4 people working hardest to ruin 2022 Yankees season

3. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette (TIED)

Spoiler alert for 2022: nobody’s keeping the Toronto Blue Jays out of the playoffs this time.

Hell, we’re still confused about how the brutal-to-watch 2021 version of the Yankees kept them out of the playoffs last time. Really shouldn’t have happened. Without August’s win streak, the Yanks finish like six or seven games back.

Toronto has reloaded for 2022, but however far they go, they’ll be carried by the big bat of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., as well as the big bat of Bo Bichette, but only whenever they’re playing the Yankees. We can trust Vladdy to bring the wood no matter who the opponent, but we can only guarantee Bichette will get loose if he’s spying pinstripes or road grays on the mound.

In the clutch last season, Bichette hit .340 with runners in scoring position (exemplary!), but against the Yankees overall, he smashed .342 with eight bombs in 19 games. Essentially, the shortstop clutched up whenever situations got tight, and treated every Yankees at-bat with the same gravitas. Against the Red Sox? .361 in 18 games with four homers. Alright! Less pop, but still effective.

Against the Rays? .187 with a pair of homers in 19 games. And … there’s your playoff race right there. If Bichette could treat Tampa like the Yanks and Sox, we’d have a chance. As of now, we’re torpedoed.

Guerrero Jr.? Coming off the worst season of his young career, the kid posted 6.8 WAR and 48 bombs as a defense-limited first baseman in 2021, near-impossible totals for someone that’s theoretically garnering almost all of his value with the bat. He terrorized nearly everyone with the bat, hitting .315 with a 1.050 OPS with RISP and posted OPS marks of 1.214, .971, and .951 against the Sox, Yanks and Rays, respectively.

He’s likely only getting better. And, as long as Bichette figures out how to pound the baseball equally well against Tampa, the Yankees still have a chance to sneak in over the Rays and Red Sox.

You know how the cookie crumbles here, though. Somehow, the stuck-in-the-mud Yanks will be the ones left on the outside looking in after Toronto realizes their potential this season. Because the Bombers’ roster got worse this offseason! Thanks in large part to…

2. Hal Steinbrenner

It’s Prince Hal, though really any one of the three men in the above photo could be singled out here as an example of being stuck in their ways.

Remember how Steinbrenner convinced some reporters that his master plan of sitting out free agency and waiting for the dust to settle after the lockout was actually a stroke of genius? Well … it’s the end of January, the Yankees have holes at every position, and the most recent decision we all watched get finalized was the call to tender contracts to anyone and everyone, including players the Yanks have made it very clear they don’t want.

Could’ve used Luke Voit and Anthony Rizzo in tandem last year. Didn’t! Now, Voit’s still here, which means the team hopes against hope they can trade him for the Milwaukee Brewers’ No. 42 prospect. Very much worth our while.

Place blame on Brian Cashman all you want — and Cash is completely at fault for continuing to recommend Aaron Boone be hitched to him, which will likely turn out the way we fear it will. But Cashman doesn’t draw up the budgets. Cashman isn’t the one who decides that one Gerrit Cole is enough for an entire offseason, leaving the Yankees woefully short on offense. Cashman isn’t the one who deems the Giancarlo Stanton trade both necessary and prohibitive for all future spending. Cashman isn’t the one who won’t entertain Carlos Correa this offseason, or who has made sure the Yankees can’t be called cheap, but won’t spend that little bit more to get over the hump.

That’s Hal, and if he exits the 2021-22 offseason without a viable shortstop, this will be his masterpiece of incompetence.

1. Rob Manfred

Hey, uh, are we going to play a season in 2022? Because that would be a pretty interesting way to ruin a season.

MLB’s ownership made it clear this week that they’d be willing to sacrifice games in the name of charging to the finish line with something resembling their CBA proposal. Correct us if we’re wrong, but an entity that loved baseball would probably prefer to avoid that at all costs.

Rob Manfred does not love baseball very much. He’d love for it to be over quicker and to look better in nationally-televised showcases than it does on a sleepy August evening in Baltimore. He wants runners on second as soon as he can get them. He wants 14 teams in the playoffs, followed by a playoff selection show, followed by 16 teams in the playoffs the next year. He’s the one who’s clearly flirting with a neutral-site World Series, neutering the Yankees’ home field advantage once and for all. He’s the one messing with the baseballs while shrouded in secrecy, taking Gio Urshela, Gleyber Torres and DJ LeMahieu out of their rhythms.

Oh, and wait! He’s the one who changed the Spider Tack rules mid-stream, flipped Gerrit Cole’s life around, and helped tear Tyler Glasnow’s UCL.

Also, not for nothing, but he really wants you to hear all about how his crown jewel David Ortiz’s positive steroid test might’ve been a little weird actually. But no one else’s.

But, perhaps most frustratingly of all, he’s the one with the master plan to kneecap MLB’s 2022 season before it ever begins, which would mark the third straight Yankees season following the Cole signing that’s been at least partially derailed by something completely beyond the team’s control.

Couldn’t have happened to a better Commish. We don’t deserve it, though.

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