BT & Sal: Yankees should be 'embarrassed' by report of Dodgers seeing clear advantage in fundamentals
The baseball world doesn’t seem to be hiding its feelings on the Yankees defensive struggles and absence of fundamentals after their fifth-inning meltdown led to their season ending in game five of the World Series.
First, Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly openly ripped the Yanks fielding issues. Then, Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported detailed instances of people within the Dodgers organization champing at the bit to take advantage of the Yankees’ deficiencies, including small leads off the bases, poor positioning in the outfield, and a chance to aggressively run the bases and force the team into mistakes, while capitalizing on plenty of baserunning mistakes on the Yankees side.
For BT and Sal, it doesn’t come as a surprise, but it should mean that big changes are necessary.
“The Yankees should be straight-up embarrassed by this,” BT said. “I would have to make sweeping changes.
“If I wasn’t predisposed to do something about what happened in the World Series yesterday, when this comes out, I am. This is embarrassing.”
BT believes Aaron Boone has a big role in the team’s lack of fundamentals, which were front and center in the Fall Classic as mistakes in games one and five led to crushing losses. He still believes changes across the organization in terms of philosophy are needed, but Boone is among them. Sal disagrees, and wonders if Boone is one of the only members of Yankees leadership who knows the value of fundamentals. For him, it starts at the top and across the organization, and believes it’s time for those in charge of personnel decisions to listen to the criticism and take a look at how they do business.
“This just exposes the Yankees on a different level,” Sal said. “It’s not just us saying it. It’s every team except the Yankees.”
