I try to come up with a New Year’s resolution every year that will help my life. Whether it’s cutting out unhealthy foods or working on being on time for dinner reservations, I try to pick something reasonable and achievable. This year, I have three resolutions. Reasonable? Not so much. Achievable? Unlikely. But if I’m somehow able to follow through on them, they will help my life and my overall health.

The three resolutions all revolve around Aaron 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 melting down on Twitter and tossing and turning in the early hours of the morning, I think I have to at least try to keep them.

Resolution 1: Don’t Get Upset Over the Lineup
After two full seasons of Boone as manager, we have enough data to know he (or whoever actually fills out the lineup card) has no idea how to build the best possible lineup. It’s why in the postseason, Brett Gardner was batting third, Gleyber Torres was batting fifth and the automatic out that was Edwin Encarnacion continued to bat fourth. The nonsensical lineup decisions from the regular season carried over into October and they will be there again in 2020.

I need to take a deep breath when I see Gardner batting in the middle of the order or when Mike Tauchman is batting third to separate Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Thankfully, Didi Gregorius is no longer an option to bat third or ahead of Gary Sanchez. Boone has managed the Yankees for 324 regular-season games and 14 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 is on March 26. There will be five months and a week between the end of the 2019 season and the beginning of the 2020 season. The Yankees have March 27 off then they play six games and have April 3 off. There is a 100 percent chance non-catcher position players will have days off within the first week of the season.

The Yankees proved last season when they set the single-season record for the most players placed on the injured list that there’s no way to prevent or avoid injuries. Even after setting the all-time record, the Yankees continued to manage their roster and lineup as if they had somehow solved injury prevention, all while not playing a single game in 2019 with their expected everyday lineup. The Yankees’ scheduled days off and extra and unnecessary rest for their position players is out of control, and unfortunately, it’s not about to change. If anything, it’s only going to get worse.

I’m prepared for the scheduled rest to increase and be even more comical than it was last year, and when it is, I need to remember it’s not worth getting upset over.

Resolution 3: Don’t Get Upset About Bullpen Usage
It took Chad Green putting together the worst single-month performance of any reliever I can ever remember for him to finally be taken out of high-leverage situations and sent down to get straighened out last season. It took Jonathan Holder pissing away every late-game tie or lead for the few months of 2019 before the Yankees decided enough was enough. When the Yankees were battling every day in September for home-field advantage in the ALCS, it was September call-ups getting the ball in close games.

The Yankees’ regrettable decision not to bring back Dellin Betances means one less elite arm in the bullpen and one more spot that’s going to go to someone like Holder or Ben Heller or Luis Cessa or some other AAAA pitcher who Boone will gladly go to try to steal some outs or give one of his “A” relievers the day off only to end up using them later in the game anyway. It’s going to happen. It’s not just about the result, it’s about the decision. I can live with the right pitcher giving it up, it’s the wrong pitcher giving it up that is the problem. It’s not a matter of if but when for Boone ruining a game with his in-game managing. He might have gotten better from 2018 to 2019, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement and too much to think he will always make the right the decision.

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 hard to.

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

Last spring, there were reports of the Yankees discussing an extension with Dellin Betances before his shoulder issue happened, keeping him out of the entire 2019 season aside from facing (and striking out) two batters in September. In what was his first time to finally cash in on being the best reliever in baseball over the last five years, Betances had a season-crushing shoulder injury followed by a season-ending Achillies injury.

You can’t help but feel bad for a guy who has done nothing other than dominate the late innings of Yankees games while relievers of much lesser ability have signed eight-figure deals, and when it was his chance at one of those eight-figure deals, it was taken away from him. No, Betances isn’t hurting for money, given the the $16.7 million he has made in his major league career, but that total represents close to what he would be getting per season now if not for the injuries. Over the five previous seasons, Betances appeared in 349 games, pitching 373 1/3 innings with 607 strikeouts, a 2.22 ERA and a 1.108 WHIP, allowing just 5.3 hits-per-nine innings with an astounding 14.6 strikeouts-per-nine. Absolutely ridiculous numbers from the best reliever in baseball.

Betances has been my favorite Yankee since Number 2 retired and as a native New Yorker and homegrown prospect who has always said and done the right things, it’s hard not to like him (unless you’re Randy Levine). He was the lone consistent bright spot in the dark years of 2014-16 and pitched in every role asked of him for both Joe Girardi and Aaron Boone. He deserved better than to have his free agency ruined and now he deserves better than settling for a one-year or rebuilding deal somewhere other than the Bronx.

The Yankees put themselves up against or over the third luxury-tax threshold by signing Gerrit Cole, depending on what happens with trying to move J.A. Happ’s ill-advised contract and $17 million 2020 salary and the Jacoby Ellsbury contract grievance, which most likely won’t be resolved for a long, long time. But after going out and getting “their guy” in Cole for the first time since they signed CC Sabathia 11 years ago, the Yankees can’t now go back to their penny-pinching ways which cost them several championship opportunities over the last decade. If the Yankees want to put together the best possible roster for 2020, that roster includes Betances.

There’s no reason for the Yankees to not sign Betances. Believing they don’t need him because they have Aroldis Chapman, whose declining velocity and control and inability to put away hitters is frightening, Zack Britton, whose control is a real problem and isn’t who he once was, Adam Ottavino, who helped ruin the ALCS, Tommy Kahnle, who is a year removed from spending the season in the minors, or Chad Green, who was demoted last season for the worst stretch of relief appearances possibly ever, is more than risky. The Yankees might not need their excessive abundance of elite relievers on days when Cole pitches, but they’re still going to need them when James Paxton (less than 5 1/3 innings per start in 2019), Masahiro Tanaka (just over 5 2/3 innings per start in 2019), Luis Severino (will be coming off season-long shoulder and lat injuries) and Jordan Montgomery (will be returning from Tommy John surgery) pitch. (Or Happ if they’re unable to move him). The Yankees’ bullpen is deeper, better and more stable than any other bullpen in baseball, but that’s all the more reason to make a strength stronger. They might not need their bullpen to win the division and beat up on what will once again be a mostly non-competitive league, but they will need it to win in October, as we once again just saw. Having to watch someone Tyler Lyons or Luis Cessa enter a playoff game because the Yankees are one elite reliever too short to get 27 outs in the postseason isn’t something I want to see.

It won’t surprise me if the Yankees let Betances sign elsewhere. Giving Cole $324 million means they have to cut costs in other places, even though they truly don’t. Not signing Betances because it’s a chance to save a few dollars with the idea Jonathan Holder or Ben Heller or some other fringe major leaguer can fill a bullpen role is a mistake. After signing Cole, I thought the Yankees were done making obvious mistakes. Not signing Betances would be an obvious mistake.

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

At some point, enough would be enough. At some point Hal Steinbrenner would grow tired of issuing an apology to Yankees fans at the end of each season for coming up short and failing to deliver a championship. That point ended up being 10 years without a championship, four ALCS losses over a decade and the continued unsuccessful strategy of playing every October game by planning for 15 outs from the bullpen. That’s the point when the Yankees decided to act like the the Yankees again and throw around their financial might the way they used by giving Gerrit Cole a nine-year, $324 million contract.

It didn’t take long for the outcry of a starting pitcher getting paid through age 38 at $36 million per season, and it didn’t take long for some to assume the Yankees would eventually regret the deal. But they will only regret it if nine years from now they haven’t won a championship since 2009. Otherwise, there won’t be any regret. The goal is to win championships. Not worry about the financial state of the team and whatever the luxury tax will be in baseball in 2028. And the goal certainly isn’t to worry about the state of the Steinbrenners’ bank account. If the Padres can afford $300 million contracts, the Yankees can more than afford $324 million contracts. This move in no way inhibits the team from necessary future moves, the same way $324 million didn’t inhibit them from this necessary move.

And this move was necessary. The Yankees had to have Cole. They had to. They couldn’t waste another season of this current championship window by being content with four innings from their starting pitchers in October. They couldn’t waste another season debating what the order of their rotation should be for the postseason because they didn’t have a true No. 1. They couldn’t sit by and let yet another superstar free agent sign elsewhere.

Somewhere along the way the Yankees started caring about three and four and five seasons down the road. It’s why the last time they went out and successfully got the guy they wanted and the guy everyone thought they would get was 11 years ago when they outbid themselves to pull CC Sabathia away from California and put him into pinstripes. It took the Yankees not wanting Justin Verlander’s salary in August 2017, cutting payroll by $50 million for 2018 after coming within a game of the 2017 World Series and not wanting to go an extra year on Patrick Corbin, but the Yankees finally changed course and signed the best available free-agent starting pitcher, crushing both the average annual salary and total salary records for a pitcher.

The Yankees did what they used to do and signed the guy everyone expected them to. The Yankees have their ace, but more importantly, the Yankees are back to acting like the Yankees.

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

Nine years ago tomorrow, I slipped into a deep and long depression. Not because it was winter and freezing cold or because the Rangers were wasting Henrik Lundqvist’s prime with a bad defense and mediocre roster or because the Giants would soon suffer the Meltdown at MetLife against the Eagles to ruin their season or because I still wasn’t over the ALCS loss to the Rangers. I became depressed because Cliff Lee turned down the Yankees.

At the time, the first month-plus of free agency had been reported as a mere formality and Lee signing with the Yankees was deemed inevitable. They needed him. They desperately needed him, and after failing to successfully trade for him in July of that season and having the ALCS swung against them because of it, they weren’t going to be stopped. Lee was going to be a Yankee and after beating them in Games 1 and 5 of the 2009 World Series and Game 3 of the 2010 ALCS, he was going to help them win games in October rather than help them lose.

I still remember seeing Jon Heyman’s tweet of a “mystery team” suddenly being involved in the Lee sweepstakes. The term “mystery team” has haunted me since that day and even the word “mystery” still bothers me. Eventually, the mystery team would be revealed as the Phillies and Lee was going back to Philadelphia even though the team had screwed him over by sending him to baseball Siberia in Seattle the prior offseason after trading for Roy Halladay. The Phillies’ offer was for five years and $120 million. It was less than the Rangers’ six-year, $138 million offer and much less than the Yankees’ six-year, $148 million offer with a player option for a seventh year at $16 million. I wrote this reactionary blog at the time with tears streaming down my face.

Lee was the one that got away … twice. Brian Cashman’s unwillingness to include Eduardo Nunez in the July 2010 deal for Lee (only to release Nunez in the spring of 2014) allowed Texas to swoop in and get him, and Lee not caring about taking substanially less money and years to pitch for a team which had shipped him away left the Yankees standing empty-handed. Maybe Andy Pettitte doesn’t briefly retire after the 2010 season if the Yankees land Lee, and the team has a rotation of CC Sabathia in his prime, Lee in his prime, Phil Hughes coming off an 18-win, All-Star season, Pettitte and A.J. Burnett. Unfortunately, Lee went to the Phillies, Pettitte did retire and the Yankees turned to Freddy Garcia’s smoke-and-mirrors act and gave Bartolo Colon a chance to ressurect his career. Miraculously, Garcia and Colon were good enough for long enough and Ivan Nova emered as a major-league starter for the Yankees to reach the postseason, but once the Yankees got to October, Colon wasn’t allowed to start, Garcia was ineffective and Nova pitched like you would expect a rookie to pitch in the playoffs. (The Yankees’ inability to hit with runners in scoring position, especially in Game 5 also played a big role in their first-round elimination.)

This offseason, an offseason followed by the exact six-game ALCS loss nine years ago (win Game 1 on the road, lose Game 2 on the road, lose Game 3 at home, lose Game 4 at home, win Game 5 at home, lose Game 6 on the road), the Yankees have a chance to sign another starting pitcher who has already gotten away twice.

Nearly a month ago, I wrote Don’t Expect the Yankees to Sign Gerrit Cole. I wrote it because why would Yankees fans expect the team to sign the most-coveted free-agent pitcher this offseason when he would likely command the most money of any pitcher in history? It’s not 11 years ago when the Yankees offered CC Sabathia a record-breaking contract on the first day of free agency and continued to outbid themselves to persuade him away from his home of California and put him in pinstripes, and it’s not nine years ago when they made the highest offer to Lee. The Yankees don’t operate the way they did a decade ago, and they have 10 years of mixed results to show for it.

The Yankees were unwilling to take on Justin Verlander’s salary at the 2017 waiver deadline, and he single-handedly swung the 2017 ALCS in the Astros’ favor by winning Games 2 and 6. After coming within a game of the 2017 World Series, the 2018 Yankees’ payroll was cut by $50 million. After falling short again in 2018 because of their starting pitching, the Yankees were unwilling to give Patrick Corbin an additional year on his offer and he ended up in Washington. The Yankees have had several chances to drastically upgrade their rotation either through free agency or a trade over the last three seasons and they have come up short each time, unwilling to offer enough money or unwilling to depart with their prospects. Combine all of this with the front office thinking starting pitching isn’t why they lost in the ALCS again, and you will understand why no Yankees fan could think it’s a given they would make a realistic run at Cole this winter.

That has all changed over the last week with the Yankees flying across the country to meet with Cole followed by reports the Yankees won’t be denied by the ace and that the team has either offered or is prepared to offer Cole a seven-year, $240 million contract, breaking both the average annual salary and total contract records for a starting pitcher. I have gone from accepting a rotation of Luis Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, Jordan Montgomery and J.A. Happ to now accepting nothing short of Cole in the rotation. The reports of the Yankees finally remembering they’re the Yankees after years of counting their pennies and nickel-and-diming their way to a 10-year World Series drought appears to be over has made me believe in the Yankees’ financial prowess again. It has made me believe they are done wasting seasons and opportunities in this current championship window.

The Yankees missed out on Lee twice. Once because they were overvalued their prospects and once because he turned down their offer.

The Yankees have already missed out on Cole twice. Once because they drafted him despite knowing he wanted to attend college and once because they didn’t want to part with Miguel Andujar or Clint Frazier. They can’t miss out on him a third time. They can’t.

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

I have been waiting for this day since the day the Yankees regrettably and unnecessarily signed Jacoby Ellsbury. I never wanted the Yankees to sign Ellsbury. No Yankees fan did. No one thought the Yankees’ decision to bid against themselves and give a 30-year-old outfielder, whose game is based on speed, a seven-year, $153 million contract was a good idea. No one outside of Boston.

The worst contract in the history of the Yankees was one that never made any sense. This wasn’t the Yankees competing against several other contenders to add Carl Pavano or even Jaret Wright after the 2004 ALCS collapse. This wasn’t the Steinbrenners overruling Brian Cashman to give A-Rod a 10-year, $275 million after his second MVP season in three years. This wasn’t the Yankees continually upping their offer to CC Sabathia to put so much money in front of him that he would have to say no to California. This wasn’t the Yankees giving A.J. Burnett $82.5 million because he led the league in strikeouts once (with an above-4 ERA). This wasn’t the Yankees stepping in and stealing Mark Teixeira away from the Red Sox with an eight-year, $180 million deal. This was the Yankees deciding to pass on their own homegrown, All-Star talent to sign essentially a one-year wonder to a seven-year, $153 million contract (with a $5 million buyout for an eighth season, which we can’t forget) when NO ONE ELSE was bidding.

Given the contract and performance, Ellsbury is the worst player in the history of the New York Yankees. Pavano is not a counter argument. There is no argument. And all of the weird injuries and issues aside, Ellsbury made more in his first two seasons with the Yankees than Pavano did in his four. Ellsbury will get paid $26 million in total from here on out to not play for the Yankees thanks to a $5 million buyout on an option that was never going to get picked up. But at least he won’t be weakly grounding out to the right side, hitting for no power, stealing no bases and blocking prospects with real baseball talent from reaching the majors.

In six seasons as a Yankee, Ellsbury played in 520 of a possible 972 regular-season games (53.5 percent) and missed the entire 2018 and 2019 seasons. He hit an anemic .264/.330/.386 and averaged a .716 OPS with 9.8 home runs, 49.5 RBIs and 25.5 stolen bases when he played. He was benched for the 2015 AL Wild-Card game, and then in the 2017 postseason, he went 0-for-9 with three strikeouts and two walks, sharing time with Chase Headey as the designated hitter before losing that part-time job the way he lost his full-time one in center field to Aaron Hicks.

The idea that having Ellsbury and Brett Gardner hitting first and second at the top of the order was what the Yankees needed after the disastrous 2013 season was such a bad idea that it makes choosing Gary Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero look good. Like that Sheffield-Guerrero decision, maybe this decision also wasn’t Brian Cashman’s call after the 2013 season since ownership had to watch the Red Sox win their third World Series in 10 years while the Yankees put together the 2006 All-Star team with Ichiro, Travis Hafner, Kevin Youkilis, Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay. If it weren’t for Alfonso Soriano’s MVP-like return in the middle of the summer to string Yankees fans along until early September, maybe the front office would have done something more drastic than signing Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. Maybe they would have also signed Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $140 million deal. (Unfortunately, that’s not a joke as Cashman and Co. did offer Choo a seven-year, $140 million deal.)

I never thought I would find a hitter streakier than Gardner, but Ellsbury was that, except his hot streaks would last a quarter of the time of his cold streaks. Yes, the Yankees’ plan was to put the two streakiest hitters in the game back-to-back at the top of their lineup in hopes that hot streaks would occur at the same time. Why would you want to do that? If you know the answer then maybe you can also tell me why you would want two Brett Gardners on the same team? And then maybe you can also tell me why would you want to pay the real Brett Gardner $13 million per year and the bad Brett Gardner $21.1 million per year?

The Yankees couldn’t get out of their $153 million mistake. They coudln’t pay Ellsbury to play for another team through a trade like they did with David Justice or A.J. Burnett or Brian McCann because at pennies on the dollar, he wasn’t healthy or wanted. The only way out was to finally release him now that the insurance coverage has run out and maybe there is a team dumb enough to sign him to the league minimum and see if he has anything left, which he doesn’t. He’s not going to become the player he was for one season of his 13-year career. That one season also happened NINE YEARS AGO! He’s not going to be rejuvenated and revitalized with a change of scenery and more playing time because he isn’t good. He’s not going to come back to hurt the Yankees. If he does land a job somewhere, he will most likely play like a Hall of Famer against the Yankees when he faces them because every ex-Yankee does, but he’s not going to be the missing piece of another contender, and he’s not going to get some big hit or make some big play against the Yankees that ruins their own championship aspirations. Because in a game of that magnitude, Ellsbury will be on the bench, like he was for the 2015 Wild-Card Game and like he was for nearly the entire 2017 postseason aside from a few DH at-bats, in which he went 0-for-9 with three strikeout and two walks.

Ellsbury’s comical injury saga of 2018 and 2019 was a fitting end to his Yankees tenure. He had no place on this team this past season other than to give the Yankees front office an out when they choose to not sign Bryce Harper, citing a “crowded outfield” as their reason, and he had no place on this team in the upcoming season even if a series of unfortunate injuries or a rash of underachieving decimated the team. Even having him in spring training as a potential depth player is an insult. There was no longer a need to try to salvage even one cent of his remaining contract.

2013 was an embarrassment. 2014 was a disappointment. 2015 was great until the trade deadline and awful after it. 2016 sucked until after the trade deadline. 2017 was unexpected and the most fun I have had as a Yankees fan since the moment before Derek Jeter’s ankle was ruined in Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS. 2018 was enjoyable for the first three months of the season before a second half of .500 and embarrassing postseason ruined the year. 2019 ended disappointingly, but even with the disappointing end to the last two seasons, the Yankees are back to playing like the pre-2013 Yankees where winning a World Series every season was an attainable goal. If the Yankees don’t win a championship again in 2020 it will be a disappointment like it was for eight years after 2000 and again for three years after 2009. Ownership likes to apologize to the fans when the goal of winning a championship isn’t met and they promise to do better and do the things necessary to win moving forward. Getting rid of Ellsbury was doing better and doing something necessary. If he were to ever get healthy, it didn’t matter if he were the last man on the bench or the 25th man on the roster. His presence would serve as a reminder and holdover from the run of disappointing seasons from 2013-2016 and the bad contracts that led to those disappointing seasons.

The money finally became just money for the Yankees and protecting prospects who may or may never actually help the Yankees at the major league level was more important than continuing to roster a lost cause. It’s just money, and it was just $26 million at this point. The other $127 million-plus had already been wasted. Sure, the Yankees could have used the Ellsbury contract to sign Cano, or give 765 New York City high school students $200,000 towards college, or give a $100 ticket or food credit at the Stadium to 1.53 million Yankees fans, or done anything other than give a one-year wonder on the wrong side of 30 a seven-year contract to play Major League Baseball. But they did and now they will pay him to not play for them if he ever plays again at all. The worst Yankee in history is no longer a Yankee.

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