Yankees Embrace "R" Word

All throughout the years we lived in New York (like when this blog was created), my Yankees team---stocked with future-Hall of Famers like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera---was always striving for the World Series, and we Yankee fans became unrealistic in our demands year after year.

Steinbrenner, the Boss, needed to win, as did Bernie and Paulie and Tino and Mo and Jeet. We rarely even had "bad" years. If we squeaked into the playoffs as the Wild Card, it was, eh, okay.

This is how spoiled we were: from Derek Jeter's first year as a regular in 1996---when I was in high school---until 2014, when Jeter retired, the Yankees missed the playoffs twice.

The "R" word about which I mention in the title of this post is "rebuild".

For most of my adult life, the Yankees have never even acknowledged that the word "rebuild" existed. The Yankees didn't rebuild. They re-upped. The Mets rebuilt. The Blue Jays rebuilt. The Pirates and Royals seemed to be in a constant state of rebuilding.

But not the Yankees. Hell, even our arch nemesis, the Red Sox, didn't really rebuild as much as restock. While the Knicks have been a mess for over a decade now, they're more of a joke. The Jets and Giants have more leeway to "retool", mostly, in the Giants case because they won two Super Bowls with their current QB, (and for the Jets it's because, well, they're the Jets), but the saying was always NEW YORK TEAMS CANNOT REBUILD.

Unless they're the Mets.

But the Yankees? They weren't an ahead-of-the-curve team like the A's or Rays, able to contend because of their personnel smarts. They made the most money, and used it to get any player they wanted.

Until that plan stopped working.

And even then they were able to contend.

This year they have been mediocre at best--nice pitching but not so nice hitting, leading to a .500 winning percentage.

This year, at the trade-deadline, for the first time I can ever remember, they were bonafide sellers, and their general manager, Brian Cashman, proved he can kick ass at that as well.

He turned their three best players (one of which was a fire-balling, wife-beating Cubano) into 11(!) prospects, many of which project to be excellent. He also traded a couple of other guys for some other pieces, but the important part was the haul for Chapman, Miller and Beltran.

The Yankees, in my modern memory, have always sent their prospects away for the Available Big Game Player---but not this year. Their farm system, usually shite but happily mediocre this year, has vaulted into the top three in the league--if not claiming the top spot.

Lookout folks, the Yankees may have just created a juggernaut four years down the road, and they did it with kids, natural-like.