The Yankees' problem? Season after season, they believe their own B.S.

Sherman, set the Wayback to March 4, 2021, in The Athletic...

The Yankees built the Gas Station under the guidance of newly hired director of pitching Sam Briend, who previously worked at Driveline Baseball. The idea was to create a flagship pitching-focused space — essentially a batting cage-like area for throwers — with the expectation that the environment would help pitchers train productively. The goal is to replicate the setup for affiliates throughout the organization — to have a Gas Station for pitchers to pull into whether they’re stopping in Double A or the major leagues.

“If you wanna change behaviors, you change environments,” Briend said...

Yep. The Gas Station. Remember that chestnut? 

What fun it was! The key to baseball is pitching, pitching, pitching, and the Yankees had discovered a secret sauce, a leg-up against the world. 

The Gas Station was their private vein of gold, a limitless supply of young arms that would rise from the farms to build a lockdown staff. 

In 2021, the wave was here: Jordan Montgomery, Nestor Cortez, Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga, Albert Abreu, Deivi Garcia, JP Sears, Clarke Schmidt, Greg Weissert, Brooks "The Great" Kriske... the list went on and on. 

The Yankees had hacked the system. They'd find young pitchers who threw 92 mph, and they'd soon have them pushing 98 mph. They had so many pitchers that they needed to siphon off a few, trade them for whatever, assured there would be more. Montgomery looked like a rare jewel, but they dealt him for an injured CF with a suspect bat. No problem. They had plenty like him at The Gas Station.

And here we are, three years later, with a bullpen is such dire shambles that it threatens to derail 2024 and the years ahead. 

The Yankees are in a demoralizing freefall, with no lead safe and nobody to pitch after the starter leaves, usually in the sixth. A 4-2 lead can quickly become a 7-4 loss. They have no middle innings man. They have no set up man. They have no specialist. They have no strike-out man. They have no closer. What they have are fraying elbows and tired shoulders, and a season flying out the window. What system-wide depth they once had has disappeared in a torrent of trades and surgeries.

Last winter, they dealt four pitchers - including Michael King (11-8, 3.17 ERA) and their best prospect, Drew Thorpe (later traded for Dylan Cease) - for one year of Juan Soto. And while Soto is a great talent, there is no certainty he'll stay. They traded three more pitchers for Alex Verdugo. They lost three more in the Rule 5 draft. Yet they passed on Blake Snell, the NL Cy Young winner, who signed late in spring in a haze of ownership collusion, and who only now is throwing well, as evidenced by his a no-hitter last month 

It's now 15 years since the Yankees played in a world series. Increasingly, it looks like this October will be no different. And it's because of the one glaring institutional weakness: Hubris. They think they're fundamentally superior and smarter than other teams. They devour their own bullshit.  

The Yankees intend to scale the Gas Station throughout their organization, and the tools the organization utilizes will inevitably change as technology advances. Aside from its pricey equipment, the Gas Station’s biggest value is in the creation of infrastructure for the Yankees to try to churn out an indefinite wave of hard-throwers with even harder-to-hit secondary pitches.

The Gas Station.  Wasn't it fun to imagine?