Yankees GM Brian Cashman believes the 2014 season to have been a worst-case scenario, reports John Harper of the New York Daily News. When asked about the club’s poor performance, Cashman said, “I honestly believe if you repeated this season 100 times, you would not get this result.” Here’s more from New York and the AL East.
- Also from Harper, injuries were the biggest surprise for the Yankees. While some losses must be expected from an aging roster, the Yankees did lose most of their top veterans for some stretch of time. Growing fan apathy could affect New York’s offseason plans, especially with Derek Jeter’s imminent retirement. Harper suggests the club re-sign David Robertson and Brandon McCarthy. Rather than target a shortstop like J.J. Hardy, the Yankees could look at Victor Martinez to provide punch in the lineup.
- It’s widely accepted that the Red Sox failure this season can be traced to an over reliance on prospects. John Tomase of the Boston Herald discussed a few other warning signs in his latest column. With the exception of a couple veterans, the club was complacent in spring training. Boston lacked the depth to deal with injuries and underpeformance. Poor leadership left youngsters like Will Middlebrooks, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Xander Bogaerts under intense media scrutiny during their slumps, which likely exacerbated the problem.
- Red Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo is ready to manage in the majors, writes Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe. Lovullo is on the Astros list of potential managerial candidates, although it’s unclear if he fits their analytical approach. He’s interviewed for three separate posts in the past and could be busy this offseason. Lovullo’s resume includes playing in parts of eight major league seasons for seven teams, managing for nine years in the minors, and coaching for the Blue Jays and Red Sox.
“It’s widely accepted that the Red Sox failure this season can be traced to an over reliance on prospects. ”
My “conspiracy” theory: This over reliance on prospects was manufactured. Sox brass knew they basically overplayed their hand last season and won big. They knew they had tradeable contracts. They knew they had a lot of young guys who could benefit from big league experience. So, they decided to gamble on the young guys and trade away their veterans if it didn’t work out in order to set them up for the future.
And frankly, as a Sox fan, I’m okay with that. 3 World Series in 10 years? I’d have taken that in a heartbeat in 2003.
The over-reliance wasn’t manufactured at all. No one could expect all three of Boegarts, Middlebrooks, and JBJ to have completely non-existent bats and the quiet offense as a whole didn’t help matters.
I’m sure the Sox would have pursued FA options for CF and 3B if they had been even remotely appealing. But they weren’t, so they played the hand they were dealt. Manufactured? Most certainly not.
But surely they had a plan in place if the young guys didn’t work out, right?
Not exactly. They could have still been afloat if some of the veterans had hit or stayed healthy. They over-relied on young guys, but they could have conceivably upgraded at the deadline if they had been in a position to.
I just feel strongly that they knew they caught lightning in a bottle last season.
Edit: But I’m not going to debate your points.
That doesn’t make anything that happened a conspiracy theory.
The AL East was winnable. The Orioles did it without Wieters, with serious regression from Chris Davis, and underwhelming pitching. A lot of things went wrong and there was no way to account for all of that.
Well, in fairness I did put “conspiracy” in quotes.
My take is that they gambled and lost. Not a bad thing, and likely not surprising for them.
Yeah, I guess by “conspiracy” I just mean it wasn’t the official reason.
Official reason? What are you talking about?
Nobody in the Sox brass told the press “Yeah, we knew we got lucky last season so we took an even bigger chance on our prospects and figured we could trade our veterans if it didn’t work out.” That’s all.
Plenty of people in the Sox brass told the press that FA was a barren wasteland devoid of better options than said prospects. They also said they’d make upgrades if the situation called for it.
Don’t forget Machado!
True. And I don’t mean to take away from the Orioles, who had plenty of impressive performances. But the narrative that there was no way the Sox could’ve won the AL East and that they should have known that is foolish.
Your last comment rings true, and as a Yankee fan that’s the same reason I can’t gripe too much about their last few seasons (or their next few). I’ve seen the Yankees win 5 world series since I was in High School in 1996, and if you’d told me in 1995 that i’d have to deal with a few missed “losing” seasons when i would be in my thirties in order to grab 5 titles, 7 pennants and playoff appearances in all but 2 other seasons, i’d have jumped at it and not looked back.
2014 was hardly a worst case scenario. Pretty much every one of their midseason acquisitions could’ve bombed and they didn’t. Everyone knew that this result was likely.
Why should the Yankees go after V-Mart instead of Hardy? He might be a better hitter, but Hardy actually fills a void. V-Mart forces them to put players in the field that shouldn’t always be there. Do they want to break Beltran some more?
Also, V-Mart is aging. He didn’t show it this year but who knows how he’ll hold up in a year or two from now.
Agreed. I don’t get the logic behind signing their fifth DH-type player instead of a guy who could actually upgrade their defense and provide a little punch.
Hardy to the Yankees almost makes too much sense, for both sides.
While injuries were unfortunate for the yankees I think they did pretty good for themselves. They had a negative 35 run differential. You won’t win a lot of ball games like that
Only by the skill of their manager did they stay in contention as long as they did– same as last season. That’s why it confounds me why so many fans repeatedly call for Girardi’s head. He’s kept the Yanks in the picture until the last week of the season two seasons in a row despite a terrible, terrible team performance.
Exactly. But if you repeat the season 100 times (no change on the injuries). I think they got the best outcome. And probably made eleventy billion $ on Jeter’s retirement tour
Where would V-Mart even play? Behind A-Rod, Beltran, Tex and McCann, the Yanks would have five part-time DHs. That is, if any of them are healthy.
Only way V-Mart makes sense would be if the re-sign Headley and release A-Rod, and that Still might not be enough room for V-Mart with Beltran likelyl needing games at DH himself.
But agreed, he doesn’t make sense for the Yankees
I see the Yankees and Red Sox as probably having different short term futures, but both haven’t fully grasped the magnitude of their collapses this year. The fact is the Yankees, after getting extraordinarily unlucky with injuries, got lucky afterwards with scrap-heap picks and useful trades. But they could just have easily been a 90 loss team. Signing V-Mart to add to a roster that’s going to have an aging Tex, a Beltran who may be a subpar player for the balance of his contract, A-Rod, who has to play somewhere, etc, makes no sense. They need to take a harsh look at the roster, and, if necessary, live with uncertainty next year. I wouldn’t throw a gigantic contract at Robertson. Not for a team that isn’t likely to be championship caliber over the next few years. The Red Sox have made so many interesting trades and have so much potential that few people have stepped back and reminded them of how truly awful their performance had been this year. This team won the world series last year, and did not suffer gigantic injuries or a roster purge (like Miami after 2003). Both FO’s could use a hard dose of realistic thinking.
What scrap heap pick ups performed amazingly for the Yankees? It’s not like they had a Steve Pearce type season from anybody.
I didn’t say fantastically. I said “got lucky”. Brandon McCarthy was a good trade (1.6 WAR in 90 innings),, Chase Headley has 2.1 WAR in 57 games, and a few of the other players Cashman brought in were useful. Neither player was considered desirable before the trade, particularly McCarthy. They helped put a floor under what would have been a disaster of a season.
Neither player was considered a big impact guy, but both were desired. The metric people loved McCarthy, and everybody thought McCarthy would hit a little better out of San Diego. Both performed about at a level you would expect, maybe a tad bit better. But nothing I would call “lucky.”
We are now quibbling over nomenclature. Both McCarthy and Headley were depreciated values. Cashman gets some credit for capitalizing on that. The Yankees have found little bits of value here and there this year, but the real failures by many of their most expensive pieces dragged on them. If they are to improve next year by any material amount, they will need more from those people, and Cashman, I’m sure, knows that.
Why sign Victor Martinez? that makes no sense, there is no room for him to play on the Yankees. They should check out that Korean SS that is going to be posted, JJ Hardy is in decline and will be 33 next August. If not, give Asdrubial Cabrera a call, switch hitter with solid defense and playing half his games in Yankee Stadium his power numbers could be in the 20 HR range again
I am a longtime Yankee fan and I really appreciate Jeter’s contributions over the years. However, you can make the case if the Yankees sign the right SS the will be a better will be a better team in 2015. Yankees SS in 2014 have a -2.5 WAR.
Now’s not the time to buy on Victor Martinez. He’s an older player, coming off one, albeit, very good season and he doesn’t have a position. The Yankees already have DH occupied for next season between A-Rod and Carlos Beltran. They need players who can actually play a position and hit.
Come on Cashman, it’s pretty hard to say you had a worst-case scenario when you outplayed your Pythagorean record by 7 games.