The New Year is a time of reflection and renewal, of looking back and looking forward. It is also a time for personal growth and change. We hopefully use the lessons we learned in the previous year to guide us on a better, more fulfilling path in the newest trip around the sun.<\/p>\n
It is only recently that I began to truly appreciate and embrace New Year\u2019s resolutions. This is probably because of the unreasonable, effectively unfulfillable expectations I had set for myself in previous Januaries, my inevitable failure to meet or maintain said resolutions only conspiring to incrementally lower my self-esteem. The last two New Year\u2019s, I switched things up and set myself smaller, concrete and manageable goals \u2014 often ones that could be reached in the first month of the year and without undue effort \u2014 and the result has been profound. I\u2019ve effectively gamed a double esteem boost, first for accomplishing the given task and then for not failing my resolution as I had in so many previous years.<\/p>\n
This sounds like a bit too much shameless self-aggrandizement, so I\u2019ll bring it back around to the Yankees. When coming up with New Year\u2019s resolutions we\u2019d like to see the Yankees pursue, it\u2019s tempting to set a lofty bar like asking them to sign Kyle Tucker and\/or one of the top remaining free agent starting pitchers. Or perhaps they could swing over to the trade market and assemble a blockbuster for a difference maker like a Ketel Marte or Freddy Peralta.<\/p>\n
However, this is exactly the aforementioned trap I would fall into, creating unlikely expectations that are almost guaranteed to leave us in disappointment. Yankees\u2019 ownership and the front office have told us repeatedly with their words and actions not to expect needle-moving pursuits this winter. That at best they\u2019re happy to remain as they were in 2025 rather than try to improve themselves. They\u2019ve publicly reiterated their stubborn insistence that they do think that they were good enough in 2025 after tying the Blue Jays for an AL-best 94 wins.<\/p>\n
This is where I would like to draw a line in the sand. Not making a blockbuster addition doesn\u2019t have to end in rolling it back. There is a lot of middle ground between those two outcomes. Making Cody Bellinger the number one target and relying on a repeat from Trent Grisham after both posted somewhat outlier seasons and are now a year older feels like setting up for disappointment. Aaron Judge has only so many 10-win seasons left in his bat. Gerrit Cole is 35 and coming off Tommy John surgery while Carlos Rod\u00f3n will also miss the season\u2019s start as he recovers from his own elbow procedure.<\/p>\n
There are very real holes at third and in the rotation. Tatsuya Imai and Munetaka Murakami signed combined deals worth less than $90 million guaranteed, and while both have red flags of varying size, the pair felt like exactly the type of creative, win-win market opportunity \u2014 if they\u2019re good, they\u2019re cheap and if they don\u2019t pan out, neither deal is onerous in terms of total value or length \u2014 that could boost the team\u2019s chances. We\u2019ve since learned that the Yankees never had serious interest in either player.<\/p>\n