It’s been nearly three months since the Yankees’ season ended and they have done nothing to improve their roster since then.
It’s been nearly three months since the Yankees’ season ended and they have done nothing to improve their roster in that time. They haven’t done anything to their roster at all, other than have impending free agents become free agents and release the ineffective Jonathan Holder. Spring training is a little more than a month away (if the season starts on time) and the Yankees are much worse today than they were when they were eliminated.
I’m doubling down on my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions for 2021, all of which revolve around Aaron Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them.
Sometimes I wish I were a casual Yankees fan. The kind of fan who will maybe attend a game or two in a season because it’s something to do. The kind of fan who is surprised to find a mid-week afternoon game on TV and will stop and take in an inning or two before moving on to watch another channel. The kind of fan who knows the names of two or three players on the roster and still asks, “Hey, where is (player’s name)?” five-plus years after they played their final game for the Yankees. The kind of fan who doesn’t let the results of Major League Baseball games affect and impact their mood, emotions, health, happiness and general well-being.
Life would be so much easier if I were one of those fans. It really would. I think about the idea of being a casual fan at the end of any season that ends in failure, and over the last 11 years, every season has ended that way with the exception of 2017, only because that season at least represented a bright and glorious future, like a recently bought, but yet-to-be-developed piece of waterfront property. That piece of undeveloped waterfront property is still sitting there undeveloped and is now home to idle heavy machinery used to build on the land even though the signs and permits on the temporary fence still read: COMING SPRING 2018. That bright and glorious future has led to a four-game, first-round exit, including the worst home postseason loss in franchise history to the team’s hated rival, losing four out of the last five in the ALCS for the team’s fourth ALCS loss in as many tries over 10 years, and another first-round exit, this time to the team with the second-to-last payroll in the league.
This past postseason really bothered me. It still bothers me. Today is 12 weeks since the Yankees were eliminated in Game 5 of the ALDS and there hasn’t been a day in these last 12 weeks when I didn’t spend some part of it reflecting on Game 2 and the pre-planned decision to pull Deivi Garcia after one inning for J.A. Happ. There have been times over these three months when my wife will ask me what’s wrong and I try to play it off as nothing or respond that there isn’t anything bothering me. But something is wrong. I’m thinking about hearing “Happ is warming up in the bullpen” as Garcia delivers his first pitch of Game 2.
We now know the final decision to follow through on that idiotic decision belonged to Aaron Boone. How Boone was allowed to single-handedly ruin the season and how Brian Cashman and his front office staff of baseball lifers and Ivy League graduates sat back and allowed it to happen is something I will never understand. Boone and Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference defense of the decision made even less sense than their same press conferences two years prior when they had to try to BS their way through questions about how what happened in Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS. They somehow survived with runaround answers as to why Luis Severino didn’t know the start time of Game 3, why he was left in to the load the bases with no outs in the third inning of the game, why Boone turned to the last relief option in the bullpen to get out of the bases-loaded jam, why Boone let CC Sabathia pitch for as long as he did in Game 4, and why the Yankees manager lacked simple baseball comprehension and bullpen deployment skills.
A year ago, I decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t get so worked up about Boone and his daily disasters, not all of which are even related to in-game moments. Boone has lied to the media about everything from player availability to player injuries only to be outed as a liar within minutes or hours after his lies. He has made irresponsible bullpen decisions and inexcusable lineup choices in three years, and each season when I complain about his managerial ability, I’m told by fellow Yankees fans not to worry because he would never manage the way he does in the regular season in the postseason, and each season, he’s even worse in the postseason, like a managerial Nick Swisher.
This year, I’m doubling down on my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions, all of which revolve around Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them. They’re not going to be easy to keep up, but in order to prevent me from tossing and turning in the early hours of the morning more than I already do with a three-month-old in the house, I think I have to at least try once again to keep them.
Resolution 1: Don’t Get Upset Over the Lineup After three full seasons of Boone as manager, we have enough data to know he has no idea how to build the best possible lineup. We now know thanks to Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference that Boone has full authority and final say on the lineup card delivered to the home plate umpire. We now know it was his decision to play Brett Gardner over Clint Frazier in the postseason and Kyle Higashioka over Gary Sanchez, and it was his decision to twice use Mike Ford as a pinch hitter in October after deeming him not good enough to be a Yankee for all of September.
I need to take a deep breath when I see Gardner (who’s not yet a Yankee for 2021 but will most certainly be) or Aaron Hicks batting in the middle of the order as Boone forces a left-handed bat to separate the team’s right-handed hitters. Boone has been Yankees manager for 384 regular-season games and managed the Yankees for 324 regular-season games and 21 postseason games and I shouldn’t expect him to suddenly create lineups that make sense.
Resolution 2: Don’t Get Upset About Scheduled Off Days The 2019 Yankees played their last game on October 19. Opening Day 2020 was on July 25. The 2020 regular season was only 60 games. Despite playing no games for nearly nine months and then only playing 60 games in nearly a full calendar year, that didn’t stop Boone from implement his load management nonsense.
After setting the all-time record for most players placed on the injured list in a single season in 2019, the Yankees continued to manage their roster and lineup in 2020 as if they had somehow solved injury prevention. The Yankees’ scheduled days off and extra and unnecessary rest for their position players is out of control, and unfortunately, it’s not going to change. If anything, it’s only going to get worse.
The Yankees aren’t going to go out of their way to win the division or home-field advantage in the postseason. They believe just getting into the postseason is enough and they don’t care about giving away games as long as they just get in. It’s been working well for them for the last 11 seasons.
Resolution 3: Don’t Get Upset About Bullpen Usage This will be the hardest of them all. I can deal with the lineup decisions (to a degree) and the scheduled off days (to a lesser degree). The bullpen decisions though? This resolution has less of a chance of happening than Giancarlo Stanton does of a playing an injury-free season.
By the final game of the season, the Yankees’ bullpen had three trustworthy arms. The problem was they only had one starter capable of going six innings. In 2021, they will likely enter the season with three trustworthy relivers, and one of those three, the highest-paid reliever in the league has allowed a season-ending home run in both of the last two seasons. The only reason I’m even considering this resolution is because the bullpen might be so fragile that it won’t be Boone’s fault when the lesser arms blow leads and ruin games.
I understand these resolutions are rather meaningless since I can easily see myself breaking at least one or possibly all three within the first week of the season. I’m really going to try to achieve them, but I know Boone will make it impossible.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Zack Britton will be a Yankee in 2021 and 2022. As of now, Brett Gardner isn’t a Yankee, but that’s likely to change the way it has in recent offseasons.
This past season, I wrote Yankees Thoughts following each Yankees series. I wanted to do something similar this offseason since it’s once again an important offseason for the Yankees in their current championship window as the urgency to win a championship with this Yankees team continues to grow.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Despite Hal Steinbrenner claiming the Yankees lost more revenue than any other team in baseball in 2020 (and conveniently leaving out that the Yankees make more than any othe team in normal seasons), the Yankees did what they had to do in bringing Zack Britton back for 2021 and 2022. And yes, they had to do it.
After trying to navigate the posteason with only three trustworthy bullpen arms (and at times not even that), Britton was the best and most trustworthy of them all. The other two were Chad Green, who faltered at times, like he has in each of his four postseasons with the Yankees, and Aroldis Chapman, who once again allowed a season-ending home run. After Britton, Green and Chapman, it was Adam Ottavino, who the Yankees clearly no longer have faith in, Jonathan Loaisiga, who the Yankees inexplicably promoted to high-leverage situations, Luis Cessa, who is still Luis Cessa, and then a wide array of fringe major league arms like Jonathan Holder and Nick Nelson, who you don’t want to see in a regular-season game let alone in a postseason game. The decision to let the homegrown star in Dellin Betances leave via free agency coupled with Tommy Kahnle’s season-ending Tommy John surgery really screwed up the Yankees’ Rays-like strategy to go to their bullpen whenever they wanted.
2. Bringing back the team’s best reliever when all it would cost is money (something the Yankees still make more of than any other team even as they have planted the seeds they won’t want to spend this offseason) was a no-brainer. Britton has gotten better and better the farther removed he has gotten from his Achillies injury, and after an up-and-down 2018 season with the Yankees following a trade deadline deal, Britton has been his old self (minus those 32 walks in 61 1/3 innings in 2019). As a left-handed reliever who can get both righties and lefties out, at $14 million, he’s a (pre-pandemic) bargain and with his ability to keep the ball in the park (his -6.8 launch angle was the lowest in the league this season), two more years of Britton even at age 33 and 34 is well worth it.
3. According to MLB.com, the Yankees declined Brett Gardner’s $10 million option for 2021. Gardner gets $2.5 million for being “bought out” of his option, which is a nice little gift for a player who had a horrendous regular season and who has now made roughly $85 million in his career. Gardner will be back though. The buyout was just a way for the Yankees to save some money, as they will “ultimately” (I had to get Aaron Boone’s favorite word in here) bring their longest-tenured player back for a 14th season.
After 2018, I didn’t want Gardner back. He had hit 236/.322/.368, posting the worst batting average and on-base percentage and second-worst slugging percentage of his career to go along with the worst OPS (.690) of his career. It didn’t make sense to re-sign a 35-year-old after putting up the worst statistical season of his career, is the streakiest hitter of all time and whose game is based around his legs. Gardner had played himself out of an everyday job when the Yankees traded for Andrew McCutchen, and yet, the team still thought they should re-sign him with a better option in Michael Brantley (who I begged for) available. Gardner only ended up playing in the 2018 ALDS because of an injury to Aaron Hicks (shocker) and he went 0-for-8 with three walks, looking incapable of putting the ball in play against elite pitching.
When Major League Baseball decided to completely change the construction of the baseball, it saved Gardner’s career. He mashed a career-high 28 home runs in 2019 and went from fourth outfielder to starting outfielder after Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Hicks all missed signifcant time. His trademark high on-base percentage was still awful (.325), but his flyball outs from the year before were never leaving the park at a record rate for him. His power emergence at age 35 led to Boone idiotically batting him third in the postseason.
4. This season, Gardner was putrid until the final two weeks of the regular season. The player I have referred to as “The Streak” for many years now couldn’t get on one of his patented hot streaks until right before the postseason. And though Boone and the Yankees have admitted they don’t believe in hot streaks or a player being “hot,” they must have changed their theory on the old baseball adage as Gardner’s final two weeks of the regular season were enough for him to start in the postseason over Clint Frazier, who had experienced a breakout and consistent regular season both offensively and defensively and who single-handedly carried the offense at times over the two-month season. When Judge and Stanton went down (like they always do) and Hicks was unproductive and Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on, it was Frazier who saved the outfield production and possibly the season. But a handful of Gardner at-bats against Blue Jays pitching was enough for Frazier’s season to be disregarded.
Two years ago I didn’t want Gardner back, but now I do. Tauchman can’t be trusted to be the the team’s fourth outfielder going on 30 with one great six-week run on his major league resume, and it’s inevitable Judge and Hicks will miss time and Brian Cashman admitted Stanton is no longer an outfield option. So I want Gardner back. As long as he’s not in the starting lineup over Frazier 11 months from now.
5. Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ are now all free agents, which means right now, the Yankees’ 2021 Opening Day rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery and Deivi Garcia. Montgomery, the Yankees didn’t trust to use in the postseason until it became a necessity, and Garcia, the Yankees only allowed to pitch for one inning in the postseason with Cashman citing “this stage of his career” as a reason to not let him truly start a postsason game (ask the Braves’ Ian Anderson who had the same six career regular-season starts before this postseason how important “this stage of his career” was in October). After those three, it’s Clarke Schmidt, who the Yankees didn’t give a major league start to until the last game of the regular season as they continued to choose to go with Michael King as an opener over their top-rated pitching prospect. If the season starts on time (enormous “if”), the Yankees won’t have Luis Severino back until June at the absolute earliest. The Yankees desperately need starting pitching.
6. I would re-sign Tanaka. Two bad postseason starts aside, he’s still a good pitcher, who I still trust, and who the Yankees need. I would let Paxton and his injury-plagued career walk, seeing as though I was against trading for him when it happened. (If only the Yankees had an inexpensive, left-handed rotation option. Oh that’s right, they traded that pitcher in Justus Sheffield for 34 Paxton starts around two injured-list stints, back surgery, lost velocity and one mediocre postseason.) I would obviously let Happ walk and block his and his agent’s phone number as well.
Luckily for the Yankees, one of the game’s best pitchers is a free agent in Trevor Bauer. All it will take to make him a Yankee is money (once again, something the Yankees make more of than any other team). Bauer makes too much sense for the Yankees. A rotation featuing Bauer, Cole and Severino would give the Yankees the best rotation (when healthy) in the league. (Though I guess signing Bauer is also dependent upon the current status of his relationship with Cole which was supposedly rocky when the two were at UCLA together).
In reality, the Yankees will re-sign Tanaka, because they don’t really have a choice, and then count on Severino coming back and being his dominant self right away, even though there’s a history of most pitchers not pitching like their usual selves until their second sesason removed from Tommy John surgery.
I fully expect the Yankees to once again have an incomplete rotation come October 2021 with the annual debate on who should start Games 2 and 3 in a postseason series.
7. At some point in each of the last 25 days, I have thought about Game 2 of the ALDS. This past week, I watched the video of Michael Kay ripping the Yankees on the YES postgame show following Game 2 and I also listened to CC Sabathia’s similar rant on his podcast. All this did was make me more angry than ever about a baseball game that is now nearly four weeks old. I still cant believe the Yankees did what they did in that game. I can’t belive Cashman allowed Boone to make such an important and wrong decision, which was first-guessed at the time by everyone and not second-guessed after the poor result. Happ’s legacy as a Yankee will be that he was great in the regular season post-deadline in 2018, lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS in the first inning, was horrible in the 2019 regular season, gave up a walk-off home run out of the bullpen to lose Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS, spent an inconsistent 2020 regular season openly complaining about his usage and his contract option and then pooped his pants on the Petco Park mound in the postseason against a nearly all-left-handed lineup.
8. Charlie Morton shut down the Yankees in the ALDS after shutting them down as an Astro in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS and he has now emerged as the best Game 7 pitcher in baseball history. The Yankees could have had Morton. I know there’s the idea Morton was only going to pitch for the Rays to be close to his Florida home, but I don’t buy it. The Yankees gave Happ more money than they gave Morton and had they given Morton the money they gave Happ or better (he was worth more), he would have been a Yankee. There’s no way he takes less money to pitch for the Rays. Not when the Yankees train in Tampa near his home. Not when the Yankees play three series per year in Tampa. Not when a flight from New York to Tampa is three hours at most. The Yankees could have had Morton and they chose Happ. Well, first, they could have had Patrick Corbin, and they chose to not give him the extra year he wanted, then they picked Happ over Morton. Both Corbin and Morton have pitched in the last two World Series.
9. Dusty Baker is 71. Tony La Russa is 72. Baker manages a team that came within a win of their third World Series in four years and La Russa now manages a team that was nearly the 1-seed in the American League, reached the postseason for the first time in 12 years and is set up to be the dominant team in the AL Central for the forseeable future. While the Yankees (Boone), Red Sox (Alex Cora), Mets (Carlos Beltran then Luis Rojas), Dodgers (Dave Roberts) and many other teams have turned to managers with no experience seen to be able to be easily molded by the front office as “puppets” (though Cashman said at his end-of-the-season press conference that Boone “isn’t a puppet”), two of the best rosters in baseball have gone against the grain of the new-age young and inexperienced manager.
No, I don’t want the Yankees to hire someone like Baker or La Russa. I just think it’s interesting teams are reverting back to old-school managers now. The Yankees need to make a managerial change. They aren’t going to, but they need to. But I wouldn’t have wanted them to hire either as their next manager.
10. For all the praise I have given Kevin Cash this season, he ruined his team’s season in Game 6 of the World Series. I understand the “third time through the order” and giving teams different looks, but there’s no justifable reason for taking Blake Snell out of that game after he had shut down the Dodgers for five innings and the top of the order, which was due up, was 0-for-6 with six strikeouts against him.
Both Cash and Dave Roberts made Boone-type moves in the World Series and the Dodgers are very lucky Roberts didn’t manage them to third their World Series loss in four years after his decisions in 2017 and 2018.
It’s good to know other teams deal with the same nonsensical decision making the Yankees are hampered with. It’s not good to know so many managers can’t make the simple, logical and right move in a big spot.
The Yankees are bringing back Zack Britton for 2021 and 2022, but for now, they’re not bringing back Brett Gardner.
The Yankees had to bring Zack Britton back for 2021 (and 2020), so they did. The Yankees didn’t want to pay Brett Gardner $10 million for 2021, so they didn’t. But everyone should expect Gardner to re-sign with the Yankees at a much lower cost.
I can’t imagine the 2021 Yankees without LeMahieu. Or rather, I don’t want to imagine the 2021 Yankees without him.
DJ LeMahieu was supposed to be a Ray. The Rays offered LeMahieu the chance to be their everyday second baseman for a similar amount of money the Yankees were offering him to not be their starting second baseman. The Yankees couldn’t give LeMahieu their starting second base job with Gleyber Torres at the position and Didi Gregorius blocking Torres from moving to shortstop, but what Cashman could offer LeMahieu was the opportunity to be an everyday player at multiple positions. Before LeMahieu could sign with the Rays, the Yankees improved their offer, flexing the financial might they should always flex when they really, really want a certain player, and LeMahieu became a Yankee rather than a Ray.
Can you imagine the 2019 or 2020 Yankees without LeMahieu? I can’t. Even worse, can you imagine him as a Ray? The Rays already proved themselves to be the better and more complete team than the Yankees this season, so just think about how much better they would be with the unshiftable LeMahieu in their well-balanced lineup and the multi-position LeMahieu as part of their deep position player roster. Cashman likes to refer to the Rays’ lineup as a “Swiss Army Knife” for Kevin Cash to utilize, well, LeMahieu is the most Swiss Army Knife player in the majors. Think about the Yankees without LeMahieu, their only true contact hitter, and think about how not having him would likely mean a full-time role for Tyler Wade.
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On Opening Day 2019, LeMahieu wasn’t even in the starting lineup. He sat on the bench as the Yankees beat up on the Orioles with his Yankees debut coming in the second game of the season. In that game, he started at the unfamiliar third base and batted ninth. Of course, he went 2-for-4 with a double. The following day, he batted ninth again, and again he picked up two hits to go along with two walks.
Through Apr. 19, Aaron Boone and the analytics department batted LeMahieu ninth (two times), seventh (three times), fifth (four times), leadoff (three times), sixth (five times) and third (once). It wasn’t until Apr. 20 when LeMahieu became the Yankees’ permanent leadoff hitter, and even then there were a few games when he was dropped down to second against right-handed starters, so the Yankees could force Aaron Hicks into the leadoff spot.
LeMahieu hit .327/.375/.518 in his first season as a Yankee, was named the starting second baseman for the AL All-Star Team and won his first Silver Slugger award. He set career-highs in hits (197), runs (109), doubles (33), home runs (26) and RBIs (102). He was the Yankees’ MVP and nearly the league MVP, finishing fourth behind Mike Trout (OK), Alex Bregman (OK) and Marcus Semien (not OK). He also nearly became the first player in major league history to win the batting title in both leagues with his .327, but was narrowly beaten by the White Sox’ Tim Anderson who only appeared in 22 fewer games.
In the postseason, he posted a .976 OPS in the three-game ALDS sweep of the Twins and then topped that with a 1.029 OPS in the six-game ALCS loss to the Astros. It was his two-out, ninth-inning heroics that momentarily saved the Yankees’ season before Aroldis Chapman ended in the bottom half of the inning. LeMahieu finished the postseason going 13-for-40 (.325), with three doubles, three home runs, seven RBIs, four walks, a .386 on-base percentage and .625 slugging percentage. He single-handedly tried to carry the Yankees to the World Series with his 1.011 postseason OPS, but unfortunately he was only helped by Gleyber Torres in October.
This season, LeMahieu hit as if the 2019 season never ended. Despite, the nearly nine-month layoff between Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS and his first game in 2020, LeMahieu never stopped hitting. He avenged his batting title loss to Anderson from last season, becoming the first hitter in major league history to win the batting title in both leagues with a .364 average. His 41 runs scored in 50 games were the equivalent of 133 over 162 games and his 10 home runs were the 162-game equivalent to 32. He set career-highs in average, on-base percentage (.421), slugging percentage (.590), OPS (1.011) and OPS+ (177), and led the league in average, on-base percentage, OPS and OPS+. He didn’t have a postseason like he had in 2019, but he still managed to hit .281, recording multiple hits in three of the Yankees’ seven games.
There’s a good chance when LeMahieu struck out (the most unlikely result for a plate appearance of his) against Diego Castillo in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the ALDS it was the last time Yankees fans would have the privilege of watching him hit as a Yankee.
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LeMahieu will become a free agent at the conclusion of the World Series, and given the Yankees’ league-high payroll in 2020 coupled with the loss of revenue from a shortened, fan-less season and the uncertainty of what the 2021 season will look like, you better believe the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees will act as though they’re suddenly poor, and unable to bring back a player they desperately need. Steinbrenner has already said in interviews the Yankees lost more money than any other team in baseball in 2020, conveniently forgetting the Yankees make more money than any other team in baseball every other season.
Without LeMahieu the Yankees’ one-dimensional lineup becomes even more one dimensional and the strikeout-prone Yankees become even more strikeout prone. Without LeMahieu, the Yankees lose their leadoff hitter, though they will happily replace him at the top of the order with Hicks since they have done everything they can to give Hicks that spot, LeMahieu just wouldn’t let them. Without LeMahieu, they lose their starting second baseman, who can also play third base and first base, and without LeMahieu, they lose an easy-to-love fan favorite who has done nothing other than be great as a Yankee.
CC Sabathia recently spoke on his podcast about the Yankees needing more hitters like LeMahieu the way the team needed more hitters like “the other DJ (Derek Jeter” as the former Yankees left-hander put it. The Yankees need more contact hitters who have a B or even C swing when the count isn’t in their favor and can put the ball in play as well as move the runner over from second to third with a ground ball to the right side. The removal of LeMahieu from the Yankees makes the Yankees worse in 2021 than they were in 2020, and in 2020 they weren’t good enough to get out of the division series.
Maybe what should happen will happen and the Yankees re-sign LeMahieu, sign Trevor Bauer and trade for Francisco Lindor. It’s a doable plan, but it’s far-fetched given Steinbrenner already planting the seeds for a lackluster offseason and the idea Yankees’ ownership will be eating bagel bites and Cup Noodles for the foreseeable future because of their 2020 revenue losses. But it’s a plan that would give the Yankees the best rotation and lineup in baseball. Most likely, the Yankees will let LeMahieu leave, re-sign Brett Gardner (again), and go into 2021 with the same lineup minus LeMahieu, and a rotation of
I can’t imagine the 2021 Yankees without LeMahieu. Or rather, I don’t want to imagine the 2021 Yankees without him. The LeMahieu-less Yankees won’t be pretty. A team that has gone from coming within one win of the World Series three years ago with a future to growing annoying, frustrating and at times truly unlikeable along the way will become even more annoying, frustrating and unlikeable without LeMahieu.
