Yankees Postseason – Keefe To The City

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Oct 7, 2021

Yankees Need Organizational Change This Offseason

I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m not even annoyed or frustrated. I’m accepting of the Yankees’ disappointing ending because it was a disappointing season.

I was ready for exactly what unfolded on Tuesday. I expected the Yankees’ offense to disappear the way it always does in big games, especially in October, and I was prepared for Gerrit Cole to continue to pitch the way he has since injuring his hamstring on Sept. 7. I wrote I had a bad feeling about the wild-card game, and that feeling came to fruition as the Yankees’ 2021 season ended after a single “postseason” game.

The 2021 Yankees spent six months and 162 games foreshadowing how a one-game playoff would play out, and the nine-inning debacle perfectly portrayed the season. Cole sucked the way he had sucked since his Sept. 7 start against the Blue Jays. The offense that scored less runs than the Indians and Angels this season and that scored six total runs over the final three games of the season with a postseason berth on the line showed up. Aaron Boone mismanaged his bench and let Cole, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga all go longer than they should have, which has become a staple of his managerial style. Phil Nevin inexplicably sent Aaron Judge home on a play in which Judge wasn’t even in the camera’s view with the ball already waiting for him at the plate. Ultimately (to use Boone’s second-favorite word after “obviously”), the Yankees lost a game that ended four batters into the bottom of the first inning.

I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m not even annoyed or frustrated. I’m accepting of the Yankees’ disappointing ending because it was a disappointing season, and it was made possible by the Yankees’ belief they could bring back the same manager and essentially the same roster which hadn’t been good enough the last few seasons and think it would magically be good enough this season.

The Yankees built 40 percent of their Opening Day rotation on arms that hadn’t pitched in two years due to injury. Another 20 percent of the rotation was made up by an arm that had been suspended since the second half of 2019. They went into the season with two reliable and healthy starters in Cole and Jordan Montgomery, praying Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia would emerge, if needed. Schmidt was injured on the sixth day of spring and Aaron Boone said he would miss “three to four weeks.” He began a rehab assignment more than five months later. After Garcia showed promise in the majors in 2020, he walked 68 in 90 2/3 innings at Triple-A and got torched in his two starts with the Yankees in 2021, taking more than just a step back in his progression in what is a serious issue for the organization’s player development. By the 13th game of the season, the preseason favorite to win the American League was using Nick Nelson as an opener in an important game against the Rays, a game in which Nelson allowed four earned runs in 1 2/3 innings.

I call an April 16 game against the Rays an “important game” because every game is important. Every single game. The Yankees didn’t lose the ability to play the wild-card game at home in the final weekend of the season when they couldn’t win a home series against a Rays team with nothing to play for, the same way they didn’t lose the division when they lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. The Yankees blew the first wild card and they blew the division over the entire season beginning on Opening Day when Nelson was used in the 10th inning in Game 1 on April 1.

This season was miserable. Despite winning 92 games, you could count the enjoyable moments of the season on one hand, as the majority of those 92 wins were painful, nail-biting affairs until the final out. The Yankees started the season 5-10, were 41-41 on July 4 and lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. They went 25-24 against the Orioles, Tigers, Indians, Phillies, Angels and Mets, and lost three of six to the Orioles in September.

Starting 1-5 against the Rays, 0-7 against the Red Sox and getting swept by the Tigers was a sign of things to come and also a cry for help. That help came when after vehemently denying that being all-right handed would hinder the Yankees’ chances at success, Brian Cashman pivoted at the trade deadline and acquired two left-handed bats in Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo. Rizzo hit an OK .249/.340/.428, while Gallo was a disastrous .160/.303/.404. To bolster an injured rotation and worn down staff, Cashman acquired Andrew Heaney, who allowed 29 earned runs in 35 2/3 innings and was designated for assignment on the day of the wild-card game. To fill the void left by trades of the always-uninspiring Luis Cessa and the flat-out awful Justin Wilson, Cashman brought in Joely Rodriguez in the Gallo deal and traded for Clay Holmes from Pittsburgh. Rodriguez was solid and Holmes became arguably the team’s best reliever alongside Jonathan Loaisiga.

Aaron Boone spent his fourth season lying, exaggerating and mismanaging the team to countless losses, showing no signs of improvement as a manager who was hired without coaching or managerial experience at any level. His sole job as manager is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed, and after using one hand to count the enjoyable moments of the season, you can use the other to count the amount of times Boone did just that. (You’ll likely have some fingers left over.)

The lying began on the first day of spring training when Boone said Gary Sanchez would catch Cole in 2021 after separating the two in 2020. Sanchez caught Cole on Opening Day, once out of necessity when he pinch hit for Kyle Higashioka and once when Higashioka was on the COVID list. The same day Boone said Sanchez would catch Cole, he also said Clint Frazier would be the team’s starting left fielder. In the third game of the season, Brett Gardner was starting in left field. To compound his lies about Sanchez and Frazier on that February day, Boone told the media Giancarlo Stanton would play the outfield. He said the same thing in March, April, May and June. Finally on the second-to-last day of July, Stanton played the outfield.

The exaggerating came after nearly every game. You can use those remaining fingers to count the amount of times Boone didn’t mention his starting pitcher having “great stuff” despite the team losing 71 of their 163 games. Boone spent six months telling fans the Yankees “would be fine” or that they would “turn the corner” or “start rolling.” They weren’t fine, never turned the corner and didn’t roll anywhere other than to another early offseason. Between Boone’s endless uses of “obviously” and his daily tipping of his hat to the opposing starter (even when it was Michael Wacha, Matt Harvey, Jordan Lyles, Bruce Zimmerman or any one of a number of fringe major leaguers) came unbelievable defenses of his nonsensical decisions and his players’ underperformance.

The most memorable example of this came when Boone idiotically declared Hicks the team’s No. 3 hitter in spring training, and after Hicks went 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the first series of the season (in which the Yankees lost two of three), Boone was questioned about moving Hicks out of the coveted spot. He answered by saying, “Hicks will be fine.” Eight games later, Hicks was batting sixth, and four games after that, he was hitting seventh before eventually being lost for the season after playing in only 32 games. (Hicks has now played in 493 of a possible 870 regular-season games as a Yankee or 57 percent over six years.)

The 2017 Yankees came within one game of the World Series and replaced Starlin Castro, Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury with reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton and budding (at the time, but no longer) star Gleyber Torres. In four years Boone took that roster and won one division title, lost in the ALDS twice, the ALCS once and now the wild-card game as well. Boone has overseen two postseason exits to the Red Sox and was the manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in Yankees history. The Yankees as a team have gone backward with Boone at the helm and the core of players he inherited have all regressed during his tenure.

Tuesday’s loss wasn’t on Boone, even as he started Higashioka with the season literally on the line, didn’t pinch hit for the weak-hitting Higashioka until the eighth inning when the remainder of the game was a formality and used Rougned Odor before Sanchez. But the Yankees playing in that game and that game being played in Boston? Boone had a lot to do with that. As did his starter in Cole.

There was a time when I would have argued Gerrit Cole being the best pitcher in baseball. I won’t make that argument again anytime soon.

Cole’s performance was an embarrassment. “Sick to my stomach,” he said after the game, after making Yankees fans sick to their stomach over his final five September starts, in which he left early against the Blue Jays, needed 108 pitches to get through five innings against the Orioles, allowed seven earned runs and 12 baserunners in 5 2/3 innings against the Indians, got bailed out by the offense in Boston and allowed the most extra-base hits in a single game in his career in Toronto. Cole allowed 19 earned runs in his last 26 1/3 innings of the regular season with hitters batting .311/.364/.566 against him. Why anyone thought he would just turn it on like a light switch on Tuesday against a team he didn’t pitch well against when healthy on a mound he has never pitched well on in his career is beyond me.

And I use “when healthy” because Cole clearly isn’t healthy. Following the hamstring injury on Sept. 7, he was basically the right-handed version of Heaney for the rest of the season culminating with him throwing batting practice at Fenway Park in the wild-card game. But as Derek Jeter used to say, if you’re out on the field playing (or in Cole’s case pitching) then there’s no excuses. Cole deemed himself healthy enough to pitch and to take the ball in an elimination game and now he must own the humiliating effort.

Maybe a 12th straight championship-less season is for the best. Maybe the Yankees needed this finish to their season to make real organizational changes because that’s what they need: organizational change. Had the Yankees won on Tuesday and then inevitably got trounced by the Rays in the ALDS, the front office would easily give Boone a new contract, let Boone talk about how “slim the margin is between the Yankees and the team that wins the World Series” and chalk up another first-round exit to the “randomness of the postseason” as Cashman likes to do.

Immediately after the wild-card loss, while still wearing his Yankees uniform for possibly the last time, Brett Gardner said, “There’s a lot of uncertain, uncharted waters with this team heading into the offseason … Hopefully we’ll have a chance to run it back.” Run it back? Again? That’s the last thing this organization needs to be doing with this roster. They had their chance to run it back in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, and with each season they have grown progressively worse.

Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2018, saying, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” and yet, the Yankees just went through the same exercise in 2021 as they did the previous three seasons, and to no surprise the result was the same: an early postseason exit. Ownership and the front office can’t possibly think about bringing back the same manager and the same roster. Not after finishing third in the AL East and fifth in the AL in a season in which they were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series.

Following Tuesday’s season-ending loss, Boone oddly talked about how “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees. It was a confusing comment normally reserved to compare emerging teams to a recent champion, not a team that hasn’t won a championship in what will be 13 years next October and hasn’t even played for one in that amount of time.

There’s no gap to be closed on the Yankees. They’re the ones who need to close the gap. As long as Boone is manager and this roster remains intact, the gap will only grow wider.

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Oct 5, 2021

A Bad Feeling About Yankees in Boston

When the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2004 ALCS I was a just-turned 18-year-old college student living in Beacon Hill in Boston. Six weeks after move-in day, it was parents weekend during Game 3 of

When the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2004 ALCS I was a just-turned 18-year-old college student living in Beacon Hill in Boston. Six weeks after move-in day, it was parents weekend during Game 3 of the ALCS when the Yankees put together a 22-hit performance, including 13 for extra bases in their 19-8 win to take a 3-0 lead in the series. The next morning I laughed to my dad about how the Yankees were going to sweep the Red Sox. His response? “Why would you say that?”

That night the Yankees lost to the Red Sox after Kevin Millar walked, Dave Roberts stole, Bill Mueller singled and David Ortiz went deep in the 12th. But it didn’t faze me. Sure, my dad’s “Why would you say that?” kept coming to my mind, but the Red Sox weren’t going to come back. The Yankees had to win one of the next three games of the series with two of them being at Yankee Stadium. I didn’t even think the series would get back to the Stadium, so I decided to do the most sensible thing I could think of: use essentially all of my first-semester spending money on tickets to Game 5.

My dad thought I was an idiot for blowing a summer’s worth of work for the possibility of the Yankees clinching the pennant in Boston. I wanted to see the Yankees spraying champagne on the Fenway Park field even if the friendly confines of Fenway weren’t so friendly back then and I might no longer be here if the Yankees had actually won the game. It turns out parents actually do know best. I blew a substantial amount of money to watch what was then the longest postseason game in baseball history only to have my heart ripped out and stomped out Michael Strahan-style right near the Pesky Pole where I watched Ortiz’s walk-off single fall into center field. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I still see Bernie Williams charging in on the ball, hoping Johnny Damon would stumble and fall while rounding third to head home. The money that could have been better used on Natural Light, 5-5-5 Domino’s orders or Captain Morgan’s disappeared thanks to Joe Torre’s usage of Tom Gordon and the short wall in right field, which prevented Ruben Sierra from scoring the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning.

Fourteen years later, I found myself back in Fenway Park for the 2018 ALDS. I had seen many Yankees-Red Sox games between at Fenway between Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS and Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, and nearly all of them ended in an unspeakable loss for the Yankees. From Gary Sheffield fighting fans to Chase Wright allowing back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs to Kevin Youkilis’ walk-off home run off Damaso Marte, which might still be in orbit, to Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte to countless other awful defeats. Every time I walk in there I glance over to the right-field pole and get a little queasy envisioning my 18-year-old self watching the worst collapse in postseason history take place at my expense.

The Yankees lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, but went on to win Game 2 thanks to Gary Sanchez. After Game 2, I walked back to the hotel with my then-fiancée and now-wife and our two friends looking for a place to have celebratory drinks with an Amtrak ride back home in just a few hours awaiting us. I didn’t care about barely getting any sleep or not sleeping at all. The high of knowing the Yankees had taken home-field advantage from the Red Sox in the series was enough to keep me going and keep me awake.

Two nights later that high had become an unimaginable low. Luis Severino didn’t know what time Game 3 started, warmed up late and got rocked. Aaron Boone sat back and watched Severino get barreled for three innings and let him hang around long enough to put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole and load the bases with no one out in the third. Boone relieved Severino with Lance Lynn, who wasn’t the best strikeout options, not even close, wasn’t a reliever and was nowhere near the pitcher he is now. Lynn allowed a bases-clearing double and the Yankees were on their way to the franchise’s worst home postseason loss in team history.

The following night, I was back at Yankee Stadium, hoping to be going back to Boston for a Game 5. But when Boone let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ entire order a second time just so he could face the No. 9 hitter in Jackie Bradley, there would be no going back to Boston. In the single oddest managerial move of all time, Boone put the game just out of reach for his team in the eventual one-run loss and the Yankees’ season ended, while the Red Sox went on to beat the Astros and Dodgers to win the World Series.

The Red Sox haven’t played a postseason game since winning the 2018 World Series. The Yankees have played 16 with nothing to show for it other than two more years added on to their latest championship drought. On Tuesday, they will meet again with the winner going to Tampa and the loser going home.

The Yankees have everything to lose as a team in a supposed championship window, who was the preseason favorite to win the American League and now playing in the wild-card game yet again. The Red Sox? They were supposed to only beat out the Orioles in the AL East, weren’t considered close to competing for a postseason spot, and here they are, owning the same record as the preseason-favorite Yankees and hosting the wild-card game after beating the Yankees in 10 of their 19 games.

I’m not ready for Yankees baseball to end. Even in a season that nearly put me in the hospital several times, made me question being a sports fan all together and whether I should continue to watch baseball, I don’t want it to end. But I have a bad feeling about Tuesday night. A very bad feeling. The kind of feeling only the Red Sox could make me feel, and the kind of feeling their fans used to feel before the 2004 ALCS.

Tuesday night will be about the offense. Outside of Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez’s dual disaster in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, going back to the team’s last championship in 2009, when the Yankees’ season ends, it’s because of the offense. One run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS. Four runs in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. Three runs in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. Shut out in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. Shut out in the 2015 wild-card game. One run in Game 4 of the 2012 ALCS. Two runs in Game 5 of the 2011 ALDS. One run in Game 6 of the 2010 ALCS. When the season ends, it’s because of a lack of offense, never because of their pitching.

I think Gerrit Cole will be good on Tuesday. Not great, but good. He’s never been great against these Red Sox and has never been good at Fenway Park. I don’t think he will go out and lay the kind of eggs he was laying throughout September, but I don’t think we’re going to see complete-game shutout Cole from the Saturday before the All-Star break. Partially because of his lingering hamstring issue and partially because this team has seen him too much.

The roster, game and situation is nearly fool-proof from Boone. It would take his worst performance ever to not be able to piece together 27 outs. If your name isn’t Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Jonathan Loaisiga, Clay Holmes or Aroldis Chapman, you shouldn’t see the mound on Tuesday. Maybe Wandy Peralta for Rafael Devers. Everyone else should be stapled to the dugout or bullpen bench.

That brings us to Nathan Eovaldi. The starting pitcher on my All-Animosity Team. Eovaldi was a horrible Yankee as a guy who can hit triple digits, but can’t strike anyone out. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him as a 24-year-old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if he faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in their history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the 2018 playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero.”) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion, continues to beat the Yankees’ poorly-designed, all-right-handed lineup and I’ll never get over it. If he pitches a gem on Tuesday, especially after the Yankees chased him in just 2 2/3 innings just 11 days ago, I will truly never get over it. If the Yankees lose on Tuesday because of an inability to hit Eovaldi of all pitchers, I won’t be able to get over it.

The Yankees weren’t supposed to be here. Here being in the wild-card game. And now it being in Boston isn’t a scenario I envisioned as recently as five days ago. But they are here and the only way to avoid being embarrassed by their rival who has taken the clear upper hand in the rivalry ever since I laughed to my dad on October 17 now 17 years ago is to win. Win one game.

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Oct 12, 2020

The Aaron Boone Yankees Weren’t Good Enough Again and They Might Never Be

I thought this season would be different. I really did. Then again, I have thought the last three seasons would be different, and they haven’t been. Once again, these Yankees weren’t good enough to win in the postseason, and I’m not sure they will ever be ready to.

I thought this season would be different. I really did. Then again, I have thought the last three seasons would be different, and they haven’t been. Once again, these Yankees weren’t good enough to win in the postseason, and I’m not sure they will ever be ready to.

Most people think I’m negative or pessimistic when it comes to the Yankees. I try to tell those people I’m a realist. I’m optimistic when I need to be and pessmistic when I need to be. I write and speak facts about the Yankees and give my opinion on those facts. Most Yankees fans don’t want to read or listen to facts about their favorite team if they don’t toe the party line that the front office and manager have created. To believe every decision Brian Cashman and his team make is the right one and to think every move Aaron Boone makes is the best one, and to trust that neither can do no wrong takes a special kind of idiot. The Yankees have won one championship in the last 20 seasons and haven’t even appeared in the World Series in a decade.

***

When Cashman finally decided to pull the plug on Sonny Gray as a Yankee because Cashman’s pitching department couldn’t tap into the pitcher who David Ortiz referred to in 2015 as “the toughest guy I’ve faced in the last few seasons,” Cashman said the following: “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results.”

Rather than try to continue what Cashman thought was attempting to jam a square peg into a round hole, Cashman decided to move Gray, who has pitched a 3.07 ERA with 277 strikeouts in 231 1/3 innings since being traded. Cashman traded a former (and now current) front-end starter for a single prospect in Shed Long. He then flipped Long to the Marieners for Josh Stowers. Stowers struck out 123 times in 105 games in Single-A for the Yankees.

The point isn’t that Cashman wrongfully gave up on a guy who still clearly had No. 1 stuff (and got absolutely nothing in return) because his pitching department wasn’t good enough to figure him out, the point is that Cashman got rid of Gray because he didn’t think it would work. A point he has yet to admit with the current Yankees roster he has constructed.

Each time Cashman has had a chance to put the Yankees over the top in the last four seasons, he has failed to do so and ownership has failed to allow him to do so. The Yankees could have had Justin Verlander at the August 2017 deadline, but they didn’t want to take on his salary. So he went to the Astros and single-handedly swung the ALCS with wins in Games 2 and 6.

The 2017 Yankees came within one win of the World Series after not trading for Verlander, and then they decided to cut payroll by $50 million for 2018. The Red Sox and Dodgers greatly outspent them that season, and guess which two teams met in the 2018 World Series?

Cashman tried to bolster the team’s staff for 2019 by trading top pitching prospect Justus Sheffield for the oft-injured James Paxton, who had never thrown more than 160 1/3 innings in a season in his career, a career which had been and still is one long injured-list stint with some innings in between rather than the other way around. In two seasons with the Yankees, Paxton was bad then hurt then good then hurt then bad then hurt again. The 24-year-old, left-handed Sheffield didn’t miss a start for the 2020 Mariners, pitched to a 3.58 ERA and allowed only two home runs in 55 1/3 innings. The Yankees could have used that arm this past week.

For 2020, the Yankees finally had starting pitching depth. Cashman and the Yankees created a rotation of Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and J.A. Happ with Jordan Montgomery as insurance. But that was in February and before Severino needed Tommy John surgery and before Paxton underwent back surgery. The Yankees’ inability to properly diagnose Severino’s elbow injury from the previous October and Paxton’s back injury from the previous September had altered their 2020 plans. The Yankees had four months from the time the 2020 season was shut down until it finally started to add to their rotation, and they didn’t. When Tommy Kahnle went down in the first weekend of the shortened season, the Yankees decided not to add to their bullpen. The trade deadline came and went and the Yankees willingly decided to take their chances with a makeshift rotation, the kind of makeshift rotation they always seem have to by the time October rolls around, and three trustworthy bullpen arms.

In February, the Yankees had the best rotation, lineup and bullpen in baseball. But as injuries piled up for the second straight season despite Cashman and the front office’s investigation into the flaws of their training and medical staff from the previous year when they set the all-time record for most players placed on the injured list in a single season, the Yankees didn’t make a single move. Well, they made one move. They gave Deivi Garcia a chance to crack the rotation, and when he proved capable of doing so at age 21, they decided to use him as a one-inning opener in the postseason, giving the majority of the ALDS Game 2 innings to J.A. Happ who spent the 2020 season underperforming like he had in 2019 and openly complaining about his 2021 option through the media. The Yankees need starting pitching for 2021. When Severino returns, he will have made three regular-season and two postseason starts since October 2018. Paxton, Tanaka and Happ are all free agents.

Right now, the Yankees’ 2020 rotation is Cole, Montgomery, Garcia and Clarke Schmidt. Montgomery was used in this ALDS because the Yankees ran out of options. Garcia has made six career starts and was inexplicably not used as a starter this postseason. Schmidt has made one career start. I guess the other rotation spot would go to noted scumbag Domingo German, who it’s now impossible to root for, the same way it’s impossible to feel anything other than awful to need to also root for noted scumbag Aroldis Chapman to close out games for the Yankees. Unfortuantely for Hal Steinbrenner, I haven’t forgotten that either is a scumbag, the way he hoped Yankees fans would when he allowed the Yankees to trade for Chapman and then gave him a five-year deal and said, “Look, he admitted he messed up. He paid the penalty. Sooner or later, we forget, right?” I haven’t forgotten, and I certaintly didn’t forget when for the second straight season the highest-paid reliever of all time gave up a home run to end the Yankees’ season.

There’s a good chance a year from now I will be writing similar words after the Yankees’ lineup beats up on back-end starters and atrocious bullpens all regular season long only to perform its annual disappearing act against front-end starters and elite relievers come October. The Yankees built a lineup full of right-handed power hitters who are exceptionally prone to the strikeout. They have no left-handed balance, making it extremely easy for a team like the Rays to trot out right-handed relievers of varying ability to shut them down. The only true contact hitter and unshiftable presence in the Yankees’ lineup is DJ LeMahieu, and he’s now a free agent, and who knows what the Yankees will do when it comes to their league-leading payroll after the pandemic-shortened season. The Hal Steinbrenner Yankees have tried to save a penny any chance they have had, and lost 2020 revenue from the pandemic and 2021 season revenue which is impossible to project is the perfect excuse for ownership to stand pat again and pretend they’re suddenly poor.

Cashman has done a lot of great things as Yankees general manager. The Yankees have won four championships in his 23 seasons with the job title. He got ownership to buy in to a rebuild at the 2016 deadline and 14 months later the Yankees were in the ALCS. He has done amazing things recently via trade like turning Chasen Shreve and Giovanny Gallegos into Luke Voit and John Ryan Murphy into Aaron Hicks. He was able to acquire Giancarlo Stanton for Starlin Castro and got the Marlins to take on part of Stanton’s contract to boot. He purchased Gio Urshela’s contract from the Blue Jays for nothing and he signed international free agents in Tanaka, Luis Severino and Gary Sanchez. Cashman isn’t the problem, and isn’t even a problem. Yes, he had to ulitimately sign off on the foolish Game 2 pitching strategy, created by someone he hired and employs, but even so, Cashman has done far more good than bad as Yankees general manger, especially of late. With the exception of one thing.

***

I often think about how much better my life would be if Tim Wakefield had struck out Boone. I definitely wouldn’t be sitting here right now waiting for a tweet to show up on my Twitter feed reading, “Source: Yankees not expected to offer Aaron Boone a new contract.” Without that home run and that moment, there’s no way the Yankees name some random third baseman they traded for at the 2003 trade deadline as their manager after moving on from Joe Girardi. There’s no way they hand over the keys to a team in a championship window to someone with no coaching experience, let alone managerial experience.

I don’t know how Cashman or the front office could have watched these seven Yankees postseason games and still believe Boone is the right man to continue to manage this team. Whether or not Boone creates the lineup or fills out the lineup card or determines scheduled days off for players in the regular season doesn’t matter. Neither does his ability to communicate with the players or the media. The goal is to win baseball games and that’s done on the field, not from playing cards on the plane on a West Coast trip or being candid with reporters before each game. Boone’s in-game management is ultimately what matters and what wins games, and in turn championships, and he’s horrible at it.

Boone was extremely bad in the 2018 regular season, his first as a manager at any level of baseball. That season was made worse when his ALDS Game 3 starter didn’t know what time the game started, and when his ALDS Game 3 bullpen management altered the series. After defending his unfathomable decision to let Luis Severino pitch a third inning in that Game 3 and allow him to load the bases with no outs before going to the bullpen and then going to Lance Lynn rather than any one of the four strikeout specialists the Yankees had in their bullpen, Boone followed it up with a Game 4 for the ages. He let CC Sabathia face the entire Red Sox’ lineup a second time because he claimed he liked the matchup of Sabathia against the Red Sox’ No. 9 hitter Jackie Bradley. That’s right, Boone let Sabathia face the first eight Red Sox hitters in their lineup to get to a favorable matchup with the 9-hitter, a hitter so bad he’s only in the majors because of his glove, and a hitter so bad anyone in the Yankees’ bullpen could get out and likely a few position players could get out as well. The Yankees’ season ended without Rookie of the Year runner-up Miguel Andujar having a chance to swing the bat in the Yankees’ final game.

Boone was able to navigate the Yankees to 103 wins in 2019 despite leading the league in injuries. He was given the credit for the Yankees’ replacement players’ success rather than the actual players themselves. (Oddly enough, when those same players didn’t perform in 2020, Boone didn’t get any of the blame for replacement players playing like replacement players.) Boone opened the 2019 postseason with Brett Gardner as his No. 3 hitter. Yes, that happened. Eventually, Boone realized Gleyber Torres should bat third and the Yankees’ young star single-handedly beat the Astros in the first game of the ALCS. But as the ALCS went on, Boone let J.A. Happ, a starter by trade in his career, lose Game 2 on a walk-off home run, and then decided the Yankees would be better suited to have Gardner back in the 3-hole, while Torres continued to be the only hitter other than DJ LeMahieu to hit in the series. The Yankees’ offense was so putrid in the 2019 ALCS that it didn’t allow Boone to really get his hands on any of the games the way he would have liked.

Boone’s in-game managing flaws reared their ugly head once again in this postseason. He single-handedly tried to lose Game 2 to the Indians and force a winner-take-all Game 3, and then against Tampa, his bullpen and pinch-hitting moves were comically bad. Boone knows the substantial amount of priase Kevin Cash gets for the job he does with a household-name less roster and a team with a total payroll equaling the salaries of the Yankees’ two top starting pitchers, and he desperately craves that praise and admiration. It’s why he tries to get his hands on any game as early as he can as often as he can. It’s why he does first-guessed, nonsensical things like pitching Jonathan Loaisiga in high-leverage situations, using Adam Ottavino with a one-run deficit, but Chad Green with a three-run deficit, or using Mike Ford as a pinch hitter with the season on the line instead of Clint Frazier or Sanchez and then citing an ability to get on base for using Ford even though Ford posted a .226. on-base percentage this season and wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee in September. Boone has spoken about how the Yankees as an organization don’t believe in “hot” or “being hot” or “hot streaks” and then he and the organization decide to start Gardner over Frazier when the postseason begins. And then after starting Frazier against Tyler Glasnow in Game 2 of the ALDS because of Frazier’s ability to catch up to Glasnow’s triple-digit velocity, it’s Gardner who starts against Glasnow in Game 5 despite being unable to catch up to that kind of heat, because Gardner had a good Game 4 against lesser pitching. Boone’s entire job as manager is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed and he rarely accomplishes that.

After the Game 5 loss, the Yankees tried to say all the right things as the Rays were busy celebrating on the Petco Park field using Frank Sinatra and “New York, New York” as their victory song, serving as the second team in three seasons to beat the Yankees and then use the Yankee Stadium victory anthem to rub their face in it, a right they earned by winning.

“(Aaron Boone) told us he was proud of us for continuing to battle down to the last out, and to continue to keep working,” Aaron Judge said. “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done with this team, with each individual. Just continue to work and don’t forget that feeling.”

Boone is proud of his team for their third straight early postseason exit and second ALDS exit with him at the helm. Boone being proud of this group perfectly sums up his friend-first, manager-second, relaxed Southern California personality that has made the Yankees feel comfortable with losing since he took over. Go back and look up the postgame comments following any Yankees loss in an important game from this season or any of the two prior and you will find a quote (I have written about most of them) in which a Yankees player or pitcher talks about how they will just have come back and be better tomorrow. These Yankees believe there is always a tomorrow because their manager preaches about “tomorrow” to the media and all too often manages as if there’s always a tomorrow.

There shouldn’t be “a lot of work that still needs to done” when a team is in a championship window. You get inside a championship window by not having a lot of work to do. You’re in a championship window because you’re ready to win a championship. The Blue Jays? They have a lot of work to do. The White Sox? Same. The Yankees with their highest payroll in baseball? There shouldn’t be any work left to be done.

“In what’s been a real year of peaks and valleys for us on the field,” Boone said, “I feel like in a lot of ways we’re playing our best baseball right now,” Boone said after the season-ending loss.”

It’s ironic that on a night the Yankees’ season ended, Boone thought his team played their best baseball. Yes, he thinks their best baseball is losing three out of the last four games of the ALDS, the same way the Yankees lost four of the last five games of the 2019 ALCS, and the same way they lost the last two games of the 2018 ALDS by getting run out of their own building in embarrassing fashion. Boone thinks the Yankees’ best baseball is being eliminated in the ALDS. He’s not wrong, as a five-game series loss to the Rays is as good as it gets for the 2020 Yankees, who went 4-11 against the Rays, who were the much better and more complete team all season.

Yes, the Yankees lost to a really good team, and one that can win the organization’s first championship. But the Yankees could have won the series. After taking a 1-0 series lead, they had the advantage, and after winning Game 4, they had the advantage. They wasted both advantages.

“We lost to a really good team,” Boone said. “We’re going to get there. I know it. And it’s going to make it all the sweeter.”

The last three postseason debacles won’t make winning a championship anymore sweeter if these Yankees ever do win a championship. It will only make it more frustrating that they wasted so many opportunities along the way. Boone can’t speak to what it takes to win in October because he doesn’t know what it takes to win in October because he has never won in October. Not as a player and certainly not as a manger. The only 2020 Yankee to have ever won anything was Gardner and he hasn’t won anything in a long time.

I’m not sure if these Yankees will ever get past their postseason problems. I’m not sure if they will ever not hold their annual offensive October disappearing act or if they will ever have enough starting pitching to navigate the month-long tournament.

It would be a lot sweeter if Boone weren’t the manager for 2021 and beyond because then at least the front office will finally have done something Boone never has as Yankees manager: put the team in the best possible position to succeed.

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Oct 10, 2020

Yankees-Rays ALDS Game 5 Thoughts: Eliminated

One run. That’s all the Yankees were able to score in a winner-take-all Game 5. One run.

I didn’t expect the Yankees to win Game 4. I expected them to lose. I expected them to lose so much that I spent the last few innings of Game 3 and the hours from then until the start of Game 4 reflecting on the end of the season and trying to figure out what I would do during the offseason, not knowing how long it might be.

The Yankees won Game 4 in improbable fashion when the weakest starting pitching option in the team’s eyes allowed only one earned run over four innings and the Yankees’ three best relievers combined to throw five shutout innings. Game 4 was the hard part. Game 4 was the obstacle. Game 5 would be much easier with the Yankees’ No. 1 starter going on three days rest against the Rays’ No. 2 starter on two days rest. The Yankees were set up to beat the Rays in two consecutive games for the first time in 2020 and avenge their embarrassing performance against them in the regular seaso. The Yankees were set up to win the series.

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One run. That’s all the Yankees were able to score in a winner-take-all Game 5. One run. A solo home run off the bat of Aaron Judge who hit three solo home runs in the postseason and might as well have not even stepped into the box in all of his other plate appearances. The Yankees produced only three hits in their nine-inning flop to the Rays, despite Gerrit Cole’s outstanding performance (5.1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9K, 1 HR). A pair of singles from Gleyber Torres and Aaron Hicks was the rest of the Yankees’ offense, as the team went 3-for-29 with four walks and 11 strikeouts. It was the exact offensive performance Yankees fans have grown accustomed since the team’s last championship when it’s all on the line: a disappearing act.

Like the Astros in last year’s ALCS, who somehow managed to hit worse than the Yankees in the series and still win, the Rays didn’t exactly knock the cover off the ball. The Rays also recorded only three hits in Game 5, the difference being that two of theirs cleared the wall. The Rays tied the game on an Austin Meadows home run off Cole and would go on to win it after a Mike Brosseau home run allowed by Aroldis Chapman, the second season in a row aa long ball off Chapman ended the Yankees’ season.

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This one hurts. They all hurt, but this one especially because it was the Rays, because the Yankees were set up perfectly to win Game 5, because it’s another wasted season of this core’s window and because it begins an offseason without a real end date. Yes, the 2021 schedule is scheduled, but there’s no way of knowing if it will take place as currently constructed or when it will take place.

The long, cold offseason is here. For the 11th straight time it has come way too early.

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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!

Oct 9, 2020

Yankees Podcast: Gerrit Cole Is Expected to Win Game 5

I didn’t expect the Yankees to win Game 4. If they were to win, I would expect them to win Game 5 because of Gerrit Cole.

I didn’t expect the Yankees to win Game 4. But if they were to win Game 4, I would expect them to win Game 5 with Gerrit Cole on the mound. Well, they won Game 4, and now I expect them to win Game 5 and advance to the ALCS.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every postseason game.

***

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