Hour 2: Roster Construction

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This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

**Michael Kay** (0:34)
I gotta get more Kay.

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Listen live weekdays at 1 on the ESPN New York app and your smart speaker.

**Michael Kay** (0:41)
Welcome back to the show. Now, the Yankees are playing really poorly right now, really bad baseball. There's no denying that. Every single facet of the team has kind of cratered.
Although, Cam Schlutton was amazing on Monday. But even he had two starts that didn't live up to the way he pitches. Warren has struggled. Weathers has struggled. Fried has hurt. Rodan has hurt.
The bullpen, Deval, has struggled. No matter what Aaron says, Aaron Boone says about, I think he's throwing great and he has not been good at all. There are people out there that have been very good. Hedrick's been terrific. Tim Hill is reliable. Bednar, after that rough patch, has looked really good and you can actually envision being able to see him closing a playoff game in comfortable fashion.
But they do need another reliever. But as fans are watching what's transpiring now, and there are people on social media that I read with great interest because they're smart and they're not just going off about a certain thing to engender conversation or anger people.
Some of these people that I do respect their takes, keep coming up with this is terrible roster construction by the Yankees.
Why did they run it back on a team that failed last year? Right?
And I got to push back.
If the people that are hurt don't get hurt, the Yankees have the best record in the American League and you're going to think for sure that they are playing in the World Series. So how is the roster construction bad? Because you can't sit back and tell me that they should have had a better backup for Judge. There is no better backup for Judge. If Judge goes down, the whole thing goes in the crapper. It just does. We saw what happened when he ran into the wall in Dodger Stadium. The season went in the toilet. There's no replacing an icon. There's nobody in your minor league system or sitting on your bench that's going to even approximate half of what Aaron Judge does for you. Forget about what he does for you in the room and how he leads the team and how he's the soul of the team. Just his stats. Take the soul out of it. Take his leadership aspect out of it. You pencil him in for 300 average, 50 plus home runs, 120 runs batted in, an OPS that people just don't reach if they're normal. 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, otherworldly. And he goes down.
Max Fried goes down. Rodan, who just had surgery, goes down. Now, the people out there about roster, well, they should have prepared for that. You can't prepare for this many people going down. You can't. It's unrealistic to say that.
Now, with Stanton, you do prepare for him going down because that's part of the deal. He can't stay healthy. His body will not allow him to stay healthy. He gets lower body injuries every single year. So you prepare for him being out a month, a month and a half. And that's why you bring back Paul Goldschmidt. That's why Goldschmidt's there as insurance for Stanton. And when he first started playing every day when Stanton went down, you know what? He was money. He was outstanding. But now Stanton is going to be out for three months, maybe more. You don't even know if he's going to get back.
And Goldschmidt's 38 years old. It exposes a 38 year old. This is a time now in baseball where a 38 year old actually plays like a 38 year old. He doesn't have any artificial help. Not that Paul Goldschmidt would do that anyway. So he's old for his last 30 and looks over match because you've exposed him more than you had planned to. Who could have ever thought that Stanton was going to be out three or four months with an injury he suffered in April?
When you say, why did you run it back? Why don't you have a better bench? If everybody was healthy, the Yankees have a great bench. Caballero, Rosario, your backup catcher and Goldschmidt. That's a great bench. It gives Aaron Boone maneuverability. And the reason why they ran it back, why would you run it back if it didn't work last year? Well, you changed your team at the trade deadline last year. You got a closer, you got Rosario, you got Caballero. You changed your team then. You had the most wins tied with the Blue Jays, the most wins in the American League. That was not a bad team. Then you ran into the Blue Jays who gave you trouble all year and Freed and Rodin had terrible games. So, you're going to say, well, they're always going to have terrible games or that was just, you know, even great pitchers have bad games, right? You're going to say that. So where's the bad roster construction? Why can't people just accept the obvious? They're losing because they're a shell of the team that was planned to be.