Chuck Noll said the hardest thing about coaching great teams - such as the dynasty he built with the Pittsburgh Steelers - is letting the old guard go. They're the guys who got you there, and the ones you call family, and are the reason you're in the Hall of Fame. How do you cut Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, and the conga line of luminaries that owned the NFL for most of the '70s?
So it was with the 2010s Yankees. The club had to collect the shards of the Joe Torre dynasty and finally dump them in the dustbin of memory. It's hard to say goodbye to Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte, and almost impossible to wave farewell to Derek Jeter without giving him a lifetime achievement contract way past his prime. But on the other side, between 2000 and 2015, the only All-Star their farm produced was Robinson Cano.
Now we have this behemoth that has been to the ALCS twice in the last three years, built on the backs of their own prospects.
But no baseball team, no matter how loaded with lumber, can sustain long streaks of bad pitching. Not even the Yankees.
Chad Green - normally a feared, fire-balling middle-man - was battered by three home runs in the first game of Friday's doubleheader, two days after he gave up the goat to Freddie Freeman. Then, Aroldis Chapman imploded in the nightcap, allowing a two-run bomb to Amed Rosario in the bottom of the seventh to end the game, slapping an ugly exclamation point on the Yanks' seven-game losing streak.
Still, after finally snapping their losing streak on Saturday (thanks to a miscue from a former Bombers hurler), the Yankees are 17-13, 3.5 games behind the pesky Rays for first place in the AL East, and a whisker ahead of Toronto for second place. Advanced metrics still have them at around 99 percent sure to reach the MLB playoffs. But these haven't been the Yanks, the Bronx Bombers, who clubbed their way to 306 homers and 103 wins in 2019, or even the team we penciled in to perhaps play the Dodgers and revive the greatest World Series rivalry in the history of our pastime. That team would have flicked the Mets off the field like a dead bug on your dinner table.
This space lauded the Yankees for constructing such a deep lineup, a conveyor belt of big bats that attack with ruthless and endless power. For that ephemeral moment when the Mets bogarted the bold ink and rode that magic carpet to the 2015 World Series, the Yanks rebooted with Bill Gates efficiency. GM Brian Cashman has hit almost nothing but home runs ever since, and he could open his own showroom much like a car dealership and boast over the glowing, high-horsepower machines he built in the Big Apple.
But pitching was a problem, because it always is - unless you're Billy Beane, who has Oakland at 22-10 with a $50 payroll and somehow unearths all kinds of pitching gold at rock-bottom prices (Tampa Bay is similarly skilled at such things). It's nearly impossible to get great arms from first to fifth starter plus four beasts in the bullpen; the Yanks came close when it looked like they could flaunt Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, and James Paxton, but in the six months of this bizarre season, they've lost Sevy and now Paxton to injury (and Paxton wasn't great before that), while Tanaka has only pitched 20 2/3 innings in five starts and has yet to notch a win.
Only Cole is pitching to his potential, and there's no way to replace those high-end starter, unless you somehow knew Sonny Gray would morph into Sandy Koufax. At least they've had the best bullpen in baseball for a few years, doubling as makeup on the freckled face of their rotation.
Well, except for this year, as the bullpen has bombed on the Bombers. Even on Saturday, Adam Ottavino nearly spoiled a spectacular start by J.A. Happ before the Yankees walked it of – but no matter how many sluggers slip through the turnstile and stroll to the batter's box, the Yanks can't win on hitting alone. They tried that once; it was called the 1980s.
How ironic was it that the year baseball saved itself, in 1998, was called the Summer of Sammy, with Sosa and McGwire belting balls into back rows and back alleys of the blocks behind the ballpark? While they supposedly saved the sport, the Yankees went on to win 125 games, the World Series, and reclaim their throne as the greatest team of all-time. Why the irony? Because not one of those Yankees hit half as many homers as McGwire or Sosa. Indeed, those Yankees didn't have a single slugger who bashed 30 homers. Tino Martinez came closest, with 28. And only two players (Martinez and Paul O'Neill) posted at least 100 RBI.
It was that lethal pitching quartet of David Cone, David Wells, Andy Pettitte, and El Duque that made those Yanks unbeatable. Then when they get gassed, just hand the ball to Graeme Lloyd or Jeff Nelson or Mike Stanton. Get two innings out of those three and then The Sandman, the immortal Mariano Rivera, slams the door. Need a spot starter? How about Ramiro Mendoza?
These Yanks don't have those luxuries. And sure, it's easy to pick on a team at its lowest point. We know this isn't an 0-7 squad. But maybe we're learning that they're not a 6-1 squad, either. And if their pitching doesn't hold, the 2020 Yankees won't be as good as the 2019 Yankees, which, to someone named Steinbrenner, isn't good enough.
