Yankees fans have nothing good to say about the team’s trade deadline

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across Major League Baseball. Each week, we send out questions to the most plugged-in New York Yankees fans, and fans across the country. Sign up here to join Reacts.

The polls have closed on this week’s Yankees SB Nation reacts survey, and well, the results are about what you’d expect. Things continue to go south for the Bombers, and fans haven’t had much positive to say about how the club approached last week’s trade deadline.

Our most recent survey focused on the deadline, as we asked readers what strategy Brian Cashman and the rest of the front office should have taken. With the Yankees at 55-52 but only a few games out of a playoff spot on the day of the deadline, it was reasonable to feel as if any direction was on the table. Selling off several name players was plausible, but so too was buying a rental or two.

Instead, the Yankees pretty much stayed neutral, adding Keynan Middleton to the bullpen and bringing in minor league pitcher Spencer Howard. For the most part, Yankees fans did not agree with this course of action:

“Sell without limits” entailed moving anything that wasn’t bolted down (read: Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole), and was the most popular option, with just over half of Yankee fans calling it their preferred strategy. That meant fans were in favor of trying to move players with team control beyond 2023, such as Gleyber Torres, Clay Holmes, and Michael King.

Combined with the group that wanted the team to sell rentals, like Wandy Peralta, Harrison Bader, and Luis Severino, nearly 80 percent of fans preferred some sort of sell-off. Just 15 percent of fans wanted a full-fledged buy, and only six percent of fans got what they wanted with the team standing pat.

It wasn’t just Yankees fans, however, that had a negative view of the club’s actions. In a poll of fans across MLB, the Yankees were the most popular option for Biggest Loser at the trade deadline:

Nearly half of MLB fans surveyed felt that the Yankees had the worst deadline in the league, edging out the Mets, who tore down at the deadline but at least picked a defined strategy. The two New York teams lapped the field, with the Dodgers and Padres also receiving votes, along with the Orioles, who acquired Jack Flaherty but otherwise didn’t do much to supplement their contending roster.

As for the biggest winners at the deadline? Fans had their eyes on the west:

The Rangers led the way, just ahead of the Astros, with the Angels in third, meaning that 95 percent of fans listed an AL West club as their biggest winners. Texas moved aggressively to bolster their pitching, importing Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, while the Astros made a huge splash to bring Justin Verlander back, as well as reliever Kendall Graveman. The Angels brought in a raft of players to help Shohei Ohtani, most notable among them Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, and CJ Cron, though their efforts are looking to have been in vain, with Anaheim slipping below .500 and into fourth place in the division.

We’ve still got a long way to go until we find out whose deadline moves will pan out best, but it’s safe to say that hardly anyone took a liking to the Yankees’ tactics. They mostly sat on their hands, and though it’s been just a week since the deadline, the team looks as middling as ever.

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