Yankees – Page 130 – Keefe To The City

Oct 4, 2019

World Series or Bust for These Yankees

The grace period with these Yankees is over. This season is the first season of the window of opportunity for this core to win a championship.

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

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

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

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

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

The 2017 Yankees weren’t supposed to be good either, picked by many to finish near or at the bottom of the AL East in what was certainly going to be a rebuilding season. There ended up not being any transition or rebuilding. The Yankees seemingly hit on every prospect who reached the majors and the team went from preseason dud to postseason bound, winning 91 games and putting up a plus-198 run differential.

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

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

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

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

This season could have and probably should have been a disaster. When you set the single-season record for most players placed on the injured list, you’re not supposed to win your division or 103 games. You’re not supposed to sustain success with backups becoming everyday players and backups to the backups carrying the team for weeks at a time. The Yankees got 49 plate appearances from Miguel Andujar, 18 games from Giancarlo Stanton and 59 from Aaron Hicks; Gary Sanchez missed six weeks and Didi Gregorius and Aaron Judge each missed two months; Luis Severino pitched 12 innings and Dellin Betances faced two batters; James Paxton and Brett Gardner made trips to the injured list and CC Sabathia made several. Despite these injuries and more, the Yankees won the AL East.

It’s nearly impossible to predict who will and won’t perform in the postseason, with the goal being to get there and then hoping things go your way. The Yankees achieved that goal, winning the division for the first time since Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, Russell Martin and Nick Swisher were Yankees. The next goal is to eliminate the Twins for sixth time in 17 years, win the pennant and get back to the World Series, a place they haven’t been since Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, Melky Cabrera and A.J. Burnett were Yankees. The championship grace period for the organization is over. It’s long over. It’s been a decade of Octobers since the Yankees last reached the World Series and last won it.

The grace period for these Yankees is over as well. This season is the first season of the window of opportunity for this core to win a championship. There’s no more consolation prize for coming within a game of the World Series and losing or having another 100-win regular season and getting eliminated in the first round. From here on out, every season with this group which doesn’t end with a championship will be a missed opportunity.

These Yankees were expected to truly contend in the 2019 postseason and it’s here. This is supposed to be their time.

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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!

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Oct 2, 2019

Another Clean Slate for Aaron Boone

Like I did last October, I’m giving Aaron Boone a clean slate for the postseason. Hopefully, he won’t make me regret it the way he did last year.

The moment the Yankees won the 2018 American League Wild-Card Game, I started over with Aaron Boone. After failing to win the division and avoid the wild-card game and have a free pass to the ALDS, the Yankees survived the one-game playoff and were going to the first round. I erased the six months of questionable lineup decisions, nonsensical bullpen moves and head-scratching in-game maneuvers because the Yankees had reached the actual postseason. I agreed to only judge Boone on his managing in the real October.

Boone quickly reminded me why I was so critical of his managing throughout the regular season. In Game 3 of the ALDS, he let Luis Severino return to the mound with the Yankees already in a three-run hole and every Red Sox swing resulting in a line drive. He doubled down on his egregious decision to stick with Severino by allowing the clearly-fatigued righty (who was also somehow late to warm up for a postseason game) to load the bases with no outs before finally removing him. Needing a strikeout to begin to hope to limit the damage in the inning and save the game, Boone called on the last pitcher on the postseason roster and the worst strikeout numbers in the bullpen.

The Red Sox routed the Yankees, handing them the worst home postseason loss in franchise history and completely destroying the idea these Yankees couldn’t lose at home in the postseason after winning all six home games in 2017 and the first one in 2018. The raucous Stadium crowd, which had been present since the first pitch of the 2017 wild-card game, eagerly waiting the team’s return to glory, was silenced for the night and the Red Sox had pushed the Yankees to the brink of elimination.

The next night, Boone once against had too long of a leash for his starting pitcher, as he let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ lineup a second time. His reasoning? He liked the matchup of Sabathia against Jackie Bradley who was the Red Sox’ 9-hitter, so he allowed Sabathia to face the entire lineup to get to the last hitter in it. Maybe Boone was hesitant to pull Sabathia because of their history as friends and former teammates, or maybe it was because he truly believed his logic was sound. Either way, the Yankees were eliminated.

This regular season, we saw much of the same from Boone with more odd lineup decisions and unfathomable bullpen choices, but the Yankees won 103 games anyway, despite setting the single-season record for most players on the injured list and despite Boone causing six months of unnecessary blood pressure spikes across the Tri-state area. Though most of those wins can be attributed to the majority of Major League Baseball not caring to be competitive with 10 teams losing at least 90 games, including four which lost at least 103, it can’t be denied that the Yankees have had regular-season success under Boone, even if there would be no change in performance with a different manager managing this roster against this league.

This postseason, I’m scared of the Yankees’ offense getting shut down by right-handed power pitching the way it did in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS in Houston and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS against Boston, and I’m nervous that the starting pitching concerns will make an appearance against the best opposing lineups in the league, but I’m also worried Boone will ruin a game or games by letting the inning dictate who pitches and not the situation. How can you not be worried about this? We have seen Boone manage the same way for two full regular seasons and one postseason, choosing lesser relievers in high-leverage situations because of the inning number.

I have joked in the past that since Brian Cashman is so good at trades and so bad at free agency, the Yankees should have Cashman conduct the trades and have a second general manager handle free agency, the way some NFL teams have a kicker for kickoffs and another for field goals. I have also joked that the Yankees should follow this setup for their manager as well. Boone can be the clubhouse manager since he was hired for his personality and ability to communicate with the players. He can be the one who jokes in the room and keeps things loose with his impressions of the team’s roster. He can go out drinking with the guys after games, set up dinner plans on road trips and lead the card games on the team plane. Then, the Yankees can hire an actual game manager.

Cashman built Boone a super bullpen last October, featuring Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman, David Robertson, Zack Britton and Chad Green. But in the most important bullpen spots in the postseason, Boone either went to his bullpen too late or went to Lance Lynn instead. Buying someone a Ferrari doesn’t make sense if they either don’t know how to drive or are going to opt to drive their old, beat-up Acura anyway. Boone demonstrated all of last season he didn’t know how to manage a bullpen and it reared its ugly head at the worst possible time. This season, he has made the same egregious mistakes as last season with the same type of bullpen, and I’m petrified he could be the Yankees’ most-feared opponent in October.

If the Yankees lose this October because the offense performs its third annual disappearing act at the worst possible time or the starting pitching gets rocked or the elite relievers can’t protect leads, so be it. It will suck and I will be upset, but it will be easier to accept. If the Yankees lose because of Boone, well, that’s something I won’t be able to accept.

I’m willing to give Boone a clean slate to begin the postseason for a second straight year. Let’s see how long it lasts.

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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!

Podcasts • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Oct 1, 2019

Yankees Podcast: Chris Shearn

Chris Shearn of YES Network joined me to talk about the level of confidence for the Yankees this postseason.

The layoff between the end of the regular season and the start of the postseason feels extra long this season because there’s no wild-card game to prepare and worry about and because September was a formality for the Yankees. I’m not complaining since I’m ecstatic the Yankees have finally avoided the wild-card game, but I’m ready for Game 1.

Chris Shearn of YES Network joined me to talk about feeling confident about the Yankees heading into the playoffs, why the Yankees have the best possible ALDS opponent, what the lineup and rotation should be, trusting Aaron Boone in the postseason and what the Yankees have to do for this season to be considered successful.

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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!

Blogs • Yankees

Oct 1, 2019

2019 Yankees Over/Under Predictions Recap

The regular season is over and that means the over/under predictions for the Yankees are over as well. Before the postseason begins, let’s look back at my over/under predictions from the season and see where I went right and wrong.

The regular season is over and that means the over/under predictions for the Yankees are over as well. Before the postseason begins, let’s look back at my over/under predictions from the season and see where I went right and wrong.

Part of the write-up from March is italicized.
(This season’s win total in parentheses)

Gary Sanchez: Under 13.5 passed balls (7): WIN
Last season, Gary Sanchez led the majors with 18 passed balls despite only catching 76 games, 74 which were starts and 67 which were complete games. The year before, he led the league with 16 passed balls in 104 games caught, 99 which were starts and 91 which were complete games. Somehow, Sanchez increased his passed ball total despite appearing in 28 last games. No, that’s not ideal.

But I’m optimistic when it comes to Sanchez and think he will be better behind the plate in 2019, as long as he isn’t struggling offensively since I believed that affected his defensive work either. It would be nice to see him less, let’s say lazy, when he’s got his gear on and not letting fastballs go by him to advance base runners. Sanchez has to be better in 2019. I can’t go another season of listening to idiots call for Austin Romine to be the team’s starting catcher.

After leading the league in passed balls in back-to-back seasons, Sanchez only had seven this season. He caught 14 more games than he did in 2018 and 14 less than he did in 2017, but significantly cut down his passed ball total.

Miguel Andujar: .299 batting average (.143): LOSS
For a long time, having a .300 hitter on the Yankees wasn’t unusual, considering they had Derek Jeter for two decades and during his years also had some pretty good players. But since Jeter aged and Robinson Cano left, it’s been a while since you could look at the big screen in center field at the Stadium and see .300 next to a Yankee late in the season. Andujar’s rookie season and his contact ability are the perfect combination to believe that will change.

Technically, this is a loss, but I feel like it should go down as an incomplete. Andujar only played in 12 games, and played with a significant injury in nine of them, posting a .143 batting average (6-for-47).

It’s going to be interesting to see what the Yankees do at third base in 2019 when Andujar returns after Gio Urshela’s breakout season at the plate. Unfortunately, it’s a storyline that’s not going to go away this offseason or in spring training or in the regular season next year unless one of them is traded.

Aaron Hicks: Under 145 games played (59): WIN
Everything about the Aaron Hicks contract extension is great except that he could be playing center field for the Yankees as a 36-year-old in 2026, and I’m not about to go back to 2013-16. The good news is if he sucks then or really at any point in this deal, it’s not an overwhelming amount of money the Yankees owe him or would have to eat. At $10 million per season for a starting center fielder in this center field climate, it might be the best contract the Yankees have ever had on their payroll.

The biggest problem with Hicks is that he can’t stay healthy, which he is showing once again as he won’t be ready for Opening Day and probably not for more than a week into the regular season. Hicks needs to find a way to avoid his one to two injured list stints per seasons. It’s the last piece of the puzzle for a player who saved his career and was awarded life-changing money.

Hicks didn’t ended up missing the first series of the season or the first week, he ended up missing the first six-plus weeks. Then after coming back from the long and weird back injury, Hicks hurt his elbow in early August and hasn’t played since, finishing the season with 59 games played.

Hicks turns 30 tomorrow and the Yankees have him for six more seasons. For a player who never played a full season in the majors in his 20s, I don’t expect him to be healthier on the other side of 30. Thankfully, his contract won’t prevent the team from making necessary moves in the future.

Gleyber Torres: Over 25 home runs (38): WIN
The Yankees have Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and their best player in 2019 and possibly beyond might be Gleyber Torres. The 22-year-old middle infielder was an All-Star in his first season, carrying the Yankees for the first few weeks of his arrival before hitting a wall in the dog days of the season.

As excited as I am for this Yankees season and the first season in what was always expected to be the first season of this window of opportunity, I’m especially excited to see how Torres grows and adjusts to a league that will certainly have adjusted to him after what he did last year. A sophomore slump for Torres? I don’t see it.

Torres laughed at the idea of a sophomore slump or teh league adjusting to him as he batted .278/.337/.535 with 38 home runs and 90 RBIs, easily covering the home run total set here. Aaron Boone finalyl relized it wa s time to stop batitng TOres ninth and moved him up int othe top half othe order and there’s a chance he could be hitting as high as third in the postseason.

James Paxton: Under 160 1/3 innings (150 2/3 innings): WIN
When you look at James Paxton’s numbers, you see a pitcher with not a lot of miles on his arm and just 582 1/3 innings as a now 30-year-old. The reason there isn’t a lot of miles on his arm is because there’s other problems with his arm, and his shoulder and his back, and so on.

In theory, Paxton is a great fit as a power left-hander pitching half of his games in Yankee. The problem is Paxton’s career high for starts is 28 and innings is 160 1/3, and they both came last season. It would be a miracle if Paxton were to get through the 2019 unscathed to start 32 times and give the Yankees 200 innings. Until he has a season in which he’s able to avoid the injured list even once, it’s hard to believe it will happen.

Paxton finished the season at 150 2/3 innings, thanks to his annual injured-list trip, which came early in the season. Paxton was solid in his first season as a Yankee after a 10-game winning streak to end the season (minus his last start) saved his overall numbers. He had a 4.72 ERA at the end of July, but finished with a 3.82 and 15 wins in 29 starts.

There were great moments and awful moments, in a season which was really two seasons for the left-hander: Opening Day through the end of July and August through September. It was exactly the type of season I expected from an inconsistent left-hander with “great stuff”.

Aaron Judge: 118.5 walks (68): LOSS
The number most people care about when it comes to Aaron Judge is home runs. and rightfully so. But after that it should be walks.

Judge led the league with 127 walks in 2017 and was on a 110-walk pace last season if not for the broken wrist (he ended up with 76). When Judge is getting his walks, you know he’s going right, and he’s setting the table for the guys behind him and tiring the pitcher on the mound for Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez.

If were up to me, I would bat Judge leadoff. I get that Aaron Hicks is a solid leadoff candidate, but he’s not Judge. Judge has a .409 on-base percentage over the last two seasons and seems to always be in full counts. He’s not going to give away an at-bat or swing at the first pitch and ground out to short. I want the best hitter on the team to get the most at-bats over the course of a season and the best hitter on the team is Judge. It’s certainly not Brett Gardner.

You can’t plan for injuries and for the second straight season, Judge missed significant time, which caused this number to go under at 68. After last season’s broken wrist, Judge landed on the injured list for two months with an oblique injury. Judge missed the end of the 2016 season with a oblique injury, played through a shoulder injury in the second half of 2017, had the broken wrist in 2018 and then the oblique injury in 2019. Can we get a full healthy season of Judge? Especially with the current state of the baseballs.

Masahiro Tanaka: Over 13.5 wins (11): LOSS
Masahiro Tanaka has never thrown 200 innings in the regular season for the Yankees. He came within one out (199 2/3 innings) in 2016, but aside from that his best season was 178 1/3 in 2017.

Another thing Tanaka hasn’t done is win more than 14 games. He’s won 13, 12, 14, 13 and 12. And while I’m not big on pitcher’s win totals since it’s more of a team effort and a lot more is needed that the pitcher simply going at least five innings and pitching well, it’s definitely shocking Tanaka has been unable to reach even 15 wins in what has been a very good career in the majors (64-34 with a 3.59 ERA in 132 starts).

Tanaka needs to give the Yankees quality starts (and starts period), especially at the beginning of the season with two-thirds of the rotation out. If he does that, with this offense, against the crap teams they will see in April, Tanaka will be well on his way to crushing this win total.

When Tanaka had a 1.47 ERA through his first three starts I thought he was well on his way to crushing the over. Then he made a habit of blowing leads with a single crooked-number inning each start and the offense gave him little to no run support in other starts and he finished with 11 wins.

Tanaka received a decision in six starts in which he went at least six innings and gave up two earned runs or less, and that was the difference in him going over the win total. But as long as Tanaka pitches in October the way he has in five previous October starts, that’s all I care about.

Brett Gardner: Under .340 on-base percentage (.325): WIN
Gardner looked finish last season. He finished at .236/.322/.368, which are catcher-like numbers for a guy who was given the chance at the most at-bats by the team for the first five months of the season. I didn’t want Gardner back in 2019 and wanted the team to go in a different direction like Michael Brantley, who the Astros signed, and will undoubtedly have a big hit or hits against the Yankees in the postseason. Because Clint Frazier would need time to get back to playing baseball every day after losing most of the 2018 season, the Yankees couldn’t go into 2019 thinking he would be a full-time Major Leaguer. So they brought Gardner back on a one-year, $7.5 million deal, thinking his veteran leadership and clubhouse presence were needed and that his sharp decline last season wasn’t indicative of what he has left in the tank.

Gardner enjoyed a career resurgence with the new baseball, hitting an astonishing 28 home runs in season win which he wasn’t supposed to play every day and a season in which he started out looking like he was more than finished as a major leaguer. Now he’s most certainly going to be back with the team in 2020.

But even though Gardner experienced a power surge, he didn’t experience an on-base surge and was unable to return his old self when it comes to getting on base. Yes, his OPS went from .690 to .829, but his on-base only went from .322 to .325, the second-worst of his career. As long as Gardner continues to hit home runs, his on-base percentage dipping won’t matter, but if he regresses power-wise, he’ll turn back into the player who lost his leadoff spot and job completely in 2018.

Giancarlo Stanton: Under 200 strikeouts (24): WIN
Giancarlo Stanton was OK in his first season as Yankee. Yes, a .266/.343/.509 hitter with 38 home runs and 100 RBIs was just OK.

Here are the most common excuses from the Stanton fan club heard last season:

1. He’s with a new organization
2. He’s in a new league and has to learn new pitchers
3. He’s playing his home games in colder weather at the beginning and end of the season
4. He needs to get acclimated and adjusted to living in a new city

Maybe some or all of those are true, but they are no longer valid. Not in Year 2, not in 2019. Unfortunately, we can’t go back and redo what happened in October, we only know it can’t happen again. As a Marlin, Stanton would supposedly go to Europe during the MLB postseason since it was too painful to watch. Well, he better change his approach at the plate and with runners on or he’s going to being going to Europe a lot during the World Series as a Yankee.

If I’m going to take a chap loss on Andujar’s batting average, I’m going to take the cheap win on Stanton’s strikeout total. Stanton only played in 18 games, so it was impossible for him to not go under. In those 18 games, he struck out 24 times, so if he had kept that pace for 162 games, it would have translated to 216 strikeouts, but you have to figure he wouldn’t have played all 162 games. The number would have been close had Stanton been healthy all season, but I’ll gladly take the win here. Now it’s up to Stanton to redeem himself in the postseason for his forgettable 2018 postseason.

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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!

Podcasts • Yankees • Yankees Postseason

Sep 30, 2019

Yankees Podcast: Andrew Rotondi

Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about everything Yankees for the ALDS.

The regular season is over and for the first time in a long time, the regular season was just a formality for the Yankees. Now the real season begins and Game 1 of the ALDS is Friday night at Yankee Stadium.

Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the possibility of Brett Gardner or Didi Gregorius batting third in the playoffs, Luke Voit being left off the postseason roster, if Aaron Boone has learned from his past postseason mistakes, the biggest worries for October, why the Yankees should easily win the ALDS and why the ALCS is essentially the World Series.

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