Look, I get it. It’s still early. But for you Yankee fans out there, if the panic bells aren’t going off yet, I imagine the alarm is primed and poised to erupt sooner rather than later.
Over the weekend, the hapless Yanks traveled up to Boston to take on the surging Red Sox, and suffice it to say, things did not go well. The Sox swept the Bombers in three straight games, culminating in a Sunday night slugfest that saw New York’s inability to protect a lead to an 8-7 Red Sox victory.
But as giddy as I am about the Red Sox’s play this early in the season—at 15-10 they are in first place in the American League East—I’m far more excited about the Yankees’ struggles throughout the first month of the season.
Right now, the cellar-dwelling Yankees are 8-15, and for the first time in a long time, they have the chance to be a legitimately miserable ballclub all season long. And I couldn’t be happier.
Since I’ve been following baseball, bad Yankee teams have been few and far between. Sure, fans have had their complaints about the club over the last few years, but 85-win seasons are more a mark of mediocrity than anything else. I’m talking about bad, here. The kind of label reserved for those early 1990s Stump Merril-led teams that featured historic players such as Kevin Maas and Matt Nokes.
Since the Yanks started winning championships again in the mid-90s, lack of success has been a relative term. Of course the team would suffer through a down year here and there, but the situation never felt dire. When things went south, they’d simply outspend everyone else to bring in top free agents in an attempt to turn things around.
But now, it appears as though the organization is taking a different approach. They seem content to simply wait out the bad contracts, like the ones they gave to Mark Texiera, CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez (who, coincidentally, is one of the few guys in pinstripes who is actually producing), get a little bit younger and rebuild for the future.
It’s a solid plan, but not one that many fans—who are forced to pay exorbitant prices to see a game at the sterile mall they call Yankee Stadium—have the patience for. Monday saw incensed fans calling in to WFAN to call for the various heads of Brian Cashman, Joe Girardi, and much-maligned third baseman Chase Headley.
If George was still around, they say, changes would be coming and heads would roll.
But here’s the thing; in the long run, it makes sense for the Yankees’ brass to play it safe. The paradigm of success in the MLB is shifting. Teams like the Royals—who have long been the laughingstock of the AL Central—are suddenly the darlings of the baseball cognoscenti, whereas the Yankee model of overpaying for aging homerun hitters now seems antiquated.
So while I may be enjoying what looks like a terrible year for the Yankees, a 70-win season might ultimately be the best thing for the ballclub. It would serve to reinforce the idea that the Yankees need to rethink their general philosophy and catch up with the rest of baseball.
And I bet they’ll do it too—at least until they offer Bryce Harper $1.5 billion in 2017.
Old habits die hard.
