Perspectives: Tons of Thoughts

By Paul Semendinger

August 4, 2025

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Whew, that was some trade deadline! In the hours and days following the deadline, I received tons of great content from many contributors to this site. I gave all of those articles preference to my own. Here, a few days later, are my thoughts on the trades and so much more.

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The general consensus on the trade deadline was that the Yankees did great. I'll state this, there were some positives.

The Yankees seemed to greatly improve the bullpen. They also finally have a third baseman. In addition, they now have a player who can slot in for Anthony Volpe if need be. They have a deeper bench. There is some good there. On the surface.

But, as far as the hitters the Yankees picked-up:

• Ryan McMahon who has never, not once, had an OPS+ of even 100. He is a quality defensive third baseman. He is not, in any way, even a league average hitter. He has never been a league average hitter.

  
  

• Austin Slater has not had a league average OPS+ since 2023. He is a player teams seem to love to acquire and then quickly part ways with. (I don't know why.) But, since being traded by the Giants, just last year, he has now played for the Reds, Orioles, White Sox, and Yankees. This isn't necessarily a player teams are working hard to keep. And note, he's having a difficult time sticking with second division clubs. His lifetime OPS+ is 101. At best, he's a league average hitter, but again, he hasn't been that "good" in a few seasons.

  
  

• Amed Rosario is another guy that teams seem to acquire and then quickly move on from. He has played for the Mets, Guardians, Dodgers, Rays, Nationals, Reds, and now the Yankees. HIs lifetime OPS+ is 95. For his career, he is not a league average hitter.

  
  

• Jose Caballero is a guy who steals a lot of bases. He can play shortstop. He can't hit. His lifetime OPS+ is 84. It seems he was brought in to pinch run and/or play shortstop to give Anthony Volpe a rest. But based on his approach, it does not seem that Aaron Boone likes to ever give Anthony Volpe a rest. So, the Yankees got a pinch runner. Wasn't Anthony Volpe supposed to be a great base runner?

In total, of the batters the Yankees acquired, for their careers, three are below average hitters, and one is barely league average, but hasn't been for the last two seasons.

I'm sorry. I know everyone wants to heap mountains of praise on Brian Cashman for his amazing work. I don't see a whole lot here.

The Yankees are better on the periphery, I guess. But these were not big time pennant winning moves. The Yankees got a few role players. They're nice players, but none, together or combined, move the needle forward very much.

The Yankees needed a starting pitcher. Not getting one wasn't good.

Yes, the bullpen is improved. Let's though see how that plays out. Bullpens are erratic, at best, over time. The bullpen before the acquisitions was terrible. It should be improved. But, if they acquired anyone, it would have been improved.

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So many keep talking about Mark Leiter, Jr. "He'll be back soon, that'll help," they say. Really?

Leiter wasn't a good pitcher last year. And he hasn't been a good pitcher this year. How does he improve the pen other than being another pitcher to use?

Again, bullpens are strange. Bad pitchers can be good for periods - and good pitchers can be bad. Smart teams figure out how to make bullpens work. That the Yankees haven't figured it out this year partly because of the talent (or lack thereof) and partly because of the way the pitchers are utilized.

If one's best haul at the trade deadline is a few sometimes top relief pitchers (one of which has been terrible for well over a month), that isn't necessarily saying a lot.

Again, I know so many want to say how great of a job Brian Cashman did. He certainly moved a lot of pieces. Did he make the team better? Probably, in small ways, but not significantly.

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Releasing Marcus Stroman also wasn't smart. The Yankees are now left with little depth in the rotation.

I don't think Marcus Stroman is a good pitcher any longer, but he was doing well enough to keep the Yankees in the games he pitched since returning from the Injured List. Stroman provided needed starting pitcher depth. A team that needs starting pitchers should not release... starting pitchers.

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I think Ryan McMahon was a nice pick-up, but the Yankees should have addressed third base last winter. Every person in the world knew they needed a third baseman last winter. The fact that the Yankees needed a third baseman was readily apparent from before the start of Spring Training. And yet, the Yankees decided, for whatever reasons, not to address the position.

This is an approach the team has followed for many years. They purposefully go into seasons, almost every year, with visable apparent weaknesses that could have been easily addressed and yet weren't.

This is not how great teams are built. Here's the proof - the Yankees have not been a great team during this entire era.

The best thing people can say about the Yankees is that they are a good team, better than most, in a watered down league. That is not high praise. (And that's not even true this year. This year, the Yankees are not even a good team.)

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I am of the belief that waiting to fix problems until the trade deadline period is a bad strategy. It is a flawed way to build a team. This approach puts the Yankees at a disadvantage.

Any game the Yankees lost in 2025 because third base was a problem was a loss that can be tied directly to the poor roster construction over the winter.

Do not also forget that the shallow pitching staff had to have pitchers work harder and throw more pitches because outs that should have been recorded at third base weren't. The Yankees were a worse team in 2025 because they left the third base problem unaddressed until late July. To me that is completely unacceptable. And the blame for that is not on Aaron Boone, it is on Brian Cashman.

The trade deadline should not be the time to fix problems that were apparent before the season even began. Teams should use the deadline to fix problems that arise due to poor performance, injuries, unforeseen circumstances, and the like.

The approach the Yankees follow is a flawed approach. It is penny wise (I guess) and pound foolish. They lose games because of this approach. They also don't win championships as evidenced by the fact that... they haven't won a championship.

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Brian Cashman standing tall after what looked like a great deadline of good moves and expecting heaps of praise is like the kid who was told to mow the lawn for months, refused to do it, and then, after mowing the super high grass in the heat of summer expects praise and adulation for doing something that should have been already been done long ago. Sure, the lawn looks better now, but all the mosquitoes and flies and ticks and such that bothered his family and the neighbors the last few months aren't suddenly forgotten. The poor work from earlier isn't erased by the good work now. At all.

One can hope the good work now is an indication that more good work will follow. There is the hope that maybe the kid learned from his past mistake. Then again, that kid has followed the same pattern in regard to lawn mowing for years now. It seems he doesn't ever learn.

And, to continue the theme, the lawn, after he mowed it, looks better, but not great. There are lawn scpars all over the place. There are dead patches. Sure, it's better, but the lawn isn't winning any awards or getting a photo shoot in Better Homes and Gardens.

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Changing the dynamic of a team so radically virtually overnight can also be problematic. Part of being a team is...being a team. A team, at least a well run one, is more than just a collection of people.

It seems the Yankees build collections of people rather than creating teams.

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Team building begins with the manager. This is something Aaron Boone isn't particularly good at. We see this clearly, and have, on a daily basis for a long long time.

But part of this also rests on the General Manager who should have the core of the team together before the start of the season at Spring Training. It takes time for a team to come together and gel. Players have to get to know one another. Pitchers and catchers have to learn how to work together. Infielders have to find a rhythm to working together. (This is another reason why moving players out of their natural positions doesn't often work very well.)

So many fans believe that playing at the big league level is no different from Little League or their own experiences, often decades ago, playing in a softball league. In those places, the most athletic players can play anywhere and shine. It's not like that at the highest levels of the pros. Every single player on the field is better (by miles) than the best player most everyone has ever played with. They're all outstanding athletes, very single Major Leaguer. Every last player is an outstanding athlete. The worse MLB player is better than any player most fans have ever encountered. One does not become a Major League level player at a position just because he has physical skills and apparent abilities. It just doesn't work that way no matter how often people like to argue that it does. To become even league average at a position takes years and years of practice and focus. (It baffles me that so many do not understand this.)

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To go back to an earlier point. A team should be assembled over the winter, not at the trade deadline. Teams are built into a cohesive unit in Spring Training. One cannot build a team over a week in July. One can collect players. Sure. But one cannot build a team. This is, again, a point the Yankees, for whatever reasons, cannot seem to understand.

Many people talk about the chaotic teams of the George Steinbrenner Era. And they're right. But, in some ways, the Yankees of the last few years has been just as chaotic. Players are coming and going all the time. There is little rhyme or reason. The team operates in a manner of trying to find patches to try to address glaring holes.

This is no way to actually build a winning team.

Making it worse is the fact that the man guiding the team, the manager, seems out of his depth. Team building is not one of his stengths.

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Hal Steinbrenner is proving to be unlike his father in that he sticks with his manager no matter what. George Steinbrenner's biggest flaw, with managers, was that he fired too many of them too quickly. That was a problem. Absolutely. But sticking with a manager who cannot manage is just as bad, if not worse.

Also, as noted many times, George Steinbrenner learned from his mistakes. Buck Showalter manged for years and then Joe Torre managed for a very long time.

It seems that Hal Steinbrenner hasn't figured out that when people are put into positions they cannot succeed at, they must be removed from those positions. Aaron Boone proved, years ago, that he is not the man to lead the Yankees to a championship.

Stability of ineffective leaders isn't stability at all. It is dysfunctional. That disfunction ruins an organization. It takes years to recover from that.

The way the Yankees operate is dysfunctional.

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At the trade deadline this year, Brian Cashman was aggressive in getting middle-of-the-road talent.

The Yankees, in great need of a spark, needed more than middle-of-the-road talent. They needed to do more than to just make their bench and bullpen stronger. They didn't. As such, the acquisitions were not, nearly, as impressive as so many want to believe.

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I know some believe that Aaron Boone is influenced by the analytics team (and Brian Cashman) to the point where he makes no decisions himself. In looking at the many moves that have been made in recent games, there is no way the people with slide rules, stats, binders, and computers would have agreed with what Boone has done. Boone makes moves that defy reason and logic. If every decision was one that could be argued as safe when consulting "the book," there might be some merit to the argument that Boone makes no decisions, but the decisions he makes make no sense. There is no way that many of his decisions come from anywhere except his own thinking.

Sometimes, I think, Aaron Boone likes to make off-beat decisions that it seems he think will make him look smart. Going to Nestor Cortes in the World Series last year was an example of this. Other times, his moves defy any sort of logic or strategic thinking.

Whatever the reasons for his decisions, it is clear that they're not all coming from the analytics team.

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We have seen plenty of examples of bad moves by the manager that have cost the Yankees games. When some say, "The manager means little," it is clear that they're not understanding how many games the Yankees have lost because of the manager's flawed approach.

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It is becoming readily apparent that this Yankees team is not a championship club. At all. Part of that rests with the players. Part of that rests with the GM. Part of that rests with the owner. Part of that rests with the manager. This is an organization that seems to not have any real clue how to build a winning team. And for a team with the resources and great history that the Yankees have, what the fans have had to put up with for the better part of the last 15 years is, frankly, unacceptable. It is time for huge organizational changes to be made.

Right now Hal Steinbrenner's legacy is as the owner who presided over one of the least successful periods in the team's history. Right now Hal Steinbrenner's Yankees rank with the CBS Yankees.

The Yankees used to be an organization that respresented greatness. That is not the case any longer. It hasn't been the case in years. This is Hal Steinbrenner's legacy right now. He took a once proud franchise and made it mediocre. (This is not something to be proud of.)

Mr. Steinbrenner can change this by demanding and rewarding excellence rather than staying with a leadership team that has failed for far too long. This includes the GM and the manager. It's way past time for big changes to be made.

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Coming at 2:00 p.m. today is an article I wrote in 2021. The same exact problems I was discussing in that article still plague the Yankees today. And that's also a huge problem. Stay tuned.

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