The Yankees are meeting their match in teams that don’t see pinstripes – they see a team that can be beaten—plan to start the revolution now.
The 2020 Yankees are a mirage. They fool everyone but the team they are playing, and their supposed strengths are glaringly exposed as weaknesses daily.
How can this be? Well, I’m afraid it’s staring at all of us right square in the face – we don’t wish to “see” it.
Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Giancarlo Stanton are (or should be) history when the Yankees envision their future, and that includes this year when it’s looking like they’ll be lucky to qualify as the eighth (and final) team in the expanded AL playoffs system.
Moreover, things can only get worse if the Yankees allow DJ LeMahieu to walk next year, as they did with Didi Gregorius and Austin Romine this year.
Neither decision has been adequately explained by Brian Cashman. He placed his full faith in Gary Sanchez to be all he can be, together with the belief that Gleyber Torres, as gifted an athlete he is, can be a major league shortstop.
Yankees: When Anything Can Go Wrong – It Will
Both evaluations have proven to be seriously deficient as the 2020 season plays out, but that’s not all.
There are those two elephants in the room the Yankees and Cashman need to deal with, and without the blinders on.
A wish and a prayer will not get Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the field (together) for any length of time, regardless of how many Hail Mary’s Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone pretend in the daily briefings with the media.
What to do with them, God only knows. But for now, it is Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner’s cross to bear, and a repeat of this year is not acceptable – and they know it as well as we do.
$324 million said Gerrit Cole is the ace of the Yankees staff, and only by default does he retain that title (loser of his last three decisions).
J.A. Happ and James Paxton are on the bubble for next year, and the Super Pen owned by the Yankees is doing the best they can to reverse good starts almost every time they can.
Yankees: Only Bold Moves Will Turn The Tide
The trouble with the Yankees comes when you compare and contrast their roster to any team in baseball.
Pick a team, any team with the possible exception of the Dodgers, and even the most critical or biased mind opts for the Yankees as the best team in the league – On Paper.
So, therein lies the problem because I can’t remember the last time the Yankees fielded their (paper) team on a baseball diamond.
And beyond that, where is the hunger on this team?
Save for the seemingly scripted words from Brett Garder apologizing for his play and trying to light a fire under his teammates?
Injuries, and there are many, do not explain the torture of watching the Yankees absorb one loss after another to what are (supposedly) second-rate teams in their division.
COVID-19 has disrupted all teams during the 2020 season, and the Yankees are given points for willingly adjusted their schedule to accommodate MLB in re-scheduling makeup games – sometimes even in cities away from home.
And yet, there stand the Toronto Blue Jays, currently in second place (five over at 23-18), the Tampa Bay Rays (name three players in their starting lineup) holding a comfortable 6 1/2 game lead over the Yankees, plus the embarrassment of the Baltimore Orioles, who trail the Yankees by only a game-and-a-half in the AL East standings.
Brian Cashman’s 25th Anniversary As Yankees GM Is On The Line.
The charade speaking to “things that will get better” carries little if any force when given the state of the Yankees today.
From the outside looking in, the current composition of the Yankees needs a major overhaul if that elusive 28th Championship has any chance of being realized in this decade.
Suggestions? Sure, a penny for your thoughts or mine. But it’s Brian Cashman who gets paid the big bucks to wield power entrusted to him by the Steinbrenner family.
All I know, and I suspect a good portion of Yankees fans know, is that this ain’t working, and time’s a-wasting.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
