The Yankees aren't used to being here.
It's August, and not only are the Bronx Bombers all but out of the playoff race, they're now scratching and clawing to get back to .500 on the year as they look to preserve their 30-year winning record streak. That's twice as long as St. Louis Cardinals' streak, which will also be lost this year barring a truly miraculous run.
At 60-65, it's well within the realm of possibility for the Yankees to get to 82 wins this year. However, they are mired in a nine-game losing streak — the team's longest since 1982 — and their record isn't the real problem at hand for GM Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone.
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So, what is the problem? It's a roster with obvious holes that the team has continued to neglect, a very un-Yankee-like owner in Hal Steinbrenner who doesn't seem to want to spend to fill those holes, and a fanbase thirsting for someone — anyone — to put into the guillotine for what has been a truly terrible season.
"It's been a disaster this season," Cashman told reporters Wednesday. "And yeah, it's definitely a shock. Certainly I don't think anybody on our side of the fence from our player group, from our coaches, our manager, or even outside of the organization would have predicted this."
Cashman then sidestepped a question on specifically where things went wrong, besides injuries that have plagued a Yankee roster that is shallower than a puddle.
"We're gonna evaluate it all, clearly," he said. "Got, unfortunately, we're gonna have some time to do that. But I'd say everybody's had a little bit of a hand in it, from top to bottom, and it's our job to find out where. Obviously that's what we're gonna be up to and tasked with. I certainly met with Hal Steinbrenner on several occasions already and this is not something we're accustomed to or used to. And I think there's definitely gonna be a lot of internal assessments going on."
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The nightmarish season for the Yankees doesn't have one true culprit, but there are a few acting agents. The Yankees retained Josh Donaldson after he posted an OPS of .661 after the All-Star break last season. He had negative bWAR before going to the IL.
A very good bullpen has been overshadowed by a rotation that has the eighth-worst ERA in baseball. The Yankees are also scoring the seventh-fewest runs per game thanks to a batting order that really only has Aaron Judge to boast about.
Judge also missed a significant portion of this season with a toe injury following his new contract after last year, which the Yankees held off signing him to until the last moment.
Pair that with a trade deadline in which the Yankees added Keynan Middleton and Spencer Howard as shoulder-shrug moves while the cross-town Mets embraced their situation and at least did something in becoming true sellers, and you have a Yankee fanbase that is desperate for accountability.
"They want us to win," Cashman said of those fans. "They're invested in this franchise, and they're invested in our team. And they're disappointed. And certainly I hear them loud and clear. We're disappointed too."
If the Yankees do finish under .500 — and even if they eke back over in the last month of the year — it's hard to imagine there not being wholesale changes.
However, that's been a theme of Cashman's tenure as Yankees GM, which started with a bang with the dynasty-era teams of the late 90s and early 2000s and has since has faded to something else entirely. The Yankees are no longer attached to marquee free agents and only occasionally seriously pursue major trade targets such as Giancarlo Stanton, another player who has battled injuries.
Cashman's interview Wednesday wasn't especially insightful on an organizational level, but it starts to give an idea of what the Yankees might do this offseason. Clearly they believe change is necessary. The question now becomes whether that change will come in the right places.
