Yankee4Life

This is not the same team I grew up with.

The Yankees are the embodiment of baseball insanity By Joel Sherman, New York Post Yankees GM Brian Cashman speaking to the media at a press conference. All of the folks who have brought you the Red Zone Yankees are coming back. You know the Red Zone Yankees? The organization good enough to get close to the goal line, without ever actually crossing it. The franchise that insists it is championship or bust annually, but has become all too familiar with bust. The team that can tease with title proximity, but completes each season with Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone sitting at a table at Yankee Stadium explaining again why they are close, yet not good enough. The indicators are that all the same folks and philosophies that have brought you the Red Zone Yankees will be returning. So far we have the equivalent of changing dish towels at a mansion with the revelation that the bullpen coach, first base coach and third hitting coach were not asked back, which should have all the impact on the 2026 Yankees of firing George Costanza as assistant to the traveling secretary. Hal Steinbrenner continues to believe in Cashman, who in turn believes in all of his key lieutenants, including Boone. And they all continue to believe in — among others — Anthony Volpe, even if they can’t agree on how much his terrible season was caused by the torn labrum in his left shoulder. Boone doesn’t believe the injury was a factor in Volpe’s performance, Cashman does, but the surgery Volpe underwent on Tuesday will keep him out until at least mid-April. Shortstop will be kept warm for him nevertheless. “Hopefully next year, we’ll find a way,” Cashman said of the overall group. What is that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to do better than reaching the red zone? Boone offered an “I don’t know” when asked what would make folks believe that the Yankees as currently constituted, from owner down, can ever be the last team standing. That is not exactly rally-the-troops inspiring. He added: “I think we have a lot of really good people here; a lot of really good players, a lot of really good staff members and a lot of great front office [people] that are working our tails off to put us in the best position to take our shot every year … to get to October baseball and play for it. So, I can’t answer that because I haven’t got this team to the top of the mountain. So all I can tell you is I’m confident in my ability to lead this team. I’m confident in our organization to build the team that gives us a chance to win, but ultimately I can’t tell you anything to make you feel good. Ultimately, it’s about us winning No. 28 [overall championship] and all I can tell you is I’m working my butt off to try and be a part of helping us bring that back.” If there is any alchemy to not being Sisyphean in October — to actually reaching the mountaintop of which Boone spoke — it has eluded the Yankees. Yes, you have to hit the magic brew of health and playing well across all phases in a small window — as both Cashman and Boone stressed. But it is always a Yankees opponent at this time of year who has that formula down. Is that just about hitting it right eventually with enough tries? After all, no team has repeated as champions since the 1998-2000 Yankees three-peated. The Dodgers may repeat this year, but they first went from 1989-2019 without a title, which included seven straight years making the playoffs (2013-2019) before winning the COVID 60-game title in 2020 and then losing in the postseason three more straight years before beating the mistake-addicted Yankees in the World Series last October. Is it about changing the head of baseball operations? But to whom? A year ago all 30 teams would have loved the idea of David Stearns. Do Mets fans still feel that awesome? You can change the manager/coach, but you can end up with an Aaron like Glenn, too. Padres head of baseball operations A.J. Preller is about to name a fifth manager in the past decade after firing Bud Black during the 2015 season and having first Dave Roberts and then Pat Murphy as the interims — or the two lauded NLCS managers. In other words, would you know the right guy even if he were in front of you? Y ou could talk about finding more contact hitters after watching the high-average, low-strikeout Blue Jays eliminate the Yankees in the division series. Except Toronto has been part of the overall trend this postseason in which you better homer to win — playoff teams that had outhomered the opponent were 20-4 (.833 winning percentage) through Wednesday and 115-24 (.827) since 2021 (thanks to MLB Network research). In other words, it is tough to get the right people to drive the right philosophy and have it all work well enough to get to the postseason and then rise in that tiny October window. But some team does manage it annually. And year after year, for a long time now, it has not been the Yankees. Maybe they just need more tries with all the same folks doing the same thing. Or is that red zone insanity?

You guys are just showing off! 😅👍

10 out of 10, 34 seconds. I slipped up on one of the questions. The time does look decent but when you guys are done today it really won't.

6 out of 10, 46 seconds. Thank God tomorrow is Friday.

8 out of 10, 62 seconds. Baseball card questions always get me!

7 out of 10, 48 seconds. I consider this a minor victory even though you two passed me up today. The next time he does that tell him to hold on and that you are doing something important. He'll understand. 😄

When January arrives you will have been here two years and that is long enough for you to know the rules around here. I am now talking about rule nine section seven: Bumping threads with posts that simply say "bump". You may not always get an answer straight away, so please be patient before bumping a thread; a couple of hours may not be long enough for someone with the right knowledge to come along and answer your question. Bumping a thread that has not been posted in for some time may be tolerated so long as you are making a meaningful contribution to the discussion that is relevant to the original topic. Bumping old threads simply for the sake of posting however will not be tolerated. Don't bump this thread again. Thank you.

9 out of 10, 64 seconds. No complaints with the score because the one I missed I deserved to.

10 out of 10, 33 seconds. I had a mouse issue that cost precious time.

4 out of 10, 88 seconds. These questions were brutal today.

Ok KC I get the Dominguez part. But what I really want to find out is the part you said about Lupica.

10 out of 10, 26 seconds. All this time I could not get under thirty seconds and I was lucky enough to do it again. Then again when you get a question that asks what position Goose Gossage played you can not help but get it right.

Excellent and well thought out post. First I want to start off with what you said right here. What do you think exactly is Lupica addressing and just as important why can't he or other New York sports media say it out loud? THIS RIGHT HERE out of everything you wrote got me really upset because where you wrote that "every October feels the same" I said out loud "hell yeah!" Because you know why KC and everyone else reading this? Because it's true!!! Last year falling apart in the World Series, 2022 folding up against Houston, 2021 losing to Boston 1 - 0 in the Wild card game, 2020 they lose to the Rays in five games and in game two they had Deivi Garcia pitch one inning and then they yanked him. That still bugs me. Anyway it is the same movie but with different actors. Profitable but elite mediocrity. What a way to put it. To put it in other words there is no rush or desire to improve on what they currently are throwing out each year because they know the team will somehow make the playoffs and they will continue to throw the team's glorious history in the fan's faces because that somehow distracts them. This here is on the fans 100%. I love reading about Yankee history and will talk about it with anyone but I refuse to use anything that I read or know as a distraction that the team did to what is going on here and now. During the season for me what is going on now is more important than anything that I have been reading about in the past. That's true. They have mistaken consistency for greatness but they are overlooking the fact that consistency is a lot better when it works with greatness and not as a substitute for greatness. Let me explain. The 90's Yankees? Consistent and great at the same time. A perfect mixture. All successful teams have had this. The 70's Athletics and Reds. The late 70's Yankees. And many people can think of others too. In other words these teams were tough to beat. There is no way on God's green earth you can say this about Boone's teams when it really mattered because they always ended up falling apart when it counted the most. Yes, I can promise we will be reading about that beginning next month. I fully agree this is not a one player problem. You can change the cast of characters but the ending is always the same. And before I go, just a few things. 1. NO, Juan Soto would not have changed the outcome of these playoffs if he was here. 2. Jasson Dominguez is the last can't miss Yankee who seems to have in my view, missed. Before he got here they built him up to be the greatest thing to come along in years and when he is finally here they won't let him put a glove on or even let him attempt to play his natural position in center field. Naturally analytics can explain it. And I hate that word. 3. This won't happen but someone needs to sit Volpe down and tell him that he is not Aaron Judge. He's just his teammate. And no, I won't miss him if he is gone. I've had it with him.

Yankees remain champions of being good, but not good enough By Mike Lupica, New York Daily News Aaron Judge did everything he could to carry the Yankees, but ultimately Bombers fall to a better team in the Blue Jays in the ALDS. The lasting October image for another Brian Cashman/Aaron Boone Yankee team was Aaron Judge stranded on the bases as Cody Bellinger became the Blue Jays’ 10th strikeout victim in Game 4. Judge is one of the great Yankees of all time and the best hitter of his time. But this was another October about to end the way all the others have for him, with him stranded short of the Canyon of Heroes, about to watch another team celebrate on the field at Yankee Stadium that he honors so mightily. That is the real rite of fall now at the Stadium, where winning the Series once was. Just not since 2009. It makes this the second longest championship drought in the team’s history, the grand history that began with Babe Ruth, the Judge of his time in baseball. But then this has become a time when Yankee fans are told they should feel truly blessed because their team has had three decades of winning seasons. Maybe they should start raising banners above Monument Park for those. “I want to go back out there right now,” a somber Judge said Wednesday night after his team had only managed six hits against eight Blue Jays relievers, an “opener” night for them that closed out another lost October for the Yankees. We always hear, after the Yankees have all been stopped short of the Canyon of Heroes how random postseason baseball is. How much of a crapshoot it is. Even the classy Boone wasn’t buying that as a defense Wednesday night. “That’s the beauty of it,” he said. But even he can’t be surprised at how this ended, because these endings, these celebrations for the other team, have become as inevitable as the tide for the Yankees. We just don’t know in what round of the playoffs they’ll occur. It was Bill Parcells, famously, who said you are what your record says you are in sports. So here is the October record for the Brian/Boone Yankees: They have now played 12 postseason series over the eight seasons since Cashman got rid of Joe Girardi after the Yankees lost Games 6 and 7 to the Astros in the American League Championship Series of 2017. Their record in those series is 6-6. Their won-loss record in those games is 25-27. They have played two one-game Wild Card series, and split those. They have absolutely put together an historic streak of winning seasons, and no one suggested that’s nothing. But not once in the Brian/Boone era have they been the best team in series that finished them. In three of the past four seasons — they missed the playoffs in 2023 when they nearly did throw in a losing season — they have played 13 games in series that ended their season: Once against the Astros in the ALCS, once against the Dodgers in the World Series, now in a division series against the Jays. Their record in those series is 2-11. “Crapshoot” is, by definition, is a risky and uncertain matter. The October numbers for these Yankees say otherwise, and you know how much they love their numbers. Have they gotten back up in October after getting knocked down in the Brian/Boone era? They have. They at least fought their way out of a sweep against the Dodgers last year. They came back from losing the first game of their Wild Card series against the Red Sox just last week. And the whole world saw them come back from 1-6 down in Game 3 on Tuesday night, Judge carrying them again with a home run off the foul pole that made you feel as if you were watching Robert Redford — as Roy Hobbs — hit one off the light tower in “The Natural. But once again the Yankees were about to lose another playoff series as a lower seed, even if they were a lower seed just barely to the Jays, both of them ending with 94 regular-season wins. Other than the postseason of 2020 — the October games played on neutral fields during the pandemic — they have never won series like that in the Brian/Boone era. And in those three season-ending series over the past four years, the Yankees have never won a single road game. Their record in those is 0-6. And so they have now watched the Blue Jays celebrate on their field the way the Dodgers did a year ago, and the Astros did in 2022, and the Red Sox back in 2018. If the kid, Cam Schlittler, didn’t pitch the game of his young life against the Red Sox last week, who knows, the Sox might have done it to the Yankees again. When it was all on the line against the Jays, they were once again a baseball team called Judge, as All Rise rose once again. He hit .600 against the Blue Jays, had nine hits, six RBI, scored five runs, produced that unforgettable Game 3 home run to tie things at 6-all. Everybody else hit around .200. Even in the bottom of the season Wednesday, Judge plated one last run as he refused to make the last out. The only time Judge let them down in this division series was when he struck out with bases loaded, nobody out in Game 1, when that was still a game. After that the Yankees were lucky the roof at Rogers Centre was closed, because it would have come crashing down on them in the late innings that day. The bottom line here is that the Blue Jays were better against the Yankees same as they were in the regular season; the way other teams with winning records were (the Yankees were 31-36 against them this year). Did the Yankees fight? They did. But who they were against the Blue Jays this week is who they inevitably are at this time of year. Another Yankee team with a really good record wasn’t good enough. They remain the champions of that.