The Yankees didn’t finish last in the AL East last season. The Red Sox, who’ve apparently just given up, are the ones who did that. But it felt like last place here, and this is why: The Yankees ended up finishing 19 games behind the Orioles, who ended up winning the East. The year before the Yankees finished 16 games ahead of the Orioles. The last time anything like that happened with the Yankees was a half-century ago, when they went from 20 games better than the Twins in 1964 to 25 games worse in ’65.
And having said all that, and with everything that went wrong in 2023 at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees have a chance to be really good this season. And maybe even great.
They might just need some luck for a change. They haven’t had a lot of that lately, the way they haven’t had enough left-handed power, enough young talent, enough starting pitching. Mostly, the Yankees need to be great again. Because if they haven’t been building towards being great this year, then when, exactly, fifteen years since they last won it all?
Aaron Boone, on the line as much as anyone this season, on the line as much as Brian Cashman should be, says the ’24 Yankees are “hellbent on being a champion.” They sure ought to be. They need to be the best team in their division again. They need to show they can be better than the Astros, if it ends up being them against the Astros again in October, in this era when the Astros have been the kind of consistent powerhouse the Yankees still seem to think they are, despite so much evidence to the contrary.
There’s a reason why the Yankees paid with young pitching the way they did to get Juan Soto, who has the chance to be an even more important acquisition here than Shohei Ohtani will be on the other coast. For sure, Soto could turn out to be the single most significant one-year rental in history, especially if the Yankees make a deep run into October. If not, Soto — as a free agent — could make a run at the most money out there, maybe even if it’s from Uncle Stevie of the Mets.
“He’s a generational talent. What he brings to the game in that box, he has such a great demeanor. the swagger, the focus. Every single pitch he’s prepared,” Aaron Judge said of Soto of the other day. “Some of those takes he has, I feel like he’s so prepared he’s reading what the pitcher is going to throw and taking the ball out of his glove… It’s impressive.”
Soto checks so many boxes for the Yankees you feel as if you could actually run out of boxes. Somehow, with a right field wall at the Stadium you feel as if you can reach out and touch if you’re standing near home plate, the Yankees had no left-handed power last season once Anthony Rizzo suffered his concussion. Now they have exactly the kind of player that they need. They have filled out Boone’s batting order beautifully, as long as Rizzo comes all the way back.
Cashman went out and got the bat he needed. You keep wondering why he doesn’t go out and get one more arm, because the Yankees need at least one more, with Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery still out there. Montgomery knows how to pitch here, even if Cashman once decided he didn’t for some reason. Snell, who’s won Cy Young Awards in both leagues? He can pitch anywhere.
Even without them, the Yankees seem prepared to move on, and in a big way, from last season. Do they need a lot to break right? They do. They need Marcus Stroman to be more than the kind of half-a-season sensation he’s been in the past. They need Judge to stay on the field, something he has done about half the time since coming to the big leagues. Please know: Over the six 162-game season Judge has played for the Yankees, he has missed a total of 192 games. Even in the 60-game COVID season, he only played 28.
They need good health from him, they need good health from Giancarlo Stanton, they need for Rizzo to be Rizzo again at first base, and at the age of 34. They need for DJ LeMahieu to at least resemble the star he was when he first got to town, and he looked like one of the best and smartest pickups Cashman had ever made. They need for Anthony Volpe to be not just a nice kid, but a tough out. And they need for El Marciano, Jasson Dominguez, to come back swinging from Tommy John surgery and look as lit as he did last season before he got hurt.
The Yankees don’t just need Carlos Rodon to be of good health — and good cheer — they need him to go back to being the pitcher on whom the Yankees lavished the same kind of money they once lavished on CC Sabathia, who so turned out to be worth it. More than anything, at least in the pitching department, they can’t have anything bad happen to Gerrit Cole, because there is no more important starting pitcher in the entire sport than he is.
Of course a lot of this is all tied up in good fortune. But not outrageous good fortune. It was bad luck for Judge to run into that outfield door at Dodger Stadium, at a time when the Yankees were starting to roll. It was bad luck in the extreme for Rizzo to basically lose a season because of a collision at first with Fernando Tatis Jr. on an innocent looking pickoff play.
Stanton says he’s slimmed down because he wants to be a “baseball player again.” More than anything, the Yankees want to be the Yankees again. A lot has to go right this season for that to happen. The Yankees are due for things to break right. Can they win the East again? Hell, yeah.
