Winter meetings: Yankees hope to take a step (or a few steps) toward a title

In life, as the saying goes, you’re either moving forward or backward.

It works similarly in sports.

You’re either moving toward a championship or away from one.

After falling to the Blue Jays in four games in their American League Division Series, the Yankees have not exactly set baseball’s winter hot stove afire in their attempt to move toward their first championship since 2009.

Nothing unusual there.

Even with two of the Yankees’ rivals in the AL East already having made significant strides to get better — the Red Sox traded for Sonny Gray, a bust with the Yankees but a good pitcher everywhere else, and the suddenly all-in Blue Jays signed Dylan Cease to a seven-year, $210 million free-agent deal to bolster their rotation — the winter meetings, which begin Sunday in Orlando, generally are the jumping-off point for an offseason’s most noteworthy moves.

As for the Yankees, their biggest move to this point was one made by a player. Centerfielder Trent Grisham, to the surprise of some, passed up free agency by accepting the $22.025 million qualifying offer.

There have been other roster tweaks, including exercising a $2.85 million club option for lefthander Tim Hill — an easy call — and bringing back valuable lefty swingman Ryan Yarbrough on a one-year deal.

There  also were the cosmetic throw-'em-under-the-bus moves with the coaching staff. Longtime bullpen coach Mike Harkey, a loyal organizational soldier for nearly two decades and a super-popular figure among players, especially pitchers, during that time, is gone. First-base coach Travis Chapman’s contract wasn’t renewed. Chapman, since hired by the Tigers, perhaps was not as popular as Harkey but still is  a solid coach.

During a Zoom news conference on Nov. 24, managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner unintentionally took the humorous route in referencing a change “coaching-wise” to address the club’s “baserunning mistakes” throughout 2025, mishaps he characterized as “not good.”

“We’re going to expect better results this coming year,” he added.

Curiously, that’s a topic that Aaron Boone, entering his ninth year as manager, typically greets with pursed lips and clipped answers when asked to address. Those responses often are dismissive of what he insinuates is an unfair, uninformed media-driven “narrative.” Likely to follow is a non-specific citation of the club’s sacrosanct “internal numbers” supposedly demonstrating that, no, really, the Yankees are one of the best baserunning teams in the game.

Of the loss to the Blue Jays, Steinbrenner said: “You can’t pin this on Aaron Boone, that’s for sure . . . It’s on the players’ shoulders, period.”

Fine. That's fair.

In the end, it’s always about the performance of the players.

Still, poor baserunning and an overall lack of playing the game instinctively well at times have been as much a part of Boone’s managerial tenure as Aaron Judge's home runs. The notion that throwing the first-base coach overboard is an automatic fix for the kind of mental mistakes that have been an organizational issue for years — from the big leagues down through the lowest levels of the minors — is like attributing the unplanned finish of the Titanic’s voyage across the Atlantic to an incomplete wine list in first class.

The buck on the baserunning blunders, by the way, doesn’t stop wholly with Boone, either. It’s about what the organization chooses to emphasize at all levels.

It nonetheless was odd to hear the owner lay none of the blame at Boone’s feet for another disappointing October yet imply the papered-over-for-years issue of slipshod baserunning somehow stopped with Chapman.

Regardless, as Steinbrenner noted, it’s about the players. And entering these winter meetings, the Yankees need more than a few of them to plug some significant roster holes.

With Steinbrenner wanting to bring his payroll under $300 million — or certainly under the $319 million he spent last year — it is not yet clear what financial parameters general manager Brian Cashman is working under to fill those holes. They are holes, of course, that can be addressed in ways beyond free agency, and that doesn't necessarily need to happen in Orlando.

As Cashman likes to say, it isn’t until the July trade deadline when it  truly is “pencils down” for a season’s roster.

But the winter meetings, during which the Yankees have secured such players as Juan Soto and Max Fried in recent years, will go a long way toward showing how much closer the franchise is moving toward elusive title No. 28.

Or away from it.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.