Yankees begin spring training with plenty of familiarity and a quest to change October ending
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OK, so that may be a slight oversimplification, but not by much, as the Yankees are set to open spring training with a roster mostly identical to the one at the end of 2025, when they were boat-raced by the Blue Jays in the ALDS — 24 of the 26 players on the roster for that series are back in the organization.Their decision to essentially run it back has not sat well with the fan base, and will loom throughout the year until something changes, but their brain trust insists it was the right path to take because of how strongly they felt about their roster by the end of 2025 and believing that it can bear better fruits over the course of a full season.“I disagree it’s the same team running it back,” said Brian Cashman, entering his 29th camp as general manager and the final year of his current contract.“There’s going to be some differences and the competition’s going to be different, too.
In some cases, some teams got better.In other cases, some teams you could argue maybe got a little worse.
Our division’s the best in baseball. “But long story short, one series [the ALDS], make-or-break, is not going to define what we think our capabilities are.We all understand in postseason baseball, you got to bring your best baseball every series and if you don’t, you’re going home.
It doesn’t mean that we weren’t capable of great things.We just didn’t get the job done in that time frame against the Toronto Blue Jays.”Of course, the Yankees are still eight long months away from actually getting a chance to flip the script in the postseason, as they try to end a World Series championship drought that is entering its 17th year.
But their work to get there begins now, with pitchers and catchers reporting Wednesday and position players set to follow Su...