March 9, 2025
***
Per Jim Bowden...
Quick Thoughts -
I'll get into this more another times, but, well, that's that. A week or so ago, it looked like the Yankees had an outstanding starting staff. Now, not so much. At all. The Yankees have exactly five starters now if one includes Marcus Stroman and Will Warren.
Without Cole, I don't think the Yankees can be considered favorites to win the division or the pennant.
A few years ago, the Yankees thought that Jordan Montgomery was a luxury. "We won't even use him in October," the GM said (without any way of knowing) in August. (I guess Mr. Cashman could see the future. But, let's also remember that he traded for Frankie Montas at that time time and he wasn't able to see that Montas would spend most of his Yankees' tenure...injured and unavailable.) The next year, the Yankees, short on pitching, overused Clarke Schmidt to the point where he was injured for a significant part of 2024. In 2024, still short on pitching, the Yankees overused Luis Gil. His 2025 season is also in jeopardy. At best, he will miss more than two months of the season.
Would it have been better to spend the money on a pitcher like Blake Snell or trade for Corbin Burnes than to overtax young pitchers to the point of injuring them? (I believe so.)
The Yankees get high marks for acquiring Gerrit Coleand spending big to make that happen. Cole proved to be an ace. But, every season with Cole, the Yankees stopped way short of building a great team behind him leaving obvious and glaring holes at important positions and not building a balanced batting order. It seems that the Yankees wasted Cole's best seasons and their best chance to win a World Championship with Cole as the ace.
With a team like the Yankees, being essentially guided by Cashman, this might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise because Cashman will be forced to use some of his prospects as starters.
This means that Cashman won't be hindering the development of his prospects like he normally does. Remember last year when Luis Gill emerged? He only got the opportunity due to injuries.
The Yankees have a number of capable arms in house. Are they Ace level guys? Probably not, but nonetheless, they do have some capable arms. So now it's time to rethink how the capable arms are all being mismanaged. Maybe a couple of them could be moved into the starting rotation? We shall see.
Without Cole, Stanto, and Gil, this is a >500 team, at best.
So we have five starters. Not the super strong rotation we thought we had. Do we trade for Cease, Montgomery, Fedde? Or in typical Cashman style go get a bottom of the rotation starter for cheap? On the bright side, Dominguez is starting to hit, Bellinger looks good. I think they still have a fighting chance to get to the WS, but most things must work out.
Your hindsight vision is very good, if could pair up with Cashman, we'd be great, right now....but no more are there teams with all stars at every position and the rotation too, this is a league wide thing, since the started changing the baseball...wiki knows the real answer and how to deal with it ??
Trick is to roll with the punches as best you can, The Mets have same issues,as do all teams,"already", doesn't insurance cover the money, maybe making it possible to replace them with someone, reasonably good, lord knows, there's no Aces, lurking about, unattached....Go Yankees!!!
I'm not giving up, I never do, I'm a diehard fan , I have been, even in the early 60's...I still…
When Cole opted out after 2023 and then opted back in, the Yankees should have said, "No backsies!"