Yankees GM Brian Cashman says "we're about to find out" if this year's team is ready to compete for the World Series title.
Speaking to reporters Friday over Zoom, Cashman talked about the state of the current state of the roster and if he believe's it's ready to contend.
"Clearly I wouldn't say we're a finished product, but you never are," Cashman said. "You're always looking to improve yourself. ...We've had championship-caliber teams, including last year, we were championship-caliber and a contender, and if we performed better we could've been representing our league in the World Series, but we didn't perform well enough and got sent home prematurely.
"And so therefore, we're back at it. We're trying to reconfigure, game plan appropriately and come up with a roster that's maybe a little bit stronger, maybe a little bit more resilient. ...We certainly are excited by the current crew that we have."
The Yankees entered last season as the favorites to win the World Series after signing Gerrit Cole to a massive deal, but, obviously, things didn't work out as they'd hoped.
This Cole-led squad couldn't make it out of the ALDS, falling to the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 back in October, putting a damper on his first season in New York.
The team made a number of moves this offseason, from bringing back DJ LeMahieu and signing former two-time Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber, to trading for Jameson Taillon and allowing Masahiro Tanaka to return to Japan, so it was a busier offseason for the Yankees than one might think.
But Cashman says things are never really finished when it comes to tuning up the roster.
"The roster is not complete ever," Cashman said. "But at the same time... we're ready to go with what we have. If you're evaluating it and you look at it and say 'alright, I've got quality at all the positions, I've got depth in the starting rotation with some of the additions that we've had with Taillon and now with Kluber....'"
The Yankees are again among the favorites to win it all this year, and are the wide favorites to represent the AL in the World Series, but whether or not the Bombers can live up to those odds will be the big question of the season.