the problem is deeper than just new players. The philosophies of this team aren't leading to championships because at the end of the day, fundamentals are still what win you titles. Hitting homers and a strong bullpen aren't the foundation of a championship team, it's a shortcut.
You want your bullpen to be effective in the playoffs? You'll need 3 solid starters who can give you length and leads after 6/7 innings.
Getting guys on base is paramount to succeeding. 10 years ago, Yankees were a team that had these great rallys where they would put up 6/7 uns in an inning, now it's all about 7 guys having 30 homers and 80 rbis. Leadoff hitter got the most rbis out of all our hitters
Swinging up and looking for home runs isn't an approach that leads to runs being scored consistently in the playoffs because the pitching is far tougher and better than it is in the regular season. And to make it worse, when you spend 162 games playing like that, it becomes real difficult to break out of it when you need to make it simple and get hits in the playoffs. If our lineup was made up of 9 DJ's, we might still be playing right now, because despite the deficiencies of the starters; they and the bullpen did the best they could, it's just hard to win with 2/3 of your lineup going cold.
Another thing I noted in the ALCS was how seemingly on every single, an Astros player was able to go first to third easily. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about in regards to fundamentals; they were just better at them than we were. They got clutch hits, they got quality starts, used their bullpen less, worked counts better, played better defense, ran the bases better...that shyt matters and are the most important things in winning titles
