I thought the goal of each Yankees season was to win the World Series. I’m not so sure anymore.
I thought the goal of each Yankees season was to win the World Series. I’m not so sure anymore. The Yankees haven’t made a move this offseason to improve their roster and there’s a month left until spring training.
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I’m still waiting for the Yankees to do something to improve their actual roster, not their Triple-A roster.
I’m still waiting for the Yankees to do something. Anything. Well, not anything. They have already done that by trading for Greg Allen and signing Jhoulys Chacin, Tyler Lyons and Socrates Brito. I want them to do something that will improve their actual roster, not their Triple-A roster. Spring training is in four weeks, and the Yankees don’t just have holes on their roster, they have glaring holes, big enough to build an underground parking garage.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Tomorrow will be 14 weeks since the Yankees’ season ended in Game 5 of the ALDS. Since then, the Yankees have done nothing. Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I know I keep writing that and talking about it on the podcast, but I feel like it needs to be reiterated as much and as often as possible because it’s embarrassing. I’m sure Yankees ownership isn’t embarrassed, but they should be. As a Yankees fan, I’m embarrassed. The Yankees’ championship window has closed more than expected over the last two years because of injuries and underachieving, and the team isn’t doing anything to avoid having it close even more in 2021.
2. The Yankees’ nickel-and-diming their own free agents has continued this winter their handling of DJ LeMahieu. It’s nothing new for the Yankees and how they have operated for most of the Brian Cashman era. Pay other team’s players, but not your own. It’s the same way of business that was used in signing names like A.J. Burnett (five years and $82.5 million), Jacoby Ellsbury (seven years and $153 million), Brian McCann (five years and $85 million) and Carlos Beltran (three years and $45 million). None of those four finished their contracts with the Yankees, and in terms of Burnett, Ellsbury and McCann, they paid them to play for other teams because of how badly they wanted to get rid of them. None of them were coming off the types of back-to-back seasons LeMahieu just provided atop the Yankees’ lineup, and none of them was as needed as LeMahieu is with this team.
3. Let’s say the Yankees don’t re-sign LeMahieu. If that happens, if not for needing to take care of a now-four-month-old, I would draw the curtains and stay in bed for the entirety of the baseball season. But let’s say it does happen. This would be the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup:
Aaron Hicks, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Luke Voit, 1B
Gleyber Torres, SS/2B
Gary Sanchez, C
Clint Frazier, LF
Gio Urshela, 3B
Tyler Wade/Thairo Estrada, 2B/SS
This is dangerously close to happening.
4. The Yankees don’t just need to re-sign LeMahieu. They also need starting pitcher. And they don’t need starting pitching in terms of It would be nice to have another starter, they need starting pitching in terms of The Yankees might not be a playoff team without at least one more starter. This is the Yankees’ current “rotation”:
1. Gerrit Cole
2. Jordan Montgomery
3. Deivi Garcia
4. Clarke Schmidt
5. That’s not a rotation, it’s just the names of four starting pitchers. Three of which weren’t in the planned 2020 Opening Day rotation. Montgomery wasn’t trusted to start a postseason game until the Yankees were forced into starting him, Garcia wasn’t trusted to be given an actual start in a postseason game, and Schmidt, well, the Yankees thought they were better off letting Michael King and Jonathan Loaisiga open games in a 60-game season rather than let their top pitching prospect start and didn’t let him start a game until the final game of the 2020 regular season. As for the fifth starter, take your pick between a scumbag, King, Loaisiga, or some irresponsible combination of Jhoulys Chacin and Nestor Cortes.
6. The bullpen isn’t looking too great either. The Yankees finally decided Jonathan Holder had ruined enough games for them and let him go. Loaisiga keeps getting used in high-leverage spots when he can’t get out of them. Nick Nelson flopped in his first cup of coffee in the majors. Luis Cessa … well, he’s Luis Cessa. Tommy Kahnle is both injured and a Dodger. Adam Ottavino is an untrustworthy right-hander who the Yankees only allow to face right-handers making $9 million. That leaves Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. It would have been nice to add Liam Hendriks, but the Yankees passed, letting the White Sox sign him.
7. I don’t know what the Yankees’ strength is as of now. I guess by default it’s a LeMahieu-less lineup since that four-man “rotation” is set up to destroy the bullpen on days when Cole doesn’t start, though there’s not much of a bullpen to destroy. With that lineup, which is currently the team’s “strength,” expect 18-20 strikeout games to become the norm.
8. I do think the Yankees will re-sign LeMahieu because they have to. They don’t have a choice. They don’t have another option. What would their backup plan be? A middle infield of Torres and Wade/Estrada? Bring back Didi Gregorius and move Torres to second base? Sign Michael Brantley two years after they should have and have yet another outfielder/designed hitter on the roster? All of those options suck. You know what doesn’t suck? Re-signing the defending batting champion, the team’s leadoff hitter, the most versatile defender on the team and the one Yankee you actually want to see in the batter’s box when needing a big hit.
9. As for starting pitching, I think we should expect Masahiro Tanaka re-signing with the Yankees. In last week’s thoughts, I listed the available starting pitchers not named Tanaka and not having the baggage of Trevor Bauer. It’s an ugly list unless you’re trying to build the 2015 All-Star team. The same way the Yankees don’t have a choice other than to re-sign LeMahieu, they don’t have choice when it comes to Tanaka, or at least it doesn’t seem like they have a choice. Both will only cost money, which is the Yankees’ greatest resource, but both were previously Yankees, and again: the Yankees don’t like to pay their own players.
10. The other option would be to trade for a controllable starting pitcher, which is something Cashman loves to do, even if he’s awful at picking which controllable starter to obtain. The Yankees failed Sonny Gray and he failed them in his short time in pinstripes, only to find his Oakland self in Cincinnati, and the Yankees traded for the inconsistent and oft-injured James Paxton, and as a Yankee, he was … wait for it … inconsistent and oft-injured. The Yankees have to do something to improve their starting pitching, and they only have one month to do it before spring training.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.
The Yankees never want to pay their own players. Other teams’ players? Overpay them. But when it comes to the Yankees having to pay players who have produced for them, well, that’s a different story.
The Yankees don’t want to pay DJ LeMahieu, and it’s not a surprise. The Yankees never want to pay their own players. Other teams’ players? Overpay them. But when it comes to the Yankees having to pay players who have produced for them, well, that’s a different story.
It was easy for the Yankees to give A.J. Burnett a five-year, $82.5 million contract, eventually paying him to pitch for Pittsburgh for the final two years of the deal. They didn’t even blink when they bid against themselves in handing Jacoby Ellsbury a seven-year, $153 million contract, for which he only played in games in four of the seven years before being released. Brian McCann? Here’s five years and $85 million, and we’ll pay you to play for the Astros for the final two. Carlos Beltran? How about $45 million for three years, and you can finish the contract in Texas. It’s always been easy for the Yankees to overpay and hand out ill-advised free-agent contracts for other team’s free agents.
It’s always been this way with the Yankees. At least in the Brian Cashman era it’s been this way. Bernie Williams was seconds away from signing with the Red Sox and rewriting baseball history before George Steinbrenner met his modest salary request. Mariano Rivera was allowed to meet with the Red Sox as a free agent despite being the best relief pitcher of all time. Derek Jeter was told to test the market as the face of the franchise, team captain and everyday shortstop of 15 seasons. If the organization could treat 51, 42 and 2 so poorly, it should come as no surprise that spring training is a month away and LeMahieu is still without a contract. He didn’t have his best years with another team.
LeMahieu isn’t seeking franchise player money. LeMahieu isn’t 51, 42 or 2 in terms of Yankees history, but in terms of 2019 and 2020, he was the team’s best player. (Sorry, Aaron Judge, but you actually have to play to be the team’s best player.) He’s seeking his earned value for being the most important player on a team in a championship window. Cashman likes to refer to his players as “assets” like they are a piece of land or a random stock in his portfolio, and LeMahieu is an asset the Yankees can’t afford to lose.
I don’t know what the Yankees’ offseason plan is. It’s been more than three months since they were eliminated by the Rays in Game 5 of the ALDS, and they have done nothing, absolutely nothing in that time. Unless you consider stocking up on minor-league depth pieces who have had close to no success at the major-league level in recent seasons. If stocking up on players who will hopefully never appear in a game for the Yankees is the goal for this offseason, then yes, the Yankees are dominating the winter. I can’t imagine a team with the highest payroll in the league trying to win their first championship in 12 years is content with adding Greg Allen, Tyler Lyons, Jhoulys Chain and Socrates Brito.
Needing starting pitching (reminder: Jordan Montgomery is the team’s No. 2 starter), the Yankees watched the Padres take on Yu Darvish’s salary in a clear salary dump by the Cubs. They sat idle while the Mets gave up a bunch of mediocre prospects for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco when they desperately need a middle infielder and starting pitcher. With three trustworthy relievers in an aging and declining bullpen, they let Liam Hendriks sign with the White Sox, who are trying to emerge as the best team in the American League. The Yankees didn’t even care to bring Tommy Kahnle back. They let the Dodgers sign Kahnle, knowing 2021 would be a lost season for the reliever, but hoping he would return to form for 2022. The Dodgers’ front office is what the Yankees’ front office has been striving to be for years with a perfect balance of player development and financial might. The Yankees haven’t come close to realizing that balance.
It’s hard to be enthusiastic or excited about the upcoming Yankees season when it seems like the organization’s strategy is to improve simply by having the other postseason teams from their league sell off their best players to the National League. The Yankees can separate themselves from the AL East and the entire AL with a couple of free-agent moves, and they aren’t. They can make sure the path to the World Series in the AL goes through them, but like they have been for the last 12 years, they are fine if the path goes through other AL cities, and they are fine having to take that path even though it’s ended well for them zero times.
There isn’t a backup plan if LeMahieu signs elsewhere. That plan was likely doing whatever it takes to trade for Lindor, but their cross-city rival took that option off the board under new ownership. The Yankees are close to losing LeMahieu to a team that decides to meet his reported five-year demand. All it will take is the Mets wanting to further increase their World Series odds and put a dent in the Yankees’ and their fan base, or the Dodgers deciding to go over the top to win back-to-back championships or another team to decide they want the best second baseman in baseball on their team. It’s dangerously close to happening.
It will be nearly impossible to get behind the Yankees and believe in them and want to root for them if they fail to sign their best player in the middle of a championship window. It’s inexplicable it’s gotten to the point where LeMahieu not re-signing with the Yankees might happen, but that’s the way the Yankees do business. If LeMahieu had produced his last two seasons with one of the other 29 teams, the Yankees would have already signed him.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
I want the Rangers to be a playoff team. I think they can be a playoff team. It’s just going to take a lot for them to be a playoff team.
I was in bed fighting sleep when the Rangers lost to the Avalanche 3-2 in overtime. With news breaking about the NBA canceling games due to the ensuing pandemic, I thought it might be the last regular-season Rangers game I would see for a while. I didn’t think a while would be more than 10 months later.
I did get to see that Rangers team play again, more than four months later when they met Carolina in a best-of-5 play-in series. That series lasted the three-game minimum and after waiting 141 days for Rangers hockey, it was taken away again in four days.
Those August “playoff” games against the Hurricanes feel like they never happened. The Rangers team that showed up in the Toronto bubble looked like the Rangers team that showed up for the start of the regular season the previous October, a team which was nowhere close to competing for a full 60 minutes, let alone a playoff berth.
The Rangers ended up in the expanded postseason field because of the work they had done leading up to that disappointing result in Colorado. After beginning the New Year with a three-game losing streak in Western Canada, the Rangers began a magical stretch on Jan. 7, 2020, winning 16 of their next 22 games to pull themselves into the postseason picture. When I fought to stay awake as the Rangers tied the Avalance with 13 seconds left in regulation only to lose in overtime, I had spent more than two months nightly scoreboard watching long after my then-pregnant wife would go to bed.
After the loss in Colorado, the Rangers were on the outside looking in on the playoffs and math on the the remaining schedules of the Islanders and Blue Jackets weren’t on their side. The Rangers were going to need to win at least nine of their remaining 12 games to get into the postseason, and even that might not be enough because of the amount of overtime games the Islanders (15) and Blue Jackets (12) had played and the amount of loser points they had racked up. When the season was paused, the Rangers had 36 regulation and overtime wins to the Blue Jackets’ and Hurricanes’ 33 and the Islanders’ 32. All four teams were ahead of the Rangers in the standings.
This season will be 56 games, eight more than the last time there was a shortened season in 2012-13. Back then there were still three divisions per conference and the Winnipeg Jets were playing in the Southeast where their closest division opponent was 1,558.4 miles away in Washington D.C. (Only in the NHL.) Here are the points-per-game needed in the Eastern Conference in the eight years since that 48-game season. (I adjusted the 2012-13 standings to reflect today’s postseason format.)
2019-20: 1.17
2018-19: 1.20
2017-18: 1.18
2016-17: 1.16
2015-16: 1.13
2014-15: 1.20
2013-14: 1.12
2012-13: 1.15
In order to leave a potential cushion and not be disappointed, planning to need 1.20 points per game (the high end of the list) to earn a postseason berth would be wise. That means Rangers fans should be looking for the team to accumulate 67 points in the 56 games this season to get in teh playoffs.
Four teams from each division will make the playoffs. The Rangers’ division is the following (in order of their Eastern Conference finish from the regular season):
Bruins
Capitals
Flyers
Penguins
Islanders
Rangers
Sabres
Devils
The East is so deep I feel like the coach in Rudy who tells the walk-on tryouts, “NCAA regulations allow us to dress just 60 for home games, which means at least 35 scholarship players are going to be watching the games from the stands.” How do you pick four postseason teams out of those eight? If you drop Buffalo and New Jersey from being playoff teams based on last season (and the fact they are the two weakest teams on paper), you still have to cut two of the remaining six teams.
Let’s say both the Sabres and Devils are eliminated. (If they’re not, this division is even more ridiculous that originally expected.) In order for the Rangers to reach the playoffs, the Rangers are going to have to average about 1.20 points per game and have two of these five teams miss the playoffs:
1. Eastern Conference runner-up to eventual champion Lightning
2. First in Metropolitan, third in East prior to season being paused
3. Third in Metropolitan, fifth in East prior to season being paused
4. Second in Metropolitan, fourth in East prior to season being paused
5. First in Eastern Conference prior to season being paused
To put it another way, the Rangers are going to have to average roughly 1.20 points per game and have two of these happen:
1. The Islanders to play like the team from the second half of last season and not the team from the first half or the team from the playoffs and miss the playoffs.
2. The Capitals to miss the playoffs for the second time in 14 years.
3. The Penguins to miss the playoffs for the first time since Sidney Crosby’s rookie season (2005-06).
4. The Flyers to go from being the best team in the league in the second half and arguably the best team in the Metropolitan in the second half to missing the playoffs.
5. The Bruins to regress from being the best team in the East last year by eight points and the East champion the season before to missing the playoffs.
I’m not cutting the Rangers. I understand the rebuild isn’t complete. I understand a postseason berth last summer was a gift and shouldn’t factor in evulating this season’s success ordevelopment in what will be a second straight unusual season. I understand the abundance of youth and inexperience the roster will feature this season. I’m still not cutting them. At least not yet.
I want the Rangers to be a playoff team. I think they can be a playoff team. It’s just going to take a lot for them to be a playoff team.
Because of the lack of Rangers games over the last 10 months, there hasn’t been any animosity build toward new players to make the team.
We are close to when the NHL All-Star Game would take place in a normal season. But this season hasn’t even started yet, and there won’t be an All-Star Game, so the time when I usually release the season’s All-Animosity Team won’t exist this year. Maybe it’s for the better after last year’s “All-Star Game” featured Chris Kreider, Travis Konecny, Tyler Bertuzzi, Anthony Duclair and some questionable decisions in net.
By the time the Rangers open their season on Jan. 14, 2021, they won’t have played a regular-season game in 10 months and a day. In that 10 months and a day, they will have played three total games, all in their best-of-5 series against Carolina.
Because of the lack of games, there hasn’t been any animosity build toward new players to make the team. The All-Animosity Team for this season is the same as it was last season with some updates.
FORWARDS
Matthew Barzal
We came dangerously close to Panarin and Barzal 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 against the current state of the Rangers defense, he’s 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.
I was hoping Barzal got offer sheets this offseason, and was hoping the Rangers might have even been one of the teams to offer him one. If no offer sheets, I hoped Barzal would hold out for the season. That didn’t happen either. His deal eventually got done and he’ll be an Islander for at least the next three seasons. Good for the rivalry, bad for the Rangers.
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 after a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018-19 and a first-place standing in the Atlantic last season, that line has never slowed down. Now, the Rangers will have to see that line for one-seventh of their regular-season schedule. Eight games against the Bruins makes isn’t ideal.
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.
Alexander Ovechkin
In his career, Ovechkin has 35 goals in 59 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 circles on the power play, two minutes feels like 20 minutes.
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. I do respect his ability and do appreciate that I’m watching greatness and a generational talent and arguably the best goal scorer in the history of the game, that just doesn’t take away how I feel when he’s playing the Rangers.
DEFENSEMEN
Zdeno Chara
Chara is no longer a Bruin, but the Rangers will still see him plenty now that he’s a Capital. The animosity will only increase because of his change of teams.
It’s weird to think the Bruins will retire Chara’s number one day considering the team they were when they signed him and the team they eventually became. When Chara arrived in Boston, It felt like it would be at least another three decades until the Bruins won again, but after winning the Cup and reaching the Final two other times in a nine-year period, Chara was staple for the Bruins and an exemplary captain of the team for 15 years (though I have always felt as though Patrice Bergeron deserved to wear the “C” all those years).
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.
Andy Greene
To be honest, I don’t dislike Greene. In fact, I don’t have any positive or negative feelings about him. But this roster needed a representative from the Devils last season, and who was better to fill that role than their captain? Greene is no longer with the Devils, but he’s with the Islanders, and going from one Rangers rival to another made him an easy pick on this team’s blue line.
The Devils were a mess last season, and that led to them moving Greene. After winning the lottery for the second time in three years, acquiring P.K. Subban and signing Wayne Simmonds, the Devils looked at worst to be a bubble team for the postseason. The only thing they ended up on the bubble for was winning the draft lottery again. The Devils have the pieces in place to rebound in this shortened season, but let’s hope that’s not the case. The Rangers newly-aligned division is hard enough.
GOALIE
Braden Holtby
For years I only had to worry about picking the forwards and defensemen for this team because I knew Martin Brodeur would be the goalie. Holtby is in no way as easy of a choice for this spot as Brodeur was, but he has still earned it. Normally, I dislike a player because of their performance against one of my teams, but Holtby has only won 14 of 26 regular-season games against the Rangers and has lost all three postseason series to them, including three Game 7s.
The reason I have never liked him is mostly not his fault. It’s not his fault he has been perceived in past seasons to be better than Henrik Lundqvist despite having a much, much better team in front of him, and it’s not his fault that his much, much better team helped him win the Stanley Cup, while Lundqvist’s prime was wasted with a disastrous defense and poor roster construction and he will most likely retire having never won the Cup.
Holtby is now in Vancouer, so the animosity for him will go away. For now, there’s no better option, but there will be for next year.