1. At the 2019 trade deadline, the Yankees desperately needed to add starting pitching. Masahiro Tanaka was having the worst season of his career, James Paxton had been inconsistent and injured, CC Sabathia had an ERA hovering around 5, J.A. Happ was ineffective in his second season with the Yankees, and due to injuries, Luis Severino wouldn’t be available until September. The Yankees’ starting pitching situation was a mess with a lack of organizational depth that would grow more shallow with the eventual suspension of Domingo German.
2. The Yankees had an opportunity to improve that rotation by trading for 28-year-old Marcus Stroman, who boasted a 2.96 ERA in 21 starts for the Blue Jays through the end of July. They didn’t.
“We were interested, but we didn’t think he would be a difference-maker,” Brian Cashman said at the time about not trading for Stroman. “We felt he would be in our bullpen in the postseason.”
3. Three years before making the same claim about Jordan Montgomery (who it turns out is a pretty good postseason starter), Cashman and his team failed to properly evaluate Stroman. The Yankees went into the postseason with a three-man rotation of Tanaka, Paxton and Severino, put Happ and Sabathia in the bullpen and turned to Chad Green as an opener when they needed a fourth starter. In the ALCS, Tanaka, Paxton and Severino couldn’t give the team length, Happ allowed a walk-off home run as a reliever in Game 2, Sabathia blew out his shoulder in Game 4 and Green’s opening act in Game 6 put the Yankees behind three runs in the first inning. A masterclass in roster construction by Cashman. After the series ended, the Yankees’ elite relievers, all of which were no longer effective by Game 6 complained of fatigue. You know who would have likely prevented that fatigue? Stroman, who gave the Blue Jays and Mets length for the entirety of 2019.
4. That season was either Stroman’s best (137 ERA+) or second-best season (he had a 145 ERA+ in 201 innings in 2017) in the majors depending on how you want to view or value each. He was in his prime and had done an excellent job combating the juiced baseball, and still, the Yankees didn’t want him.
Stroman is now 32 and will turn 33 less than five weeks into the 2024 season. He’s coming off back-to-back seasons for the Cubs in which he missed 20 percent of his starts due to injury. Apparently, now the Yankees consider him to be a difference-maker.
5. On Thursday, after failing to increase their offer for the Yoshinobu Yamamoto and after lowballing reigning NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell, the Yankees signed Stroman to a two-year, $37 million deal.
So what changed in the four-and-a-half years since Cashman passed on Stroman at a time when the Yankees desperately needed him? The Yankees grew even more desperate is what changed.
6. Coming off an embarrassing 82-80 season in which the Yankees couldn’t qualify for the postseason in a format in which 40 percent of the league is eligible, the Yankees’ offseason plan was to trade for Juan Soto and sign Yamamoto. They used up every last starting pitching resource to acquire Soto, thinking the addition of Yamamoto would cancel out the lost starting pitching depth. When that failed, the Yankees were left without a plan, much like they were 13 years ago when Cliff Lee signed with Phillies, and the Yankees’ lack of a Plan B led to them replacing Andy Pettitte and the idea of Lee with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia.
The Yankees’ rotation-enhancing options quickly went from penciling in Yamamoto as the No. 2 Carlos Rodon was supposed to be to either overpaying for Snell or Montgomery (who Cashman dealt in 2022 because he didn’t see Montgomery being a postseason starter for his team) or signing Stroman and all the baggage that comes with him. Knowing the cost of each, the Yankees made a “Hey, we tried!” offer to Snell then pivoted to Stroman.
7. Stroman has worn out his welcome at every place he has been: the Blue Jays, Mets and Cubs. The New York native, who was suspended in the minors for using a performance-enhancing substance frequently engages with critical fans on social media (which is always a good idea) and has spent the last four-plus years since Cashman made the “difference-maker” comment bashing the Yankees through social media. (Oddly enough, all past Yankees bashing done by Stroman has now been scrubbed from his social media accounts.) When Stroman pitches poorly, rather than be accountable, his first instinct seems to be to search for his name on X/Twitter and respond to anyone who has mentioned his most recent performance. Rodon blowing a kiss to heckling fans after he missed most of last season and then pitched poorly when he did pitch is minor-league softness compared to what Stroman is capable of.
Stroman has his issues, both on the mound where underlying metrics suggest his prime is over, and off the mound, where he will go off on fans when he doesn’t meet expectations. The Yankees had to fill their hard-to-root for quota somehow with the recent losses of Josh Donaldson, Domingo German and Jimmy Cordero, and by acquiring Alex Verdugo and signing Stroman, they are doing everything they can to fill those voids.
8. The Yankees’ rotation is now made up of the reigning AL Cy Younger winner (Gerrit Cole), the worst starting pitching in the majors in 2023 (Carlos Rodon), a starter who went down in the 2022 postseason with an injury and then made only 12 starts in 2023 because of injuries (Nestor Cortes), an oft-injured righty who just pitched a career high in innings to middling results (Clarke Schmidt) and Stroman, who again missed 20 percent of last season.
The Yankees still need to add another starter, whether it’s Snell or Montgomery. Bringing back Luke Weaver isn’t going to help me sleep at night, and the odds of Rodon, Cortes, Schmidt and Stroman all being healthy and available when the seasons starts at the end of March is a four-leg parlay I want no part of.
9. “Hope” should never be a word associated with the Yankees during an offseason. The Yankees have the ability to remove the idea of “hope” from their offseason plans every year, and yet, every year they continue to make that their organizational motto. You would think after 14 pennant-less and championship-less seasons, they would go back to their old way of doing business, signing and banking on sure-things rather than hoping and praying for bounceback seasons and Comeback Player of the Year nominations for members of their roster. But that’s all Yankees fans are likely left to do going into 2024 again: hope and pray that a group of oft-injured, over-30 players and pitchers somehow defy their individual injury histories and recent performance issues.
10. Hopefully, Stroman pitches well for the Yankees (as well as he would have in 2019 had they acquired him in his prime), and he doesn’t feel the need to search for his name on social media and wage a war with the largest fan base in the sport. If he doesn’t pitch well, or if he does come decide to take out any performance-related frustrations on fans, he’s at least in the right environment to do so where his new manager will be there to defend, support and lie for him to no end. Let’s “hope” Stroman is an All-Star again in 2024 like he was in 2023 and it all works out.
The Yankees lost out on free-agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese star signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers and a lot of Yankees fans seem worried. I’m not one of them.
The Yankees lost out on free-agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese star signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers and a lot of Yankees fans seem worried. I’m not one of them.
1. I thought I would be more upset about the Yankees not landing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but I’m not. Losing out on Yamamoto (and losing Michael King) hurts their overall pitching staff, but it’s not enough to ruin the 2024 Yankees. The Yankees may not have the pitching depth they had before trading for Juan Soto or the depth they thought they could replenish when Yamamoto was still an option, but pitching hasn’t been a problem for the Yankees in 15 years. The offense, however, is what has led to the demise of the current Yankees core in each of their postseasons and what prevented them from even reaching the postseason last year.
2. The Texas Rangers just won the World Series with a rotation similar to the Yankees’ and an inferior bullpen. They were able to win four postseason rounds and went on the road in the wild-card series to end the Rays’ season, swept the 1-seed Orioles in the ALDS, knocked off the Astros in Games 6 and 7 in Houston and then beat an NL Cinderella story that had eliminated the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies.
3. Does that mean I don’t want the Yankees do anything else? Certainly not. The Yankees still need to build back up their starting pitching depth. It seems as though they are content with their current lineup situation, and because of that, pitching will be their primary focus for the remainder of the offseason. As currently constructed, the Yankees have a strong team on paper and in theory. On paper and in theory, it’s a roster full of household names that should return them to the postseason. In actuality, it’s a roster that is banking on the majority of its players to stay healthy and return to their usual form. I don’t want to go into 2024 with the roster representing the type of parlay card full of +400 and +500 underdogs the Yankees have put together in recent years. Parlays are for suckers and the recent rosters the Yankees have called “championship-caliber” were suckers. The long odds on that parlay card can be shortened by signing one or two of the leftovers starting pitchers with Yamamoto off the board.
4. The Yankees’ inability to sign Yamamoto makes their trade for Soto all that more important. If the Yankees hadn’t acquired Soto and were three days out from Christmas with a replacement-level outfielder the Red Sox didn’t want as their only move, then yeah, things would be bleak for 2024. Soto moved the needle that much for me and the 2024 Yankees. They will still need a lot to happen, but they need a lot less now that they have Soto.
5. Ultimately (credit to Aaron Boone for that word), the Yankees’ season will come down to the following:
Anthony Rizzo being healthy and the offensive force he was in April and May of last season.
DJ LeMahieu being healthy and productive.
Giancarlo Stanton having his first productive season in three years, and if not, the Yankees being willing to move him down in the order, bench him or release him.
Anthony Volpe taking a giant step offensively in his second full season after a rough rookie season at the plate.
Carlos Rodon not being the worst start pitcher in baseball.
Nestor Cortes staying healthy.
If all of those things happen, the Yankees will be fine. (Fine in terms of the regular season.) If half of them happen, they should still be fine in terms of reaching the postseason. If only the Rodon and Cortes needs work out, they will still be fine. If none of them happen, well, Yankees fans will have a lot of free time in August, September and October again like they had last season.
6. The addition of Soto helps mitigate a lot of the offensive issues and uncertainty, but had the Yankees signed Yamamoto they would still be hoping to hit on a few items from that list. Like Soto, adding Yamamoto would have lessened the need for those listed items to go the Yankees’ way, but neither Soto nor Yamamoto alone, nor together, would fully safe-proof the 2024 Yankees from some sort of roster parlay.
7. This offseason has felt longer than normal because the Yankees’ season was hanging on by a thread in mid-July and officially over on August 13. There was essentially seven weeks added to the length of his offseason because of how early the Yankees were out of it. When they open the season on March 28 in Houston, it will be more than seven months since they last played a truly meaningful game.
The Yankees’ lack of depth in all departments leaves little wiggle room for them to sustain injuries and underperformance the way they were able to in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. We saw last year what happens when the current roster is banged up, and next year’s roster currently has less depth than that. If you’re a Yankees fan who’s not already praying for a healthy 2024, you may want to start.
8. I don’t care how much money Yamamoto received and anyone who thinks it’s too much money for a pitcher who has never thrown a pitch in the majors or too much period has been fooled by the owners into thinking there is a limit to how much players can be paid. At least three teams offered Yamamoto $300 million and the team that landed him already invested $700 million in another player. That same team has more than $400 million committed to Mookie Betts and nearly another $200 million to Freddie Freeman and Tyler Glasnow each. Every team can pay and overpay for players. Some just choose to do it more than others.
9. The good news is I don’t see how the Yankees don’t re-sign Soto now with Yamamoto off the table. Hal Steinbrenner could have cried poor after 2024 and let Soto walk if he had just committed to a decade of Yamamoto at $300-plus million. But now? Now the only star position player for the Yankees under contract after 2024 is Aaron Judge. A year ago, Steinbrenner said, “Fans want to see stars,” and then paid a star-less lineup for most of 2023. The Yankees have two stars now and they will hit back-to-back in the order, representing the best back-to-back situation in the sport. I expect them to have both for 2024 and beyond. I have been under the impression the Yankees would re-sign Soto from the second they traded for him, and now I fully expect it. If they don’t, I will be right back to where I was as a Yankees fan the second before the deal for Soto was finalized.
10. Missing out on Yamamoto in this dreadful free-agent class means the Yankees can’t go into 2024 as the true odds-on favorite to win the AL. (Maybe that’s a good thing since they were the odds-on favorite for 2021 and finished third in their division and fifth in the AL and their postseason lasted nine innings.) The AL was wide open for 2023 and the Yankees chose not to be a part of it with their “Run It Back” roster. As open as the AL was last year, it’s similarly open for 2024. Without Yamamoto, the Yankees can’t truly separate themselves from the pack, but there are still free-agent signings they can make to at least have somewhat of an edge on the rest of the league.
After years of shopping in the clearance aisle for position players to no success, the Yankees finally acted like the Yankees once again and acquired a generational talent. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
After years of shopping in the clearance aisle for position players to no success, the Yankees finally acted like the Yankees once again and acquired a generational talent.
1. Last month when Hal Steinbrenner was staring into a laptop rather than publicly assessing the miserable 2023 season in person, nothing he said made me feel better about being a Yankees fan going into 2024. Unless Steinbrenner guaranteed he would stop at nothing to acquire Juan Soto, he wasn’t going to make me feel better about retaining his general manager and manager and his overall evaluation of his inherited franchise.
The Yankees acquired Soto on Wednesday night after days of negotiating, trading player names and finally reviewing the medicals of all of the arms the Yankees exchanged for the 25-year-old superstar. Today, I feel as good about being a Yankee fan as I have since the team won Game 5 of the 2022 ALDS over Cleveland. (That feeling lasted barely 24 hours with the Yankees losing Game 1 of he 2022 ALCS the following night. I expect this feeling to last longer.)
2. I have seen many Yankees fans who say they have been hard on ownership and Brian Cashman in recent seasons take a step back to applaud their work here. There will be no applause from me. This trade doesn’t erase last season. It doesn’t make up for the 2022 trade deadline disaster. It doesn’t negate not signing Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or Corey Seager when it would have only cost money — the Yankees’ greatest resource — to do so. Trading for Soto was necessary and it was the type of move the Yankees should always be willing to make. The trade for Soto is the Yankees as an organization doing their job, something they no longer often do. The Yankees doing their job every few seasons isn’t worthy of congratulatory praise.
3. This deal wasn’t a luxury move, the way it was when the Yankees acquired 28-year-old Alex Rodriguez in February 2004. This move was a necessity. The Yankees desperately needed a middle-of-the-order, superstar, left-handed bat to complement Aaron Judge, and paying whatever price San Diego demanded was going to be worth it. I have seen commentary suggest the Yankees overpaid for Soto or that the Padres somehow “won” a trade that isn’t even a day old. To me, the Yankees didn’t give up anything they couldn’t afford to lose, they acquired the best player in the deal, and it will take the Padres hitting a massive parlay with the arms they received to somehow come out on top from the deal after trading away a unique talent like Soto.
4. During the negotiating period, I came across real people who were worried the Yankees were overpaying for one guaranteed year of Soto by moving Michael King and Drew Thorpe. King was a great late-game, multi-inning reliever for the Yankees and showed exceptional promise as a starting pitcher over the final two months of this past season. He also blew up his arm when he fractured his elbow in July 2022 and the 104 2/3 innings he threw in 2023 represent the most innings he has thrown since 2018. Thorpe had a great season in the minor leagues, but again, it was the minor leagues and his success in High-A and Double-A is in no way indicative of his future success or potential success in the majors. Neither pitchers are good enough to prevent the Yankees from acquiring Soto, and thankfully they weren’t.
5. Soto isn’t a superstar, he’s a generational superstar. He’s a unicorn in terms of plate discipline in today’s game as he has more walks (640) than strikeouts (577) in his career, and only in his rookie season (when he was 19 years old) did he not outwalk his strikeout total (79 to 99). He has the fifth-highest OPS+ for any player with 3,000 plate appearance through his age-24 season with the only players above him being Ty Cobb, Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle and Jimmie Fox.
6. Soto just turned 25 at the end of October and has already played six full seasons in the majors. What he accomplished through his first six years and his age-24 season is ridiculous: posted a .923 OPS as a 19-year-old, led the Nationals to a championship as a 20-year-old with a .949 regular-season OPS and 1.178 World Series OPS; won the batting title (.351 average) as a 21-year-old, recorded the first 145-walk season in 17 years (Barry Bonds) as a 22-year-old; drew another 135 walks and added a Home Run Derby crown as a 23-year-old; played in all 162 games with 132 walks and a .930 OPS as a 24-year-old.
7. To put into perspective just how young Soto is and how absurd it is that he has been in the league for six years already, here is Soto compared to the ages of other Yankees considered “kids” by the organization and fan base:
Estevan Florial: 26.0 Juan Soto: 25.1 Oswaldo Cabrera: 24.9 Austin Wells: 24.5 Anthony Volpe: 22.7
8. Once Jasson Dominguez returns in the summer, the Yankees have the ability to use this lineup:
DJ LeMahieu Juan Soto Aaron Judge Jasson Dominguez Gleyber Torres Anthony Rizzo Giancarlo Stanton Austin Wells Anthony Volpe
Here is a real lineup the Yankees used in September:
9. In the past, Soto has said he prefers to hit third. Whether he still feels that way and if it will be Judge then Soto or Soto then Judge in the Yankees lineup is now the team’s biggest offensive problem. For long stretches of last season, Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, Willie Calhoun, Harrison Bader and Jake Bauers took turns hitting second and third. The team has come a long way since late last night.
10. I don’t think the Yankees traded for Soto with the idea of taking one shot at ending the championship drought with him on the roster. I think they made this move with the idea they will do whatever it takes to extend him (unlikely with Scott Boras as his agent) or re-sign him. Ideally, the Yankees would pay him before the other 29 teams have a chance to, but if they aren’t able to (and I don’t think they will be able to with the way Boras operates) then at least they have a season together to lay the groundwork needed to keep him a Yankee for the rest of his career.
The Yankees have passed on too many mid-20s position players in recent years (Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Corey Seager) with their decisions to pass immediately coming back to haunt them. The focus for the Yankees with Soto can’t just be for 2024.
The Yankees’ offseason is going about as well as the actual season. No changes have been made to the front office, dugout, clubhouse or roster and everyone within the organization continues to talk about how
The Yankees’ offseason is going about as well as the actual season. No changes have been made to the front office, dugout, clubhouse or roster and everyone within the organization continues to talk about how great everything is.
1. After the last day of the miserable, embarrassing 2023 season, the Yankees went quiet for 36 days. More than five weeks of nothing from the organization. Over that time, every other major-league club either kept playing or held some sort of end-of-the-season post mortem to explain what happened over the previous six months and why it won’t happen again. Some teams even decided during that time to move on from their general manager and/or manager, a concept foreign to ownership in the Bronx.
2. The Yankees chose nothing: say nothing and do nothing. They decided against holding their standard end-of-the-season press conferences with their general manager and manager. They decided against replacing the two people in those jobs. They went into hiding as an organization, choosing only to hold internal meetings in Tampa where they decided to run it back with the same front office and same staff. And when they report to spring training in a little under three months, they will make it apparent they are running it back with the same roster as well.
3. It was only recently the Yankees came out of hiding to publicly answer questions for an 82-win season, and the only reason they did was because they had to. Brian Cashman had to attend the General Meetings and show his face in public, and Hal Steinbrenner knew Cashman had to attend these meetings and would be questioned, so he too came out of hiding. Knowing he had to be the first person from the organization to say something, anything since the end of the regular season, hours before Cashman went on an expletive-filled tirade, Steinbrenner popped open his laptop and virtually addressed the media like a coward.
4. “I’m proud of our operation,” Steinbrenner said. “I think we have a great group of baseball people. I think we have a very strong process that has served us well up until what happened this particular season.”
The Yankees have such a “strong process” that they finished fourth in the AL East and eighth in the AL, producing more runs than only the Tigers, Guardians, White Sox and A’s. So what did Steinbrenner tell his “great group of baseball people?”
“I told them this season is completely unacceptable.”
And yet, that “group of great baseball people” are still employed by the Yankees in the same positions they held during the “completely unacceptable” season. Those employees keeping their jobs includes Cashman and the equally untouchable Aaron Boone.
5. “I think he’s a good manager,” Steinbrenner said of Boone. “He’s extremely intelligent. He’s hardworking. The players respect him as a manager. They want to play for him and win for him.”
If the players want to win for Boone, why didn’t they do that more often? Of course players want to play for him. Boone is a dream boss. He’s the ultimate player’s manager. Make the first out of an inning at third? He likes the aggressiveness. Give up seven runs in two innings? He thought the stuff was great, but there were just a few pitches the starter would like to have back. Jog down the first-base line like you’re a valet attendant retrieving a car? Turn your back on the pitching coach after allowing eight runs without recording an out? He’ll say he would have disciplined the pitcher in question, but it’s late in the season.
As for Boone being “hardworking,” maybe he is, but it doesn’t mean the work he does is good, and what is Steinbrenner basing Boone being “extremely intelligent” or a “good manager” on?
6. Steinbrenner admitted to wavering on if Boone should continue as manager of his team. Why would Steinbrenner even think about replacing someone who is “extremely intelligent” and “hardworking” and a “good manager” the players “respect” and “want to play for” and “want to win for.” Those are the exact characteristics every MLB team is looking for in hiring a manager, and yet Steinbrenner was willing to move on from someone he has under contract who possesses those traits. Why? Because Boone doesn’t actually possess those traits.
Steinbrenner said he changed his mind about a possible managerial move after consulting with Andy Pettitte, Nick Swisher and Aaron Judge. Steinbrenner’s own intuition nor his highly-paid “great group of baseball people” mattered in the decision. Instead, a former teammate of Boone’s, someone who never played with or for Boone and the team’s current captain (who gets to enjoy an accountability-less work environment) acted as the driving force in Boone getting a seventh season to manage the Yankees.
7. Nothing Steinbrenner said made me feel any better about being a Yankees fan going into 2024. Truthfully, unless he guaranteed he would stop at nothing to acquire Juan Soto, he wasn’t going to make me feel better after retaining his general manager and manager. But then Cashman spoke and suddenly all of the lies and excuses that came out of Steinbrenner’s mouth didn’t seem so bad.
In Cashman’s first run-in with the media since the end of the season, he behaved in a manner wildly inappropriate for someone of his position. He spoke about his job and his team as if he had put a few back in the hotel lobby before meeting reporters. Not only did he ideologically challenge anyone who thinks or talks poorly of the disastrous roster he has built, I was waiting for him to physically challenge media members for saying or writing anything critical of him or his team over the last year.
“I think we’re pretty fucking good,” Cashman said with microphones in his face, and that’s all he needed to say. That one sentence sums up the state of the Yankees better than any words I can put together possibly can. Coming off their worst season in 30 years in which they had the highest payroll in the AL, Cashman still believes the Yankees “are pretty fucking good.”
8. The lack of accountability within the organization is startling. Steinbrenner said the season was unacceptable, and yet, he didn’t fire a single employee. Cashman has blown through more than $3 billion of payroll over the last 14 years without producing a single World Series appearance let alone World Series win and still believes his team is “pretty fucking good.” Boone has a litany of performance-related excuses for his players after every single game and those players spend all season talking about tomorrow until there are no more tomorrows and then they talk about next year.
9. When Steinbrenner was asked about Cashman’s unhinged appearance, he said, “While I don’t condone the cussing, I do like the passion.”
Steinbrenner doesn’t condone Cashman’s language except he does, since nothing came of it. In mid-July when Carlos Rodon blew a kiss to heckling fans in Anaheim, Boone said, I would like him not to do that … But I think it was better than getting into a shouting match or doing something that he would regret.” Rodon shouldn’t have reacted and blown a kiss to upset fans, but hey, at least he didn’t verbally or physically assault a fan! Every single member of ownership the front office and clubhouse lacks accountability and it trickles down from Hal, who won the birth lottery, all the way to someone like Harrison Bader, who condescendingly responded, “No concern,” to Meredith Marakovits when asked about his level of concern regarding the team’s place in the standings in early August.
10. Early in the 2023 season, a friend of mine told me he believes the Yankees are operating as a social experiment: a test to see how far the organization can push its fans while still maintaining a fan base. At first I laughed because of the comedic way it described the 2023 Yankees’ season, but as the season progressed, it became hard to ignore as a possibility.
Maybe the Yankees are just fucking with all of us? It sure would explain Steinbrenner recently saying Boone thinks the team needs to bunt more or Cashman opting to criticize his second-highest-paid position player’s injuries unprovoked. It certainly would explain everything the two said over the last two weeks. It would definitely explain everything that has gone on with this team for a long time now.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. The Yankees’ season officially ended nine days ago, and unofficially ended on August 13 in Miami. The wild-card best-of-3 series ended last week, and today, a division
1. The Yankees’ season officially ended nine days ago, and unofficially ended on August 13 in Miami. The wild-card best-of-3 series ended last week, and today, a division series could end. All of this has happened without a word from the Yankees. No end-of-the-season press conference full of lies, excuses and empty promises. No nothing.
Then again, what is there for the Yankees to announce that we don’t already know? The lack of sourced rumors and news means there will be no changes for 2024. Brian Cashman will continue in his role for a 27th season. Aaron Boone will be back for a seventh season.
2. I’m numb to these Yankees. A year ago, I was livid when Boone was retained after the ALCS debacle in which the Yankees were swept by the Astros and he used the 2004 ALCS to unsuccessfully motivate his clubhouse. The year before that, I was irate when he was given a new three-year contract with a fourth-year option. Now? Now I really don’t care.
It’s not good for the Yankees that I don’t care. When their most ardent fans are throwing their arms up in disgust, it’s not good. I’m not alone. I have received countless texts and had countless conversations with friends, many of whom are in the same tier of me when it comes to caring about the Yankees who no longer care.
3. Once the Yankees avoided a last-place finish in the AL East and prevented the consecutive season winning streak from ending, the possibility of real, meaningful change was gone. Boone wasn’t going to survive a last-place finish, but a fourth-place finish, well that’s a whole different story! He wasn’t going to survive the Yankees finishing under .500, but two games above .500, well that’s a whole different story! The measuring stick for what is and isn’t considered a success for the Yankees has been watered down to the point that being slightly better than a Red Sox team that just fired their general manager after four seasons is enough for people to keep their jobs.
4. Joe Torre managed the Yankees for 12 seasons. In those 12 seasons, the Yankees went to the playoffs 12 times (in a format in which only the Top 4 teams in the AL reached the playoffs), won four championships and appeared in six World Series. Despite unfathomable success that led to his number 6 being retired, he was forced to sing for his supper in front of Cashman, George Steinbrenner and ownership in Tampa after three straight first-round exits. It didn’t matter that he was given an approaching-40-year-old Mike Mussina, a 42-year-old Randy Johnson, a 45-year-old Roger Clemens, Chien-Ming Wang, Shawn Chacon and Jaret Wright to navigate those postseasons. The Yankees were expected to win every season and they hadn’t in seven years, so Torre was offered a degrading incentive-laden deal to remain Yankees manager.
This week in Tampa, Boone is meeting with Cashman and ownership led by Hal Steinbrenner, who was his father’s fourth choice (at best) to run the Yankees. Boone isn’t in Tampa to sing for his supper or convince a room full of the same millionaires and billionaires that took Torre for granted in that same room 16 years ago. Boone doesn’t have to persuade the front office as to why he should still be manager of the Yankees after six unsuccessful seasons and with the organization’s championship drought now at 14 seasons with one in the last 23 years. Because to the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, these last six seasons weren’t unsuccessful. To the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, they were wildly successful.
5. The idea a Yankees season is a success if it ends with a championship or is a failure if it doesn’t died with George. Once the championship-or-bust mentality was erased from the organization, success was measured by simply making the postseason. “Just get in” became the motto for Hal’s Yankees and his general manager referred to the postseason as a “crapshoot” in every opportunity he could. Oddly enough, Cashman never referred to the postseason as a “crapshoot” when the Yankees were winning the World Series every year. There was no mention of success in October being “random” when Cashman inherited a dynasty built for him. Only when that dynastic roster grew old and eventually retired and Cashman was forced to build his own core did the words “crapshoot” and “random” become a part of his vocabulary.
Cashman was done the favor of all favors by the league and the players’ association when they expanded the postseason format to five teams and then eventually to six. Not only would his preaching that winning in the postseason was the equivalent to trying to win a casino game be more acceptable, but with 40 percent of the league getting a postseason berth, his Yankees would never miss the postseason. Until they did. In just the second year of seven of the AL’s 15 teams reaching the playoffs, the Yankees weren’t one of them. So the championship-or-bust measuring stick that had been downgraded to “just get in” had dropped another notch: Stay out of last place. Mission accomplished.
6. Cashman’s predecessors built him a stunning, breathtaking mansion, of which he drilled a few holes and hammered in a few nails, and then spent the next nearly three decades acting as though he built the whole thing alone with his bare hands. Once the core of players he inherited that had won four championships in five years — the five years for which Cashman still holds his job to this day — began to age and retire, Cashman couldn’t build his own core. After eight championship-less seasons, he was able to squeeze one final ring out of the Core Four by surrounding them with a half-billion-dollar offseason. Four years and a pair of ALCS losses, an ALDS disaster and a postseason-less season later, he tried the same trick, except this time his half-billion-dollar spending spree was every bit as bad as every single trade for a controllable starting pitcher he has ever made. Three years later, the Yankees had a single postseason game to their name: a 3-0 shutout loss at home to the Astros. He spent the following summer trying to convince ownership to sell at the deadline and hit the reset button, and somehow fooled everyone into thinking he wasn’t the person responsible for all the bad deals and acquisitions the Yankees were trying to sell off for pennies on the dollar.
The Baby Bombers were going to be Cashman’s legacy. They were going to prove he could develop his own talent, build a core of his own and allow him to stop living in Gene Michael’s shadow, no longer needing to pass off Stick’s work as his own. Except the Baby Bombers couldn’t turn Cashman into the genius the faction of the fan base that sleeps in Yankees pajamas so badly wanted him to be recognized as. After coming within one with of the 2017 World Series, the Baby Bombers never got that far again.
They never got that far again because Cashman’s analytically-driven organization either couldn’t finish off the development of the majority of its young players, or watched their careers stall out with no answer to fix them.
They never got that far again because Cashman continued to prospect-hug the wrong prospects only to eventually release or designate them for assignment for nothing in return.
They never got that far again because Cashman signed the wrong free agents, acquired the wrong acquisitions, surrounded his already oft-injured roster with more oft-injured players and continued to believe aging players could beat Father Time, as if it were the early 2000s and they could get help in beating Father Time.
They never got that far again because Cashman took a team that came within one win of the World Series and turned it over to someone whose managerial and coaching experience at any level was the same as mine.
7. Not only did Cashman convince Hal Steinbrenner and the executive group that offered Torre a prove-yourself contract that Boone was the right man to take over a team knocking on the door of the World Series, but he convinced them to cancel all additional interviews.
Of all the irresponsible decisions Cashman has made in tarnishing what the interlocking NY stands for, hiring Boone is right near the top. Boone proved himself overmatched for the job in his very first spring training, forgetting he needed to notify the bullpen of when to get relievers warm. In the very first series of the season, he decided to trust Jonathan Holder as if he were peak Ramiro Mendoza. In his very first postseason, his starter for the pivotal Game 3 of the ALDS didn’t know the start time for the game. When that starter could only get outs by lucking into 105-mph line drives finding gloves, Boone let him put the Yankees in a three-run hole. When that hole wasn’t big enough, Boone sent him back out for the next inning where he loaded the bases without recording an out . Needing a strikeout, Boone went to his least likely option in the bullpen to generate a strikeout. The Yankees would go on to suffer the most lopsided home postseason loss in the team’s history that night. The following night, Boone let his fatigued starter face the opposing lineup in its entirety a second time because he liked the matchup of his starter against the 9-hitter. The Yankees’ season ended that night with Boone nonsensically defending his thought process.
The results aren’t as important as the process for the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees. Cashman told us all exactly that a year ago at the team’s end-of-the-season press conference. The same press conference they have yet to hold this month. And because the process is what matters, and not scoring more runs than the opposition and not winning games and championships, there’s truly no goal for the Yankees. A process is a subjective thing. Cashman may think Boone’s process is outstanding. Someone else (anyone else) may not. Wins and losses aren’t subjective, and because of that, they’re not necessarily part of the internal process the Yankees believe they have perfectly concocted, the same way the organization said their 2022 internal metrics proved Isiah Kiner-Falefa was one of the best defensive shortstops in the league. (I guess they stopped believing in those numbers in the postseason when they benched him for his defense against the guardians and Astros.) Boone’s process hasn’t changed since his first season as a major-league manger. He made the same in-game strategic mistakes in 2023 he made in 2018. Shockingly, the Yankees have only grown worse during his tenure, operating under his process.
From top to bottom, the Yankees are a mess. Their majority owner wants no part of owning the team. He wants to reap the financial benefits of being an all-time lucky sperm, but doesn’t want to do any of the work involved in earning those benefits. His hands-off approach has kept Cashman in power, and the cocky, stubborn smartest-guy-in-the-room, who five years ago rejected the idea of Bryce Harper being a Yankee, continues to operate with no accountability or consequences. Do you really think the guy who didn’t even meet with Harper during his free agency because he had an outfield depth chart of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, Jacoby Ellsbury and Clint Frazier or the guy who watched Josh Donaldson’s 2022 and then brought him back and rostered him for nearly all of 2023 is going to admit to any wrongdoing in his hiring of Boone. Because that’s what moving on from Boone would be. It would be an admission that choosing the guy with no experience was the wrong choice. We’re talking about the same guy who was forced by ownership to call up the kids in August and September against his wishes. If it were up to Cashman, Donaldson and Harrison Bader would have still been batting fifth and sixth for the Yankees last Sunday.
8. Steinbrenner has Cashman’s back. Cashman has Boone’s back. Boone has his players’ backs. And his players say they have Boone’s back because what else are they supposed to say? Judge could think Boone a moron (which he is) and do you think the captain of the team is going to tell a sea of microphones his true feelings about his manager? And yet, Judge’s supporting his manager to the media at the end of the season is being used as some sort of proof that none of the Yankees’ failures are on Boone. Boone losing his job wouldn’t be scapegoating. He’s not a scapegoat. He’s not the problem, but he’s a problem and part of the overall problem, and has been since he was hired. The goal for the organization should be to resolve all problems.
In all likelihood Judge and Gerrit Cole and all of the Yankees love Boone, and why wouldn’t they? Everyone wants a boss who is their friend first and authority second, if at all. Everyone wants a boss who doesn’t care about mental, physical or emotional mistakes, who holds no one accountable and has little care for results.
Boone is a dream boss. He’s the ultimate player’s manager. Make the first out of an inning at third? He likes the aggressiveness. Give up seven runs in two innings? He thought the stuff was great, but there were just a few pitches the starter would like to have back. Jog down the first-base line like you’re a valet attendant retrieving a car? He’ll say he believes the effort was there. Blow a kiss to heckling fans who are fed up with a soft, thin-skinned $800,000-per-start pitcher? He’ll say at least the pitcher in question didn’t physically assault the fans. Turn your back on the pitching coach after allowing eight runs without recording an out? He’ll say he would have disciplined the pitcher in question, but it’s late in the season.
There’s no ceiling for the lengths Boone will go to “protect” his players. But in doing what he thinks is protecting is his players, all he has really done is create a losing culture for the winningest organization in sports history. He has created a clubhouse and roster that is comfortable with losing and that believes there’s always tomorrow. And why wouldn’t they? That’s all any of them have heard since becoming Yankees under Boone. The only player still around now to remember how things were before Boone is Judge, and maybe that’s why Judge referred to the season as a “failure” two weeks ago, something his manager or teammates wouldn’t dare to do.
9. With no change at general manager and no change at manager, what change is coming for a team that just finished 19 games out in the division? How are they planning on closing that 19-game gap? They aren’t. The only movable player on the roster is Gleyber Torres, and while I’m not the biggest Torres fan, it’s probably not a great idea to trade the team’s second-best hitter. (I fully expect the Yankees to keep Torres, not extend him and then lose him to free agency a year from now.) The rest of the roster is a collection of young players you can’t trade out of necessity, young players whose trade value has decreased now that they have reached the majors with little-to-no success or mid-to-late-30s players owed big money. The free-agent market looks like a tag sale of items that belonged to an owner who was a chain smoker.
10. That leaves the Yankees with one option for next season: another massive parlay. Hope DJ LeMahieu gives them a full season, Stanton isn’t officially washed, Anthony Rizzo can avoid long-term concussion symptoms and be productive, Anthony Volpe isn’t a bust, Jasson Dominguez returns in July looking like he did in September, Carlos Rodon can stay healthy and pitch to his salary, Nestor Cortes can bounce back from shoulder problems and that Michael King and Clarke Schmidt can build on their 2023 seasons. And on top of all that, they need Judge and Cole to continue to perform at a superstar level. Easy.
It’s a lengthy parlay card that looks every bit like the offseason parlay cards the Yankees have created for themselves over the last decade. If A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K all happen, this could be a World Series team! None of those parlays hit and don’t expect this one to either.
No change at general manager. No change at manager. No change to the roster because there’s no change to be made.
