First in a two-part series on how to fix the Yankees

“Coffee’s for closers only.”

— Blake, “Glengarry Glen Ross”

I have been thinking about this line a lot recently. Because these are the Yankees. And in good times and especially bad it is expected that they are going to the top of the market to problem solve. And the Yankees need impact lefty bats, and Shohei Ohtani and Cody Bellinger in free agency and Juan Soto possibly in a trade are available.

But here is the thing: “Coffee’s for closers only.”

These types of players are acquired for three reasons:

1. To be a tentpole to indicate an organization is trying to shift into a more serious mode.

2. To change the narrative around a franchise that is being called cheap or is said to be unable to lure stars or hungers to juice attendance and/or TV ratings.

3. As a finishing piece to an organization that perceives itself a championship club.

The Yankees have spent most of the last three decades in that third bucket, though I think they signed Carlos Rodon for six years at $162 million last offseason for a combination of Nos. 2 and 3; as if Hal Steinbrenner felt he had to pay salutation to his network and to a fan base screaming that he was cheap while in the familiar chorus that he is not his dad. I know how effusive executives in the organization were when the Yankees spent big on Gerrit Cole or CC Sabathia or Masahiro Tanaka. No Yankees official, even in real time, crowed over Rodon; instead, this played more like a habit — we are the Yankees and something of magnitude from outside the organization must be done to stop the noise after a humiliating ALCS sweep by the nemesis Astros.

That was a mistake. And it would be a mistake to go chasing the mute button with an open wallet this winter to try to quell the vocal despair associated with the club’s worst showing in 30 years. The Yankees have steadily dug themselves into this hole over years of dubious moves. There is not one magic move that is going to fix this.

Coffee’s for closers only.

And, as a team, these Yankees are not closers. So no coffee for them.

So what should they do?

Job No. 1 is internal:

1. Don’t con themselves. In a room together, a bunch of executives in job-protection mode could probably delude themselves that Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo incurred the kind of freak injuries that the greatest organizations in history could not prevent — running into a concrete slab that for some reason was not padded and jamming a head against a retreating runner’s leg on a pickoff play at first. Remove the injuries and the Yankees are, at minimum, probably in the 90-win area and battling for a wild card.

5

Sure. If that gets you through the night.

But those injuries should not be looked at as an alibi. They should be a lesson that was not learned last year when Judge’s record-setting brilliance camouflaged so many other issues that were overt in the second half. The Yankees just didn’t have enough good players, notably they lacked diversity, batting average and impact on offense.

The Dodgers cut their payroll significantly from 2022 to 2023, led the majors in IL time (notably their rotation was devastated) and still ran away with the NL West to make the playoffs for an 11th straight time (10th as division champs). On the other end of the financial spectrum, the Rays’ rotation also was waylaid top to bottom, plus in mid-August, they lost their best everyday player, Wander Franco, for at least the rest of this year when MLB placed him on administrative leave while an investigation continued into his alleged relationship with underaged girls. The Rays are still going to the playoffs for a fifth straight year, a period in which (through Wednesday) they have 419 wins to the Yankees’ 408.

These were well-run, deeper organizations than the Yankees.

The Yankees can try to sell themselves that this was just a weird year. Look at how many all-in disappointing teams there were like the Cardinals, Mets and Padres. They can play the “everything that could go wrong did go wrong and we still finished over .500” card as a symbol of resilience or institutional know-how or fill-in-the-upside blank.

But treating what occurred this year as an anomaly or a one-off or a dose of bad luck would be a more careless error than anything committed this season by Gleyber Torres.

2. No matter what the Yankees do externally — even if it is to go for the coffee pot and try to sign, say, Bellinger or Ohtani or trade for Soto — they will remain in this quicksand holding an anvil if they do not figure out how to produce quality players and then maintain the excellence.

The maintenance is a key part. You might be feeling the same way about Austin Wells now that you once did about Greg Bird. Or about Jasson Dominguez as you did Gary Sanchez. I spoke to GM Brian Cashman recently about the rise and thud of players such as Bird, Sanchez, Miguel Andujar, Clint Frazier, Deivi Garcia and Luis Severino. Want to now include Oswaldo Cabrera and Ron Marinaccio, who both looked so good last season? Want to include veterans such as Aaron Hicks and Luke Voit, who had moments then crashed?

Cashman said injuries were at the heart of many of the plummets. Also, it is not like, say, for example, Andujar, Bird or Frazier went on to success elsewhere. Maybe they are Yankees success stories — i.e., that the organization got anything out of them.

5

OK, again, if that gets you through the night.

Because the problem is that they also fooled the Yankees, who failed to recognize what they were and trade them before all value was lost (what were the opportunities missed there?). There also have been misreads on how good players were such as Thairo Estrada (whose contract they sold to the Giants to get — wait for it — Rougned Odor on the roster) and Jordan Montgomery, who has the 14th-best Fangraphs WAR among pitchers since the Yankees decided he would not be in their postseason rotation and traded him for the since-released Harrison Bader. One spot behind him is Pablo Lopez, who the Yankees considered trading for at that deadline and ended up with Frankie Montas instead.

The Yankees were susceptible to needing Odor because of such a lousy job developing lefty bats and wanted Bader because after Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner they failed to develop a center fielder.

5

It underscores that since the arrival of The Core Four, the Yankees just have not been good at producing homegrown players beyond relievers — especially when it comes to position players. Now, their near future revolves around whether after nearly three decades they can actually be good at this again; whether a few of Cabrera, Dominguez, Wells, Anthony Volpe, Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira and at some point soon perhaps Spencer Jones and Trey Sweeney can emerge as above-average contributors.

The Yankees had just gotten too old, unathletic and one note. There were times this year in which the Yankees played the Orioles and were so Jurassic that it looked like the Minneapolis Lakers vs. the Showtime Lakers. From this young group, the Yankees need energy/athleticism and a diversity away from righty hitting — Cabrera and Dominguez are switch-hitters and Wells, Jones and Sweeney left-handers.

The Yanks have to figure out what has gone wrong with their hitting program. They had 22 players take at least 50 plate appearances this season and just two — Judge and Torres — have a positive OPS-plus. It would be hard to assemble that with the lowest payroll in the majors, much less the second largest.

They coupled the third-lowest batting average in team history (.226) with the second-highest strikeout rate (23.8 percent). The lack of competitiveness and adjustments at-bat to at-bat and game-to-game were stark. Scouts, pitching coaches and executives from multiple opponents said the Yankees were by far the easiest team for which to game plan, so susceptible were they to a similar attack plan. The echo was the Yankees had dangerous hitters, but not good hitters.

Hitting coach Dillon Lawson became the first coach fired in-season by Brian Cashman in his quarter-century as general manager. But his pull-it-in-the-air ethos is soaked up and down the organization. The Yankees need to work on producing good overall hitters.

And there are few more important issues moving forward, for example, than Volpe: 1) improving as an overall hitter and 2) not regressing like an Andujar or Sanchez. The Yanks shunned a lot of shortstops and trade requests that involved Volpe, waiting for him. So he needs to build on a 20-20, solid-defense rookie season by substantially cutting his strikeouts and raising his average so he is on base more. How did he become such an all-or-nothing pull hitter that he had the 17th-highest strikeout percentage (27.1) and was tied for eighth in grounding out to third base?

Also, just watching Wells late in the season is a reminder of what it looks like when the Yankees have a lefty threat in the middle of the lineup. Now add Rizzo, if he can make it back from his concussion issues. Now add Dominguez, if he can return from Tommy John surgery. But it only matters if Wells and Dominguez are for real.

5

Will this homegrown era be illustrious or illusionary? The Yanks need to hit on multiples — one outside star will not fix this mess. For it should be noted that like the Yankees, Ohtani’s team (Angels) and Soto’s (Padres) are going to be home for the playoffs and Bellinger’s squad (Cubs) is in peril of not even reaching the low bar of the third NL wild card.

The Yankees are not one player away, regardless of how talented that player is. They are at the mercy of these youngsters being real. If they are, then the Yankees can go back to being the Yankees next offseason and buy Soto as a finishing piece.

Until then:

Coffee’s for closers only.

Coming tomorrow: Part 2 — The external solutions the Yankees should consider this winter