The Rangers followed up a tough weekend loss in Columbus with a tough home-opening win over Arizona. Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
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The Rangers followed up a tough weekend loss in Columbus with a tough home-opening win over Arizona.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. I knew the Rangers’ effort produced in the season opener in Buffalo wasn’t going to be something to expect night in and night out for 82 games, but I didn’t think it would evade them so quickly. Certainly not two nights later against the Blue Jackets.
“Tough game, tough game,” Peter Laviolette said of the 5-3 loss in Columbus. “Funny game, tough game.”
The Saturday night loss to the Blue Jackets was a letdown. After the Rangers took an early 1-0 lead (50 seconds in) on a lucky bounce/redirect off a skate, I think everyone thought the Rangers would run away with the game. Joe Micheletti mentioned how a young Blue Jackets team that had a tough season a year ago and a tough opening night could easily let the game get away from them if the Rangers could extend their first-period lead, and the Rangers nearly did so … twice.
2. A pair of first-period goals by the Rangers were called back after Blue Jackets challenges for offside. Both plays were barely off (which is why they weren’t called off in real time), but off nonetheless. Once those goals were called back, a feeling of impending doom for how the game would play out began to settle in. That feeling proved right.
After the two non-goals, Elvis Merzlikins turned into a brick wall and once he left the game with an injury, backup Spencer Martin played the same. On top of the Blue Jackets getting surprising all-world goaltending, every extended shift for the Rangers in the Blue Jackets’ zone was immediately met with a Blue Jackets goal.
“There were some odd-man rushes I didn’t like,” Laviolette said, “there wasn’t overwhelming amounts of it, but the ones we didn’t take charge of, they came back the other way and bit us.”
3. Ryan Lindgren’s absence due to an upper-body injury had a distinct impact on the loss as the Braden Schneider-Zac Jones pairing had a rough game. Even still, the Rangers had opportunities to take the lead and then to tie the game and then to get back in the game, but nearly every time, Merzlikins and Martin made spectacular saves.
“Offensively I felt we pushed the entire game, especially in the third,” Laviolette said, “we just couldn’t seem to get it in.”
4. Monday night’s home opener was a different story. The Rangers didn’t provide the type of stunning, nearly flawless effort from Buffalo, but they managed to beat Arizona 2-1. Laviolette called it a “hard-fought win” and “gusty effort” and that’s putting it mildly.
The Rangers were up against it all game with Connor Ingram continuing the trend started by Merzlikins and Martin in Columbus of the Rangers getting the absolute best from the opposing goalie. Thankfully, the Coyotes got the absolute best from their opposing goalie as well.
5. After being barely challenged in Buffalo, Igor Shesterkin had an off-night in Columbus. He bounced back on Monday and gave the Rangers their first “Igor” game of the season. They desperately needed it.
Through the first two periods, the Coyotes were granted five man-advantages to the Rangers’ two. Two of the Coyotes’ five came at the same (18;41 of the second) with Alexis Lafreniere going off for a soft slashing call and Lindgren joining him in the box for unsportsmanlike conduct for shooting the puck at the boards after the call on Lafreniere. After scoring the game-tying goal earlier in the second on the power play, the Coyotes would have full, two-minute 5-on-3 power play. The Rangers managed to kill off the entire two-man advantage with blocked shots from their triangle and saves from Shesterkin.
6. “Theres nothing that goes up on the scoreboard from a 5-on-3 kill,” Laviolette said, “but I do think that everyone else feeds off of that.”
The Garden showered the Rangers with appreciation for the two-minute, two-man kill, and when the Rangers finally received a power play o their own a few minutes later, they took the lead. Vincent Trocheck did his best Chris Kreider impression and deflected home an Artemi Panarin shot into traffic.
With the Rangers unable to extend their lead, and clinging to their 2-1 advantage, Barclay Goodrow held on to Jason Zucker on a breakaway and the new Coyote was awarded a penalty shot.
Zucker came down the right side and rather than deke, tried to beat Shesterkin with a shot past his blocker.
7. “On the penalty shot, it is more like mind games,” Shesterkin said. “So when Zucker moved on the right side, I was looking for the shot on the blocker side.”
Shesterkin kept his perfect “mind games” record in tact with the save, improving to 4-for-4 in stopping penalty shots in his career.
After that, it was all about the Rangers holding on for dear life over the final 4:48, which they did.
8. The Rangers power play scored for a third straight game to open the season, and Kreider has now scored in a ll three games as well. The Panarin-Filip Chytil-Lafereniere line has been superb to begin the season, but the Kreider-Mika Zibanejad-Kaapo Kakko line has been every bit as good, if not better. The Rangers finally have a true, defeined top six.
“To me, it’s been a really good line,” Laviolette said of the Zibanejad line, which provided the game’s first goal on a 2-on-1. “(Kreider) has been a noticeable impact player for us.”
9. The Rangers have looked extremely different in all three games this season. In Buffalo, they looked like the best team in the league. In Columbus, they fought the game and bad bounces with nothing coming easy after the two disallowed goals. At the Garden, they had to rely on their goaltending.
“I think that you’re going to have to figure out how to win a lot of different ways,” Laviolette said of his team’s effort after the home opener.
10. The Rangers became too reliant on Shesterkin under Gerard Gallant, and when Shesterkin didn’t provide a historic effort (like he did for all of 2021-22), it was challenging for them to win. That’s no longer the case. Sure, there will be times when Shesterkin will get them two points on his own, but it won’t be a nearly-every-game necessity.
“It’s a long road,” Laviolette said about his team’s varying performance through the first three games. “We don’t have to be perfect or perfectly ready tonight.”
The Rangers have been mostly good through three games, and for one of those three nights they were almost perfect. Over time, they won’t need to be to win games. Not with this coach and this roster.
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Rangers fans should be buzzing after the team’s 5-1 season-opening win over the Sabres in Buffalo.
The Rangers opened their season with a 5-1 win over the Sabres in Buffalo. Every Rangers fan should be buzzing after the best 60-minute effort the Blueshirts have provided in years. I know I am. So is Brian Monzo, and he joined me to talk about the impressive season-opening win.
Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!
The Rangers opened the 2023-24 against the Sabres on Thursday night in Buffalo with a dominating 5-1 win in Peter Laviolette’s debut as head coach. Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!
The Rangers opened the 2023-24 against the Sabres on Thursday night in Buffalo with a dominating 5-1 win in Peter Laviolette’s debut as head coach.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. What team am I watching? That’s what I asked myself as the final seconds of the season-opening first period wound down in Buffalo.
“This has been a nearly flawless period for the Rangers,” Joe Micheletti said at that moment as if he were reading my mind.
After 20 minutes, the Rangers had a 2-0 lead, had the shot advantage with 12 to just seven, had won 64 percent of the faceoffs, had converted their only power-play opportunity and had thoroughly dominated play. It was hard not to be overly excited and ecstatic about this Rangers team after just one of 246 periods.
2. With the hype and anticipation of a new season, the hiring of a new head coach, the implementation of a new system and 25 percent turnover rate in the opening night lineup, it would have been understandable for the Rangers to struggle out of the gate. Add in opening the season on the road against a tough opponent in the young-and-hungry Sabres team that missed the postseason by a single point, and it would have been painful but acceptable for the Rangers to look flat early on. The opposite happened.
“We were ready to skate, ready to compete,” Peter Laviolette said. “It kind of stayed that way the whole game.”
3. After creating some opportunities within the first two minutes of play, Artemi Panarin drove the net to secure his own rebound on a wrist shot from the slot, and without ever looking to his left, slid the puck meticulously across the crease for Alexis Lafreniere to bang it into an open net for the game’s first goal.
It would be hard to find any Rangers fan who, if given the chance, wouldn’t have picked Lafreniere to score the team’s first goal of the season in the first game of the season, let alone in the first 3:47 of the first game of the season. After the overpublicized frustrating preseason Lafreniere endured and the criticism he drew over the last month, he put it all to rest quickly in the first game that matters, reminding everyone that preseason play is meaningless.
4. It was Lafreniere’s defensive play that sparked a turnover with just under eight minutes in the second that led to a Panarin goal, though somehow Lafreniere wasn’t credited with an assist on the play. The fourth-year, former No. 1 overall pick was outstanding in the season opener and rewarded his new head coach for believing in him, actually coaching him up over the last two weeks and not shying away from keeping in the team’s top six.
“(Lafreniere) took a step from those practices and brought it into the game,” Laviolette said. “I thought the line was excellent.”
5. The Panarin-Filip Chytil-Lafreniere line was wildly impressive. They generated high-quality chances right from their first shift and produced the Rangers’ first and third goals, playing with a level of chemistry as if they have been a line for years. As a line, they outshot the Sabres 8-0 in the first period.
They weren’t the only ones with a big night. Chris Kreider scored his first of the season on a tip-in on the power play that gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead and added a shorthanded goal in the third to extend the Rangers’ lead to 4-1. That shorthanded goal came at the perfect time as it started to feel like the Sabres were about to break through.
6. Down 3-0, the Sabres scored with 1:30 left in the second when a shot blocked by Jacob Trouba unfortunately landed right on the stick of JJ Petrka. With 37 seconds left in the period, the Sabres got their first power play of the game (it would have been their second if not for Jordan Greenway retaliating on Kreider immediately following a boarding call) after a soft interference call on Erik Gustafsson (who made some key defensive plays in his Rangers debut). The Sabres didn’t score on that power play that carried over into third, but at 8:51 of the third, Chytil was called for tripping and less than two minutes later, Trocheck went off tripping as well. The Sabres were getting man advantages left and right, but the Rangers’ penalty kill prevented them from getting on the board.
“The penalty kill was absolutely courageous the way they defended,” Laviolette said, “and the way they blocked shots.”
Seconds after Jeff Skinner clanged a shot off the crossbar that would have made it a one-goal game, Mika Zibanejad recorded his second of three assists on the night on the all-important, game-ending Kreider shorty. With 1:29 left, Jacob Trouba scored a full-ice empty netter, and the Rangers went on to win 5-1.
7. It’s crazy to think I haven’t mentioned Igor Shesterkin yet, given that he turned away 24 of 25 shots faced. Shesterkin wasn’t challenged in the first period, but needed to make some keys saves at the end of the second and moments before Kreider’s shorthanded goal in the third. He came up big when he needed (which he always seems to) and earned his 100th career win in the process. The fact I didn’t mention him in these Thoughts until now is a testament to how great he is in that a one-goal-against performance against the third-highest scoring team from a season ago isn’t unordinary, for as silly as that sounds.
8. I wanted Peter Laviolette to replace Gerard Gallant. I was in the minority of wanting Laviolette’s sixth head coaching job in the league to be with the Rangers, but after more than two decades of watching him succeed everywhere he has been, if the Rangers were going to go with someone with NHL experience, I wanted it to be Laviolette.
This isn’t one-game sample size praise either. I believe in Laviolette and trust him as Rangers coach. You won’t find me jumping off his bandwagon if the Rangers falter or slide. Likely because I don’t think they will do either under him. (Sure, I could do without Vincent Trocheck leading all Rangers forwards in ice time by nearly three minutes, but it’s acceptable after last night’s overall performance.)
9. The differences in just one game between Laviolette’s plan his predecessor were stark. The Rangers forced turnovers and won 1-on-1 battles all over the ice, dominated the neutral zone, and rather than give the first power-play unit the entirety of each man-advantage, the second unit was given ample time to set up and create opportunities. Given the team’s play, preparation, chemistry and game plan, it’s almost as if I was watching a completely different franchise from last season.
10. “It’s one win, Laviolette said, “but it’s a good start.”
Not just a “good start,” a great start. A dominating start. A you-can’t-ask-for-a-better-first-game start. It was the kind of full-game effort we have so infrequently seen from these Rangers. In recent seasons, the first-period effort would have waned in the second and the two-goal lead would have been erased. On Thursday, the effort was maintained and the lead was extended. It was a refreshing and satisfying performance. The kind of performance that not only wins in the regular season, but the kind that wins in April, May and June.
Maybe it was just one of 82 and the Rangers will lay an egg in Columbus on Saturday night. I don’t think it was and I don’t think they will. I think it was a sign that these Rangers have taken the next step with the right head coach behind the bench to guide them.
Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!
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.
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.
