2016 Yankees Thread: Judging By The Future, It's Right Now

[The War Report]

You make me look like a blind homer breh.

Act like The Yankees haven't moved top pitching prospects to the bullpen, brehs. FOH!

 

[Mantle Drunk]

I know it's spring training but I had high hopes for lindgren but dudes looked like a scrub so far in his young career.

 

[Grifter]

Refsnyder and Torreyes with the double steal. Judge with a 3-run bomb

 

[Mantle Drunk]

Mateo lost his helmet rounding the bases after his HR.

 

[GunRanger]

That 80 speed

he's making the team right

 

[The War Report]

he's making the team right

He's getting more seasoning in the minors.

 

[K-Apps]

Matthews: Who is Hal Steinbrenner?

Who is Hal Steinbrenner?

TAMPA, Fla. -- I come in search of Hal Steinbrenner.

Physically, the man is not hard to find, just one floor up from the press box of the spring training home of the New York Yankees in a stadium that bears his father's name.

But who exactly is Harold Zieg Steinbrenner, the quiet, reticent son of George M. Steinbrenner, a man everyone thought they knew even if they had never met him?

He is the man who for nearly the past decade has held the destiny of the Yankees in his hands and in his family's checkbook.

But to Yankees fans, he has remained a cipher, largely out of the public eye except, most dismayingly, when issuing what has seemingly turned into an annual ritual, the October apology for another season ended too soon. I have covered his team for seven years and never had more than a passing conversation with him.

I find Hal Steinbrenner at his desk in a spacious office overlooking left field at the ballpark colloquially known as The Boss in honor of his late father, who died in 2010. In a display case are several of the World Series championship trophies won by the Yankees since George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1973. At the conference table where we will conduct our interview sits the triangular folded American flag, in a wooden display case, that had been draped over his father's coffin.

Hal Steinbrenner is dressed casually in a polo shirt, tan slacks and tan lace-up shoes. He is unshaven, a bit hyperactive, and his voice and clipped cadences instantly recall those of his father. He looks younger than his 47 years.

Over the course of a wide-ranging, hourlong interview, he is alternately very much what I expected and nothing like I thought he would be.

I found him smart, vulnerable, funny, at times profane and always immensely likable. And ultimately, perhaps unknowable.

I tell him that I have come not so much to talk about his team but to learn about him. Who is Hal Steinbrenner?

He is self-deprecating. "You're assuming I even know," he said, with a rueful smile.

He knows, however, who he is not. "I'm not trying to be George," he says. "I never walked into this with the concept of trying to act like George, trying to be everything that George was, 'cause I can't. Nobody can."

In his excitement to describe the courage of the astronauts, he uses an expletive that surprises me. It goes against the image of the reserved, introverted second son of George Steinbrenner.

He is strident, if not exactly passionate, about his role as managing general partner of the Yankees -- that is the description he uses, never "owner," and certainly never Boss -- but nowhere near as wound up as he gets when he talks about flying his airplanes, a GTO single-engine aircraft and a Cessna high-wing that he says he can land anywhere. It is a hobby he only took up in 2000.

"That's what I do to get away from this," he said, pointing at his iPhone. "Go up to 2,000 feet and practice takeoffs and landings."

His lifelong interest in aviation became an obsession when he lived on Davis Island, literally a minute from Peter O. Knight airport.

"I'm watching these planes take off and land and I finally said to myself, 'I can't avoid this any longer,"' he said. "It scared the hell out of my dad. He was always worried about it. But you know, there's nothing safe about driving on the interstate, either. You minimize the risk, you make sure your plane is in good shape, and you don't make poor choices, and it's a fairly safe thing to do."

The way he talks about flying mirrors the way Hal Steinbrenner runs the Yankees, with caution, careful preparation and strict attention to detail. It is virtually the opposite of the way George Steinbrenner ran the team, mostly by his gut, often by impulse, and nearly always fueled by emotion.

When Hal Steinbrenner says, "You don't want to see the pilot going nuts when the lights start going off in the cockpit," you know he's not just talking about flying an airplane.

"I'm a checklist kind of guy, for better or worse," he said. "I'm always under control. Maybe it's a bad thing in this position, but it's just my personality."

He is never again going to let the fans see him throwing things at his TV, as he said he did during last year's playoff loss to the Houston Astros, and he said he's never going to react to a loss, or a losing season, by firing someone. He understands his natural reserve tends to make fans believe he doesn't really care about the Yankees, at least not as much as his father did.

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that," he said. "I'm not going to try to be something that I'm not. I don't pretend to be as good as him in this role, and I wouldn't even try."

But he does bristle slightly at the perception that Hal's Yankees are cheap (last year's payroll was $240 million) or that he is not nearly as willing to spend for free agents as his father had been. He points out that twice in his tenure, the Yankees have spent upward of $400 million in an offseason for free agents, a sum not even George Steinbrenner ever spent.

Masahiro Tanaka because, he felt, "we weren't good enough to win."

And while he said that the Yankees will no longer carry such a bloated payroll, he left little doubt that under similar circumstances, he would do the same thing again.

"We have a lot of money coming off the payroll in the next two years, $100 million from four guys," he said, in reference to the expiring contracts of Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran and CC Sabathia. "And we're going to put a lot of it back in. But that doesn't mean I need a $240 million payroll."

Hal seems like a likeable guy, the fact that is the total opposite of George in terms of personality and organizational philosophy actually works to his advantage. At point he will have to spend, but I glad he's being smart about it when to do it.

 

[The War Report]

. At point he will have to spend

WTF do you think The Yankees have been doing all this time? :bronwtf:

 

[Pitfalls0117]

shyt our thread already longer through March 6 than the Blue Jays thread was through July last year

Anyone know what Eovaldi's timetable is? Will he be ready for the start of the season or nah?

 

[K-Apps]

WTF do you think The Yankees have been doing all this time? :bronwtf:

It's clearly obvious they aren't spending like they usually do until the older contracts are done and waiting to bid on Harper and Harvey

 

[The War Report]

It's clearly obvious they aren't spending like they usually do until the older contracts are done and waiting to bid on Harper and Harvey

Dog, did you forget when they signed Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, Beltran, Andrew Miller? And all that money they spent internationally?

 

[K-Apps]

Dog, did you forget when they signed Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, Beltran, Andrew Miller? And all that money they spent internationally?

Besides Tanaka and Ellsbury, none of those other acquisitions were considered big-time FAs, my point was that the Yankees aren't gonna spend money on every big-time FA like they did in the early 2000s. Sure, they overdid it with Ellsbury (I didn't understand that one honestly), but they aren't trying to just have roster filled with high-priced FAs all over the place. I like the fact they are making an honest attempt of re-building the roster slowly within through the farm system.

 

[tremonthustler1]

Dog, did you forget when they signed Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, Beltran, Andrew Miller? And all that money they spent internationally?

Spending internationally is cool cuz for a while they were gun shy.

This is the first year in a long time they didn't spend, and in the next 2 years, all their albatross deals minus Ellsbury and Headley will be wiped off the books.

I just can't wait for this to be a reality by the end of 2017:

C Sanchez
1B Birdman Birdman
2B Castro
3B Headley
SS Didi
LF Aaron Gordon Judge
CF Ells
RF (random Coli poster til Harper gets here)
DH McCann

and in that lineup, McCann and Headley would have 1 year left on their deals and the rest will be saved for Harper

 

[holidayinn21]

Dog, did you forget when they signed Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, Beltran, Andrew Miller? And all that money they spent internationally?

Their spending spree's come after they have other contracts come off the books. They swap salaries instead of adding it.

Those names you mentioned were signed after Grandy, cano, youkilis, Mo, and Pettitte's contracts were done.

Same thing in 08. And the same thing will happen after this season when Tex and beltran are done.

 

[Captain Crunch]

Spending internationally is cool cuz for a while they were gun shy.

This is the first year in a long time they didn't spend, and in the next 2 years, all their albatross deals minus Ellsbury and Headley will be wiped off the books.

I just can't wait for this to be a reality by the end of 2017:

C Sanchez
1B Birdman Birdman
2B Castro
3B Headley
SS Didi
LF Aaron Gordon Judge
CF Ells
RF (random Coli poster til Harper gets here)
DH McCann

and in that lineup, McCann and Headley would have 1 year left on their deals and the rest will be saved for Harper

Not too mention that rotation
Harvey, Fernandez, Severino, Tanaka