Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the Yankees’ roster moves and who they should sign.
It’s been a few weeks since the Yankees’ season ended in the most crushing way and there’s still a long way to go until there will be meaningful baseball. The offseason is here and free agency is here and the Yankees need to use their financial power this winter.
Andrew Rotondi of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about if the pain of the ALCS loss has faded, if the Yankees need to rethink their postseason bullpen strategy, whether or not the Yankees should bring Didi Gregorius back, the Aroldis Chapman extension, the inevitable return of Brett Gardner, the chances Gerrit Cole signs with the Yankees and what will happen with Clint Frazier.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
I don’t want the Yankees to bring Didi Gregorius back. It’s time to move on. It’s not that I would be upset if the Yankees do decide to bring him back, I just don’t want them to.
On Opening Day 2015, the Yankees trailed the Blue Jays 6-1 when Didi Gregorius was hit by a pitch to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning. With two outs, Carlos Beltran walked to push Gregorius into scoring position as Mark Teixeira came to the plate. The Yankees had a chance to get back into the game with one swing with from Teixeira, but on the first pitch to Teixeira, Gregorius inexplicably took off for third and was thrown out. Inning over, rally over, Yankees’ last chance to get back in the game over.
There was no need for Gregorius to try to steal third, mainly because there’s never a good reason to steal third, unless you’re being given it and are 100 percent certain you will get there. It was an ill-advised move by Derek Jeter’s heir most likely trying to do way too much in his first game with his new team in the team’s first game with a new everyday shortstop in 20 years. Gregorius tried to get into better scoring position for no logical reason, and while the Yankees were most likely going to lose the game anyway, it expedited the result.
After spending much of 2015 criticizing Gregorius, I grew to like and accept him as a player over the next four years despite his in-game decisions like stealing third with two outs, laying down bunts when it was the last thing the team needed or swinging at the first pitch after the previous hitter walked on four straight pitches. He saved the season in the 2017 wild-card game, beat up Corey Kluber in Game 5 of the 2017 ALDS, was the best player in baseball for the first 30 games of 2018 and provided the game-breaking grand slam in Game 2 of this year’s ALDS. Aside from the few postseason moments and the improbable early-season run in April 2018, Gregorius has been exactly what I thought he would be as a Yankee: a great fielder, but a low on-base, bottom-of-the-order bat. Due to injuries and a lack of left-handed bats, Gregorius was often miscast a Top 6 presence in the Yankees’ lineup when he has mostly belonged in the bottom third. Overall, the Gregorius trade worked out for the Yankees. They got an everyday, defensive-minded shortstop who was able to realize his power potential for five seasons.
When it was announced the Yankees didn’t extend a qualifying offer to Gregorius, I wasn’t shocked since he would have most likely accepted the one-year, nearly $18 million payday to rebuild his stock after Tommy John surgery and if the Yankees really wanted him back they could get him for more years at a lower average annual salary. But I don’t want the Yankees to bring him back for more years at any salary. It’s time to move on from Gregorius. It’s not that I would be upset if the Yankees do decide to bring Gregorius back, I just don’t want them to.
It’s not for any one reason but rather a combination of reasons. His low career on-base, his decline in production following surgery, his age turning 30 prior to Opening Day 2020 and his in-game baseball IQ being the lowest on the team since Nick Swisher. Unfortunately, money does matter to these Yankees and any money spent on Gregorius is less the team would have to spend eventually on someone like DJ LeMahieu or any of the young core players. In an ideal world, or a world prior to Hal Steinbrenner counting every penny, I would welcome Gregorius back knowing the Yankees would eventually not play him if he didn’t perform or move on from him if they needed to. But these Yankees won’t do that. Money owed is more important than production and if Gregorius were to fall off on the other side of 30, Yankees fans would have to sit through it.
The question becomes what the Yankees do at shortstop. Thankfully, they have a 22-year-old shortstop who has been playing second base for the last two seasons they could slide over to short and a three-time Gold Glove second baseman who has been playing first base who could slide over to second. The Yankees could then have either Gio Urshela or Miguel Andujar at third base, possibly move to Andujar to first base (which I want them to do), or go with a healthy Luke Voit there.
Gregorius was a nice player for the Yankees. He became a fan favorite, had some big hits, a few Yankees Classic-worthy moments and turned his career around in New York. He ended up being a more-than-acceptable replacement to an all-time Yankee at a position which hadn’t seen change in two decades and his time with the Yankees went much better than originally expected. But it’s time for a change and time to move on from Gregorius.
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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!
Scott Reinen of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the end of the Yankees’ season and latest ALCS loss.
The Yankees’ season came to a disappointing end once again as the team lost the ALCS in six games to the Astros. Now there’s a little more than five months until real baseball and an entire year until the Yankees can get back to this point.
Scott Reinen of Bronx Pinstripes joined me to talk about the Yankees’ ALCS loss to the Astros, DJ LeMahieu’s clutch home run will eventually be forgotten, the Yankees’ postseason pitching strategy, the embarrassing offensive performance and how the Yankees can close the gap with the Astros for 2020.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!
I will remember the good times from CC Sabathia’s Yankees career and him representing a time when ownership would do whatever to build the best possible roster, when only winning the World Series mattered.
CC 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 and 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 deal also included an all-important opt-out clause after three years.
Sabathia was a Yankee because the organization’s offer far exceeded any other teams, not because it was necessarily where he wanted to live or pitch. But that no longer mattered to the left-hander or Yankees fans when he went 19-8 with a 3.37 ERA in the regular season, and then 3-1 with a 1.98 ERA in the postseason, earning himself ALCS MVP honors and helping the Yankees win the World Series for the first time since 2000.
Fearful of that opt-out clause after his third season, the Yankees extended him, adding two years and $50 million to his contract. He continued to pitch like an ace for the first season after the extension, going 15-6 with a 3.38 ERA, and winning Games 1 and 5 in the ALDS over the Orioles. In his first four seasons as a Yankee, Sabathia had gone 74-29 with a 3.22 ERA, being as close to a sure-thing for a win every five days as anyone in baseball, and living up to his $23 million annual salary more than any free-agent pitcher ever had.
In 2013, things took a turn for the worst. Sabathia went 14-13 with a 4.78 ERA and led the league in earned runs allowed as the Yankees missed the playoffs for just the second time since 1993. In 2014, Sabathia made only starts, and pitched to a 5.28 ERA over 46 innings. In 2015, it was much of the same, as he went 6-10 with a 4.73 ERA. Sabathia was no longer the hard-throwing ace of the Yankees, but rather a wasted roster spot making roughly $700,000 per start.
Sabathia had supposedly been best friends with Cliff Lee during their time in Cleveland and it was reported that Sabathia and Andy Pettitte had talked frequently as Sabathia’s velocity diminished. I wondered then if those two stories were true, how could Sabathia not seek out the advice of his two left-handed friends on how to succeed in the league without overpowering hitters? Were Sabathia and Lee no longer friends? Were he and Pettitte just “talking” and not talking about pitching? Was Sabathia too stubborn to reinvent himself, or could he just not do it?
Sabathia was going to make $25 million in 2016, the highest single-season salary of his career, after having gone 23-27 with a 4.81 ERA in the previous three seasons. And he was going to make another $25 million in 2017 unless he ended the 2016 season on the disabled list with a left shoulder injury or spent more than 45 days on the disabled list in 2016 with a left shoulder injury or didn’t make more than six relief appearances in 2016 because of a left shoulder injury. No Yankees fan wanted Sabathia to get hurt, they just wanted him to pitch better. Any Yankees fan would have signed up for a season of a 4.50 ERA from the once-dominant lefty.
Sabathia turned his career around in 2016. He no longer reared back for a mid-to-high-90s fastball which no longer existed. He scrapped the fastballs right by you for the cutters in on your hands and the offspeed pitches and breaking balls away. The reinvention I had yearned for had occurred and Sabathia made 30 starts and pitched to a 3.91 ERA. It wasn’t worthy of $25 million per year, but it was worthy of a spot in the rotation for 2017.
He got even better as a finesse pitcher in 2017, going 14-5 with a 3.69 ERA. It was his first double-digit win season and his first season over .500 in four years. He was no longer the ace of the staff, but he was no longer an over-the-hill pitcher representing an albatross contract either. In 2018, he pitched to a 3.65 ERA, proving his new-found success was sustainable after three straight years of it.
Back on June 26, 2015, I wrote “CC Sabathia Is Done”. At the time he was done. He could no longer throw hard and was seemingly too stubborn to turn into a finesse pitcher for what looked to be the final seasons of his career. Let’s look back at what I wrote and see how it changed over his final four seasons.
Next season, Sabathia’s salary increase to $25 million for the season, and when you consider his 2011 ERA (33 starts) was 3.00, his 2012 ERA (28 starts) was 3.38, his 2013 ERA (32 starts) was 4.78, his 2014 ERA (eight starts) was 5.28 and his 2015 ERA (15 starts) is 5.65, well, where is this going to go? It could go through the 2017 season, as Sabathia has a $25 million vesting option, which will vest if he doesn’t finish the 2016 season on the disabled list with a left shoulder injury or if he doesn’t spend more than 45 days in 2016 on the disabled list with a left shoulder injury or if he doesn’t make more than six relief appearances in 2016 because of a left shoulder injury. (There is a $5 million buyout if any of these things happen, so the Yankees will have to pay him $5 million to not pitch, which is better than $25 million to pitch and not be good). So the only way the Yankees are getting out of paying Sabathia $50 million in 2016 and 2017 is if he injures his left shoulder, and when he’s not even going five innings in starts, that’s not going to happen. The only way to not throw away $25 million in 2017 is for Girardi to start leaving Sabathia on the mound to throw 150-pitch complete games, or hope that he retires and walks away from the money, and that’s not happening. So if you think this season has been bad or 2014 and 2013 were bad, it’s not going to get better.
The biggest problem for Sabathia at the time (aside from not giving the Yankees a chance to win in most of his starts) was the money he was owed. No Yankees fan wanted Sabathia to get hurt, but everyone was hoping the Yankees would instead use the $5 million buyout on him for 2017 to pay him to go away.
Sabathia turned it around in 2016, just in time for the Yankees to decide to not buy him out. And in the span of two years, he went from looking at being bought out and retiring to starting Games 2 and 5 of the ALDS against the Indians and Games 3 and 7 of the ALCS against the Astros. Sabathia’s line in those four postseason starts: 19 IP, 16 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 10 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 2.37 ERA, 1.368 WHIP. I still can’t believe the same person whose career seemed over when he made only eight starts in 2014 and pitched like his career was over when he did pitch was given the ball to start a game in 2017 with a trip to the World Series on the line.
I have written several times that Sabathia needs to find a way to get outs without overpowering hitters the way his former teammate Andy Pettitte and supposed best friend Cliff Lee were able to do. With the Yankees in Houston, it was made known that Pettitte and Sabathia have talked frequently as Sabathia’s velocity and repertoire has changed, and if this is true, when are the changes going to take place, or are they ever? And do we know Sabathia and Pettitte are even talking about pitching when they talk? They could be talking about anything.
It took three seasons of a 4.81 ERA and leading the league in earned runs allowed in one of those seasons for Sabathia to finally give up on trying to be the pitcher he had been since 2001. He finally went through with the advice of Pettitte, who he grew to mirror in his starts, both with his stuff and his performances, and it revitalized his career. Sabathia became among the league leaders in soft contact, and while he might not no longer have been the hard-throwing, seven-plus inning ace, he didn’t need to be to get productive results.
At this point, I treat every Sabathia start like a trip to the casino. If you plan on spending $500 at the casino then you’re going into it assuming you’re going to lose that $500 and anything you don’t lose or if you happen to end up winning, it’s an unexpected bonus. When Sabathia takes the mound, I assume the Yankees are going to lose, and if they aren’t blown out, he will certainly blow a lead they have given him at some point in the game. If he comes out in a tie game, with the Yankees winning, it’s the unexpected bonus. That’s not how it should work for starting pitcher making $23 million this season, $25 million next season and possibly another $25 million in 2017.
Over his last four seasons, the Yankees went RECORD in games started by Sabathia, so he was longer an expected losing trip to the casino. In today’s market, as a No. 5 starter making $8 million, he more than lived up to his contract before his knee forced him to the injured list several times and his shoulder finally gave up. He more than made up for the money he “earned” from 2013 to 2015.
During the 2011 season, I said “Jorge Posada is like the aging family dog that just wanders around aimlessly and goes to the bathroom all over the place and just lies around and sleeps all day. You try to pretend like the end isn’t near and you try to remember the good times to get through the bad times, and once in a while the dog will do something to remind you of what it used to be, but it’s just momentary tease.” Well, that aging family dog has become Sabathia.
The aging family dog might have been north of 20 years old from 2013-15, but he kept on chugging along.
The next time Sabathia puts the Yankees in a hole before they even come up to bat for the first time, I will try to remember his first four seasons with the Yankees when he went 74-29 with a 3.22 ERA. The next time, he lets the 7-8-9 hitters get on base to start a rally, I will try to remember his win in Game 1 of the 2009 ALDS, his dominance over the Angels and winning the ALCS MVP in 2009 and his role in beating the Phillies in the 2009 World Series. The next time he can’t get through five innings, forcing the bullpen to be overused, I will try to remember his Game 5 win in the 2010 ALCS against the Rangers to save the season. And the next time he blows a three-run lead the inning following the Yankees taking that lead, I will try to remember his wins in Games 1 and 5 against the Orioles in the 2012 ALDS to get the Yankees out of the first round.
I will remember Sabathia’s Yankees career in three parts. Part I being 2009-2012 when he went 74-29 with a 3.22 ERA, made 13 postseason starts and one postseason relief appearance and helped the Yankees win the 2009 World Series. Part II being 2013-2015 when he went 23-27 with a 4.81 ERA and made $69 million for 69 starts. Part III being 2016 until he threw his last pitch in Game 4 of the ALCS when his body finally said enough and he walked off a major league mound for the last time.
I will try to remember the good times CC Sabathia once gave us nearly every time he took the ball because they hardly happen anymore and they are only to going to become more rare. I wish there were more good times to come, but there aren’t.
After his July 16 start against the Rays, Sabathia wasn’t himself for the rest of this season. That was the last time Sabathia gave the Yankees length (six innings) after a career built on giving his team length. He ended up on the injured list again in August and then missed half of September, forced to be left off the ALDS roster because of his injuries.
When Sabathia entered Game 4 of the ALCS in the eighth inning, the Yankees were headed for a loss to put their season on the brink of elimination. Sabathia took the mound with no one warming up in the bullpen, as it was his game to finish, and the Stadium’s chance to most likely say goodbye to the best free-agent pitcher the organization had ever signed.
I will remember the good times from Sabathia’s Yankees career, and I will remember him representing a time when ownership would do whatever it could to build the best possible roster, a time when luxury taxes, long-term contracts, overpaying for talent and worrying about five and six seasons from the present didn’t matter, only winning the World Series did. Without Sabathia, the Yankees would be looking at a two-decade championship drought instead of just one.
Sabathia saved the Yankees at a time when they had no starting pitching, couldn’t get out of the first round of the postseason and a divided clubhouse was more newsworthy than their on-field results. Sabathia gave the Yankees an ace and he gave everyone on the roster a teammate by rebuilding the Yankees’ internal culture with his infectious personality, which was shown in the emotional on-air breakdowns of Joe Girardi and Alex Rodriguez after Game 4.
Sabathia’s 17th pitch in 23 days led to a mound visit from Aaron Boone and Steve Donahue to evaluate the lefty after a look of pain and disgust. After one warm-up pitch to see if he could continue, he couldn’t. His career came to an end in a way that best described him: he pitched until he physically couldn’t pitch anymore.
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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!
Two 100-win seasons in a row, both ended with elimination after the offense performed its annual October disappearing act. The Yankees can’t bring back the same team next year and expect a different result.
When the 10th pitch of DJ LeMahieu’s legendary ninth-inning at-bat landed just past George Springer’s outstretched glove in right field for a game-tying, two-run home run, the Yankees had their moment. After thinking about the possibility of winning three straight against he Astros and coming back down 3-1 in the series, I knew the Yankees were going to need a moment along the way, a special moment like a ninth-inning, game-tying home run. LeMahieu had provided that moment and I could truly envision Game 7 of the ALCS for the first time.
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Game 4 left me feeling like the season was over. A sloppy and embarrasisng loss had put the Ynakees on the brink of elimination and they would face the threat of their season ending for the remainder of the series .They would need to win three games in three days against the best team in the league, win games started by both Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, win twice in Houston and what seemed like the hardest obstacle of them all: they would need their offense to wake up. The offense woke up in Game 5, even if it was only for an inning, providing a three-run lead the pitching staff wouldn’t relinquish, they finally beat Verlander in the postseason for the first time in franchise history, and now they would just need to beat the Astros’ less-than-stellar bullpen in a battle of bullpens to see Cole on Sunday night.
The Yankees willingly built their 2019 postseason formula for success with the idea they would ask for 12 outs from their starting pitcher in each postseason game and then go to their super bullpen for the remaining 15. It was the same strategy which failed in the 2018, mainly because Aaron Boone didn’t read the instruction manual for it. In theory, it’s a sound strategy given the stats for starting pitching seeing a lineup for the third time in a game and the overwhelming success of the Yankees’ bullpen. But in actuality, trying to win nearly every night for a month using the same relievers over and over leads to both overuse and overexposure. That was clearly the case with Chad Green.
In Green’s first four postseason appearances, he was dominant, throwing 71 high-stress pitches over 12 days. He retired 14 of the 16 batters he faced in 4 2/3 scoreless innings to help the Yankees sweep the ALDS and steal home-field advantage from the Astros in the ALCS. But after pitching 2 2/3 perfect innings against the Astros in Games 2 and 3, Green returned to the mound in Game 4, and the combination of overuse and overexposure led to him allowing a three-run home run to break open the game and the series for the Astros.
Two nights later, the Yankees were asking Green to pitch for the fifth time in six games in the series and they were asking him to open Game 6 and face the top of the Astros’ order: Springer, Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, and if anyone got on Alex Bregman, and if two people got on Yuli Gurriel. Green’s dashboard gas warning was showing “5 Miles Until Empty” but the Yankees had no other choice. He had been the team’s go-to opener all season and without a trustworthy fourth starter, he was the only reliever with experience as an opener on the roster.
Green struck out Springer on four pitches and looked the way he had in the postseason prior to Game 4. But then Altuve doubled and Bregman drew a one-out walk, and you could sense Green laboring on the mound. He was badly missing his spots, finding himself in long counts and had needed 20 pitches to record one out in the inning. Gurriel went to the plate knowing Green would try to rediscover the strike zone after the Brantley walk, and if Green threw a fastball anywhere near the plate, Gurriel was swinging.
Green’s first-pitch fastball to Gurriel sailed in toward Gurriel’s hands and before it could make it all the way inside, Gurriel opened up and crushed a three-run home to left field. Green had officially run out of gas, and the Astros had a three-run lead at home, something they had 50 times during the season and never lost once.
I expected runs in Game 6. The Astros had seen the Yankees’ bullpen too much in the series not to score against it, and it didn’t matter if the Yankees had seen the Astros’ bullpen or not, it wasn’t very good. The Yankees weren’t facing a three-run deficit against Verlander or Cole, they were facing a three-run deficit against Brad Peacock, Josh James, Ryan Pressly and Jose Urquidy. It wouldn’t take a miracle for the Yankees to come back, it would just take the offense being itself, something it hadn’t been all series.
The Yankees’ offense never truly woke up in Game 6 after it had slept through the first five games. Aside from LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres, not a single other Yankee consistently produced in the series. Judge had one moment: his Game 2 home run off Verlander, but that was his only extra-base hit of the entire postseason. Hicks had his three-run home run in Game 5, but that was it, not that I was expecting much from someone who hadn’t played since August 3. Edwin Encarnacion went 1-for-18 with 11 strikeouts and was the worst hitter on a team full of bad hitters. Brett Gardner provided three singles over six games, lowering his career postseason batting line to .196/.260/.252. Gary Sanchez had a three-run home run in Game 4 and an RBI single in Game 6, but that was it as he led the team with 12 strikeouts. Didi Gregorius looked like he was finally about to go on one of his hot streaks (oh wait, the Yankees don’t believe in hot streaks) in Game 6, but by then it was too late after he had been an automatic out for the last week. Gio Urshela had three hits (including a home run and the important ninth-inning single) and reached base four times in Game 6 and his average only climbed to .238 and his on-base percentage to .304 to show had bad he had been over the previous four games. Giancarlo Stanton … there’s nothing to say about Stanton.
The Yankees outscored the Astros in the series, but that was only because of their 7-0 win in Game 1. After that, the Yankees scored 14 runs in five games. They had 44 hits and 22 walks in the six games, but left 45 runners on. It was the same type of offensive performance we saw from them in their previous three ALCS appearances over the last decade, and like those series, they lost this one as well.
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It’s one thing to watch the outs come off the board with your team trailing in an elimination game. The finality of the baseball season, one that started back on March 29 in this case, begins to set in and you come to accept the fact that the season is over and it won’t end with a championship. It’s another thing to have your emotions toyed with for two straight nights right up until the last pitch of the series. I had come to accept the season was over by the time the ninth inning began in Game 6, but there was still a small part of me that thought the Yankees could tie this game, eventually win it and force a Game 7. They might still lose the series with Cole going against Luis Severino and an overworked bullpen, but at least it would give Yankees fans one more day of baseball.
LeMahieu’s home run completely turned my night around as I jumped higher in the air than Springer had trying to catch it. The season had been saved. There would be a Game 7. Well, if the Yankees scored one more run in the inning there would be a Game 7. I told my wife Brittni the Yankees had to take the lead in the ninth. With the top of the order coming up in the bottom of the ninth, there was a good chance this would be the Yankees’ last chance to take a lead in the game. The Yankees didn’t score in the ninth and they didn’t get another chance to.
After Aroldis Chapman got the first two outs of the ninth, he began to worry about what he was doing rather have Springer and Altuve worry about what he was doing. He was the one on the mound with the ball in control of the situation. But he fell behind Springer and walked him, and the second he fell behind Altuve 2-0, he was in trouble. Only an extra-base hit would beat the Yankees with Springer on first, but with Altuve at the plate, it felt like he would only get an extra-base hit. Altuve sat slider and Chapman gave him one and now for the rest of time I will see replays Altuve’s pennant-winning, walk-off home run.
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The better team won the series and it wasn’t even close. The Astros got much more length out of their starting pitching, their bullpen, while inferior on paper was better on the field, and even though their hitting was as close to as bad as the Yankees’, it came through enough to win the series in six games.
It was always going to be hard to win the pennant and reach the World Series against this Astros team. It was going to be impossible to with a two-batter lineup, inconsistent starting pitching and a fatigued bullpen. It’s amazing the series even went six games.
The 103 regular-season wins are meaningless now. Two 100-win seasons in a row, both ended with postseason elimination after the offense performed its annual October disappearing act. The Yankees can’t think they can bring the same team and pitching strategy back next year and think they will get a different result.
The first real season of this current championship window was wasted. Unfortunately, the Astros’ window is coinciding with the Yankees’, and unless the Yankees make drastic changes to improve their roster, the 2017 ALCS and 2019 ALCS won’t be the last ALCS ending with the Astros beating the Yankees.
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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!
