About the Off-Day: Meanderings of My Mind

About the Off-Day: Meanderings of My Mind

By Tim Kabel

October 13, 2025

***

Since the Yankees were battered and bruised by the Blue Jays and eliminated from the postseason, there will be no more games to recap until March of 2026. The Good Lord willing, I will resume that activity then. Since we will have several months of off-season activities or inactivities, I will resume my “Meanderings of My Mind” column on Mondays. I will now wander from topic to topic as if I were a brown bear in Katmai National Park scouring the riverbanks for that last salmon before hibernation. 

·      The more I think about the postgame comments by Aaron Boone, the more agitated I become. In particular, his response when asked if he was concerned about whether he would return next season as the manager rankles me. Boone smirked and said, “I'm under contract.” The sheer arrogance of that statement, although factually correct, is a problem. He is like an inept teacher stating that he doesn't feel the need to change because he has tenure. There are myriad reasons why Boone should be removed as the manager. This is yet another one. It seems that he doesn't think anything he did is wrong or needs to be changed. He is an inadequate manager in many ways. However, he seems to think he is the second coming of Connie Mack. Therefore, as I have written many times, he is unlikely to change. If a man weighs five hundred pounds but thinks that is perfectly acceptable, he is not going to diet. He will continue to eat gravy sandwiches and donuts a la mode.  Boone clearly needs to be replaced. Maybe then he will realize that having a contract does not give you a shield from accountability.

·        A quick update on my novel, “The Sea Change of Dr. Abernathy”. It has been on the market for a couple of weeks now and is doing well. The feedback I'm receiving so far is very good. It is available in both paperback and kindle versions. The amazing thing is that since its release, the kindle version has ranked at about # 10,000 in sales on Amazon. It has gone as high as # 3700. It took me a while to realize the significance of that, but it means that out of all the books available on kindle, and there are over 38 million of them, my little book ranked # 3700 in sales. I am not a well-known author. Nor am I a celebrity. I am extremely humble and grateful for the success I am having.

·         I have written that I believe Aaron Boone should be replaced as manager. I have also written many times that I don't consider Aaron Boone to be a good manager. Quite the opposite, I consider him to be an inadequate and almost incompetent manager. He has simply been blessed with talented teams. That does not mean that I think Brian Cashman is a great general manager. I do not. At one point he was. But it seems that success may have gone to his head and like Boone, he has an inflated opinion of himself. Cashman has been the Yankees’ general manager since the earth's crust was cooling. Yet, the Yankees have not won a World Series since 2009. He is at least partially culpable in that lack of success. He deserves credit for some of the players he brought in this season. Paul Goldschmidt did a fine job in what will probably be his only year as a Yankee. Cody Bellinger was very good. Acquiring Devin Williams was a good move. The fact that he had trouble adapting to New York is not an uncommon occurrence and not something that Cashman could have anticipated. Ultimately, Williams seemed to adapt to a middle inning or setup role. However, the Yankees acquired Austin Slater and Jake Bird among others at the trade deadline. Bird was quickly banished to the minor leagues, never to return. Slater was not on the postseason roster for either the Wild Card round or the Division Series. What was the point in getting these two players and giving up prospects for them? Cashman also seems to be firmly entrenched in his devotion to analytics. Let me be clear, analytics are useful as a tool. However, it needs to be one of many tools on the tool belt, not the only one. I would love to see the Yankees replace Cashman, but Hal Steinbrenner considers him to be part of the family, so it is unlikely that he will remove Cashman. Therefore, we should settle for what we can get and hope that a new manager will be enough to get the Yankees over the hump to win the World Series

·        I know there are some people who believe in reincarnation. I'm not 100% sure where I stand on it. However, if I were to be reincarnated, I would definitely want to be a brown bear in one of the National Parks in Alaska, preferably Katmai. Think about it, these beautiful, majestic bears spend their summer months focused entirely on eating. They consume vast amounts of food, including salmon, berries and whatever else they come across. They certainly don't have “a fancy weight loss journey”. They have “a fancy weight gain” journey. That's not even the best part. The purpose of the weight gain journey is for these bears to get plump or as my friend Roger says “zaftig” enough so that they can sleep uninterrupted for approximately six months. So, let's see if I have this right, stuff yourself as much as possible without guilt or second thoughts and then take a six-month nap. These bears don't have to worry about predators; they are the predators. They don't have to worry about being hunted, they are protected. Besides, now they are famous. There are bear-cams monitoring their activities and in September thousands of people vote on which bear is the fattest. The fattest bear is not treated with scorn or ridicule. There is no fat shaming. They are celebrated. That would be a great life.

·        I will be writing articles in the coming days and weeks about what moves I think the Yankees should make. My first one dealt with the manager.  Next, I will start addressing players, starting with pending free agents on the Yankees’ roster. However, I do want to take a moment to say that next season, Jasson Dominguez needs to play every day. That may necessitate a change in manager because Boone yanked him in and out of the lineup throughout most of the season and then essentially out of the lineup for the last several weeks. I think it is a testament to Dominguez’s ability and his makeup as a person that in his one postseason at bat in the last game of the year for the Yankees, he delivered a ninth inning double. Many young players would have retreated into a shell and simply grounded out weakly or struck out in such a situation. If Boone is back as the manager next season, I don't have a great deal of confidence that he will play Dominguez every day. As I have noted many times, Boone is abysmal when it comes to developing young players. Even those he plays regularly, such as Anthony Volpe, do not flourish.

·        I had my family over for dinner this weekend. I made one of my favorite meals but one I have not made in quite some time. It is a Paul Prudhomme recipe called Pasta Chu Chu. I know it is an odd name but, it is strips of pastrami with julienned vegetables, including green and yellow squash, multicolored peppers, carrots, onions, and mushrooms in a cream sauce over pasta. It is absolutely delicious. For dessert, I made rice pudding, and I used cranberries and dried apricots instead of raisins. It was very tasty.

·       The Yankees have three outstanding pitching prospects who were at AA this year. They are Ben Hess, Carlos Lagrange, and Elmer Rodriguez Cruz. I will discuss them more in-depth throughout the winter, but the Yankees should consider converting at least one of them to the bullpen. In his unlikely that all three would make the rotation with Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodon,Cam Schlittler, and others already there. However instead of trading one or more of these prospects for the next version of Austin Slater, the Yankee should see if if they could use one of those prospects to strengthen the bullpen, in a move that could have 

long-term positive results.