Hal Steinbrenner stood on a Zoom call Wednesday, said the position players carry "the majority of the responsibility" for the Yankees' playoff exit, and in the same session blessed a new multi-year deal for the general manager who has run this operation since 1998. That's an owner pointing the finger at the only people in the building who can't fire themselves.
Start with what he got right. The Yankees were awful in October. Tampa Bay swept them, and the bats went missing completely: a .130/.192/.239 line across three games, five total runs, a shutout in Game 1, both home runs off the bat of Ben Rice. That's miserable, and no front office swings those bats. Steinbrenner called the offense "detrimental," and the box scores back him up. The hitters stank.
But stopping there doesn't explain much. If the offense's October disappearance is the whole story, explain why it keeps happening to the same team under the same people. Three straight seasons have ended the same way: a World Series loss to the Dodgers in 2024, an ALDS exit to Toronto in 2025, and now a sweep by the Rays. Same general manager, the same field manager now in his ninth year, largely the same core. A lineup that goes cold at the same time of year, three years running, points to something the people building the roster have failed to fix.
And those people got rewarded. Brian Cashman reached agreement on a new deal. Aaron Boone is staying, with Steinbrenner saying flat out that the blame does "not" lie on Boone's shoulders. "Cash is great every season," the owner said, and praised the roster as good as any in baseball coming out of spring. Fine. If it was that good and still lost, who assembled the depth that couldn't cover when the stars went down?
Because they did go down. Aaron Judge wasn't available in the postseason. Giancarlo Stanton missed most of the year and was used only as a pinch hitter. Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham lost chunks of time. Health, depth, performance science, a plan for what happens when your best hitter can't play in October: those are front-office jobs. Steinbrenner wants the hitting judged on its own while the roster-building that left him thin gets a contract extension and a round of applause.
There's a smell to the whole thing. The player-blame and the Cashman endorsement arrived in the same breath, and only one of those groups has leverage. Players read this. Free agents read this. An owner who publicly hangs his clubhouse out to dry while shielding his executives is telling the whole sport exactly where the loyalty runs.
Then there's the "World Series or bust" line, which Steinbrenner repeated when pressed: "That's absolutely what we expect." He's also been out in public pushing for a hard salary cap, floating the idea that his costs should come down. You can't demand a title and campaign to spend less in the same month and expect anyone to take the mission statement seriously.
Trent Grisham struck out to end the season, and that image is the one Steinbrenner wants you to keep. Remember instead that the day the swing-and-miss got blamed, the people who keep handing these rosters to October got paid.
