Yanks at a Crossroads

So the Yanks didn't make the playoffs for the second year in a row, for the first time since they began their latest streak of relative dominance and flat out dominance in 1994.   That's 20 years.   They needed a breather, and should have taken one.

Instead, after not making the playoffs last year, they wisely chose not to match or surpass Seattle's offer to Robinson Cano, their last great homegrown hitter.  But instead of saving the first rounders they gained from that decision and others,  they went out and bought 3 over 30 MLB veterans who came with draft pick compensation.   So there went the 2014 draft pool, as well as the chance to get three more premium players for the system they had given lip service to rebuilding, and the chance to get creative with the allotment and add some preps outside of the first round.

Then they did something smart, and grabbed Masahiro Tanaka.   This was a great move and if he hadn't gotten hurt, the Yanks might not have been eliminated by now.

That turned out to be a masterstroke, because Tanaka is an ACE, and he's still young enough that,  even if he ends up needing TJ surgery, he will still be in his 20's when the really high upside kids start showing up from the farm. If he doesn't need it he will provide continuity at the top of the rotation going forward, in place of the declining CC Sabathia, who never should have been re-signed after he opted out the last time.

The Yankee pitching this year was pretty uniformly good, even with the in season injuries to so many starters, and some dead periods for the bullpen.  What's more, there was good news on the pitching side of the farm, with the breakout year by Severino, the impressive debut of Clarkin, and some more velo added during the draft.

The big problems this year were the offense, and for part of the year, the defense.

The weirdness was that the Yanks did not turn to the farm for help with the O and even D.  Instead, they traded crap for steadier gloved crap, and kept trying to get by with more and more veterans.

It still doesn't make any sense.

So, in the next 8 weeks or so we will get a pretty good idea of what their plan is to fix this disaster they've created.  First, we'll see if there will be new people making the decision, a mix of old and new, a reshuffling of the deck, or status quo more or less.   Then we'll see if they are still eager to play fast and loose with their picks.   If they are we're in for a repeat of this year.   But if their plan includes only hiring vets who don't cost picks on one year contracts, then things might change just a bit faster.

We'll see.  But this, my friends, was brutal and that's more about what was wasted than about what was lost.