The Yankees Have a Roster; Philosophy Dilemma

Consistent pitching, improved offense, and progression to the mean have helped the Yankees turn their season around after an abysmal beginning.

A stretch of 13 wins in 18 games, including six straight, got them back to .500, but they’ve since lost two of three. Some lackluster baseball was bound to follow in the wake of such a run– regression to the mean.

I’m not going to panic after a few losses following such an extended string of good baseball. It’s hard to get wrapped up in a sample size as small as a couple of games, but these latest losses have brought some of that miserable April feeling back to the surface.

Despite righting the ship somewhat, it’s still clear that the Yankees’ roster is mostly a hodgepodge of flawed players, some young and some old, that seemingly doesn’t mix as a unit.

Carlos Beltran and Alex Rodriguez are two players that should both be full-time DHs at this point in their careers. With Rodriguez back from his hamstring strain, Beltran had to relinquish the DH duties and return to right field.  A-Rod has compiled a slash line of just .188/.261/.450. Now the Yankees are playing a right fielder who’s had a hard time fielding the position, and a designated hitter who’s had a hard time hitting. (Prior to his injury, Rodriguez had started to hit: two of his six home runs came in the three games preceding the hamstring tweak.)

(Both players homered on Friday night, throwing water on the hot take that their combined 0-for-8 on Thursday was in any way tied to this position adjustment. I wasn’t buying that pregame fodder, but it’s important to realize, either way, one game doesn’t end the argument. A-Rod has a long way to go in turning his season around, and Beltran will probably never be more suited to playing the field than to DHing.)

Mark Teixeira‘s neck is barking again, and he’s day-to-day after receiving another cortisone injection. Joe Girardi is now in the unenviable position of having to choose between poor-fielding Dustin Ackley and backup catcher Austin Romine to spell Teixeira. This isn’t great, either, but A-Rod could have been an option at first if he were willing to restart that short-lived experiment. But since he’s uncomfortable doing so, the roster is even less flexible.

The front office’s philosophy is just as jumbled and it probably explains the makeup of the team. The Yankee brass wants the team to win both now and in the future. This thinking doesn’t jive with the team as currently constructed. Their veterans are too old, brittle, underperforming, or some combination of the three. Their young players are talented but not high-impact. The potential high-impact players that they do have are stuck in Triple-A due in part to the logjams on the 25-man roster created by the franchise’s ambiguous approach to its future.

Memorial Day weekend is the first tentpole of the baseball season, and Brian Cashman has to figure out the proper ways to navigate these logjams and this incongruous roster. He can opt to stay the course, hoping that what we’ve seen this month is more than just window dressing. Or he can look to trade some assets for quality prospects, which, in turn gives guys like Aaron Hicks, Rob Refsnyder, Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez chances.

With this group of players, two things are for certain: both options cannot coexist, and neither can the two disjointed aspects of the Yankees’ philosophy.