This offseason sucked. There’s no other way to look at it. The Yankees had an opportunity to completely upgrade their roster, change the comfortable-with-losing culture their manager has instilled within the clubhouse and become the clear favorite to win the American League and get back to the World Series. They instead chose to make marginal-at-best roster upgrades, extend the manager for three more years (with an option for a fourth year) and you would have to be a Steinbrenner, a good friend of Brian Cashman or the biggest Yankees apologist of all time to consider them the favorite, as of now, to win the pennant.

Unfortunately, as a Yankees fan, the roster the Yankees have put the together is the one I have to root for. After months of writing and talking about the missed opportunity the franchise purposely created for itself, this week I need to put that aside and pray that what changes the Yankees did make will be good enough to win in 2022.

No one expected the 2016 Yankees to be any good. And they weren’t. 

They got off to a 9-17 start, and it was obvious they had to tear apart the team and play prospects, and by this time every fan wanted them to do just that. Free agency had been the Yankees’ strategy since the early 2000s and a way for the team to plug holes on their sinking ship. It worked at times as they were able to tread water, have winning seasons and reach the playoffs, but over the previous 15 years, they had won one championship. Eventually you need to start over. Eventually you need a new boat. The game had changed too much and the Yankees needed a new boat and Yankees fans wanted a new boat.

At the end of play on July 6, 2016, the Yankees were 41-43 and it looked like they would certainly be sellers at the deadline in three weeks, but ownership wasn’t on board. The Yankees then went on an 11-5 run through July 26, and were now in striking distance of a wild-card spot — only four games back — and ownership hadn’t budged on selling and giving up on the season for future seasons.

The Yankees then lost their next four games, one in Houston and a three-game sweep in Tampa Bay. It was the best thing to happen to the organization since the Astros, Indians, Expos, Orioles and Reds passed on Derek Jeter in the 1992 draft, allowing the Yankees to select him with the sixth overall pick. The losing streak pushed the Yankees out of reasonable contention, ownership gave Brian Cashman the green light to trade his veteran assets and begin the transition into “rebuilding mode.”

Andrew Miller (Indians), Aroldis Chapman (Cubs), Carlos Beltran (Rangers) and Ivan Nova (Pirates) were all traded, and Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira announced their retirements. Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge were called up to become everyday players, and in the process, Brian McCann was relegated to backup duty, which would lead to his offseason trade to the Astros. (A trade in which the Yankees would pay McCann to beat them in Game 7 of the ALCS). The Yankees had finally decided to show off the depth in their farm system, and thanks to that four-game losing streak at the end of July, the depth only got deeper with the top prospects they received in return.

The 2017 Yankees weren’t supposed to be good either, picked by many to finish near or at the bottom of the AL East in what was certainly going to be a rebuilding season. But there ended up being no “rebuilding.” The Yankees seemingly hit on every prospect who reached the majors and the team went from preseason dud to postseason bound, winning 91 games and putting up a plus-198 run differential.

The 2017 Yankees overcame a 3-0 first-inning deficit in the wild-card game. They overcame an 0-2 series hole to the 102-win Indians to advance to the ALCS. They overcame another 0-2 series hole to the Astros to bring a 3-2 series lead to Houston for Games 6 and 7. Ultimately (to use Aaron Boone’s favorite word), they came one win shy of reaching the World Series for the first time in eight years.

For 2018, the Yankees essentially replaced Chase Headley, Starlin Castro and Jacoby Ellsbury with Giancarlo Stanton (the reigning NL MVP), Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres and the Aaron Hicks who was drafted in the first round. But once again, they came up short in the postseason.

The 2017 postseason loss wasn’t crushing. Rather it was an exhilarating ride, being back at a raucous Stadium seemingly every night in October and watching a young, homegrown core get within a game of the World Series. The 2018 postseason loss, on the other hand, was crushing. After once again winning the wild-card game, and taking a game in Boston, the Yankees became the favorite in what had become a best-of-3 with two games at the Stadium where they didn’t lose. Not only did they lose both, they were embarrassed in every facet of the game, especially managing, and their rival celebrated on their field en route to a championship season.

Because of the way the season ended and the team it ended against, 2018 is viewed as a disaster, and rightfully so. But if you go back to 2016, 2017 and 2018 were never supposed to be about the Yankees. They were supposed to be about the Indians and Astros and Red Sox and Cubs and Dodgers, and they were. The timeline Yankees fans were given and expected prior to Opening Day 2016 was always 2019, these Yankees just happened to arrive early. The 2017 and 2018 Yankees gave us two unexpected years of championship contention even if it didn’t end with a championship.

Going back six years, 2019 was always circled as the first season the Yankees would truly contend for a championship, and they did. But in what has become a decade-long trend, the team fell short with inconsistent starting pitching in October coupled with an inability to get a timely hit. Two years after losing to the Astros in the ALCS in seven games, the Yankees lost to them again, this time in six games, losing four of the final five games of the series for the franchise’s fourth ALCS in 10 years. Ultimately (I’m trying to use this word as often as Boone does in one of his postgame press conferences), the first season of the Yankees’ championship window came and went without a championship.

The 2020 season was to be the Yankees’ best chance at ending their championship drought, but things started to unravel in spring training with Luis Severino going down for the season, James Paxton needing a back procedure, and the entire starting outfield of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks expected to miss as much as the first half of the season. The shutdown in mid-March allowed for Paxton, Judge, Stanton and Hicks to heal, but it turned a 162-game season in which the Yankees’ depth would separate them from the rest of the division and likely league into a 60-game season mess. A second straight injury-filled season led to a mediocre 60-game performance from the Yankees, and in the postseason, the bats once against disappeared and Boone did all he could to eliminate his team in five games against the Rays.

The Yankees were the odds-on favorite to win the American League in 2021. They got off to a 5-10 start, were 12-14 at the end of April and 41-41 on the Fourth of July. A 13-game winning streak in July and August saved their season, only to be followed by losing 12 of 15 in August and September. The odds-on favorite to win the AL finished fifth in the AL, third in their own division and their postseason was over after nine innings.

The night the Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS I wasn’t upset. The series loss and losing both chances to advance to the World Series was disappointing, but the future of the team was so bright and so promising that losing to the eventual champions in seven games in a season in which the Yankees weren’t supposed to even be part of the postseason race didn’t hurt the way many other postseason eliminations have. Then again, I didn’t think the Yankees would be here having played four seasons with nothing to show for it other than embarrassment (2018), frustration (2019), humiliation (2020) and disaster (2021).

The grace period with these Yankees ended after 2018. (Unless you’re Cashman and believe the Yankees actually won the 2017 World Series, then the grace period is still going.) The 2022 season is now the current core’s fourth season in their “window of opportunity” to win a championship, and the window has closed much faster than expected, if it’s even still open. The season-crippling injuries to Severino, Judge, Stanton, Hicks and Luke Voit coupled with the underperformance of players like Sanchez, Torres, Sonny Gray and James Paxton over the last four years have caused the championship drought to continue. Only two players remain from the Game 7 lineup from the 2017 ALCS: Judge and Hicks.

There’s no more consolation prize for coming within a game of the World Series or winning 100 games and then getting blown out by your storied rival or losing in five games in the first round or eeking your way into the playoffs on the final pitch of the regular season. There’s no more excuses and no more “next year”. These Yankees were expected to truly contend in 2019 and it’s now 2022.

The Yankees set themselves up for the most second-guessed roster construction of all time if their 2022 creation doesn’t work out. Before and after lockout, they passed on every star, passed on every starting pitcher and passed on the A’s firesale. At the team’s end-of-the-season press conference on Oct. 19, Cashman said he would be making “upgrades” and that he would use the “free-agent marketplace” and “trade market” to acquire the available “legitimate options” for said upgrades. The “legitimate options” will be playing for the Dodgers, Braves, Rangers, Mets, Red Sox, Twins and Padres in 2022. None of them will be playing for the Yankees.

This is the team Yankees fans were given to root for and to get behind. This is the roster we are being asked to support and follow and invest our time and money into for the next six (and hopefully seven) months.

A year ago on Opening Day, Gerrit Cole couldn’t get through the sixth inning against the Blue Jays (a trend that would continue all season for the Yankees’ ace against the Blue Jays, Rays and Red Sox). Boone went to Nick Nelson, of all relievers, for the 10th inning in a 2-2 game with the automatic runner on second, and he promptly allowed Randal Grichuk to break the tie with a double. Trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th, Boone’s No. 3 hitter Hicks took three pitches, all strikes, for the first out and Stanton took two strikes then swung through the third pitch of his at-bat before Torres struck out on five pitches. I wish I had turned off YES after the last pitch of that game and not turned it back on again for the rest of the season. Hundreds of wasted hours, dangerously high blood pressure, heartache and mental and physical fatigue would have been avoided.

I don’t want to look back on the 2022 season like I do the 2021 season and regret having wasted so much time. With the roster Cashman has created, it’s a real possibility. It’s not just a possibility, it’s the most likely outcome. For now, I will do my best to believe this roster can win. As a Yankees fan, I don’t have a choice.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

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

The Yankees’ 2022 season is one enormous gamble. It didn’t have to be this way. The Yankees could have put together as sure of a thing possible from an on-paper roster standpoint. They could have used their financial might and the fact they generate more revenue than any of the other 29 teams in the majors and play in the biggest market in the country to their advantage. They could have finally put together the best possible roster to end their going-on-13-year championship drought. If it didn’t work out on the field, at least they would have done everything in their power to attempt to win.

Instead, the Yankees purposely created one prodigious parlay for the 2022 season. Rather than spend the way their revenue streams allow and needing only health to be on their side to be the favorite to win the American League pennant, overall health is now just one of a lengthy list of things the Yankees need to hit on to win with the roster they have constructed.

At the Yankees’ 2021 end-of-the-season press conference on Oct. 19, Brian Cashman openly admitted the 2021 team was “unwatchable.” The Yankees had been the odds-on favorite to win the AL, and they instead finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division. In lieu of making wholesale changes to a declining roster and culture that had only gone backward in each season since 2017, Cashman’s first move for 2022 was to extend Aaron Boone. Boone had been handed the keys to a team that came within one win of the World Series, and crashed it before leaving the driveway. Under him, the Yankees suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history while falling to the Red Sox in four games in the 2018; lost four of the final five games of the 2019 ALCS; were embarrassed by the 28th-highest payroll Rays in the 2020 ALDS and were eliminated by the Red Sox for a second time in his tenure in the 2021 wild-card game before’s the game’s second commercial break. Cashman and the Yankees hired the inexperienced, in-over-his-head Boone, watched him fail miserably for four years and then decided to double down on their disastrous hire by giving him a new three-year deal with a fourth-year option. Boone, who never won anything as a player, has now done the same as manager. His Yankees have produced one division title and an 11-11 postseason record with no World Series appearances in four seasons.

When the Boone extension was announced, I desperately tried to talk myself into Boone with better players in 2022. If the Yankees could go out and dominate the free-agent market or make a blockbuster trade then maybe the team could outperform their own manager. At least that’s what I told myself. A complete roster and improved rotation would prevent Boone’s frequent illogical lineups and horrifying bullpen decisions. His in-game decisions wouldn’t have as much of an impact on the team’s success, and the Yankees could win in spite of his presence. I thought this was a real possibility because of Cashman’s comments at that press conference.

“I’m going to be looking to upgrade,” Cashman said that day. “There are some areas of weakness that have popped up in a lot of categories.

“Here’s the biggest key. Go to the marketplace, whether it’s the free-agent marketplace, or go to the trade market and see how we can solve that with what’s available in the marketplace. And obviously there will be some legitimate choices to reconfigure in certain categories.”

Cashman’s admission of needing to upgrade the roster either through the “free-agent marketplace” or the “trade market” had me thinking about some combination of Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Max Scherzer and Matt Olson in pinstripes. The 2021 season had been a colossal failure, Cashman had recognized and admitted it, and he was going to make sure it didn’t happen again. He said as much. Or so I thought.

Not a single one of those five names is now a Yankee. The Yankees sat out on the pre-lockout signing frenzy and remained on the sidelines for the post-lockout signings. They chose not to participate in the A’s firesale, which has included losing their manager (who I would have loved to be the Yankees’ manager) to the Padres, trading Olson to the Braves, Chris Bassitt to the Mets, Matt Chapman to the Blue Jays, and most recently Sean Manaea to the Padres. All four of those players (and the manager) would have improved the Yankees.

With a boat that has been taking on water since the 2017 ALCS, rather than get a new boat, the Yankees decided to once again patch the latest holes, hoping it can get them to where they want to go. It’s a strategy that hasn’t worked over the last four offseasons, but they used it for a fifth straight offseason. Four-plus years ago the Yankees had a young, inexpensive core on the rise. Now what’s left of that core is older, expensive, oft-injured and mostly in decline, and they have never gotten as close to winning it all as they were when they went to Houston needing to win one of two games.

Cashman admitted the Yankees would need to find a shortstop, so they chose the 20-year-old unproven Anthony Volpe and the 21-year-old unproven Oswald Peraza over the 27-year-old proven Seager and the 27-year-old proven Correa. Over the last four offseasons, Hal Steinbrenner has proven he would rather produce his own Seager or Correa or Manny Machado or Bryce Harper than pay the actual Seager, Correa, Machado or Harper. And that’s nice in theory, but those four are superstars and there’s a very slim chance either Volpe or Peraza turn into any of them. The Yankees passed on Machado because they had Gleyber Torres. They passed on Harper because they would eventually have to pay Aaron Judge (who they still haven’t paid), Giancarlo Stanton (who they don’t let play the outfield), Aaron Hicks (who has barely played baseball over the last four years) and Clint Frazier (who the Yankees released for nothing in return this offseason). I pray multiple times each day that both Volpe and Peraza into Seager or Correa. I also know how math and statistics work and understand how low the odds are of even one of them becoming an above-average, everyday major leaguer, let alone a star or superstar.

Volpe will turn 21 this month and has never played above High-A. Peraza is 21 and has played 87 games above High-A. When Seager was 21, he was batting third in the postseason for the Dodgers. When Correa was 21, he was batting third and winning Rookie of the Year for the Astros and eliminating the Yankees from the postseason. When Machado was 21, he was in his third year in the majors, had hit 51 doubles in a season and had an All-Star Game and Gold Glove to his name. When Harper was 21, he had played three seasons and 357 games, hit 65 home runs and been a two-time All-Star and Rookie of the Year.

In choosing Volpe and Peraza over Seager and Correa, Cashman traded with the Twins to acquire the light-hitting, all-glove Isiah Kiner-Falefa. The Rangers had traded Kiner-Falefa to the Twins after the lockout because before the lockout they had signed Seager to a $325 million deal. The Rangers, yes, the 106-loss, last-place Rangers didn’t want to build around Kiner-Falefa, so they signed Seager. They also didn’t want the inexpensive defense-first Kiner-Falefa playing second for them, so they also signed Marcus Semien for $175 million. The Rangers chose to give Seager and Semien a combined half-billion dollars rather than roster and play Kiner-Falefa.

These are the same Rangers who happily paid Rougned Odor to not play baseball for them in 2021 despite owing him $27 million and knowing they would be a last-place team. And these are the same Yankees who happily traded (yes, traded an actual person) for Odor in the first week of the 2021 season and then rostered and played him for the entire season, even giving him two at-bats in the one-game playoff against the Red Sox.

In the trade for Kiner-Falefa, the Yankees also acquired 36-year-old former superstar Josh Donaldson and the $48 million owed to him, along with 23-year-old catcher Ben Rortvedt who is all defense and no bat (and I mean no bat). In exchange for the three players, the Yankees gave up Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela.

Rather than keep Sanchez and have a left side of the infield of Seager and Urshela or Correa and Urshela, they chose to move on from the second-best power-hitting catcher in baseball and create a left side of Kiner-Falefa and Donaldson, and in turn have arguably the worst catching tandem in the majors. At best, the trade was an even swap of productivity. At worst, it prevented the Yankees from signing an in-their-prime shortstop and forced them to take on $48 million for a player who has missed 32 percent of the last four seasons. The Yankees have shied away from paying in-their-prime stars because they didn’t want to pay for their late-‘30s seasons. But here they are paying for Donaldson’s late-‘30s seasons without also getting his prime seasons. The Blue Jays got those prime years from Donaldson and they used them to beat up on the Yankees.

The Yankees’ need for a shortstop came from the team giving up on Torres at the position after completely misevaluating him as a shortstop over 2020 and 2021. I keep reading and hearing about how the Yankees can methodically find at-bats for DJ LeMahieu. I have a solution: make LeMahieu an everyday player.

It’s inexplicable that Torres could play over LeMahieu. This isn’t the beginning of 2019 when Torres was coming off an unbelievable rookie season and LeMahieu was signed as a super utility player and wasn’t in the 2019 Opening Day lineup. This is the beginning of 2022, and Torres has been barely a playable option since the start of the shortened 2020 season.

Yes, LeMahieu is coming off a disastrous 2021 season in which he hit .268/.349/.362 with 10 home runs and 24 doubles. He also played through a hernia that required surgery and forced him to miss the one-game playoff and would have kept him out of the rest of the postseason if the Yankees’ postseason had lasted longer than nine innings. For as bad as LeMahieu was last year, Torres was worse: .259/.331/.366 with nine home runs and 22 RBIs. And Torres has no injury excuse or offseason surgery to fall back on. He just sucked and has sucked since he showed up to Spring Training 2.0 out of shape in July 2020, sending his career into a tailspin.

The Yankees are in this position because they watched Torres play shortstop like an overweight slob seven beers deep each night for two months in 2020 (the overweight part was true) and chalked it up to a shortened season and small sample size. Believing Torres was still the shortstop of the future despite never showing he was capable of being that, the Yankees gave LeMahieu a six-year, $90 million contract after 2020 to be their second baseman of the future. Then after 143 games in 2021, the Yankees decided enough was enough after Torres’ fielding single-handedly carried the Yankees to the most humiliating loss of the season on Sunday Night Baseball against the Mets. With 19 games left in the season and on the outside looking in on the postseason, the Yankees finally moved Gio Urshela to short, a move they claimed all season they would never make.

Now because the Yankees still trusted Torres after 2020 and paid LeMahieu, only to give up on Torres the following season, the Yankees have to choose between LeMahieu or Torres, and it seems like the Yankees are choosing Torres, who was last good two-and-a-half years ago, over the better, more reliable LeMahieu, who still has five years left on his current contract and is owed $75 million. The Yankees are picking Torres over LeMahieu after already picking Boone over Sanchez and Volpe and Peraza over Seager and Correa. They also picked a reunion with Anthony Rizzo over Freeman and Olson.

Rizzo is a good player. He’s also coming off the worst season of his career since his rookie year nine years ago. The general perception is that his two months as a Yankee were great, when in reality, they weren’t. Rizzo homered in his first two games with the Yankees in Miami and then homered twice over the next six weeks. 

In the outfield, knowing Hicks can’t stay healthy (he’s missed 62 percent of the last three seasons), and knowing that in the last 28 months he’s had his elbow and wrist surgically repaired, and knowing that he’s now 32 years old, the Yankees created center-field depth by … doing nothing. That’s right, the Yankees are counting on Hicks to play a full season for the first time in his 10-year major-league career. They are also counting on “full” seasons from Judge and Stanton for the second straight year. (Judge played 148 games in 2021 and Stanton 139.) But if any of them should get hurt, the Yankees did give a major-league deal to Tim Locastro, who is coming off a torn ACL suffered eight-and-a-half months ago.

The Yankees went in the 2021 season with a rotation of Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery and reclamation projects in Corey Kluber, Jameson Taillon and Scumbag Domingo German. In early February 2021, Cashman said he believed in that rotation “in theory.” Kluber had spent the previous two years not pitching for health reasons and made only 16 starts as a Yankee, averaging five innings per start. Taillon made the most starts (29) he had made in three years, but still injured his ankle and needed offseason surgery. German was awful and then got injured. The patchwork Opening Day rotation Cashman built was mostly bad and mostly injured and in the 13th game of the season, the Yankees didn’t have a starter to face the Rays and instead used Nick Nelson as an opener. Eleven pitches into that eventual loss, the Yankees trailed 2-0 with a runner on second and still no outs. If you think a game on April 16 is meaningless, the Yankees didn’t clinch a postseason berth until the final pitch of their regular season in Game 162, and because of losses like that April 16 one had to play the one-game playoff at Fenway Park.

If not for the breakout season from Nestor Cortes, the Yankees’ rotation would have been in shambles. Cortes entered 2021 having pitched to a career 6.72 ERA and 6.69 FIP. He pitched in 22 games for the 2021, starting 14, with a 2.90 ERA and 1.075 WHIP. The Yankees are going into 2022 thinking the 93 innings innings from Cortes in 2021 are the real Cortes and not everything in his career prior to 2021.

They have Cole and Montgomery they can count on for health and production. Between those two in the rotation plans is Luis Severino, who has pitched 23 2/3 innings since the end of 2018 and last started a game in the 2019 ALCS. After Severino, there’s Taillon, coming off ankle surgery, and Cortes, coming off his one good season in the majors.

It would be unrealistic to think the Yankees could navigate an entire season with five starters (then again, unrealistic thinking is their thing), so they will undoubtedly need to rely on starting pitching depth to get them through 2021. Last season, including openers, they used 15 “starting” pitchers, including the legendary Andrew Heaney and Asher Wojciechowski. The Yankees’ current starting pitching depth consists of Clarke Schmidt, Luis Gil and Deivi Garcia.

The oft-injured Schmidt who was the Yankees’ first-round pick in 2017 is now 26 years old and has thrown 12 2/3 career major-league innings. In those 12 2/3 innings, he has allowed 13 earned runs and 31 baserunners.

Gil made six starts for the 2021 Yankees and was impressive at times. He also walked 5.8 batters per nine innings, which is even higher than his 5.3 walks per nine in his minor-league career.

Garcia showed flashes of brilliance with the Yankees in 2020. They also chose to use him as an opener instead of a starter in the pivotal Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, and he spent nearly all of 2021 in Triple-A, pitching to a 6.85 ERA and putting 177 baserunners on in 90 2/3 innings.

The Yankees added to their starting pitching depth this offseason by signing … no one. OK, I shouldn’t say no one. They did sign Shelby Miller to a minor-league contract last week. Since 2016, Miller has made 36 starts and 61 appearances, pitching to a 7.04 ERA, 5.38 FIP and 1.773 WHIP. I have recorded a video to play in my absence in the event he ever throws a pitch for the New York Yankees. It starts with “If you’re watching this video then you already know I’m no longer a baseball fan …”

The bullpen will be good because the Yankees’ bullpen is always good. The problem is how Boone uses his bullpen and how early into the season he will burn out his elite options. Everyone remembers Chad Green giving up go-ahead home runs in seemingly every appearance in the second half of last season. No one remembers Boone using Green for multiple innings on April 1, April 3, April 7, April 11, and April 18. Through 15 games, Boone used Green for more than an inning five times!

So the bullpen can be counted on for 2022 (as long as Boone doesn’t destroy it. Cole can be counted on (well, except against the Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays). Montgomery can be counted on to give you a good No. 3-type season. After that? The Yankees will get to where they think they can go if …

Judge stays healthy, which he has done once (2021) since 2017 …

Stanton stays healthy, which he has done once (2021) since 2018 …

Joey Gallo hits closer to his .821 career OPS and not the .707 OPS he posted in 58 games as a Yankee last season …

Hicks somehow stays healthy (this is the least likely thing to happen of all the things listed here) …

LeMahieu rebounds from his awful 2021 and hernia surgery …

Torres rebounds from his last 676 plate appearances …

Rizzo slows his obvious decline …

Donaldson stays healthy all year, which he has done one-and-a-half times since 2016 …

Kiner-Falefa isn’t an automatic out at the plate …

Higashioka, Rortvedt and Jose Trevino aren’t the worst offensive catching tandem in the majors …

Severino stays healthy for the first time since 2018 …

Taillon avoids yet another injury …

Cortes proves 2021 wasn’t an anomaly and that that’s who he truly is …

Some combination of Schmidt, Gil and Garcia provide adequate production when called upon …

The Yankees don’t need to hit on all of those things to win the division, the pennant and a championship, which is what ownership, the front office, the manager and now also Donaldson have all said is possible with this roster. But they do need to hit on a lot of those things to do so. It didn’t have to be this way. The Yankees’ 2022 season didn’t have to be one longshot parlay. Unfortunately, it is.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

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

I didn’t want Brett Gardner back for the 2019 season. I had seen enough from the then-35-year-old outfielder and his career-worst season to want the Yankees to go in a different direction. Entering the first true season of this group’s championship window of opportunity, I wanted a younger and better left field, with the assumption Giancarlo Stanton would be primarily used as the designated hitter. I wanted the Yankees to sign Michael Brantley.

I’m not sure if the Yankees ever even gave a thought to signing someone other than Gardner because in the first minutes of free agency, they brought him back on a one-year, $7.5 million deal, believing his career-low .690 OPS in 2018 wasn’t indicative of who he was at what’s now considered to be an advanced age in baseball.

Gardner was said to be the team’s “fourth outfielder” entering 2019, a position which might have gone to Clint Frazier if not for a lost season due to unfortunate injuries. As a reserve player with extra rest, the logic was that Gardner would be more productive than he had been in the career-worst 2017.

In 2019, Gardner went from being the supposed fourth outfielder to being an everyday player. The same thing happened in 2020 and again in 2021. Gardner played the third-most games on the team in 2019, the fifth-most in 2020 and the third-most in 2021.

On Monday, Gardner’s agent Joe Bick said Gardner intended to play in 2022 and prefers to play for the Yankees.

With Aaron Judge, Joey Gallo and (unfortunately) Aaron Hicks under contract, along with Giancarlo Stanton, who the Yankees are cautious to ever let play the outfield (despite his increased production when he does), Gardner would at best be the team’s fifth outfielder. But fifth is still too high on the depth chart. As long as Gardner is on the roster, he will find his way into the lineup with regularity. Injuries will make sure of it.

Before Opening Day in 2019, Gardner went from fourth outfielder to starting center fielder as Hicks started the season on the injured list (after injuring his back on a 35-minute bus ride in spring training) and Stanton joined Hicks on the IL before April 1. On April 20, Aaron Judge joined them both. In what was supposed to be a season in which Gardner would transition from an everyday player to a role player, he played in 141 games.

In 2020, Gardner was back again as the fourth outfielder. Prior to the pandemic ruining and shortening the season, Hicks was set to miss half the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, Judge was going to miss about half the season after the Yankees were unable to diagnose his fractured rib and punctured lung and Stanton was also going to miss half the season with a calf injury. If the 2020 season started on time, some combination of Gardner, Clint Frazier, Mike Tauchman and Miguel Andujar was going to be the everyday outfield.

Spring training in 2021 started without Gardner, but a week into it, he was re-signed. Despite Aaron Boone opening spring training by saying Frazier was now the team’s starting left fielder, in the third game of the season Gardner was starting in left field and would go on to play 140 games during the regular season with only Judge and DJ LeMahieu playing more.

In 2019, the Yankees needed nine outfielders to get through the season. In only 60 games in 2020, they needed seven. In 2021, they used Gardner, Judge, Stanton, Gallo and Hicks, along with Frazier, Tauchman, Andujar, Tyler Wade, Greg Allen, Estevan Florial, Ryan LaMarre, Tim Locastro, Jonathan Davis, Trey Amburgey and Hoy Park.

Last season, the Yankees got a miraculous 287 combined games played from Judge (148) and Stanton (139), and if you’re counting on that type of health in 2022, well, there was a guy in New York who recently won the lottery for the second time in three years. Hicks has missed 251 of the Yankees’ last 401 regular-season and postseason games. He’s now 32 and the most games he has played in a season was 137 back in 2018, which was a hamstring injury, significant back injury and a surgically-repaired elbow and wrist ago. Thankfully, Gallo has been exceptionally healthy in his career.

Gardner can’t be even the Yankees’ fifth outfielder in 2022 because he can never just be a bench option used a couple of days a week. No fourth or fifth outfielder on the Yankees ever remains that.

But if injuries aren’t the reason Gardner becomes an everyday player for the Yankees again in 2022, his manager will be.

Under Boone, Gardner lost his job to Andrew McCutchen after the 2018 trade deadline. Gardner wasn’t in the lineup for the 2018 wild-card game against the A’s and wasn’t in the lineup for Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS against the Red Sox. But when Hicks went down with a hamstring injury in that Game 1, Gardner came off the bench to play the rest of that game, as well as Games 2 and 3. When Hicks was healthy enough to play in Game 4 with the Yankees facing elimination, Boone benched McCutchen in favor of Gardner.

In 2019, Gardner was supposed to be the team’s fourth outfielder for the second consecutive year. But in a season that became about replacement players and “the next man up,” Gardner found himself playing in 87 percent of the team’s games, batting in the Top 4 spots in the lineup 46 times in 141 games, and when the postseason started, Boone penciled him in as the team’s 3-hitter. He would bat third in all three games in the ALDS, and then again in the pivotal Game 3 of the ALCS against Gerrit Cole, in which his first-inning at-bat swung the game (and the series) in the eventual Yankees loss.

Gardner was awful for six of the eight weeks of the 2020 regular season, but the two weeks he was productive happened to come at the end of September and right before the expanded postseason. So when it came time to fill out the lineup card for Game 1 of the postseason, Gardner’s name was on it and Frazier’s wasn’t after Frazier carried the Yankees’ offense along with LeMahieu and Luke Voit through two forgettable months.

Spring training in 2021 started without Gardner, but a week into it, he was re-signed. Despite Aaron Boone opening spring training by saying Frazier was now the team’s starting left fielder, in the third game of the season Gardner was starting in left field and would go on to play 140 games during the regular season with only Judge and DJ LeMahieu playing more.

Boone loves his veterans and he loves Gardner. When the going gets tough, Boone goes to Gardner. When the Yankees’ backs are against the wall and their season is on the line facing elimination, Boone has gone with Gardner every time and every time the Yankees have been eliminated. Boone will continue to go with Gardner every time. He’s one of his guys, and being one of Boone’s guys is in no way tied to ability or performance.

As long as Gardner is a Yankee, he will play, and he will play nearly every day. If injuries don’t force him into the lineup, Boone will. It’s time to move on. It’s been time to move on.

Way back in mid-October, the Yankees decided the status quo of being knocked out of the postseason as early as possible was something they wanted to continue to do as an organization and so they gave Aaron Boone a new contract. A month after that, Boone went on CC Sabathia’s podcast to speak about the 2021 season. Aside from saying the obvious, “As you might imagine, I don’t look at my mentions on my Twitter,” Boone said a lot on the podcast.

Last week, I broke down Boone’s statements of “I make the lineup” and “We’re gonna need a shortstop.” Today, I want to look at Boone uttering the words that should make every Yankees fan question whether or not they want to invest more of their time into this team.

“Do we look largely similar to what we’ve looked like last year?”

That was a real thought the manager of the Yankees had and he had the audacity to actually say in a public forum. That’s not an original or personal thought either. Boone said exactly what the organization is likely considering and has most certainly talked about internally.

It doesn’t matter that Boone followed that question by asking, “Or is there a blockbuster trade or signing that all of a sudden moves this guy out, trades this guy and then that starts affecting everything else?” All that matters is his admission that the 2022 Yankees looking like the 2021 Yankees is a possibility being discussed within Yankee Stadium this offseason.

It’s not a thought any person associated with the Yankees should have. How could any Yankees employee, whether you’re signing checks, making deals, filling out the lineup card, batting third, watering the infield or cold calling prospective ticket buyers think having a nearly identical roster to 2021, which was nearly identical to 2020, which was nearly identical to 2019, and which was nearly identical to 2018 should be an option for 2022?

The 2021 Yankees were the heavy the odds-on favorite to win the American League, and they finished third in their division and fifth in the AL with their postseason lasting nine innings. The 2020 Yankees barely reached the postseason with an eight-team AL field, and were ousted in the ALDS. The 2019 Yankees lost to the Astros in six games after DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres proved you can’t win a seven-game series with two productive postseason hitters. The 2018 Yankees were historically embarrassed and humiliated in four games against the Red Sox, suffering the worst home postseason loss in the history of the franchise.

Boone isn’t the first one to think the Yankees could or should look in 2022 like they did in 2021. Brett Gardner, the last remaining member of the 2009 World Series team and the only Yankee to have ever won anything (even if it was so long ago he likely doesn’t remember what it’s like to win), said nearly the same thing after the team’s wild-card loss to the Red Sox. Wearing his uniform for an extended period of time after what could be his final game as if he were Wayne Gretzky, Gardner used the phrase “run it back,” hoping the Yankees would return the same core and roster in 2022 that has never gotten the job done.

“Running it back” can’t be an option. It can’t be. “Running it back” means an everyday infield of Luke Voit, Gleyber Torres, DJ LeMahieu and Gio Urshela. It means trusting Aaron Hicks to play the first full season of his career at age 32, and knowingly going into another year with Gardner eventually getting everyday at-bats. It means more nonsensical and unnecessary drama on who the starting catcher should be and treating each individual Gary Sanchez at-bat like an audition for his job. It means not having enough starting pitching yet again and it means relying on your bullpen to protect a one-run lead nearly every night.

The Yankees aren’t getting to the World Series and losing because they’re short a starter or adding a big bat to the current roster away from getting over “the hump” Boone likes to refer to. They’re not one player away. They’re a-lot-of-the-roster away. No matter what Boone idiotically says about “how the league has closed the gap on the Yankees” or how “the margin is slim” within the AL, there has always been a gap for his Yankees and the margin isn’t slim.

The problem is while it shouldn’t be an option or a thought, “running it back” is most likely what the Yankees will do. There’s only so much that can change on the roster due to contracts and value, and the easiest route to a 26-man roster in 2022 is staying relatively the same as it was in 2021.

The status quo is the easiest and cheapest route for the Yankees to take and for a team that had the same payroll in 2022 as it did 17 years prior despite exponential growth in their revenue streams, theres’ nothing Hal Steinbrenner likes more than his Yankees looking largely similar to what they looked like the year before.