What Can/Should NY Do?
- Thread starter jon abbey
- Start date
I mean....
Anyways, what I take this to mean is he isn’t getting fired midseason, but not sure we can conclude anything more.
Anyways, what I take this to mean is he isn’t getting fired midseason, but not sure we can conclude anything more.
But it did work in 1978. In reverse of this situation. Bob Lemon was a mellow man replacing a maniac. This year, Boone is the mellow guy. Maniacs are in short supply.
He also said he is willing to go over the luxury tax if a trade sends us to the postseason. I'm not sure how one trade can fix this mess.
Big trade. Seriously, though, if this means no more Judge in center, which means less Frazier than that is a good thing.
View: https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1410631718663557126?s=20
View: https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1410631718663557126?s=20
It’s times like this that I get pissed as a Red Sox fan that Hal beat out Hank. I like my Steinbrenners impulsive, reactive and overly emotional.
Good for Hal.
Edit: The offense is coming around. Defense is still a lingering problem. Pitching is the new problem. Chapman's inability to throw strikes and Cole looking human probably has more to do with the MLB crackdown on sticky stuff, the Yankees relying on analytics to sign a certain kind of pitcher, and an adjustment period for everyone on what the new 'normal' is. Unless Boone has lost the team, and I think Hal and Cashman would know if that is true, firing him mid-season won't solve the tangible problems they have with roster construction and the MLB pitching crackdown.
The pitching will probably even out because every team is dealing with the same challenge. Defense needs to be fixed. Cashman needs to get on it.
2nd edit: Skipped right over the post about Locastro being traded for. So yeah, that will help.
Edit: The offense is coming around. Defense is still a lingering problem. Pitching is the new problem. Chapman's inability to throw strikes and Cole looking human probably has more to do with the MLB crackdown on sticky stuff, the Yankees relying on analytics to sign a certain kind of pitcher, and an adjustment period for everyone on what the new 'normal' is. Unless Boone has lost the team, and I think Hal and Cashman would know if that is true, firing him mid-season won't solve the tangible problems they have with roster construction and the MLB pitching crackdown.
The pitching will probably even out because every team is dealing with the same challenge. Defense needs to be fixed. Cashman needs to get on it.
2nd edit: Skipped right over the post about Locastro being traded for. So yeah, that will help.
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I've never heard it used as a verb, but I guess that means they're like strapping heavy metal around their necks.
He was on NY's 40 man for a couple months a few offseasons ago but they didn't have space for him to stick. He seems fairly similar to Tauchman (fast, good defender, bad hitter) but at least he has an option remaining.
I read the Hal comments and I’m picturing the gif of the guy sitting at the table saying everything is fine as the house burns down around him.
This is a very interesting comment from Hal
View: https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1410653105482616842?s=21
View: https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1410653105482616842?s=21
That's a pretty bold statement (pun intended). Can you elaborate? I felt like the Celtics tuned out Coach Brad this year but it's a tough thing to spot in general so I would be curious to know the basis for your comment.
I agree it’s very subjective. As fans, I think we can catch glimpses of discord from TV closeups. There is a general malaise that seems to envelop Stanton, Torres and a few others as they watch impassively from the dugout. In prior years, the Yankees were usually way more animated in the dugout, clowning around after home runs, wheeling little Ronald Torreyes around in a wagon. You see it with the Sox this year. Winning teams have fun.
Have the Yanks quit on Boone? Nobody would admit it publicly. So you look at body language, the way a pitcher hands the ball to Boone, whether the players are talking to coaches in the dugout, going over data together. This team has no fight. They find ways to lose. The 2021 Sox find ways to win. (The 2020 Sox did not.)
The Yanks were very good from 2017-19. Boone got a lot of credit for that. My hunch is several players have tuned him out. But we won’t know until he’s fired and someone snitches.
Once they fall 14 games behind the Red Sox, they'll have them right where they want them.
The only problem is Bucky Dent isn't walking through that door.
Isn't it more likely that all we're seeing is random performance variation writ large, rather than some collective psychosis occurring amongst the Yankees players?
My impression is we see these kinds of things fairly regularly. A team is awfully good one year, or for a few years, then suddenly isn't as good in a particular year. And last time I checked, the Yankees are over .500 so we're not talking some kind of outlier variation. We just see this kind of variation less often with teams than we do with players because it's less likely, but it still happens. Couple that with the thought that perhaps some of the performances we saw from players such as LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres that may have established expectations in people's heads were the Yankees just catching a couple of career years.
Where blame is better apportioned, IMHO, is on Cashman rather than Boone. GMs have to constantly evaluate players and decide who's likely to perform well and who's likely to regress, over a prolonged period of time. That's why the decision of the 2018 RS to resign players like Steve Pearce, who clearly caught lightning in a bottle, smacked of lazy or misinformed personnel management. For the current situation, I look at the Yankees and I see Gardner in the lineup and I just shake my head. That's clearly on the GM.
The other part of the quitting argument that seems overblown to me is that MLB players seem awfully motivated, as far as I can tell, to do as best they can at all times because the rewards for marginal improvements in performance at that level are so high. It seems to me the only situations where players slack off to some degree are veterans clearly near the back end of their last big contract. Even then, I don't think it happens that much, but I'll allow that it happens.
Also, Boone may be a poor in-game decision maker, but how many games has that cost the Yankees, really? I think if I were Hal I would say almost the same things he just did, because what else can you do, other than replace Cashman, which is the only thing I'd be thinking about if I were him.
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Great point for discussion that we are approaching from opposite sides. Random performance variation vs. me worrying about players quitting on their manager. You can eventually prove your point with numbers. My argument is more subjective. Both perspectives have their place in sports arguments.
Yankee fans are not accustomed to mediocrity. NYY’s last under.-500 season was 1992. Other teams can have bad seasons but it’s really an outlier for the pinstripes when .500 becomes an issue. Boston throws in the occasional WTF season and then turns into a WS contender one year later. The Yanks don’t tank. The genius in Boston’s approach is dazzling. Does it help to change GMs every five years and take a slightly different approach? Cashman has been GM in NY since 1998 and full GM since 2008.
The way NY’s starting pitching is going, dropping under .500 in July as a team is not improbable. Girardi had a couple teams flirt with under.-500 but he managed in September 2016 like the playoffs we’re at stake.
I do see your point about judging Torres off his career season. Let’s see how he finishes up his first full season since 2019. The flip side of your motivation/incentive point is young players can get off to a bad start and flounder because they realize that slump is costing them money. Stats have always been important to players so this is nothing new. But after you get 400 ABs in a season, the numbers don’t change much. The dog days of August could also keep a slumping player down, especially if his team falls out of contention.
DJ has been hitting more like his old self lately. Regardless of where this team lands, I see him getting back to .290 BA. But that’s a long way from his first two seasons in pinstripes.
I will be watching in August to see how a few Yankee under-performers (modern description) or dogs (my term) perform if and when their team falls 10 or 15 games out of first place.
Yankee fans are not accustomed to mediocrity. NYY’s last under.-500 season was 1992. Other teams can have bad seasons but it’s really an outlier for the pinstripes when .500 becomes an issue. Boston throws in the occasional WTF season and then turns into a WS contender one year later. The Yanks don’t tank. The genius in Boston’s approach is dazzling. Does it help to change GMs every five years and take a slightly different approach? Cashman has been GM in NY since 1998 and full GM since 2008.
The way NY’s starting pitching is going, dropping under .500 in July as a team is not improbable. Girardi had a couple teams flirt with under.-500 but he managed in September 2016 like the playoffs we’re at stake.
I do see your point about judging Torres off his career season. Let’s see how he finishes up his first full season since 2019. The flip side of your motivation/incentive point is young players can get off to a bad start and flounder because they realize that slump is costing them money. Stats have always been important to players so this is nothing new. But after you get 400 ABs in a season, the numbers don’t change much. The dog days of August could also keep a slumping player down, especially if his team falls out of contention.
DJ has been hitting more like his old self lately. Regardless of where this team lands, I see him getting back to .290 BA. But that’s a long way from his first two seasons in pinstripes.
I will be watching in August to see how a few Yankee under-performers (modern description) or dogs (my term) perform if and when their team falls 10 or 15 games out of first place.
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Stanton said something the other day in his press conference after the game about NY's effort needing to be more consistent, I think that is exactly what Terry is talking about. I think a team needs to trust their manager and it's got to be hard to trust Boone's decision making at this point for them, especially after that ridiculous wishy-washy back and forth thing with Chapman against the Royals.
I wonder if there is still a Gleyber Torres for Luis Castillo deal potentially to be had, both have struggled a lot this year. CIN desperately needs a SS, NY could just move all of their SSs up a level (Kim to MLB, Peraza to AAA, Smith to AA, Volpe to high A, Vargas to low A).
You have mentioned often how bullpen guys are warming, or not warming, at odd times. And then the Chapman thing happened, Boone changing his mind on the way back to the dugout. Players notice everything.
That’s the type of high-risk trade for a starting pitcher Cashman almost has to make, considering the current state of the rotation. Not necessarily Castillo, though.
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Four weeks now since I started this thread, two thoughts:
1) NY has basically made no real changes since then, Cashman is doubling down on (what seem to be) his mistakes.
2) It occurred to me that the most likely managerial replacement is Joe Espada, who worked for NY from 2014-2017 (first as a special assistant to Cashman, then as the third base coach) before being hired by the Astros as their bench coach when the Sox hired Cora. If this is true (and it is completely my own educated guess), then I kind of get why Cashman is sticking with Boone for now, because he can't really hire Espada away from a contender midseason and putting in an interim manager generally just complicates things.
1) NY has basically made no real changes since then, Cashman is doubling down on (what seem to be) his mistakes.
2) It occurred to me that the most likely managerial replacement is Joe Espada, who worked for NY from 2014-2017 (first as a special assistant to Cashman, then as the third base coach) before being hired by the Astros as their bench coach when the Sox hired Cora. If this is true (and it is completely my own educated guess), then I kind of get why Cashman is sticking with Boone for now, because he can't really hire Espada away from a contender midseason and putting in an interim manager generally just complicates things.
As a clueless Sox fan, can I ask what the Yanks fanbase thinks happened with Gleyber? I asked my Yankees friends this question and all I got were joke texts about "he isnt cheating anymore". We can barely stand Dalbec's .693 OPS so I can only imagine how frustrating Gleyber's .638 OPS must be.
The short answer is 'who knows', the long answer starts with even though he was a top 3 prospect in all of MLB, no one expected him to have much power at any point of his career before he actually did. Even when he was called up in early 2018, people thought he had a 15 HR ceiling, and then he hit 62 HRs in 977 ABs over 2018/2019.
Then when baseball stopped and then restarted in 2020 because of Covid, he came back from the restart out of shape and a mess both offensively and defensively. They gave him some time off during the shortened season to try to get his shit together, and he seemed to be back to himself, with an impressive postseason, 1.262 OPS in 30 PAs. This year, no idea except that the bulk of the team has been comatose offensively all season.
It still feels like normal variation to me. The 2018 Red Sox returned with basically everyone in 2019 and won only 84 games. Sometimes lots of players have bad seasons at the same time and along with some bad injury luck, a season can be derailed.
ARod keeps citing the same issue... too many RHH.
It's strange they wouldn't have more LHH power hitters, any trade rumors in regards to fixing that?
It's strange they wouldn't have more LHH power hitters, any trade rumors in regards to fixing that?
They haven't had many LHH for a few years now, that really isn't the problem except in the very occasional game against someone like Eovaldi. Cashman likes that it's much harder to shift on RHH and all of their guys have plenty of opposite field power. if the RHH were hitting, it wouldn't be an issue.
And to answer your question, Cashman clearly doesn't think it's a problem (or didn't last winter anyway) because Schwarber was a FA and Gallo was almost certainly fairly easily obtainable via trade.
TL/DR: A-Rod is wrong about everything, never listen to him.
Every Yankees team that has had success in the last 25 years has had really good left hand hitters or switch hitters. From Bernie/Tino/O'Neill/Posada to Giambi/Matsui to Teixeria/Cano and even complimentary guys like Swisher, Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon, and Bobby Abreu. Yes, the shift has something to do with it but why wouldn't you want to take full advantage of the RF porch? Makes no sense to me.
They went 103--59 in 2019 and scored the most runs in MLB with an almost totally right-handed lineup, a very similar lineup to the one they have now (Hicks is out but missed a lot of 2019 too, Gardner is awful now, Didi is gone but missed half of 2019 also), their top 7 OPS+ hitters from 2019 are all still in the lineup now. Their RHH hit plenty of HRs to right when they are on. I also argued for adding Gallo or Schwarber last winter, but I think the simplistic "they need more left-hand hitting production" is not really correct (not blaming you). They need the guys they have to hit to the level that everyone expected, then their offense would be just fine.
That lineup's production was not sustainable IMO. Sanchez's career numbers have been one extreme(2017, 2019) or the other(2018, 2020). LeMahieu's career numbers don't support him being playing at an MVP level every year so a dip in production from the last 2 years was likely. Scrap heap finds like Voit, Urshela, and Tauchman were good, but are coming back down to earth or are not on the team. The inexplicable one is Torres. I can't believe he's playing at the level he is.
What made that 2019 lineup so good the unexpected really good years of the above mentioned guys like DJL, Voit, Urshela, Tauchman but also a guy like Cam Maybin's 126 OPS+, Brett Gardner hitting 28 HRs, a guy like Mike Ford coming off the bench and having a 136 OPS+ in 50 games who all combined to help offset the losses of Stanton and Hicks, and the unexpected power surge of Torres' 38 HRs. It seemed like whoever Cashman and Boone put in the lineup that year produced despite the amount of games missed from regulars. That doesn't happen very often.
Both of these things are true. They really could use more left-hand hitting, but to your point of just having the guys in there hit to their level everyone expected: was it realistic to expect that?
As Red Sox fan and lover of the game; you can't win every year. How many times have the Sox gone from First to Worst and back up. Baseball is a cyclical game. The Yankees are loaded, just some underperforming, injuries, and some bad breaks that are magnified because they are the Yankees. I fully expect them to be in the mix at the end of the season. To even contemplate firing Boone or Cashman is ludicrous and a knee-jerk reaction.
Firing Boone would be not a kneejerk reaction, he should not have been hired to begin with. He is adequate, he is OK, he is the guy who sits in the next cubicle to you for a few years who you are never impressed by but one day he is inexplicably promoted over you and then later you learn his dad and granddad worked at the company for decades and are friends with many people in upper management. His biggest strength by far is not screaming at reporters when asked idiotic questions in press conferences, that doesn't exactly help boost the winning percentage. He has had a ton of talent to work with (Fangraphs thought NY had the most talented MLB roster coming into this season, and they have been in the top few MLB teams every year under Boone) and he has won a lot of regular season games but he has never been a good decision maker under pressure, when quickly changing circumstances of a game force him to improvise a bit from the elaborate game plan he is presumably supplied with before each game. This quality is less than ideal for a guy whose most important job is postseason decision maker. He has pretty clearly lost the clubhouse as Terry has talked about, IMO he has never really been an asset but adequate, a guy you hope you can win despite of.
Cashman is more complicated, he has been there so long that I'm not sure how NY would even go about replacing him. His tenure has been up and down, but at least at this point, it's pretty easy to see that he had a terrible offseason (imagine if he had gotten even one of Schwarber or Gallo or Lance Lynn, for starters).
On the flip side, and part of this is because there are fewer minor league teams per franchise now, but holy shit is the farm loaded, with another top international stud supposedly signing in January (SS Roderick Arias). NY already has 5 other SSs in their system who deserve serious top 100 consideration based on pedigree/performance (Peraza, Volpe, Vargas already on at least one list, Park and Smith both have OPSs over 1.000 currently). Cashman has to get credit for that too, and with every other AL East team also having quite a bit of talent on the way, I'm sure Cashman is hesitant to cut into his own stockpile in fear of it backfiring on him in a few years.
But Cashman sticking by Boone is one of the worst moves he's made IMO, I hope he realizes that sooner rather than later. My theory (posted here for the first time) is that unless Boone miraculously saves this season, he will be fired after NY is done and Cashman will hire Joe Espada, who was with NY from I think 2014-2017 (special assistant to Cashman and then 3rd base coach) and then was hired by the Astros as bench coach to replace Cora where he still is. Clearly with Houston playing great, he cannot move midseason but that is my guess as to why Cashman is dealing with this situation the way that he is. Of course he could still fire Boone now (hurrah) and put in an interim guy (please not Nevin, please not Nevin, please not Nevin) but that would just complicate things in the offseason so if Espada is his plan, I kind of get not firing Boone until the season is done.
So FWIW, I disagree with both parts of this. I think if you are a GM and you have built the best edition of a team in franchise history (2018 Bos obv). it is your duty to do your best to reunite them for an attempt at back to back titles, something I think BOS has never accomplished (?). I don't know what Henry told DD about the team budget and when but I thought he had to bring back Eovaldi and Pearce, within reason of course.
As for Gardner, what would you have suggested instead? Gardner is 37 but has somehow not lost any sprint speed last I saw, and he had a 1.079 OPS in 24 PAs in last year's postseason (extremely SSS obv). I wanted to trade Frazier for Gallo in the winter in which case Gardner's ability to play CF would have been much less needed (Gallo is somehow a solid defensive CF), but I get bringing Gardner back cheaply as the 4th OF. Hicks going out for the season right after Tauchman (a horrendous hitter) was traded has meant way too much Gardner starting in CF but that is more a question of the less than ideal AAA OF options, I think. If Florial had been able to get a 2020 minor league season under his belt, maybe he'd have been ready to break camp with the team (he is starting to hit well in AAA the last few weeks, he is still just 23) and Cashman wouldn't have signed Gardner, but that didn't happen.
(Also Gardner is a rare lefty hitter for NY, which of course doesn't help if he is terrible at hitting, but again you can see the small pluses adding up.)
That seems pretty reasonable, what else is he going to say?
The big question is if his unhittable splitter was completely or partially a product of Spider Tack or whatever. If he has that third pitch, he is way less predictable and can get away much more easily with his B stuff. If it is gone, then he needs his A versions of FB/slider or some luck, especially against RHHs.
The big question is if his unhittable splitter was completely or partially a product of Spider Tack or whatever. If he has that third pitch, he is way less predictable and can get away much more easily with his B stuff. If it is gone, then he needs his A versions of FB/slider or some luck, especially against RHHs.
Great post. Regarding the bolded, though, shouldn't Cashman just look north up I-95 for an example of how to handle things? It was completely understood by everyone that Ron Roenicke was an interim manager the moment he was promoted. Yes, the circumstances were bizarre and on top of that the 2020 Red Sox were a tire fire but nobody blamed that on him, and he handled the pandemic-related disruptions as well as anyone could have expected. Yet, when the season ended Chaim Bloom acted professionally but decisively to find a long-term replacement who fit his vision. Maybe Boone=Roenicke in this scenario, but given the talent level he has been given and failed to maximize, I don't think it would be the worst idea to hand the reins to the best available alternative (is there a 2021 Stump Merrill anywhere in the Yankees system who deserves a shot in the big chair?), see what happens and then hire Espada or another permanent replacement in the fall. Even if the temp manager gets unexpected results, Cashman should have the juice to buck the media and fan opinion if he thinks he needs someone else for the long run.
I agree that the GM's job in that situation is to try and win another WS the following year (and not necessarily because of the B2B thing but because a GM should always be trying to maximize expected titles over some reasonable time window, and the fact that you won it the previous year almost certainly means that part of that strategy should include trying hard to win it the following year because you're likely close. The 2013 Red Sox may be an exception to this idea, BTW).
Where we disagree, I think, is whether that strategy has to include bringing back almost all of the same players. In fact, I think the case could be made that when you have a historic season like 2018, that almost by necessity requires players to perform in a way that makes regression to the mean even more likely the following year. The GM should be trying to assemble the best team possible based on the information in front of him, and when that info says Player X likely performed way above his head last year, the GM should be looking hard at other options.
I'll defer to your knowledge of Gardner, but my general impression, which I did not disabuse myself of with a quick jaunt through Fangraphs, is that at this point he is substantially less than what I think the Yankees version of Replacement Value is, or should be. Honestly I had forgotten about Hicks going down (when is he expected back?), so if the Yankees are expecting his return relatively shortly then I can better see standing pat.
Hicks is out for the season. I understand resigning Gardner in the offseason just because he is the longest tenured Yankees player, had a pretty good year last year, and was expected to be the fourth outfielder/pinch runner/defensive sub type.
I think where Cashman has screwed up was not trading Frazier (which I was against, in fairness) or Andujar (though he was injured). It's hard to justify making a trade when you have two in-theory-good-offensive players in house -- Frazier and Andujar -- who can fill left field and then just paper over center with Gardner or Judge periodically.
To sum up, though, if they are truly going for it again - which they have to be considering the talent on the roster - than hoping Andujar and Frazier can start hitting and playing good defense in lieu of making a trade is criminal.
I've always thought the Sox should claim 1903-1904 as well. If McGraw was chicken, well that's the NL's problem.