The New York Yankees are in the middle of a 17-year championship drought. The longer they go without winning their 28th title, the less fans and the media seem to hear from the team's owner, Hal Steinbrenner.
In what has become the annual postmortem presser after falling short again, Steinbrenner showed up. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to realize he may as well have stayed off everybody's Zoom screen, because he ended up contradicting his main points.
A walking contradiction
Steinbrenner played back the hits, saying the Yankees deploy a championship-or-bust mentality, while also undermining that sentiment by citing that 90+ wins and another ALDS exit are still examples of success.
Steinbrenner also pinned the blame on the players while also praising Brian Cashman for doing a brilliant job putting the team together. It's almost as if Steinbrenner can't commit to the things that once made the team great, because that would mean he and the rest of the front office would eventually have to hold themselves accountable.
Then there's the impending lockout. Fans of a certain age may find it wild that one of the names behind a potential salary cap is a "Steinbrenner." According to the Yankees' owner, he helped build the initial proposal for the cap when The Athletic's Chris Kirschner asked about it.
"I helped craft the proposals that we have given at the bargaining table, and I support those proposals in their entirety," Steinbrenner said (h/t Everything Yankees on Twitter). "That should answer your question."
More than words at a press conference—one hidden behind a Zoom screen for some reason, despite being at Yankee Stadium—Steinbrenner's issue is his lack of proactiveness over the last 17 years. Throughout his tenure as owner, the Yankees have one championship, and Brian Cashman's job hasn't been in jeopardy once.
Then there's Aaron Boone. Boone has just three division titles, one World Series appearance, and no championships. The way he's skirted getting sacked makes it seem like his resume is more illustrious than it is.
Steinbrenner praised Boone while again blaming the players for what went wrong.
"I thought Boone managed a good season, especially with the pitching staff," Steinbrenner said (h/t SNY Yankees). "He 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."
The three horseman of the mediocre apocalypse
It would be one thing if this regime were only a few years old. Cashman has held the GM title since 1998. Boone has been with the Yankees since 2018.
These Yankees are well beyond pinning their recent follies on the kind of bad luck that sometimes comes with small sample sizes. The sample size of mediocrity is quite large. This team hasn't been able to get over the hump, and much of that is because Steinbrenner has been inactive when it comes to change.
It feels like Steinbrenner's Yankees would rather keep rolling out the same type of squad year after year, with the same front office leading the way. They can't be surprised when the results are the same and then wonder where it all went wrong.
This era of the Yankees is close to two decades without a championship. That's a lifetime compared to the droughts other teams have faced, when factoring in the expectations that come from playing for the Yankees—in this case, owning them.
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