It’s Time To Rebuild the Bombers
Suffice it to say, the 2023 season has not gone the way either the New York Yankees or their fans had hoped. The team’s current nine-game losing streak is their longest in 41 years. And while the team’s 60-65 record isn’t on the same grim level as those of the Athletics or Royals, it’s still awful by the franchise’s typical standards. New York has teetered on the edge of .500 a few times recently, including being outscored in three of four seasons from 2013 to 2016, but you have to go back to 1992 to find the last time they crossed that negative line. Rather than tear everything down to the foundation when things go wrong, the Yankees tend to be a team that reloads and tries again next time. But can they do that this offseason?
The Yankees have had some bad breaks this season, but blaming everything on that would be a mistake. I’m not going to wax poetic about why this season has been so miserable — other writers have already laid out the club’s tale of woe — but we still need to review the basics to get a good view of where things truly stand. The pitching bears quite a lot of the blame. In detailing how the preseason PECOTA projections for the Yankees diverged from what has actually happened, Patrick Dubuque didn’t mince words at Baseball Prospectus:
Two of the Yankees’ seven starters have met expectations so far, and it’s their two worst ones. Injuries have pressed those sixth and seventh (and eighth) starters into service, even more so than our depth chart team anticipated. But when you imagine a collapse like the Yankees have had, you assume that it’s injuries. You envision Aaron Judge’s plate appearances replaced by Billy McKinney’s, like the world’s most unprepared Broadway understudy. While Brito and Randy Vásquez haven’t bailed the team out, they also didn’t make the hole. And at this point, it’s more hole than boat.
For the Wall Street Journal, Lindsey Adler talked about how the team’s plan to develop around homegrown talent has given way to a lineup and staff stocked with aging veterans rather than young stars:
Years later, the 2023 mess represents the failure of the Baby Bombers to find success at the major-league level. Only Judge, Torres, and Severino remain on the team today. Bird is out of baseball, Andújar and Frazier are in the minor leagues, and Sánchez has taken his low-average, high-slugging shtick to San Diego.
No team strikes gold on every prospect, but with that group the Yankees had the potential to have a robust core—two outfielders, a catcher, a shortstop, a second baseman, a first baseman, and an ace—under team control for many years to come.
While it would be fun to be able to say, “Ha, ZiPS saw this coming the whole time, puny mortals!” I don’t get to have that satisfaction. ZiPS had the Yankees with a median projection of 89 wins coming into the season, tied with the Toronto Blue Jays in first place in the AL East. (At this point, to hit that 89-win record, the Yankees would have to win about three-quarters of their remaining games, which, while possible, is an extremely tall order.) Even if you liked the Yankees coming into the season, the fact is that there was always substantial downside to be found in the roster. Looking at the history of the Yankees’ ZiPS projections, you can see the ebbs and flows of the team’s fortunes over the last 20 years:
| Year | Projected Wins |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 91 |
| 2006 | 94 |
| 2007 | 95 |
| 2008 | 95 |
| 2009 | 97 |
| 2010 | 96 |
| 2011 | 88 |
| 2012 | 93 |
| 2013 | 83 |
| 2014 | 83 |
| 2015 | 82 |
| 2016 | 84 |
| 2017 | 81 |
| 2018 | 92 |
| 2019 | 98 |
| 2020 | 99 |
| 2021 | 95 |
| 2022 | 88 |
| 2023 | 89 |
The fact that a 99-win 2022 season only produced enough performance-based goodness to juice the team’s projections from 88 to 89 wins should have been a red flag about the team’s downside. I talked about this briefly in my final preseason standings post:
The Yankees were the most volatile team in the standings when I ran these projections back in February and the uncertainty of the team’s rotation has just magnified that result. We shouldn’t necessarily panic about Luis Severino and Carlos Rodón at this stage, but their injuries are adding yet more mysterious fog of war to the mix. Combine a rotation with a lot of variance with the fact that there’s a lot of value tied up in a single player, Aaron Judge, and the Yankees are the division’s X factor.
The Yankees have become reliant on larger parts of their win total coming from a shrinking percentage of their roster, which leaves a lot tied up with the fate of a few players. The Angels can tell you about the inherent risks of that, though the Yankees have historically done a much better job filling out their rosters with complementary players than their haloed compatriots out west. The 2022 season demonstrated how good the Yankees’ core was when things went their way more often than not; the 2023 team is a very similar roster showing the opposite scenario. Just as 99 wins was a realistic possibility, so was a 79-win season.
So, what’s next? While you’d have to be seriously deluded to confuse this team’s spending habits with those of the Rays, George Steinbrenner is gone and Hal Steinbrenner appears to have a different appetite for patching holes with piles of cash. We estimate the Yankees’ luxury tax payroll as approaching $300 million this year, and they already have close to $200 million committed for next season. When you consider that that $200 million does not include salaries for arbitration-eligible players such as Gleyber Torres, Nestor Cortes, Clay Holmes, or Jonathan Loáisiga (the Yanks spent nearly $50 million on salaries for arbitration-eligible players in 2023), they may not have enough room under their self-imposed payroll limits to quickly retool as they have in the past.
Indeed, I think the Yankees should probably be looking ahead two or more years, rather than focusing on 2024. We’re perhaps already seeing the beginnings of an increased nod toward the long haul rather than the short one. Everson Pereira and Oswald Peraza were just called up, and I doubt the team would be doing that right now if they didn’t intend to give them serious looks and full-time play. Austin Wells has been solid at Triple-A, and when the minor league season ends, it’s going to be hard not to give him a look in the majors as well. All three may play critical roles on the next good Yankees team, that team just might not take the field next season.
I ran some very, very, very (keep saying “very” for another 15 minutes) preliminary projections for the 2024 season. These projections assemble teams based only on the players who are currently under club control; think of them as “baseline” projections, the place where every team begins the 2023-24 offseason. The Yankees do not start off in a dominating position:
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto Blue Jays | 89 | 73 | — | .549 | 33.4% | 35.4% | 68.8% | 6.7% |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 88 | 74 | 1 | .543 | 26.1% | 35.9% | 62.0% | 5.6% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 86 | 76 | 3 | .531 | 19.7% | 34.6% | 54.3% | 3.9% |
| New York Yankees | 83 | 79 | 6 | .512 | 10.7% | 27.3% | 38.1% | 2.0% |
| Boston Red Sox | 83 | 79 | 6 | .512 | 10.1% | 26.3% | 36.3% | 1.1% |
Despite the Yankees only having one imminent free agent they might miss (Harrison Bader), the state of the team is such that simply standing in place and hoping everything that went wrong this season will go better next year may very well be a losing proposition. Even if the rest of the AL East also stood pat, the Yanks still wouldn’t be in a dominating position. On the offensive side of the equation, only five players under contract project at 1.5 WAR or more in 2024:
| Player | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Judge | .271 | .380 | .562 | 447 | 85 | 121 | 19 | 0 | 37 | 97 | 78 | 6 | 158 | 7 | 5.5 |
| Gleyber Torres | .261 | .329 | .427 | 548 | 75 | 143 | 26 | 1 | 21 | 77 | 55 | 12 | 109 | -1 | 2.9 |
| Anthony Volpe | .219 | .301 | .391 | 512 | 71 | 112 | 26 | 4 | 18 | 73 | 52 | 23 | 91 | 2 | 2.5 |
| DJ LeMahieu | .249 | .325 | .355 | 453 | 57 | 113 | 19 | 1 | 9 | 48 | 49 | 2 | 90 | 8 | 2.1 |
| Oswald Peraza | .239 | .307 | .375 | 440 | 59 | 105 | 16 | 1 | 14 | 60 | 35 | 18 | 89 | 2 | 2.0 |
By comparison, the Red Sox have seven, the Orioles and Rays have eight, and the Blue Jays have an absurd 13, enough that they won’t have enough playing time for everyone. (When the Yankees have a core strong enough to challenge for the AL East in a couple of years, those upstart Orioles will already be starting to say goodbye to some of their young talent. I’ll complain about that another day, though.) Even Aaron Judge has a reduced outlook compared to before the 2023 season. He’s still viewed as one of of the scariest hitters in baseball, but ZiPS projects him well below the output of his historic 2022 season. Injuries and the continued march of time will do that.
Nearly a quarter of the team’s guaranteed money for 2024 is tied up in two players who aren’t on the above list: Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo.
| Percentile | 2B | HR | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95% | 24 | 38 | .282 | .372 | .580 | 156 | 3.6 |
| 90% | 21 | 35 | .274 | .364 | .562 | 149 | 3.1 |
| 80% | 19 | 31 | .261 | .345 | .528 | 137 | 2.5 |
| 70% | 18 | 29 | .251 | .337 | .505 | 130 | 2.0 |
| 60% | 17 | 27 | .245 | .329 | .486 | 123 | 1.7 |
| 50% | 16 | 26 | .238 | .321 | .468 | 117 | 1.3 |
| 40% | 15 | 24 | .230 | .313 | .451 | 111 | 1.0 |
| 30% | 14 | 22 | .222 | .306 | .432 | 106 | 0.7 |
| 20% | 12 | 20 | .210 | .296 | .409 | 96 | 0.1 |
| 10% | 11 | 17 | .198 | .280 | .379 | 83 | -0.6 |
| 5% | 9 | 16 | .187 | .270 | .354 | 75 | -1.1 |
| Percentile | 2B | HR | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95% | 26 | 28 | .275 | .374 | .484 | 133 | 3.2 |
| 90% | 25 | 25 | .259 | .358 | .462 | 125 | 2.5 |
| 80% | 22 | 23 | .250 | .343 | .437 | 114 | 1.8 |
| 70% | 20 | 21 | .240 | .337 | .424 | 108 | 1.5 |
| 60% | 19 | 19 | .232 | .330 | .411 | 102 | 1.1 |
| 50% | 18 | 18 | .226 | .323 | .393 | 99 | 0.9 |
| 40% | 17 | 17 | .220 | .317 | .379 | 91 | 0.5 |
| 30% | 15 | 16 | .212 | .310 | .362 | 88 | 0.2 |
| 20% | 14 | 13 | .204 | .303 | .346 | 81 | -0.3 |
| 10% | 12 | 11 | .193 | .289 | .319 | 71 | -1.0 |
| 5% | 10 | 9 | .185 | .281 | .298 | 62 | -1.6 |
Stanton is no longer a young superstar, a prime-age superstar, an aging superstar, or even a regular star. His last 3-WAR season was in 2018, and he’s only had a single two-win season since (and it’s not likely to happen this year either). Stanton turns 35 soon after next year’s World Series, and the odds of the team ever getting the player they hoped for when they traded for him are growing increasingly long. ZiPS now thinks it’s more likely than not that Stanton will fall short of 500 homers in the end.
Now, Rizzo’s concussion and its after-effects (not to mention continuing to play through post-concussion symptoms) add greater uncertainty to his projection than is typical, but he’s also a player in the twilight of his career, so it’s hard to really be enthused about his likely 2024 contributions.
On the pitching side, only three starters currently project above the 1.5 WAR mark:
| Player | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | FIP | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gerrit Cole | 11 | 6 | 3.29 | 29 | 29 | 175.3 | 146 | 64 | 22 | 45 | 199 | 125 | 3.35 | 3.8 |
| Carlos Rodón | 9 | 6 | 3.48 | 22 | 22 | 113.7 | 89 | 44 | 14 | 37 | 137 | 118 | 3.43 | 2.2 |
| Nestor Cortes | 6 | 5 | 3.70 | 24 | 21 | 116.7 | 101 | 48 | 15 | 31 | 117 | 111 | 3.69 | 2.0 |
Even if you like Domingo Germán, once you account for injury risks, the Yankees probably need to add two good starting pitchers this offseason if they want to compete in 2024. ZiPS remains skeptical of Clarke Schmidt (and even more so of Jhony Brito), Randy Vásquez wasn’t even getting Triple-A hitters out, Luis Gil’s coming off Tommy John surgery, and next season may be too quick for Will Warren.
The relievers, at least, project somewhat better, but that’s not enough in itself to return the Yankees to the top of the division:
| Player | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | FIP | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Loáisiga | 5 | 2 | 3.14 | 42 | 1 | 48.7 | 42 | 17 | 3 | 13 | 41 | 131 | 3.19 | 1.0 |
| Clay Holmes | 6 | 3 | 3.23 | 61 | 0 | 61.3 | 47 | 22 | 3 | 25 | 67 | 128 | 3.12 | 1.1 |
| Jimmy Cordero | 3 | 2 | 3.59 | 39 | 1 | 42.7 | 35 | 17 | 3 | 15 | 44 | 115 | 3.27 | 0.5 |
| Michael King | 6 | 3 | 3.62 | 45 | 1 | 69.7 | 56 | 28 | 9 | 24 | 87 | 114 | 3.58 | 1.0 |
| Scott Effross | 4 | 2 | 3.73 | 41 | 1 | 50.7 | 46 | 21 | 6 | 12 | 50 | 110 | 3.67 | 0.5 |
Reloading quickly and effectively looks like a really tough challenge for the Yankees. The team is arguably in worse shape than at any point in recent memory, perhaps going back to the CBS-era Yankees, which only non-Yankees fans wish to remember. In 1993, Baseball America ranked the Yankees farm system as the fourth-best in baseball. In our most recent farm system rankings, we have the team at no. 25. The Yankees have had the same approach for a very long time. Perhaps they’d be well served by a laser focus on the future, rather than what’s immediately coming.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Inherited wealth child screws up the family business. Man bites dog, etc.
I’ve also been the last one to get on Cashman’s case because I think he’s done a great job adapting to changing environments through the years. But it’s time for him. Things are a lot different and it doesn’t look like the org is on par with the best in the game anymore (except in the very specific area of getting mid-level pitching prospects to throw harder). Thank you and enjoy your retirement, guy.
Agreed on Cashman. He has had a pretty sustained run of success, but his las 2-3 years were pretty miserable. When every single high profile trade you’ve made has failed catastrophically and left you in a much worse position than standing pat, it’s probably time for new voices in the room.
Same here – I think Cashman is a possible HOF GM, all things considered, but this feels oddly like the start of the Andy Hawkins Era 2.0 for the Bronx Bombers.
Not a bad time to hit the reset button.
He should be an easy HOF GM.
Cashman is probably the third best GM of the last 25 years. Him and Billy Beane and Theo Epstein. Friedman and Anthopoulos will probably beat him someday but if you want to know what a Hall of Game GM looks like, it looks a lot like Brian Cashman.
Dombrowski?
Dombrowski’s a no-doubter.
He absolutely should be. I do wonder if the relative lack of WS rings for a Yankees GM will be an obstacle in him getting in, however.
He won 4 rings! That’s a lot! You can’t really compare him to old-timey GMs like Ed Barrow and George Weiss, who were playing against a lot fewer teams and didn’t have to go through any playoffs.
There’s absolutely no ‘possible’ about it. First ballot GM.
Even Hall of Fame GMs can see the game pass them by. See also Beane, Billy.
I don’t think the inheritance thing is an issue, honestly. Many of the worst/most meddlesome owners— Reinsdorf, Angelos, Moreno— are self-made billionaires from genuine non-wealthy backgrounds. They have significantly more ego about “running a business” is the issue. The owners who grew up rich are quite used to hiring competent, specialized people to run their assets.
It feels like the “self-made” owners tend to meddle heavily in baseball ops/decision making (Reinsdorf, Peter Angelos, Moreno, George Steinbrenner, Dick Monfort, Jim Crane), likely for the reasons you mentioned.
The inherited wealth owners seem to be the ones who constantly give the worst quotes and seem very out of touch and entitled (John Angelos, Phil Castellini, John Fisher, Tom Ricketts). Of course there is plenty of overlap.
Brian Cashman is still a guy who can be a GM in this league and maybe is even one of the better ones, but it’s very hard to ignore the flashing red lights. The total failure of the Rizzo and German situations and the fact that they’re probably finishing with a losing record despite spending a huge amount of money are pretty worrisome.
It is definitely time to get some new blood in there somehow. Whether that’s Cashman going or him hiring away some people from other organizations, I’m not sure but they’re clearly behind in some key areas. One of the things I have noticed is that there a very few front offices who can stay on top of things without a regular infusion of executives from other organizations. Hiring a brand new person at the top is often an obvious time to bring in lots of different voices. But if you look at the worst front offices in the recent past—the recently fired White Sox, the Royals, the Rockies, the Avila-led Tigers, and probably the A’s, it’s people who haven’t had any new voices in a very long time. Almost every other organization is constantly looking to bring in new people who have new ideas. The Yankees…I don’t know, have they done that? I don’t think they have.
What I will say is that the job Cashman has done up until this point is shockingly good. He has only rebuilt once in about 25 years and has repeatedly won the toughest division in baseball. He has the benefit of a huge payroll but he never gets a shot at the top talent in the draft and the expectations hem him in somewhat compared to what he could do elsewhere. The fact that this year the team has been mediocre could simply be that gravity is winning.
Or, it could be time to see how much money James Click would need to come take over. It is hard to tell from here.
As a Red Sox fan, I’d welcome Cashman as head of baseball ops for all those reasons.
If I were a White Sox fan, I’d be petitioning Reinsdorf to do all he can to bring Cashman on, and beginning said petition right now, to thwart any ideas of bringing LaRussa back to run the whole organization.
I saw a rumor today that La Russa wants Dayton Moore in as GM. Which would be better than having La Russa himself, but mostly by default.
The rumor is a combo of Dayton Moore, who is bad at the job and weird, along with Chris Getz who is bad at the job he has now.
Getz is unsurprising since Reinsdorf loves to promote people from within but I don’t know what he sees in Moore or why he thinks the Royals are a model organization.
Hiring two guys goes against what they said in the press release announcing Hahn and Williams were out just yesterday when they stated they were looking for a single voice. Also the fact that they already seem to have people lined up is in opposition to their stated plan of a “search,” but consistent with how they handled the Renteria for LaRussa change.
It makes me wonder if Grifol was Jerry’s idea and still leaves me wondering who is in charge of baseball decisions. This team is rapidly becoming the Rockies of the Midwest.
Dayton Moore has the same number of rings as Cashman over the last 20 years and he’s been there twice as often. Don’t get me wrong, Cashman’s ability to keep his team playing at a high level all these years, even with his budget, is a remarkable feat. His failure to get a greater number of his teams over the top is certainly a strike against him, but as Dayton Moore shows, luck plays a role in this. A much, much bigger role than it does when it comes to team building. That’s where Cashman has excelled.
You do realize there are 30 teams, right? As long as you win a Championship more often than every 30 years, you’re ahead of average expectations. One time is the past 20 years is just fine, and 6 times in the last 30 years is spectacular.
Definitely agree on the Rays comp not working – Tampa’s owners spend a much larger percentage of their revenue on players than the Yankees’ do.
The issue really does come down to Hal wanting to dip under the luxury tax every couple of years, while also not being willing to sacrifice playoff revenue by actually taking the steps to rebuild.
The drunken sailor spending didn’t help the Mets or Padres. It’s not about bringing in a bunch of expensive old people. The most consistent team the past 10 years is the Astros. Their payroll isn’t huge
Last year the Padres made the NLCS and the Mets won 101 games.
And what are they doing this year, after their payrolls increased significantly?
I don’t know if you can really attribute the Padres historic bad luck in extra inning and 1 run games to being an expensive team. By Pythag or BaseRuns record, they would be comfortably in the playoffs.
The 2023 Padres are no more a reflection on the merits of spending big in free agency than the 2022 Rangers were.
Sustainability, which is the basis when considering successful franchises, is not going to be looking very kindly on either the Mets or Padres for quite a few years. Machado and Bogaerts are already beginning their decline, as is Darvish, and all have potential albatross contracts. The Mets only hope is Steve Cohen. The cupboard is bare but he has a way to refurbish it and probably will try to.
The Astros also kicked off this run with a 3 year stretch as one of the worst teams in baseball history. It’s really, really hard to build a consistent winner without ever having to go through rebuilding seasons. In recent history that is pretty much just the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals. Even then, all of them have had soft resets where they missed the playoffs for a few years, but managed to stay around or just over .500.
This is the key point. It is nearly impossible to have a run of success like the Yankees have had.
A lot of the hand wringing about the Cardinals and Yankees is justified because it really does seem like they need to rethink some things. But a lot of it is just that if you never rebuild eventually the cracks show up. This is a total normal thing to happen after barely rebuilding over a 25 year period.
It’s honestly impressive that it took Cashman this long to build a crappy team, given the simultaneous constraints of never being allowed to rebuild while never being allowed to commit to a core that would cost more than the luxury tax for three consecutive seasons.
For the past 20 years, Yankees paid the luxury tax in all but two seasons.
What does that say about the Cardinals, who have never had a payroll high enough to pay the luxury tax?
Their division is weaker?
Drunken sailor spending Rangers are doing OK this season.
Astros run a CB 40-man tax payroll over $200 million pretty consistently. They are usually in the top third of payroll. Not the hugest payroll but definitely not a small market team with guys like Bregman and Altuve each making around $30 mil this season.
Sorry for the late reply!
Someone shoved a whole lot of words into my mouth, then wrote a reply based on shit I didn’t say.
The Yankees are quite a bit worse than the Padres by every measure, this year, and are spending quite a bit more money in an absolute sense…even as they’re spending a far smaller proportion of their revenue on players than the Friars have.
Meanwhile, the Astros took several years to properly rebuild, which allowed to both acquire top draft picks AND shed payroll so that they could efficiently operate within the parameters their owner had set.
Maybe reread what I wrote, and try again?
Edited out – GoatHerder beat me to it.
I mean, the other most consistent team over that timeframe is the Dodgers.
Spending a lot of money isn’t a bad thing if you spend it well.
The Astros have been excellent but the Braves are able to compete for the position as the current gold standard, 5 straight division titles, a World Series title and a future that looks rosy, to say the least, with a roster of top level players, in their prime, and not a single one of them on an absurd contract.
Astros with 6 straight ALCS appearances.
It should be renamed the Annual Astros Invitational.
The CBT is the unsung story here. It jumped in 2023, but grew more slowly throughout the 2010s than it did in the previous decade. Meanwhile, salaries kept rising. I.e. it’s become more painful to slip under the tax for a year than it was in the past. It seems to have led to some cumulative wear and tear on the Yankees – a bad contract like Stanton’s hurts them more than it did in the past.
If the Cardinals can stay under the tax line every single year and have 15 consecutive winning seasons (until now), why is it so hard for the Yankees to do it? Needing to dip under that line every once in a while is only a minor issue at worst.
Gonna be real, mate…I don’t have the emotional energy to explain the concept of changing horses midstream.
Holy moly did Rodon’s 2023 go down the tubes. Was not paying attention.
It was never above the tubes.
Step right up, and don’t be shy
Because you will not believe your eyes
He’s right here, fragile as glass
And his ’23 season has been ass
You can look inside another world
One where Carlos can freely hurl
He’s everything you dream about…
But don’t fall in love
He’s a Yankee…
Understandable. The Yankees weren’t paying attention to his injury history when they gave him that contract
I thought it was a mistake when the White Sox let him go without extending the QO to get a draft pick, but I also thought it was a mistake when somebody gave him 6/$162 because he was just as likely to do this for at least half the years of that contract as he was to make 25 starts.
Slightly off topic, but one thing I’ll give the Mets credit for is not drunken sailor spending over whatever their actual number was to keep degrom.
His new nickname is Carlos Pavano
So the ridiculously premature ZiPS projection has every AL East team over .500. That has got to be a very rare outcome!
Is the AL Central projected as all below .500?
There was at least a very good chance that all 5 could have actually been above .500 this year before the Yanks season went to poop
As pessimistic as I am about this season and the future — I’ll believe in the next great Yankee prospect once he’s actually shown it and not a second before — I still don’t think it’s impossible in 2022. In a lot of ways, the Yankees “surging” to an 82-80 last place finish would be both the most frustrating and funniest outcome after all this.
Volpe’s got a 116 wRC+ in 216 PA since fixing his mechanics, while continuing to play good defense.
He and Judge are the only things worth paying attention to.
and continues to disrespect the Orioles. Where can I get the over on 86 wins?
When the starting rotation isn’t held together by prayers and an unsustainable ERA given how mid the defense is. Bradish and Kremer by themselves do not a rotation make.
That’s before any upgrades. Starting the offseason with 86 wins is fantastic, especially for a team that has payroll room.
I suspect 86 will be among the highest in the full projections, even with an incredibly suspect rotation.
Doesn’t seem like Domingo Germán is likely to ever throw a pitch for the Yankees again, based on the reporting around the time of his suspension/dismissal.
Interesting that, for all the talk about the Yankees’ edge in pitching development–which did turn a bunch of no-name relievers into All-Stars & gave them a 2-win Cortes–you can’t prepare for injuries and can’t slow down aging (at least not anymore–and maybe don’t sign Rodon if you’ve got injury risks everywhere).
I admire the Yankees for having such a sustained run of success. But it’s looking like a rough couple of years.
Or maybe how they make pitchers better also increases injury risk
Most of the injured guys are acquisitions. Cortes and Gil are the notable injured Yankees developed pitchers. Severino was hurt but recently has just sucked like giving up HRs was his job. The problem is that the pitchers the Yankees are bringing in drop like flies.
were I a Yankees fan I’d wanna see the team get wayyy more athletic. Get some speed (especially with the new rule changes) instead of a bunch of dudes who look like NFL linebackers
NFL linebackers are generally very athletic. Maybe you mean tractor pullers?
beat me to it. An NFL linebacker isn’t getting on a roster without running a 4.6
Yeah, you should compare them to the linemen rather than the linebackers.
#CloneJassonDominguez
I dunno! Dominguez is already 20 years old, and he’s only in AAA!!!!
He’s certainly not a sure fire stud like Marcelo Mayer or Miguel Bleis
A 30 year run of success is amazing. Brady amazing. They have every financial advantage to invest in all phases of player acquisition and development. As a NY resident 1987-94 I remember well the Dallas Green era.
As a NY resident and Mets fan I unfortunately remember the Dallas Green era too.
I really thought Greg Bird was going to be a Dude.
As did I. The post-Teixeira era looked promising
I thought he was going to be the best hitter out of him, Judge, and Sanchez.
Back problems don’t get better.
They get managed.
Maybe I am misremembering but I think he broke his foot or something and then he imploded? But yeah, a back injury never really goes away. Guys like Yelich and Kershaw can still be productive but not to the same degree.
He hurt his back right after being drafted, then missed half of the 2012 MiLB season.
He also missed the start of the 2014 season to a back injury.
Then he hurt his shoulder in 2015, but was able to play through it.
Then he tore the shoulder in 2016.
Then he broke a bone in his foot in 2017.
Then he broke a bone in his ankle in 2018.
Then he tore his plantar fascia in 2019.
Don Mattingly agrees.
He didn’t have a back injury. His original injury was a torn labrum in his right shoulder which caused him to miss the whole 2016 season. (it was actually a recurrence of an injury from his minor league days.
From there he had foot surgery (2017), a bone spur in his ankle (2018), and a torn plantar fascia (2019).
No mention of a back injury anywhere in his injury history.
“His original injury” was in 2016?
Good one.
Bird only managed one healthy season in the minors, haha!
His back was why they moved him off catcher.
Hell, the 2016 labrum tear wasn’t even his first injury to that shoulder – it was an aggravation of an injury from the year before.
would love to see a chart on Stanton’s probability of 500 HR over time, must’ve looked like a slam dunk for a few years, until it didn’t
If you think about it, the seeds for 2023’s disappointing season really started to be planted at the ’22 Trade Deadline. The deals with Chicago (Wesneski) and Oakland (Sears/Waldichuk/Medina) thinned out their upper minors P depth considerably. It left them a little too dependent on the health of Rodon/Montas this season. That…hasn’t worked out great.
I’m aware none of those four have been spectacular or frankly even good this year. The Yanks could have really used someone like Sears — a fairly dependable 4/5 guy that will keep you in games — especially at the outset of the season.
Yes, there is a bit of bad luck in the fact that three guys that they got back last year — that were all controlled for this year at least — will wind up with 0IP this season. Pitchers break, yes, but the whole Montas case specifically makes me wonder about what medical info they have and what they’re evaluating.
Midseason?
In the 2022 offseason, they traded two middling, cheap players for one middling expensive player and one bad cheap player.
Mission Accomplished, though!
They’ll be able to dip below the luxury tax threshold this off-season, because of that trade.
I wonder why Yankees fans are mad.
The Montgomery for Bader trade, while initially a win for both sides, also looks regrettable now. Bader has been hurt multiple times again this year, while they really could’ve used Montgomery in their rotation this year.
But how could they have foreseen that a player who has yet to eclipse 450 PA in career that started in 2017, and who was on the IL at the time of acquisition, would have injury issues???
To be fair, those injury issues only began in 2021. He didn’t exceed that PA mark from 2017-2020 for completely different reasons, the 2020 reason being obvious.
Anyway, the more unexpected part was that the 2023 Yankees would need a healthy mid-rotation starter much more than they needed an elite defensive CF with speed and a decent bat.
Hey, at least they aren’t the White Sox!
Can we please have an article on WTF is going on with the White Sox, TLR is back???
TLR is Rasputin
What’s that I hear! It’s Ozzie Guillen’s music!!!
By god it’s Ozzie Guillen! OZZIE GUILLEN WITH A STEEL CHAIR!
I know this article is about the future and not the past. But you can’t talk about the Yankees problems without talking about their reactionary fans and media that seem to force management into terrible decisions. Every scapegoat that they have forced out of town (Gray, Gallo, Sanchez, Hicks) in recent seasons has been productive since they left.
Gary Sanchez had one bad defensive season, and otherwise in his career has only been bad on defense in the imagination of scouts,media and fans, but he had to be exiled. They traded valuable players away for Gallo, and then gave him away a year later because of the idiotic uproar over his batting average, and have been searching for LH power ever since.
With the exception of Volpe, they are reluctant to give time to young players to show what they are in the majors. Is this because they don’t like young players, or is it because they fear the spiral of negativity that surrounds any player who has a 50 PA cold streak?
This is a problem that is going to continue repeating itself until they have a management team that doesn’t care about the noise.
As a Yankees fan…it’s been genuinely hilarious seeing all the people who have spent the last several years harassing Hicks online and on the street lose their shit while watching this team’s OF.
I’ll give you Sonny Gray and maybe Sanchez this year, but Gallo and Hicks have not been good. They get up-voted highlights on Reddit, but look at the actual stats.
You could argue the Yankees messed them up, but don’t put that on the fans reacting to their poor performance.
Took a look at Hicks’ “actual stats” in Baltimore!
He’s put up a 122 wRC+ while playing functional CF defense, putting up 1 WAR in just 155 PA.
That’s 4.2 WAR/650, if you’re keeping track at home.
Quick question:
What do you think the word “good” means?
Hicks has an OPS of around .800 with Baltimore. He’s mostly only faced right handed pitching, he’s been hurt a lot, and has been streaky, but to say he hasn’t been good is to deny reality. He absolutely would have helped the Yankees if he’d have performed at a similar level with them. I’m not necessarily knocking the move, though. He looked terrible when released and there’s no guarantee that he’d have done as well had he stayed with the Yankees.
I feel like he was just done with the organization by the start of May, after a spring of Boone burying him on the depth chart in favor of worse players, whom he had also outperformed the season before.
I doubt being harassed by idiots who don’t know what a $10m player looks like in 2023 helped, either.
To be fair, when you’re a consistent contender, the young players usually need to earn more playing time by proving they can outplay the veterans in the limited opportunities they do get. As long as you have a better alternative option, you can’t afford to continue to give a rookie consistent playing time (in the Majors, anyway) after a 50 PA cold streak from which they may never recover from that season while trying to win enough games to make the playoffs.
The Gallo trade hurts. Duran looks like he’s a good player and Smith is perfectly cromulent.
I sort of agree with this article but the fact is a team that is projected for a winning record next year is hardly a time for doomsaying. They have a strong, if fragile top 3 in the rotation, some interesting bullpen pieces, and Aaron Judge. The kids will probably be better, Rizzo will hopefully be less concussed, and there is enough upper minors talent that some of them will pan out (IMO Sweeney and Dominguez are more likely than Pereira and Wells, but that’s just me).
They need a center fielder to tide them over until Dominguez is ready and they need a ton of starting pitching depth. They have enormous revenues. Maybe they deal Loisiaga and Gleyber Torres to bring back a touch more talent and save a little bit of money but I don’t see how dealing guys who have been hurt all year is going to get them any future help.
Like, I don’t know if Gerrit Cole has a no trade but if not he’s the only plausible guy who could bring back a lot of talent (the Yankees could just eat a lot of the money going forward). Everyone else was hurt.
I don’t remember who said it, but someone once said “People don’t pay to watch the Yankees play, they pay to see them win.” A slightly above .500 record doesn’t cut it with Yanks fans, ever.
“The kids will probably be better” — says who? Tell me all the above-average major league position players the Yankees have developed in the past 25 years. I think I count 3? There’s an overwhelming pattern of Yankees position player prospects never learning how to hit a breaking ball and it sinking their careers. I see no evidence that that’s changed.
Gleyber Torres and Anthony Volpe have both been above average this year…
Neither one can hit a slider.
And despite that, they’ve both been above average this year!
How exactly has Gerrit Cole not met expectations???
Yeah, this. Either the author believes that being a top-10 pitcher in the league is a failure, to that Cole was their 6th or 7th best SP heading into the season?
I mean, his strikeout rate did plummet this year by six percentage points, and his x-stats aren’t as favorable. So I guess if you expected him to be as good if not better than last season, it’s not meeting expectations?
He’s a CYA contender and leads the league in ERA and innings pitched. No reason to overthink things to the extreme. That’s good no matter what anything else says.
I didn’t say I agreed with the take, just trying to explain why some might say so. Cole is obviously still great.
the article referenced in this piece made a simple analysis using BP’s proprietary DRA (deserved runs allowed) statistic which does not like Cole this year. Cole’s DRA is 11 percent better than league average which is actually in the first percentile of their projections for his year.
From the article, behind paywall:
Yeah, exactly zero trust in Baseball Prospectus’s “deserved” stats, haha – they also regress BABIP for hitters using a non-Statcast formula.
Cole has an opt-out after 2024. Does he exercise it? The Yankees can nix it by exercising his 2029, but would they rather free up the money?
It will probably depend on how he does next year, but if he puts up a year like this—good but not super close to being a top 5 pitcher—he would be crazy to opt out unless he really wants to leave. A 35 year old pitcher or whatever he will be and whose peripherals are no longer elite should not getting $144M guaranteed from anybody. If he opts out the Yankees would be crazy to exercise that clause to keep him.
I realize that his peripherals have taken a step back this year in most respects, but he is still the favorite to win the Cy Young. If he is coming off a Cy followed by a finalist season, somebody will be willing to pay him.
Am I taking crazy pills? “good but not super close to being a top 5 pitcher” – Cole is the AL Cy favorite right now! And that’s not just me saying it, betting markets agree whole-heartedly (or whole-wallet-edly)
Huh? Who do you have in the top 5? Cole is getting a lot of Cy Young buzz. You know your stuff, so I’m betting I’m wrong, but I’m curious. I see Gausman in the conversation, but who am I missing?
It only makes sense if you use FIP-WAR to the exclusion of all else.
He’s 3rd in RA9-WAR and 5th in 50/50 WAR, the latter of which is what folks like Tango recommend.
I get why he’s getting Cy Young buzz, but that’s (1) because the best pitchers are all in the NL right now and (2) bWAR loves him, which is irrelevant because bWAR is wack. Gallen, Steele, and Strider are pretty comfortably the top 3 in some order, with Gausman and Gray behind them. If you’re just going on ERA only, then you’d also put Snell over Cole too, although I have zero faith in Snell continuing to do this (even less than Cole). For me, Cole’s in kind of a grab bag with Kirby, Webb, Eflin, Pablo Lopez, Wheeler, Ohtani, and Luis Castillo, and probably a half dozen other pitchers. Cole, like all those other guys, is a case where you can cherry pick whatever stats you want to make the case they’re in the Top 10 but the overall profile is mixed between “elite” and “good”. None of these guys are obviously Top 5 pitchers for me right now, although some are Top 10.
He’s still the favorite for the Cy Young because that ERA is shiny, but if that’s the only criteria for “best pitcher” then the gap between “best pitcher” and “Cy Young” is going to diverge a bit. I don’t think you can just look at one metric anymore, especially now that we have actual batted ball data to tell us whether this is actually him or not. You have to have some sort of convergence across metrics to judge pitcher quality or else you’re leaving a lot of info on the table. I mean, Kyle Bradish has the same ERA- as Cole, and while you might decide that Cole is a more worthy Cy Young contender than him because he’s pitched more innings it’s really iffy to start talking like you believe Bradish is a Top 5 pitcher.
Sonny Gray is a prime example of why you can’t just look at fWAR and call it a day. He has had an excellent season that is comparable to Cole’s on a rate basis with less volume, but he has about 1 more fWAR than Cole despite the 17 IP difference. The reason is that Gray has run a 4.3% HR/FB rate this year which is just over a third of his career rate. The biggest flaw in FIP is that it assumes that BABIP is purely random fluctuations outside the pitchers’ control while HR rate is entirely within the pitchers’ control. HR/FB rate is less consistent year over year than BABIP.
If you look at xERA or xFIP, suddenly Gray is within a rounding error of Cole with a deficit in innings.
I don’t really see your point. Gray has a similar ERA and xERA to Cole and his FIP is way better. xFIP is interesting but I’m not sure it’s relevant to performance.
You might catch the point if you read the whole comment?
Pitcher BABIP is far more stable year to year than Pitcher HR/FB%.
Therefore, any framework that treats Pitcher BABIP as luck and Pitcher HR/FB% as indicative of performance is asinine.
Prima Facie.
Hell, it would probably claim that Andy Pettitte had a better career than CC Sabathia!
xFIP regresses HR/FB% to league average because there is very little evidence that pitchers have appreciable control over that.
Essentially Gray’s shiny FIP is just as much fools gold as Bradish’s shiny ERA.
If all the rate stats are pretty close (and I think that is a reasonable conclusion between Gray and Cole), then I would prefer the pitcher who consistently throws more innings.
Yeah, fWAR for pitchers is even more wack than bWAR for pitchers.
50-50 for individual seasons, fRA9-WAR for 800 IP+ samples.
fWAR rates Andy Pettitte over Tom Glavine, Roy Halladay, and Zack Greinke.
It rates Javy Vazquez over Cole Hamels, Roy Oswalt, and Mark Buerhle.
It rates Ricky Nolasco over Kyle Hendricks.
I’d also like to add that fWAR says that Burnes’ 2021 is clearly better than Verlander’s 2011
FIP-WAR is super useful!
If you know nothing else about a pitcher, it’s way more indicative of true talent than a 200 IP sample size of RA9-WAR!
It’s also a great counterweight to a mid-sized RA9-WAR sample size – say, 200-600 innings (won’t argue with someone who says 800).
But we’ve known for so damn long that Pitcher BABIP has a stabilization point, independent of defense, that it insults the players to to refer to a 2000 inning sample of fWAR as “DIPS”
No, it’s not! It has long been proven that pitchers have significant control over the quality of contact on balls in play. FIP is ONLY useful as a predictor metric, and there are better metrics for doing that.
You are both in agreement. The stabilization point for pitcher BABIP is just somewhere in the 500-1,000 innings range, so FIP is a useful metric for samples under that.
With small sample sizes xFIP is probably the best metric we have easily available because it is the quickest to stabilize.
I would really like to have a version of xFIP that adjusted the league constant for the pitcher’s career BABIP relative to the league if the sample size was sufficient.
Also, it might be time to revisit the FIP formula. The relative weightings of HR, walks, and strikeouts was determined more than a decade ago.
Batters also have significant control of BABIP, but I won’t take a single .350 BABIP season as a gospel indication of true talent.
I 100% agree on the premise, but fWAR does answer the question of “how good is this player” better than RA9-WAR does, in a single-season sample.
He’ll certainly exercise it.
He either gets guaranteed a load of cash or gets to play for a team that cares about winning.
far be it for me to defend the Yankees, but this would be their first sub-.500 season since 1992. That’s two years before the existence of the TV show Friends.
Obviously there are some issues here, but this is a nearly unprecedented run of competency or better in sports history
So, since Simpsons Season 3. Those were the good times.
So, for baseball reference, that was the season where Mr. Burns brought in current MLB stars as ringers on his company softball team. Among those current stars were Don Mattingly, Steve Sax, and Daryl Strawberry. So, yeah, that was a long time ago.
“Mattingly! I said trim those sideburns!”
I’ve spent probably way too much time wondering why Steve Sax was on that team. I guess Ryne Sandberg wouldn’t take their calls?
Sigh. Injuries were the culprit. A healthier Cortes and Rodon, an SP signed to replace Severino, 3B/CF/LF and this team is fine.
Some of the issues aren’t end-alls. Plus, unlike the immense expectations we gave on paper to the ’23 squad, a new season will lend a fresh perspective. What would be best for the Yankees is to remember how the ’19 season was buoyed by unsung contributors and how the re-tooling wasn’t due to any major off-season star.
Cashman’s ability to win for 25+ years is really quite an achievement.
But it’s also true that other than Judge, the Yankees haven’t really drafted and
developed a notable or even above-average or even consistently average MLB hitter (or even position player, other than Gardner) since Cano.
They’ve had some guys, like Sanchez, who were good for a year or two, but no one with a significant MLB career, whom you could call a Core contributor.
This – while the Bosox were developing Youkilis, Ellsbury, Pedroia, Betts, Devers, Bogaerts,JBJ, Vasquez and more and the Dodgers were (and still are) bringing up Ethier, Bellinger, Puig, Will Smith, Seager, Kemp, Martin, Loney, Pederson etc.
Obviously, this is partly because of draft position, but come on. Compare those lists!!
So this basically covers the entire 21st century, to date.
With the Yankees this century, it’s Cano and Judge, that’s the list. I could be wrong,
but I think the 3rd best position player they’ve developed this century is Gardner, and so much of his value was in fielding and baserunning.
You have to go back to Alfonso Soriano (drafted in the 90’s) to find another impact (=solid) hitter developed by the Yankees.
It’s very hard to build a team entirely on trades and free agency, and it’s to Cashman’s
credit that he’s kept the Yankees competitive despite what appears to me to be a major failure in player development. But that failure is real and it’s gotten increasingly hard to plug holes in a roster when you’re getting nothing from your farm system.
…
I don’t disagree with the premise…but Brett Gardner “doesn’t count,” while James Loney, JBJ, Andre Ethier, and Christian Vazquez do?
At least Jacoby Ellsbury didn’t tie up as much of his value in defense and baserunning!
/s
Anyway: Frankie Cervelli, Nick Johnson, Gary Sanchez, Melky Cabrera, and Gleyber Torres all comfortably clear the Loney/JBJ line, and Thairo Estrada looks well on his way to doing so.
But yeah – the issue is that ownership took away the safety net of being able to spend their way out of mistakes while not allowing them to rebuild, either.
Fair enough – I got a little carried away, especially with Loney and Vasquez, and I completely forgot Melky. Almost included Cervelli (13.9 career WAR, don’t really regret not including him).
Re: some of the other guys –
Johnson was drafted in 1996, Gleyber wasn’t drafted by the Yanks and Estrada has 4.6 career WAR (most not for the Yanks, which is kind of what I was looking for)
Ethier was really good
Fair play on Johnson, but Gleyber was acquired as a 19 year old in A-ball and Estrada has been worth 7 fWAR (I have zero trust in DRS).
More to my point…Gardner was worth nearly 40 career WAR! Dude comfortably beats out Ellsbury and Youk.
I love Gardner. I even wanted them to run with him one more year (and they probably would’ve been better off doing that than going with whatever they had…).
But I was trying to focus on good major league hitters.
But I agree I didn’t give him enough credit.
Gleyber was a very highly-rated prospect when they got him. Basically, close to MLB-ready.
He wasn’t close to MLB ready but he was highly rated.
I had no idea Gardner had that good of a career.
Gardner was really, really good!
His career line is quite a bit closer to guys like Carl Crawford and Dustin Pedroia than to Ellsbury!
Don’t fix the Yankees! They are perfect like this. Nothing gives me joy like watching the Yankees lose games.
Time for the Yanks to tank! Just kidding, but that would be funny if they seriously started playing for the draft pick.
Disagree with this article and maybe literally want to spit at the idea that the New York Yankees pack it up for a rebuild. What are we building that way?….I don’t even see why it’s necessary here:
– Cole, Judge, and Rodon is as nasty a trio in the sport. This team’s loaded and well built when healthy
– Volpe, who wouldashouldacoulda been the #1 MiLB prospect entering 2023, looks all around excellent and on the rise
– Trey Sweeney, a versatile and high Iso LHH IF bat, and Drew Thorpe, a sneaky RHSP prospect, are two more guys on the way up with interesting skills and potential
– They’re always pretty good at loading the pitching staff and bullpen with velo
– We saw ln and over the past couple years they have supporting younger, cheaper players
That said…feel free to send Clay Holmes to the Cubs for change
Man, I wish they’d dealt Holmes at the deadline.
I wish it had been to Cubs for pennies because emotions are high
You’re trusting in positive outcomes for all of those, and I’m inclined towards the negative outcome on most of them. I could address all of them, but I’ll focus on two: Rodon has not only been injured his whole career but now has chronic back problems and will never be an above-average starter again, and the Yankees’ track record with prospects makes it impossible to believe that anyone out of their system will ever be a consistently impactful player.
I’m trusting less in positive outcomes than positive processes maybe? Volpe’s got alot of good going on under the hood. Sweeney and Thorpe weren’t picked out of a hat either, all these guys have in demand skills and performances. Sweeney’s a MIF/IF capable LHH with a flyball approach, average or better power, and not a whole lot of swing and miss. Thorpe’s an innings eater who throws strikes and misses bats in the zone with command of an average or better mix. These are players and prospects getting good results with good processes very close to the MLs! Rodon’s been racked with injuries but, at least by high 95.6 avg FB, has shown an otherwise healthy arm when available. Judge has been as good per PA this year as last
Assuming the worst is really wise but the reaction shouldn’t be to become paralyzed and lock up for the next half decade is all. Even if it means salary dumping Cole and Holmes to the Cubs for lottery ticket low minors Prospects, highly recommended by me, they can get very good very fast
“Cole, Judge, and Rodon is as nasty a trio in the sport. This team’s loaded and well built when healthy”
A trio never is enough to support a MLB team, even if healthy. Look at Ohtani, Ohtani, and Trout, even when healthy the Angels don’t compete.
Ohtani and Trout are 2 players
Lol -6? I keep hoping the people will reclaim the internet, but it really might just be billionaire worshipping bots at this point. They own the real world, they own the media, they own the internet…Where does someone who is only a nominally an idiot, would likely lose many symptoms if I could escape the internet, go?
It’s interesting that the 2 longest active streaks of winning seasons will likely both be snapped this year.
The Nationals took 2 of 3 from the Yanks over the last few days. The Nats are 7-3 over their last 10. It’s not that far fetched to think the Nats could finish with a better win loss than the Yankees. I know that I would laugh if that happened. It’s not probable but not improbable either. Oh the joy!
Nats look pretty solid. I’m not entirely sold on Abrams’ bat yet, but I’m getting more convinced. They’re certainly a lot closer to coming out of their teardown than I thought.
And they’re fun!
This is why the Middleton trade infuriated me in a way that even I wasn’t expecting.
It showed an utter lack of awareness of what could “save” the Yankees (way more than they were going to find at the deadline) and also showed just a sheer misunderstanding of the idea of a sunk cost — 2023, even at that point, was/is a sunk cost, but continuing to make trades to get a rental reliever is just bonkers.
2024 is far from a lost cause — as Judge showed last year, he can drag the offense by himself if he has to — but you need better back up plans than the minor league FA merry-go-round in the OF.
Going into the season with Oswaldo as the everyday LF and then hoping that Donaldson would bounce back (to his hitting ways, I know he was still good defensively) was what really sunk this team IMO. They were already carrying some weak bats in the lineup at catcher, center field, and with a rookie at SS who never played in AAA, and would definitely require time to settle in.
Then, the unpredictable stuff happened. Stanton turned into a pumpkin, Rizzo was playing concussed, and then the big Judge injury happened and they just didn’t have enough to cover that and all of the underperformers and injury-prone players. Bauers and McKinney did a solid job, but they are both LH and you don’t really want either of them in there against LHP. The pitching staff was doing fine for most of the season, and then it’s kind of stunk lately.
I don’t really know what the team does going forward. If I had to put money on it, I would say that Cashman and Boone are back next season (they extended both less than a year ago, and I doubt Hal fires them). Honestly, I want the team to just release Stanton and LeMahieu at this point. I don’t think hoping that they turn it around and go back to their old selves in their late-30s is a good strategy (see Donaldson). Just take the sunk-cost, reset next year, sign some free agents to one-year deals, and play some youths and maybe a 2017 type of team comes from it. There have been some good developments on the farm (Drew Thorpe for top-100!) so it is certainly not doom-and-gloom, but good luck selling that to your average WFAN listener. I certainly don’t envy this front office at all.