Yankees Structural Deficiencies Keep Getting Exposed

If you are a Yankees fan, you are growing more disgusted by the day watching the painfully bad play on the field. What was once the standard of excellence in baseball has become a nightly exercise in frustration, as the New York Yankees’ historically anemic offense continues to sink any hopes of a meaningful late-season surge.

Since the All-Star break, the Yankees have scored two runs or fewer in more than 60 percent of their games. That is not a temporary slump. It is a sustained collapse of a lineup that ranks near the bottom of the majors in batting average and on-base percentage while striking out at an alarming rate. The power is still there in isolated bursts, but consistent production has vanished. Night after night, the bats go silent, turning even the strongest pitching performances into tense, low-scoring affairs that could tip either way on a single mistake.

But if the terrible offense were not enough, the repeated lackadaisical play has become impossible to ignore. Fielders loaf after balls as though this were a summer beer league. Baserunners routinely forget how many outs there are. Outs are given up on the basepaths because players simply are not hustling. These are things that would not fly for any Little League team in America, and it is a nightly occurrence for the New York Yankees. Shameful.

Yes, this falls on the players. But Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman simply must go. If it is not the responsibility of the manager to cause the players to “try hard,” then we need a new job description. Aaron Boone should be personally embarrassed that he is the manager of a team that regularly does not attempt to compete. It is a disgrace. The roster construction is clearly the responsibility of the general manager, and Brian Cashman had a roster exposed a year ago for being too left-hand dominant, a bullpen with holes, a lineup that is too swing-and-miss, and too many players who lack consistent effort. He had an entire offseason to address it and failed to do so. Then, after watching these deficiencies get exposed in the first half of the season, he elected to go through the trade deadline without addressing it again. So here we are.

Yes, the Yankees’ starting pitching has been historically great, and that has kept the team afloat. The rotation has delivered quality start after quality start, and boasts an ERA that ranks among the best in baseball, masking the offensive void and keeping the club in wild-card contention. And yes, we will hopefully be getting back Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton at some point, and that should help. But perhaps the worst thing that could happen for Yankee fans is Aaron Judge coming back, helping us win some games, and ownership forgetting the clear failures of Boone and Cashman. These guys simply must go.

The Yankees have a $350 million payroll and play in the largest market in sports. It should not be too much to ask that we have a well-rounded team with no single point of failure in the lineup or the bullpen, and a group of guys who are demanded to run out ground balls every night. If the Steinbrenners are looking for someone to solve these problems, call any Little League manager in the outer boroughs and it will be taken care of.

For Yankee fans’ sake, I hope this is the last season we need to watch this. The Bronx deserves better than another year of excuses, half-hearted effort, and leadership that refuses to demand accountability. The resources are there. The passionate fan base is there. What is missing is the will to fix what has been broken in plain sight for far too long.