Show who’s The Boss
Time to see how much of George lives in Hal
CARLSBAD, Calif. – Hal Steinbrenner’s DNA test is coming up, and there is only one way he is going to pass it.
Before the next big-league umpire shouts “Play ball!,’’ he better have signed either Manny Machado or Bryce Harper, and preferably both.
And while he is at it, he can put together a package that will lure either Corey Kluber or Carlos Carrasco from the Indians. If he really wants to touch ’em all, he can also find someone to take Giancarlo Stanton off his hands.
As much as I like Harold Z., moves like that are the only way I will be convinced he is truly the son of George M.
Forget Ancestry.com or 23andme. The only surefire ways to prove that the current owner of the New York Yankees is the linear descendant of the previous owner are with his gut and with his checkbook.
As Major League Baseball’s 2018 GM meetings entered their second, and final, day on Wednesday, Hal Steinbrenner’s Yankees had made all of two moves.
Last week, they resigned Brett Gardner, the oldest position player on their roster and one of just three remaining links to their 2009 team, the last to win a World Championship (CC Sabathia and David Robertson being the other two).
And, on Wednesday, they re-signed Sabathia, who will turn 39 right around the time of the next All-Star Break.
Nice work, since both have been exemplary Yankees who are respected by their teammates and the fans and lend an air of gravitas to a sometimes disturbingly young and immature clubhouse.
But in no way, shape or form do those two signings move the Yankees any closer to the Boston Red Sox, or send any message to their demanding fanbase that 2019 will be anything but a repeat of 2018, only a year older.
Adding Machado, or Harper, or Kluber, or Carrasco, and preferably three out of those four, would send an entirely different message. It would tell the rest of the league that when Hal Steinbrenner says he is “pissed off,’’ he’s not just paying lip service on a radio show. It would show he means business.
Anything less would be positively un-Yankee-like and definitely un-Boss-like.
It won’t happen right away, because nothing of consequence ever happens at the GM meetings. And judging by the slowness of the freeagent market last year, it may not happen by next month’s winter meetings, either.
But between now and the start of spring training, we’re going to learn a lot about what kind of an owner Hal Steinbrenner really is.
There’s no question that Hal Steinbrenner’s nature is far different from George Steinbrenner’s. The old man was concerned with just one thing: winning. At everything. The son seems concerned with the bottom line, and the future, two things the Boss never seemed to pay any attention to. “Wait’ll next year’’ was never part of George Steinbrenner’s vocabulary. Lately, it seems like the Yankee team motto.
Yankees GM Brian Cashman, whose most remarkable accomplishment is not so much his four world championships as his ability to last 22 years in what used to be the hottest seat in New York sports, and has dutifully parroted the new team philosophy publicly: Fiscal responsibility. Wise business decisions. No more subsidizing other teams. And certainly, no mortgaging of the future.
But a glimpse of the real Cashman, the preHal Cashman, emerged briefly at the end of his media availability on Tuesday.
“I don’t like waiting for the credits to roll at the end of the movie,’’ he said. “I don’t like circling the airport. I’m here trying to land the plane. If you find the right matches, let’s do it. Why wait?’’
In other words, Yankees gotta Yank. George Steinbrenner would have been proud. So now it’s up to Hal. In accordance with his mandate, Cashman brought the 2018 Yankees in under the $197 million luxury tax threshold, meaning the 2019 Yankees will have to kick in only 20% of every dollar they spend above the new threshold, $206 million. And with $148 million committed to next season, they have some money to play with.
So here’s how they should play it: Sign Machado, for whatever it takes. Put together a package to pry away Kluber, a two-time AL Cy Young winner, or Carrasco. Maybe it means sending Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield back to Cleveland, along with Miguel Andujar, who becomes expendable with Machado at third. And if you can find a fish to take Stanton’s albatross of a contract off your hands – maybe the Dodgers, who have done it before – you go all in on Harper, too.
And if there’s any money left over, buy yourself a Patrick Corbin for good measure.
Then reserve lower Broadway for a parade and the steps of City Hall for an awards ceremony in early November.
That’s the way things used to be done with the Yankees, and the way they still could be done, if Hal wants to do them.
You mean to tell me that after five years of fearless predictions that Bryce Harper would someday be a Yankee, now he’s suddenly no longer a fit? That sounds more like a misdirection play than anything else, an attempt to con Scott Boras into thinking there’s one fewer bidder than he expected.
And if there’s one thing that became a hallmark of Cashman’s Yankees, it’s that they never would telegraph their punches.
Maybe they’re trying to camouflage this one, too.
Or maybe these Yankees really have become Hal’s Yankees, the fiscally responsible, forward-looking, contentedly second-place Yankees.
Both Steinbrenner and Cashman say that’s not the case. This offseason will be their chance to prove it. Hal Steinbrenner’s DNA test is coming up. I can’t wait to see what it will show.