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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

I’m not sure if the Yankees ever even gave a thought to signing someone other than Gardner because in the first minutes of free agency, they brought him back on a one-year, $7.5 million deal, believing his career-low .690 OPS wasn’t indicative of who he was at what’s now considered to be an advanced age in baseball. Gardner was said to be the team’s “fourth outfielder”, a position which might have gone to Clint Frazier if not for a lost season due to unfortunate injuries, and as a reserve player with extra rest, maybe he would be more productive than he was the season before.

Gardner went from being the fourth outfielder to being an everyday player before Opening Day as Aaron Hicks started the season on the injured list and Stanton joined Hicks before April 1. On April 20, Aaron Judge joined them both. In what was supposed to be a season in which Gardner would transition from an everyday player to a role player, he played in 141 games, playing in nearly 90 percent of the games despite his own trip to the injured list. But in 2020, Gardner won’t be going from a fourth outfielder to an everyday role, he will begin the season in an everyday role with Hicks expected to miss the majority of the season following Tommy John surgery. Add in the questionable health of Giancarlo Stanton, who played in 18 regular-season games and then was injured again in the ALCS, and Aaron Judge, who finished 2016 on the then-disabled list with an oblique injury, suffered a shoulder injury he played through in 2017 and missed 50 games this past season with another oblique injury, and you can expect to see a whole lot of Gardner in 2020.

That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the Yankees were willing to bat Gardner ninth (where he belongs) and accept strong outfield defense and a weak bat from their No. 9 hitter, but we saw in the most important games of the year in the postseason that the team thinks he’s capable of batting in the middle of the order. They think this because he experienced career highs in both home runs (28) and OPS (.829), which were both clearly a product of the baseball with absurd home run totals across the league. Outside of 2018, Gardner’s average (.251) and on-base percentage (.325) this past season were the worst of his career. So coming off the worst overall season in his career in 2018, Gardner was essentially the same player, only with inflated home run power.

I’m for the Yankees re-signing Gardner. Not because I think he’s suddenly developed 28-home run power at age 36 after more than a decade of only having power at Yankee Stadium. I’m for it because the Yankees need an outfielder, they know and trust Gardner (to a fault more times than not) and with the retirement of CC Sabathia, Gardner is the last-standing veteran presence in a still mostly-young clubhouse and the last link to the Yankees’ last championship. If the Yankees would use Gardner the way he should be at this stage of his career, in what will once again be assumed to be his last season, then I don’t have a problem with his return like I did last season. I just don’t want to see him being used to divide up Judge and Stanton because he bats left-handed. Let him play Gold Glove-caliber defense and whatever you get with the bat is merely a bonus.

The Yankees need to sign an outfielder because of the injury to Hicks and they’re going to re-sign Gardner, who will be 36 on Opening Day and will turn 37 during the season, and they were most likely going to re-sign Gardner whether or not Hicks was scheduled to miss most of the season. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when. It’s going to happen. The longest-tenured Yankee will still be a Yankee in 2020.

***

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

The Yankees had to have CC Sabathia. They had to. The problem was Sabathia didn’t want to be a Yankee. As a 28-year-old free agent, he wanted to move home to California to pitch. He initially turned down Brian Cashman’s lucrative six-year, $140 million offer, and after Cashman told Sabathia’s agents he would be willing to travel to California to meet with the left-hander to negotiate, he was on his way to Vallejo. They landed on seven years and $161 million. At the time, it was the biggest contract for a pitcher in history.

The Yankees have to have Gerrit Cole. They have to. The problem is the Yankees most likely won’t offer what Cole is looking for, and after drafting him and losing him and then being unable to trade for him, the Yankees could miss out on Cole for a third time.

I have given up expecting the Yankees to better their team and fill necessary holes if it means paying significant dollars, and Cole is going to command significant dollars in what will most likely be the biggest contract ever given to a pitcher. Eleven years ago, the Yankees didn’t care about setting the record for giving Sabathia the largest pitching contract at the time, all they cared about was winning as they kept increasing their offer to Sabathia, outbidding themselves to make sure he chose the East Coast over the West Coast.

The Yankees were unwilling to take on Justin Verlander’s salary at the 2017 waiver deadline, and he single-handedly swung the 2017 ALCS in the Astros’ favor by winning Games 2 and 6. After coming within a game of the 2017 World Series, the 2018 Yankees’ payroll was cut by $50 million. After falling short again in 2018 because of their starting pitching, the Yankees were unwilling to give Patrick Corbin an additional year on his offer and he ended up in Washington. The Yankees have had several chances to drastically upgrade their rotation either through free agency or a trade over the last three seasons and they have come up short each time, unwilling to offer enough money or unwilling to depart with their prospects. And to no surprise, they have been eliminated by better starting pitching in each of the last three postseasons.

Cashman can defend the financial spending of his boss like he comically did at this end-of-the-season press conference, but everyone knows the Yankees don’t spend like they used to. Despite revenues being at an all-time high in baseball, the Yankees’ payroll has essentially stayed the same, or at times been less than it was 15 years ago when revenues were nowhere near what they are today. Cashman can keep preaching that the 2019 Yankees were “a play or two away” from going to the World Series and not “a player or two away.” Maybe so, but had the Yankees somehow been able to win Game 6 in extra innings and overcome Cole in Game 7, how were they going to actually win the World Series? Or has the goal changed to just getting there since the team has been unable to do that for 10 straight years. Zack Britton openly admitted the bullpen was exhausted after the ALCS and it was obvious with Chad Green laboring in Games 4 and 6 and Tommy Kahnle pitching like his elbow or shoulder might give at any moment. The Yankees’ bullpen-heavy approach to the postseason didn’t work again this October and it has yet to ever work for them. There’s a reason why the two teams with Verlander, Cole, Zack Greinke, Corbin, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg were in the World Series and the team asking their bullpen to get 15 outs each postseason game wasn’t.

Hal Steinbrenner has already alluded to the idea of the Yankees not signing Cole or Strasburg or any available high-salary starting pitcher. He has already given a sneak preview to their excuse that getting a full season of Luis Severino and the return of Jordan Montgomery as in-house upgrades are just as good as upgrading through free agency. Cashman has told the media he is “interested” in Cole and Strasburg and Zack Wheeler and that he has already talked to their agents. The Yankees are making it known to their fan base that they are once again doing the bare minimum, but be prepared for the statements from Cashman and the front office about getting “outbid by a number they were comfortable with” sometime between now and spring training.

As it stands, the Yankees’ 2020 rotation will include Severino and Montgomery both coming off nearly an entire missed season, James Paxton who has never pitched more than 160 1/3 innings in a season and has never avoided the injured list in a season, Masahiro Tanaka, who has somehow avoided elbow surgery all these years later, and J.A. Happ, who will be 37-and-a-half years old in April and pitched every bit like his age last season. After those five, there’s a suspension yet to be determined, and the hope that Deivi Garcia will become a true front-end starter. If not, the Yankees could always use Nestor Cortes every five days again when one of their starters inevitably goes on the injured list.

Cashman likes to refer to “boxes being checked” when talking about newly-acquired Yankees or prospects. Well, Cole checks every box the Yankees need to be checked. He’s a durable, power, starting pitcher and true No. 1. He’s what Severino has been at times, except all the time, and what the Yankees haven’t consistently had since they signed Sabathia. Like Sabathia, all Cole will cost is money, which is something the Yankees used to use to their advantage to create the best possible roster.

It’s not that the Yankees aren’t a playoff team without Cole, it’s that they aren’t a championship team without him, and isn’t being a championship team the goal here? At least it used to be.

***

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