Yankees and Major League Baseball arrive at a crossroads

The Yankees spent the last two years transforming from an old club to a new one. Now they stand ready to make a seismic shift in the sport, a game going through significant changes of its own.

Yankees fans and writers, last year at this time, felt a lot of optimism and hope so. Today, after a season of home runs and high fives, the vibe is more of surety and hell-yeah.

And for good reason. That 2017 team wasn’t the real Yankees, it was the tryout for the 2018 Yankees. Because, while some players arrived ahead of schedule, two of their best have not yet made it. Plus, management knew they were going into the season with far too many underperforming players.

Finally, while they had some money to spend last year, they were never going to have enough to compete with win-now teams. That ended up costing them a shot at the World Series.

Think of how so many of those factors combined in the postseason. Three big pitchers who were traded, and later appeared in the playoffs: Sonny Gray, Justin Verlander and Yu Darvish.

The Yankees opted for the least expensive of the three. They acquired the very good and still young Sonny Gray because they were not a win-now team. Gray made them better, but a big part of his value is that he is young and under team control for two more years.

Additionally, Gray cost the Yanks less than two million for his time in 2017 and roughly ten million the next two years.

Meanwhile, the Astros and Dodgers picked up Justin Verlander and Yu Darvish, respectively. Darvish cost the Dodgers roughly twelve million, but Verlander was much more expensive. Not only did the Astros agree to pay around seven million for last year, but also close to $40 million over the next two seasons.

Show me the money

As you know, the teams finished in order of how their free agent pitchers did: Astros first, Dodgers second, Yankees third. It is conceivable that, had the Yankees picked up Verlander, they would have won the World Series

But they didn’t do that, and the view from here makes clear the reasons. Darvish, who was my first choice for the Yankees to trade for, is already a free agent. And his cringeworthy performance in the WS made me glad he was not melting down for the Yankees.

Had they taken the gamble I wanted them too, they would be in a worse position now as his prospect package would have been more significant.

Verlander, meanwhile, has already paid for his contract but that was never a sure thing. No one who values the future of the franchise wanted Brian Cashman to trade for an aging, expensive player with a very checkered last five seasons and the propensity to break down.

That seems more likely now that he has had to make a deep playoff run.

No, Verlander never fit into the plans of the 2017 Yankees, or beyond. But that’s all done now. Today, the Yankees face a fascinating crossroads for the organization, and for baseball itself.

We’ll start with a look at how the game itself is changing, starting this offseason, and then at how the Yankees are set to thrive in this new framework.