The New York Yankees faithful saw this coming but were just waiting to see it become official. After the team's 7-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the Yankees were officially eliminated from postseason contention. This is the first time that the team failed to qualify for the postseason since 2016.
Now, the fanbase waits to see what will come of the offseason. What will the team do to improve the roster? Will the scouting and analytics departments get overhauled? Will manager Aaron Boone and/or general manager Brian Cashman get shown the door?
While speaking with reporters on Sunday, Yankees superstar and captain Aaron Judge opened up about the failed season. Judge reiterated what he said in the past and that the season is a failure if they don't win a championship. Judge also said there needs to be a lot of changes and fixes in the organization. When asked about what specifically needs to be changed, Judge said, "We'll keep that in-house."
Aaron Judge wants to see a lot of changes made by Yankees after failing to make postseason
Judge made some more interesting comments, as he told reporters that he intends to be part of "internal talks" about what the Yankees should do this offseason. Judge's comments come at the 3:00 mark of the video in the YES Network tweet below:
"I got some ideas, but it's going to all of us," said Judge. "It's going to be talking with everybody in the organization. All the way down to the minor league staff all the way to the top. There's a lot of stuff we need to work on and improve. But like I said there's a lot of bright spots that we've seen with the young guys coming up and this is the time to build on that and start building our next foundation."
A lot went wrong for the Yankees that torpedoed their season. The moves that Cashman made in recent years didn't pan out and resulted in the team going on a horrid stretch this summer, highlighted by the team's inability to hit. The analytics and scouting factor into that as well. Then, there's the medical staff, as the team dealt with multiple injuries this season, including some newcomers on the team.
As for the plan this offseason, it is all dependent on what owner Hal Steinbrenner wants to do. What is known is that Steinbrenner said he will be bringing in an outside company to assess the team's analytics and baseball operations departments. From there, it will be up to Steinbrenner to see what changes he wants to make.
Cashman is about to complete the first year of his new four-year contract last winter. As for Boone, he is under contract for one more season. With a frustrated fanbase, Steinbrenner will have to decide whether he wants to bring both back, or decide to move on from one to appease said fans. Either way, he will have to prepare an explanation when he makes a decision.
As the postseason will begin on Oct. 3, Yankees fans will be patiently waiting to see what changes begin to trickle in, if any, throughout the winter.
