The Yankees’ roster seems like it’s all but complete. I still think a certain bald, left-handed outfielder will be a Yankee in 2021, but aside from his return, what you see right now is what the Opening Day roster will be.
The Yankees’ roster seems like it’s all but complete. I still think a certain bald, left-handed outfielder will be a Yankee again in 2021, and aside from his return, what you see right now is what the Opening Day roster will be.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Can we get an announcement from the Yankees that they have officially signed DJ LeMahieu and Corey Kluber? What’s holding this up? Neither are actually Yankees yet and that worries me. What is preventing either of them from signing their reported contracts? I need these deals wrapped up, so I can stop lying awake at night and thinking about it. As of now, Tyler Wade is an everyday player for the Yankees and Jordan Montgomery is the No. 2 starter. Sign the contracts.
2. The Yankees are right up against the luxury-tax threshold, and they aren’t going to go over it. I know they aren’t going to because they spread out LeMahieu’s money over six years. If they didn’t care about the luxury tax (which they shouldn’t because they’re the Yankees), LeMahieu would be getting his $90 million over four years at most. It’s disappointing the Yankees are scared off by paying interest on their roster and an amount that is so inconsequential for the organization. Hal Steinbrenner isn’t going to have to live off of ramen noodles from a styrofoam cup for the next year if the Yankees go past the threshold. The Steinbrenners would make much more money than they would have to pay in luxury tax by hosting more home playoff games and possibly winning the World Series for the first time in 12 years.
3. The Yankees have seemingly enough room to bring back Brett Gardner on a very cheap deal. I didn’t want Gardner back after 2018, but now he’s needed. Not because he’s good. It’s because he’s a better option than Mike Tauchman or Greg Allen, and we’re the inevitable Aaron Hicks injury and Aaron Judge injury away from Tauchman or Allen playing an important role on the 2021 Yankees. This is all based on the Yankees finally making Clint Frazier the everyday left fielder, but after Aaron Boone’s lineup management in the postseason, that’s not guaranteed.
4. The Blue Jays aren’t screwing around. After an unexpected postseason berth in an expanded postseason field, the Blue Jays are surrounding their young, very good, inexpensive core with established major leaguers. Three-plus years ago, the Yankees reached the postseason unexpectedly and made a run to Game 7 of the ALCS. How did they surround their young, very good and inexpensive core? By cutting payroll by $50 million, that’s how. The Blue Jays recognize their window is just opening. The Yankees, on the other hand, are doing everything to help their already-opened window close. While the majority of the teams in the league are purposely tanking and fielding non-competitive teams to save money and increase the bank accounts of their billionaire owners (Cleveland currently has a $35 million payroll, which is the equivalent of Gerrit Cole and Luke Voit), the Blue Jays are going for it.
5. The AL East is now a three-team race. Even with the trade of Blake Snell, the Rays were still going to be a problem for the Yankees, and now the Blue Jays are as well. The Blue Jays finished one game behind the Yankees in the 2020 standings and had passed them in the standings for a period of time. Sure, it was a 60-game season, but it showed the Blue Jays could hang with the Yankees for at least 60 games. Now with their team having that much more experience, coupled with the addition of George Springer, and who knows who else before their roster is complete, the Blue Jays are a decent threat.
6. I say “decent” because the Blue Jays still lack starting pitching. They have less quality starting pitching than the Yankees and the Yankees have basically done all they can to have the most incomplete rotation for a team expected to contend for a championship. After Hyun Jin Ryu, the Blue Jays’ next best starter is Robbie Ray, who had a 6.62 ERA and 6.50 FIP in 12 games and 11 starts for Arizona and Toronto last season. Ray had been good in the three seasons before last (3.72 ERA and 4.09 FIP), and maybe he shouldn’t be evaluated on 51 2/3 innings in a shortened season. His 1.897 WHIP did happen, and it’s hard to ignore.
7. Even if Ray were to return his 2017-2019 self, having Ryu and Ray atop their rotation isn’t worrisome for the Yankees because they are both left-handed and the Yankees would have nine right-handed bats against them in any start. Now if the Blue Jays were to go out and sign Trevor Bauer then I would start to be really worried.
8. I don’t want Bauer on the Yankees, but I don’t want him in the AL East or on the Mets. I don’t want him standing in the way of the Yankees and a division title, and I also don’t want the Mets to be good because they’re the Mets. I want Bauer to end up with the Angels. The Angels suck and continue to waste the career of possibly the best player in the history of baseball. They aren’t signing Bauer away from being a threat. They need much more than the outspoken right-hander who has had one great full season in his career (2018) and then 11 great starts in 2020. Someone is going to overpay for Bauer because it’s a weak free-agent class for starting pitching. Let it be the Angels.
9. J.A. Happ signed with the Twins. A one-year, $8 million contract for the 38-year-old left-hander. I want to laugh at the Twins. I’m not going to go. With ALDS wins over the Twins in 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2019 and the one-game playoff win over them in 2017, the Twins are more than due to break through in the postseason, specifically against the Yankees. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Yankees and Twins meet in October and to have the Twins finally beat the Yankees with Happ leading the way. That’s the way this works. A former Yankee and goes on to haunt them. Recently, Eduardo Nunez did it. So did Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce and Brian McCann. Eight shutout innings from Happ against the Yankees in the ALDS seems about right.
10. It seems like spring training is going to start on time. Who knows if that will actually happen, but with less than a month to go until the scheduled start of it, there hasn’t been any word of it being delayed. That means we are so very close to the return of baseball, and it feels fake because I have been under the idea since the end of the 2020 season that the 2021 season would be delayed. It still could be, though as of now, we are a few weeks away from the 2021 season beginning. That makes me happy.
I’m still waiting for the Yankees to do something to improve their actual roster, not their Triple-A roster.
I’m still waiting for the Yankees to do something. Anything. Well, not anything. They have already done that by trading for Greg Allen and signing Jhoulys Chacin, Tyler Lyons and Socrates Brito. I want them to do something that will improve their actual roster, not their Triple-A roster. Spring training is in four weeks, and the Yankees don’t just have holes on their roster, they have glaring holes, big enough to build an underground parking garage.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Tomorrow will be 14 weeks since the Yankees’ season ended in Game 5 of the ALDS. Since then, the Yankees have done nothing. Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I know I keep writing that and talking about it on the podcast, but I feel like it needs to be reiterated as much and as often as possible because it’s embarrassing. I’m sure Yankees ownership isn’t embarrassed, but they should be. As a Yankees fan, I’m embarrassed. The Yankees’ championship window has closed more than expected over the last two years because of injuries and underachieving, and the team isn’t doing anything to avoid having it close even more in 2021.
2. The Yankees’ nickel-and-diming their own free agents has continued this winter their handling of DJ LeMahieu. It’s nothing new for the Yankees and how they have operated for most of the Brian Cashman era. Pay other team’s players, but not your own. It’s the same way of business that was used in signing names like A.J. Burnett (five years and $82.5 million), Jacoby Ellsbury (seven years and $153 million), Brian McCann (five years and $85 million) and Carlos Beltran (three years and $45 million). None of those four finished their contracts with the Yankees, and in terms of Burnett, Ellsbury and McCann, they paid them to play for other teams because of how badly they wanted to get rid of them. None of them were coming off the types of back-to-back seasons LeMahieu just provided atop the Yankees’ lineup, and none of them was as needed as LeMahieu is with this team.
3. Let’s say the Yankees don’t re-sign LeMahieu. If that happens, if not for needing to take care of a now-four-month-old, I would draw the curtains and stay in bed for the entirety of the baseball season. But let’s say it does happen. This would be the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup:
Aaron Hicks, CF Aaron Judge, RF Giancarlo Stanton, DH Luke Voit, 1B Gleyber Torres, SS/2B Gary Sanchez, C Clint Frazier, LF Gio Urshela, 3B Tyler Wade/Thairo Estrada, 2B/SS
This is dangerously close to happening.
4. The Yankees don’t just need to re-sign LeMahieu. They also need starting pitcher. And they don’t need starting pitching in terms of It would be nice to have another starter, they need starting pitching in terms of The Yankees might not be a playoff teamwithout at least one more starter. This is the Yankees’ current “rotation”:
5. That’s not a rotation, it’s just the names of four starting pitchers. Three of which weren’t in the planned 2020 Opening Day rotation. Montgomery wasn’t trusted to start a postseason game until the Yankees were forced into starting him, Garcia wasn’t trusted to be given an actual start in a postseason game, and Schmidt, well, the Yankees thought they were better off letting Michael King and Jonathan Loaisiga open games in a 60-game season rather than let their top pitching prospect start and didn’t let him start a game until the final game of the 2020 regular season. As for the fifth starter, take your pick between a scumbag, King, Loaisiga, or some irresponsible combination of Jhoulys Chacin and Nestor Cortes.
6. The bullpen isn’t looking too great either. The Yankees finally decided Jonathan Holder had ruined enough games for them and let him go. Loaisiga keeps getting used in high-leverage spots when he can’t get out of them. Nick Nelson flopped in his first cup of coffee in the majors. Luis Cessa … well, he’s Luis Cessa. Tommy Kahnle is both injured and a Dodger. Adam Ottavino is an untrustworthy right-hander who the Yankees only allow to face right-handers making $9 million. That leaves Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. It would have been nice to add Liam Hendriks, but the Yankees passed, letting the White Sox sign him.
7. I don’t know what the Yankees’ strength is as of now. I guess by default it’s a LeMahieu-less lineup since that four-man “rotation” is set up to destroy the bullpen on days when Cole doesn’t start, though there’s not much of a bullpen to destroy. With that lineup, which is currently the team’s “strength,” expect 18-20 strikeout games to become the norm.
8. I do think the Yankees will re-sign LeMahieu because they have to. They don’t have a choice. They don’t have another option. What would their backup plan be? A middle infield of Torres and Wade/Estrada? Bring back Didi Gregorius and move Torres to second base? Sign Michael Brantley two years after they should have and have yet another outfielder/designed hitter on the roster? All of those options suck. You know what doesn’t suck? Re-signing the defending batting champion, the team’s leadoff hitter, the most versatile defender on the team and the one Yankee you actually want to see in the batter’s box when needing a big hit.
9. As for starting pitching, I think we should expect Masahiro Tanaka re-signing with the Yankees. In last week’s thoughts, I listed the available starting pitchers not named Tanaka and not having the baggage of Trevor Bauer. It’s an ugly list unless you’re trying to build the 2015 All-Star team. The same way the Yankees don’t have a choice other than to re-sign LeMahieu, they don’t have choice when it comes to Tanaka, or at least it doesn’t seem like they have a choice. Both will only cost money, which is the Yankees’ greatest resource, but both were previously Yankees, and again: the Yankees don’t like to pay their own players.
10. The other option would be to trade for a controllable starting pitcher, which is something Cashman loves to do, even if he’s awful at picking which controllable starter to obtain. The Yankees failed Sonny Gray and he failed them in his short time in pinstripes, only to find his Oakland self in Cincinnati, and the Yankees traded for the inconsistent and oft-injured James Paxton, and as a Yankee, he was … wait for it … inconsistent and oft-injured. The Yankees have to do something to improve their starting pitching, and they only have one month to do it before spring training.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Once the New Year arrives, the countdown to pitchers and catchers is on. If it remains as scheduled, there’s not much time for the Yankees to improve their roster, which they drastically need to.
Once the New Year arrives, the countdown to pitchers and catchers is on. If it remains as scheduled, it’s in about six weeks, and that’s not much time for the Yankees to improve their roster, which they drastically need to.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. The Yankees finally made an offseason move. It didn’t make the team better in any way, but they made a move, so at least we know they know they’re allowed to modify their roster.
The move was to add soon-to-be-28-year-old Greg Allen, an outfielder from San Diego. Allen is a career .239/.298/.343 hitter in 221 games with Cleveland and San Diego with eight career home runs, though he has been able to steal bases (32 in 38 attempts), even if that’s something the Yankees don’t value and all of baseball no longer seems to either.
2. Clearly a depth move, Allen is now currently the team’s fifth outfielder, I guess? Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, Clint Frazier then Mike Tauchman then Allen. Giancarlo Stanton is no longer an outfielder and Brett Gardner is still a free agent. Once Gardner inevitably returns, he becomes the fourth outfielder (I would hope), Tauchman becomes the fifth (I would also hope) and Allen falls to sixth.
For now, it’s a nothing move by the Yankees. But when Judge and Hicks eventually go on the injured list, Allen will likely become needed.
3. The Yankees have been connected to many free agents this offseason, like they are every offseason, because they’re the Yankees and content needs to be created and clicks need to be had, but nearly all of the rumors and reports will amount to nothing. They might not make a single move of significance other than re-signing DJ LeMahieu, and who knows if they will even do that? But the one name that has drawn a lot of attention is Yasiel Puig, though I don’t know why.
It’s not that I wouldn’t welcome Puig as an addition the Yankees. I just don’t know where he fits. The Yankees have a full outfield and they have outfield depth. It’s the one area they actually have depth. Signing Puig would mean not signing Gardner, which is a decision I highly doubt the Yankees would make. But even if they were to make that decision, does Puig play over Judge or Hicks or Frazier? I’d hope not. On top of that, you’re adding yet another right-handed bat to a team that lacks an actual left-handed bat (sorry, Hicks). I don’t see it.
4. What I do see is the Yankees signing Corey Kluber. Rather, I want them to sign Kluber. I will go pick him up if needed.
Kluber faced three batters in 2020 before going down for the season. In 2019, he only threw 35 2/3 innings because of injury. But from 2014 through 2018 he was the best pitcher in the American League, pitching to a 2.85 ERA and 1.016 WHIP, while averaging 218 innings per season and 10.1 strikeouts-per-nine innings.
If the Yankees sign Kluber and he’s his 2018 self (20-8, 2.89 ERA, 0.991 WHIP, 9.3 K/9), well then they have Gerrit Cole, Kluber and potentially Luis Severino as their 1-2-3. If the Yankees sign Kluber and he sucks or goes down with another injury, it will have only cost them money. Nothing else. Just dollars. The thing the Yankees make more of than any other team.
Signing someone of Kluber’s ability is a move the Yankees should make because of their financial resources. It doesn’t hurt their prospect pool and doesn’t hurt their bank account given the salary Kluber will sign for to prove he can still pitch.
Will the Yankees sign Kluber? Probably not. Why? Because it will cost money, and the Steinbrenners are now poor following the 2020 shortened, fan-less season.
5. I have no idea how the Yankees plan to build a rotation for 2021, and I have no idea how they think they can without re-signing Masahiro Tanaka.
Charlie Morton (Atlanta on a one-year, $15 million deal) and Mike Minor (Kansas City on a two-year, $18 million deal) are off the board. Robbie Ray re-signed with Toronto and Drew Smyly signed with Atlanta. The list of available free-agent starting pitchers not named Masahiro Tanaka is frightening.
6. Outside of Trevor Bauer, who is the best available, but the worst fit for the Yankees, the other big-name options are Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, Jordan Zimmermann, Jeff Samardzija, Cole Hamels, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Leake and Rick Porcello. The problem is that it’s 2021 and not 2016.
Tanaka makes too much sense for the Yankees. He’s consistent (3.74 ERA over seven seasons), he’s durable (at least 27 starts in all full, 162-game seasons since 2016) and he was historically great in the postseason prior to his two 2020 postseason starts. He knows New York and the Yankees and they know him.
I think the Yankees will re-sign Tanaka. I just think it won’t happen until LeMahieu signs with the Yankees or somewhere else.
7. If it’s somewhere else for LeMahieu, I don’t know if I will be writing or podcasting about it. Not re-signing LeMahieu might be the move that officially sends me off the grid, and removes Yankees baseball from my life. Because not signing LeMahieu would be so inexplicable, so irresponsible, so nonsensical and so disgusting I don’t know how I could continue to follow, root for and cover the team.
The fact it’s Jan. 7 and LeMahieu is still a free agent makes me sick. The Yankees are clearly waiting him out to save some money because they need to be financially responsible now that they’re poor, and the longer this goes, the better chance he signs with the Mets or Dodgers or Nationals are someone else.
8. Spring training begins in about six weeks and the first spring training game is scheduled for seven weeks from this Saturday. That’s not that far away. (Yes, this is under the assumption the season will start on time, and until I’m told otherwise, I will operate under that assumption). The Yankees have A LOT of work to do in not so much time. I get nauseous thinking about how little time they have to improve their roster and to stop supporting the frame keeping their window of opportunity open with duct tape.
9. Phil Hughes announced his retirement from baseball, though I think the league kind of announced that for him with the lack of offers over the last couple of seasons. Hughes never lived up the expectations of being a first-round draft pick and the team’s top prospect, but he did have his moments. He served as Mariano Rivera’s setup man in 2009 and was invincible in that role (prior to the postseason), and the following year he was an All-Star for his magnificent first-half production in his first full season as a starter.
Hughes’ Yankees career was marred by inconsistency and an inability to put away hitters and allow two-strike fouls (something I wrote about at length during his final years in New York). He had a lengthy career, made a lot of money and has a championship ring to his name, so it wasn’t like he was a bust. He just wasn’t what I thought he would be.
It’s been two months since the Yankees last played. A long two months.
It’s been two months since the Yankees last played. Two months today, actually, and it’s been a long two months. After the Yankees bowed out in Game 5 of the ALDS to the Rays, I had to watch the Astros fail to match the Red Sox’ historic 2004 ALCS comeback leaving the Yankees as the only team in baseball to ever blow a 3-0 series and then I had to watch the Dodgers overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NLCS and go on to win the World Series with my wife taunting me along the way. Yes, I’m (begrudgingly) happy my wife got to experience her favorite team winning a championship, but I have had to hear about it multiple times a day since. It’s not going to end anytime soon, and her daily wearing of 2020 world champion apparel isn’t helping. Two months down, more than two months to go until spring training. That is if spring training happens as scheduled which is about as sure of a thing as Clint Frazier playing over Brett Gardner (who isn’t even currently a Yankee) in 2021.
We’re long past the point of the offseason where click bait headlines are even remotely intriguing. The endless stories and “reports” about nearly every team being tied to a free agent are tiresome and in just a few weeks, we have had to hear about whether or not the Yankees will tender Gary Sanchez (no-brainer), if they will re-sign DJ LeMahieu (they better), that they might be interested in Yadier Molina (please, no), or maybe James McCann (pass), and that Michael Brantley is their Plan B if LeMahieu goes elsewhere (is it the 2018-19 offseason?) It’s not going to end anytime soon. Not until every last viable free agent is off the board.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. It’s going to be a dark day in the Keefe household if DJ LeMahieu doesn’t sign with the Yankees. If I didn’t have the responsiblity of taking care of another human now, I would have already bought blackout shades and curtains for my windows in the event LeMahieu signs elsewhere, so I could just stay in bed and watch his endless videos of his beautiful inside-out swing until Opening Day.
There’s no reason for the Yankees to not sign LeMahieu. None at all. The Yankees’ current championship window has already started to close, and it will close that much faster without LeMahieu on the team. All it will cost to bring him back is money, and reminder: the Yankees make more money than any other team in baseball.
I stay up at night thinking about the Yankees’ lineup without LeMahieu and how many strikeouts it would become capable of. I fear Aaron Hicks becoming the everyday leadoff hitter and what will happen to the infield defense with the removal of the team’s best (sorry, Aaron Judge) and most versatile player.
2. The idea Michael Brantley could be the Yankees’ Plan B if they don’t bring back LeMahieu is appalling. Brantley was a good idea … before the 2019 season, when the Yankees could have signed him to replace Brett Gardner and provide his All-Star-caliber offense for them instead of the eventual American League-champion Astros. I wrote and spoke endlessly about wanting Brantley on the Yankees instead of Gardner to no avail. Now Brantley is two years older and is better suited to be the designated hitter, which doesn’t really work on a team full of players best suited to be the designated hitter. If this were two years ago, I would be willing to go pick Brantley up myself. But to sign him because you cheapen out on signing your best player, no thanks.
3. There was never a question if the Yankees would tender Gary Sanchez a contract. Did that stop any media outlet from creating the headline “Yankees give Sanchez a contract” after he was officially given a new contract? Of course not! For as bad as Sanchez was in 2020, the Yankees were never going to let him walk for nothing. They aren’t the suddenly poor Cubs.
I will never stop believing the 2016 and 2017 versions of Sanchez still exist. I won’t stop because we see it at times. We saw it as recently as Game 2 against the Indians when he single-handedly saved the game, the series and the Yankees’ season (before he was unnecessarily benched for Kyle Higashioka).
I get that there are a lot of Yankees fans who have given up on Sanchez and who want to see Higashioka hit routine ground balls to short for an entire season in 2021. I have done my part in trying to rid the world of the fan clubs of Austin Romine (who posted a .582 OPS in 2020) and Higashioka (who walks less than every position player in the majors and some pitchers). It’s up to Sanchez to make them all look like the idiots they are.
4. The Yankees need starting pitching. This isn’t “the Yankees need starting pitching because you can never have enough starting pitching.” This is “the Yankees need starting pitching because right now their rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery, Deivi Garcia, Clarke Schmidt and … Michael King?”
Montgomery, the Yankees didn’t trust to start a postseason game until he absolutely had to. Garcia, the Yankees allowed to pitch one postseason inning. Schmidt, the Yankees didn’t give a major league start to until the last game of the regular season, choosing to continue to start or “open” with King over him, who was anywhere from bad to abysmal in all of his appearances. Luis Severino isn’t expected back until midseason, and Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ are all free agents. There’s a 100 percent chance the Yankees will enter the 2021 postseason with their rotation completely up for debate. It wouldn’t be October without the Yankees not having clear-cut options for Games 2 and 3 of a series.
5. Now just because they need starting pitching doesn’t mean they should sign Trevor Bauer. I don’t want the Yankees to sign Bauer. Let the Mets sign him and J.T. Realmuto and George Springer. As long as they don’t sign LeMahieu.
I understand Bauer won the 2020 NL Cy Young in an 11-start season, but I also understand he had a combined 4.48 ERA (4.34 FIP) in 2019 and has put together one great “full” season (2.21 ERA in 28 starts in 2018). It’s going to cost an undeserved amount of money to sign Bauer and put him on a team and in a clubhouse with Cole, who he has a known past and rift with. It doesn’t matter that the rift is from their college days at UCLA, what does matter is that Bauer is the only one to talk about it since. And he has talked about it because he wants as many options as possible as landing spots, and it would be wise to make sure the team that makes the most money in the sport isn’t excluded as a potential landing spot. I have never heard Cole comment on his relationship with Bauer and have never heard him say it’s water under the bridge or that they were young or that it was a long time ago. That’s probably because not such a long time ago, Bauer accused Cole of cheating or doctoring his pitches on Twitter after his success in Houston. There seems to still be something there, and Bauer isn’t good enough to not care about whatever is there.
Bauer is a good pitcher, who can be great at times. But he hasn’t been great enough to get the kind of contract he’s going to get this winter. And he’s not nearly great enough to force his personality into the New York market, and into’s Cole’s rotation and clubhouse.
6. There was a recent report the Blue Jays are interested with reuniting with Happ. This needs to happen. The Blue Jays already committed to Robbie Ray and have Hyun-Jin Ryu on a multi-year deal. Add Happ to the rotation and that’s three left-handed starters the Yankees will have a chance to see in the six series between the teams (if there’s a 162-game season). The Yankees crush left-handed pitching (because they still don’t have any left-handed-only hitters not named Gardner), and adding Happ’s quickly-declining fastball and inability to go five innings, and the path to the AL East title gets that much easier. Happ also owes the Yankees many, many wins from the last two seasons, and what better to make up his awful 2019 and 2020 than by pitching against the Yankees in 2021.
7. Charlie Morton signed with the Braves. The same Charlie Morton I wanted the Yankees to sign instead of Happ before 2019. The same Charlie Morton many Yankees fans told me was never an option because he would only pitch for the Rays to be close to his Tampa home. Last time I checked, Atlanta isn’t another name for Tampa. Atlanta is in Georgia. Tampa is in Florida. Atlanta to Tampa is an hour-plus flight or six-and-a-half-hour drive.
I have long said if the Yankees gave Morton more money than the Rays did he would have been a Yankee, and his decision to sign with the Braves proves it. The Yankees train in Tampa. They play three series a year in Tampa. New York to Tampa is a two-and-a-half-hour flight. Morton could have been a Yankee. And if he had been, maybe the Yankees’ World Series drought isn’t going on 12 years.
All Morton did with the Rays was go 18-8 with a 3.33 ERA and 282 strikeouts in 232 2/3 innngs in the regular season. In two postseasons with the Rays, here’s what he did in six starts: 30 IP, 26 H, 9 R, 7 ER, 10 BB, 36 K, 2 HR, 2.10 ERA, 1.200 WHIP. Yeah, the Yankees were better off letting Chad Green “open” Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS and let J.A. Happ do whatever you want to call what he did in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS than they would have been with Morton. Morton went on to solidify himself as the best Game 7 pitcher in baseball history and the Yankees went on to two more early postseason exits.
In the last three-plus calendar years, the Yankees have passed on taking on Justin Verlander’s contract, including Clint Frazier or Miguel Andujar in a trade for Cole, signing Patrick Corbin and signing Morton. Verlander, Cole and Morton all went on to beat the Yankees in October and Corbin went on to win the World Series in his first season with the Nationals.
8. In Brian Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference, he mentioned Gio Urshela having a bone chip in his right elbow that wouldn’t need surgery. In a tale as old as time, Urshela underwent surgery this past week to remove the bone chip and will be sidelined for three months. That means if everything goes right, Urshela will be able to play baseball in early March, giving him nearly a month to get ready for the 2021 (if it begins on April 1). But the last time everything went right for the Yankees was 11 years ago.
I don’t know what to say about the Yankees and their handling of injuries anymore. In 2019, they set the all-time single-season record for players placed on the injured list. They followed that up by not properly diagnosing Paxton’s back injury from September 2019 until February 2020, Severino’s elbow issue from October 2019 until February 2020 and Judge’s collapsed lung/broken rib suffered in September 2019 until the spring of 2020. These all came after Hicks rehabbed a torn elbow ligament on his own in the second half of 2019, and talked his way onto the 2019 postseason roster, before eventually needing Tommy John surgery.
Now if Urshela’s rehab has a single setback, the Yankees will have a third straight season affected by their inability to properly diagnose and treat injuries.
9. The Yankees spent the last three seasons letting Jonathan Holder ruin important games. It started in the third game of Aaron Boone’s tenure as manager in Game 3 of the 2018 regular season and it never ended.
Holder was allowed to pitch in the most important game of the 2018 regular season, the first game of a four-game August series in Boston with the division on the line. Holder faced seven batters and didn’t retire any of them. His line: 0.0 IP, 5 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. In June of 2019, Holder set the kind of record no one wants to hold, allowing another five earned runs without recording an out against the Blue Jays: 0.0 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 HR.
Like every other mediore-to-bad Yankee, Holder inexplicably had his fans, and they never enjoyed my criticism of the right-hander who the Yankees never fully realized was incapable of getting big outs or preventing the elite arms from having to warm up or come into games they had no business being a part of. I like to think the fans infatuated with Holder and Hicks and Higashioka are the same who loved Romine and Swisher.
Rather than offer Holder a contract that is equivalent to couch change for the Yankees, the Yankees didn’t tender him a contract. In a season in which the Yankees would let Luis Avilan try to close out the Rays one day and then designate him for assignment the next, let Miguel Andujar pinch hit for Mike Tauchman in the ninth inning one day and then send him down the next, deem Mike Ford not good enough to be a Yankee in September but able to pinch hit in two postseason games with Sanchez and Frazier on the bench, the Yankees let Holder ruin games for one more season before deciding to not re-sign him.
10. Last week, Cashman said, “I’ve had three managers: 10 [years] with Joe Torre, 10 with Girardi and hopefully 10 more with Boone.”
I don’t think I can handle 10 more years of Boone. Unless there’s multiple championships over that 10 years. Another 10 years of Boone would take us through the 2030 season. 2030! The moment the Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury I began to count the days until he would no longer be a Yankee, and that was only a seven-year contract, which became a six-year contract, and because of his inevitable injuries, he only played in four of the years. That was nothing compared to what 10 years is.
Cashman doesn’t speak publicly about a manager or player unless he feels he has to, and he’s brutally honest when he does. So if he’s willing to go out of his way to publicly say he wants Boone as manager for 10 years, Boone will be manager as long as Cashman is general manager. It’s not good that mismanagement, especially in October, is acceptable, and that despite it in two of his three postseasons as Yankees manager Cashman is still publicly saying he wants Boone as manager for another 10 years.
A lot would have to change for me to be OK with Boone being Yankees manager for another decade. A lot.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Zack Britton will be a Yankee in 2021 and 2022. As of now, Brett Gardner isn’t a Yankee, but that’s likely to change the way it has in recent offseasons.
This past season, I wrote Yankees Thoughts following each Yankees series. I wanted to do something similar this offseason since it’s once again an important offseason for the Yankees in their current championship window as the urgency to win a championship with this Yankees team continues to grow.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Despite Hal Steinbrenner claiming the Yankees lost more revenue than any other team in baseball in 2020 (and conveniently leaving out that the Yankees make more than any othe team in normal seasons), the Yankees did what they had to do in bringing Zack Britton back for 2021 and 2022. And yes, they had to do it.
After trying to navigate the posteason with only three trustworthy bullpen arms (and at times not even that), Britton was the best and most trustworthy of them all. The other two were Chad Green, who faltered at times, like he has in each of his four postseasons with the Yankees, and Aroldis Chapman, who once again allowed a season-ending home run. After Britton, Green and Chapman, it was Adam Ottavino, who the Yankees clearly no longer have faith in, Jonathan Loaisiga, who the Yankees inexplicably promoted to high-leverage situations, Luis Cessa, who is still Luis Cessa, and then a wide array of fringe major league arms like Jonathan Holder and Nick Nelson, who you don’t want to see in a regular-season game let alone in a postseason game. The decision to let the homegrown star in Dellin Betances leave via free agency coupled with Tommy Kahnle’s season-ending Tommy John surgery really screwed up the Yankees’ Rays-like strategy to go to their bullpen whenever they wanted.
2. Bringing back the team’s best reliever when all it would cost is money (something the Yankees still make more of than any other team even as they have planted the seeds they won’t want to spend this offseason) was a no-brainer. Britton has gotten better and better the farther removed he has gotten from his Achillies injury, and after an up-and-down 2018 season with the Yankees following a trade deadline deal, Britton has been his old self (minus those 32 walks in 61 1/3 innings in 2019). As a left-handed reliever who can get both righties and lefties out, at $14 million, he’s a (pre-pandemic) bargain and with his ability to keep the ball in the park (his -6.8 launch angle was the lowest in the league this season), two more years of Britton even at age 33 and 34 is well worth it.
3. According to MLB.com, the Yankees declined Brett Gardner’s $10 million option for 2021. Gardner gets $2.5 million for being “bought out” of his option, which is a nice little gift for a player who had a horrendous regular season and who has now made roughly $85 million in his career. Gardner will be back though. The buyout was just a way for the Yankees to save some money, as they will “ultimately” (I had to get Aaron Boone’s favorite word in here) bring their longest-tenured player back for a 14th season.
After 2018, I didn’t want Gardner back. He had hit 236/.322/.368, posting the worst batting average and on-base percentage and second-worst slugging percentage of his career to go along with the worst OPS (.690) of his career. It didn’t make sense to re-sign a 35-year-old after putting up the worst statistical season of his career, is the streakiest hitter of all time and whose game is based around his legs. Gardner had played himself out of an everyday job when the Yankees traded for Andrew McCutchen, and yet, the team still thought they should re-sign him with a better option in Michael Brantley (who I begged for) available. Gardner only ended up playing in the 2018 ALDS because of an injury to Aaron Hicks (shocker) and he went 0-for-8 with three walks, looking incapable of putting the ball in play against elite pitching.
When Major League Baseball decided to completely change the construction of the baseball, it saved Gardner’s career. He mashed a career-high 28 home runs in 2019 and went from fourth outfielder to starting outfielder after Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Hicks all missed signifcant time. His trademark high on-base percentage was still awful (.325), but his flyball outs from the year before were never leaving the park at a record rate for him. His power emergence at age 35 led to Boone idiotically batting him third in the postseason.
4. This season, Gardner was putrid until the final two weeks of the regular season. The player I have referred to as “The Streak” for many years now couldn’t get on one of his patented hot streaks until right before the postseason. And though Boone and the Yankees have admitted they don’t believe in hot streaks or a player being “hot,” they must have changed their theory on the old baseball adage as Gardner’s final two weeks of the regular season were enough for him to start in the postseason over Clint Frazier, who had experienced a breakout and consistent regular season both offensively and defensively and who single-handedly carried the offense at times over the two-month season. When Judge and Stanton went down (like they always do) and Hicks was unproductive and Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on, it was Frazier who saved the outfield production and possibly the season. But a handful of Gardner at-bats against Blue Jays pitching was enough for Frazier’s season to be disregarded.
Two years ago I didn’t want Gardner back, but now I do. Tauchman can’t be trusted to be the the team’s fourth outfielder going on 30 with one great six-week run on his major league resume, and it’s inevitable Judge and Hicks will miss time and Brian Cashman admitted Stanton is no longer an outfield option. So I want Gardner back. As long as he’s not in the starting lineup over Frazier 11 months from now.
5. Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ are now all free agents, which means right now, the Yankees’ 2021 Opening Day rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery and Deivi Garcia. Montgomery, the Yankees didn’t trust to use in the postseason until it became a necessity, and Garcia, the Yankees only allowed to pitch for one inning in the postseason with Cashman citing “this stage of his career” as a reason to not let him truly start a postsason game (ask the Braves’ Ian Anderson who had the same six career regular-season starts before this postseason how important “this stage of his career” was in October). After those three, it’s Clarke Schmidt, who the Yankees didn’t give a major league start to until the last game of the regular season as they continued to choose to go with Michael King as an opener over their top-rated pitching prospect. If the season starts on time (enormous “if”), the Yankees won’t have Luis Severino back until June at the absolute earliest. The Yankees desperately need starting pitching.
6. I would re-sign Tanaka. Two bad postseason starts aside, he’s still a good pitcher, who I still trust, and who the Yankees need. I would let Paxton and his injury-plagued career walk, seeing as though I was against trading for him when it happened. (If only the Yankees had an inexpensive, left-handed rotation option. Oh that’s right, they traded that pitcher in Justus Sheffield for 34 Paxton starts around two injured-list stints, back surgery, lost velocity and one mediocre postseason.) I would obviously let Happ walk and block his and his agent’s phone number as well.
Luckily for the Yankees, one of the game’s best pitchers is a free agent in Trevor Bauer. All it will take to make him a Yankee is money (once again, something the Yankees make more of than any other team). Bauer makes too much sense for the Yankees. A rotation featuing Bauer, Cole and Severino would give the Yankees the best rotation (when healthy) in the league. (Though I guess signing Bauer is also dependent upon the current status of his relationship with Cole which was supposedly rocky when the two were at UCLA together).
In reality, the Yankees will re-sign Tanaka, because they don’t really have a choice, and then count on Severino coming back and being his dominant self right away, even though there’s a history of most pitchers not pitching like their usual selves until their second sesason removed from Tommy John surgery.
I fully expect the Yankees to once again have an incomplete rotation come October 2021 with the annual debate on who should start Games 2 and 3 in a postseason series.
7. At some point in each of the last 25 days, I have thought about Game 2 of the ALDS. This past week, I watched the video of Michael Kay ripping the Yankees on the YES postgame show following Game 2 and I also listened to CC Sabathia’s similar rant on his podcast. All this did was make me more angry than ever about a baseball game that is now nearly four weeks old. I still cant believe the Yankees did what they did in that game. I can’t belive Cashman allowed Boone to make such an important and wrong decision, which was first-guessed at the time by everyone and not second-guessed after the poor result. Happ’s legacy as a Yankee will be that he was great in the regular season post-deadline in 2018, lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS in the first inning, was horrible in the 2019 regular season, gave up a walk-off home run out of the bullpen to lose Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS, spent an inconsistent 2020 regular season openly complaining about his usage and his contract option and then pooped his pants on the Petco Park mound in the postseason against a nearly all-left-handed lineup.
8. Charlie Morton shut down the Yankees in the ALDS after shutting them down as an Astro in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS and he has now emerged as the best Game 7 pitcher in baseball history. The Yankees could have had Morton. I know there’s the idea Morton was only going to pitch for the Rays to be close to his Florida home, but I don’t buy it. The Yankees gave Happ more money than they gave Morton and had they given Morton the money they gave Happ or better (he was worth more), he would have been a Yankee. There’s no way he takes less money to pitch for the Rays. Not when the Yankees train in Tampa near his home. Not when the Yankees play three series per year in Tampa. Not when a flight from New York to Tampa is three hours at most. The Yankees could have had Morton and they chose Happ. Well, first, they could have had Patrick Corbin, and they chose to not give him the extra year he wanted, then they picked Happ over Morton. Both Corbin and Morton have pitched in the last two World Series.
9. Dusty Baker is 71. Tony La Russa is 72. Baker manages a team that came within a win of their third World Series in four years and La Russa now manages a team that was nearly the 1-seed in the American League, reached the postseason for the first time in 12 years and is set up to be the dominant team in the AL Central for the forseeable future. While the Yankees (Boone), Red Sox (Alex Cora), Mets (Carlos Beltran then Luis Rojas), Dodgers (Dave Roberts) and many other teams have turned to managers with no experience seen to be able to be easily molded by the front office as “puppets” (though Cashman said at his end-of-the-season press conference that Boone “isn’t a puppet”), two of the best rosters in baseball have gone against the grain of the new-age young and inexperienced manager.
No, I don’t want the Yankees to hire someone like Baker or La Russa. I just think it’s interesting teams are reverting back to old-school managers now. The Yankees need to make a managerial change. They aren’t going to, but they need to. But I wouldn’t have wanted them to hire either as their next manager.
10. For all the praise I have given Kevin Cash this season, he ruined his team’s season in Game 6 of the World Series. I understand the “third time through the order” and giving teams different looks, but there’s no justifable reason for taking Blake Snell out of that game after he had shut down the Dodgers for five innings and the top of the order, which was due up, was 0-for-6 with six strikeouts against him.
Both Cash and Dave Roberts made Boone-type moves in the World Series and the Dodgers are very lucky Roberts didn’t manage them to third their World Series loss in four years after his decisions in 2017 and 2018.
It’s good to know other teams deal with the same nonsensical decision making the Yankees are hampered with. It’s not good to know so many managers can’t make the simple, logical and right move in a big spot.
