The Dodgers are the Yankees’ greatest alibi.
They are the West Coast doppelgangers who also have spent billions and billions of dollars chasing championships, and have one — in the pandemic 60-game 2020 season — since 1988. So the last time the Dodgers won it all in a full season was when Kirk Gibson famously limped around the bases — thus, just two years after the Mets’ last title.
If the Yanks chose to use it, the Dodgers exemplify just how difficult it is to be the last team standing, which Los Angeles will not be again this year after the 100-win NL West champion was swept out of the Division Series by the 84-win Diamondbacks.
Now before you get out your dartboard and replace Brian Cashman’s picture with mine, I am not here to pardon what has been now several years of particularly bad Yankees decision-making. They have roundly failed recently — picking the wrong free agents too often; making horrible trades; not getting enough from the draft, international and development; sticking to a philosophy that locked them into an offense that was too right-handed and not athletic enough. And that is a partial list.
