DETROIT – There is only wreckage now, the detritus of having every weakness exposed, of falling apart so completely as to make it difficult to see the outline of a major league team, much less the New York Yankees.
Over the coming days and weeks, Yankees management must assess the meaning of that wreckage, of a humiliating ALCS sweep by the Tigers.
Normally, Brian Cashman’s front office would favor the big picture: That over six months – with all their offensive issues – the Yankees did finish with the second-most runs in the majors, the best record in the AL and a Division Series victory. Cashman has always valued assembling a roster to attain the posteason and then hope his club was healthy and playing well enough to do something come October.
PHOTOS: YANKEES’ DEJECTION AFTER ALCS SWEEP
But it would be a mistake to dismiss these playoffs, specifically the past four games, as small-sample irrelevance. It was instead a microcosm of their problems made clearer under the microscope of the playoffs. What was wrong this October threatens to become more debilitating from April-to-September without repair.
For the Yankees are at a teetering point with too much age and too little difference-making youth coming, between do-they-or-don’t-they decisions on long-term commitments to postseason duds Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson, between having sizeable needs and yet a commitment to lowering payroll beneath the $189 million luxury-tax threshold for the 2014 season.
In other words, as large an issue as what to do with Alex Rodriguez feels like today – and it is massive – it is hardly the whole docket after an 8-1 thumping on Thursday in ALCS Game 4 brought closure to the 2012 Yankee season.
The Yankees never led in this series, not for one inning of the 39 played. And they scored in just three. They managed six runs in four games or as many as Detroit DH Delmon Young drove in by himself. This was the third straight postseason in which Young has killed the Yankees, which means he has a lot in common with Nick Swisher.
Thursday, the Yanks were undermined by their ace, CC Sabathia, who gave up six runs on 11 hits in just 3 2-3 innings – though the shabby defense of Eric Chavez and Mark Teixeira certainly didn’t help. But the Yankees’ pitching was almost uniformly good in this postseason and the Yanks were nevertheless 3-6.
The Yankees are dispersing to their homes because they hit poorly. And so while the Yanks do face, for example, deciding how much to spend to try to keep free agent Hiroki Kuroda and whether Rafael Soriano is going to opt out of his contract, and whether elder statesmen Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera are coming back and at what cost, it is an offense that enfeebled them this postseason that demands the most work this offseason.
Starting with this: Do they want to change philosophy? The Yanks hit the most homers in their history (245), which helped them to 95 wins and to negate much of their clutch malfeasance. But the all-or-nothing approach left them a) too susceptible in the playoffs to better pitchers armed with precise scouting reports exploiting glaring weaknesses and b) without the diversification to score in other ways.
Of the Yanks’ six ALCS runs, five came via homer. Before cooling over the past few games, Raul Ibanez had strong at-bats. But the Yanks’ best hitters throughout the playoffs were non-homer threats Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki and, in the past two games, Eduardo Nunez. Meanwhile, the power hitters brought the Yanks down one futile hack after another.
Can the Yanks find a middle ground in which they can still capitalize on their short right-field porch without becoming all-in slaves to it?
Part of that will be about future construction. There seems little doubt they will let Swisher and his pathetic postseason history go to free agency. He doubled in the only Yankee run, but the Yanks trailed 6-0 at that point. Earlier, with Game 4 still in doubt, he struck out with runners on to fall to 1-for-34 with runners in scoring position in his playoff career.
The Yanks are going to have to determine if they can live with the soap opera and fade of A-Rod or if there is a team that will obtain the game’s most polarizing player if they eat tons of the $114 million he has left. With the catastrophe of A-Rod’s 10-year contract, do they venture long for Granderson and Cano, both of whom let the Yanks down mightily this October?
Do they bring Ichiro back? Expand the role of Nunez? Trust that Jeter has game after a fractured ankle? Think Teixeira can stay healthy and productive?
The season ends, the huge questions are just beginning.