Jake Bauers spent Wednesday night fighting off Blake Snell. Brian Cashman should have spent it fighting off indigestion.
Eleven pitches. A two-run homer. A seventh-inning lead change at Dodger Stadium that helped Milwaukee beat Los Angeles, 6–2, and move within one win of the World Series. Two nights earlier, Bauers worked a 12-pitch walk ahead of Christian Yelich’s two-run single. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell him he was supposed to be disposable.
Watch those at-bats. That is a skilled hitter working. Recognizing pitches. Protecting the plate. Refusing to surrender an at-bat because the pitcher has better credentials.
The kind of baseball you’re supposed to teach.
Which brings us to the Yankees, an organization that can explain a player’s limitations in seventeen different statistical languages but too often struggles to help him overcome them.
Bauers hit .202 with a .279 on-base percentage, a .693 OPS and 12 homers in 84 games for New York in 2023. The reason? Boone's inconsistency with the lineup. It still exists today. There were legitimate problems. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. The question is whether the Yankees saw problems worth solving or they were just clueless on how to build up players. I say it's the latter.
Here’s his 2026 answer: .266/.389/.484, 26 homers, 86 RBIs. Sánchez added 12 homers and a .771 OPS.
That’s an enormous improvement for Bauers: 110 points in on-base percentage and 180 points in OPS over his Yankees season.
Funny how much better a hitter looks when he keeps reaching base.
And Gary Sánchez? Remember him? Before he became everybody’s favorite punching bag, he was supposed to be the future of the Yankees. In 2016, he hit .299 with 20 home runs in just 53 games. That excitement wasn’t invented by a marketing department. The kid could hit baseballs into next week.
He became a two-time All-Star and a Silver Slugger winner. Those accomplishments happened in pinstripes, too. That makes the eventual breakdown more frustrating: the Yankees had already seen what he could do.
Sánchez’s batting average this season certainly doesn’t scream superstar. But Milwaukee is getting useful offense from him while Bauers has become a major threat. A contender has found room for two former Yankees to contribute in October.
Somehow, the Brewers managed to survive the discovery that their players weren’t perfect.
Here’s my problem with Cashman’s operation: too often, it feels as though the Yankees acquire talent, identify the flaws and wait for the player to arrive at his own solution. When the solution doesn’t come quickly enough, the organization moves on with another explanation about roster construction.
Where is the accountability for making the player better?
We cannot see every coaching session. These numbers don’t prove nobody in New York worked with Bauers or Sánchez. But they absolutely justify asking why another organization is getting value the Yankees couldn’t sustain.
And before somebody calls this hindsight, remember Texas.
Nathan Eovaldi went 5–0 with a 2.95 ERA in the 2023 postseason. Aroldis Chapman posted a 2.25 ERA across nine playoff appearances. Jordan Montgomery was there too! Three former Yankees, both helping the Rangers win a championship.
Different departures. Different circumstances. Same irritating television experience for Yankees fans: watching familiar faces help somebody else finish the job.
No, every former Yankee doesn’t become a star. But how many of these October reminders does this front office get before its judgment becomes the story?
Development requires patience, instruction and a plan that changes when the player needs something different. You don’t get to take credit for identifying talent and then shrug when somebody else figures out how to use it.
Bauers stood there Wednesday night and made Snell keep working until he got a pitch he could punish.
That takes skill. It takes confidence. It takes the willingness to stay in the fight.
The Yankees’ front office ought to try it.
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