It is amazing that it has come to this.
It is absolutely baffling.
It is also very frustrating.
But it is absolutely true. We have seen this play out for months now. Months and months and months…
The Yankees, the NEW YORK YANKEES, are being held hostage.
The Yankees cannot do anything.
They can’t make moves.
They can’t sign players – even their own free agents.
The Yankees have been rendered helpless. Completely helpless. Completely.
The Yankees are being rendered incapable of doing anything, at all, to address the 2021 season.
And the person holding the Yankees hostage is a player. A player.
It’s not ownership that drives the Yankees right now.
It’s not the G.M.
It’s a baseball player.
One player has completely hijacked the Yankees’ offseason.
This is a player who in his entire ten-year career has averaged 12 homers a season. This includes his seasons with the Yankees, by the way. (Hardly impressive.)
This is a player who, before he came to New York owned a lifetime batting average of .298. (That’s nice, but it’s hardly amazing.)
This is a player that has played in fewer than 200 games as a Yankee.
This player is asking for $20-$25 million dollars a year for up to five years as he enters the season when he’ll turn thirty-three years old. (A deal that everyone knows, logically, will be a horrible deal for the franchise sooner than later.)
This is D.J. LeMahieu.
Baseball’s most valuable franchise… Baseball’s most legendary franchise…
The New York Yankees,
THE NEW YORK YANKEES,
The New York Yankees are being held hostage by this player. They have said it time and again. Their first priority is figuring out what will happen with D.J. LeMahieu. Until they determine what will happen with him, they cannot do anything else.
As the rest of baseball awakes from its months-long slumber and starts addressing their teams for 2021, the Yankees sit and wait (and literally beg LeMahieu to come back). It’s embarrassing.
The entire Yankees’ 2020-21 off-season rests in the hands of D.J. LeMahieu. He is driving the ship. If the Yankees resign him, they’re done. That’ll be their big deal. If they don’t, they’ll look around for the scraps that come after the other big names have gone off the board.
The Yankees need pitching. Lance Lynn was traded. Blake Snell was traded. Yu Darvish was traded. The Yankees weren’t even in on the deals. The Yankees aren’t even players in the deals. They’re not active. They have been rendered incapable of doing anything. At all…
Until D.J. LeMahieu makes up his mind.
They Yankees admit, out loud, that they are rendered incapable of doing anything until they figure out what to do with a second baseman who will soon be entering his decline years. A player who plays the position that their youngest superstar (Gleyber Torres) should be playing. A guy, logically, that shouldn’t be blocking the young superstar, but if he is resigned will, for four to five years – the years of Torres’ prime. (It makes no sense.)
D.J. LeMahieu now controls the Yankees.
The Yankees organization has ceded its power to a second baseman.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
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