The New York Yankees will begin the second half of the 2016 campaign with a record of 44-44, good for fourth place in a competitive AL East, and their worse-than-expected play is now causing indecisiveness among the team's shot callers.
General manager Brian Cashman believes the team should go into sell mode and prepare for the future, while owner Hal Steinbrenner and president Randy Levine are interested in seeing the team stay together with the hope it'll still contend, according to a source of ESPN's Wallace Matthews.
"All the talk of buying or selling is speculation at this point," Levine said. "There's two weeks to go, and at that time we'll make a decision. You can't make any decisions until you have specific transactions in front of you.
"We believe in this team.''
The same source tells Matthews that Cashman and his "baseball people" are willing to trade away the core of the team including Aroldis Chapman, Mark Teixeira, Nathan Eovaldi, Ivan Nova, and Carlos Beltran.
Matthews' source also said the Yankees would like to move outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, catcher Brian McCann and are "willing to listen" to offers for left-hander Andrew Miller.
During an interview with ESPN's Buster Olney in early July, Cashman didn't seem ready to go into complete sell mode, but he did say time was running out for the Yankees to decide on which direction to move in.
"We have not been playing well," he explained. "We've been a .500 team the entire season thus far and I've publicly stated this team needs to declare itself one way or another.
"It, unfortunately, hasn't declared itself in a positive way and the way we had hoped as of yet. So the clock is ticking, and the more we stay in this mode we're currently in it's going to force us into some tough decisions."
