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 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.

They’re really going to run it back. Again.

There are less than two weeks left in the Yankees’ season. Thankfully.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. In 12 days, the 2023 Yankees will no longer exist. It’s both happy, because this has been the most miserable Yankees season of my life, given the performance relative to expectations, and sad, because it sucks when the baseball season ends, even one as miserable as this.

I gave up on the Yankees long ago. The Sunday, Aug. 13 loss in Miami was the day I came to realization the season was officially over. The Yankees confirmed my realization by losing nine straight games.

2. I was starting to feel good about 2024 with the arrival of Jasson Dominguez, but that lasted eight games before the actually promising prospect was taken from us through at least next season’s All-Star break, and likely longer. Dominguez was and hopefully remains the real deal. He’s not Anthony Volpe, who you have twist numbers and narratives to feel good about. He’s not Oswald Peraza, who hopefully is building on his .849 OPS over his last 13 games, and he’s not Everson Pereira, whose inability to make contact is startling. Maybe Volpe will become the superstar he’s believed to be. Maybe Peraza and Pereira will continue their development into being everyday players for the Yankees. There was no maybe with Dominguez. There were no growing pains. He was every bit as good as advertised over the last four years, and would have opened the 2024 season as the Yankees’ 3-hitter and returned hope to a fan base starving for someone other than Aaron Judge to believe in in the batter’s box. Unfortunately, on March 28, 2024 in Houston, we will all have to pray a 1 through 4 of DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton that wasn’t good enough or healthy in 2023 will be good enough and healthy a year older in 2024.

3. I keep hearing “It’s crazy the Yankees are only six games out with 12 games to play!” It’s not crazy. This is what the six-team, three wild-card format was created to do: keep as many teams in the postseason picture for as long as possible (especially the team with the highest payroll in the AL and second-highest payroll in the majors). The Yankees are only “almost a playoff team” because 40 percent of the league gets into the playoffs, and sadly they aren’t in the Top 40 Percent of the league, a feat that seemed impossible of ever happening when the new playoff format was implemented.

4. Sometime in the next two to three weeks, the Yankees will hold their end-of-the-season press conference and explain why they didn’t win a championship for the 14th straight season. Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone will both undeservedly remain in their positions for 2024, the Yankees will do little to nothing to upgrade the roster over the winter, and expect fans to tune in beginning on Opening Day believing next season will end differently than the previous 14 simply because the Yankees are the Yankees, as if that means anything anymore.

5. The Yankees’ recent play and winning 14 of 20 assures Boone will be back for 2024. The Yankees needed to continue their bottoming out, finish in last place and end the consecutive-season winning streak for him to be removed as manager. Now that they have spent the last three weeks beating up on the Tigers, Pirates and Red Sox, are out of last place and above .500, there’s no doubt in my mind Boone will be back next season. We know Cashman is coming back. He has a lifetime contract. So where will the change come from to make sure a season like this doesn’t happen again? How about nowhere. There won’t be any change.

6. The players the Yankees could have gotten rid of have already been gotten rid of: Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson and Harrison Bader.

If you think Bader was bad as a Yankee (and he was painfully bad), well, Reds fans can’t be too happy with how he has played for their team. Bader is 5-for-31 and hitting .161/.235/.194 with Cincinnati. (Yes, that a .194 slugging percentage.) Bader was a below-league-average hitter with the Cardinals (99 OPS+), well below one as a Yankee (75 OPS+) and is an automatic out as a Red (18 OPS+). I’ll always remember Bader for his “No concern” comment when asked how concerned he was about the Yankees’ place in the standings after their loss to the Astros on August 6.

Donaldson has played seven games with the Brewers, and while he’s nowhere near the level of player the Yankees decided to take on $52 million for, he’s been better than he was as a Yankee, hitting .217/.357/.391. Donaldson already has a double with the Brewers, after hitting one in 120 plate appearances for the Yankees this season.

And then there’s Aaron Hicks. Hicks isn’t just playing well for the Orioles, he’s playing the best baseball of his career, hitting .288/.386/.452. Hicks had similar seasons with the Yankees five and six years ago, but those came during the days of the juiced baseball. What Hicks is doing now, for the veteran minimum, while the Yankees are paying him to play for the best team in baseball is sickening.

All three of these ex-Yankees may be playing in the postseason. Hicks and Donaldson definitely will be, and the Reds are tied for the final wild-card berth in the National League. Here’s to Hicks and Donaldson winning ALCS and NLCS MVP respectively and meeting in the World Series.

7. Congratulations to Carlos Rodon on giving the Yankees his second quality start of the season on Sunday in Pittsburgh! The Yankees have paid Rodon about $25 million of his $27 million for this season so far to receive two quality starts. The Yankees lost both of those starts and are 3-9 when Rodon takes the mound, but that’s just semantics.

8. Stanton has one multi-hit game in nearly a month, and he’s down to .193/.279/.431. He’s hitting .202/.289/.448 in his last 205 games and 843 plate appearances. He will be 34 for 2024 and is under contract for next season, the season after that, the season after that and the season after that. Rodon will still have a season left on his contract when Stanton is gone.

9. I have made a small fortune this season betting on the under in Yankees games, so when I saw this stat two days ago, it didn’t surprise me: The Yankees have been held hitless in 48.8 percent of innings this season. It made me laugh because when you watch the Yankees get no-hit through the first five innings of a game two to three times a week (like they did most recently on Sunday), it’s easy to understand just how horrible the offense is. But when it’s written it out that in half of their innings this season they have been no-hit, well, that really drives the point home.

10. The Yankees are six back with 12 to play. They essentially need to win every remaining game to possibly reach the postseason. If you think they can do that and have the Mariners or Rangers collapse (since the Yankees going 12-0 would mean 6-0 against the Blue Jays which would mean the Blue Jays have collapsed) then hats off to you. There’s a reason the Yankees have a 0.4 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, and it’s not because that scenario is likely.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
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The Yankees won two of three from the Tigers and lost two of three to the Brewers. None of it matters.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The only reason to watch the Yankees this September no longer exists. I guess there’s some intrigue in watching the continued development of Anthony Volpe and the hopeful development of Austin Wells, Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira (and maybe Oswaldo Cabrera if he’s not a lost cause), but the one true reason to watch any remaining games was Jasson Dominguez. Unfortunately, Dominguez is now out for the rest of this season and likely half of next season after tearing his right ulnar collateral ligament.

The most miserable Yankees season imaginable grew even more miserable with the Dominguez news on Sunday. Dominguez had been the Yankees’ switch-hitting center-field superstar that everyone hoped he would be after he signed four years ago, and now he will miss out on three more weeks of major-league plate appearances this year and most likely three months of next year.

2. Dominguez reportedly told the Yankees on Wednesday that his arm was sore. He then went on to play Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Sounds a lot like Anthony Rizzo telling Aaron Boone he was experiencing “fogginess” prior to a series opener in Baltimore before going on to play all three games in that series and then being shut down. So now Dominguez needs surgery and the next time we will get to see him play is around the All-Star break next summer, and that’s probably only if everything goes perfectly. Get ready for ‘Isiah Kiner-Falefa Center-Field Stopgap for the First Half of 2024.’ 

3. I was upset the Yankees didn’t just get no-hit for nine innings and lose on Sunday to add another notch on their belt of embarrassment from this season. Instead, they finally got a hit in the 11th inning to tie the game, tied the game again in the 12th inning down two runs and won in the 13th inning on a Kyle Higashioka walk-off hit.

Higashioka got to play in the game because Jake Bauers pinch-hit for Ben Rortvedt, who happens to be Gerrit Cole’s latest personal security blanket, and Higashioka went into the lineup for the Rortvedt/Bauers spot. I thought I was done having to watch Higashioka play baseball as a Yankee, but apparently I’m not.

4. Higashioka has only received one start in September and two since August 31, but that’s two too many. Wells and Rortvedt should be playing every day no matter what hand the pitcher throws with. Wells has only played in three of the last six games. If Cole has to have Rortvedt catch him, which he clearly does (just like he had to have Higashioka catch him over Gary Sanchez and then Jose Trevino catch him over Higashioka) then Rortvedt should catch the remaining Cole starts and Wells should be catching every other start. He needs the at-bats, he needs the work behind the plate, he needs the experience. Every day he’s sitting on the bench is a day wasted toward the Yankees being better in 2024 and beyond.

5. The same goes for Peraza, Pereira, Cabrera, and also Estevan Florial, who was called up on Monday, which likely pained the Yankees since they would rather roster has-beens, and never-weres than Florial. Those four should be playing in all 19 remaining games. (Comically, Peraza and Pereira are both not playing on Monday.) There is absolutely no reason for any of them to not play. Bauers and Kiner-Falefa should only get another plate appearance this season if two of Aaron Judge, DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres or Giancarlo Stanton get a day off on the same day.

6. Luis Severino isn’t going to throw another pitch this season and most likely threw his last pitch as a Yankee. I can’t see the team re-signing him after the way the last five years have transpired. I have always been a Severino fan and have gone out of my way to defend and support him against his critics, of which there are many. Once Severino is gone, Judge will be the last remaining player from the 2017 team that had so much promise. Severino hasn’t been healthy since 2018 and hasn’t been a consistent front-end starter since the first half of that season. That’s more than five years ago, which in baseball, is a long, long time ago. I’m sure the Dodgers, Rays or Astros will sign him, fix him, keep him healthy and have him reaching his full potential again, and I’m sure he will have success wherever he goes in 2024 since he won’t be pitching for or coached by the Yankees.

7. Five years and three weeks from now, the Yankees will no longer be paying Carlos Rodon. Like I said, five years in baseball, is a long, long time. The Yankees’ offense got thoroughly dominated in the 2022 ALCS by the Astros, and came to the conclusion they were adding Rodon away from closing the gap on the Astros. They didn’t add a single bat in the offseason, and instead ran it back with Josh Donaldson and Aaron Hicks, and believed in Harrison Bader and Oswaldo Cabrera. As I wrote and said when Rodon signed, he was a luxury, not a necessity at a time the Yankees needed necessities. Their starting pitching wasn’t why they lost to the Astros, and yet, they chose to sign Rodon to a six-year, $162 contract.

The always-injured Rodon missed the first half of the season with injuries, and had he missed the entire season, the Yankees may have a chance at the postseason since they are 2-8 in his 10 starts. He has given the Yankees one quality start, and that happened to be on August 22 against the Nationals when the Nationals had traffic on the bases in all six of Rodon’s innings, but he managed to escape jam after jam. In half of his starts, he has failed to pitch five innings, and he’s put 69 baserunners on in 46 1/3 innings while allowing 12 home runs. On Thursday, he got lit up by the Tigers (3.2 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), who have scored the second-fewest runs in the majors.

The Yankees are tied to a two-pitch starter, who makes more than $800,000 per start and who has made a full season of starts once in his nine-year major-league career for five more years. The decision to sign him was unnecessary at the time, and now it will likely prevent them from signing other starting pitchers this offseason. It shouldn’t prevent them from doing so, but Hal Steinbrenner operates in the limits of the imaginary salary cap that he helped impose. (And remember, he has been an adamant public supporter of a hard salary cap in the sport and a spending structure that would destroy his own team’s ability to be consistently be good because it would save him some money.)

8. Michael King’s line as a starter across four starts: 16.2 IP, 13 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 21 K, 1.08 ERA, 1.28 FIP, 0.960 WHIP. King’s first two starts were abbreviated because of pitch count concerns, but the last two times out he was allowed to throw 69 and 79 pitches and went five innings both times, allowing one earned run in each of the two starts. Those two starts came against the Astros and Brewers, two teams with championship aspirations this season, and real championship aspirations, not the fake kind of championship aspirations the Yankees had this year. As long as King’s health holds up, he will be given a rotation spot for 2024, and the Yankees need starting pitching options for 2024

9. Right now, their expected rotation would be Cole, Rodon, Nestor Cortes, Clarke Schmidt and King? There are enormous injury concerns with everyone other than Cole. It’s likely why Brian Cashman was in Japan on Saturday to watch Yoshinobu Yamamoto start. Cashman chose to be in Japan and attend that Yamamoto start of all Yamamoto’s starts because it was Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium and the 1998 Yankees were being celebrated for their 25th anniversary. And yet, the general manager (who inherited that team) wasn’t present. Cashman wasn’t about to show his face to the public and leave himself open to get destroyed by the crowd. There was no coincidence in Cashman being absent.

10. It’s unfortunate Cashman won’t be absent from the Yankees forever, and only is when it’s convenient for him to not have to answer in the form of boos and expletives for the decisions he has made with the organization since the final out of the 2017 ALCS. He will have to answer questions soon. There are now less than three weeks left in the season and then the Yankees will hold their annual end-of-the-season press conference. It’s typically takes place during the ALCS or World Series since the Yankees are usually eliminated before both of those rounds of the postseason, but this season it could even take place during the wild-card round since they won’t even qualify for that.

Cashman will have to answer for this season and this roster. He can hide for a Saturday in Japan on a conveniently-timed scouting trip. He can’t hide forever.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
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Labor Day is depressing, but with Labor Day has nearly always come the anticipation of October and Yankees playoff baseball. Unfortunately, there won’t be any postseason baseball for the Yankees this October. So as the summer comes to an end, and this miserable Yankees season comes to end, let’s look at the state of franchise.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. While I have spent the last couple of weeks rooting for the Yankees to lose to further cement this embarrassing season and give ownership no room to possibly run it back again next season, part of me was hoping they pulled off the four-game sweep in Detroit just to hear the postgame comments from Aaron Boone and his players. I so badly wanted to hear that this is the turnaround they have been waiting for and that they have momentum going into September, but I was deprived the opportunity for comedic comments from the Yankees clubhouse because they couldn’t even pull off a sweep of the Tigers. In spectacular Yankees fashion, Gleyber Torres threw away a double play ball (after booting a double play ball earlier in the game that extended an inning and led to the Tigers scoring) that would have sent the game to the 11th inning. It was so Gleyber and so Yankees that it was beautiful in the way a tornado is.

2. The Yankees managed to go 3-1 in Detroit, and they are now 11-2 against the A’s, Royals and Tigers, and 57-67 against all other teams. If they only played those three teams (on pace for 115, 113 and 90 losses respectively) then they would be “championship-caliber” in the way Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman and Boone have talked about them this season. Instead, the Yankees are 65-69, sitting comfortably in last place in the AL East and need to go 17-11 in their remaining 28 games to preserve the consecutive season winning streak that dates back to 1993.

3. What’s even harder to stomach about this season is that the Yankees would be 64-61 if they never played the Red Sox. And the Red Sox would be 61-64 if they never played the Yankees. The Red Sox singlehandedly ruined the Yankees’ season, and the Yankees singlehandedly propped up the Red Sox’ season. I guess the good from that is the Red Sox helped the Yankees realize they need organizational and roster change, and the Yankees prevented the Red Sox from selling their wide array of assets at the deadline, only to stand pat (like the Yankees) and they will now also miss the playoffs.

4. The Yankees’ decision to stand pat at the deadline was ill-advised at the time and looks even worse in hindsight. After choosing to not move Harrison Bader by the first of August, the Yankees put him on waivers on Tuesday and then watched him join the Reds on Thursday for nothing in return other than salary relief. Just some money back in Hal’s bank account.

On Aug. 2, 2022 when the Yankees traded Jordan Montgomery for Bader, I tweeted, “Umm … Harrison Bader sucks.” Bader sucked with the Cardinals and he sucked even worse with the Yankees. He came to the Yankees as a below-league-average hitter for his with a 99 OPS+ and posted a 72 OPS+ with the Yankees, somehow managing to be 27 percent worse in New York than he had been in St. Louis. He hit .237/.273/.353 with the Yankees for a .627 OPS. His first six weeks as a Yankee were spent on the injured list and a lot of his 2023 was spent there too. His five 2022 postseason home runs in nine game is what some will remember his time with the Yankees by, but I will remember him for three other things:

1. His error in Game 3 of the 2022 ALCS. He dropped a fly ball that would have ended an inning, but instead extended the inning and the next batter (Chas McCormick) hit a two-run home run to essentially end the Yankees’ season.
2. His postgame comments on August 6. After losing to the Astros, Bader was asked how much of a concern it is being 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot? “No concern at all,” he answered. “We keep playing this brand of baseball it’s going to be just fine.” The Yankees did keep playing that brand of baseball and are 7-14 since.
3. Not knowing what waivers is. After Tuesday’s game he was asked what his reaction was to finding out he was put on waivers. “Like what is waivers mean?” he replied. (That’s not a typo. That’s how he worded his answer.) How does a going-to-be-30-year-old in their seventh major-league season not understand waivers?

Bader was as much of a bust as busts get, and I’m glad I no longer have to watch him play for the Yankees, and I’m especially glad he won’t be a Yankee for 2024 and longer as many wanted him to be with a possible extension. The fact the Yankees technically traded Montgomery (who they could have desperately used this season) for nothing is the type of result that can be expected from Cashman transactions at this point.

5. Bader’s dismissal was only the start of the roster news for the week as Josh Donaldson was released by the Yankees on Tuesday. Why did the Yankees wait until now to release Donaldson in a move that every Yankees fan was clamoring for since the end of last season? I have no idea. But I do know if the Yankees’ season didn’t spiral out of control, the Yankees would have kept Donaldson and he would have been starting at third base and batting fifth the moment his current 60-day IL stint ended.

Bader’s time with the Yankees was forgettable, but short-lived. Donaldson’s time with the Yankees was disastrous with long-term ramifications.

On Jan. 12, 2023. prior to the start of spring training, I wrote about Donaldson, questioning how he could still be a Yankee for 2023:

Donaldson is owed $21.75 million in base salary in 2023 and has an $8 million buyout attached to him for 2024. There’s a better chance the Yankees figure out how to efficiently conduct Stadium entrance security than there is that Donaldson isn’t bought out in 2024. That means Donaldson remains a $29.75 million investment for the Yankees. I have made a lot of foolish purchases in my life. The Tubthumper album from Chumbawama in 1997 comes to mind. But that cost my sixth grade self, what, $14? Maybe $15. (I should have used that money on a safer investment like buying more Pogs.) The Yankees willingly traded for Donaldson and took on the entire $51.5 million owed to him to acquire Kiner-Falefa. Teams do crazy shit like that when they are getting an elite player in return. Pay off this overpaid sunk cost for us and we will give you the player you covet. The Dodgers took on David Price’s remaining contract to get Mookie Betts. The Yankees coveted Kiner-Falefa, a player the Rangers spent half-a-billion dollars to avoid playing (by signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien), and a player the Twins immediately flipped to the Yankees (and then used the money saved on Donaldson to sign Carlos Correa). The Yankees coveted him so much, they were willing to take on more than the entire team payrolls of the A’s and Orioles to make it happen.

Donaldson is going to play because of owed money. There’s no circumstance in which he will be benched for underperformance. If he wasn’t benched last year when he posted career lows in runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and had the highest strikeout rate of his career, what exactly would he need to do to get benched in 2023? If he were to have a sub-.500 OPS around Memorial Day, Boone would still deflect questions about Donaldson batting fifth with how great his defense has been as if defense doesn’t grow on trees.

On Memorial Day, Donaldson did have a sub. 500 OPS at .489 and was on the IL, having been so since the sixth game of the season. He did eventually get his OPS up to .659 (which was 190 points lower than his career OPS and represented a new low for him for an OPS in a season, beating last year’s .682) before going on the IL for the remainder of his time as a Yankee. His .142 batting average was alarming and his .225 on-base percentage made him unplayable, and yet, when healthy, he always played and never batted lower than sixth in the lineup.

6. “The things he did this winter to get himself ready to go, I think you’re crazy to think that a bounce back is not in there offensively,” Boone said of Donaldson in spring training. “This guy still has bat speed, and is super talented. He’s in a much better place than he was a year ago right now.”

I guess we’re all crazy. Everyone not employed by the Yankees is just a crazy idiot. He never bounced back, and he ended up being in a worse place than he was the year prior. I can hear John Sterling now at an Old Timers’ Day in the near future …

“This next Yankee came to the Bombers via trade prior to the 2022 season. In his first year in pinstripes he posted full-season career lows in every single offensive statistic, culminating in a magnificent 1-for-13 performance with 10 strikeouts in the ALCS as the Yankees were swept away by the Astros. Despite offseason calls to release him, the Yankees brought him back for 2023, never batted him lower than sixth and eventually released him in late August, while still on the 60-day injured list. He missed 44 percent of the team’s games over his two seasons as the Yankees paid him $51.5M for 165 games of a .678 OPS. That’s Josh, by gosh! Josh, with panache! Welcome back, Josh Donaldson!” (Stadium organ plays.)

7. All of the recent benching, waiving and releasing has made it possible for the Yankees to call up and play the next wave of Baby Bombers that the organization hopes can fulfill the goal the last wave couldn’t: win a championship. Or even play for a championship.

Last week, it was Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira. And now on Friday, in Houston, against Justin Verlander, it will be 20-year-old Jasson Dominguez and 23-year-old Austin Wells. Dominguez reaches the majors after just nine games and 37 plate appearances in Triple-A and Wells after 33 games there.

8. In a vacuum, neither Dominguez nor Wells are likely ready for the majors. But the Yankees don’t operate in a vacuum. Hal sees the possibility of an empty Stadium for all of September and likely deteriorating TV ratings over the last three weeks that are only going to get worse over the next four. He hears the calls for him to sell the team, replace his entire front office, fire everyone in the dugout and get rid of any player whose last name isn’t Judge, Cole or Volpe. He knows the Yankees’ brand and the interlocking NY are being viewed as if they’re a steaming pile of crap, and with all of the recent 2024 season-ticket emails that have gone out, the demand, interest and sales can’t be doing well.

9. Hal had two moves to negate the damage done by the last-place season for his bottom line. The first was to raise ticket prices for 2024, which he did, reportedly by as much as 10 percent for some seats. (He needs to make up for the missed postseason gates somehow.) The other was approve the call-ups of all top prospects, and he has now done that as well.

No Yankees fan who hadn’t already purchased September tickets and had an ounce of self respect (or a life) would trek to the Stadium to see Bader swing through fastballs from righties, watch Giancarlo Stanton power walk on the basepaths, sit through a Carlos Rodon shellacking, witness Kyle Higashioka throw the ball into the outfield on stolen-base attempts or be present for an Albert Abreu meltdown. But to see top prospects? To see the future? Well, that’s a different story. Potential September Stadium-goers know it, YES viewers know it and Hal knows it.

It’s likely the Yankees’ baseball operations department doesn’t agree with the decision, but screw them. They have been wrong about everything for several years that it’s time they are overruled before hopefully being replaced.

10. Odds are Dominguez and Wells will be overmatched this weekend, and could be all month the way Peraza and Pereira have been for the last week, Oswaldo Cabrera has been all year and Anthony Volpe has been for the most of the season as well. That’s fine. Winning games no longer matters, and hasn’t since the horrific Sunday loss in Miami. All that matters now are plate appearances, innings played and continued development for those six. The only way the Yankees make their stay at the bottom of the division a one-year thing, and the only way they climb back to the top of the East in the relatively near future is by building their own homegrown talent.

The remaining 28 games of this season are crucial to 2024 and beyond. For the next month, it’s probably going to look ugly a lot more than it’s going to look promising, and that’s OK. The 2023 Yankees, had they been at full strength all season, were never going to do what the 2017-2022 couldn’t do either. That core had their chance. They had many chances. Now it’s time for a new roster, a new team and a new era, and I’m ready for it. I think all Yankees fans are.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
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