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.

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

I’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 team without at least one more starter. This is the Yankees’ current “rotation”:

1. Gerrit Cole
2. Jordan Montgomery
3. Deivi Garcia
4. Clarke Schmidt

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!

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.