Palladino: Cashman's Offseason Strategy Has Put Yankees In This Hole
By Ernie Palladino
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They have three players hitting over .250 and two of them come off the bench.
Nobody's hitting with runners in scoring position.
The power guys are hitting a notch above the bottom third of all of baseball.
And the record?
Oy.
So when and why, exactly, did the Yankees turn into the Mets, circa 2014?
General manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Girardi need to figure that out, and pronto, because if they don't, the Yanks' final record is liable to look a lot like the Mets' that year. And if you don't remember that gem of a season, here's a numerical reminder: 79.
That's 79 wins.
The difference is, for the Mets of that era, finishing three games below .500 represented a small step in the right direction. They had been losing for a long time.
For the Yanks, a losing season would equal utter disaster. Remember, they're a franchise that hasn't gone sub-.500 since 1992, when the last of those truly bad squads finished fourth in the division at 76-86.
They may not have gotten to the World Series since 2009, but finishing on the good side of .500 has never been a problem.
Not until now. Maybe.
Sure, it's early. But it can get late awfully quick in these parts, and the 8-16 mark after Tuesday's 4-1 loss at Camden Yards left on a frayed thread whatever patience executives and fans had. With 14 of their 27 remaining May games on the road, putting together a bunch of series wins to get back to even by June won't be an easy task.
The answers come in offense, however. And that is where Cashman needs to understand exactly how the Yanks got into this predicament.
It isn't hard. Just look to the offseason.
MORE: Yankees' Cashman On WFAN: 'I'm Getting Tired Of Watching This'
He made a big splash in that for-a-song trade for Aroldis Chapman. Great pickup for the bullpen. But, except for the swap that brought Starlin Castro and Aaron Hicks, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to the offense.
It's also worth remembering here that, even when Chapman does re-emerge May 9 from his suspension for violating the league's domestic violence policy, he won't do the Yanks much good if they can't get him a lead. And right now, leads have been hard to come by for Girardi's gang.
Can't lead if you can't score, and all that. Castro is one of the two regulars who are actually hitting a bit. He's down to .300 after Tuesday's 0-for-4, while Brian McCann is plugging along at .269. But the fact that they have just three homers each says more about McCann struggling than Castro hitting.
Hicks? He's hitting a juiceless .077 in limited appearances. And Chase Headley, the third baseman Cashman decided not to replace with a free agent, ended the Baltimore game at .147 with no extra-base hits. He was dropped to ninth in the order for a third time, the second in four days.
Headley sits last among the 105 qualifiers for the AL batting title. But he's not alone. Seven of his teammates join him in the lower half of the list.
That bleeds over to their .203 BA with runners in scoring position, good for 28th in the league.
The pitching has started to suffer for it.
Cashman's radio silence during free agency appears a mistake at this point. So is Aaron Judge's continuing Triple-A status.
After the Yankees took one step deeper into the AL East cellar, with just one win better than baseball's worst team, Atlanta, they headed back to their hotel Tuesday with some major work ahead of them. It's a good bet that some of the answers, at least on offense, lie beyond the current roster.
As Cashman searches for answers, he might start with a little introspection.
He needs to change things up, change his thinking, before the darkness comes.
Follow Ernie on Twitter at @ErniePalladino
