It’s time for Hal Steinbrenner to admit some hard truths about the Yankees

On behalf of the Yankee legions who have seen enough, we have here an open letter to Hal Steinbrenner:

Hello, Hal?

Are you there?

Are you aware what an absolute embarrassment this $201 million Yankee team of yours is?

This team that just got swept at Fenway Park to fall into fourth place in the American League East?

This team that leads the majors in runners being thrown out on base?

This team that is hitting .218 and a .632 OPS with runners in scoring position and with two starting outfielders batting under .200?

This team that continues to play sloppy defense and is way too often clueless when it comes to the fundamentals of baseball?

Look Hal — again, are you there? — we know you’ve always said you’re your own person and not in any way like your old man. Okay, we get that. George could get crazy at times, but at no time did Yankee fans think he didn’t care, which right now they’re wondering about you. They’re crying out to you, Hal. They want you to start acting like the Boss. At this juncture, after 12 years of not reaching the World Series despite the highest or second-highest payroll in the game, he would conclude it’s time to go in a new direction.

For starters, it’s time to put Aaron Boone out of his misery. Not that changing managers is going to make any difference. But when a team plays as badly as the Yankees did this weekend in Boston — in a series where they desperately needed to make a statement that they can compete in this division — it’s pretty clear they are not responding to Boone. If the Boss were still alive, there would be a new manager waiting for them in New York Monday.

Let’s be honest here. Boone is a genuinely good guy. But he was put into this job without any previous managerial experience because Brian Cashman wanted a manager, unlike Joe Girardi, who would offer no resistance when Mike Fishman and the analytics geeks sent the lineup down to him.

And that’s the problem, Hal. Cashman and his obsession with analytics have won you nothing since 2009. This latest team of his, if you’ve been watching, is a poorly constructed mess. It all started with Cashman’s ill-conceived decision to relieve Derek Jeter from a healthy portion of Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million contract in 2017. How has that worked out? In the weekend series against the Red Sox, Stanton, as the cleanup hitter in the all right-handed Yankee lineup, was 2-for-10 with seven strikeouts.

While you can give Cashman credit for finding Luke Voit and Gio Urshela on other teams’ scrap heaps, his overall trading record has been less than stellar. He himself has often touted his signature trade to be the 2016 deal in which he sent Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs and got back Gleyber Torres. The same week, he traded Andrew Miller to the Indians for a package including Clint Frazier.

Frazier, hitting .187, has been a complete bust, often looking like a buffoon in the outfield with no idea where he’s throwing the ball. Torres, after showing much promise his first two years with the Yankees, has deteriorated greatly both with the bat and in the field and probably should be traded while he still has some value.

Frazier’s lack of fundamentals and baseball smarts is endemic to the Yankees player development department, whether you know it or not, Hal. They’re doing a terrible teaching job down there but that too starts at the top.  And then you have to ask yourself: What have all of Cashman’s analytics accomplished with the pitching?

The Yankees have still not drafted and developed a frontline starting pitcher since Andy Pettitte. Under Cashman’s analytics-oriented pitching coach Matt Blake, Jameson Taillon, Domingo German and Michael King have all been inconsistent this year and Deivi Garcia has gone backward at Triple-A. 

(We won’t dare speculate as to whether Sunday’s disastrous three-homer outing was an indication that Gerrit Cole, your $324 million ace, might actually have been one of the sticky finger culprits these past few years.)

We know this is probably annoying to you, Hal, down there in your bunker in Tampa, and we know you don’t like firing people, but you have to take stock of your organization and clean house from top to bottom. If you were watching this series at Fenway Park this weekend, you could have learned something from the Red Sox, who played with a fervor. Besides playing defense, the Red Sox are smart and aggressive on the basepaths, hit-and-run — you know, the old school stuff.  They may not be a great team but they are entertaining, which your Yankees are not.

That alone would be a death knell for the GM if your dad were still here.