The Rangers had leads in both games in Pittsburgh and they lost both games. With three straight losses and one win in five games, the Rangers are in trouble not even two weeks into the season.
The Rangers had leads in both games in Pittsburgh and they lost both games. They blew a two-goal lead on Thursday and two one-goal leads on Sunday. With three straight losses and one win in five games, the Rangers are in trouble not even two weeks into the season.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. In a week, we might know if the Rangers will have a season. They have currently lost three straight and four of five and are now headed to Buffalo for two games followed by two against the Penguins at the Garden. At the end of next Monday’s game against the Penguins, the Rangers will have played nine games, or 16 percent of their season.
2. Maybe the front office isn’t evaluating David Quinn and his team on wins and losses this season, in what should be the last rebuilding season for this roster. Maybe it’s still only about experience and development for the youngest team in the league. A bad week against the Sabres and Penguins and gaining experience and developing will be all the Rangers have to play for this season.
3. That’s not an exaggeration. I wrote (blogs) and spoke (on the podcast) at length before the season and in the first week of it about the importance of every single game, and continuously brought up the magic number of 1.2, which is the amount of points per game the Rangers need to reach the playoffs. Through five games, they have 3, when they need to have 6. They are in last place in the East and tied with Ottawa for the worst win percentage (.300) in the NHL.
4. Joe Micheletti continues to praise the Rangers in each broadcast about how good they look. Looking good while losing is still losing, and the Rangers have done that in all but one game. Outshooting the Devils 50-28 is nice, but shots don’t determine points in the standings. The youngest team in the league having leads in both games in Pittsburgh against a team in a Penguins team in a win-now window is nice, but blowing the lead in both games and losing both games isn’t impressive.
5. Micheletti would be better off saying “some Rangers have looked good” because that’s more accurate.
Here are the Rangers who have looked good this season:
Pavel Buchnevich Filip Chytil Phil Di Giuseppe Adam Fox Kaapo Kakko K’Andre Miller Artemi Panarin
6. That’s it. Mika Zibanejad has one goal. Alexis Lafreniere doesn’t have a point in what has to be the longest pointless streak at any level for the No. 1 pick. Jack Johnson … why even bother. Jacob Trouba and Ryan Lindgren have been inconsistent. Tony DeAngelo has been awful. Chris Kreider hasn’t been good and neither has Ryan Strome. Igor Shesterkin is giving up goals from the half-wall and hasn’t won a game, and Alexandar Georgiev erased his shutout with a disaster against the Devils. The fourth line hasn’t necessarily been bad, but they also haven’t done anything special, unless you count Colin Blackwell accidentally scoring.
7. I guess the one thing you could say is the Rangers could have won every game except their opening night embarrassment despite all of the issues and underachievers on the roster. Unfortunately, that’s not going to put four games back on the schedule and make it easier for the Rangers to reach the postseason.
8. The David Quinn Fan Club is dwindling by the day. It’s either this year or next year when results will matter to the front office, and if it’s this year, Quinn better figure it out and fast. I do believe the 2021-22 season will be when Quinn is finally evaluated on the team’s success in the standings, so he has 51 games (and possibly some playoff games) to learn how to win at the NHL level.
9. Here’s some advice for Quinn: Stop waiting until you desperately need a goal until you pair Panarin and Zibanejad; Stop playing Strome on PP1; Don’t play Johnson, but if you need to in the event of an emergency, never pair him with DeAngelo; Give Lafreniere as much ice time as possible, and Kakko too. These are all very simple things that could instantly begin to translate into wins, yet Quinn continues to make winning even harder than it already is.
10. At 1-3-1, the Rangers have 3 points and will need about 64 points over the next 51 games to make the playoffs. That’s now 1.26 points per game, up 0.06 from the start of the season. They will need to go something like 30-17-4 the rest of the way to reach the postseason. It’s still doable, but they can’t continue to stack losses or it will be impossible be a Top 4 team in the East. The all-division schedule won’t allow for the Rangers to go on the kind of run they want on in January, February and early March of last year. These next four games could be the season.
This August will be five years since Gary Sanchez hit his first career home on Aug. 10, 2016 in Boston. Five years since he hit 20 home runs in only 229 plate appearances. Five years
This August will be five years since Gary Sanchez hit his first career home on Aug. 10, 2016 in Boston. Five years since he hit 20 home runs in only 229 plate appearances. Five years since his at-bats became must-see TV. Five years since he temporarily became the face of the Yankees.
Over the last three seasons, Sanchez has fallen out of favor with Yankees fans to the point the majority of them have (wrongfully) clamored for Kyle Higashioka to be the team’s starting catcher. And he has fallen out of favor with his manager to the point Aaron Boone gave into the idiotic fans and actually benched Sanchez in the postseason.
Recently, Marly Rivera of ESPN spoke with Sanchez from his home in the Dominican Republic, and he had a lot to say about the state of his career.
On being benched during the playoffs. “I played the second game in Cleveland, and I played well. Then we went to San Diego, to the bubble … After almost a week without playing, it didn’t go well for me in the second game … I struck out three times, but I felt like I was taking good cuts, good swings. I felt so much better. But I didn’t play.”
If Sanchez doesn’t play in Game 2 against Cleveland, the Yankees’ season ends the next day in Game 3 and they never get to embarrass themselves in the ALDS against Tampa Bay. (So maybe he shouldn’t have played Game 2 in Cleveland because it would have prevented Yankees fans from enduring the worst managerial strategy in team history in Game 2 of the ALDS). It’s over because if Sanchez doesn’t play, they lose Game 2 to Cleveland, and then J.A. Happ starts Game 3 against Cleveland and they would have lost with Happ on the mound.
Sanchez’s two-run home run in the sixth inning of Game 2 in Cleveland gave the Yankees an 8-6 lead. (Zack Britton and Jonathan Loaisiga combined to blow that lead in the seventh.) After Aroldis Chapman did what he does best in the playoffs in the eighth inning by allowing a run, the Yankees trailed 9-8 for the ninth. The Yankees loaded the bases with no outs for Brett Gardner, and he struck out, bringing Sanchez to the plate. Because of Gardner’s inability to put the ball in play and score the tying run, the game was essentially all on Sanchez. If he failed to bring in Giancarlo Stanton from third, the Yankees would no longer be able to tie the game by making an out. Sanchez drove the 1-1 pitch to deep center fielder to tie the game with a sacrifice fly, and after a DJ LeMahieu single, the Yankees took the lead for good.
After that game, Sanchez started and played in one more game in the postseason: Game 2 of the ALDS. To be benched for the remainder of the series and the final three games because of his Game 2 performance (0-for-4, 3 Ks) was completely ridiculous and unfair. If Sanchez was going to be benched, then why wasn’t Aaron Judge (0-for-5, 3 Ks) or Luke Voit (0-for-3, 3 Ks)? Why didn’t Boone bench himself for his irresponsible pitching plan with Happ? The Yankees needed a scapegoat to hide Boone’s disastrous managing and the team’s Game 2 loss and they chose Sanchez. The Yankees have said they don’t believe in hot or cold streaks, though they apparently believe players should be able to hit Tyler Glasnow after six days off.
Boone wasn’t even willing to use Sanchez as a pinch hitter in Games 3 or 5, choosing to go with Mike Ford, who had been sent down to the team’s alternate site in the regular season. Ford wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee in September, but he was good enough to be a Yankee in October and get at-bats over Sanchez (and Clint Frazier).
On speaking with Boone about his postseason benching. “I asked for and had a respectful and very positive conversation with Aaron Boone. I explained to him that I thought I deserved an explanation for what happened. We had a good conversation, and we talked about all of that and cleared things up.”
Joe Girardi’s tenure at as Yankees manager came to an end because of his supposed lack of communication with the (at the time) young Yankees. In hiring Boone, Brian Cashman and the Yankees praised his communication skills, even though he had never managed or coached at any level of baseball in his life. Our new manager is awesome at this skill he has never actually performed! Well, so much for being a great communicator since Sanchez had to seek him out to talk about being removed from the lineup.
Sanchez has been the Yankees’ starting catcher since August 2016. If he’s suddenly not going to play, he should be told why. It’s bad enough he doesn’t play when Gerrit Cole pitches because the supposed best pitcher in the world needs to coddled, but to bench him outright in games not started by Cole in the postseason does deserve an explanation whether he hit .147/.253/.365 in 49 games or not.
Sanchez has had bad stretches in his career before, like any player. If 2020 hadn’t been a shortened season and he had time to correct himself and enhance his numbers, I’m not writing about this right now and Kyle “Let’s Hope He Hits a Ground Ball Just Past the Outstretched Glove of the Shortstop” Higashioka isn’t starting over him in the playoffs. Sanchez had 178 plate appearances in 2020, which is one-third of his career-high 525 plate appearances from 2017. It’s easy to see how he could have had a bad one-third of a season and then rebounded over another 350 plate appearances. The shortened season needs to be treated as and evaluated on what it was: 37 percent of a standard 162-game season.
Sanchez needs to find a way to stay healthy for an entire season (which can also be said about Judge, Stanton and Aaron Hicks). The reason his career-high for plate appearances in a season is 525 is because he was hurt and missed significant time in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Sanchez needs to produce in 2021, but he also needs to stay healthy.
On being asked to change his defensive setup. “I understand that the team is trying to help me, and I like that. I know all they want to do is see me improve. But this offseason, I have to focus on trying to recover that form from last year (2019) and be able to mix everything that I improved upon by adding lowering my right knee.”
Since the Yankees’ 2009 season, the farthest they have gone in the postseason was when they lost Game 7 of the ALCS In 2017. Sanchez was their No. 3 hitter that season and during that postseason run. In his most recent game for the Yankees (Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS), Sanchez batted ninth. Could anyone envision Sanchez batting third for the Yankees now? Imagine the shitstorm it would cause if Boone penciled his name into the 3-hole. That’s how far Sanchez has fallen in three calendar years.
I attribute his decline to two things: the first being his inability to lay off breaking balls low and away, and the second being the Yankees’ relentless attempts to try to make him Ivan Rodriguez behind the plate. The Yankees couldn’t just let Sanchez hit 30-plus home runs a season and use his exceptional arm to throw out would-be basestealers. They decided the passed balls were too much! So instead of letting Sanchez be the player they gave $3 million to as a 17-year-old and who climbed to the majors and set historical home run records upon reaching the majors, they had to screw him up. Then they decided he needed to be better at framing pitches! The Yankees are now trying to get Sanchez back to being the player he was in 2017 and 2017 and 2019 even though they played a large role, and possibly the only role in him no longer being that player.
If the Yankees were to make Sanchez the perfect defensive catcher and he were to still post 2020-like offensive numbers, he would still be criticized. No fans wants Sanchez to block every pitch in the dirt and steal a few strikes in a season and not hit. They want him to get on base 35 percent of the time and hit 30-plus home runs. They want the offense over the defense. The Yankees want it all. They want Sanchez to be the perfect, complete player. That player doesn’t exist, especially not at catcher.
On the negative criticism from Yankees fans. “I have to listen to all the negative comments, everything that everyone has to say about me, because the truth is that I played badly at the plate. That’s why I have to take everything anyone says. Let them say what they want. I deserve it. That will make me better and stronger.”
As President of the Gary Sanchez Club (and one of the few remaining members, possibly the only remaining member), this comment broke my heart. Sanchez became the scapegoat for the underachieving 2019 and 2020 Yankees and unfairly so.
No, Sanchez didn’t hit in the 2019 ALCS against the Astros, but unless your name is DJ LeMahieu or Gleyber Torres, you are to blame for the offense failing in that series. Judge went 6-for-25 with 10 strikeouts and had one extra-base hit in the six games. Didi Gregorius: 5-for-23. Gio Urshela: 5-for-21. Gardner: 3-for-22 with 10 strikeouts. Edwin Encarnacion: 1-for-18 with 11 strikeouts. Hicks: 2-for-13 with five strikeouts.
Sanchez went 3-for-23 with 12 strikeouts in the series, but at least he hit a three-run home run in Game 5 in an attempt to keep his team from the brink of elimination.
On his 2020 season. “It just wasn’t me. That 2020 thing, that wasn’t me. It was a bad year.”
Everyone needs to remember how good Sanchez has been. Historically good. In 2016, he nearly won Rookie of the Year (and should have won it over Michael Fulmer) despite playing in only 53 games. In 2017, he was an All-Star and Silver Slugger, hitting 33 home runs with an .876 OPS, earning him MVP votes. 2018 was a disaster, as he was hurt for most of the year, playing in only 89 games and needing offseason surgery. But the Yankees’ only win in over the Red Sox in the 2018 ALDS was single-handedly because of Sanchez, who hit two home runs and drove in four runs in Game 2. In 2019, Sanchez rebounded, and while the average (.232) and on-base percentage (.316) weren’t there, he still slugged .525 for an .841 OPS after hitting 34 home runs. And then there was 2020.
Sanchez’s 162-game averages are absurd. They would be absurd for any player, but for a catcher they are seemingly fake: 94 runs, 25 doubles, 44 home runs, 110 RBIs, .236/.320/.502. Yankees fans are upset their catcher averages only an .823 OPS over 162 games.
On getting back to being his old self in 2021. “I went through something similar in 2018: I was hurt all year, and there was so much criticism. [In 2019], I came in proved my self and had one of the best years of my career.”
Sanchez is going to need to get off to a fast start in 2021 because the majority of Yankees fans are done with him, and Boone, the idiot, has already set a precedent that he will turn to Higashioka, considering he did in the biggest games last season. If Sanchez gets off to a slow start, the Higashiokers will be out in full, just like the Rominers (Yankees fans who wanted Austin Romine to play over Sanchez) were. This could very well be the last season of Sanchez as a Yankee even if he doesn’t play well and play well right away. Otherwise, Yankees fans will likely watch him win the 2022 World Series with the Padres.
I get why Yankees fans are frustrated with Sanchez. They remember how good he has been. I don’t get why Yankees fans have given up on him. I’m frustrated with him too, and I want him to return to being that player. I’m nowhere near ready to give up on him. I still believe in him.
The Yankees’ roster seems like it’s all but complete. I still think a certain bald, left-handed outfielder will be a Yankee in 2021, but aside from his return, what you see right now is what the Opening Day roster will be.
The Yankees’ roster seems like it’s all but complete. I still think a certain bald, left-handed outfielder will be a Yankee again in 2021, and aside from his return, what you see right now is what the Opening Day roster will be.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Can we get an announcement from the Yankees that they have officially signed DJ LeMahieu and Corey Kluber? What’s holding this up? Neither are actually Yankees yet and that worries me. What is preventing either of them from signing their reported contracts? I need these deals wrapped up, so I can stop lying awake at night and thinking about it. As of now, Tyler Wade is an everyday player for the Yankees and Jordan Montgomery is the No. 2 starter. Sign the contracts.
2. The Yankees are right up against the luxury-tax threshold, and they aren’t going to go over it. I know they aren’t going to because they spread out LeMahieu’s money over six years. If they didn’t care about the luxury tax (which they shouldn’t because they’re the Yankees), LeMahieu would be getting his $90 million over four years at most. It’s disappointing the Yankees are scared off by paying interest on their roster and an amount that is so inconsequential for the organization. Hal Steinbrenner isn’t going to have to live off of ramen noodles from a styrofoam cup for the next year if the Yankees go past the threshold. The Steinbrenners would make much more money than they would have to pay in luxury tax by hosting more home playoff games and possibly winning the World Series for the first time in 12 years.
3. The Yankees have seemingly enough room to bring back Brett Gardner on a very cheap deal. I didn’t want Gardner back after 2018, but now he’s needed. Not because he’s good. It’s because he’s a better option than Mike Tauchman or Greg Allen, and we’re the inevitable Aaron Hicks injury and Aaron Judge injury away from Tauchman or Allen playing an important role on the 2021 Yankees. This is all based on the Yankees finally making Clint Frazier the everyday left fielder, but after Aaron Boone’s lineup management in the postseason, that’s not guaranteed.
4. The Blue Jays aren’t screwing around. After an unexpected postseason berth in an expanded postseason field, the Blue Jays are surrounding their young, very good, inexpensive core with established major leaguers. Three-plus years ago, the Yankees reached the postseason unexpectedly and made a run to Game 7 of the ALCS. How did they surround their young, very good and inexpensive core? By cutting payroll by $50 million, that’s how. The Blue Jays recognize their window is just opening. The Yankees, on the other hand, are doing everything to help their already-opened window close. While the majority of the teams in the league are purposely tanking and fielding non-competitive teams to save money and increase the bank accounts of their billionaire owners (Cleveland currently has a $35 million payroll, which is the equivalent of Gerrit Cole and Luke Voit), the Blue Jays are going for it.
5. The AL East is now a three-team race. Even with the trade of Blake Snell, the Rays were still going to be a problem for the Yankees, and now the Blue Jays are as well. The Blue Jays finished one game behind the Yankees in the 2020 standings and had passed them in the standings for a period of time. Sure, it was a 60-game season, but it showed the Blue Jays could hang with the Yankees for at least 60 games. Now with their team having that much more experience, coupled with the addition of George Springer, and who knows who else before their roster is complete, the Blue Jays are a decent threat.
6. I say “decent” because the Blue Jays still lack starting pitching. They have less quality starting pitching than the Yankees and the Yankees have basically done all they can to have the most incomplete rotation for a team expected to contend for a championship. After Hyun Jin Ryu, the Blue Jays’ next best starter is Robbie Ray, who had a 6.62 ERA and 6.50 FIP in 12 games and 11 starts for Arizona and Toronto last season. Ray had been good in the three seasons before last (3.72 ERA and 4.09 FIP), and maybe he shouldn’t be evaluated on 51 2/3 innings in a shortened season. His 1.897 WHIP did happen, and it’s hard to ignore.
7. Even if Ray were to return his 2017-2019 self, having Ryu and Ray atop their rotation isn’t worrisome for the Yankees because they are both left-handed and the Yankees would have nine right-handed bats against them in any start. Now if the Blue Jays were to go out and sign Trevor Bauer then I would start to be really worried.
8. I don’t want Bauer on the Yankees, but I don’t want him in the AL East or on the Mets. I don’t want him standing in the way of the Yankees and a division title, and I also don’t want the Mets to be good because they’re the Mets. I want Bauer to end up with the Angels. The Angels suck and continue to waste the career of possibly the best player in the history of baseball. They aren’t signing Bauer away from being a threat. They need much more than the outspoken right-hander who has had one great full season in his career (2018) and then 11 great starts in 2020. Someone is going to overpay for Bauer because it’s a weak free-agent class for starting pitching. Let it be the Angels.
9. J.A. Happ signed with the Twins. A one-year, $8 million contract for the 38-year-old left-hander. I want to laugh at the Twins. I’m not going to go. With ALDS wins over the Twins in 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2019 and the one-game playoff win over them in 2017, the Twins are more than due to break through in the postseason, specifically against the Yankees. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Yankees and Twins meet in October and to have the Twins finally beat the Yankees with Happ leading the way. That’s the way this works. A former Yankee and goes on to haunt them. Recently, Eduardo Nunez did it. So did Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce and Brian McCann. Eight shutout innings from Happ against the Yankees in the ALDS seems about right.
10. It seems like spring training is going to start on time. Who knows if that will actually happen, but with less than a month to go until the scheduled start of it, there hasn’t been any word of it being delayed. That means we are so very close to the return of baseball, and it feels fake because I have been under the idea since the end of the 2020 season that the 2021 season would be delayed. It still could be, though as of now, we are a few weeks away from the 2021 season beginning. That makes me happy.
After the Rangers’ disappointing loss to the Devils, they’re going to have to get back on track against the Penguins this weekend, and it won’t be easy.
The Rangers should have won on Tuesday night. They controlled play for the majority of the game and had many opportunities to either take the lead (when it was 1-1 in the second) or tie the game (when it was 4-3 in the third), but they couldn’t get the one goal to change the game. The Rangers answered their season-opening letdown against the Islanders with an impressive win over the Islanders two nights later. After their disappointing loss to the Devils, the Rangers are going to have to get back on track against the Penguins this weekend, and it won’t be easy.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. I should have known better. I should have known the Rangers wouldn’t follow up their impressive shutout win over the Islanders from Saturday with a strong start on Tuesday against the Devils. The Rangers still aren’t there in terms of starting games the way they should or coupling back-to-back 60-minute games and I need to accept that. I think the reason I haven’t accepted it is because of those 16 wins in 22 games a year ago at this time that made the Rangers appear to have arrived earlier than expected. But sandwiched around that magical run was a rocky, inconsistent first few months to last season and the same kind of play right before the regular season was shut down. That inconsistent effort expected from a rebuilding team showed up again in the postseason in the three-game sweep by Carolina.
2. If you take away the 16 wins in 22 games, the Rangers have been what you would expect a rebuilding team to be since the beginning of last season. Take away those 22 games and you have a 20-23-4 record (including postseason), which is in line with what you would think a team with the Rangers’ youth, inexperience and poor defense would have. Those 22 games might have been a mirage since their only “impressive” win in that span was in the first game of the 22 against Colorado in Igor Shesterkin’s debut. (They did beat the eventual Eastern Conference runner-up Islanders three times during those 22 games, but they’re the Islanders, and the Rangers owned them last season.)
3. That’s not to say the Rangers were bad on Tuesday against the Devils. They controlled play for the majority of the game and outshot their cross-river rival 50-28. But in the minutes the Rangers didn’t control the play or had lapses, the Devils took advantage every time, beginning just 32 seconds into the game on a Travis Zajac goal. That’s now a goal against within the opening minutes of two of three games this season.
4. Mika Zibanejad tied the game with a power-play goal 2:50 into the second, but then Jack Hughes quickly answered with a pair of goals in less than six minutes. After a tough rookie season (21 points in 61 games) as the No. 1 overall selection, Hughes looked like a completely different player at the Garden. He had an assist to go with his two goals, was involved in nearly every play and all over the ice. He was Matthew Barzal-like with the puck in the offensive zone and he’s quickly becoming a player who you can’t wait for his shift to end. I was hoping Hughes turned into a bust for the sake of rooting for the Rangers, but unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case. He already has six points in three games this season or 29 percent of his point total from last season.
5. The No. 1 pick this year, Alexis Lafrenière is still looking for his first NHL point, but he has looked good, when he has been allowed to look good. And by allowed, I mean when he’s on the ice with high-caliber players he should be on the ice with. That means Artemi Panarin and/or Mika Zibanejad. Lafrenière should be getting Top 6 minutes every single game to go along with PP1 minutes. That means removing Ryan Strome from PP1.
6. Strome doesn’t belong on the first unit. He doesn’t belong in the team’s Top 6. His career year last season was made possible by playing a full season with Panarin. Micheal Haley could have scored 40 points being on the ice with Panarin as often as Strome was. The power-play units don’t need balance and there’s no need to stash Lafrenière or even Kaapo Kakko on the second unit, so Strome can continue to turn over the puck or look completley out of place talent-wise with the rest of the first.
7. It’s going to be very, very bad if Zibanejad is injured and forced to miss time after losing an edge and sliding into the boards in the third period on Tuesday. He’s either the most important or second-most important player on the Rangers (to me, he’s the second-most important), and they can’t afford to navigate this shortened season against the competition of the East without him. Here’s to seeing him back in the lineup on Friday in Pittsburgh.
8. Unfortunately, David Quinn’s never-ending line shuffling coupled with his not wanting to put Panarin and Zibanejad togther unless the team desperately needs a goal in the final minutes of the third period continues. Maybe if the two were playing together for an entire game, the team wouldn’t be trailing in the third period. In the brief time the two were on the ice together at even strength in the third period against the Devils, the puck didn’t leave New Jersey’s zone. The Rangers could have that kind of offense for an entire game if Quinn would recognize what he has and what he’s wasting.
9. As we saw from the Devils (even though the Rangers outplayed them), there won’t be any nights or games off in this division. The Devils and Sabres were expected to be the two worst teams in the East, and they haven’t looked like it after a week. Both teams are much improved and both teams are going to be a problem all season. There isn’t an easy part of the schedule this season and the four straight games against the Devils later in the season is going to be the equivalent of playoff series.
10. The magic number is 1.2 points per game. That’s the number I will continue to write and talk about all season because if you want the Rangers to reach the postseason, that’s the number it’s going to take to get there (or something just below that number). Through three games, the Rangers are 2.6 points under pace, more than a full win and loser point under where they need to be. The Flyers, Capitals, Devils and Islanders have been able to hold that pace through the first week of the season and they currently hold the four East postseason spots. Sure, we’re only five percent of the way into the Rangers’ season and a big weekend in Pittsburgh could get them right back on track, but needing a big weekend in Pittsburgh with the way the Penguins just played in two games against the Capitals isn’t something that should be counted on.
The Yankees are going to try to win in 2021 with nearly the same team from 2020. It’s a wild, ill-advised and irresponsible plan for a team in a supposed championship window, but it’s the Yankees’ plan.
The Yankees weren’t good enough to win the World Series in 2020. They weren’t good enough to get out of the division series. They weren’t even good enough to win the division in the regular season. And it looks like they are going to try to erase their soon-to-be-12-year championship drought with nearly the same roster in 2021.
During the 2010s, when the Yankees failed to reach the World Series for the first time in a decade since the 1910s, the team would use corny slogans to try to depict the organization and help boost ticket sales. Everyone remembers “Pride. Power. Pinstripes.” and “Our History. Your Tradition” and “A Timeless Legacy” from in-game commercials on YES. Well, if there’s a new one for 2021, it might as well be “Complacency” or maybe “Luxury-Tax Threshold.”
The Yankees have grown complacent since their last championship with the goal of simply getting in the playoffs, not caring how they get there. Home-field advantage doesn’t seem to matter for a team that keeps losing because of it, and having a strong, durable rotation or a lineup that can frequently put the ball in play aren’t important either.
Brian Cashman has made it clear the Yankees’ goal is to reach the playoffs and then hope to have luck and random chance on their side once they get there. Many times Cashman has called the playoffs a crapshoot, which means the general manager thinks the Yankees were just one really, really, really lucky team in four out of the five years from 1996 through 2000. They were extremely fortunate to have the dice land the way they did in 2009 as well.
It’s obvious the Yankees are doing everything they can to stay under the luxury-tax threshold for 2021 and have to avoid forfeiting an amount of money that’s probably equal to a homestand’s worth of Coors Light sales in the at the Stadium. (If Coors Light was $12 in 2019, what’s it going to be the next time fans are allowed to attend games with all of the supposed lost revenue the Yankees have suffered? $15? $18? $20?!) DJ LeMahieu’s contract says as much with the Yankees spreading his $90 million across six years rather than the expected four or even five. Their decision to replicate their pre-2008 season plans by possibly having both Deivi Garcia and Clarke Schmidt in their rotation like they did Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy also makes it clear: avoid the luxury-tux penalty.
That means the team you see today (with LeMahieu and Corey Kluber counted as sure-things even though the team has yet to announce either as officially signed) is the team you will see on Opening Day. You can probably add Brett Gardner as well though it wouldn’t surprise me if the Yankees are prepared to replace an inevitably injured Aaron Hicks or Aaron Judge with Mike Tauchman and Greg Allen. But after Gardner, that’s it. There’s barely enough room under the luxury-tax threshold to add Gardner and have space for any in-season call-ups or potential trade acquisitions. Then again, after the Yankees stood completely pat during the 2020 deadline when they had glaring weaknesses and needs, why would they be active at the 2021 deadline, especially with no wiggle room before the penalty.
When Cashman finally decided to pull the plug on Sonny Gray as a Yankee because Cashman’s pitching department couldn’t tap into the pitcher who David Ortiz referred to in 2015 as “the toughest guy I’ve faced in the last few seasons,” Cashman said the following: “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results.”
Each time Cashman has had a chance to put the Yankees over the top in the last four seasons, he has failed to do so and ownership has failed to allow him to do so. The Yankees could have had Justin Verlander at the August 2017 deadline, but they didn’t want to take on his salary. So he went to the Astros and single-handedly swung the ALCS with wins in Games 2 and 6.
The 2017 Yankees came within one win of the World Series after not trading for Verlander, and then they decided to cut payroll by $50 million for 2018. The Red Sox and Dodgers greatly outspent them that season, and guess which two teams met in the 2018 World Series?
Cashman tried to bolster the team’s staff for 2019 by trading top pitching prospect Justus Sheffield for the oft-injured James Paxton, who had never thrown more than 160 1/3 innings in a season in his career, a career which had been and still is one long injured-list stint with some innings in between rather than the other way around. In two seasons with the Yankees, Paxton was bad then hurt then good then hurt then bad then hurt again. The 24-year-old, left-handed Sheffield didn’t miss a start for the 2020 Mariners, pitched to a 3.58 ERA and 3.17 FIP and allowed only two home runs in 55 1/3 innings. The Yankees could have used that arm against the Rays in the ALDS.
For 2020, the Yankees finally had starting pitching depth. Cashman and the Yankees created a rotation of Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and J.A. Happ with Jordan Montgomery as insurance. But that was in February and before Severino needed Tommy John surgery and before Paxton underwent back surgery. The Yankees’ inability to properly diagnose Severino’s elbow injury from the previous October and Paxton’s back injury from the previous September had altered their 2020 plans. The Yankees had four months from the time the 2020 season was shut down until it finally started to add to their rotation, and they didn’t. When Tommy Kahnle went down in the first weekend of the shortened season, the Yankees decided not to add to their bullpen. The trade deadline came and went and the Yankees willingly decided to take their chances with a makeshift rotation, the kind of makeshift rotation they always seem have to by the time October rolls around, and three trustworthy bullpen arms.
Right now, the Yankees’ rotation is Cole, Corey Kluber and his eight starts over the last two seasons, Montgomery who is 11 starts removed from Tommy John surgery, and two rookies. The other rotation option is noted scumbag Domingo German, who it’s now impossible to root for, the same way it’s impossible to feel anything other than awful to need to also root for noted scumbag Aroldis Chapman to close out games for the Yankees. Unfortunately for Hal Steinbrenner, I haven’t forgotten that either is a scumbag, the way he hoped Yankees fans would when he allowed the Yankees to trade for Chapman and then gave him a five-year deal and said, “Look, he admitted he messed up. He paid the penalty. Sooner or later, we forget, right?” I haven’t forgotten, and I certainly didn’t forget when for the second straight season the highest-paid reliever of all time gave up a home run to end the Yankees’ season.
The Yankees are going to try to win in 2021 with the same lineup that wasn’t good enough in 2020 or 2019. They are going to try to win it all with a rotation that desperately needs Luis Severino to return completely healthy midseason and have no adjustment period after having only made five starts in what will be nearly two years. They are going to try to win it all with a bullpen that is now down to three trustworthy relievers in Chad Green, Zack Britton and Chapman with the departures of Kahnle and Dellin Betances over the last two years and the disappearance of an effective Adam Ottavino.
It’s a wild, ill-advised and irresponsible plan for a team in a supposed championship window, but it’s the Yankees’ plan. The Yankees are going to go through the same exercise and expect different results.
