2024 is definitely the World Series or bankruptcy for the Yankees

Since the trade for Juan Soto, nothing has changed for the Yankees. This transfer, which was just as significant for them as Shohei Ohtani was for the Dodgers, was not the same for them: They did not make this trade in order to NOT participate in the World Series for the first time since 2009.

By any measure and by any circumstance, this season is either the World Series or a bust for the Yankees, despite all the times since 2009 when it was just stupid of them to still pretend that was a realistic mission statement, like they were still Joe Torres Yankees.

There have been moments this season when the Yankees have looked, without question, like the best team in baseball. That doesn’t change because the Dodgers beat them when they didn’t have Soto on the roster, and it doesn’t change because they just finished a series against the Orioles — who certainly don’t fear the Yankees — that easily could have been two wins out of three for the Yankees had Aaron Judge not left Wednesday night’s game after suffering a blow to the hand.

The Yankees have obviously gotten much better since their 82-80 record last season. They also performed admirably without Gerrit Cole. Soto, No. 22, was exactly who they expected. And fittingly, Judge was the Aaron Judge of 2022 and could have a chance at 60 again if he doesn’t get hurt. In addition, Giancarlo Stanton hasn’t been injured, at least not yet, and hit 18 home runs over the weekend, nearly helping the Yankees get back to the top in that one Orioles game they lost in overtime.

But there is no team in this sport that can win more now than the Yankees, and that includes the Dodgers, even after all the money the Dodgers spent on Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto; and even without Mookie Betts, who suffered a broken hand this week that Judge did not suffer.
Listen, Brian Cashman isn’t going to lose his job if the Yankees don’t win their first championship in 15 years just because Yankee fans have come to believe Cashman’s job security could survive a nuclear attack. He’s not going to take the blame if Cashman still hasn’t remembered how to put together a championship team. But Aaron Boone will.

Cashman has undoubtedly done an admirable job of patching up Humpty Dumpty after last season’s fourth-place finish, which was nearly the Yankees’ first winless season since before Joe Torre arrived. But Yankee fans know better than anyone how the team has shown early pace since the last World Series and what excellent frontrunners they were before falling short, and sometimes by a significant margin, of reaching the Canyon of Heroes.

That’s part of the Yankees’ current reality: who they are, not who they once were. Here’s a reality check: More than half the American League has been to the World Series since the Yankees last won the 40th championship in their great history. That was in 2003, when Aaron Boone led the Yankees to their sixth World Series with Joe Torre as manager. And although Cashman was general manager by then, the heart of this team – the Core Five, which still included Bernie Williams – was already in place when he became head of baseball operations on 161st Street. It’s not unfair to point that out. It’s just a fact of baseball in the Bronx, just like the Yankees putting together one winning season after another with Cashman in charge.

But since 2003, the Yankees have been to as many World Series as the White Sox, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Mets. And if the Yankees don’t make it back this season, if they don’t win at least their 41st championship, then Yankees history will continue, and that will be the longest time since Babe Ruth came to town over a century ago without them being part of an event like the Fall Classic that they seem to have invented.

Are they really in the first-class cabin of the 2024 season? You bet. They were hit early by Cole’s injury and have suffered other pitcher injuries recently as well, the most important, at least for now, to Clarke Schmidt, who had become a real horse for them. But it’s clear, and that means without wanting to overreact to how they performed against the Dodgers and Red Sox and now the Orioles, that Cashman has a lot of work to do if he wants his team to play all of October and into the first week of November.

They lack a true first baseman because Anthony Rizzo is injured. They are not getting much out of their second baseman Gleyber Torres, even though he should have done much better as a Yankee player than he has, like so many other overrated young players. Their catcher Jose Trevino was so exposed last weekend against the Red Sox that you wonder what took the Yankee opponents so long.

The trade deadline is still over a month away. Just how quickly perceptions can change over the course of a long season can be seen by looking at how quickly perceptions of the Yankees have changed in the last few weeks alone. But the young, talented, and spirited Orioles have absolutely no fear of the Yankees and just proved that again, standing 5-2 against them so far this season. And another fact is that the Yankees currently have a 10-12 record against the rest of the American League East. That’s why, for all the good work they’ve done and the way they looked like a force when Soto, Judge, and Stanton were knocking the ball around, they’re still in development.

They were on a roll until Soto suffered a sore forearm and the Dodgers nearly swept them. Then the Red Sox, trailing the Yankees and Orioles in the East by a long shot, ran like a 4×100 season the next weekend, including the game where they stole nine bases, which seems like a lot to me. Then the Orioles came to town. Judge got hit, the Yankees came back without him, forced overtime, and then lost the game for what felt like the second time. Then came a 17-5 Thursday and you thought the Orioles were still scoring runs after they got on the team bus.

We basically hit the halfway point of the season this weekend. The Yankees were a really good team in the first half. Even great at times. World Series or bust. The emphasis is on bust if they don’t finally get back. Seriously? If not now, then when?

REMEMBERING THE GREAT WILLIE MAYS: LUKA AND KYRIE ARE OUT OF MAGIC AND MIKE BREEN NEEDS HELP…

In the week of Willie Mays’ death, it is worth remembering that there was a time in this country when the highest compliment you could pay other great athletes was to say they had something of Willie Mays in them.

I talked about this recently, but one of the best comments I’ve ever heard about him came from Reggie Jackson, who told me the following on the occasion of Willie’s 92nd birthday:

“With Babe Ruth, you only ever wanted to see one thing. With Willie, it was different. You wanted to see him do everything.”
That’s how it was from the Polo Grounds onwards.

He was all of these things in his youth, even in the days of Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Roberto Clemente.

He was Michael Jordan in a 9-man sport instead of a 5-man sport, with that kind of talent and that kind of innate swag that you either have or you don’t.

There was a time when I was just starting out in this business and he was doing spring training with the Mets when I put him behind the batting cage one morning in St. Petersburg.

And Willie Mays said, “The sad thing is that people who have only seen me when I was old forget what I was like when I was young.”

And I said, “No, sir, they won’t.”

This week we were reminded that they never forgot, and Willie Mays was once again the player that old manager Johnny Keane always called “the magician”.

Wait a minute, maybe Luka and Kyrie aren’t the best backcourt players after all since they started shooting balls into the best baskets?

Here’s something I’m not sure will happen, but I hope happens to the Giants this year:

I hope Daniel Jones develops into the player the Giants still see and need him to be.

Because what other option is there for rooting?

Speaking of our local quarterbacks, it’s truly shameful that the Jets couldn’t organize their game plan around Aaron Rodgers’ quest for spiritual fulfillment.

Who will ESPN choose next that won’t be the long-term solution for its NBA broadcasts?

There is no better commentator than Mike Breen, not a single one who comments on major sporting events on television, and maybe next season they will stop adjusting the chair next to him and playing musical chairs.

I don’t know how Novak Djokovic can be ready for Wimbledon after his recent knee surgery, but I do know that things will be a lot more interesting when he actually shows up at the All-England Club on July 1st, simply because he’s always been a lot more interesting on the court.

There has been far too little talk about the fact that Joe Mazzulla has done the best job as coach in the entire league this season, hasn’t there?

Where did they find the judge for the Mar-a-Lago documents case – through some kind of dating app for judges?