Blogs – Page 67 – Keefe To The City

Feb 10, 2022

Aaron Boone: “I Make the Lineup”

Aaron Boone’s offseason appearance on CC Sabathia’s podcast had a lot of upsetting and disappointing moments.

Today is Day 71 of the lockout. It’s been more than 10 weeks since the baseball world was halted in the most inevitable and predictable shutdown of all time. An event years in the making only made more obvious by the events of nearly two years ago when at one point the owners and players couldn’t agree on playing 60 or 70 games in the pandemic-shortened season.

There has no been little to no news over the last two-plus months, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing since the only Yankees news prior to the lockout was the daily reminder that Hal Steinbrenner is as much like his dad as Michael Kay is as much like Vin Scully. Seemingly every hour leading up to the December lockout a different big-game free agent came off the board while the Yankees sat on their thumbs and grew that much closer to granting Brett Gardner’s wish of “running it back” with the same core and essentially the same roster that hasn’t been good enough for five straight seasons and has gotten progressively worse over that time. The only news since the first of December has been related to coaching hires, and even that news wasn’t any good, as the Yankees couldn’t even complete the hire of a valued baseball mind like Eric Chavez, who ended up going to the Mets.

Spring training is supposed to begin next week with pitchers and catchers reporting. We’re supposed to already be a week-plus into getting 15-second videos on social media of bullpen sessions for pitchers who have already started workouts. Instead, Major League Baseball is no closer to being a thing again than it was more than 10 weeks ago when Rob Manfred told us a lockout would expedite the collective bargaining process.

Way back in mid-October, the Yankees decided the status quo of being knocked out of the postseason as early as possible was something they wanted to continue to do as an organization and so they gave Aaron Boone a new contract. A month after that, Boone went on CC Sabathia’s podcast to speak about the 2021 season. Aside from saying the obvious, “As you might imagine, I don’t look at my mentions on my Twitter,” Boone said a lot on the podcast. And nothing was more important than when he said, “No one’s ever made a lineup for me. I make the lineup.” Nothing was more important than that statement and nothing was more upsetting than him elaborating on the process he uses to create his lineups.

I have always believed Boone when he has publicly stated he creates the Yankees’ lineup. Not because I think he’s an honest person. We know he’s far from being that after watching nearly 600 postgame press conferences filled with lies and exaggerations about his team’s performance and injuries. I believe him because there’s too much evidence to suggest otherwise. Any Yankees fan who has watched him mismanage and ruin countless games in four years as Yankees manager knows there’s no Ivy League graduate, analytics guru or data scientist who would ever come up with, support or defend the lineups Boone consistently puts together. No one with even a casual understanding of baseball would bat Gardner second (which he did 14 times in 2021), third (which he did three times in 2021) or fourth (which he did three times in 2021). That alone is enough to prove to me that Boone is telling the truth. He has said as much multiple times in recent seasons, including saying, “Ultimately, I’m writing out the lineup and I’m making these decisions,” when asked if he’s a puppet for the front office after the team’s 2020 ALDS loss to the Rays.

It’s not hard to fill out a major league lineup card, especially when it’s the lineup card of the New York Yankees. It should be as easy as it gets, yet this is the process Boone said he uses on Sabathia’s podcast.

“My process for making the lineup is actually a little bit different all the time. There’s the ebb and flow of the season. Let’s assume everyone is healthy and we’re not going to bed that night with ‘We’re waiting to find out if this guy’s available tomorrow.’ So if our guys are available, a lot of times, I’ll buzz by my coaches the night before going home where we may have a thought. A lot of times it’s usually with Mendy where I’ll just be like, ‘What do you think about this guy in tomorrow?’ And we’ll kind of bounce things off. When Marcus was here, I said, ‘What do you think of this guy in tomorrow? This guy out? What do you think about flipping these guys in the lineup?’ So that’s usually how it starts and then when I come in, usually I’ll come into my office and Mendy will follow me in and we’ll kind of go through our different things if theres a little tweak we want to make.

Boone said that’s the process he uses if the team is completely healthy. If he said that’s how he thought about things when the lineup was full of Greg Allen, Tim LoCastro, Estevan Florial, Ryan LaMarre and Rob Brantly in mid-July, it would be somewhat acceptable, but that’s the process he uses when “our guys are available?” He’s not even close to done explaining.

“Sometimes I’ll reach out to like I’ve even done this with Cash and Cash is not usually very much involved at all. But sometimes if I have a tough decision that I’m really wrestling with, I may call Cash on it. I may call Mendy on my way home. I may call Marcus Thames when he was here on my way home. When there’s that tough decision I have when I’m thinking about getting a different guy in tomorrow or sitting a guy a day, I may go to different people and ask their opinion on it, and then ultimately, I gotta decide which way I want to go.”

When Boone interviewed to be manager of the Yankees, he was so extraordinary that the front office canceled all other interviews and didn’t even hold a second round of interviews, handing Boone the job with no prior coaching experience at any level. I’m certain he didn’t explain this process in his supposed spectacular interview.

“We have a very strong analytics department that gives us so much information that kind of helps us decisions, give us context on what we’re seeing, what we’re looking at. And I think the reality is any of the really strong franchises are very strong analytically, but ultimately, the teams that do it the best are able to … the secret sauce is how do you strike the balance? Because every day is unique amongst itself, especially in a big league season when you’re playing 162 games. So you’ve gotta be able to strike the balance, but as Cash puts it, ‘We want to have a buffet of everything available to us,’ so that we can make really good decisions and I think we do that here even though we get criticized about it a lot.”

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t know where it’s going. I just hope to find it somewhere along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.“

OK, that final part was from Michael Scott on The Office, but everything else came out of Boone’s mouth. Now knowing exactly how his lineup creation process works, I feel much more at ease about the team’s failure to meet expectations since he became manager because it makes perfect sense that someone who uses the above strategy to create a lineup would fail to meet expectations. The man who gave that answer was given a four-year extension to manage the sport’s winningest and most prestigious franchise, and in that time he will oversee the decisions of about $1 billion in payroll.

There’s much more to break down from Boone’s offseason appearance on Sabathia’s podcast. Coming tomorrow: Aaron Boone: ‘We’re Gonna Need a Shortstop.’

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

Blogs • NHL • Rangers

Feb 7, 2022

2021-22 NHL All-Animosity Team

As is tradition every All-Star break, here is this season’s All-Animosity Team.

The NHL All-Star Game returned after a year hiatus, but now it’s come and gone, and the second “half” of the season is set to begin. With 35 games remaining, the Rangers have put themselves in a position where winning less than half of their games would get them to 98 points. It will take a monumental collapse for the Rangers to not play a postseason game for the first time in five years (I’m counting the 2019-20 playoffs as real postseason games for them).

Because of the Rangers’ two-week break from Feb. 1 through Feb. 15, there has been a lull in animosity toward non-Rangers around the league. But in sticking with tradition of the All-Star break, here is the 2021-22 All-Animosity Team.

FORWARDS

Matthew Barzal
We came dangerously close to Barzal and Artemi Panarin playing together for the foreseeable future. If not for Panarin taking less money (about $1 million per year less) to be a Ranger instead of an Islander, Rangers fans would have had to deal with those two flying around together for years to come. It gives me chills just thinking about it. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.

When Barzal is on the ice, I’m scared. I’m not scared at the level of Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Nathan MacKinnon or Connor McDavid, but I’m still scared. He’s the one true playmaker on the Islanders and not someone I enjoy entering the offensive zone with the puck. Every time he does his patented circling of the zone with possession it feels like it will only end badly, and unfortunately, he’s not going anywhere in terms of the rivalry.

Brad Marchand
Marchand is the ultimate player who you hate to watch your team play against, but would love if he were on your team. He’s dirty and annoying, he’s a pest and nuisance, but he’s really good. He makes up one-third of the Bruins’ “Perfection Line” and the Bruins go as that line goes, and that line has been going for years.

Marchand might have been on this team solely for what he does with the puck because he’s that talented, but it’s what he does without the puck that solidified his roster spot. His lapses in judgment and total disregard for player safety whether it’s unnecessary hits to the head or irresponsible slew foots have made him universally disliked in the entire hockey world outside of Boston. I don’t envision a scenario where Marchand is in the league and isn’t on this team.

Tom Wilson
OK, maybe Wilson is the ultimate player who you hate to watch your team play against, but would love if he were on your team. Like Marchand, Wilson is a really good player, however, his lapses in judgment are nearly impossible to comprehend. His presence on the ice worries me for the health of the Rangers’ elite talent, but if he were flying around throwing big hits and scoring big goals for the Blueshirts, my perception of him and the Tri-state’s perception of him would be much different.

DEFENSEMEN

Alexander Ovechkin
OK, so I had to do some odd maneuvering like putting a historically awful defensive player on defense for this year’s roster. But considering he does hover around the top of the left circle on the power play, it’s almost like he’s a defenseman sometimes. A stretch? Yes, it is.

In his career, Ovechkin has 41 goals in 67 regular-season games against the Rangers and another 13 goals in 33 playoff games across five postseason series, with four of those series going seven games. He’s the ultimate “When is his shift going to end?” and “Get the puck out of the zone” player there is and when he’s waiting at the top of the left circle on the man advantage, two minutes feels like 20 minutes as you pray the shot attempts he does get somehow miss the net.

I keep waiting for Ovechkin to slow down, thinking age or games played might start to catch up to him, but in his age 34 season he led the league in scoring with 48 goals and was on a 58-goal pace before the season was shut down. In 91-regular season games since January 2021, he has 53 goals. He’s not slowing down. At worst he’s keeping pace with what he has always done, and it’s possible he’s getting even better with age.

I do respect his ability and appreciate that I’m watching greatness, a generational talent and the best goal scorer in the history of the game, but that doesn’t take away how I feel when he’s playing the Rangers. And no, I don’t want him to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal record, though unless he unexpectedly decides to retire, he’s going to break it.

Zdeno Chara
Chara’s last three stops have gone from the Bruins to the Capitals to the Islanders. All he needs are stints stint with the Devils, Flyers and Penguins at this point to increase an animosity that doesn’t need any increasing.

Chara isn’t close to being the player he once was and appears to be a liability on the ice more times than not, but he’s not once again on this team for the player he is, but the player he was.

I will miss him when he’s no longer in the league though. Chara and Joe Thornton remain the last members of the ’90s club of current NHLers who played in that decade with both going back to the 1997-98 season. Derek Jeter was finishing his second major league season when Chara and Thornton both made their debuts, and this year will be eight years since Jeter retired, all while Chara and Thornton keep on playing in the NHL. It’s preposterous, and the length of their careers is something we may never see again, and we’re seeing it from two players at the same exact time.

GOALIE

Matt Murray
During Henrik Lundqvist’s number retirement ceremony, I couldn’t help but think how unfortunate Lundqvist was to have his career take place during a 15-year period in which the front office gave him to little no help defensively and asked him to single-handedly carry the organization to each win during his career. Lundqvist deserved better. He deserved more than one chance to play for the Stanley Cup, and he did everything one single member of a hockey team could do to win a championship.

It’s not Murray’s fault he got to play behind the 2015-16 and 2016-17 Penguins en route to back-to-back championships. And for as unreasonable as it is, it bothers me that he got to do so. I’m glad Lundqvist retired only ever playing in an NHL game for the Rangers, but I still wish he had agreed to waive his no-trade five and six years ago and went to a contender at the time and won. Then I wouldn’t have to think about the all the fortunate goalies over the years who have gotten their names engraved on the Cup, while Lundqvist who was undoubtedly the undisputed best goalie of his era never did.

Blogs • Giants • NFL

Jan 3, 2022

Joe Judge Is a Joke

I wanted to like Joe Judge. I really did. But after two miserable seasons, he deserves to be fired.

I wanted to like Joe Judge. I really did.

After the Giants announced the hiring of Judge, I wrote No Confidence Giants Ownership Hired Right Head Coach in Joe Judge. In it, I wrote:

I don’t have any confidence the Giants got this hire right given every personnel, roster, draft and trade decision they have made over the last seven years. But I want them to be right. I want to have a Giants season last past September. I need them to be right.

But after his introductory press conference, I followed it up by writing Joe Judge Just Might Be What Giants Need. Judge looked and sounded like the exact type of coach any fan would want to lead their team, saying everything you want the head coach of the team you root for to say. Judge could have sold me a home in a flood zone in desperate need of a new roof, septic system and furnace at three times the asking price and I would have bought it with the way he talked that day. Looking back, he essentially did sell me that.

“What I’m about is an old-school physical mentality,” Judge said at his introductory press conference. “We’re going to put a product on the field that the people of this city and region are going to be proud of because this team will represent this area.”

That statement was enough to make me a believer. To look past his lack of head coaching experience at any level. To forget that the decision makers who hired Judge were the same people who unnecessarily fired Tom Coughlin, hired Ben McAdoo, hired Dave Gettleman, hired Pat Shurmur and retained Gettleman for four seasons.

I have always been saddened that Kyle Chandler’s character Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights isn’t an actual person and football coach, but at his introductory press conference, Judge appeared to be giving me the closest thing to making Coach Taylor come to life. Now a week shy of two years I wish Kyle Chandler were coaching the Giants. I wish anyone other than McAdoo or Shurmur were coaching the Giants.

I couldn’t have been more wrong about Judge. I should have stayed with my initial reaction to his hiring that Giants ownership couldn’t be trusted to get a head coach hiring right, considering Gettleman and his opposite Midas touch effect would be involved in the decision. After 32 games and a 10-22 record, Judge has been an extension of the McAdoo and Shurmur Giants, and with his weekly happy-go-lucky postgame press conferences following the dismantling of his team each Sunday, he’s quickly rising the power rankings of everything that been wrong with the organization for the last decade.

Judge’s most recent unintentional comedic postgame press conference helped him make an impressive jump up those rankings. On a day in which the Giants scored three points, lost by 26 points to a team whose coach is actually going to lose his job next week, turned the ball over four times and threw for an unfathomable negative-10 passing yards, the lowest point of the day for the Giants came after the team’s 12th loss of the season.

When asked why Giants fans should have faith in him as head coach, Judge went off on a tangent for more than 11 minutes reminiscent of Billy Madison’s comparison of The Puppy Who Lost His Way to the Industrial Revolution. In no way did Judge come close to answering the question.

He instead misremembered history, created his own history, spoke in general vagueness, told flat-out lies, curated fictional stories and even swore a couple of times. He said, “This ain’t some clown show organization” in describing a franchise that gone 61-99 over the last 10 seasons with one playoff appearance (a 25-point loss). He tried to use the recent sideline fight between Washington teammates as to why his Giants are in a good place and said the lack of golf bags present in the team’s locker room means the organization is headed in the right direction. The climax of his answer though came when he said impending free agents on the team come into his office “begging to come back’ and that former Giants making more money elsewhere call him multiple times a week to tell him they wish they were still Giants.

The entire rant was cringeworthy, and unfortunately for Judge, will likely follow him forever. It’s unlikely he will ever shed those 11 regrettable minutes since the only way to do that would be to become a successful NFL head coach and eventually lead a team to a championship. The Giants are as far away from being a championship team as they have ever been and Judge is as close to losing his job as he has ever been. And if he were to lose his job, it’s hard to envision another team taking a chance on him.

But Judge doesn’t view the 11-plus minutes heard around the world from Sunday as regrettable. A day after adding a new chapter to the embarrassing last decade of Giants football, Judge claimed he had no regrets about anything he said.

“Look, I was asked a specific question about what fans were asking and I responded to it,” Judge said. “People ask me a direct question, I give direct answers.”

Again, Judge was asked why fans should have faith in him. His answer was more than 11 minutes long and at no point did he answer the question. If you were going to illustrate how to not directly answer a question, Judge’s answer to the question he was asked on Sunday would be the golden example.

After having a day to sift through the bullshit Judge spewed in their presence in Chicago, the inevitable follow-up question to his claim that former Giants who “make more money” than they did or would with the Giants call him to tell him they miss playing for him was asked. Judge declined to specify names (because there aren’t any names).

“I know this is a place that players want to play,” Judge said. “It’s a place that a lot of players are going to want to play for a long time.”

Do players want to play for the Giants? Sure, if the money’s right. Sure, if they have no other offers. But if all things are equal and the Giants are going up against any other team in the league for a coveted free agent, what kind of idiot would choose to play for this team, with this roster, under this coach, front office and ownership?

“There are obviously some things that we have to do better,” Judge said after claiming the Giants, at 4-12, are a well-coached team. “I’m not going to sit here and hide behind anything. I’m not going to sit here and say we’re perfect or anything.”

If you were to listen to the 22 postgame press conferences given by Judge after Giants losses, you would think the Giants were on a 32-game winning streak under him. Nothing is ever bad, everything is part of the process and he and his team should only be measured on immeasurable metrics like culture and personal relationships and kindness.

“Obviously, the most important thing in this league is winning,” Judge said. “So we have to do a better job putting ourselves in a position to finalize and put ourselves in position to win.”

This was the first time as Giants head coach Judge has acknowledged that wins and losses are the determining factor of success in sports. So I’m relieved to know that he knows that the goal of the game is outscore the opponent and his job is to make sure his team outscores their opponent in the majority of their games.

But in a typical Judge-ian way, his answer leads you to believe he doesn’t fully understand or comprehend just how awful he has been at his job if wins are the “most important thing.” The second part of his answer would lead you to believe the Giants’ 12 losses in 16 games have been the product of bad breaks or late-game defeats. Nine of the Giants’ 12 losses have been by double digits. Outside of their Week 2 loss in Washington and Week 3 loss at home in Atlanta when they gave away those games, and their still-hard-to-understand three-point loss in Kansas City, the Giants have been run out of every building they have played in, including their own twice. Over the last five games without Daniel Jones, they are 0-5, having been outscored 141-49, losing on average by 18 points. It’s not like the Giants were a postseason team or even a respectable team with Jones either, as they were 4-7 with the “franchise” quarterback playing, and are 12-25 with him as a starter in three seasons.

Everything about the Giants is depressing. The roster is a perfect blend of overpaid, underachieving, oft-injured and untalented players. The general manager is a week away from being removed from a job he should have been removed from at least two years ago. And the head coach who was hired despite his inexperience has done nothing other than show his inexperience at every opportunity for two seasons.

Gettleman will be gone a week from now, and someone else will have the responsibility of trying to not screw up the Giants’ coveted situation of having two Top 8-ish picks in the 2022 draft. With Judge supposedly safe from the same fate as Gettleman, it means the team’s new general manager will have Judge forced on him the way Jones and Jason Garrett were forced on Judge. This likely means the new general manager will be a name promoted from within since no coveted outside candidate would sign up to be an ingredient in this recipe for disaster. The never-ending cycle created when Jerry Reese was retained and Coughlin wasn’t, which continued when Reese was fired and Gettleman was brought back will continue once again for the 2022 season. The Giants need to hit the reset button yet again, and that means giving the new general manager his choice at head coach and his choice at quarterback.

The Giants were losers under McAdoo. They were losers under Shurmur. They have been losers under Judge as he has failed on his promise to put a team on the field “the people of this city and region can be proud of.” And for that, he has earned the same fate (even if he won’t receive it) as his two predecessors: two seasons and done.

Blogs • Yankees

Jan 1, 2022

My New Year’s Resolution (for the Third Time): Don’t Get Upset with Aaron Boone

I’m tripling down on my 2020 and 2021 New Year’s Resolutions for 2022, all of which revolve around Aaron Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them.

Four years ago, I decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t get so worked up about Aaron Boone and his daily disasters, not all of which are even related to in-game moments. In six years as Yankees manager, Boone’s time has mostly been spent putting his players in the worst possible position to succeed, and on top of that, he has constantly lied to the media about everything from player availability to player injuries only to be outed as a liar within minutes or hours after his lies. He has made irresponsible bullpen decisions and inexcusable lineup choices during his tenure, and each season when I complain about his managerial ability, I’m told by fellow Yankees fans not to worry because he would never manage the way he does in the regular season in the postseason, and each season, he’s even worse in the postseason (when the Yankees even reach the postseason), like a managerial Nick Swisher.

Last year, I took a year off from these resolutions, knowing they are nearly impossible to accomplish. I decided achieving them was as likely as me pledging to run 30 miles a day. But after the most miserable Yankees season of my lifetime in 2023, I feel I must give them a try again in 2024. I’m quadrupling down on my 2020, 2021 and 2022 New Year’s Resolutions, all of which revolved around Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them. With Boone being given a seventh chance to manage the Yankees to a championship, I have to try them again. I just have to. For my health and for the health of those who live with me, I owe it to them to try to make these work.

Resolution 1: Don’t Get Upset Over the Lineup
After six full seasons of Boone as manager, we have enough data to know he has no idea how to build the best possible lineup. Thanks to Brian Cashman’s 2020 end-of-the-season press conference we know that Boone has full authority and final say on the lineup card delivered to the home plate umpire. While the front office nerds may have a say on who to bat where and who to play when, we know the unnecessary rest and inexplicable bullpen decisions that have run rampant during Boone’s tenure are all his call.

I need to take a deep breath when I see Giancarlo Stanton batting ahead of Anthony Rizzo or Gleyber Torres in 2024. Boone has been Yankees manager for 901 games (regular season and postseason combined). I shouldn’t expect him to suddenly use logic in determining who bats where.

Resolution 2: Don’t Get Upset About Scheduled Off Days
The Yankees’ scheduled days off and extra and unnecessary rest for their position players is out of control, and unfortunately, it’s not going to change. If anything, it’s only going to get worse. With Aaron Judge turning 32 in April, Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton 34 and DJ LeMahieu 35, get ready for the greatest amount of days off for regulars you have ever seen. Juan Soto is only 25, coming off a season in which he played in all 162 games and the Yankees don’t owe him a cent after this season and I can already see him getting one of the first four games of the season in Houston off, so the Yankees can “get him off his feet” because “it’s a long season.”

The Yankees aren’t going to go out of their way to win the division or home-field advantage in the postseason. They haven’t in a long time. They believe just getting into the postseason is enough (and they have a hard enough time doing that despite 40 percent of the league getting into the playoffs). They don’t care about giving away games as long as they just get in. It’s been working well for them for the last 14 seasons.

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

I don’t think I will ever get over Boone’s decision to use Albert Abreu in literally a “season-on-the-line situation” in Game 161 of 2021. After a fourth straight season of nonsensical bullpen choices, that decision shouldn’t have surprised me, but given the magnitude of the game, not even I thought Boone would screw it up. He did and then he thought going an extra batter with every pitcher used in the one-game playoff loss would work out any differently than every other time he used the same strategy.

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

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

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes on Tuesday and Friday during the offseason.

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

Dec 3, 2021

Lockout Brings Much-Needed Break from Yankees Baseball

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t care about baseball. To be one of the fans you overhear at a game interpreting a simple rule wrong or asking where Derek Jeter

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t care about baseball. To be one of the fans you overhear at a game interpreting a simple rule wrong or asking where Derek Jeter is or getting overly excited about a ball that results in a lazy flyout. Sometimes I not only wonder what it would be like to be someone like that, but I actually wish I were someone like that. Someone who didn’t care about the results of a game and whose mood and daily life for the majority of each year weren’t impacted by a game they have no control over.

I have wondered this and wished this a lot over the last 12 baseball seasons. Over that time, I have watched …

The Yankees not include Eduardo Nunez in a deal for Cliff Lee, who would single-handedly swing the pivotal Game 3 of the ALCS …

The Yankees go into a season with the smoke-and-mirrors version of Freddy Garcia and a 38-year-old Bartolo Colon who hadn’t pitched in two years as 40 percent of their rotation …

Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher and Russell Martin go a combined 10-for-79 as the Yankees scored six total runs in a four-game ALCS sweep …

Lyle Overbay play 142 games in a season, Vernon Wells 130, Chris Stewart 109, Eduardo Nunez 90, Jayson Niz 87 and Travis Hafner 82 …

The Yankees go into a season with one expected everyday regular under the age of 30 …

The Yankees go into the next season without one expected everyday regular under the age of 30 …

Go into a third straight season with only one expected everyday player under the age of 31 (Didi Gregorius at 26) and give 428 plate appearances to Stephen Drew (.201/.271/.381), 642 plate appearances to Chase Headley (.259/.324/.369) and 501 plate appearances to Jacoby Ellsbury (.257/.318/.345) …

Build an everyday outfield of Ellsbury (.263/.330/.374), Brett Gardner (.261/.351/.362) and Aaron Hicks (.217/.281/.336), who would hit a combined 24 home runs in 1,621 plate appearances …

Not take on Justin Verlander’s salary at the Aug. 31 deadline as he would single-handedly swing the ALCS by winning Games 2 and 6 …

Not part with Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar in a trade for Gerrit Cole who single-handedly swing the ALCS the following season with a Game 3 win only to eventually release Frazier for nothing and never play and have no plan for Andujar …

The Yankees’ ALDS Game 3 starter not know the start time of the pivotal game, suffer the worst home postseason loss in franchise history and have their first-year manager manage the team out of the postseason against their longtime rival …

The front office add no starting pitching at the trade deadline and then endure another ALCS loss when the bullpen was asked to pitch 31 of the 54 2/3 innings in the series …

The manager make the most obvious regrettable first-guess decision in history in Game 2 of the ALDS …

The front office go into the season with 40 percent of the rotation made up of arms that hadn’t pitched in two years due to injury and another 20 percent being an arm that hadn’t pitched in a year and a half due to suspension …

The front office think a team could be successful without any left-handed hitting in a lineup, let alone one that plays 81 games in a stadium with a 314-foot, right-field line …

A team that was the preseason favorite to win the American League end up winning finishing in fourth place in the division and fifth place in the AL and have their postseason end in one game be referred to as “a postseason contender” by the team’s general manager …

A manager who has proven to be in over his head in his position and incapable of making even the simplest in-game decisions, while also blatantly lying about his roster’s performance and exaggerating injury news to the media and fans get a new three-year contract with a fourth-year option …

An owner who has not increased the team’s payroll in 16 years despite the team’s exponential revenue growth openly speak about and vote to decrease the current luxury-tax threshold …

A team that has openly admitted it needs to get better, needs a true shortstop, a center fielder and starting pitching did’t sign a single free agent prior to lockout with all of the great starting pitching options no longer available, the only center field option no longer available and now just two shortstop options available.

Since the announcement of his new contract, I have spent the last nearly seven weeks talking myself into Aaron Boone with better players. All he needs is a better roster! Because that will prevent him from batting Gardner third, using Brooks Kriske (or now someone like him) in extra innings in Fenway Park and choosing Albert Abreu over his entire bullpen with the season literally on the line in Game 161 of the regular season. Just give him better players! Unfortunately, with the way the offseason had played out prior to the lockout, the idea of Boone with better players is turning from an idea into a dream, and a rather unrealistic dream at that.

There are two actual starting shortstop options remaining: Carlos Correa and Trevor Story. Correa is by far the better player, but he’s also a jerk (given his comments following the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal and recent evaluation of Jeter’s career) who comes with a lot of baggage. Like CC Sabathia said on a recent episode of his podcast, Correa has set himself up to be A-Rod if he comes to the Yankees in terms of being a dividing figure in the clubhouse and being booed on the field, and I don’t know if that’s a 10-year commitment this Yankees front office wants to make.

I really don’t know what type of commitments they want to make. One would think the Yankees would be all about big-money, short-term deals, like the one Max Scherzer signed with the Mets, but the Yankees were reportedly not even involved in talks for Scherzer. How is that even possible? How is it possible that the Yankees weren’t interested in the best available free-agent pitcher and arguably the best pitcher in the game who would only cost money, something they make more of than any other team?

Not only were the Yankees not in on Scherzer, but they let the reigning Cy Young winner in Robbie Ray sign with the Mariners on what I think is a favorable contract for the Mariners. They watched Kevin Gausman sign with the Blue Jays, and even Jon Gray (who the Yankees once drafted and have always been connected to) was signed by the Rangers. The Rangers also signed two of the available shortstops in Corey Seager (who was my No. 1 choice for the Yankees to sign) and Marcus Semien. The Rangers mean business this winter. The Yankees mean … I don’t know what the Yankees mean.

It keeps me up at night to think the Yankees will sign either Correa or Story (I think they would be more inclined to sign Story since he will be cheaper and they were connected to him in July) and then call it an offseason. This team isn’t a shortstop away from a championship. They are many, many pieces away from that.

If the old adage holds true that you want to build up the middle, then the Yankees’ current middle is Gary Sanchez, (whose name made headlines this week just for being tendered a contract), Gleyber Torres (who was removed from shortstop and is now being forced to second base, which removes the three-time Gold Glove DJ LeMahieu from the position), no one at shortstop and Aaron Hicks (who has played 145 games in the last three years and in that time has suffered a back injury, a hamstring injury and has had his throwing elbow and left wrist both surgically repaired). That’s the Yankees’ middle: Sanchez, Torres, no one and Hicks. World Series here they come! “Postseason contender!” as Brian Cashman called them in his end-of-the-season press conference.

Both Correa and Story make the Yankees much better simply because they’re breathing and the Yankees don’t currently have an actual shortstop on their roster. That sentence reads like a joke, but it’s far from a joke. However, they need a whole lot more than one of those two. Aside from LeMahieu, they essentially need an entire infield since I have given up on Torres, whose mere presence is screwing up the infield alignment, and they need someone who can be trusted to play a full season in the outfield whose name isn’t Brett Gardner.

On top of that, they need starting pitching. They have Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery. Luis Severino has pitched 27 2/3 innings since the end of 2018. Corey Kluber is now a Ray. Jameson Taillon is recovering from ankle surgery. Domingo German flat-out sucks. Clarke Schmidt is always hurt and has put 31 baserunners on in 12 2/3 innings in the majors. In six months, Deivi Garcia went from looking like the future of the rotation to having a future in an independent league. Michael King is a reliever.

Scherzer is a Met, Ray is a Mariner, Gausman is a Blue Jay and Gray is a Ranger. The Yankees didn’t want to go to a second year for Justin Verlander (just like they didn’t want to take on his salary in 2017), so he’s back with the Astros. Eduardo Rodriguez went to the Tigers, Steven Matz to the Cardinals, Noah Syndergaaard to the Angels and Alex Wood back to the Giants. Even Alex Cobb (who signed with the Angels) or a reunion with James Paxton (who went to the Red Sox) would have been viable options. The Yankees signed none of them.

I really hope there’s a multi-player return trade coming before Opening Day because that seems like the only way the Yankees improve their roster. The remaining free-agent pitchers all might as well be J.A. Happ (who happens to also be a free agent) because there’s no one left who will improve the rotation. And unless the Yankees are going to sign Correa and Freddie Freeman, there’s nothing left in free agency to get excited about.

Still wearing his uniform long after the wild-card loss to the Red Sox, Gardner said, “There’s a lot of uncertain, uncharted waters with this team heading into the offseason … Hopefully we’ll have a chance to run it back.”

Well, he may just get his chance. Whenever the lockout ends, the Yankees will still be the same team they were after that loss. The same roster that has never been good enough to win in the postseason and is now not even good enough to get into the actual postseason and play a series. The same franchise that hasn’t been good enough and hasn’t tried to be good enough for the last 12 years.

No one knows when this lockout will end. Next week? Next month? The month after that? After spring training was supposed to start? After the regular season was supposed to start? A break for baseball means a break from the Yankees, and that’s somehow become a welcome relief.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes on Tuesday and Friday during the offseason.

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