BOSTON — Twelve years ago, a wide-eyed Brett Gardner soaked in a Yankee World Series celebration at the end of his age-25 season, surely thinking that the team’s overall talent level paired with the Yankees’ insatiable desire to win would bring him a few more rings.
“You think you’re going to go every year,” Gardner said on Tuesday, thinking back to his mindset after first getting a taste of the Fall Classic.
When the 2021 Wild Card game ended in a crushing loss to the hated Red Sox at Fenway Park, Gardner was met with the realization that not only had the Yankees not won a World Series since that 2009 triumph, they haven’t even been back to one. Manager Aaron Boone characterized the death of the 2021 Yankees’ season as cruel. His longest-tenured player has more years of experience and anguish behind his answer.
“It is cruel,” Gardner agreed. “It’s a tough game. At the end of the season, there’s only one team that goes home happy. Obviously, that’s not going to be us. I’m obviously disappointed, upset, frustrated, all of the above.”
Gardner has a player option for 2022 at $2.3 million. If he declines that, the Yankees can pick up their team option for $7.15 million, or buy him out for $1.15 million. Essentially, Gardner has to decide if he thinks he can get more than $2.3 million on the open market, as the likelihood of the Yankees paying a 38-year-old outfielder over $7 million — for a year when they’ll have Aaron Hicks back as well — is virtually nonexistent.
Gardner addressed the media after Tuesday’s game still wearing his uniform. As heavy-handed as it seemed, we were looking at a man who did not want to come to grips with the idea that when he did take it off, he may never put it back on.
“I’m not going to wear it home and sleep in it, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” he smiled. “You don’t know how many chances you’ll get to put the uniform on. It feels good to still have it on.”
The clock is certainly ticking on Gardner’s career, be it in pinstripes or another team’s jersey. He didn’t sound like a man who wanted to retire.
“I hope I’m back next season,” Gardner said, making it clear he wants to remain a Yankee. “I hope that I’m back in that room, and I hope that I’m in Tampa come February.”
The desire to win, the desire for playing time, and perhaps the desire to be closer to his hometown in South Carolina will likely factor into his decision about next year.
No matter what he does, the failure to reach the mountaintop since summiting it in 2009 has weighed on him.
“As a young player you don’t know how long you’re going to be around,” Gardner said. “You don’t know that you’re going to be here for 14 years. Each year that goes by that we don’t make it is obviously a little tougher. You just don’t know how many more opportunities you’re going to get.”
TIMES ARE A-CHANGIN’
Boone plainly admitted after the Wild Card game that he feels the rest of the league has closed the gap between them and the Yankees. This is far from the dynastic team of the late ’90s. This is a team that can be exposed by good pitching, lacks depth in their own starting rotation, and recently can’t seem to keep their players healthy.
“There’s a lot of good teams out there,” Gardner noticed. “It’s harder now than it’s ever been. The work that we put in over the course of this season, at the end of the day it wasn’t enough. We all collectively — from the top all the way down to the bottom — we need to take these next few days, weeks, months and continue to look ourselves in the mirror, reevaluate, and find ways to get better.”
Giancarlo Stanton said that the type of production he saw from the 2021 Yankees made their demise unsurprising.
“I feel like we, top to bottom, could have done more,” Stanton said. “I’m not going to pick apart the year. This game was unfortunate to end our season. That’s where we’re at. It’s not baffling. I saw it. We all could have done better.”
CRUNCH TIME FOR JUDGE
It’s hard realizing that something you’re committed to may not be giving you enough back. Just ask Aaron Judge.
“Every part of me can’t believe it ended like this,” Judge said from the Yankees’ Fenway funeral home. “The Red Sox were just a better team.”
Judge has now played five years with the Yankees without making a World Series. The man who so clearly wants to be Derek Jeter is in danger of missing out on Jeter’s most defining trait: trophies. To his credit, Judge had another fantastic year and is certainly not the reason the Yankees fell short. He isn’t a free agent until after the 2022 season. However, a team trading its star player to avoid potentially losing them for nothing in free agency is not unprecedented. When asked about this, Judge ripped a page right out of the Jeter playbook.
“I want to be a Yankee for life,” he said. “I want to wear these pinstripes for the rest of my career, represent this great organization and bring a championship back to the city. But you never know what the future holds for you. It’s kind of out of my hands. Whatever happens on the flip side of that — with contracts, this and that, getting traded — it’s out of my control.”
