A Reader's Response To One Plan...

November 3, 2025

***

Last week, our Editor-in-Chief, Paul Semendinger wrote his plan for the Yankees to follow in order to build the best team possible for 2026.

The following was sent to SSTN by a reader (who wishes to be unnamed, but gives permission to share these thoughts on the site):

***

In your recent article, you suggested additions that would improve the Yankees enough to perhaps win a World Series. 

It is very difficult to put a world championship team together nowadays (except the Dodgers),  because players today, for the most part, lack the consistency and durability of past greats. For example, there are very few, if any pitchers, who can pitch great for 10 straight years or more. Pitchers like Tom Seaver, Gaylord Perry, Warren Spahn, just about every year would win 15 -20 games or more, almost every season and pitch well over 200 innings. That doesn't happen anymore.

You suggested the Yankees spend more money and acquire players like Bo Bichette, Kyle Schwarber, JT Realmuto, perhaps Tarik Skubal, etc.

You may or may not agree with my evaluations, but I hope you find them interesting.

Every player I will mention has both positive and negative aspects. The difficult part is determining if the positive outweighs the negative.

JT Realmuto may be a nice Yankees addition. However, would he be in a platoon role with Wells, or would he play full time? He has declined the last few years and he will be 35 years old when the season starts next season. In 502 at bats in 2025, in a great hitters park, he hit only 12 homers, with only 52 rbi, with a .257 batting average.

I am not a big fan of Austin Wells because of his low batting average, high strikeout totals, and is a poor postseason player. In 72 post season at bats, Wells has a .153 batting average, with only 2 homers and 7 rbi. But, at age 35 next season and seemingly in decline, can Realmuto be expected to be the primary catcher? Is he good enough offensively to get the job done? He threw out 30 runners trying to steal for a 29.7 caught stealing rate, well above the NL average of 23.2 percent. In his postseason career, he has displayed good power, a good rbi producer, with a .232 batting average. He has had some good postseasons and some poor postseasons. Sometimes, going to a new team that is expected to be in the playoffs can revitalize a player's career, at least for one season. I'm not sure if they should acquire Realmuto. This would be an interesting debate.

Bo Bichette is another player I'm not sure about. The positives are that he twice led the league in hits, and if he didn't miss so much time on the I.L. this season, he would have led the league for a third time. His career batting average is exceptional these days when it is compared to the MLB average of .245.  He had a good postseason in 2023 and has 6 hits in 22 career postseason at bats, for a .273 batting average. He also has driven in 90 or more runs in 3 seasons.

But the negatives are this: he is considered a poor defensive shortstop. Also, he doesn't seem the most durable. He missed 23 games this season, plus the entire AL playoffs. He is scheduled to play in the World Series. In 2024 he played only 81 games. In 2023 he missed 27 games. If he misses this many games and he is only 27 years old, how many games will he play when he gets in his 30s? 

Not counting 2024, when he played 81 games, since 2021, his power has declined from 29 to 24 to 20 to 18 homers. In 2021 he stole 25 bases, the last three seasons he stole 5,5, and 4 bases. He also made 3 errors in only 6 postseason games. 

Do the Yankees give Volpe another year at shortstop, or should they acquire Bichette? 

Most Yankees fans seem to want Bellinger to return to the Yankees. I'm not so sure. We know he is a great defensive player and can play all 3 outfield positions at a high level. It is said he can also play a good first base. Also, the last three years he struck out less than 100 times, and the Yankees sure could use more contact hitters if they are going to win the world series. Bellinger also provides good power and an above average batting average. 

But Bellinger has some negatives. He has not always been durable, as he had seasons in which he played only 95, 130,130 games. His career is way too up and down. After winning the NL MVP in 2019 the next 3 seasons he batted .239, .165, .210. Then he made a nice comeback batting .307, then declined to .266, then .272 last season. It seems as though we never know what kind of season Bellinger will have.

I put much emphasis on postseason stats. Bellinger has had a large sample size. In 76 games and 270 at bats, he has only 10 homers, 37 rbi and a ,211 batting average. He also struck out 92 times! He also did not hit well in this year's postseason. 76 games is a pretty big sample size to have such poor postseason stats. 

Jazz Chisholm provides great power and speed and gives the Yankees much needed athleticism. However, his low baseball I.Q, terrible defense, low batting average, high strikeout totals and terrible postseason stats( 88 at bats, .170 batting average) seems like too many negatives. If he changed his approach according to the situation and didn't almost always try to swing for homer, and didn't try to do too much (such as making an impossible throw, when he should just keep the ball) he would be a much better player.

I'm not sure if the Yankees should keep Grisham. Many times players have their best year when they are in the last year of their contract. Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson once said something such as," Give me a team with 25 players playing in the last year of their contract, and my team will win the pennant."

Grisham, although he hit 34 homers, batted only .235, with a ton of strikeouts. From 2022-2024 his batting averages were incredibly low ( .184,.198, .190).  Wow! If that was his bowling scores that would be good. In 94 at bats, he has a career .160 postseason batting average. This season in the postseason, he was just about an automatic out ( 4 hits in 29 at bats ).

The Yankees pitching staff looks good on paper( at least in the regular season). Max Fried led the league in winning percentage this season and in his career, his .692  win percentage is one of the highest in history. But in the postseason, in his 14 starts, he pitched 6 great games, 7 terrible games, and one so-so game. His record is 2 wins , 6 losses, with a 5.31 e.r.a. He is a completely different pitcher in the postseason.

Carlos Rodon also has some excellent regular seasons. However, in the postseason, he is a disaster. 1 win, 3 losses with a 7.53 e.r.a. in 8 games and 7 starts. He averages almost exactly 4 innings per start. He is similar to how Kenny Rogers pitched so poorly in the playoffs when Rogers was a Yankee.

Luis Gil, Will Warren, Clark Schmidt ( all have very high postseason e.r.a.) 

Dylan Cease has had an up and down regular season career. Sometimes he looks like a really good pitcher, other times he doesn't seem like a good pitcher. He has not been a good postseason pitcher.

The Yankees are  probably never going to fire Cashman, so as long as Cashman is running things, it is very difficult for many, if not most Yankees fans, to have any confidence the Yankees will win another world series. 

Almost every player on this current Yankees team, including pitchers, seem to have one thing in common: They have for the most part, very good regular season stats in some categories, yet are very, very poor postseason players.

This team for the last 16 years has not had enough clutch postseason players to win a world series. One fan made a very interesting comment. This fan said instead of the Yankees always trying to acquire big name players who have great regular season stats, but are colossal failures in the postseason, they should do the opposite and acquire a few players who don't have great regular season stats, but have excellent postseason stats, like the Dodgers Kik Hernandez. 

If there is a bidding war for the services of a superstar such as Tarik Skubal, or a good player like Kyle Tucker, the Dodgers have a huge financial edge over almost every team except the Mets. The Dodgers seem to have somewhat of a monopoly on Japanese talent, as most Japanese players, I would guess, would want to play with Ohtani. Plus, LA is much closer to Japan than the East Coast. Hollywood offers endorsements for players, the weather for the most part is good, and the Dodgers seem to be a dynasty in the making. Their player development department is considered the best in MLB, their scouts are rated the among the best, if not the best.

If a player wants to win a world series, what better team than to join the Dodgers at this point? The Dodgers about 12 or 13 years ago signed a 25 year, $ 8+ billion tv deal, which comes out to $ 334 million a year. And that was before the Dodgers made or will make millions of dollars in profits on Ohtani.

At this point, with Steinbrenner not willing to fire Cashman, how are things expected to change? 12 straight postseason failures since 2010 is not being unlucky, it is not the luck of the draw, or a roll of the dice. This indicates a failure of the Yankees organization to put together a good enough team to win a world championship.

I was always impressed by Brian Sabean's tremendous career. He is currently the executive advisor to Brian Cashman. Sabean should be the Yankees GM. If he was, I would be very confident the Yankees would have a great chance of winning the world series. As VP of Player Development/Scouting, he drafted or signed Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, J.T. Snow, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and others. Sabean and Gene Michael were the 2 most influential people in creating the Yankees dynasty in the 1990's.  Cashman inherited this dynasty as GM that was built mostly by Michael and Sabean. 

When Sabean became GM of the Giants, he built Giants team that won a pennant in 2002( coming within 3 innings of winning a world series), and built a world championship Giants teams of 2010, 2012, 2014.

Sabean created 2 dynasties on 2 different coasts. Sabean should be the GM of the Yankees, not just as an advisor. The Yankees not only have many players on the field playing the wrong positions, they have the wrong GM right now.