Sometimes, a team, a general manager, a manager — anyone involved in the workings of a franchise — can carry equity with fans from one year into the next. Sometimes, there’s a degree of patience that remains intact because of past results, a tinge of optimism from a year that fell short shifting over.
If the Yankees possessed any of that after their run to the World Series in 2024, most of it evaporated with an exit in the ALDS last year — and the last bit likely disappeared when the Yankees opted to essentially run it back with their roster this year. Marquee free agents signed elsewhere. Cody Bellinger re-signing in The Bronx served as their lone splash, but even that one felt more necessary than intriguing by the time late January rolled around. By their inaction this offseason, owner Hal Steinbrenner, general manager Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone suggested that they thought the Yankees were good as constructed, that they could rely on a strong rotation and Aaron Judge and a breakout or two to make it back to the postseason.
It’s a risky proposition. A slow start could lead to more chatter externally — on talk shows, from fans, in social media posts — about the futures of Cashman and Boone, something they’ve certainly experienced before. It could lead to more questions about whether their window to win with Judge, a generational talent with one glaring void on his career résumé, has closed.
The cure to that: a vintage strong start by the Yankees, something they’ve pieced together in recent years that allowed them to create a sizable gap atop the AL East and hold off any dips over the final four months of the season.
