New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner met with the media on Wednesday and discussed what he thought went wrong in the postseason.
While fans are blaming Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman for another season without a championship, Steinbrenner defended them. He made sure to let everyone know he thought the players were the reason the team failed.
"(Boone) got us to the playoffs, and the bottom line is the players didn't live up to their end of the bargain in the playoffs," Steinbrenner told reporters on Wednesday.
Specifically, Steinbrenner called out his position players for not putting up more runs.
"I believe we absolutely had a team that was capable of winning a championship," Steinbrenner said on Wednesday. "I was disappointed, quite frankly, with the offense throughout the course of the year. As a whole, even though there were some bright spots, and (Ben) Rice had a great year, etc., as a whole they were very inconsistent when it came to run scoring. They were inconsistent for long periods of time."
"That is certainly one part of the organization I'm going to be looking at from top to bottom," he added. "This is twice now that the offense has not come through."
Against the Boston Red Sox, the offense scored 18 runs in two games. Against the Tampa Bay Rays, they managed just five runs across three games. As a whole, the offense scored the ninth-most runs in baseball and was tied for 11th in OPS.
Steinbrenner also said that the pitching staff was the reason the team made the postseason, and he had nothing bad to say about them.
To be fair, the Yankees were without Aaron Judge for most of the year, which obviously had a huge impact on the offense. However, that did not change Steinbrenner's assessment of his team's ability to score runs.