The best starting pitcher on the free-agent market is gone. Patrick Corbin signed a six-year, $140 million deal with the Nationals after the Yankees wouldn’t go to a sixth year with the left-hander and now the Yankees find themselves in some trouble.

There is still the possibility the Yankees could pull off another trade for a starting pitcher the way they did for James Paxton in November, but without their best trade chip in Justus Sheffield, the dream of Corey Kluber or Carlos Carrasco in pinstripes will most likely never be anything more than that: a dream.

I’m happy Corbin is not a Yankee though that is contingent on the Yankees using the $100-plus million they would have given him to use on Bryce Harper and/or Manny Machado (emphasis on the “and” there). I still believe the Yankees should sign both Harper and Machado, and not one or the other, given that they are both 26 years old and are either in their prime or might have not even entered it yet (which is scary). But Hal Steinbrenner is unlike his father was, and the penny-pinching son of the former owner, who would have never let the team go through the month of August with Shane Robinson playing every day, is more likely to give Yankees fans a back-end starter and an elite reliever and call it an offseason than he is to sign the two biggest free agents available.

I’m holding on to the idea that the Yankees didn’t throw away 2018 to get under the luxury tax threshold for this offseason only to come away with Brett Gardner, CC Sabathia, a back-end starter and an elite reliever. I’m holding on to the idea that the Yankees don’t think they can essentially throw the same team out there for a third season in a row and think 2019 will end any differently than 2017 or 2018 did. I’m holding on to the idea that the Yankees are still the Yankees who use their financial prowess to their advantage. Maybe I’m just kidding myself.

Corbin wasn’t going to be the No. 1 or No. 2 starter that Yankees fans envisioned after an offseason of hype, considering he has had one really good Major League season and just two years removed from an ERA above 5. But he would have fit nicely into the rotation along with Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka and James Paxton and would have been a better starting option than the depth the Yankees currently have. All Corbin was going to cost was money. No prospects. Just money. And the Yankees balked at a sixth year for him, thinking they could make better use of that sixth year and $20 to $25 million by spending it on someone else. Someone like a 36-year-old J.A. Happ.

Happ was everything you could ask for from a trade deadline acquisition, pitching only one stinker as a Yankee in the regular season before laying the biggest of eggs in Game 1 of the ALDS in Boston. Happ came to the Yankees as a durable, veteran lefty who knew the AL East well and had dominated the Red Sox in his career. Unfortunately, when the Yankees needed him to dominate the Red Sox as a Yankee, he missed the pivotal early August series with a rare illness and then would have been better off missing his one postseason start as well.

I’m not about to dismiss Happ for what he did in the ALDS because his body of work as a regular-season Yankee was outstanding. Without him, the Yankees might have lost out on the first wild card (which in hindsight I wish they had or I wish they had at least lost to Oakland in the wild-card game to prevent the embarrassment of the ALDS). However, he is now 36 and relying on someone at that age to continue to take the ball every fifth day, not only next season but the year after (since it will likely take at least a two-year deal to sign him) is risky. And when you’re in a championship window, which the Yankees are in, it might not be the most sound decision. Now it’s their only decision.

The Yankees could have solidified their rotation with money: the thing they make more of than any other team in the league. They could have added a younger lefty with the ability to miss more bats, but they were scared away by the dollar signs and the thought of paying a potentially worthless Corbin six years from now when their current window will most likely be closed. Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Andujar and Luis Severino aren’t going to be young forever. And aside from Stanton whose deal is locked in, the others aren’t going to be cheap forever. So now with Corbin off the board, unless Brian Cashman has the greenlight to sign Machado and then flip Andujar in a deal for someone like Kluber or Carrasco, the only satisfying way to complete the rotation is to sign Happ, and they can’t be scared of spending because he’s the last worthy free-agent starting pitching option.

The Yankees were willing to throw away last season to get under the luxury tax, and for what? To sit back and piece together a team to try to get over the hump of the last two seasons? Are they really not going to use their financial muscle on the most talented free-agent class in history? They already passed on Corbin, and if they don’t sign Happ, we’ll have our answer.

***

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

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Last week, the Yankees began building their 2019 roster by re-signing Brett Gardner to a one-year deal. The move was both good and bad, but now that Gardner is back, there’s nothing to do other than pray he produces and we get the 2017 version of him and not the 2018 version.

The Yankees declined Gardner’s $12.5 option, bought him out for $2 million and then gave him $7.5 million. So in essence, they saved $3 million by re-signing the longest-tenured Yankee. That $3 million is a very big deal because the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees are worried about every single cent that goes into payroll, doing everything they can to avoid being hit by the luxury tax. We saw it this past season when the team cut payroll by about $50 million despite getting to within one win of the 2017 World Series.

Unfortunately, there’s no reason to think the Yankees won’t operate under the same idea in 2019 and beyond to make sure they don’t have to pay tax on their payroll. This will please the other 29 teams in the league because if the Yankees aren’t willing to flex their financial muscle, which is the one advantage they have over every other team in the league, then the rest of baseball doesn’t need to worry about being outbid on free agents by the frugal, money-managing Yankees. The idea the Yankees are going to go bargain hunting this winter is a huge problem because we are looking at the best free-agent class in history.

I like to think the Yankees didn’t do everything they could to get under the luxury tax in 2018 only to sit back and not wildly spend on the best free-agent class in history. But if the Yankees were willing to cut payroll after reaching Game 7 of the ALCS and were willing to play Shane Robinson every day in August in the middle of a pennant race to avoid overpaying for an outfielder, well, I’m not about to think they will spend the way they did after 2008 and 2013.

But the Yankees need to spend. They can’t bring back the same team in 2019 that wasn’t good enough to win in 2018 and think they will go farther than they did in 2017. This is the most important Yankees offseason of all time. The team has a strong young core already in the majors in Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres and Luis Severino and surrounding veteran All-Star pieces to be good enough to contend for a very long time. Couple that with this free-agent class and by Opening Day the Yankees should be the favorite to win the World Series.

The Gardner signing was the first of the most important offseason in team history and it doesn’t make the Yankees better. It makes them either the same or worse. Gardner coming back most likely means no Bryce Harper (if the team was even thinking about him given their financial worries) and it means no better option left-handed hitting option for left field like Michael Brantley. Gardner is now the team’s left fielder against right-handed pitching (which most of the league is) unless he continues on his 2018 decline or Clint Frazier is healthy and producing to force Gardner to the bench.

Maybe the Yankees don’t care about having Gardner relegated to the bench at some point and maybe they are secretly hoping for that since that would mean Frazier is healthy and ready. Or maybe Gardner was just a $7.5 million insurance policy if the Yankees are unable to land Harper or another better outfield option, and if they do, they will make Gardner the official fourth outfielder.

The problem is the Yankees can’t afford to screw this offseason up and destroy the future they are set up for. There are many avenues and options and paths to go this offseason between free agency and trade possibilities, but they can’t get it wrong. By no means can they get it wrong.

Since it’s nearly impossible to predict trades let alone trades the Yankees make, here is how I would will build the 2019 Yankees through free agency. Let’s start with the other 2018 Yankees, who are now free agents.

CC SABATHIA
Sabathia can come back, get his $10 million, pitch every five days, give the team five quality innings, miss a few starts to get his knee drained and hopefully enjoy a trip to the World Series and get his second ring. I want Sabathia to return to the Yankees as the No. 5 starter and nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. I don’t want to see him start a postseason game again under any circumstances.

I’m happy that Sabathia was able to revitalize his career by finally learning how to pitch like his so-called two best friends in Cliff Lee and Andy Pettitte. I’m still not happy about how long it took for him to realize his velocity was gone and he would need to rely on location and offspeed pitches to be successful, but better late and never I guess.

Sabathia earned $10 million last season and I’m thinking the same amount of money would be enough to get him back in 2019. Throw in some incentives and sign him up for 150 innings and the Yankees have the best No. 5 starter in baseball.

NEIL WALKER
For a while, I was disappointed Walker was dragging the best first name in baseball through the mud with his awful play. But over time, he learned how to play without playing every day and turned into a nice utility player for the Yankees.

Now that Didi Gregorius is going to miss close to half the season in 2019, the Yankees need a middle infielder. Gleyber Torres can move over to shortstop, leaving second base open for a reunion with the switch-hitting Walker. (No, Manny Machado isn’t in my plans, as you will find out later.)

Walker earned $4 million last season as a late-spring training signing and I would think that same number can get him another one-year deal with the Yankees (they could probably get him back for even less) to be their starting second baseman for half the season and possibly more if Gregorius is out longer or if other injuries arise (they always do).

DAVID ROBERTSON
Ah, David “Copperfield” Robertson. I was crushed the last time he left the Yankees since I thought they needed to sign both he and Andrew Miller and not just one of the two, but I was equally as happy when he returned in 2017 in the trade that also brought over Todd Frazier and Tommy Kahnle.

Robertson was his usual self in 2018 as he pitched to a 3.23 ERA and 1.033 WHIP in a career-high 69 2/3 innings with 91 strikeouts (11.8 K/9). He wasn’t as dominant as he was for the Yankees in the final two months in 2017 (1.03 ERA, 0.743 WHIP and 13.1 K/9), but he was still the same old reliable David Robertson.

The bullpen was, or at least it was supposed to be, the Yankees’ strength for the postseason before Aaron Boone decided to mismanage it in the ALDS. The Yankees can have another dominant bullpen in 2019, and I expect them to have one, and that starts with bringing back Robertson.

J.A. HAPP
The Yankees traded for J.A. Happ because they were in desperate need of rotation help. That and because he was AL East tested and proven, had postseason experience and was the Red Sox’ kryptonite. Unfortunately, Happ was unable to face the Red Sox in the biggest series of the season in August because of a rare illness, and when he faced them in Game 1 of the ALDS, he couldn’t have been worse.

Happ was the ideal trade deadline candidate. As a Yankee, he made 11 starts, went 7-0 and pitched to this line: 63.2 IP, 51 H, 20 R, 19 ER, 16 BB, 63 K, 10 HR, 2.59 ERA, 1.052 WHIP. (The home run total was a little high, but three of those came in his only bad start with the Yankees and another came when he had an 8-0 lead in the sixth inning and grooved one in for a grand slam in Boston.) The team won 9 of his 11 starts and his acquisition helped them avoid a complete collapse in the wild-card standings. (Though, now I wish they had either been the second wild-card team or lost the wild-card game.)

Happ would give the Yankees another left-handed pitcher in the rotation to go with Sabathia and a free agent to be named shortly. He would give them quality innings and he has already proven he can pitch in the AL East, in New York and for the Yankees.

Bring back Sabathia, Walker, Robertson and Happ in 2019. Simple enough. Now let’s get to the best free-agent class in history and let’s get the Yankees back to the World Series where they haven’t been in what will be a decade next October.

BRYCE HARPER
The prize of the 2019 free-agent class. In the early 2000s, this signing would have been a given. I wouldn’t have to check daily to see the latest rumors on Harper and worry about where he is signing because I would know that sometime in December he would be at Yankee Stadium, smiling and putting on a number 34 jersey over his dress clothes. But in 2018 with Hal Steinbrenner signing on to his online banking account every 15 minutes to make sure every penny is counted for, the chances of Harper are slim and now even slimmer with Gardner back.

If you try hard enough, you can find a reason not to sign any player even one with Harper’s abilities. It’s like criticizing a supermodel. Her hair kind of looks weird. Her boobs are too big. Her smile is too much. But that seems to be what a lot of Yankees fans are doing with Bryce Harper: coming up with reasons to not want him. He’s always hurt! He hit .249 last season! He sucks in the postseason!

If you can find a reason to NOT sign Harper then why sign anyone? If you can criticize an MVP-caliber, generational talent entering his prime enough to not want him then what are we all doing?

The Yankees might not need Harper, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t sign him. All it will take to land 26-year-old Bryce Harper entering his prime is money! No prospects, no Gleyber Torres, no Miguel Andujar, no Justus Sheffield, just money. MONEY! And guess what’s even better … it’s not your money! It’s the New York Yankees’ money and they have so much of it they could sign Harper, Machado, Brantley, Josh Donaldson, Patrick Corbin, J.A. Happ, Dallas Keuchel and Charlie Morton if they wanted to. Somehow, the Yankees tricked most of their fan base into thinking the luxury-tax penalty somehow affected the fan base and that fans should be worried about the team’s financial state. Money used to be the Yankees’ biggest advantage over all 29 other teams. Now they operate as if each dollar matters to them and as if Yankee Stadium isn’t essentially a currency printer.

But to the idiotic Yankees fans who don’t want Harper, let’s go through their reasons.

No, he isn’t always hurt. Yes, he played 118 games, 100 games in 2014 and 111 games in 2017, but he also played 153 games in 2015, 147 games in 2016 and 159 games last season. That’s not to say injuries don’t happen, but the time missed in 2017 was due to him slipping on a wet first base in what was a complete fluke incident.

Yes, he hit .249 last season, but he also had a .393 on-base percentage, hit 34 home runs, drove in 100 runs and walked 130(!) times. Harper had a .889 OPS in what was a “down year”.

He has sucked in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean he will always suck in the playoffs. He has played 19 games in the playoffs and has had 89 plate appearances, batting .211/.315/.487 with five home runs and 10 RBIs. He hasn’t been David Ortiz in the playoffs, but he certainly hasn’t been Nick Swisher or Mark Teixeira either. I also wouldn’t sign or not sign a player based on their postseason history. (However, once they are a Yankee, if they suck in the postseason, small sample sizes go out the window.)

Harper is going to get at least a seven-year deal and I really think there is no way he gets only seven years. The Marlins gave Giancarlo Stanton his 10-year, $325 million deal when he was 25, only one year younger than Harper, and Harper is a much better player with a much better resume than Stanton was when he signed his deal.

I don’t care if it takes a 10-year deal to land Harper, which would make him a Yankee through 2029. There’s no sure-thing in baseball or free agency, but right now, the only player ahead of Harper I would sign to such a deal would be Mike Trout, and unfortunately, he’s not a free agent.

PATRICK CORBIN
Corbin is a good pitcher. He’s a lefty who put it all together this season and figured out how to consistently get strikeouts (246 in 200 innings) and he’s a New York native who falls into the “grew up a Yankees fan” narrative like Harper.

Corbin is by no means an ace or a guaranteed front-end starter. He should be counted on as a solid middle-of-the-rotation arm, who has the potential to be a front-end arm if he can maintain his consistency. But while everyone is fawning over what he did in 2018, he’s also two years removed from a disastrous 5.15 ERA and 1.561 WHIP in 2016 that saw him moved to the bullpen for the last two months of the season. Luckily for Corbin, he wasn’t a free agent after 2016 and is a free agent after his best season in the majors.

I don’t want Corbin because I think he’s going to win the Cy Young for the Yankees (though he might since Rick Porcello did once win the Cy Young). I want Corbin because I think he’s a stable rotation option, who throws the ball with his left arm and has finally tapped into his strikeout potential. If you want Corbin because you think he’s going to challenge Luis Severino or Masahiro Tanaka as the No. 1 in the rotation, well, you are going to be disappointed. But if you want Corbin because he might have finally put it together for good and because he’s a more reliable rotation option than Domingo German or Luis Cessa or any other hittable garbage in the organization then you’re in luck. All it will take to get Corbin is MONEY! M-O-N-E-Y!

ANDREW MILLER
I was sad when the Yankees traded away Miller in 2016, but I understood why they had to do it. (They had to do it because Brian Cashman poorly built the team.) The Yankees weren’t going anywhere and they needed to cash in on all of their tradable assets and Miller was their best one. He was a great Yankee, who took the ball after breaking his non-throwing wrist, and served in every role he was asked to without complaining all while putting up zeros as both a setup man and closer.

Miller dominated with the Indians in 2016 and the 2016 postseason and again in 2017. He had the blemish of giving up a home run to Greg Bird in the 1-0 Game 3 of the 2017 ALDS, which now looks like the most unbelievable feat of all time given the player Bird has become, or rather not become.

Miller would give the Yankees a second left-handed option in the bullpen (or possibly a third if Stephen Tarpley is a Yankee in 2019) and fills the void left by Zach Britton, who couldn’t have been a bigger disappointment, but who I certainly expect to return his former self as he gets farther removed from his Achilles surgery. The more elite bullpen options Boone has, the less chance there is of him calling on a crap reliever in a big spot like he did with A.J. Cole all summer or Lance Lynn in the playoffs. Bring back Miller.

Like all these other free agents, all Miller will cost is MONEY! The Yankees have a lot of it. They better be willing to spend it.

***

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

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

I really didn’t think I would care at the inevitable outcome of this baseball season. After 108 regular-season wins and their postseason run, I thought I would be able to shrug off the Red Sox winning the World Series, but I was wrong. I was very wrong.

The Yankees failed to stop the Red Sox in the postseason after failing to beat them in the regular season. Ownership stood pat, worrying about the luxury tax and not actual wins and losses, while the Red Sox did everything they could to win a championship and they did. The Yankees came within one win of the World Series in 2017, and in 2018, Hal Steinbrenner decided to cut his team’s payroll by roughly $50 million because he was worried about money, something his family’s Yankees have never worried about. Meanwhile, the Red Sox and Dodgers came on spending, trying to improve their team in every possible way, and to no surprise, the two met in the World Series. I miss the Yankees not being worried about every penny and not caring about the luxury tax.

It’s not that the Red Sox won the World Series, well, OK, it is that. But it’s more of how they won. And I don’t mean by Aaron Boone, A.J. Hinch and Dave Roberts doing everything they could to roll out a red carpet and escort them right to a championship. I mean how they won with former Yankee letdowns Eduardo Nunez, Nathan Eovaldi and World Series MVP Steve Pearce serving as heroes in October.

The trio of former Yankees couldn’t have been more disappointing during their time in pinstripes. Nunez was an overhyped prospect who Brian Cashman who hung on to for too long before letting go for nothing. Eovaldi was a hard-throwing 25-year-old who couldn’t strike anyone out when they traded Martin Prado and David Phelps for him and he left the Yankees as a hard-throwing 26-year-old who couldn’t strike anyone out and who needed another Tommy John surgery. Pearce had one of the shortest and worst stints as a Yankee when he played for the team six years ago.

That’s the general overview of how each of the three were complete letdowns for the Yankees, but it goes much deeper than that. Much deeper.

EDUARDO NUNEZ
I don’t know if I will ever hate a player more than Nunez. Well, it’s not so much him I hate because it’s not his fault he’s not very good, it’s Brian Cashman and the Yankees’ fault for thinking he was going to be the heir to Derek Jeter at shortstop. Instead, Nunez couldn’t play shortstop, couldn’t play any infield position really, and was eventually moved to the outfield before being let go by the Yankees for absolutely nothing. In 2014, the Yankees were willing to give Nunez’s job to Yangervis Solarte, who at the time had never played in the majors, rather than go through another season with Nunez.

It was Cashman’s awful evaluation of Nunez that cost the Yankees back-to-back World Series appearances and possibly back-to-back championships. Had Cashman been willing to part with Nunez, Cliff Lee would have been a Yankee. If Lee is a Yankee, he isn’t a Ranger and doesn’t beat the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS, and the Yankees don’t lost the pennant in six games. Cashman kept hanging on to the bad-ball hitter waiting for him to figure how to field a ground ball or show any semblance of discipline at the plate, and it never happened.

Sure enough, it was Nunez coming up like a Gold Glove winner in the ALDS, and sure enough, it was Nunez connecting with a ball at his laces to hit for a three-run home run in Game 1 of the World Series. As hard as it is to accept the Red Sox winning another World Series, it’s even harder to know Nunez was a part of it. “Eduardo Nunez is a champion” is something I never thought I would write.

STEVE PEARCE
Here are a couple tweets of mine from Pearce’s Yankees tenure.

Steve Pearce is the worst Yankee ever.

— Neil Keefe (@NeilKeefe) September 5, 2012

I always thought people sitting on oil were the luckiest people in the world, but I was wrong. It's Steve Pearce.

— Neil Keefe (@NeilKeefe) September 7, 2012

Once Pearce left the Yankees, he played for every other AL East team and shoved it right up the Yankees’ ass.

Pearce was an awful Yankee. Yes, his time with the Yankees was a very small sample size of 12 games and 30 plate appearances, but in those plate appearances, he hit .160/.300/.280 with one home run and four RBIs. That was back in 2012 when the Yankees were trying to win the division and avoid the first year of the wild-card format, so his at-bats were going at a crucial time. Since then, Pearce has gone on to play for the Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays and Red Sox moving around the AL East and destroying the Yankees at every opportunity. Here is how he has done against the Yankees since they removed him from the team.

2013: 2-for-6, .333/.333/.500, 2B

2014: 14-for-47, .298/.411/.553, 3 2B, 3 HR, 7 RBIs

2015: 5-for-34, .147/.256/.294, 2 2B, 1 HR, 3 RBIs

2016: 13-for-47, .333/.447/.590, 1 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBIs

2017: 10-for-28, .357/.406/.750, 2 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBIs

2018: 11-for-37, .297/.395/.757, 2 2B, 5 HR, 14 RBIs

Aside from 2015, Pearce has essentially been David Ortiz 2.0 against the Yankees.

It didn’t surprise me at all when Pearce single-handedly put the Yankees away in the division race back in August and it was business as usual when he went 4-for-12 against the Yankees in the ALDS. It was just the icing on the cake when he hit three home runs and drove in eight in five games in the World Series en route to being named World Series MVP.

I don’t care what team Pearce is on next season, but if the Yankees face him, he needs to be hit on the first pitch he sees against them. I don’t care who the pitcher is, what the score is, what the situation is or how important the game is. Pearce needs to be hit.

NATHAN EOVALDI
Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and can’t strike anyone out and that’s exactly what Eovaldi is. The Dodgers gave up on him and the Marlins gave up on him despite him being 24 years old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and he didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot that relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches per inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball this season and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but sure enough he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in the team’s history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero”.) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion and some dumbass team is going to give him an incredible free-agent contract after this stretch run in the regular season and postseason performance.

It doesn’t bother me that the Red Sox played “New York, New York” after they won or that they keep referring to the Yankees every chance they get in their offseason victory lap. It only bothers me that they won and that the Yankees didn’t because they didn’t play well against them and didn’t do everything possible to put the best team on the field.

I don’t want to hear Hal Steinbrenner talk about how angry he is that the Red Sox won and his Yankees didn’t. Steinbrenner has the ability to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s time this Steinbrenner acted like the real Steinbrenner and didn’t worry about money, only winning.

***

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

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Brett Gardner will be a Yankee in 2019. The Yankees decided to buy him out of his $12.5 million option for next season for $2 million and give him a $7.5 million one-year deal, saving $3 million and giving themselves outfield depth, which they desperately lacked in the second half of the season.

The return of Gardner has been a touchy subject as the longest-tenured Yankee is viewed as the unofficial captain of the team, and it’s been hard for Gardner fans to accept his decline. Generally, all Yankees fans like Gardner and appreciate the career he has had and what he has meant and produced for the team for over a decade now. But was it the right move to bring back the 35-year-old outfielder, who will turn 36 during the upcoming season?

I have been torn on this decision for a while. I have always been a Gardner fan, despite his streakiness, but it sure looked like he was done for most of the season. To determine whether or not Gardner should have been re-signed, let’s look at the good and bad of his return, starting with the bad since everyone always asks for the bad first.

THE BAD
Gardner batted .236/.322/.368 this season. That’s the worst batting average and on-base percentage and second-worst slugging percentage of his career. His .690 OPS was also the worst of his career. It’s never good when a 35-year-old puts up the worst numbers of his career in the final year of his contract and then the team brings him back for another season.

Gardner started the season the same way he has for the past several seasons: batting leadoff. But eventually his on-base percentage got too low to justify giving him the most potential at-bats over the course of a game and season, and starting Sept. 1 he was no longer batting first most of the time. (Tip of the hat to Aaron Boone who was willing to pencil in Gardner as his leadoff hitter for the majority of the first 135 games of the season despite his drastic decline in production. Just another example of “A’s across the board” for the manager.) For the last month of the season, Gardner was the Yankees’ No. 9 hitter … when he played.

The trade for Andrew McCutchen resulted in Gardner no longer being an everyday player for the final month of the regular season and into the postseason. It took an Aaron Hicks injury in Game 1 of the ALDS for Gardner to play the next two games of the series, and it took McCutchen being a complete non-factor at the plate for Gardner to remain in the lineup. After struggling to find and maintain any level of offensive production during the regular season, Gardner went hitless in the playoffs (0-for-8 with three walks) and looked completely overmatched at the plate.

On top of Gardner’s decline from leadoff hitter to No. 9 hitter to fourth outfielder is Clint Frazier waiting for his shot at being an everyday major leaguer. Let’s say Frazier is healthy in 2019 and moving forward. Where is he going to play? Aaron Judge is in right field. Hicks is in center. Gardner is in left. Giancarlo Stanton can rotate in the outfield to give those three days off. The return of Gardner not only means the Yankees are going to give a lineup spot to a 35-year-old coming off the worst season of his career, but that there is nowhere for Frazier to play, barring an injury to one of those four. (I’m not even going to get into asking where Jacoby Ellsbury is going to play because who cares? He should never wear a Yankees uniform in a real game again.)

The Yankees weren’t good enough to reach the World Series in 2017. They weren’t good enough to get out of the first round in 2018. I’m not sure that continuing to bring the same exact team back once again is going to get them over the hump. While Gardner might be very, very, very low on the list of reasons why the Yankees were eliminated short of their goal the last two seasons, his situation was a fixable one with the $2 million buyout.

THE GOOD
Gardner has been everything you want from a Yankee over a decade. He was a good, solid fourth outfielder/role player turned everyday center fielder turned everyday left fielder (thanks, Brian Cashman for signing Ellsbury!). He is the longest-tenured Yankee and though Judge is certainly the face of the franchise, it’s Gardner who is always there for a quote or state of the team when the media comes calling. From everything you hear and read, he’s an excellent leader and great clubhouse presence, and those things do matter.

Even with his ugly offensive season, Gardner still plays incredible defense, as shown by his Gold Glove finalist nomination. He plays left field at Yankee Stadium better than anyone, and the difference between having him in left or Stanton or anyone really is night and day.

For all of his flaws in the batter’s box in 2018, Gardner did bat .264/.350/.428 with a .778 OPS and a career-high 21 home runs in 2017. So he’s only one year removed from the best power showing of his career. Maybe there was an unknown injury or underlying reason why he fell off this past season. Maybe this past season wasn’t the beginning of the end, but rather an anomaly. Maybe after an offseason of rest, 2017 Gardner will be the Gardner the Yankees are getting in 2019.

Gardner might not have the stereotypical power that comes with left field and left field in the American League, but he won’t give away at-bats, will make every pitcher work to get him out and when he’s going right, he will get on base. Sure, he’s streaky, and there’s a reason why I have called him “The Streak” for a long time now, but the idea is that his hot streaks will outlast his cold streaks in 2019. If they don’t, well, the Yankees are still getting Gold Glove defense and a leader for $7.5 million, and if it doesn’t work out, he can return to the bench where he finished last season.

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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!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.