Why, because the New York Yankees are the New York Yankees. The Yankees are the most valuable, wealthiest baseball franchise in the world. The Yankees, because of that, are under more scrutiny than any other team. The Yankees are in New York City, USAToday says that New York is the best sports city globally, Forbes says it’s Boston, but that is irrelevant; if you’re from the tri-state area, you know its New York. For these and other reasons, all eyes are on a team that is supposed to win a World Championship every year, but they don’t.
Maybe a better question is why the lowly Tampa Bay Rays, a team from a much smaller market, a team with one-quarter of the payroll, wins the ALCS, but the Yankees haven’t been able to in years?
To put it plainly, the New York Yankees are not the DesMoines MudDogs (no offense, Iowa); they are the Yankees, a team that is supposed to be victorious every year. If the MudDogs or any other team comes in third or fourth in their division, they likely feel their season was successful. Not the Yankees, if they don’t reach the World Series and win it, they are failures.
Based on that, all eyes are on the Yankees in the offseason to see what they will do to improve the team. Some of it seems ludicrous, the Yankees have one of the most powerful lineups in baseball, yet we try to improve it. The Yankees are known to have one of the best bullpens in the game, but yet with Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman headlining the group, we need to fix it; it’s not good enough.
All of this aside, the Yankees do have some serious problems to solve. Mainly they have no starting pitching. Yes, they made the biggest splash last year when they went to California and spent $324 million on Gerrit Cole, but now they find themselves with only Gerrit Cole. The Yankees have to rebuild their pitching rotation completely. But with the Yankees, you never know what they and their general manager Brian Cashman will do. But all of these things are so damn important because the Yankees must win next season, or it will be the end of the world.
Maybe we should look at the Dallas Cowboys, the wealthiest sports franchise at $5.5 billion (the Yankees are at $5 billion). They haven’t won an NFL Championship since 1996, even longer since the Yankees have won. I wish I could answer why the Yankees can’t seem to put it all together and win their 28th World Championship, If I could Brian Cashman would be out and I would be in.
Nevertheless all of the sports world will be watching the New York Yankees this offseason to see whose tires they will kick or what blockbuster deal they will be pulling off, or if they again patch up the team and hope for the big win. In my experience when you do the same thing and expect a different result, you’re playing the fools game.