do, it’s not working and needs to be rebuilt. What the Yankees do have is a goal, and that goal is to be one of the six best teams in the AL and reach the postseason. If they happen to run into a championship along the way, great. And if they don’t, like Cashman’s favorite position player Hicks said this season when asked about no longer being an everyday player because of his performance, “so be it.”

Cashman didn’t need to be fired after this season. His contract was up, like Boone’s was last year. The Yankees could have had a clean break and moved on to someone else. But like Boone last year, Cashman is still part of the Yankees. He will be going on his 26th season as general manager and his 14th season in trying to produce a World Series team. He’s not going anywhere now and won’t go anywhere until he decides to step away on his own.

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