I’ve spent a lifetime being cowed by the New York Yankees. I was 10 years old — the perfect baseball age — when the Bronx Zoo Yankees roared to the World Series (Reggie hit three homers) and 11 the next year when Bucky Dent did his Bucky Dent thing and they won it again. That set me up to fear the Yankees for the rest of my life.
Then I was a young writer when the Yankees came back, Terminator style. The 1996 World Series was the first one I covered all the way through. The Braves beat New York two straight at Yankee Stadium to start and seemed utterly assured of victory. The Yankees, obviously, came back and won four World Series over the next five years, and I was there for all of them.
And even though they’ve only won the one World Series since then — that relatively joyless 2009 thing when they hired a bunch of mercenaries to get them over the top — I’ve always believed deeply that the Yankees would start crushing souls again.
I don’t believe that anymore. This team is a mess.
Oh, they’ll probably make the playoffs. Aaron Judge is that good. Max Fried is that good. The Rangers and Guardians, who seem like the most likely threat to the Yankees’ tenuous hold of the final playoff spot — probably won’t spark, and it’s not like Boston is a sure thing above them. Baseball Reference lists them as 66% likely for the postseason, and that feels right, and once there, heck, anything can happen.
No, what I’m saying is that this team seems to be in a death cycle. They will not just collapse. But their days of being that Yankees team that struck fear into the heart of 10-year-olds … I think those days might just be gone.
My pal Mike Vaccaro has a book coming out in March called The Bosses of the Bronx about the Yankees under the Steinbrenners, and it’s terrific. It’s also a good reminder that the Yankees don’t really stand for anything anymore. George Steinbrenner was a tyrant, and he was a bit of a buffoon, and he was volatile, and the team tended to do its best building when he was on one of his multiple suspensions.
BUT … you never doubted the Yankees’ motivations under King George. You never questioned their energy. You never wondered if they were willing to do whatever it took to win the title. They were the Yankees, after all. The team of Ruth. The team of Gehrig. The team of DiMaggio. The team of Mantle. The team of Yogi.
THE YANKEES!
You don’t sense any of that energy now. Brian Cashman has been running the Yankees for almost thirty years — the last 16 without a title. Aaron Boone has been managing the Yankees since 2018 without a title. The team has had ONE All-Star first-round pick in the last 25 years* and while, yes, the Yankees usually pick late and yes that pick was Aaron Judge, that’s just not going to get it done.
*Technically, Phil Hughes, their first round pick in 2004 was an All-Star — he made the All-Star team in 2010 .
This team just feels … tired. Boring. Hopelessly flawed. They’re over .500 because of Judge and Fried and some nice contributions from Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm Jr. and the like — but they’re not a good baseball team. They don’t do anything well. They are comedy gold on the bases. They’re constantly messing up defensively. They’ve got like nine struggling closers in the bullpen — it’s like they are stuck in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner —
Closers, closers everywhere
Fastballs, ev’ry one throws
Closers, closers everywhere
But none of them can close
My best guess is they make it into the playoffs and then don’t make any changes because that’s what the Yankees have become. Hey, they’ve got Gerrit Cole coming back! They’ll pick up a couple of interesting players in free agency! The kids will get better! They were in the World Series just last year!
And all of that’s right. The Yankees will be fine.
But will they ever be THE YANKEES again?
I think it will be a long, long time.
📓 This is Joe’s Notebook.
Half-formed thoughts, instant reactions, and nonsense (usually baseball) in real time.
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