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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 24: The Yankees score once and lose.

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

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

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

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

July 21: The Yankee score two runs and lose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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