Yeah, That Was Bad

 It's possible that on the day I die, the one thing I won't regret is that I will no longer remember the 2023 New York Yankees season. The general manager called it a "disaster" and he was being generous. Yeah, the kids came up and made it kind of fun to watch the last couple of weeks, but all the problems that were present last offseason (and the one before that and the one before that) were not addressed and are the exact same issues that are supposedly being discussed even as the detested Houston Astros continue to play baseball games that count. Ouch.

Aaron Judge would be fine if he could just avoid playing in Dodger Stadium forever. Gerrit Cole, however difficult he is to watch sometimes (tons of pitches, diva behavior) is still an elite starter. Gleyber Torres made large strides in the second half at the plate, and still sometimes looks distracted in the field.

Those are the highlights. The lowlights are everything else.

There is still no starting centerfielder, left fielder or third baseman for the Yankees going into 2024. The starting rotation does not have a reliable second starter, forget a third, fourth or fifth. (Yes, Clarke Schmidt looked good. Let's see him do it for a whole year.) Nestor Cortes needs to be the 2022 Nestor Cortes, and we haven't really seen him pitch much since then. 

The Miami Marlins used to have a really good player called Mike Stanton. Anybody know where he is these days?

We've been promised "major changes" before. What we got was the previous year's not-terribly-successful team with a new coat of varnish. If that happens again, Hal Steinbrenner's going to find out what happens when people DON'T show up at the rate of 40,000 per night.

I'm not one who blames Aaron Boone for everything. I think he's a perfectly serviceable major league manager, given that the analytics department makes the bulk of the calls and he's only there to answer questions before and after the games and deal with the players, who appear to love him. He'll be back and that's okay with me.

Brian Cashman has been a very good general manager for a long time but appears to have been in a baseball coma for the past three or four years. The team's been going downhill and he doesn't seem to notice. It was only by the grace of the Boston Red Sox, of all people, that this year's squad didn't finish in last place in their division. The toughest division in baseball, by the way, had three teams - THREE - enter the playoffs and nobody made it to the second round. So don't tell me about that anymore.

Should Cashman be fired, or does this fall on the Steinbrenner family and their (ironic) aversion to change? It's a good question. Cashman will be back, and the Steinbrenners aren't going anywhere, so maybe it doesn't matter. Changes on the field need to be made. Does anybody in this organization have the guts to make them?

I'll get back to you in 2024. Whether I get back to Yankee Stadium is another question. We'll see.

Deadline? What deadline?

 What a disappointment. And yet, in a sick, twisted way it makes sense.

The fact that the New York Yankees, a team in desperate need of upgrades at third base, first base, left and center field, whose all-star right fielder has to DH because his injury from two months ago still hasn't healed, did NOTHING at the trade deadline (and don't talk to me about the middling reliever they got for a prospect) speaks volumes. It's the way this team has operated for years, and there's no indication management even wants to change that.

In order to keep the Yankees beneath whatever arbitrary luxury tax deadline they're probably pennies under at the moment, they couldn't add significant salary. Because god forbid they don't make as much profit in the future as they do now, which is a ridiculous amount. Imagine how much they'd be making if they had a winning team.

That meant there would be no major trades unless the Yankees could rid themselves of a large salary like that of Stanton, Carlos Rodon (whose minuscule sample size means he might still find himself), Josh Donaldson, Anthony Rizzo, Frankie Montas, Harrison Bader or... I could go on... and that wasn't going to happen. There weren't even real impact players on the market, unless you count the two Paleozoic pitchers the Mets were unloading, and even they weren't going to help the Yankees score more runs, which is the real problem.

Yankee fans wanted to see some indication that management cares, and they didn't get it. We wanted to see people leave who aren't doing any good. We wanted to see players enter who might. Even if there was no trade, we wanted to see representatives of the farm system we've heard so much about like Pereira, Peraza, Wells and Spencer Jones rather than the walking wounded of Stanton, Rizzo, and LeMahieu.

The front office and Aaron Boone will tell us there've been injuries, and there have. The problem is the Yankees keep telling us they've healed when they clearly haven't. Judge isn't Judge yet. With the Yankees last in the standings and fading in the wild card race every day, he should take the rest of the season off, have the surgery on his toe and come back ready for 2024. LeMahieu should have gotten his foot fixed last offseason and didn't, and he's clearly not the same player. Rizzo had the neck issue after a collision at first base and insists he's fine. He's clearly not. Stop telling us players are ready when they're not. This season is shot. Give the club and the fans a shot at 2024. Let the kids play.

Bader and Luis Severino will be gone by next season. That's fine. The same is true of Donaldson, and that's great. Wandy Peralta might or might not be back. We're told Nestor Cortes is almost back, and we'll see which version of Nestor we get, same with Jonathan Loaisiga.

But the point is that this season is no longer the issue. This year has been botched, never more than it was at the trade deadline, when fans expected change and got nothing. The focus now needs to be on the future, so we don't have a succession of trade deadlines that are just as deflating.

Does Brian Cashman have to go? Maybe, if the Yankees are willing to hire a GM who isn't a slave to the analytics department and the luxury tax. You can't keep Stanton, Judge and Cole on the roster and stay competitive under the luxury tax. Since you're not getting rid of them (or Rodon) the tax has to be paid.

Does Aaron Boone have to go? Also maybe. I'm not sure he's been a major reason in the decline of the team over the past four years, but if his job really is to answer questions at press conferences after losses, well, the fans are tired of seeing his face and hearing his voice. You're not going to let the man manage the team, so maybe you need someone who's better at keeping the angry mob at bay.

Make no mistake - this was years in the making. The same team, give or take, has been trotted out since 2019 and the decline has been steep and swift. An overhaul was clearly needed. It didn't come.

Focus on next year and the years after. This year is over. And Kenyan Middleton isn't the answer. 

The Boston Unplug

 It wasn't even a massacre.

I didn't have high hopes with the Yankees limping their way into Fenway Park this past weekend, and as it turned out, I was overly optimistic. But it you think those three games happened the way they happened because Alex Cora is a genius and the Red Sox are a powerhouse, I invite you to look at the standings. They're still in last place, three games over .500.

No, the Red Sox didn't massacre the Yankees this weekend. If anything, they were the hand that pulled the plug on the Yankees' life support. This team has been less than stellar for at least three years now, evidenced by the fact that they've trotted out the same team (give or take) for three years and gotten pretty much the same results.

There will be a time in the season when these guys look invincible. It will NOT happen while Aaron Judge nurses his toe (an injury that came as a result of a game-saving catch). But it'll happen, if it hasn't already. And the rest of the time this will be a mediocre team, losing games because they score a run or two in the first inning and then take the rest of the game off.

I'm not suggesting this is about motivation. I don't think any major league player goes out on the field with the intention of doing just okay. Those screaming that Judge or Rizzo should "fire up" the team, or that Aaron Boone is too nice, are missing the point. The sadder truth is that these Yankees ARE playing up to their ability and these have been the results. 

This team might make the playoffs as a wild card. They might even survive the first round if they're in any kind of shape in October. But they're not a "championship-caliber team" as Hal Steinbrenner likes to say. They haven't won a championship or been in a World Series in 14 years. Don't expect that to change in 2023.

Radical changes need to be made and some money needs to be sacrificed. The jettison of Aaron Hicks was actually a good sign: They ate the salary and got rid of a player who wasn't helping. They need to do the same with Josh Donaldson, who is poison in the clubhouse and a crater in the lineup. Yeah, he's hit a few home runs. But he's done nothing else.

There needs to be a real impact bat in the middle of that lineup. The idea that we're waiting out Giancarlo Stanton's next whole week of being a monster is ridiculous. The rest of the time he plays - when he plays - isn't worth it. 

DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Rizzo suddenly look old and tired. The pitching is being held together with Scotch Tape. Changes need to be made and the trade deadline is still more than a month away.

This isn't a massacre. It's euthanasia.