A lot happened with the Yankees over the weekend, all off the field. The team went against their contract extension policy, amended their beard policy, reminded everyone of how much money they are spending on their roster, misevaluated their player development system and vowed to stop playing Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” after losses. There was a little good and a lot of bad, which is the way it goes when Hal Steinbrenner speaks publicly.
“After great consideration, we will be amending our expectations to allow our players and uniformed personnel to have well-groomed beards moving forward,” Steinbrenner said. “It is the appropriate time to move beyond the familiar comfort of our former policy.”
This weekend was the appropriate time. Not last weekend. Not the weekend before. Not last season or the one before that. February 2025: the appropriate time.
While this is a change, it’s not that much of a change. The Yankees still won’t allow long hair and they aren’t going to have anyone looking like Charlie Blackmon or Brandon Marsh. A well-groomed beard is hardly noticeable, so if that’s what it takes for some players to feel good about themselves, then this change makes a lot of sense.
“Winning was the most important thing to my father,” Steinbrenner said. (Notice how he said it was the most important thing to his father, and not himself? We all know increasing the cost of tickets, concessions and merchandise while maintaining the same payroll is the most important thing to Hal.) “If somebody came and told him that they were very sure this could affect us getting the players we want to get … I think he might be a little more apt to do the change than people think, because it was about winning.”
Aaron Boone went on to say that the rule could potentially prevent someone from signing with the team and Brian Cashman cited a non-roster invitee who was hesitant about signing with the Yankees because of shaving. Boone spoke in hypotheticals and Cashman mentioned a player who may or may not exist. Ultimately, no player is choosing to not sign with the Yankees over their appearance policy. Money trumps a beard or long hair.
Money was also talked about extensively by Steinbrenner as he can never help himself from telling everyone how much of his inherited money he is spending on his inherited baseball team.
“Our payroll now is almost identical to last year,” Steinbrenner said. “We’re right at 307, 308. I think then last year we were 310, so we’re right there.”
The Yankees’ payroll should never be the same year over year. It should increase every year. When the prices for tickets, concessions and merchandise remain the same year over year then Hal can keep the payroll the same year over year. But for some odd season, Hal’s revenues keep increasing, while payroll remains the same.
“Should I really need a $300 million-plus payroll to win a championship?” Steinbrenner asked. “Does having a huge payroll really increase my chances that much of winning a championship?”
Certainly, Hal can’t be serious. No, you don’t need the game’s highest payroll to win a championship, but then you need to have one of the game’s best player development systems, and the Yankees don’t have that.
“We have a good player development system,” Steinbrenner said. “Good, young players that have come up.”
He then went on to cite Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells and Luis Gil. There was no mention of the stalled development of the Baby Bombers from 2018 on, of which only Aaron Judge remains a Yankee. And citing Volpe as a product of a “good” player development system is as much of a stretch as it gets. He has been 17 percent worse than league average at the plate through two seasons, has a .288 on-base percentage and a .667 OPS. He is much closer to being a bust than he is to being an example of a successful player development story.
If the player development system is as good as Hal seems to think, then why doesn’t the team have a starting third baseman? Why do they claim the starting left field spot is up for grabs? Where was the player development system in the postseason when they were starting Alex Verdugo and Anthony Rizzo by choice? The same Verdugo and Rizzo who are still free agents, unwanted by the entire league.
The Yankees have one player on the MLB’s Top 100 Prospects list: Jasson Dominguez. The player who wasn’t good enough to play over Verdugo in left field the last time the Yankees played a real game, but who is now good enough to start in left field without having played any real games since. On Sunday, Dominguez misplayed a fly ball in the Florida sun, the type of play that prevented the Yankees from playing him in October.
Before Steinbrenner cried publicly about his finances again and gave his team the option to grow beards, he and the organization went against their policy of extending a contract before it expired by giving Boone two more years on his deal (that was set to expire at the end of this season).
I understand Cashman has a job for life with the Yankees and that once the Yankees won the pennant last year, the same became true of Boone. So I want to congratulate Boone on getting two more years added to his deal. It’s a well-deserved extension for a savvy in-game manager who’s always upfront with the media and the team’s fan base on player performance and injuries. He deserves to be rewarded. Here’s to two more years after this one and hopefully many more after that!
It wouldn’t be a proper celebration if I didn’t’ list the long, CVS-receipt-like list of Boone’s accomplishments as Yankees manager.
- Only Yankees manager to get a fifth season on the job without a championship (he has now extended the record to an eighth season)
- Manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS)
- Manager for the worst single-month record in 33 years
- Manager for the worst season record in 31 years
- Manager for the most steals allowed in a single game by the franchise in 109 years
- Manager for the first three-plus-game-series sweep by a National League team at Yankee Stadium in franchise history
- Manager of the first Yankees team to lose five straight home series in 34 years
- Manager for the first Yankees team to not steal a base over 20 consecutive games in 61 years (the best part of this is that is happened in an era when there is a pitch clock and disengagements and pickoff throw limits)
He also used video from the 2004 ALCS as a motivation tactic during the 2022 ALCS, missed the playoffs entirely despite 40 percent of the league getting in the postseason in 2023 and then oversaw the single-worst defensive inning in the history of the World Series in 2024. When you add up his pitching decisions from the 2018 ALDS, 2019 ALCS and 2020 ALDS and factor in the disastrous summer of 2021, the ALCS embarrassment of 2022, the entire 2023 season and the humiliating 2024 World Series, it’s hard not to question why he wasn’t given an extension of more than two years.
Cashman said if Boone weren’t the Yankees manager there would be a “feeding frenzy” for his services, a claim that can’t be substantiated as long as Boone remains manager of the Yankees. And he’s going to remain manager of the Yankees for a long time.
Last modified: Feb 24, 2025
