Assessing The Problem

By Andy Singer

November 24th, 2024

Photo Credit: Jason Szenes, NEW YORK POST

All of us have shifted into the fun of offseason roster construction tasks. Who will the Yankees non-tender? What prospects might bump up to the Majors? What free agents are the Yankees interested in bringing in? Will the team re-sign Juan Soto? What trades does Brian Cashman have up his sleeve that none of us saw coming? For many of us, roster construction is fun to think about, and it's an area about which we all like to argue and armchair quarterback; after all, that's our job as fans. Unfortunately, roster construction alone does not win championships. Just ask some of the teams in the NBA that have built super-teams that assured them a championship...until they didn't win.

Like the rest of you, I have had my head firmly in the roster construction phase of the offseason, but something has continued to stick in my craw since the Yankees lost the World Series. We all saw the lousy baseball the Yankees played not just in the World Series, but throughout the playoffs; not just in the playoffs, but throughout the season; and not just throughout the season, but since the end of the 2017 season. Again, it hasn't been an isolated incident, but a feature of Aaron Boone-led baseball teams.

Yet, in the public postmortem that occurred after the Yankees' World Series loss, all I keep hearing about from Yankee officials is that historically bad 5th inning in Game 5. Yes, that was truly horrible baseball, but it was far from an isolated incident; rather a hyper-concentrated microcosm of the disease that has afflicted the team for years. Brian Cashman was the only team official who was willing to step beyond discussing Game 5, noting that, “The team wasn’t the best defensive team that we’ve had, clearly. And the team also obviously made some baserunning mistakes.”

In case you were wondering, that's Cashman taking the blame for the Yankees' flaw in 2024 from a roster construction perspective...except that doesn't explain the ability for the team to completely melt down and play without fundamentals for years now.

I did something I really didn't want to do: I went back and watched the 2024 World Series with clear eyes, and without the emotion of the moment. Yes, the Yankees' bats went ice cold. Besides that, though? From a talent perspective, the Dodgers and Yankees were evenly matched. The Dodgers' roster had at least as many flaws from a roster construction perspective. You could make the argument that the Yankees were right there to win 2-3 out of the first 5 games in that World Series. Freddie Freeman was fantastic, obviously, but the Yankees puttered around to give him the opportunity to show off some heroics.

The real difference between the Yankees and the Dodgers was that the Dodgers didn't consistently beat themselves; the Yankees did. They did it in the field and they did it on the basepaths. We also know that the Dodgers' pre-series scouting reports actively recommended finding ways to force the Yankees into beating themselves with poor fundamentals. Unfortunately, the GM and the owner have each blamed isolated incidents (the 5th inning) and roster construction for the team's loss.

Until the team addresses the true root cause of their postseason failure, I fear the Yankees could build a super-team and still lose. I hope the internal assessment of the Yankees' failures is different than what the team has espoused publicly.