The New York Yankees’ 2023 season was a “failure on every level,” said owner Hal Steinbrenner in Tampa on Thursday, and the organization has to wear that. Literally: “Look at me!” he said. “Look at the bags under my eyes. There’s pressure on all of us, man. We’re feeling it, and that’s a good thing. We deserve to feel it. And that’s gonna make us stronger this year.”
In a 15-minute conversation with reporters two days before spring training games begin, Steinbrenner emphasized half a dozen times that 2023’s effort, in which the Yankees finished in fourth place, 19 games out of first, and missed the playoffs for the first time since ’16, was “embarrassing” and would fuel the organization this season.
He said he had never seen so many players report to camp early; spring training for that group, he said, started six weeks ago. “And I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he said. “These guys really believe they have something to prove, and they’re ready to do it.”
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Maybe not entirely ready. Steinbrenner insisted he believes the roster as currently constructed is championship-caliber, but he also said, “We are not done trying to improve this team.” He declined to respond to reports that the Yankees have made an offer to reigning National League Cy Young winner Blake Snell, but he did acknowledge that he wanted to add pitching depth, especially after the Yankees gave up four pitchers in December to acquire left fielder Juan Soto from the San Diego Padres.
“I want to add to this year's roster if the opportunity arises, because we are always going to continue to try to improve,” Steinbrenner said. “No team’s perfect, right? There's no perfect team. So there's always work to be done. And you know, Opening Day is not pencils down, right? [The July 30 trade deadline] is pencils down. So we’ve got a lot of time during the season, if we have a need, to fill it, and we're going to just keep exploring possibilities and considering things.”
The top remaining free agent pitchers are Snell and former Yankee Jordan Montgomery, who are both represented by superagent Scott Boras. (Boras’s other top two clients, center fielder Cody Bellinger and third baseman Matt Chapman, are also unsigned.)
Pitching depth would be nice. But the Yankees will only go as far as their offense carries them, and Steinbrenner knows it.
“Too many of our good position players just did not play up to their potential,” he said of last season. “We couldn't score runs. And we had a near zero run differential the entire year, and you're not going to win a World Series with that. You’re just not.”
The Yankees’ two most prominent players, captain and outfielder Aaron Judge and ace Gerrit Cole, told Steinbrenner over the winter that they saw room for improvement in the way the team conveyed information, so the front office added a coach whose job is exclusively to serve as a liaison, and they hope that will help.
But these are the Yankees, and in the end, they are about stars. They hope Soto, who at 25 has drawn comparisons to Ted Williams, will bolster a lineup that was too often unable to adapt. Soto will make $31 million this year, his final season before he can be a free agent, and the trade pushed the team payroll over $300 million, well past the top luxury-tax threshold.
Steinbrenner has said he does not believe he should need a $300 million payroll to win a title, and “I still agree with that,” he said. But he also wants a good night’s sleep.
