Allow me to give my final rant of the '24 Season:
I gotta b!tch here, so forgive me. I hate to be an over-reactionary fan, but someone's heads gotta roll for that 5th inning yesterday. The culture of the Yankees is off. It's institutional. Is it generational? Maybe it's Gen Z / Millennial indifference? But the fact that we're having multiple, costly brain farts during the
World Series is nuts. The fact that it happened all year means yesterday wasn't some freak anomaly - it's ingrained in the team DNA. This team was not focused / mentally prepared. That's a coaching thing, no?
Go through all my Yankee posts even back during the S0HH days - I NEVER call for the manager to be fired, but Boone gotta go. And maybe it's not just Boone, but someone has to pay. (Also, Hal probably doesn't help either, but we can't get rid of him.)
Yesterday wasn't even heartbreaking as it was embarrassing, dumbfounding, and, most of all, insulting to the fans. It made no sense to me. Plus, it being only Game 5 tempered the hurt. For me, '01 and '95 hurt the most, '04 was a close second but that has almost been scrubbed from my memory for the sake of my wellbeing. This '24 series was just frustrating, like the '12 and '22 ALCS. Like, how'd this team win 90+ games this year? It just didn't add up.
I gotta get back to work and finally concentrate on sh*t I can control and stop worrying about these hundred-millionaires not doing the simplest aspects of their jobs correctly.
To answer your question, the problem is and has always been Brian Cashman. The bad effort and no accountability type culture that plagues the team starts there. George Steinbrenner being around was all that kept him in check. As soon as he was gone the problems bubbled right to the surface. George died right before the deadline on July 13th 2010. At this point the Yankees were in win now mode. Cano was the only key player younger than 29 and 6 key guys were 33 or older. Jeter, Teixera, and A-Rod all dropped off real bad from the year before so they needed pitching help to offset the drop in offense with CC and Andy being the only pitchers with an ERA below 4.00 and they had 2 guys with 5+ ERA’s on the year. Cliff Lee was available and they had the pieces to get him but Cashman refused to trade Eduardo Nunez in the package for him and Lee would end up with the rangers who’d knock them out in the ALCS. Then in negotiations for a new deal with Jeter hitting free agency that winter he lowballs Jeter, leaks the offer to the press, and gives Jeter 5 guys by name he’d rather have. Nearly lost their captain to Boston that winter with that shyt. He should’ve been gone right then and there. It got even worse with the Jeter & A-Rod era coming to an end.
He must have seen money all in the winter of 2013 and gotten obsessed with the he gets on base scene because with no other talented stars in their prime he lets Robinson Cano walk in free agency and tries to replace him with
Carlos Beltran & Bryan McCann as well as Jacoby Ellsbury who gets a deal 3 years shorter but only $3 million less per year. Ellsbury ends up being bad for 3.5 years and gets sent home for the last 3.5 years of the deal. Now by 2013-14 they’ve got no long term or short term building blocks on the roster and it gets even worse when the baby bomber era began.
Girardi takes a team full of young guys to game 7 of the ALCS and not to the World Series only because Hal got cheap and didn’t go all in on Justin Verlander but Cashman makes the call to fire his manager and replace him with a guy who has never managed at any level in his life. I said in the season thread at the time it reminded me of the chargers GM AJ Smith firing Marty Schottenheimer after the chargers blew the 2006 divisional round vs the pats and replacing him with a shytty coach who’d flopped in several places including their own division a year prior. Cashman was looking for a manager who’d let Cashman be the de facto manager and take the heat for him and I’m confident in saying I’ve been proven right unfortunately.
Every year under Boone except 2018 when the Red Sox smashed them to pieces in their own house two straight games to end the year has been defined by Cashman building a roster full of crippling flaws he chose to not address by using obvious solutions and the team beating themselves by playing ugly and sloppy undisciplined baseball.
Take a look at 2021 for example. They got off to a horrible start in equal parts due to having 0 lefty bats on the roster (Cashman declared they have righties who hit righties well and hit to right field so they didn’t need any lefties), no speed, with 3 of the 5 projected starting pitchers coming off 2 year absences with injuries to their throwing arms, and a team full of bad defenders with their manager in a contract year. On the season the 2021 Yankees were the most strikeout prone team in franchise history, stole the fewest bases in team history or close to it, led the majors in outs on the bases, led the majors in outs at home plate, led the majors in double plays hit into, led the majors with double plays hit into with the bases loaded, finished dead last in doubles, were near dead last in several hitting categories with men on base, had no shortstop, no catcher, no left fielder, had no first baseman most of the year, gave up the 5th most 9th inning runs in the majors, lost their first 39 games or close to it when giving up 5+ runs and lost I believe their first 38 games where they fell behind 3 runs or more. The season ended in a blowout loss to Boston where Gerrit Cole on 1 good leg had to pitch because the rest of the injury prone rotation Cashman built wasn’t healthy either. Not only was Boone brought back on a new contract, but Cashman was out under no pressure to get better results and he passed on all stars at first base and shortstop that winter, including the guy who just killed them in the World Series. The only person held accountable was the third base coach who sent judge home and got him thrown out at the plate in the playoff loss to Boston.
The following winter after his team imploded after the midway point of the season and got swept by Houston in a press conference where he took no accountability for every single move he made over the previous 18 months backfiring catastrophically and setting the team back 3-5 years and declared the process matters more than the results Hal gave him a 5 year contract with undisclosed terms. The lack of urgency and leadership that leads to the bad fundamentals starts with Hal and Cashman. Until at least Cashman is gone the problems will just continue to get worse. The manager is only here to be a puppet for him. That’s the only reason Boone was ever hired in the first place. For my money last night was the worst loss in franchise history even over 2001 and 2004. It’s one thing to finally run out of magic after 3 titles in a row or to lose in historic fashion after a historic rally vs them in game 7 the year prior. It’s another entirely to give away multiple World Series games in a series you should have won in 5 or at least be up 3-2 instead of losing in 5 because year after year there’s no internal pressure to execute in the big moments. Think about how many times since Steinbrenner died that Cashman signed 2nd, 3rd, or 4th tier position players and played them out of position all year and watched it backfire or how many times he has traded with the A’s and gotten burned. Think about how many times he’s traded for 2nd and 3rd tier pitchers instead of trading away top prospects he never lets play anyway and it immediately backfires. Think about how much money he has wasted on bad players the past 13-14 years. Any other owner would’ve fired him ages before his disastrous 2020-2022 where he set hundreds of millions on fire, so at the end of the day, it’s as much on Hal for not caring about whether they win or not as much as it is on Cashman for having so bloated an ego on top of his incompetence.
Yall are good. Able to talk about next year/future already.
This been my mood all day
I’m like that year round so I’m used to it. Every ravens season ends in a similar manner so the spring & into summer I’m pissed because John Harbaugh keeps his job with no pressure to get results even after going 10 straight years without reaching the conference title game and missing the playoffs 4 times in 5 years in that stretch in large part because his teams always fail to execute in critical moments and make basic mistakes like not running the ball against bad run defenses. It’s year round for me
. The spring and summer leave me disgusted that a Super Bowl window was wasted and then the fall and winter leave me disgusted a World Series window was wasted.