David Ortiz didn’t need a Yankees uniform to know what he believes is missing in the Bronx.
The Red Sox icon said Wednesday night that the current Yankees are lacking the same thing that once helped define the organization: culture. After New York was swept out of the ALDS by the Tampa Bay Rays, 4-3, at Yankee Stadium, Ortiz said the small details are piling up on a team that no longer has the same edge.
“Look, I never played for the Yankees but I competed a lot against the Yankees,” Ortiz told Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Kevin Burkhardt on Fox. “And there’s one thing that I can see missing from the Yankees, and it’s the culture.
“There’s a lot of little things that in the long run, they start catching up. And those things never happened when you guys were there.
“They need to start paying attention to those little things because you need to have that one player in the clubhouse that gets those things put away.”
Ortiz then looked directly at Jeter and Rodriguez and made the point even more personal.
“I know you used to do that,” he said to Jeter.
“You used to do that,” he added, pointing to Rodriguez.
He said the Yankees need to get back to that standard.
“That organization need to go back into it because at the end of the day, yeah the game has changed a lot, there’s a lot of different things going on with the game,” said Ortiz, who won three World Series titles in Boston. “But the culture [is] always going to be the culture, and they are far away from being where they used to be culture-wise.”
Ortiz did not single out the four errors the Yankees made in Game 2, or the questions Rodriguez raised about “five positions” on the roster in this series. But both of those themes came up during the Fox discussion.
Rodriguez contrasted the Yankees’ payroll, which sits north of $300 million, with Tampa Bay’s at $110 million.
“They do everything well,” he said. “They pitch, they defend, timely hitting, great character, little things. And yes, they’re last in home runs, but they’re [in] first place.
“So there’s something there. And I think there’s something there where there’s a counter money-ball..that if you go against the market, you go against the consensus, you land where the Rays and the Brewers are today.”
Those clubs are still alive. The Yankees are not, and their title drought now stretches back to 2009.
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