The problem with the analogy is those teams were loaded with talent, while this one doesn’t have a first baseman, might or might not have a catcher, probably doesn’t have a shortstop (at least offensive), doesn’t have a left fielder, doesn’t have either a 2nd or third baseman depending on what happens with Torres & Jazz, has a massive question mark at centerfield, and needs batters for the bench.
A friend of mine used that same logic.
This is the part that gets me too. The refusal to play the young guys unless injuries force them to. It’s a completely incoherent way to run your team to fill the margins and half the lineup with stopgaps who are playing out of position.
Hal has to realize that he can’t afford to lose Soto. Whatever it’ll cost to keep him, it’ll cost more to lose him. It’d be a 2010-11 cavaliers season type atmosphere in the stadium with very few sellouts if any, but the fan anger would be directed at the owner and front office as opposed to the player who left. That team would have a ceiling of 85 wins and an early playoff exit regardless of who they face for 2-3 years before Judge and Cole decline and then the bottom falls out. It would probably also cause future free agents to pass on them because they wouldn’t trust the team to make the effort to field a proper contender long term like how Albert Pujols and Jason Giambi passed on the A’s in the winter of 2001 and the marlins in the winter of 2011 because they didn’t trust the team’s commitment to winning. It would instantly turn the perception of the Yankees (especially after how many stars they passed on from 2017-22) into that of a second rate franchise like the cowboys or bulls who still milk 90’s nostalgia to sell tickets and merchandise when they haven’t been relevant since.
It’d be Kevin Durant joining the warriors basically but stretched out to a decade. That’d be bad for baseball. The Yankees would immediately become totally irrelevant and with the rest of the AL being weak, the dodgers might only have one challenge while winning 115+ in a very anticlimactic season whose outcome was a foregone conclusion before it even began. Great for the dodgers, but bad for everyone else.If the Dodgers get Soto
Nah I gotta stop you right here, because you can't say this, when you were perfectly fine with letting Judge walk with Hicks, Donaldson, and IKF still wasting AB's.
And how does waiting until January for him to make a decision help solve these issues?
I was fine with them blowing it up, the same way I'd be now if they let Soto go. What I don't want is for them to let Soto walk, pivot by blowing money on guys who won't make us better in the long run, then when someone really good comes along, Hal goes "but we spent money on Alonso and Bregman, to spend so much on this obviously better guy is tough to make the money work."
Because there’s nobody who can even come close to replicating what he brings to the table. The other name I keep hearing is Anthony Santander and he’s a career .245 hitter with a .307 career OBP who hit .235 with a .308 OBP last year. Hasn’t ever hit above .261 in a season and he hasn’t done that in 5 years now. They can’t afford the pr hit of losing the 26 year old wildly popular megastar who sent them to the World Series and delivered the most iconic Yankee hit since 2003. Not after passing on Verlander, Harper, Machado, Cole once, Correa, Seager, Turner, Olson, and Freeman. We all saw what it looks like in 2013 and 2018 when they spend around the margins instead of landing the superstar. They the up paying more for far worse players and it ends up burning them for 5-10 years. 6 years removed from passing on both Harper & Machado, DJ is the only guy they have left from the winter of 2018 and he’s been both hurt AND awful for 4 years in a row. They spent roughly $230 million paying Ellsbury, McCann, and Beltran as opposed to $240 million on Cano and got basically nothing for it and even spent 3.5 years paying one of them to stay on his couch. This isn’t 2021 where you can afford to miss out on 2 of the 3 all star shortstops and can afford to miss on one of the two between Olson and Freeman. Plan B after Soto leaves you the equivalent of a basketball team whose ceiling is 45 wins and a surprising fight against a real contender. That doesn’t sell tickets as the follow up to a heartbreaking World Series loss.
O’Neill wasn’t out of his prime though
. He had his best seasons here. He never hit above .276 or had an OBP better than .346 with the reds.Out of his prime years. Paul was 30 when he got to the Yankees.O’Neill wasn’t out of his prime though
