If there’s ever been a reason to believe that youth and flair in baseball rejuvenates the soul, just take a listen to Hal Steinbrenner’s voice.
The Yankees’ owner spoke with Mike Francesa on WFAN Radio Thursday afternoon, expressing his enthusiasm toward the franchise’s fresh new look. While most fans expect to see a playoff contender emerge in the coming years, Steinbrenner, like usual, isn’t thinking too far ahead.
“I think we’re ready to contend, now things have to go somewhat right, obviously,” Steinbrenner told Francesa. “The young players that did well last year have to do well again, the young players that haven’t proven themselves need to, and we’ve got to stay healthy. We shortened the game by going out and getting [Aroldis] Chapman, and there’s some unpredictability in our starting rotation, but we’ll just have to see. We feel like we’ve done what we can do with the bullpen to try to mitigate that.
“We know what our fans expect. Our fans expect to win. We haven’t made the playoffs the way everybody’s used to, but I was also around in the early-90’s working up there, and we weren’t doing so well then either. You’re going to have ups and downs, but if we get this core of good young players and supplement that with good veterans every year, we’re going to be back again, and hopefully in a hurry, maybe as soon as this year, we’ll see.”
Since 2012–which was the last time the Yankees have played in a postseason series–no team has eclipsed the 90-win mark during the regular season. Steinbrenner can’t guarantee that this streak will be snapped in 2017, but he did confess that last year’s 84-win club isn’t on the same level as the group of players he sees now.
“I’ve always thought it needs to be a good mix of veterans and young kids. But it can’t be one of the other. It’s got to be both,” Steinbrenner said. “That gives you some flexibility from a payroll standpoint. It brings you some youth. It also brings you leadership and mentorship with the veterans. I think with the kind of young talent we have, not just at the major league level with [Greg] Bird and [Gary] Sanchez and hopefully [Aaron] Judge and [Luis] Severino, guys we have in Double-A, Triple-A, you know, Tyler Wade, obviously [Gleyber] Torres, [Jorge] Mateo, we’ve got a lot of good young talent. That could be a good pipeline for years to come.”
So, it seems like the Yankees have all the pieces–well, unless they don’t. When asked if the front office would look into potential trade deadline deals this summer, Steinbrenner left every door open.
“Any time in July, we’re going to look at every possibility,” he said. “We’ve done it every year. If my family feels that we’re close [to the playoffs] and Cash feels that we’re close and we need a piece, we’ve never been afraid to go out and get it, and that’s never going to change.”
The Yankees open the 2017 regular season at Tropicana Field on Sunday afternoon against the Tampa Bay Rays.
You can listen to Steinbrenner’s full interview on WFAN here.
If you want to connect with Tom Hanslin, email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @tomhanslin.
