Boone unsure if Yanks closed gap on Astros this offseason

TAMPA — For the third time in the last six years, the Yankees arrived at spring training off the heels of losing to the Astros in the ALCS.

Because of that, manager Aaron Boone was asked again on Wednesday whether the team had done enough this offseason to close the gap and how confident he was that the Yankees would have a better team this year.

“How much we’ve closed the gap, I don’t know,” Boone said on the day pitchers and catchers reported to George M. Steinbrenner Field. “We’ll see. We’re in February. We got a long way to go to even get that opportunity to find out if we get to play in the playoffs and have that crack again. I feel like that’s our expectation.

“There’s been some teams, namely the Astros, that have been a nemesis that have knocked us off a couple times. They’ve set the standard right now, certainly in the American League. But that said, we’ve got a bear of a division we’ve got to go through. In a lot of ways, a number of teams in the American League are better.”

The Yankees hope they are one of those teams and that they have improved off their 99-win season in 2022, even if they bring largely the same roster into 2023. While their most important move of the offseason was re-signing Aaron Judge to a nine-year, $360 million contract, their biggest addition was landing left-hander Carlos Rodon on a six-year, $162 million deal.

Other than that, they added reliever Tommy Kahnle, but lost Andrew Benintendi (who was injured during the ALCS) to free agency and did not add a left fielder on a major league deal to replace him.

The Yankees believe having DJ

LeMahieu healthy again will help, but just how much the rest of their offseason will move the needle against the Astros remains to be seen.

“We ran up against a bit of a buzz saw and we were a little depleted,” Boone said of getting swept in the ALCS. “That said, if we’re going to win it all, [if] we’re going to win the prize, we gotta find a way to get by these teams that in a given year really got it rolling on the mound.”