Damn Yankees

Some eleven months ago, toward the end of July or beginning of August, the Yankees’ annual summer swoon was bottoming out, and I took a rare detour into the commentariat. I kept my thoughts to myself, though, as I am typically not known for my timely and informed sports takes.

Often, I assume things that were true in my childhood remain true today. To some extent, this has validity: Lebron is still annoyingly overplaying his hand, James Harden remains a non-winner, the Jets will always be hopeless, and the Patriots manage to just find success. 

Usually, though, sports change. Players improve or decline, NBA champions rotate, and I don’t share my thoughts because I miss the boat and don't know what I’m talking about. I felt that the Celtics overpaid Mitchell Robinson given his injury history and the hack-a-Mitch strategy, but my friends informed me that there are basically no quality centers on the market, so supply and demand, so I was wrong. 

Nonetheless, I feel more than empowered to talk about a team losing games that I haven’t watched because: why should I watch them? So rather than say something new, I’ll share what I thought last summer, namely the following.

In kindergarten, I had a conversation with another boy who would become a close friend, and a pretty good ballplayer. I relayed some anecdote--probably falsified--about how a relative’s favorite part of a baseball game was the national anthem. He turned to me, maybe six years old by this time of year, and said maybe they had a point. After all, he said, you can't guarantee the guy's gonna hit a homer at every at bat.

Today's New York Yankees organization appears to think otherwise. In April and May [note: 2025], they were cruising. They had the new bats, and they connected them with the ball, hitting home runs at an unprecedented clip, even for the bombers. It all was going according to plan.

Until the summer, that is. Others have covered the now-annual tradition that is their summer slump, but Aaron Judge got hurt, the lineup shriveled up, and the outfield fence seemed farther than ever. This skid started in June, accelerated in July, and may or may not be grinding to a halt in August. Yes, they remain in playoff position. Yes, they just last week tied their record from earlier this season, something about the most runs scored in two games where every run was scored because of a home run.

But this is not a strategy!

This is madness! What kind of team can rely on unprecedented feats? Reliability and unprecedentedness are antonyms! What are they thinking!

The problem with these Yankees is not that they are going to miss the playoffs--they probably won't. Nor is it that they won't win the World Series--of course they won't, but only one team gets to. It's that they are insane.

This piece of wisdom that homers are not a strategy had been relayed to me in the twilight of the Yankees Dynasty. Mariano Rivera had just blown the save in Game 7, and the Diamondbacks pulled off the impossible. In 2003 they would lose to the Marlins, and then I dare not recount 2004, during which time the Yankees/Red Sox Rivalry hit its local peak, they started selling "Yankee Hater" hats, and I was in the third grade.

If memory serves me right, two important things happened that year. First, I wrote but did not mail a letter to Brian Cashman in response to a schoolyard rumor they were going to trade Jeter or maybe Matsui. Second, one of the baseball coaches first informed me that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Heady stuff for a third grader!

And yet! These guys have the nerve to wake up every day and tell me that Anthony Volpe can be the starting shortstop on a major league contender. They have the nerve to expect that the bullpen won't implode. They have the nerve to get completely embarrassed by the Sox in a pivotal four game series at home. Because guess what! The Red Sox brought good pitchers, and the home runs dried up. This is not a strategy, and these Yankees are insane.

I was not born to be a Yankees fan. My father was born the same year as the Mets, and my mother arrived from Boston a rabid Red Sox fan. Despite their best efforts, it was awfully difficult to be five years old in New York 2001 and not like the Yankees. So I can say: this is not what I signed up for. Of course they are still more successful than the Orioles and can always count on beating the Twins, but they are deep into their longest World Series drought ever. They are basically at risk of no longer being The Yankees.

What's worse is I find myself speaking like the Red Sox fan of my youth. The Yankees suck. I hate these Yankees. Those damned Yankees. It's become a hobby, a cottage industry.

That was about as far as I got last summer. That autumn, the Dodgers won a classic World Series, and the league began murmuring about unfair dominance and unreasonable spending. That was our thing!

Last summer, my new favorite thing was to listen to two guys yap about how there’s nothing to be done. I’d never really been into podcasts before, but I also had never experienced such frustration, such stupidity, from people who are so outwardly convinced that they’re competent just because of, like, their outfits. In Catch me if You Can there's the bit about how the Yankees win because everybody's always looking at the pinstripes, but in that movie at least DiCaprio was good at lying.

In 2025, there appeared to be a failure of strategy. The league made the bases bigger, they added the ghost runner in extra innings, they wanted more balls in play, but the Yankees kept trying to rely on true outcomes (walks, homers, strikeouts) and kept striking out. This year, the bullpen always stunk, but they began by playing more baseball, putting the ball in play, stealing bases, making things happen. They had some stupendous starting pitching early on. Then, they stopped.

The analytics might argue that batting average is uninformative, but if your everyday starting catcher has been batting .087 since returning from injury, you will not win.

The only true outcome is just out after out after out. The league has been trying to make games go a little faster, and let me tell you if you never get a hit, the game just flies by!

They have lost nine out of the last ten, including, amusingly, another four game series against the Sox, except this year’s Red Sox are worse than last year’s. The Tigers have an all-time pitcher who’s demanding a trade because they can’t pull anything together, but they’ve swept the Yankees, too. The ONE thing, as noted above, the ONE thing is supposed to be that the Yankees can beat Minnesota, but they just lost two of three to them.

My issue is not that they can’t develop players, not that they send the wrong guys to the minors, not that they won’t give Caballero the consistency to start at short but continue deferring to Volpe as though he’s a high schooler whose dad bought the team new uniforms. My issue is just that they are being insane.

There are few jobs where anybody, say, GM Brian Cashman, can keep the same role for 28 years straight despite failing to achieve the year's stated goal (winning the World Series) for 17 years straight. I used to freak out about typos in an email to one internal person. This guy is failing over and over again in public, being wrong about players with high visibility, and then doubling down. People say Aaron Boone, the manager, doesn’t hold the players accountable, but there is just nobody being held accountable.

I, a fan writing an angry letter for the first time since third grade, won't be holding them accountable. I'm 30 years old and angry with the same executive as when I was 8 or 9. I'm going to keep letting them drive me nuts, I'll keep trying to go to a game when they're in town on my birthday, because they’re the baseball team I like, and there’s always baseball. There’s always baseball, and despite the steaming pile of garbage they trot out on the field, it’s always going to be profitable. I am currently wearing my stupid Yankees hat because I am a stupid Yankees fan.

Strange times indeed when the Knicks give me pride, the USMNT gives me hope, and the Yankees give me ulcers.