 is one of many topics Hal Steinbreder addressed at our season premiere of Yankees Hot Stove. You can find part one of his interview with Meredith Murokvitz on Yes, his social media feeds and the Yes app. Now, in addition to Judge Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman, we're a couple of other individuals Hal discussed with Meredith. Right now we wanna bring you part two of their interview with Hal talking about some big picture topics and the routine he goes through when the Yankees finish up each year. When the season ends, what's your process like in evaluating everything from front office to players and to where you're gonna go next? Cash starts out by having free agent meetings, I guess we could call them. They basically go through all the top free agents, go through the different teams who's available, a lot of information. It's some of our pro scouting people who are obviously involved, analytics people, domestic scouting people. I mean, anybody that's been in this organization a while, we want their opinion on different players. That's already been done. So, Cash does that right away. And I'm not overly involved with that process because I want people talking freely during those meetings. But once we get a better idea as to, is there a consensus on this player? This player would be great for the organization. It would fill our need. I'm gonna get pulled into it and I'm gonna start looking at scouting reports and I'm gonna start diving into it and then we ended up making a decision when the decision has to be made. Do you have in your mind a number when it comes to payroll for 2023? Well, again, I don't think you could buy championships. I think the Dodgers and the Mets proved that this year. Not that that's what they were trying to do, but their payrolls were higher than ours. So I don't have a number in mind, but I think the number, we were third highest payroll in baseball, 270, whatever the number was. That's a lot of money and a lot of commitment. And my family does it every year. I mean, we have money come off the payroll, we normally are putting most of it back in, if not all of it, if not more. And we do that to feel the most competitive team we can to try to win a championship. You had mentioned a little earlier in this interview, contact hitters like Ben and Tendi, DJ Lamehu having a balanced lineup. In your mind, do you need to shift focus away from some of the swing and miss guys and kind of look more towards those contact hitters to fill out the roster? Well, I think we were starting to do that. That's why we picked up Ben and Tendi at the trade deadline. Look, you have to have power hitters. You also have to have contact hitters. I mean, if you can find contact hitters to hit with power, that's probably even better. But again, I go back to the Houston series. I'm not saying we would have won, but I do believe we would have scored more runs with those two guys in it. It's important. It's important to be balanced. You know, if you look at some other areas of need for this roster, you saw great performances from pitchers like Nestor Cortez. You still have Domingo Herman, Garrett Cole, a big part of that rotation. Do you feel like you need more starting pitching? Well, I've always said, everybody's always said, you can't have enough starting pitching, right? We've got injuries and all, but Severino as well. We have a really good starting rotation. Everybody's healthy. Nestor comes back healthy. We've got a good starting rotation. That doesn't mean we won't be looking. We're going to look at everything, like we always do. You know, we've had some big hits in the bullpen, and some of those guys aren't going to be back right away. So there's no doubt we need to look at the bullpen, because we really got hit pretty hard with the injuries there. Next year, there are going to be some rule changes. What do you think of the rule changes? Anything we can do to make this sport the best it can be for our fans of all ages. Other sports have done it, and we need to do it too. So I was absolutely in support of all those. How much more difficult has it been over the years? As you see the game evolve, you see analytics and data become a much, much bigger player in all of it to try to field a championship team, knowing that a lot of teams now have the resources that only the Yankees and a few other teams had had in the past. Yeah, I think if you look at it logically, given the level of competitive balance in the game today, it's much stronger than it was 10 or 15 years ago. And as you said, everybody's into analytics at varying degrees, and everybody has that capability. There's no doubt it's very difficult to win a championship. I mean, we get compared to the Dodgers a lot. Huge market, they normally put a lot of money into the payroll every year. How many World Series have they won the last 10 years? It's not easy. It's not easy. Not easy. We're going to keep trying every year. I mean, that's what we do. I think the resources we put into our baseball operations people, our scouting, our player development, and then, of course, the payroll every year, I mean, I think that proves we're trying to win a championship, period. When you look at the scouting, when you look at the advancements you have made and the commitment you have made on the analytics side, how have you seen that help your organization, and in what ways can you see that evolving and getting better? Well, again, I think we're pretty well balanced. There are more teams that are even more analytic driven than we are. But there's no doubt analytics is a lot about what we do. And we've seen certain players through time that we have picked up, mainly through analytics, that have done very well here. You look at Urshela, you look at Didi, and a number of others. There's no doubt it's a big part of our decision making, but so are the boots on the ground, the pro scouts. A lot of fans have this preconceived notion that it's all analytics, that those are the only decisions that would be made based on those facts. What would you say to them? How do you explain the decision making process? I would say the first question I always ask Cash when he's proposing a trade or a free agent signing is, what do the analytics people say? What do the pro scouting people say? And oftentimes, they're not agreeing. And if they're not agreeing, sometimes we don't do a deal. So both sides are extremely important to me. They just are. And we've got some really good pro scouts that have been with us a long time, and they know their players. When you look at the Yankee fan base, one thing you will always say about them, they are a passionate group sometimes. They let you know about it. If they're not liking what's going on, there were a couple on-field ceremonies throughout the course of this year where they booed members of the front office and including yourself. How do you deal with that? How do you handle those boos? I understand. I understand they want to win. I mean, I think the two times that was happening, we were struggling. You know, we were struggling, and they were in August, and I understood. And I understood they were frustrated that we didn't get a judge deal done at the beginning of the year. So I understand the passion. That's what makes them great. And that's what makes running this organization such an honor. It's not always easy. But you've got to have that passion. You have to have that passion in the fan base. And, you know, they've got it in spades. When you look back at last season, what was the best moment of 2022 for you? I think winning the division, to me, was such an important thing because we were really struggling down the stretch. And I think Tampa got within two games of us, maybe two or three games. And, you know, just struggling on really all fronts, but primarily with the lineup and scoring runs and offense to come back and win the division by seven games, I think, you know, play a bit better in the last two weeks of the season. That was very exciting for me. Very exciting for me. Tough division to win. No doubt about that. Most frustrating moment of the 2022 season. Injuries. The injuries. You know, when Stanton Rizzo and Carpenter went down in a pretty small amount of time, you could see the effect it had on the offense. You know, at the same time, DJ was struggling with his foot, didn't have been in Tendi yet. I mean, it was very frustrating because you saw the first half of the season what the offense was capable of. It was leading the major leagues in numerous categories, if I recollect. So you knew that's who they were. It wasn't a fluke. But to see that decline was frustrating. What is your message to Yankees fans right now? That we're going to continue to strive to win a championship without a doubt. And we're going to do it in all the ways we discussed earlier. And we understand they're frustrated. We understand how many years it's been. But we're not going to let up.