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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason • Yankees Thoughts

Jan 28, 2021

Yankees Thoughts: Busiest Week of Offseason

A lot has happened this week. It was easily the busiest week for the Yankees this offseason as the team made two trades, finalized two contracts and let a great Yankee leave.

A lot has happened this week. It was easily the busiest week for the Yankees this offseason.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I wrote all there is to write about the Yankees’ approach to the imaginery salary cap and said all there is to say about the team’s decision to cut payroll by $50 million this offseason for the second time in three years, and here it is for the last time. It’s sad, disappointing, frustrating, annoying and embarrassing, but it is what it is at this point. Hal Steinbrenner would rather save a homestand’s worth of hot dogs than do everything he can to win the World Series for the first time in 12 years.

2. The Yankees dumped Adam Ottavino’s salary on the Red Sox. But not all of it. The Yankees will pay Ottavino $850,000 in 2021 to pitch for their hated rival and to pitch against them. The Yankees will play the Red Sox 19 times (if the season goes as planned) or 12 percent of their season. Not only did the Yankees essentially give Ottavino to the Red Sox, they also attached a prospect to him. So when the Red Sox are buried in the standings at the trade deadline, they can then move Ottavino, who’s an impending free agent, as a rental and acquire even more prospects. The Yankees not only made the Red Sox better and set up their own right-handed heavy lineup to fail against Ottavino, they are also helping the Red Sox expedite their rebuild. When the prospects the Red Sox obtain for Ottavino in July become cornerstones for them and haunt the Yankees for the next decade, Steinbrenner’s fear of the luxury tax will be to blame.

3. The Yankees traded away Ottavino and then turned around and signed Darren O’Day, who does what Ottavino does from a different arm angle. The 38-year-old side-winder is as tough ones right-handed hitters out of the bullpen as anyone in the league, but what attracted the Yankees to O’Day was his price: around $2 million.

4. Why did it have to be O’Day instead of Ottavino? Why couldn’t it be both. Two years ago, the Yankees were going to go into the 2019 season with six elite relief options: Ottavino, Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, Dellin Betances, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapaman. Unfortunately, Betances got hurt and they never got to experience the full “super” bullpen, but they still had five elite relievers for 2019. Then they let Betances walk and sign with the Mets, and they had five options for 2020. Then Kahnle got hurt, and they had four for 2020. Then Ottavino fell out of Aaron Boone’s bullpen circle of trust, and they had three. They Kahnle leave and sign with the Dodgers and traded Ottavino to keep it at three for 2021. Adding O’Day gives them four again, but that’s still not enough. After O’Day, there’s Luis Cessa, Jonathan Loaisiga, Michael King and Nick Nelson. The bullpen is top heavy and old. Britton is 33. Chapman will be 33 next month, and O’Day is 38. The Yankees need to be adding to their bullpen like they did with O’Day, not subtracting from it like they did by moving Ottavino. The illusion of the luxury tax is preventing the Yankees from putting together the best possible roster.

5. Thankfully, DJ LeMahieu finally signed. The delay was waiting for a 40-man roster spot, but now the Yankees have their best player back. (I wish Aaron Judge were still considered to be the team’s best player, but you have to actually play to be the team’s best player, and not just half the season.) I lost a lot of sleep, staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, wondering if the Yankees were going to let LeMahieu walk, so I’m glad his contract is finalized.

6. The Yankees also traded for Jamseon Taillon to bolster their rotation. On paper and when healthy, the Yankees have a great rotation: Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Corey Kluber, Jameson Taillon and Jordan Montgomery. But “on paper and when healthy” can’t be a thing for the Yankees. A year ago right now, the Yankees’ rotation “on paper and when healthy” was Cole, Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and J.A. Happ with Montgomery as insurance. How did that turn out?

7. Taillon gives the Yankees another unknown. This is the Yankees’ potential rotation at full strength:

Cole: Nothing wrong (knock on all of the wood)
Severino (unavailable until midseason): Five starts and 20 1/3 innings since start of 2019
Kluber: Eight starts and 36 2/3 innings since start of 2019
Taillon: Seven starts and 37 1/3 innings since start of 2019
Montgomery: 12 starts and 52 innings since start of 2019
Deivi Garcia: Seven career starts and 35 1/3 innings (including his “start” in Game 2 of the ALDS)
Clarke Schmidt: One career start and 6 1/3 innings

Severino is coming back from Tommy John surgery, which was preceded by a lat issue, which was preceded by a shoulder issue. Kluber is coming back from a shoulder injury. Taillon is coming back from his second Tommy John surgery. Montgomery is 52 innings removed from Tommy John surgery.

8. Taillon does give the Yankees’ depth. Before the Kluber signing and Taillon trade, Montgomery was the No. 2 starter. Now he’ll be the No. 4 to start the season if everyone stays healthy (knock on all of the wood again) and the No. 5 when Severino hopefully returns (knock on all of the wood again). Garcia and Schmidt go from getting rotation spots on Opening Day like Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy did in 2008 to insurance options in the event of injury (knock on all of the wood again) or underperformance.

9. Unfortunately, Masahiro Tanaka won’t be returning to the Yankees. The seven-year Yankee is returning home to pitch for the Rakuten Golden Eagles. I think Tanaka only wanted to remain in North America if it were with the Yankees. He probably said he wanted $X and if he didn’t get it, he would just go home and pitch, and the Yankees’ desire to not go past $210 million meant he wouldn’t get what he wanted. I wanted Tanaka back, but the non-existant salary cap ended his time with the team. (I will have more on Tanaka in a separate blog.)

10. The 59-day gauntlet that is January and February is about halfway over, and that means there’s less than three weeks until scheduled spring training. Less than three weeks! I’m afraid to get too excited for the return of baseball because I still think the league and the owners will do everything they can to delay the start of the season. If they don’t, there will be baseball in no time. That makes me happy.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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

Jan 28, 2021

Yankees Podcast: Payroll Cut by $50 Million Once Again

For the second time in three years, the Yankees have cut payroll by $50 million while in their championship window.

The Red Sox were happy to take Adam Ottavino in the Yankees’ salary dump of the right-hander. Why wouldn’t they be? He makes the Red Sox better and his removal from the Yankees makes them worse.

Sure, the Yankees then went and signed Darren O’Day, but why couldn’t they have both? Why couldn’t they have five elite relievers? For 2019, on paper, they had six. Now they have four.

For the second time in three years, the Yankees have cut payroll by $50 million in the middle of a championship window.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 27, 2021

David Quinn Believes Rangers Have ‘Played and Competed for 60 Minutes’

David Quinn is getting moodier with each loss, and now that there have been four straight, his postgame press conferences are growing more tense.

The Rangers have now played 11 percent of their season and they have one win. One. That win came five games ago when they avenged their season-opening loss to the Islanders with an impressive 5-0 win over their New York rival. Since then, it’s been losing, losing, losing and more losing.

The Rangers’ season is in trouble. As crazy as that sounds after six games, it’s true. The Rangers’ season began on Jan. 14. There’s a good chance it could be over playoff-wise on Feb. 1.

It’s been a while since I broke down the postgame press conference from a Rangers coach following every game. It’s been eight years actually since John Tortorella gave wild, entertaining, but also outlandish postgame press conferences in what would be his final season as Rangers head coach. Quinn isn’t at the end of his leash in New York the way Tortorella was when he helped usher Marian Gaborik out of town because the dynamic scorer wouldn’t muck it up in the corners or block shots with his face. But Quinn’s seat is heating up. Rangers fans are starting to turn on the third-year coach after the sluggish start to the season coupled with his unfathomable lineup decisions.

Quinn could help himself by making simple yet logical changes to his current in-game strategy. He could remove Ryan Strome from PP1, stop dressing Jack Johnson, not shuffle lines every other shift and play Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad together at even strength. If the Rangers were to still lose with these changes, then so be it. At least they could say they were doing everything possible to try to win. Instead, they will continue on their current course, which has them in last place in the East, tied for the worst record in the league with Ottawa.

Quinn is getting moodier with each loss, and now that there have been four straight, his postgame press conferences are growing more tense. So it’s time to revisit the tradition built during Tortorella’s final season in New York and analyze Quinn’s postgame press conferences after the team loses, using the same format from eight years ago.

On the team’s face-off struggles.
“A face-off is a battle, not only with the centerman, but the flanks and the wingers, and too often we weren’t ready to compete in those battles.”

The Rangers won 30 percent of the face-offs in the game. Thirty percent! Quinn used the word “abysmal” to describe his team’s effort on face-offs and that might be a generous description. The Rangers haven’t been good enough this season in several areas, but face-offs have easily been their most glaring weakness.

On the play from the first two lines.
“Yes, we’re not getting enough from our Top 6, for sure.”

This answer is almost like a trick because no one know who the Top 6 forwards on the team are because of how frequently Quinn shuffles his lines. We know for certain that Panarin, Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich, and unfortunately, Strome, are in the Top 6. Filip Chytil’s injury takes him out of the conversation, leaving the other spot to either Alexis Lafrenière or Kappo Kakko. Here’s the thing: the 2020 No. 1 pick and 2019 No. 2 pick should both be in the Top 6. Only on the Rangers would only one of them be in the Top 6, and at times neither of them are.

You would think the Rangers were stacked with forwards to be unable to give Lafrenière and Kakko first- or second-line minutes. That’s poorly Quinn is utilizing his roster. Sadly, Strome is going to continue to be used as the second-best center on the team, if he isn’t any good, and Kreider is going to keep his spot based on seniority and money owed. (Once again why the team should have moved on from him). That means less ice time for Lafreniere and Kakko, the two forwards who should receive the most ice time of anyone not named Panarin or Zibanejad.

To put into perspective how bad the Rangers’ top forwards (whoever they are) have been, Phil Di Giuseppe has as many points (4) as Kreider and Zibanejad combined. Colin Blackwell has as many points (2) as both Kreider and Zibanejad, and as many goals as Zibanejad (1). Lafrenière doesn’t have a point.

I went back and looked at how each No. 1 overall draft pick has started their career since Steven Stamkos was selected first in 2008, and here is the game number each recorded their first career point.

Jack Hughes: 7
Rasmus Dahlin: 4
Nico Hischier: 2
Auston Matthews: 1
Connor McDavid: 3
Aaron Ekblad: 1
Nathan MacKinnon: 1
Nail Yakupov: 2
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins: 1
Taylor Hall: 2
John Tavares: 1
Steven Stamkos: 8

Lafrenière needs to get on the scoresheet on Thursday to tie Hughes and beat Stamkos. Otherwise he will need to score on Saturday to tie Stamkos. Even if he hasn’t at least picked up a second assist after Monday’s game against Pittsburgh, oh boy.

On the team’s play during the four-game losing streak.
“I thought for the last four nights we were skating and competing, for the most part, 60 minutes.”

If the scoreboard counted expected goals and if the standings counted moral victories, the Rangers wouldn’t own a 1-4-1 record, instead, they’d be 4-1-0. But their knack for blowing leads, allowing soft goals and collectively underachieving has lost them five of six games.

Yes, the Rangers have deserved better. They outshot the Devils 50-28 and controlled play and lost 4-3. They had a 3-1 lead against the Penguins and lost. Then they had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 against Penguins and still lost. They had those same leads against the Sabres and lost again. Some goals against have been soft, but not all of them.

It’s nearly impossible to say your team competed for 60 minutes for four straight games when you lost all four games, but Quinn did just that. Either Quinn has accepted losing or he has yet to realize he is a big reason to blame for some of the losing. (The Rangers haven’t scored a goal when his favorite player Johnson has been on the ice this season.)

On turning the season around.
“I’m still stewing about tonight. We’ll figure that out here in the next 48 hours.”

The Rangers had less than 48 hours until their next game against the Sabres by the time Quinn said he had 48 hours to figure out how to right the season. If the Rangers don’t start turning their moral victories into actual victories over the next three games, there won’t be a season to right.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New Rangers episodes after every game throughout the season.

Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Podcast

Jan 27, 2021

Rangers Podcast: Another One-Goal Loss

The Rangers lost to the Sabres 3-2 and have now lost four straight games, all by one goal. Their season is slipping away.

The Rangers lost to the Sabres 3-2 on Tuesday and have now lost four straight games, all by one goal. To make matters worse, it was their third straight lost in which they had a lead in the game. They blew three leads in two games in Pittsburgh and blew another two leads in Buffalo. The Rangers’ postseason chances are declining by the day, and they need to turn their season around before they no longer can.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New Rangers episodes after every game throughout the season.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Jan 27, 2021

Hal Steinbrenner Shows True Colors in Adam Ottavino Trade

The Yankees say their goal each season is to win the World Series, but after the trade of Adam Ottavino, Hal Steinbrenner made it clear there’s a limit to how badly the wants to win it.

The Steinbrenners are poor. At least that’s what they want Yankees fans to think. That’s why Hal Steinbrenner went on the radio after the team’s disappointing postseason loss to the Rays and made sure to mention how the team didn’t make as much money as they normally do because of the shortened, fan-less season. And that’s why Adam Ottavino was traded to the Red Sox as part of a salary dump on Monday.

The Yankees didn’t have to trade Ottavino, especially to the Red Sox, but it’s clear Brian Cashman was told to keep the 2021 payroll below the $210 luxury-tax threshold. So rather than keep the right-hander in the Yankees’ bullpen during the team’s supposed championship window, Ottavino will now come out of the Red Sox’ bullpen and likely embarrass the Yankees when he does.

Ownership was so desperate to avoid paying any sort of luxury tax for 2021 that they were fine with Cashman sending Ottavino to their direct rival. The Steinbrenners are so worried about losing a home game’s worth of beer sales to payroll tax that they are completely accpeting of trading a right-on-right specialist to a team they play 19 times when eight of the Yankees’ nine everyday bats are right-handed hitters. The Yankees play 12 percent of their season against the Red Sox, and that means there will be an abundance of opportunities for Ottavino to strike out Aaron Judge, Luke Voit and Giancarlo Stanton in order with sweeping low-and-away sliders. I’m scared to think of what a Gary Sanchez at-bat against Ottavino will look like. There will come a game this season when the Yankees need a big hit against the Red Sox and Ottavino will come in the game and get the job done against them. Actually, there will likely be many games when the situation arises considering how many times they play each other.

Not only did the Yankees trade Ottavino within the division and to their hated rival, they will be paying him to pitch against them this season. As part of the deal, the Yankees are paying $850,000 of Ottavino’s salary, as he becomes the latest ex-Yankee in a long list of former Yankees who were paid to play and pitch against the Yankees (and beat them while doing so).

Ottavino wasn’t expendable either. Not the way he might have been, at least on paper, during spring training in 2019 when the Yankees had Dellin Betances, Tommy Kahnle, Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. But then Betances got hurt and eventually became a Met and Kahnle got hurt and became a Dodger. For as inconsistent as Ottavino might be at times and for as bad as he is at holding runners on, he would still be at worst the Yankees’ fourth-best reliever to start 2021, and could very well become their best the way he was for a large part of 2019.

Now that Ottavino is gone, the Yankees have three trustworthy relievers in Green, Britton and Chapman, and I only put Chapman with the other two because of his career numbers. At this point, I don’t trust Chapman to tell me what day of the week it is. After those three, it’s Jonathan Loaisiga, Luis Cessa and I guess Michael King and Nick Nelson? Maybe Tyler Lyons and Nestor Cortes? It’s some combination of pitchers you never want to see warming up and pitchers you never want to see come into games. The Yankees gave away a valuable reliever in the middle of a championship window. Actually, they didn’t even just give him away. They are paying him to not pitch for them!

There’s no salary cap in baseball. If there were, maybe this move could be praised since it keeps the Yankees under the $210 million threshold and gives them the ability to re-sign Brett Gardner and still have enough money for midseason call-ups and potential trade deadline acquisitions. But there’s no salary cap in baseball, just the illusion of one, and because of that, this move is simply disgusting.

The Yankees’ payroll is now $50 million less than it was a year ago. $50 million. Whenever the Yankees don’t win the World Series, Hal Steinbrenner likes to apologize to the fans the way his father used to, but at least when his father would, it meant something. It wasn’t an empty gesture made between figuring out how to best keep fans out of the lower bowl during batting practice and making sure concession stand workers were putting the right amount of fries in each container to maintain margins. After the Yankees’ ALDS loss to the Rays, Steinbrenner said:

“I’m very disappointed, obviously. We invested a lot of time, energy, money into the team last offseason, and we all felt that we had a team that could win a championship, and we failed to do that. We didn’t even come close. So right now, at this point in time, all I can do is apologize to our fans. They deserved a better outcome than they got. Period. I mean, they just did.”

If the Yankees fail to win the World Series for the 12th straight year in 2021, he needs to have a better apology than that one. Cutting payroll by $50 million for the second time in a championship window (the team did the same thing after coming within one win of the World Series in 2017) is inexcusable for the franchise which makes more than any other in Major League Baseball.

The Yankees say their goal each season is to win the World Series, but after the trade of Ottavino, Steinbrenner made it clear there’s a limit to how badly he wants to win it.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

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