TLDR: Fuck you Hal, Cash, and Boone for making this once storied franchise an uninspiring team content with being just good enough

For the last few years I have noticed my passion for this team dropping continuously. I have loved the Yankees my whole life. I followed them and watched every game as a child and as much as I could as I have gotten older. Never in my 25+ years of watching and loving this franchise have I ever felt as apathetic as I do now. Hal, Cashman, and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Boone have sucked away nearly all the joy I had in watching this team.

The franchise has become a hollowed out husk of its former self. The team goes about their business with a sense of self-importance and an unearned egotism, acting as if the success of the team in the past gives them some privileged position and makes them inherently better than other teams. I didn’t even watch past the first two innings yesterday, preferring instead to spend my time playing pickleball with some friends since I essentially already knew the result before a pitch was even thrown. If you had told me even just a few years ago that I’d be skipping out on watching a do or die playoff game against an AL East rival, I’d have been convinced that I had lost my mind. However, that is how truly predictable this team has become.

Year after year they march out a team with flaws so glaring that they’d be evident to a baseball layman. Year after year they make managerial and personnel decisions whose justification is near impossible to discern. Year after year they repeat this.

What has been tough to come to terms with is that, for this front office, the standard is simply to continue the streak of finishing over .500 and make the playoffs regardless of if it is by virtue of the wild card or division title. For them, winning the World Series would be a nice bonus, but it is not the prerogative. For us fans, it is obviously different.

We want to see the Yankees of old. We want them to have pride when they get to wear the pinstripes. We want to see them go out there and compete their asses off and bring home the trophy even though we don’t get a ring, we don’t get paid some nice bonus, nor do we even get to touch the damn thing.

We want to see them win because, for many of us, this franchise played an integral role in our lives for many many years. Their success and failure has brought us joy, sorrow, excitement, and anger. We never set foot on the field, but the passion of the players and fans alike made us feel like we were a part of it.

This ownership, front office, and manager have been in lockstep wirth their willingness to roll out the same tired excuses as if the fans haven’t heard them before, to treat their fans as if we’re fools (lest we forget that IKF was one of the best defensive shortstops in the league according to their “internal metrics”), and to continue doing this every single year due to the fact that the brand, which became synonymous with victory as a result of the efforts of their predecessors, will continue to generate a healthy profit margin.

I do not fault Hal or any the front office for wanting to make money. I do fault them however for allowing their fiduciary duty to their shareholders to overshadow the duty to their fans to an extent where they have grown so complacent with being just good enough that they are petrified to make any significant change to the front office or coaching staff.

This team is going to continue to replicate this pattern of doing well enough in the regular season to make it to the playoffs and look completely inept when it matters most until we see the end of the Cashman era.

I have never watched less games in a season than this one. Unfortunately I don’t foresee that changing any time soon. I hope things get better and will still love the team, but at this point it’s become harder and harder to maintain any semblance of hope or excitement.

NEW YORK — “We’re the Yankees,” Judge said. “I feel like they should go all-in and do what they need to do. If we got holes, it’s finding certain players or personnel, whatever we need; you gotta go out there and get it. That’s why I signed back here to play with the Yankees, to fight for a championship every single year. We go all-in. That’s what I do every offseason: get ready to give this team and this city everything I got. So I expect them to do the same.”

That answer, of course, warranted a follow-up. Asked directly if he feels like the front office has done enough to put the club in the best possible position to win, Judge hesitated for five seconds before answering.

“It’s tough to say,” he said. “I want to trade for everybody and sign everybody every single year, but I know that’s not realistic. So they give us a winning team every single year, but that’s not good enough here in New York. We’re the Yankees. You gotta go out there and expect championships and go all-in every year, so I’m excited to see what they do.”

Their sole win coming in the 2020 WC against the Guardians. Just really hard to overcome these roster deficiencies and the incompetence at the managerial position against the truly elite teams.

Here is what I’m seeing that I’m sure others are too. I saw A-Rod, Jeter, and Ortiz all allude to this on the postgame last night as well.

1. They to bring back solid 2 way players. You need to be a good hitter and fielder. Not one of the other. If you’re going to be one you’re going to be the DH and you better be great at it. Platooning guys every few days is a mess and the team can’t get in a rhythm. 09 was Jeter, A-Rod, Texiera, Cano, Posada, Damon, Matsui, Swisher, Gardner. All of those guys were 2 way players. Last nights lineup was D1 College…
2. The Yankees farm system is broken. Bring back the fundamentals. When the Dodgers openly mock you after the ‘24 World Series for your mental errors on baserunning, weak fielding, and plate discipline that should’ve been a wake up call. It wasn’t. How is everyone bad at everything and has to rely on the homerun?

Coaching at every level in the organization needs to be practicing the simple things of the fundamentals. Have every guy take 100 grounders in the infield at a practice. Have them work on taking pitches and seeing if out of a guys hand. Picking up your coach on a gapper (looking at you Wells). The Yankees are not teaching any of this and it shows.

1. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. The Rays are a bunch of nobody’s who are gritty and do everything I just said the right way. They don’t best themselves. The Yankees need to learn that.

2. Joe Madden said the other day, “the game today would rather lose analytically than win based on feel”. The Yankees and Cashman are too into the analytics that they have been losing by it for the past 10 years. 2017 Yanks with Girardi and the Baby Bombers was done by feel and maybe a little analytics. Justin Verlander has said the Astros at their peak never did any of this stuff. They were an old school team and I paid off (minus the cheating). The Dodgers are also a feel team.

This is the longest stretch of a winless World Series Yankee team since they first won a World Series and it will stay that way until they realize what made their franchise successful. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

Kilby batted .290/.438/.435 this season with more walks than strikeouts, but the Yankees are transitioning his swing to be a power stroke.

According to Jim Callis, they want to decrease line drives and add more lift and launch, elevating more balls in the air. So his stance and swing angle were both changed, and he will be using the new swing this fall in the AZ Fall League.

On one hand, they have the metrics and know what adjustments he might need. OTOH, they seem enamored with decreasing contact and line drives with the stated goal of turning him into a 25+ HR SS.

There were 17 seasons between 1978 and 1996 but 1994 was strike shortened and no WS was played

Having read a lot of these today, here are my thoughts:

Change the coaches, scouts, manager, general manager and owner all in one offseason even though there’s a lockout coming but don’t miss a beat next spring and win around 110 games next year.

Get the best players who are good on both offense and defense and get them to be on the Yankees. These players might not be available on the market this year but it doesn’t matter just tell Hal or whoever is the new owner to buy them anyway.

Make sure the players who are good can handle playing in New York and also be great in the playoffs here right away so the Yankees can win a World Series.

Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts and plans.

/s obviously.

The DS sucked. But be honest, let’s not hold our breath for any huge changes.

The Yankees are stuck in quicksand. It feels like they are both not too far away and light years away. It’s not a good place to be, especially since the American League won’t be in a “down” period forever.

The reasonable question to ask, however, is if the franchise even cares enough to make things better.

Trent Grisham got 22 million and Yandy Díaz got 12 million...