The lockout is here and the Yankees haven’t improved at all

The term “locked out” can be used to describe several parts of the Major League Baseball landscape right now.

Most importantly, the players have been locked out by the owners as both sides try to come up with a new collective bargaining agreement. Every thought, conversation, action and inaction surrounding the league starts there and won’t end for quite some time.

Beyond that, there are still dozens of free agents that are locked out from the process of finding a new home. If players under contract with a team are getting their likenesses removed from the league’s official website, where does that leave players like Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw, free agents who are still unsigned? For as long as this drags on, MLB has to pretend like they don’t exist at all.

Then you have the Yankees. In November, they headed into an offseason knowing that the team needed some major improvements in numerous areas. The team got 10% less offensive production from their shortstops than an average team did, ranking 20th out of 30 teams in wRC+ from the position. Things were just as gruesome at center field (11% worse than league average) and catcher (12% worse than league average).

Anyone with even a loose connection to the game knew that a lockout was waiting on the night of Dec. 1 like an immovable boulder blocking the roadway. There is no detour around it, the only way out is through. Because of that, several teams got a jump on their offseason reclamations, executing an array of signings that guaranteed their team would go into the lockout better than they were before it.

The Mets’ free agent quartet (Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, Starling Marte and Max Scherzer) have combined to make 10 All-Star teams, won two Gold Gloves and three Cy Youngs, and provided something that the Yankees are sorely lacking right now: a rejuvenated sense of inspiration. Previously dismissable teams like the Tigers (who shopped with a purpose and left with Eduardo Rodriguez and Javier Baez) and Rangers (recent bottom-feeders now featuring a Corey Seager-Marcus Semien infield tandem) have upgraded their ball clubs and given their fans something to keep them warm amid the lockout tundra.

Even within their own division, the Yankees were outdone. The Blue Jays may have lost a Cy Young winner in Robbie Ray, but they extended a Cy Young-quality pitcher in Jose Berrios for seven years and lured Kevin Gausman north of the border in a move that used to be the Yankees’ specialty. To be the best you have to beat the best, and the Yankees’ success in the increasingly distant past came from key free agent investments like Berrios and Gausman on top of homegrown talent. The Rays are following that blueprint to a certain extent this offseason, keeping once-in-a-generation shortstop Wander Franco in powder blue with a brand new 12-year deal and taking a flier on Corey Kluber to bring some stability to their experimental starting pitching.

The final verdict on their activity won’t come down for a while, but the Yankees’ main competition at least made some moves too. The Red Sox traded Hunter Renfroe to the Brewers for Jackie Bradley Jr., a fairly obvious salary dump for Milwaukee that also netted Boston some defense and prospect depth. Boston also stocked up on left-handed pitching before the free agent store closed for the winter. James Paxton and Rich Hill came to buzzer-beating agreements with the Sox within two days of each other on the type of low-risk ventures that will either return pleasant surprises or be easily flushed and moved on from without creating catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the only thing the Yankees have done so far is double down on a roster that was both underwhelming and uniquely deficient. Take a look around the league and stare in open-mouthed wonder at all the unbelievable talent at shortstop. The Yankees have one who was jettisoned away from the position, and as of right now, the person on their roster best-equipped for the position gets on-base at a rate that is frankly hard to fathom.

If the season started tomorrow, Gio Urshela would be the Yankees’ starting shortstop. This is the same Gio Urshela who ran a .301 on-base percentage last season, placing him in the bottom 15 of qualified AL hitters. Just ahead of him on that list is Gary Sanchez, the catcher whose .307 on-base percentage isn’t even the main lightning rod for criticism in his skillset. Tendering Sanchez a contract, avoiding arbitration with Urshela through a one-year, $6.5 million shoulder shrug and getting Joely Rodriguez back are among the only headlines the Yankees have generated since flaming out of the playoffs just one game in.

Now that doing anything else is literally impossible, the Yankees are stuck in a prison of their own design. They could have added to the roster before the lockout hit or subtracted pieces that actively made it worse for prolonged periods of last summer. Instead, they stood pat, and with Brian Cashman unable to comment on club operations Friday morning as he rappelled down a building in Connecticut during a community event, there’s nothing to indicate they will get moving after the lockout.

In other words, Yankee fans are headed for a holiday season of disappointing gifts, knowing that several other kids in the neighborhood already opened their new favorite toy.