Yankees wrap three days of meetings, Hal Steinbrenner hints at 'subtle' changes
The Yankees wrapped three days of high-level organizational meetings on Friday, kicking off a crucial offseason.
Team captain Aaron Judge and ace Gerrit Cole were never expected to attend this three-day meeting, but will maintain the open dialogue with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner that began with monthly meetings during the season.
According to sources with direct knowledge of the team’s thinking, the Yankees have not yet determined how they will announce to the public the return of manager Aaron Boone, which SNY reported last week is expected to happen. Boone is under contract for next season, so no action is needed.
The Yankees are also yet to schedule GM Brian Cashman’s annual postmortem news conference. Both that and the coming update about Boone’s return are complicated by Major League Baseball’s desire to avoid non-playoff news during the postseason.
The team is not bringing in consultants to audit the organization, as was initially assumed. As SNY reported last week, the Yankees are hiring a third party to show the team how it runs its analytics -- a process that the analytics department itself requested. No one will be reviewing Yankee materials or auditing the organization from the outside.
Still, the Yankees will continue to evaluate every aspect of their own operation after an 82-80 season that Cashman called a “disaster.”
Speaking on Wednesday at the Sportico’s Invest in Sports event in New York (and shared on X/Twitter by Sportico editor-in-chief Scott Soshnick), Steinbrenner said “[It was] a check your egos at the door kind of thing, and be prepared to be critiqued. And a lot of that happened.
“And I think at times it got a little dicey. But it was respectful the entire time. There wasn’t one stone we left unturned -- from health of the team, what we’re doing in the clubhouse, clubhouse culture, what we do in the weight room. Analytics, pro scouting, biomechanics. Is there enough communication between everybody?
“It was a great three days. It was a very honest communication. Many more to come in the months to come, but we’re going to be making some changes. Some may be more subtle than others, but I think we’ve uncovered certain things we could do better.”
Sources said that more details would come to light at Cashman’s eventual news conference. “We can’t do the whole big reveal now,” one source said when asked about Steinbrenner’s comment about “changes.”
But with the GM and manager returning, the expectation is that “subtle” will be a key word.
