Bradford William Davis: The Yankees can fix everything that went wrong with this team, if they want to
The Yankees have as promising a core as you can find in baseball, one defined by towering drives and radar guns. But despite the on-field success throughout the regular season and the near-misses in the playoffs, time is running out on achieving their ultimate goal. And while no one can predict the impact of a cheating scandal and a global pandemic, the primary blame rests on their shoulders.
In Gerrit Cole, the Bombers hustled for a true ace, something that, Luis Severino’s brilliant 2017 and early ‘18 run aside, they had not secured enough of in free agency, trade, or internal development.
One year in and Cole was the right move, dominating when it mattered most during his outstanding Game 5 effort against the Rays. However, giving him a blank check was the team’s only move of significance.
Their preseason expectation of a deep and dominant staff — which included Severino, an electric arm in James Paxton, and the clutch, dependable Masahiro Tanaka — was understandable. In January.
But as the coronavirus hiatus progressed into June, they knew Domingo German was unlikely to be available due to his domestic violence suspension and his open flirtation with walking away with the game altogether. Paxton, never a paragon of health, was recovering from surgery, struggled with velocity loss during the preseason, and got hurt again. Severino was already down for the count thanks to his pre-pandemic Tommy John surgery.
The same story existed with their bullpen. Allowing Dellin Betances to walk away was an understandable move given his injury history — even though his own career embodies the Yankees’ cheapness with their most talented players — but not acquiring another talent to replace him meant depending on too many ifs. If Adam Ottavino could reverse his end-of-year trends or find a workable approach against lefties. If Jonathan Loaisiga would become a relief ace when Tommy Kahnle needed elbow surgery. If no one else gets caught by the viral pandemic, especially not star closer Aroldis Chapman. If.
Given the vast resources at the Yankees’ disposal, going into October with so many question marks and zero upgrades was a major tactical error.
The Yankees decisions might as well have included offering a prayer for more of 2020's good fortune.
The Yankees haven’t had any problems creating an extraordinary talented lineup, but they again, didn’t hustle in fortifying a weak spot. By the end of August, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton were on the IL, as was Gleyber Torres, who started off slow but remains their top young hitting talent. But instead of addressing potential weak points — namely a lack of threats from the left side of the plate — the team chose to depend on the fairly unproven role players of 2019, instead of acquiring upgrades, or at very least, redundancies.
Mike Tauchman and Mike Ford were two nice boosts for last year’s club. But give their limited track records, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when they struggled to hold their own at the plate this season.
Allowing positional depth like Austin Romine, Cameron Maybin, and, critically, Didi Gregorius — one of the few lefty power threats on the entire team — to leave in free agency may have each been defensible decisions in a vacuum. But put together, the missing depth left them them prone to prolonged slumps and firebreathing righty relievers, which eventually doomed the team that backed into the expanded playoffs. First base platoon sluggers are a dime a dozen, yet Ford was, somehow, the only bat Aaron Boone trusted to get on base in an elimination game. He had only been on base three times through all of September.
Behind the plate, Gary Sanchez, once every bit the franchise player that Judge might be, has hit below .200 for the second time in three years. Even his All-Star worthy 2019 was buoyed by a hot start — he hit .183/.290/.394 from June 24 through the end of the year.
Despite his struggles on offense and well-documented defensive shortcomings, Sanchez is known for working incredibly hard at his craft, a good reason to think very carefully before giving up on him. If they still believe in Gary returning to his 2016-17 form, or even the cumulative production of 2019, it shouldn’t preclude them from searching for additional redundancy.
And if they don’t believe Sanchez should start for the 2021 ballclub, will they go for Phillies free agent J.T. Realmuto as an upgrade? Recent history, most notably sitting out the A-list bats like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, suggests otherwise.
The lineup was supposed to be a fully operational Death Star, and it absolutely was at its best. But against the Rays bullpen, the Death Star’s lack of dangerous left-handed bats was something like Darth Vader’s ill-fated thermal exhaust port. But hey, what are the odds of finding that one glitch in the system?
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So this leaves us with an offseason in flux. With the Yankees, their entire middle of the rotation is either recovering from Tommy John surgery (Severino), reaching free agency (Paxton and Tanaka), trying to prove they’re productive members of society (German) or flirting with their 40's (Happ). Reinforcements like Deivi Garcia, Clarke Schmidt and Loaisiga are talented but not yet proven. DJ LeMahieu is also a free agent. He’s in his 30s, too, but deserves much better than the savvy, thrifty two-year deal the Yankees gave him — even though the Yankees have rarely played in the top end of the free-agent market.
Save for Torres their established bats and arms are all either in, or aging out of, the typical 26-30 prime years. There’s little projection on the current roster, more downside than up. Then, there are the injuries, no doubt influenced in large part to the lack of a traditional ramp-up, but still existing in perpetuity with their most crucial sluggers. And the 2020 season showed the team was surprisingly thin.
The Yankees are, like every team in the sport, worth billions based on the public estimates. However, their roster investment is deceptively large in total dollar amount, and small relative to other teams when factoring estimated revenue. This is a problem of their own design, but one can that be fixed. Otherwise, they could be like so many talented teams in history — including the wild card opponents in Cleveland they thwarted — that ran out of time before capturing the elusive title.
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