Dread

So here is Joel Sherman's, glass-half-full, hey-they-won-100-games take on the 2018 Yankees:

https://nypost.com/2018/10/10/greinke-corbin-arenado-heres-ideal-yankees-offseason-of-reloading/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_3382344

Aside from the usual sportswriter fantasies—Hey, maybe the Yanks can trade Jacoby Ellsbury for Zack Greinke!  They should get Nolan Arenado!—it's not an unintelligent piece.

But it does include the "inside scoop" that the Yanks have no real interest in Bryce Harper, and will probably look to sign Machado alone.

Worse yet, word starts to trickle in that maybe the Yankees don't want Manny, either.

Uh-oh.

Be afraid, people.  Be very afraid.

Look, if this is true it would, on many teams, reflect some good baseball instincts.  On this one, it just reflects saving more bucks for the Steinbrenner infestation.

I am hugely wary of both players, and for any intelligently run Yankees team, I would be all for chasing both of them away with sticks, strings of garlic cloves, and crucifixes.  Giancarlo Stanton could go with them, and so could ICS and the Bird.

But folks, there's nothing left.

I mean, literally.  Thanks to injuries, flameouts, and Coops' brilliant maneuverings, there's not a left-handed bat left on this team.  For that matter, there's not a back-up outfielder remaining, after he traded all of those for mediocre pitching rentals.

Last year, Hicks missed 25 games.  The year before, he missed half a season.  The other Aaron, Judge, missed 50 games in 2018, and played much of 2017 with a serious shoulder injury that rendered him almost useless at the plate.  Stanton missed only four games but he usually misses many more, and when he was forced to play the outfield last season he often looked as though he had tweaked a gonad in his head, as well as elsewhere.

Behind them?  There's no one.  Not in the farm system, where Florial shrinks a little more everyday in Arizona.

Nor is there a single, reliable infield bat down on the farm.  Maybe Hetch-Hetchy, Toe, Tyler Too, or even Holder can fill in for Sir Didi with their gloves, but they're not real replacements at the plate.

And again, there's no one else.

No one in Triple-A.  No one below that.  No new draft picks or signees in 2018 who displayed even a hint of future promise.  Nothing but a few remaining arms who may or may not make a decent No. 4-5 starter or middle reliever.

Nada.

What the last three seasons have demonstrated, once and for all, is that Brian Cashman has absolutely no idea of how to identify and raise young talent.  None.  Player after player, throughout our system, moved backwards this past season, with even the vague hope that many of them could one day play in the big leagues evaporating like the year's stock market gain.  Gone.  Good-bye, Mr. Spalding.

Any idea that this man Cashman is going to quietly, cleverly build up a real contender the way that, say, the Red Sox, Astros, or Cubs have, is purest fantasy.  It's not what he does.  It's not what he can do.  It's not what he's ever done, in the last twenty years.

The only time that Brian Cashman ever won a ring for the New York Yankees is when he took a big wad of Steinbrenner money, and went out to purchase the top three free agents on the market.  Even then, to be sure, he still had the Michael-Showalter-Watson Core of Four shoring up his team.  But at least it could be said he added some value to them.

This year, Cashman has the chance to do the same.  I'm not looking forward to it.  They're not good investments, and I'm sure that if they are signed, I will be cursing Harper and Manny for many a year.

But the alternative is not going to be the next Benitendi or Martinez, or Altuve or Gerrit Cole.  It's going to be Luke Voit, back to say, .235, at first, and Neil Walker at second, and Hetch-Hetchy alternating with Tyler Wade at short, as they become the first Yankees platoon to collectively hit under .200.

It's going to be the next Shane Robinson, or maybe Rashad Crawford putting in major time, moving from one outfield spot to the next as he follows the injuries, hitting at least 2-3 home runs.

So Hal and Brian are really going to skip the big moves, and tell us all they're going to stay the course with the farm system?  That's rich.  They won't get so much as a whiff of the Wild Card Play-In Game for a long, long time to come.