What is the panic button exactly?
Really, I want to know what it is and then I want to know its value. There has been much discussion of whether the Yankees need to press such a thing. To what end? Now is not time for panic or — worse — the kind of maneuvers panic evokes.
The Yankees need to accept who they are, and if they are a bad team — the early indicators are that is their identity — so be it. The big mistake would be trying to fix something with a Raul Mondesi or Vernon Wells.
The Yankees have been contenders for 23 straight years. That is never happening again, unless this club rights itself and makes it 24. Many executives around the game have predicted the every-thing-goes-wrong season for the Yankees in recent years, and then have been stunned when it did not occur.
Judgment day finally may be upon this franchise.
The 8-15 record reflects a team that has just two elite performers — Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances (yes, I still consider Betances elite despite the recent hiccups) — and both are symbiotic players: They need others to excel to make their jobs meaningful. Adding Aroldis Chapman in a week merely will give the Yankees three Clapton-level guitarists in a band with no drummers or bass players or songwriters.
After missing the playoffs in 2013, the Yankees abandoned their long-held strategy to get under the $189 million luxury tax threshold and invested nearly a half a billion in Masahiro Tanaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. In 2013-14, the Yankees were not very good, but refused to accept who they were and pushed to 85 and 84 wins and pseudo contention, failing to seize opportunities to trade Robinson Cano and David Robertson. In that 24-month window, they refused to accept whom they had become and missed the chances to accelerate a rebuild.
I admire the general spirit of what they do. In an age when so many teams are tanking, the Yankees are trying to retain a George Steinbrenner mandate of winning year to year. But Steinbrenner operated in an era when perhaps his team alone, or maybe one or two others, could sign big free agents. But Zack Greinke really signed with the Diamondbacks, Max Scherzer with the Nationals. More clubs can and do play in this forum. The structure of how much can be spent in the draft and internationally further scuttles advantages long held by the Yankees.
Once more, no team is putting together 23 straight winning seasons again — not under these rules. It is hard to win and keep winning. We thought the Astros had decoded the tank-to-champ strategy. Yet after beating the Yankees in the wild-card game last year, they have a worse record than the Yankees this season. The Dodgers, with all their money spent, have not been to a World Series since 1988 and are .500 now.
The Yankees can look to the Red Sox for some inspiration. They won it all in 2013 and have finished in last place each of the past two seasons. But 2015 was not a waste. The Red Sox used the season to stick with or learn about Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Travis Shaw, all of whom contributed big-time to sweeping the Yanks at Fenway over the weekend and jumping Boston to first place.
The Yankees also should look to their own history. They began the 2005 campaign at 11-19. Steinbrenner empowered Brian Cashman to do what he felt was correct, and the GM decided against following the organization’s quick-fix DNA. He resolved to protect the best players in a thin system (namely Phil Hughes). Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang were promoted along with a journeyman named Aaron Small. All paid big dividends, as did a minor trade for Shawn Chacon. Those Yankees actually won 95 games.
This group would be hard-pressed to duplicate that result, but the philosophy should be the same. Try to figure this out internally. Don’t take on more veterans and their contracts as window dressing. If the team is finally terrible, then use July to make the best big-picture deals for Chapman and Miller, and if there is a market for free-agents-to-be Carlos Beltran and Mark Teixeira (though I suspect he would not waive his no-trade clause), deal them, too. See if Rob Refsnyder can play third (did you think Travis Shaw could do so at this time last year?) and give Gary Sanchez half the catching responsibility.
Now is no time for panic for the Yankees. There is going to be opportunity, even under the worst-case scenario of being non-contenders for the first time in a quarter of a century. The Yankees have to be prepared to accept being bad in attempts to be real good again.