Today, as pitchers and catchers arrive in Camp Tampa - de facto home to both the Rays and the former Evil Empire - the Yankees have replaced their team with a roster of exact duplicates from last year.
Somehow, this winter, somebody got into the clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field and replaced every player - every lug nut, every molecule - with a perfect replica from last year's 2nd place team.
Same team, one year older...
I've followed the Yankees for 70 years. Never - never - do I recall them simply doubling down on last year's unexceptional team, as they have done. No big free agent, no major trade, no massively hyped rookie - just the same lineup that finished runner-up.
This year, the Yankees and Mets will mount completely opposite strategies. The Mets begat a total winter teardown, recreating their clubhouse down to the wall studs. The Yankees didn't even rearrange the furniture.
This could mean a craftier, wiser Yankee team, fused by comradery and experience.
It could mean a lineup that implodes from the strains of age.
On this blog, Cooperstown Cashman has few admirers. For years, I've wanted a new GM. But let's be honest: We're watching an exceptionally bold strategy - something entirely new. Cashman is holding his cards, standing pat, with or without a winning hand. He is doing this, of course, at the directive of Food Stamps Hal Steinbrenner.
Will it work?
Can the Yankees, buttressed by maturity, create a winning clubhouse? Or will we simply see more blown out body parts?
This winter, I wanted a frontline starter. Come October, I believe they will regret not adding one. So be it.
Another Steven Wright joke goes, "Whenever I think about the past, it just brings up so many memories." He's right. But I don't recall anything like what we're about to see.
And so begins the Great Yankee Experiment of 2026.
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11 comments:
BRIAN IS AN IDIOT. HAL HATES THE YANKEES. NEITHER ONE CARES WHAT ANYONE THINKS ABOUT IT.
Second place is good enough!
The same team is coming back and so are the same fans. It’s deja vu all over again.
And that my friends, is the whole point. As long as the suckers keep coming back, as long as they keep sending their discretionary income to Hal, as long as the profit margin is healthy, he’s not going to care what little, if any, success the team has.
We are the suckers
Dick, you're absolutely right! What is wrong with me that I ever expected more?
You must have heard the cautionary tales
The dangers hidden on the cul-de-sac trails
From wiser men who've been through it all
And the ghosts of failures spray-canned up on the wall
We've got to judge the judge
Got to find the finds
We've got to scheme the schemes
Have to line the lines
We must stake the stakes
And show the shown
We must take the takes
And know the known
Try to place the place
Where we can face the face.
We got to face the face
Try to place the place
Where we can face the face
Face the face, got to face the face.
Face the face, got to face the face.
✅
So did they hire the new software person and determined this is the best path to take?
Hal has been replaced with the Hal 9000. It's more efficient.
Cashman is The Brain That Wouldn't Die.
Boone continues to play Boon in Animal House and still hasn't graduated from Faber.
The analytics department was given the winter off, which they spent in the Hot-Tub Time Machine. Many of them aren't coming back. They're staying in 1996.
Trost got the trots and was cast in The Attack of the Dysenteric Dimwits.
WARNING: Rant incoming.
Take the longview, it’s really not that the team isn’t spending enough as much as it is they spend poorly. Why is Stanton here? What have we won with him? Is Cole’s contract worth it? Grisham? Seriously? All the missed opportunities…Harper, Machado…and the bungling - Rizzo forced to play with a concussion, anchoring the team to Volpe…Boone is indeed a sub-par mgr. who adds nothing and gets exposed in October. Any other contender would’ve moved on from him by now. The real problem is Cashman, and Steinbrenner’s inexplicable fealty to him. The team needs a new direction, a fresh start, yet this offseason has been the most regressive one imaginable. The stasis is as numbing as Novocain. But outside of this estimable blog and a few other points of light, there is little criticism and even less outrage. Are the fans truly just sheep, just walking wallets waiting to be plucked of our last centavo? For most veteran fans, baseball is ingrained in our souls, making it impossible to turn away. But everything has its breaking point. And with next year’s work stoppage bearing down on us like a heat seeking missile, I’ve just about reached mine.
Good song by Pete Townshend
good ?
And so begins the Great Yankee Experiment of 2026.
It's an experiment, but I wouldn't call it "Great".
I put instant coffee in the micro-wave and it went back in time. (another Steven Wright joke...)
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