June 25, 2024
***
This week we asked our writers the following:
Rizzo is out. Schmidt is out. Dominguez is out. Stanton is out. LeMahieu isn't hitting. Torres isn't hitting. The catchers don't hit and one can't throw. The bullpen looks terrible. The starters have returned to earth.
Are the Yankees in trouble? Is this 2022 all over again?
Here are their responses:
***
Derek McAdam - I’m not too concerned about where the Yankees are right now. Yes, they’ve lost seven of their last 10 games, but every team is going to slump at some point this season. The Yankees really haven’t done so until now, so this may be their time. If they’re still not playing good baseball by the time the All-Star break rolls around, I’ll start to get concerned. As for now, it’s not fun to watch, but I’m not hitting the panic button just yet.
***
Paul Semendinger - I said from the start of the season that I believe the 2024 Yankees are constructed better than the 2022 Yankees. That being said...
I believe the last few weeks have exposed the many flaws this teams has.
This could be 2022 all over again. In 2022, Brian Cashman made a host of bad moves. They were bad when he made them and time demonstrated just how bad they were.
In order to avoid a repeat of 2022, Brian Cashman (with Hal Steinbrenner's backing) is going to have to make some big time deals. The Yankees need some bats. The Yankees need pitching. There are a gazillion holes on this team.
If the Yankees make smart moves, they can win in 2024. If they don't, it will be a long second half, a long off-season, and many many many fans will have lost their faith in this organization completely. I don't think the Yankees' decision-makers understand that.
***
Lincoln Mitchell - The Yankees are an odd team. They get no offense from 1b, 2b, or 3b and pretty average offense from catcher and left. They have essentially a four man offense and now one of those guys, Stanton, is hurt. In short the Yankees are in trouble. If they do nothing, they will not play into late October. The good news is that they have so many holes that while they can’t fill all of them, it won’t be tough to upgrade at two or so. For example, adding another good starter and a first baseman, or a first baseman and DH would make a big difference. They will need to improve the bullpen as well, but if that is all they do, then they are in pretty big trouble.
***
Tim Kabel - I believe that this season will ultimately be a repeat of 2022. The only difference will be that this time the Yankees will slip out of first place because the Orioles are a much tougher opponent than the Rays were in 2022.
***
Cary Greene - And yet here the Yankees are, sitting in first place on June 24th -- with last season's Cy Young Award winner all set to start contributing. I wrote (often) this offseason that the Yankees should add a slugger in a bench role, so they could compensate for not if -- but when Big G goes down with a lower body injury. J.D. Martinez was the obvious play, or Joc Pederson (who went off the board in the blink of an eye), but money was tight and Hal was frowning over the high payroll. I also wrote that trading Gleyber Torres while he was worth over $13 MTV was another good move.
The catching is what it is. What teams do have above average offensive catching? Not many. It's not like Higgy or the Kraken would make much of a difference. Regarding the bullpen, I also wrote that a number of moves could have been made -- both through the trade route and also by spending extra coin. Not enough was done by Cashman, but it's not like other teams were giving away good relievers via trade proposals and it's not like Hal wanted to spend wildly.
Hal went all in on Soto this past offseason and he even spent a little more here and there. So where are all the up and coming rookies who have golden opportunities to plug into the mix? Anyone? Buhler? Buhler? Crickets...
Let's face it, this is the best team Hal Steinbrenner could stomach putting on the field. They need to go out and win despite a very iffy manager, a GM who has Strat-O-Matic and Fantasy Baseball advisers and the aforementioned owner who is getting sick and tired of spending his profits on player's salaries.
What we are looking at is the legacy of Hal Steinbrenner being written. He's a fine ol' chap but he's a loser when it comes to running a winning franchise. This Yankees team still could win it all, they still might, if only injuries weren't the annual bugaboo regarding the Cashman roster building approach. It does feel like 2022 (waiting to happen any day now) all over again though, doesn't it?
This offseason he added mostly players with decent health histories, so he finally dumped his reckless ways in which he amassed a whole bunch of players who had good chances of having injury issues. Blame it on the medical staff too. Blame it on Cashman. Blame it all on Hal. Find a scapegoat. Point the fingers at anyone and everyone. Yet here we all are.
Our Yankees are in first place right now folks. Rome isn't on fire quite yet.
***
Andy Singer - Is it 2022 all over again? No, I think that's an overreaction to the team's current slump. The Yankees jumped out to one of the best starts in baseball, and there was no planet on which the team was going to play close to .700 ball the remainder of the year (as cool as that would have been). The boring answer is that whenever performance is so far above true talent levels, the law of averages is often satisfied by a swift and painful overcorrection. On a certain level, that's what we're seeing, and over the long haul, I feel reasonably good that the Yankees are one of the two or three best teams in baseball. They were more than competitive with both the Orioles and Dodgers even without their full lineups.
However, that doesn't mean that there isn't reason for concern. Behind Judge and Soto, the Yankees are not getting consistent production. I really like what I see from Ben Rice, and I think JD Davis will be a fine platoon partner at 1B and 3B, but there are still large segments of the lineup that aren't producing. The Yankees also need to fix the bullpen - it's gone from a concern to a dumpster fire in short order. I think Yoendrys Gomez (as I noted prior to the start of the season) is part of the answer, but he's far from the whole answer. I think the Yankees need bullpen arms, a corner infielder, and a right-handed platoon complement for Alex Verdugo (seriously, look at his career splits and his current splits...it's ugly), in that order. I'm sure Cashman and co. realize this, but it's up to Hal Steinbrenner to okay the expenditures.
