Blogs – Page 57 – Keefe To The City

Feb 9, 2023

Rangers Thoughts: Cautionary Tale for ‘Kid Line’

The Rangers showed the sizable gap between a team that’s contending for a championship and a team that seems to have no plan on Wednesday night against the Canucks.

The Rangers showed the sizable gap between a team that’s contending for a championship and a team that seems to have no plan when they wanted to on Wednesday night against the Canucks. In the end, they got the expected two points, but it wasn’t as easy as it probably should have been.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. There aren’t many games I expect the Rangers to win, but Wednesday night against the Canucks was one of them. The Canucks are a poorly-run organization with a bad on-ice product that just changed head coaches midseason in the oddest way possible and also traded their captain a month before the the trade deadline. They are a mess. They are a team that has Connor Bedard aspirations and the Rangers are a team that has Lord Stanley aspirations, and the disparity was evident when the Rangers wanted it to be on Wednesday.

2. The Rangers scored 6:53 into the game on a beautiful, no-look pass from Vincent Trocheck to Chris Kreider on a 2-on-1. From just inside the blue line until his pass, Trocheck kept his eyes on Spencer Martin, making everyone believe Trocheck would shoot. He didn’t and the Rangers took a 1-0 lead. One minute and 38 seconds later, the Rangers scored again.

Filip Chytil scored his 19th of the season to extend his goal-scoring streak to five straight with his seventh in the last five games. (He now has 11 goals in the last 13 games as well.) It’s easy to forget Chytil is 23 years old because this is his sixth season in the league, having debuted in 2017-18. Chytil is going to get paid if he keeps up this level of play and production (as he should) as a true second center (again, if this is who he truly is). You would like to think the Rangers will be able to find a way to keep him, but unfortunately, the money owed to Trocheck is likely the money needed for Chytil.

After the Chytil goal, Rick Tocchet’s face had an expression equivalent of someone who gave up a nice TV gig to join a disaster. Eight minutes and 31 seconds into the game, and the game was essentially over. Or rather it should have been.

3. In typical Rangers fashion, they didn’t score the next goal, which would have made the remainder of the game a formality. With two minutes and 24 seconds left in the first, Conor Garland scored after the Rangers let Quinn Hughes weave his way around the top of the offensive zone without any pressure. Of course the Canucks were able to get on the board against the Rangers’ fourth line and third defensive pair.

“We were playing real good hockey and then all of a sudden we change our game a little bit and started turning pucks over in the neutral zone and going cross-ice and stuff like that,” Gerard Gallant said. “You get up and think it’s going to be easy and then all of a sudden it’s a hockey game.”

I’m sure Vitali Kravtsov and Julien Gauthier held back a good laugh upstairs, watching the site of Will Cuylle, Sammy Blais and Jake Leschyshyn contributing nothing positive in yet another game. It’s beyond frustrating that Kravtsov and Gauthier, two players who could potentially be difference makers, continue to not play, so that Gallant can get his traditional fourth line, even if that fourth line provides no offensive value and is a defensive liability.

4. In the opening minutes of the second, the Canucks drove the play, and it felt like yet another game in which the Rangers would blow a two-goal lead after growing comfortable with their early success. Thankfully, Alexis Lafreniere changed that at 6:23 in the second when he was able to finish off a Jacob Trouba shot by pushing the puck through the last inches of the crease and into the net. For Lafreniere, it was his second goal in as many games after this overtime winner on Monday, and for the Kid Line, it was their second goal of the game with all three members of it getting on the scoresheet.

5. “They were good again, scored a couple of big goals, tonight, obviously,” Gallant said after the game about the Kid Line. “I don’t think anybody was great defensively tonight, but the Kid Line created chances for us, for sure.”

A nice little backhanded compliment from the coach on the line he never seems to want to compliment from a group of players he never wants to praise. Luckily for him, the two goals they provided were the difference between the Rangers winning by a goal or losing by one, mostly thanks to his personally-constructed fourth line.

6. The Canucks didn’t go away, cutting the lead to a goal again after J.T. Miller found Vasily Podkolzin for his first goal of the year. It’s been five years since the Rangers traded Miller to the Lightning. As a Ranger, Miller produced 0.50 points per game in his age 19 through 24 seasons. With the Lightning, Miller had 0.69 points per game in his age 24 and 25 seasons. As a Canuck, Miller has averaged 1.04 points per game in 253 games over his age 26 through 29 seasons.

7. As a former first-round pick (15th overall in 2011), Miller is as good of cautionary tale as any that being a highly-touted prospect doesn’t translate to success in the NHL right away. Or it’s a cautionary tale that the Rangers have no idea how to develop their own potential high-end talent. The Rangers could use Miller. Every team could use a player of his caliber. Instead, they added him as a sweetener in the Ryan McDonagh package to the Lightning.

8. The same can be said for Pavel Buchnevich, who scored a career-high 30 goals With the Blues last season (in only 73 games) after being traded by the Rangers. Buchnevich has scored 15 goals in 38 games this season, totaling 45 goals in 111 games as a Blue (a 33-goal pace over 82 games). Buchnevich, like Miller, has become a more-than-a-point-per-game player since leaving the Rangers.

On a night in which the Rangers’ Kid Line (consisting of players that are 21 and 23 years old) scored two of the team’s four goals, Miller provided a reminder of what’s possible with patience with first-round talent, especially first- and second-overall first-round talent.

9. With just under four minutes left in the game, and the Rangers clinging to their 3-2 lead, Mika Zibajenad scored his 25th of the season to give the Rangers a two-goal for the third time. (Jacob Trouba picked up his second primary assist of the game on Zibanejad’s goal. A much-needed start to the “second half” for the captain.) But just like the previous two times in the game the Rangers held a two-goal lead, they let the lead get back to just one goal, and this time it only took 11 seconds for the Canucks to get it back. Elias Pettersson scored with 3:44 left in the game, and a game in which the Canucks were nearly 3-to-1 underdogs would be another hold-on-for-dear-life ending for the Rangers in the final minutes.

10. The Rangers did hold on for their third straight win, and are now six points ahead of Washington (with two games in hand) to stay out of a wild-card berth. I would prefer they got a wild-card berth if it meant playing the Hurricanes in the first round over the Devils, but obviously not if it means playing the Bruins. It’s safer to just stay in the Metropolitan bracket and facing the seem-to-be-superior Devils to avoid the chance of playing the Bruins.

The next 10 days will go a long way in helping determine where the Rangers end up in the postseason bracket. After Friday’s home game against the Kraken, the Rangers go on the road to play the Hurricanes, Canucks, Oilers and Flames before returning to the Garden to host the Jets. Beginning Friday, the Rangers will play six games in 11 days and their remaining 31 games in 63 days, nearly a Rangers game every other night.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Thoughts

Feb 7, 2023

Rangers Thoughts: Most Entertaining Game of Season

After Monday night’s exciting 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, Wednesday night feels like 10 days away, which is when the Rangers will play next. Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

I’m glad the Rangers just ended a 10-day layoff and aren’t starting one because after Monday night’s exciting 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, Wednesday night feels like 10 days away, which is when the Rangers will play next.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. I don’t have a hard time falling asleep. Just ask my wife. I could lie down on a hardwood floor with two children two years and younger playing around me with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse blaring on TV and “The Wheels on the Bus” playing on volume 10 on Alexa and be asleep within seconds. But on Monday night after the Rangers’ 5-4 overtime win over the Flames, I couldn’t fall asleep, which is why I’m writing this with a fatigue headache sitting over my left eye feeling like I was on the other end of a Jacob Trouba open-ice hit.

Between the three blown leads, the five Ranges goals, the nine total goals, the big hits, the fights, the play of Mika Zibanejad and the Kid Line, the kicking motion review (that of course didn’t go the Rangers’ way) and the big saves from Jaroslav Halak, the game had everything. I couldn’t fall asleep because I couldn’t stop watching Trouba lay out Nazem Kadri.

2. It’s rare that a player of Kadri’s ability is on the other end of a hit like that because a player of Kadri’s ability is usually smart enough to not put themselves in a situation like that. Henrik Lundqvist discussed the play after the second intermission on MSG, and broke down how Trouba sets up attacking opponents by making them think for a fraction of a second that there is enough time and space in the middle of the ice for them to cut across before taking away that time and space before they can realize it.

3. It was a clean hit, just like Trouba’s hit in the first period. Just like nearly all of Trouba’s hits are. But every time Trouba makes a hit like the ones he made on Monday night, he immediately has to defend himself in the form of a fight. I get the opposition wanting to stand up for their teammates, but maybe instead of fighting for their teammates they could just tell their teammates to keep their head up when skating with the puck.

4. After Trouba laid out Kadri, the nearest Flame to Trouba was Dillon Dube, so he took it upon himself to fight Trouba. Dube had zero career fights before taking on Trouba and had exactly 20 penalty minutes in each of the last two seasons. Trouba made quick work of him and as Stephen Valiquette said on MSG, “That’s somebody that shouldn’t want that smoke.” So in the span of seconds, Trouba destroyed the Flames’ third-leading scoring, beat the crap out of someone who has no business fighting and got his team a power play thanks to the instigator penalty. There’s nothing more demoralizing than a player jumping another player to stick up for his teammate who got leveled, only to also get his ass kicked.

Trouba takes a lot of shit from Rangers fans (including me) about his play and especially his play relative to his salary cap hit. But his performance in the win over the Flames made him worth every penny.

The Dube instigator led to a Zibenejad power-play goal to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead, so so much for Dube standing up for his teammate and making a statement. Within the next nine minutes of play, however, that lead was gone and the Rangers trailed by a goal.

5. It would have been hard to stomach if the Rangers had lost the game, and they nearly did. They blew a 1-0 lead, a 2-1 lead and a 3-2 lead. They had to overcome a 4-3 deficit with 7:05 left in the game to avoid losing what was a dominating performance. They had to overcome the deficit because the officials and Toronto upheld Andrew Mangiapane’s third-period goal. (I’m glad Mangiapane isn’t a Ranger. It’s hard enough to say and write Leschyshyn.)

I understand why the call was upheld because Mangiapane’s right foot was moving forward after he made contact with the puck. When you see a slowed-down replay it looks like he’s making a kicking motion even though I don’t think he is. But I have seen that same type of goal called back countless times and thought it would be in this instance as well. It wasn’t. That’s the way it goes for the Rangers and goal reviews.

6. Since Artemi Panarin became a Ranger I have called for him to play on a line with Zibanejad. Play the team’s top playmaker with the team’s top goal scorer. (What a concept.) David Quinn would only pair the two when the team was trailing and in full-blown urgency mode in the final minutes of the third period. I have enough problems with Gerard Gallant and his unfortunate similarities to Quinn, but the one thing Gallant can do to separate himself from Quinn to avoid the same fate as Quinn is to keep the two together.

7. Gallant was asked about keeping them together moving forward after the game.

“You’ve gotta give it some time, and I don’t know if I’m going to give it time or not,” Gallant said. “We’ll see.”

I think Gallant made part of that comment in jest, but I’m not 100 percent sure he did. He knows his penchant for changing lines daily is out of control, though I don’t know how he could think of breaking the two of them up. I guess when you’re the guy who healthy scratches Kaapo Kakko in the playoffs and Alexis Lafreniere in the regular season and plays Sammy Blais over Vitali Kravtsov, you could think of breaking up Panarin and Zibanejad.

8. The Kid Line was more than noticeable, driving play and creating chances as Filip Chytill scored a pair of goals and Lafreniere scored the overtime winner. If Gallant could just change out Vesey with Panarin and Zibanejad, and continue to allow the Kid Line to play without the nerves of making a mistake and being benched (or scratched), the Rangers would have a very dangerous top six. They could have a dangerous bottom six as well, but that would entail rebuilding the entire fourth line, which they seem unwilling to do. But to keep the theme of these Thoughts positive after the memorable win and the most entertaining game of the season, I will refrain from writing about the fourth line disaster. (And I won’t mention how Blais hasn’t scored a goal in 53 games with the Rangers.)

9. Lafreniere desperately needed that goal, (as he desperately needs every point he can get), which was just his second since December 7. Chytil looks like he will be a consistent goal-scoring threat and Kakko is starting get his name on the stat sheet with regularity. Now Lafreniere needs to do the same. The trio is never gong to be given PP1 time as long as Gallant is the head coach, so they are going to need to find a way to get their points in the limited final-seconds-of-the-power-play time they do get and at even strength. They are starting to do just that.

10. Coming off a 10-day layoff and at home and given the performance, the Rangers had to have two points from that game. The same goes for their next game on Wednesday night against a Canucks team that isn’t good and an organization that is lost. It’s not often that I expect the Rangers to win, but I expect them to win on Wednesday.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Feb 6, 2023

Yankees’ Own Evaluation Is Disconcerting

The Yankees have spent the offseason making excuses for their postseason play, and that continued this past weekend.

I spent the weekend avoiding the -15 degree weather in New York City by staying inside, watching countless episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and wondering why the NHL can’t just have their traditional skills competition during their All-Star Weekend. The Yankees spent the weekend continuing their public display of delusion about how the 2022 season ended and how they compare to the world champion Astros.

Brian Cashman went on 670 The Score this weekend and wanted to be celebrated for reaching the ALCS even though his latest roster to come up championship-less didn’t even win a game in that series.

“New York’s a tough grading system,” Cashman said. “So the only A you get is if you finish with that trophy in hand otherwise you get an F. There’s nothing in between.”

This is a misleading statement from Cashman. The 2017 Yankees lost in seven games in the ALCS and I would have given that team an A at the time given their expectations, performance and how set up for the future they appeared to be. I certainly didn’t think I would be sitting here five years later with these Yankees still having not won a championship.

The 2013-2016 Yankees were mostly hated rosters filled with either past-their-prime superstars like Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez or roster stopgaps desperately hanging on to major-league careers like Lyle Overbay, Vernon Wells, Kevin Youkilis and Travis Hafner. Those were truly awful teams that Joe Girardi was somehow able to squeeze winning records out of, and after 2017, I didn’t think the Yankees’ roster would be so universally detested again for a long, long time.

But that time has come again as the roster is littered with washed-up players like Josh Donaldson, overpaid busts like Aaron Hicks and bargain-bin disappointments like Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Add in a failed manager who’s protected by his general manager, and there’s a lot to not like about the current Yankees. It’s truly scary to think about if Aaron Judge had left this offseason. Giancarlo Stanton coming off the worst season of his career would be the position player face of the franchise.

The grading system Cashman speaks about is accurate when it comes to the current state of the Yankees. A team that in the last six postseasons has been eliminated by the Astros three times, the Red Sox twice and the Rays once. A team that is going on a 14-year World Series appearance drought and a team that has won it all once in the last 23 years. A team that has consistently passed over generational free-agent talent for less expensive options and in-house options that don’t pan out.

“In the end we were four games short of a World Series appearance,” Cashman said. “But it felt like with the way our fan base reacted and the press that we got knocked out in the first round.”

It’s not surprising Cashman thinks he and his roster should be praised for their embarrassing showing in the ALCS. This is the same guy, who a year ago, said the organization’s World Series drought doesn’t date back to 2009, it only dates back to 2017 because the Astros cheated, calling his Yankees the rightful champions that season in what what his lowest moment as general manager. It’s been a long time since Cashman won that he now has to conjure up championships in his head rather than have his team win them on the field. So of course he believes reaching the ALCS and not winning any games there is an accomplishment.

“The perception was we didn’t do well,” Cashman said. “And the reality was we had a hell of another run at it, but we fell short, so that’s just the New York market.”

If the young, inexperienced Guardians, with the fourth-lowest payroll in baseball, who weren’t supposed to sniff the postseason, had won Game 5 of the ALDS over the Yankees and then got swept by the Astros, I would say the reality was they had a hell of a run at it. Their entire roster made less than Stanton and Donaldson combined and they had the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning of a win-or-go-home Game 5 against the Yankees. Yes, if they reached the ALDS and were swept, so be it. They could be proud.

The Yankees shouldn’t be proud of their showing. A team that kicked their ass all season, kicked their ass worse than ever in four games over five days in October. It was demoralizing. The Yankees were mismanaged in Game 1, complained about exit velocity and open roofs costing them Game 2, were one-hit through 8 2/3 innings in Game 3, and when they finally broke through and scored five runs in Game 4, they allowed six runs. The Astros beat them in every way possible.

That’s not how Michael King sees it. While I was busy watching Mickey and Goofy find all the animals for their petting zoo, and while Cashman was telling sports radio in the Midwest about the participation award his 2022 Yankees deserve, King was on MLB Network Radio talking as if the Yankees had just won the World Series and had played in their sixth straight ALCS and not the Astros.

“Every offseason move that we make, you can see the Twitterverse going nuts, like ‘Is this enough to beat the Astros?’” King said. “It’s never just like ‘Is this enough to be a World Series team?’ It’s ’Is it enough to beat the Astros?’ Because we know that obviously, ultimately that will get us there.”

King wondered why Yankees fans can never just wonder if a move is enough to be a World Series team and then quickly realized that the American League berth in the World Series goes through Houston, changed course and corrected his incorrect initial thought. Then, toeing the Cashman/Aaron Boone company line, he goes back-to-back with the use of “obviously” and “ultimately” as if he were reciting a Boone postgame press conference. (And to think there are people who don’t think a team takes on the character of their manager.)

Every move the Yankees make needs to answer the question: Does this move close the gap between the Yankees and the Astros? Right now the gap is sizable. It’s four postseason wins, which is the equivalent of an entire league championship series. It’s enormous. The Yankees might have made it to the baseball final four, but they did nothing once they got there. It’s not something that should be celebrated. Not for the Yankees and not for this group of Yankees the string of postseason failures they have put together.

“I think that if we faced the Astros when we were rolling in those May, June, July months, I think it’s not even close,” King said. “We were by far the best team in baseball.”

Michael, Michael, Michael. The Yankees did face the Astros in June when the Yankees “were rolling.” The Yankees were 51-18 and 7 1/2 games up on the Astros when they met for the first time on June 23 for the start of a four-game series. And the Yankees “were rolling” for the end of April, May and most of June. In July, they were falling apart.

Here’s how those four games when the Yankees “were rolling” went:

June 23: The Yankees are no-hit for seven innings, strike out 10 times and pull off a miraculous four-run ninth inning for a walk-off win.

June 24: The Yankees score once and lose.

June 25: The Yankees are no-hit, strike out 15 times and (obviously) lose.

June 26: The Yankees are no-hit for the first 6 1/3 innings, rally for two runs in the ninth and walk it off in the 10th after Dusty Baker rests all of his ‘A’ relievers.

Here’s how the other three regular-season meetings between the two teams went:

June 30: The Yankees score one run, strike out 11 times and lose.

July 21: The Yankee score two runs and lose.

July 21: The Yankees score five runs (and still lose) off a starter who wasn’t in the Astros’ postseason rotation and a reliever who’s no longer in Major League Baseball.

The Yankees saw the Astros when they were the so-called “best team in baseball” and never had a lead. They faced them when they were starting their second-half collapse and got swept in a doubleheader. They played them in the ALCS, scored nine runs in four games and were swept.

“We hit a little bit of injury. Trade deadline I think kind of just like threw off the locker room a little bit,” King said. “But if it’s all together I think this team is unbelievable and there’s no chance an Astros team could stop us when we’re rolling.”

Well, the Astros did stop you when you “were rolling.” At one point the Yankees had a 9 1/2-game lead over the Astros in the AL and that was erased. So not only did they stop you, they stopped you, caught you and passed you, humiliating you in the process.

The Yankees did have their fair share of injuries, but so does every team. The 2021 Astros didn’t have Justin Verlander or Lance McCullers Jr. They went to the World Series. The 2021 Braves didn’t have Ronald Acuna and they won the World Series. The 2022 Astros lost their 2-hitter after 64 games in Michael Brantley and still won it all. Every team has injuries. No one wants to hear about injuries, especially the Yankees’ injuries.

As for the change in the clubhouse at the trade deadline, well, King last pitched more than a week before the deadline after suffering a season-ending injury, so he wasn’t in the new-look clubhouse daily. But yes, clubhouse favorite Jordan Montgomery was traded at the deadline. Did the removal of Montgomery from the clubhouse make Boone a bad in-game manager in October? Did Montgomery’s departure cause Judge to go 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS? Is it the reason why Donaldson went 1-for-13 with 10 strikeouts? Kiner-Falefa couldn’t handle routine ground balls because he was upset the Yankees traded one of their homegrown starting pitchers? It’s hard for me to think Harrison Bader dropped a ball in center field because he was uncomfortable being the player Montgomery was traded for.

“I never want to make the excuse of injuries because every team goes through it,” King said, “But unfortunately, we just had some issues that made is so we weren’t at full strength.”

King doesn’t want to make excuses for injuries, but unfortunately, he’s going to anyway! What team is at full strength by late October? Sure, if the Yankees had a completely healthy Matt Carpenter batting and if DJ LeMahieu and Andrew Benintendi were available and if King himself never got hurt, then yeah, the Yankees’ chances of beating the Astros would have improved. But the Yankees didn’t have those players, and they lost. That’s the way it goes.

If the Yankees and Astros meet again in the ALCS in 2023, I don’t expect that either team will have the 26-man rosters they planned on having for the series. And if the Yankees and Astros do meet again in the ALCS in 2023, I pray the Yankees finally win, so I don’t have to listen to excuse-filled interviews like these ones.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

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.

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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.

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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!