GM PRIDE & PREJUDICE: FOUR MORE YEARS?

It seems fitting that while the nation undergoes its quatra-annual ritual of selecting a President, America's most venerable sports franchise should be pondering the fate of its Chief Executive as well. Brian Cashman's contract expires at the end of the year, and Hank Steinbrenner's recent comments about his front-office, ranging from veiled criticism to tepid praise, have hardly clarified the Yankees' public position on the future of their GM.

So does the Yankees GM deserve four more years? Or perhaps, the more relevant question is whether Brian Cashman qualifies as the man best suited to steward the franchise into the next decade. A question, I regret, I can only respond to with decided ambivalnce.

The principal obstacle to answering it, an insurmountable one perhaps, is that no ready alternative comes to mind, apart from Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees amateur scouting director, who reporters have characterized as everything from an unsung genius, for drafting Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy (if not for also selecting CJ Henry in the first-round the previous year), to a truckling opportunist with, in Bill Madden's words, "designs on inheriting the earth."

Indeed, with a family as capricious and autocratic as the Steibrenners, one always has to fear cronyism, nepotism, and servility will prevail over merit. George's "Kitchen Cabinet" in Tampa, after all, bled the franchise once already. A recrudescence, now, could suffocate the body Cashman has restored while still in its infancy.

Still, this last year, beginning with his refusal to acknowledge the folly of hiring Marty Miller, continuing through his recent public criticism of Bernie Williams and Joe Torre, and ending with his eschewal of Johan Santana, Cashman's decisions only have underlined the dubious side of the GM's record and raised the question whether 10 years inside the Yankees crucible hasn't begun to distort his judgment.

CASH, THE DELIVERER
As this blog has argued before ("In Cash We Trust," 01/12/08) Cashman's greatest contribution to the franchise, exceeding in signficance even his dramatic improvement of the Yankees' farm system from a league worst to one of its best in three short years, is his modernization of its management structure and its governing philosophy-- how the franchise divides responsibility and how it identifies and values talent.

But it is precisely this visionary quality to what Cashman has accomplished that brings to mind the ancient parable's wisdom about the foibles of prophets. The man with the vision of the Promised Land, that is, isn't always the one best equipped to lead his people there. Why? Because the fervor and tenacity he needs to break with conventional wisdom, to transform customs and habits consecrated by age, and to persuade his people to trust his vision so easily hardens into a myopic, rigid dogma over years spent exhorting, prodding, and badgering them to see the Light.

Indeed, Cashman had to rebuff Tampa's interference and opposition for seven years before he he could wrest the power and authority most GM's inherit with the title. Then, once he did so, once he enacted his plan, subordinating the Tampa faction, revamping his scouting department, and re-investing in the amateur draft and then clinging to the prospects reaped from it, the Steinbrenners hardly repaid him with gratitude and affirmation. During the Yankees early season doldrums last season, the Boss himself warned that the GM was on "a big hook". And Boss Jr, following in his father's footsteps, already has threatened reprisals should the Yankees' decision to forgo Johan Santana return to haunt them.

It should surprise no one, then, if all the resistance Cashman has had to overcome to wean the Yankees from free-agent dependency, if all the internal pressure to trade prospects that he has had to deflect-- if all of the stubborn tenacity he had to muster now prevents him from seeing the farm system he has built with the dispassionate, rational insight his job requires of him.

Indeed, his peremptory rejection of the Twins' eleventh-hour trade proposals for Johan Santana--one, according to Bob Klapisch, of Ian Kenndy, Melky Cabrera, and Jeff Marquez; another, according, to Kevin Kiernan, that excluded the Big Three entirely-- should make us wonder whether Cashman has developed an irrational fetish for his own creation.

Witness his comments to The New York Post this winter about the Yankees prospects: "I'm definitely fully invested in a lot of young talent. You get attached to it." Has he forgotten that the cultivation and retention of young pitching isn't an end in itself but merely a component part in the overall scheme for winning?

FORGOING SANTANA: CASHMAN'S VANITY PROJECT?
A few other less charitable explanations for Cashman's decision to forsake Santana have circulated however. Michael Kay has bandied one that has gained adherents. Kay insinuates that Cashman refused to trade his young pitching prospects because they're cheap and the Yankees GM wants to prove he's smart enough to win without relying about sport's largest payroll. Now, while the arrogance and corruption of power never ceases to amaze me, I nonetheless have a difficult time accepting Kay's hypothesis. It strikes me as both too transparently simple and too ruthlessly narcisistic. That Cashman would place his own reputation above the franchise's best interest doesn't square with his public persona nor does a man interested exclusively in his reputation and advancement endure the public recrimination, aggravation, and second-guessing that attends upon running the Yankees or suffer the Steinbrenner for 10-years. There are far easier ways for Cashman to prove his brilliance.

in any case, vanity and hubris, typically, afflict executives-- from Presidents to CEOs to GMs-- in far more subtle and insidious ways. It's when they believe that they act with the most noble and self-sacrificing purposes-- as in exporting Yankee democracy or restoring a Yankee dynasty-- that pride, more often, brings miscalculation and ruin.

I prefer accordingly the theory that Cashman simply has become overinvested emotionally in the farm system he built, a pitfall into which artist and visionaries often slip-- falling in love with their own creations, pace Pygmalion's infatuation with Galatea. Ego and object merge. Creation becomes fetish. Rational appraisal surrenders to irrational prejudice. And Cashman mistakes uncertain potential for established talent.

A corollary to which would attribute to Cashman the classic tragic flaw of the General who fights the last war. Having watched as the legion of established pitchers Cashman acquired arrive in NY with great fanfare only to flounder (Weaver, Vasquez, Contreras, Brown, Pavano, The Unit), Cashman derives from the result the obvious strategy. Avoid the Trojan Horse. Eschew opponents' pitcher; Cultivate your own.

Only as Generals often learn too late, every war is sui generis and the tactics of past battles may ill serve future ones. So too, Cashman, I fear, may soon discover about Santana. For the chance to acquire the premiere pitcher in baseball, while he is still only 29 years of age, is one of those unprecedented, sui generis opportunities that presents itself once a decade. The relevant comparison, then, is not the Yankees acquisition of Brown, RJ, Vasquez, or Pavano. The relevant parallel is the Red Sox' trade for Pedro Martinez.

SANTANA'S PRICE: THE FLAWS OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
In fact, irrational bias can plague the economist and actuary as often as the general.

Consider Cashman's reluctance to committ to Santana, reportedly because of the financial cost.

Vincent Genarro, author of Diamond Dollars and informat advisor to the Cleveland Indians, examined the Santana trade through an economists' prism, applying business school models that GMs, evidently, increasingly utilize and that Cashman, reportedly, often adopts as well. (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ys-gennarosantanafinal011808) And Buster Olney reported that the Yankees' front office recoiled at the contract Santana demanded for many of the same reasons Genarro elaborates.

Genarro's logic, at least as I understand it, begins from the following premise: relinquishing young prospects for Santana, in addition, to paying him the $137 million contract he sought is tantamount to paying a tarriff. The Yankees pay twice: (i) $22 million a year for Santana and (ii) a surchage for yielding Hughes or IPK, quantified as the salary difference between (Hughes/IPK's replacement - Hughes/IPK himself).

In this view, the tarriff increases the price of Santana's $137million contract above and beyond whatever revenue Santana possibly could earn them by securing the Yankees a playoff spot and in the best scenario, a World Series. Supposedly, Cashman, for this very reason, opposed any deal for Johan Santana that would have necessitated yielding prospects, any prospects, whether or not named Hughes or Kennedy, regardless of their talent or promise.

Only the foregoing equation contains far too many unreasonable assumptions to be dispositive.

It either excludes variables it should consider or assigns higher or lower values to them than warranted.

For example, how does one assign a value to the glory of a World Series ring? George and Hank would tell you the trophy exceeds in value the added broadcast and gate revenue it earns. But beyond the fallacy of assuming one can quantify winning, there's another ulitarian bias at work as well. One that evokes Lenin's metaphor about the omlette justifying the broken eggs. The assemblage of a winning baseball team, after all, isn't like the production of widgets. The players aren't just a production cost; unlike assembly line workers, baseball player consist as much in the output as in the input. Wages or profit-sharing alone doesn't satisfy them Like the owners, players have an unquantifiable emotional stake in winning, their finished product. Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, to illustrate, won't care if retaining Hughes and IPK earns the Yankees multiple championships five years from and with a cheaper payroll besides. By then, they'll have retired and their celebrity will have dimmed. They want to win NOW. And with the age of the Yankees' position players, who can blame them.

THE COST OF FORSAKING SANTANA
What Cashman and Gennaro fail to consider, then, is the countervailing risk the Yankees have incurred by NOT acquiring Santana. One cannot calculate the financial cost of Hughes, Kennedy, or some group of prospects in a vaccum or static context.

One has to consider the following factors as well:

1) Hughes will accompany Kennedy and Chamberlain to comprise 60% of a starting rotation of untested rookies whose a) statistics we can't project accurately and b) whose innings the Yankees will limit to a high of approximately 185 innings for Kennedy and to a low of approximately 140 for Chamberlain. If Wang and Pettitte stay healthy and contribute 200 innings, Yankees starters would amass approximately 880 innings. And if we assume 6 innings per start (a liberal assumption because in 2007, Yankee starters only averaged 5.5 innings per game), the Yankees would still have to accrue another 100 innings or so, representing 16 starts, from Mussina, Igawa, Rasner, and Karstens. 16 games is considerable a league as highly competitive as the AL has become.

2) That the Yankees roster is old and that aging stars like 38-yr-old Rivera, 36-yr-old Posada; 33 and 34-yr-old Jeter, Damon, Abreu, and Matsui; even 32-yr-old A-Rod don't have many prolific seasons left before their production regresses, if the decline hasn't begun already. The window they have to win another championship is a narrow one. These aging veterans can't afford to squander a season or more while their fledgling starters build their stamina and mature.

3) That each year the American League becomes more competitive with more teams contending for the playoffs; that the Yankees current financial model is anchored on qualifying for the post-season; and that the Yankees' two prinicipal competitors for the wild-card last year, the Tigers and the Mariners, dramatically improved this off-season.

Meanwhile, with exception of Baltimore, each of the division rivals the Yankees play 18-19 times a season will be better as well. Toronto, if healthy, has the best pitching staff, 1-12 in the division, if not the league. On the hand, many predict Tampa, with the acqusition of Garza, Percival, and Bartlett, the addition of Evan Longoria and the promotion of their young pitchers, could win 75-80 games. And Boston, a team already two games better than the Yankees, is poised to improve as much as the Yankees, if not more, with Ellsbury, Bucholz, and Lester each contributing full seasons and Dice-K, gaining another year of seasoning.

4) That if Cashman is correct and pitchers like Santana don't reach free-agency in their prime anymore, the Yankees may have forsaken their last best hope of guaranteeing themselves one. When's the next time the Yankees will have the opportunity to acquire the best pitcher, while still in his prime, if the Elite 3 suffer injuries or don't fulfill their promise? Does Sabbathia really rival Santana?


THE PERILS OF YOUTH
Even if Cashman is correct and all three of his wunderkind evolve into celebrated pitchers, the past performance of great pitchers in their first year doesn't bode well for the Yankees.

Just look at the statistics of the some of the modern era's greats when in their early 20's during their first year in the major leagues.

1984 Roger Clemens (Age 21)---------133.3 IPs, 4.32 ERA, 1.31 WHIP
1987 Greg Maddux (Age 21)---------- 155.7 IPs, 5.61 ERA, 1.64 WHIP
1987 Tom Glavine (Age 22)-----------195 IPs, 4.56 ERA, 1.35 WHIP
2000 Roy Halliday (Age 23)------------67.7IPs, 10.64 ERA, 2.20 WHIP
2000 Brad Penny (Age 22)------------119.7IPs, 4.81 ERA, 1.50 WHIP
2001 CC Sabathia(Age 20)------------180.3IPs, 4.39 ERA, 1.35 WHIP
2002 Jake Peavy (Age 21)-------------97.7 IPs, 4.53 ERA, 1.43 WHIP
2002 Josh Beckett(Age 22)-----------107.7IPs, 4.10 ERA, 1.27 WHIP
2003 Dan Haren (Age 22)-------------72. 7IPs, 5.08 ERA, 1.46 WHIP
2004 Eric Bedard (age 25)------------137.3IPs, 4.59 ERA, 1.60 WHIP


With this history, I can't envision the Yankees qualifying for the playoffs, let alone winning a World Series.

In which case, this fans' ambivalence about Brian Cashman won't matter one iota. Come November, rest assured, Randy Levine will appear from behind his curtain to announce yet another purge.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS: THE TRAGIC-COMEDY OF CONGRESS' STEROIDS HEARING

How does one explain the lurid charade staged in Washington this week, other than to observe "Hell hath no fury like a Congressman scorned." It would seem Roger Clemens provoked the Capitol Clowns because he dared to question the unimpeachable integrity, the scrupulous fairness, sage wisdom, the Infallibility of their former crony, George St. Mitchell!

Well, now that Chairman Henry A. Waxman has defended Pope Mitchell's Bull against recusant Roger Clemens and his circle of wicked apostles, we can expect Congress, mercifully, to conclude its steroids Inquisition, once and for all.

After the Chairman's latest comments, one certainly hopes so. Evidently Chairman Waxman enacted the role of Grand Inquisitor with such relish and brio he may have antagonized his own constituency. [1] He says he now regrets convening the hearing in the first place. On Thursday, Congressman Waxman had the following epiphany: "I didn't think it was a hearing that needed to be held in order to get the facts out about the Mitchell report. I'm sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing."

Read: I'm sorry that my Hollywood constituents saw in my hectoring zeal a disturbing echo of HUAC and its interrogation of celebrities in the 40's and 50's; even though Roger Clemens, another selfish, inarticulate, rich, white male who votes Republican, happens to occupy the diametrically opposite pole of the political spectrum.

Watching Waxman, one almost waxes nostalgically for a good old communist witch-hunt. At least when HUAC was trying to decide between the conflicting stories of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, Congress had charges of treason to weigh and national security to protect. Yet as Marx once observed, History always repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. And who better than the American Henry James celebrated for his "sense of humor" to appreciate the grotesque comedy of what unfolded this week in Washington. Anarchy besets Iraq, al-Qaeda regroups in Pakistan, an economy falters and Congress stages an elaborate theatrical spectacle that proves nothing, benefits no one, and serves no greater public good.

For how, really, did Congress think a a single American would benefit from a Congressional investigation of the credibility of Brian McNamee, the veracity of Roger Clemens, and the validity of the Mitchell Report? That is, a single American, of course, other than George Mitchell, a DLA Piper Rudnick lawyer, IRS Agent Jeff Novitsky, U.S Attorney Matthew Parella, Brian McNamee or everyone else connected to the Mitchell Report whose reputation, probity, and motives Roger Clemens' vehement denials have impugned.

And therein lies the tragedy beneath the farce, the graver implications Congress' theatrical comedy poses for the audience.

Indeed, the collaboration between George Mitchell, major league baseball, federal agents and U.S. prosecutors raises troubling questions that should unsettle all Americans-- questions that had the Committee really been concerned about the public's interest it would have investigated or at least, broached.

Much outrage has been wasted on the conflict of interest underlying Mitchell's ties to baseball's ownership, in general, and the Boston Red Sox, in particular. Criticism that's valid and yet misplaced. It obscures the far more ominous implications Mitchell's former titles as a U.S. Attorney, U.S. federal judge, and U.S. Senator posed for players and now poses for all Americans.

THE MITCHELL REPORT'S OWN PRIVATE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR
One of the questions Waxman should have asked was how and why Mitchell could capitalize on the power and resources of the U.S. government and its criminal investigative arm in an inquiry a private industry commissioned. After all, the full title of the committe Waxman chairs is , "The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform." Why then didn't the Committee perform its assigned role and oversee the conduct, in this instance, of the U.S Justice Department. More specifically, what legal basis did U.S. attorney Matthew Parella and Federal agent Jeff Novitzsky have for,

(1) placing the witnesses, testimony, and evidence the Federal government can gather only within circumscribed Constitutional and judicial mandates at the disposal of George Mitchell and MLB, a private entity, beholden to neither?

(2) What legal basis did they have for disseminating incriminating evidence about the drug use of individual players not subject to a criminal investigation but nonetheless facing sanction by their employer, MLB?

(3) And in do soing, what basis did they have for violating the legal and constitutional obligations a Federal prosecutor has to obey in a criminal proceeding, such as furnishing a defendant's lawyer with all the inculpatory evidence they've accumulated before the government can try or sentence him; and then permitting him the opportunity to confront his accusers and to rebut their testimony.

• For all baseball writers' effusions about what a great American George Mitchell is, it appears the the former Federal judge and U.S attorney doesn't think too highly of the Constitutional principles American cherish because he certainly didn't heed them in his steroid inquiry. For example, he supposedly invited players to appear and to defend themselves once someone had incriminated them. However, Mitchell refused to inform the players and their counsel of the specific charges' substance or to allow them to confront their source, as the Constitution would have obliged a government prosecutor. True, the Constitution didn't require this of him; it doesn't regulate a private industry's investigation. However, Congress and the press then shouldn't allow this great American paragon to pretend his inquiry was scrupulously fair and unimpeachably defintive either.

(4) What legal basis or practical justification did Federal prosecutors have for excusing Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee (and/or extenuating their sentence) for the alleged crime of selling and distributing illegal drugs simply because they cooperated with George Mitchell in MLB's private investigation and because they implicated players for the less culpable and less severely punished transgression of illegal drug use?

Of course, for their cooperation, Federal and State prosecutors reward defendants (and/or suspects) with immunity or lighter sentences all the time. Their Faustian bargains with the guilty is supposed to serve the greater good. They co-opt the drug runner to implicate the drug kingpin. They excuse the hit man to convict his mob and its boss. They pardon the possession of narcotics to curtail its sale. Murder goes unpunished but the government extirpates an entire criminal enterprise. The trade supposedly serves the greater good.

However, when the goverment does the exact opposite, cui bono? Why, that is, did Federal prosecutors trade a seller and distributor of illegal drugs for their mere users? How does the public benefit, morever, if Federal prosecutors reward the cooperating defendants not for the convictions they've won but simply for aiding a private investigative body, The Mitchell Committee, that lacks the power and authority to sanction them. Who is served other, of course, than the Federal prosecutor and agent themselves in the self-aggrandizing publicity and career boost they receive from taking down a celebrity? If we're fortunate, they'll join Henry Waxman in Congress.

THE CORPORATE PROSECUTOR: COMING TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU

Indeed, the zeal with which Federal prosecutors have pursued baseball players, in general, and Roger Clemens, in particular, for using illegal steroids, a preponderantly self-inflicted harm, should worry every American. Witness Brian McNamee's account of his interrogation.

Listen, Brian this is [Assistant United States Attorney Matthew] Parrella-he
goes,"You have three strikes to go to jail." He goes -- he goes, "You know, you're a cop." He goes, "You picked up steroids and you delivered steroids. That's a federal crime." He goes, "And if you lie to a federal agent, you go to jail." He goes, "I'm going to tell you" - my attorney just sat there. He goes, "Yesterday, you took two steps back" -- no. "You have two strikes against you to go to jail. You have one more strike." All right. So, then, they recapped what we talked about that day and then -- the day before. And, then, right away, "So what about Clemens?" "Well, what do you mean?" [IRS Special Agent] Novitzky went on this big tirade because it was the biggest embarrassing thing I've ever heard from anybody. He's trying to tell me that I -- that how can I tell him that I don't know anything about steroids and Clemens with, first of all, what they know and then also I must not be good at what I do because I stretch him and I train him; so if I put my hands on his body, how can I not know that his body's changing by taking steroids. And, then, he threw a piece of paper at me and he goes, "Do you know how many people we've talked to?" Parrella jumped in. He goes, "We know about [sic] more about you than you know about yourself." He goes, "You're going to jail." My attorney just sat there. And they said, "Let's go back to when you first met Clemens in '98." Paragraph 27 of Roger Clemens's defamation suit.

Of course, Roger Clemens has both the money and the public stage to defend himself. The average American citizen does not. More troublesome than the Federal prosecutor's zeal to implicate baseball players, then, is their colloboration with Mitchell's investigation to do so because of the dangerous precedent it sets.

Just imagine what would happen if it's your employer Federal prosecutors assist next time.

[1] I don't live in California's 30th District. But I, a staunch Democrat, for one, would never vote for him following his performance.

CONGRESS' ASS-ININE WITCH-HUNT

I can't recall the last time I commended a Republican legislator. It might have been Jacob Javitz? Perhaps, Lowell Weicker. In any case, I've never voted for one.

But amid the nauseating piety, the repetitious groupthink, and the hysterical bombast baseball fans hear daily from the media and George Mitchell's Washington cronies about the nefarious spectre of steroids, the witches' brew Roger Clemens allegedly ingested, and the witch-craft his late-career statisics supposedly imply--- amid the cry to deplore and to punish, one Congressman has distinguished himself for his independence, his wisdom, his sense of fairness and proportion and above all, his historical vision. And for the clarity of that vision, he deserves praise and recognition, even if he is a Republican: Representative Darrell Issa of California's 46th Congressional District.

The Congressman had this to say last week.

"To me, [the steroids brouhaha] smacks of the McCarthy era. We have the broadest investigation power in the House...I'm hoping we're not abusing it. I've noticed that to a certain extent we're doing the same thing [Joseph McCarthy once did] here, promenading people before Congress," though the inquiry has outgrown its original justification and has beggared the committee's time and resources.

Yet there's a deeper and more far-reaching historical current feeding Congress' sick obsession.

You needn't hearken back to Salem or to evoke McCarthyism for the parallels to disturb you. Just recall yesterday. Remember 1998? The last time a moral frenzy gripped Washington and deprived our leaders of foresight and circumspection, while the public rolled its eye and recoiled in disgust.

Then, the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees spent months investigatin the great harm the wayward Presidential penis wrought to our Republic. Meanwhile, Osama Bin-Laden and al-Qaeda gathered in Afghanistan, solidifying their power, establishing base camps, planning and preparing the most lethal and calamitous attack ever inflicted on American soil.

Today, another war-ravaged Islamic country confronts the U.S. with a power vacuum (albeit this time of its own making) where terorrists run rampant and militants committed to slaugherting Americans slowly accumulate power and influence despite the presence of 160,000+ US troops. Meanwhile, the U.S. House Oversight Committee convenes a grand Inquistition into lesions on The Rocket's Ass. And the fans of a $5 billion dollar industry at the height of its popularity shrink, again, with revulsion at the conduct of their representatives.

From where does this hysteria arise? Daniel Bell explained it as follows:

"The moralism so characteristic of the American temper had a peculiar schizoid character: it would be imposed with vehemence in the areas of private conduct...The idea of the 'right of people to know'... operates without a sense of limits and often becomes an invasion of privacy. For what is it that 'the people' have a right to know? One's morals and habits? One's political views? The self-appointed guardians of morals insisted on the right of scrutiny of private conduct in the name of public decency... [Meanwhile, this moralism] is rarely heard regarding the depredations of business and the corruption of politics... and in the arena of foreign policy allows us [to refuse] to face realities."

God help us if this time Congress refusal to face reality presages the arrival of incipient horrors they've, once again, neglected.

CASH-MANIA: STEINIS-ITUS OR THEO-ENVY, EGO & THE YANKS (PART I)

(Dear Reader: The Post below will appear in two parts. Part I follows. Look for Part II, Santana Folly, in the forthcoming days.)

Are verbal incontinence, smug self-satisfaction, and thin-skinned pettiness contagious? In Yankee Land, these are traits we come to expect of the Steinbrenners.

However, Brian Cashman's behavior of late raises the question whether he's contracted the Steinbrenners' character flaws.

Last week, Cashman made some rather tactless and disparaging comments about his former manager and center-fielder. This week, Cashman gambled the house to protect the farm, rebuffing the Twins' eleventh-hour offer, according to The Bergen Record, of Johan Santana for Ian Kennedy, Melky Cabrera, and a prospect.

Are these isolated lapses or symptoms of a more fundamental shortcoming, of the vanity and hubris that often come to afflict men who wield power?

Let's analyze each in its turn.

STEINIS-ITUS: DISHONORING THE OLD GUARD

Now, Brian Cashman, it's true, has never exactly been the most magnetic or charismatic personality: the guarded, saturnine demeanor; the un-inflected monotone; the prolix and ponderous responses to the most basic question.

(The "Sports Pope" and "The Idio-Savant" had some juvenile fun at Cashman's expense during Joe Girardi's press conference. They turned their mike off at varying intervals only to discover Cashman effusing ad nauseum about the managerial search "process," in response to a single question, a discourse about as intriguing as a Ben Stein lecture on the "process" by which the Agricultural Dept. calculates corn subsidies.)

But if his public comments are hardly models of charm, wit, and eloquence, they usually betray the saving grace of discretion.

That is, until recently, when Cashman appeared with his new friend and counterpart, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, at William Patterson University. Listed below I excerpta few of the more incendiary remarks Cashman offered about his former manager, centerfielder, and some of his current players' and team's "mental toughness" and "physical conditioning"

• About why the GM declined to offer Bernie Williams a contract for the '07 season, "Williams had become more involved in his music 'and that took away from his play' and that Williams had a 'terrible season' in 2005." -- NY Times, "A Bitter Rivalry Finds a Little Common Ground," January 26, 2008)


• About Joe Torre's role: "Torre had played Williams 'ahead of guys who could help us win' in 2006, a reference to Melky Cabrera" -- Id.
  
• About Joba's performance during the midge infestation, "'I thought our guys weren't mentally tough enough to get through it."
  
• About Damon and Abreu's off-season conditioning, "Cashman said Damon struggled last season because he reported to spring training out of shape, adding that Bobby Abreu was also out of shape."

"51"*?: THE BERNIE VENDETTA

The first problem with criticizing Bernie and Torre is that it doesn't serve what should be Cashman's primary responsibility-- assembling the best talent available and winning ball games.

Sure, rebuking Damon and Abreu for their commitment and work ethic may spur them to work harder in the off-season. However, disparaging the performance and diligence of a former player (one effectively retired) and impugning his former manager's judgment won't improve the 2008 Yankees any.

Then again, it might avail Cashman himself: by implying his manager's favoritsm and his player's neglect accounted for his team's failures he retrospectively acquits himself of responsibilty. He also depletes the good will of two Yankees infinitely more popular than him. After all, diminishing one's predecessors and blaming one's subordinates is a long, ignoble tradition men in power employ to safeguard their legacies and to burnish their reputation.

Which makes one wonder whether diminishing their popularity was precisely Cashman's motive, or at the very least, his unconscious wish, because of the indignation directed at him in the wake of their departures. The uproar Torre's ouster provoked occurred recently enough for most of us still to recall it. But Cashman's passive-aggressive minor-league invitation to Bernie in late January of 2007-- an offer he made reluctantly and designed to be refused, besides, much like Torre's-- fomented a backlash every bit as furious, especially after the roster Cashman assembled consisting of four first-baseman and no fifth outfielder started 22-29. (In retrospect, the rebuff to Bernie foreshadowed the Torre fiasco nine months later.)

So it raises the question: did Cashman resent the public outcry their departures generated? Did Cashman resent having even to offer Bernie a minor league invite because of public pressure and Torre an offer they knew he'd refuse? Did Cashman especially resent their decisions to spurn the offer and then to shun the organization? It wouldn't be the first time the front-office denigrated an ex-Yankee to deflect the outrage his ouster provoked.

But worse than gratuitous, Cashman's characterization of Bernie's 2005 season as "terrible" is also unjust. And more egregious still is Cashman's insinuation that it resulted from two factors the precise effect of which we can only speculate -- (1) his physical conditioning and (2) his musical career. Finally, there's the added irony that Cashman would choose to reproach a player for his off-season, extra-curricular activities during a public appearance having nothing to do with his duties as GM.

Now, in fairness, Bernie's offensive production in 2005 did represent the nadir in a decline that actually began back in 2003. However, he hardly had a "terrible" season. If he did, what do we make of the 2007 season of the center-fielder that Cashman considered so indispensable that he spurned a deal for Johan Santana, in part, because he feared, at this late date, he couldn't replace.

Compare Bernie's 2005 offensive statistics with Melky Cabrera's last year.

• Bernie Williams-- 2005-- .249/.321/.367/.288 RISP-- 12 HRs-- 64 RBIs (485 ABs), RC/G= 3.8
  
• Melky Cabrera-- 2007-- .273/.327/.391/.272 RISP-- 8 HRs-- 73 RBIs (545 ABs), RC/G=4.3

Perhaps, Cashman would have preferred Bernie emulate Roger Clemens' off-season work-out regimen. How else does a player arrest the physical decline the body undergoes around 35, whether he plays classical guitar or no? Players, it seems, are damned if they use performance-enhancing drugs and damned if they refuse them.

On the defensive side, Bernie's waning speed, it's true, also curtailed his range in center-field, but evidently, not enough to convince the Yankees to sign Carlos Beltran at a $20 million dollar discount the winter before. Anyway, until someone shows me a proven metric to quantify precisely how many runs Bernie's diminished range yielded, I remain dubious to Cashman Apologists' unsubstantiated assertions that Bernie's defense handicapped his team.

In 2005, the Yankees won 95 games and their pitching staff surrendered 789 runs. How many of those 789 runs did Bernie's defense cost them? How many more wins would Bubba Crosby's defense, say, have garnered them. In 2001, the Oakland A's won 102 games with Johhny Damon in CF. In 2002, they won 103 with Terence Long in the position.

And really, if Bernie had such a "terrible" season, why did Cashman reward him for it in the off-season with a guaranteed major league contract for 2006.

TORRE-BASHERS ANONYMOUS
But Cashman seems determined to rewrite history. Indeed his assertion that "Torre played Williams 'ahead of guys who could help us win' in 2006" represents an even greater distortion than his musings on William's 2005 season.

Of course the reproach of his ex-manager did warm the hearts of Torre-haters everywhere, awakening a few them from their two month larval dormancy to vent their hatred and malice. I quote one below.

• "joe torre who didn’t want to be woken up to go out and speak to his ROOKIE pitcher in a palyoff game who was being attacked by bugs! was there ever a worse manager than joe torre the last 7 years, can any true yankee fan not be ecstatic this bum will not be here next year? anyone is better than torre. sorry, but this defense of bernie is for the birds..recall how he was such a team player that he didnt even show up for spring training last year?"-- Anonymous poster, Lohud blog

The tenor, I think, speaks for itself.

In any case, Cashman, it seems, rather conveniently, has forgotten the circumstances of the 2006 season. Torre didn't start Bernie in the outfield, on a regular basis, until Sheffield and Matsui suffered season-ending injuries in April and May respectively. In the 23 games, the Yankees played in April 2006, Bernie started in only 15, 9 of them as the DH. So in the mere 6 games Torre started Bernie in the outfield, what player did Torre bench "that could have helped the Yankees win?" Andy Phillips? The Yankees, after all, didn't promote Melky Cabrera until May 9, 2006, the day after a broken wrist landed Matsui on the DL for almost the entirety of the regular season.

And with both Matsui and Sheffield sidelined, Torre had no choice but to start Bernie in the outfield, a decision, quite frankly, for which, the Yankees GM should be grateful. Because were it not for Bernie rising to the occasion, increasing his batting average by 30 points and his slugging percentage by 70 points over 2005, the Yankees might not have qualified for the playoffs

Is Cashman, perhaps, thinking of the period after he acquired Abreu on July 31st? Well, if so, he's mistaken here as well. Because if anything, Torre played Bernie, NOT Melky, less after Abreu arrived. Bernie's Plate Appearance dropped from highs of 103, 89, and 78 in May June, and July to 66 and 61 in August and September. Melky's Plate Appearance remained constant throughout: 112 (June), 106 (July), 122 (August), 108 (September)

What about the playoffs? Well, thereto Cashman would be mistaken. Torre ddn't play Bernie Williams, let alone start him, in any game of the 2006 ALDS, except as DH in Game 3 against Kenny Rogers. In a game incidentally during which Bernie Williams came about 6 inches from a 2-run home-run in the 5th inning that would have narrowed the Tigers' lead to 3-2.

THEO-ENVY: THE ATHLETE v. THE INTELLECTUAL

All of which raises the question why? Upraiding players and maligning ex-managers in public is, of course, a Steinbrenner hallmark, or a George Steinbrenner one, anyway. But why would a GM ordinarily so guarded and evasive that he regularly bores his audience by repeating the same hackneyed cliches over and over again to avoid offense or indiscretion take the occasion of an appearance, with of all people, Theo Epstein, GM of the Yankees' arch rival, to denigrate his former manager and center-fielder?

Here's one theory that amused me greatly.

• "Where does that little peanut-head Cash get his balls, throwing dirt on Bernie out of the blue? This is the second time in a month that this bug-eyed little squirt has embarrassed our team while playing kissyface with his new drinking buddy, Epstein. Anyone who thinks that’s accidental isn’t paying attention." -- Anonymous Blogger, Lohud Blogs

Now, I can't condone the attacks on Cashman's physical appearance. After all, the toll working for Steinbrenners exacts is probably enough to make anyone look "bug-eyed" from stress and sleep-deprivation after 2o years.

However, in his suspicion that it wasn't "accidental" that Cashman criticized Bernie and Torre while playing "kissyface" with Epstein, the blogger may be on to something. The theory calls to mind something Tom Verducci wrote back in October about Cashman in his superb article about the Torre debacle, "Blood On Their Hands"

"It's apparent now that in his heart Cashman didn't really want Torre back... Cashman has fancied himself a Billy Beane-Theo Epstein wanna-be, an intellectual GM known for running an efficient system, especially when it comes to player development, rather than just a guy who writes checks. He has traded veterans for prospects, embraced sabermetrics and surrounded himself with young number-crunchers who get jazzed about PlayStation tournaments. The more he has put his self-worth in the image of cutting-edge GM the less Torre and his old-school ways became relevant."

For if Verducci is right and Cashman envies Epstein's public image as a "baseball intellectual" and wants to remake his own in Theo's likeness, it's not suprising he'd become a little too expansive, a little too earnest, a little too eager to impress in his company.

In fact, what better time for Cashman, the ex-athlete, the former Cathlolic University 2nd baseman, to signal he's every bit the Ivy League Epstein's intellectual equal, to signal that he too has embraced baseball's new sabermetrical vanguard, than a joint appearance with Epstein to depreciate the two most prominent symbols of the Yankees' old, antiquated regime, Torre and Bernie, his figurative Son and to elevate the most prominent embodiments of the new one, his young pitchers. Witness the other much reported statement Cashman issued that night: "My strong recommendation," Cashman also said, "is that we stick with our young pitching and keep it in-house."

And that's exactly what Cashman did four days later, by forgoing the opportunity to acquire the best pitcher in baseball. I only wish I endorsed his decision. In part II of this post, I will explain why I do not.

[1] Because to Cashman's credit, he recognized that in the new marketplace wrought by expansion and revenue-sharing, championship-caliber pitching had become too scarce and too costly a commodity to purchase via free-agency. The Yankees had to cultivate it on the farm. For this reason, Cashman shrewdly augumented the sums spent on the draft-- from $3.8 million in '03 to $7.4 million in '07

IN CASH WE TRUST?

(Pete Abraham, the Yankees' beat reporter for The Journal News, ran an abridged version of the piece below on his blog on January 11, 2008. Much thanks to Pete for the opportunity)http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2008/01/11/pinch-hitting-the-yankees-republic/

February 4, 2008, will mark the 10th year of Brian Cashman’s tenure as the Yankees’ General Manager, the longest period anyone has held the position in the Steinbrenner era, in itself an accomplishment. With celebration however anniversaries also invite reassessment. Accordingly, the milestone begs an appraisal of Cashman’s record.

The first problem, of course, is how. In business, labor and management, for better or worse, bow to the same arbiter—the profit margin. In baseball, however, the very numbers that are a GM’s lifeblood offer no reliable, objective index of his proficiency, only his players’. The most obvious index, his team’s wins and losses, owes to too many variables beyond his control-- payroll, injuries, meddlesome owners, a manager’s folly, the vagaries of players’ production, and sheer luck — to gauge his performance by this measure alone.

Two further complications bedevil the task of evaluating Cashman. First of all, he has benefited from the foundation of young, championship-caliber players his two predecessors Gene Michael and Bob Watson assembled. The core of whom, Jeter, Pettitte, Posada, and Rivera, even today, underpin the Yankees’ success. Secondly, Cashman bore the title of GM in name only through his first eight years, not assuming the position’s full power and authority until November 2005.

Still, Cashman has stamped his signature on enough of the organization’s management structure, personnel, and philosophy to suggest an informed, if hardly definitive, assessment. A record, I judge, in sum, an equivocal one: far less prodigious than the genius nomaas.org, for example, regularly credits him with; but far more able and momentous than the incompetence Mike Pagliarulo’s crude tract smeared him with last year. http://www.myspace.com/baselinereport

No place is this checkered ledger more evident than the Yankees’ major league roster. Where a history of shrewd position-player acquisitions have secured and fortified the dynastic foundation Cashman inherited while a disastrous succession of inept, aged, and frail pitchers have squandered and undermined it. Compare Justice, Ventura, Olerud, Matsui, A-Rod, Damon, and Abreu, on one side, with Weaver, Karsay, Brown, Vasquez, Contreras, Wright, Pavano, Farnsworth, and Igawa, on the other. Even the exceptions, largely, prove the rule. George and his Tampa cronies account for the Mondesi, Wommack, and Giambi acquisitions, on the one side, and propelled the Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens’ signing, on the other. And if we can quibble with wisdom of some of the above acquisitions, or even who accounted for them, the overall pattern speaks for itself: éclat with position-players, folly on pitchers.

Now, in Cashman’s defense, a neglected, depleted farm system and a bear free-agent pitcher market often confined his options to overpriced starters and regressing veterans. And to his credit he recognized why. In a sport flush with cash, beholden to new revenue sharing arrangements, and plagued by a scarcity of pitching talent, only the rare preeminent starter reached free-agency while still in his prime. Even small-market teams jealously guarded their proven pitching talent. They began to sign their best starters to cheaper, long-term contracts before they qualified for arbitration, enabling them, as such, to hold on to their pitchers for two or three years past their free agent eligibility.

Witness Dan Haren’s contract with Oakland. Haren would have attained the six years of service free-agency requires after the 2008 season. But in 2005, the A’s signed him to an extension through 2009, with a 2010 club option, besides. Apart from enabling them to retain Haren longer, the A’s increases his trade value. This explains why Haren commanded four highly rated Diamonbacks prospects when Twins’ GM can’t seem to obtain more than two for Johan Santana. Haren, now, likely won’t reach free-agency until, at the very earliest, he’s 30.

The lesson Cashman learned from all of this is that the Yankees had to return to drafting and cultivating their own pitchers. Their woefully deficient farm system hadn’t produced a starting pitcher since Andy Pettitte in 1995. But once granted full authority in 2005, Cashman remedied the deficiency with considerable dispatch. In just three years, his infusion of premiere, minor-league pitching talent raised the Yankees organizational ranking from 27th in 2004 to 5th in 2007 in Baseball America’s annual survey.

Yet how Cashman accomplished this feat will leave perhaps a more enduring legacy on the franchise than will even the players themselves. He streamlined the management structure, reasserting his supremacy, clarifying executives’ domains, reconciling the Tampa and New York factions, and restoring accountability. Next, he dismissed scouts, hired new cross-checkers, and re-invested money and manpower in the amateur draft. And finally, he expanded the use of quantitative analysis to vet prospects, to identify unsung talent, and to preempt subjective, scouting reports, plagued by human bias, with empirically verifiable data. Enter Moneyball; Exit Prodigal George.

Some of Cashman’s recent comments, however, raise worrisome questions. Has he, like the sculptor Pygmalion, fallen in love with his own creation? The Daily News’ Bill Madden reported, during the Winter Meetings, that Cashman rebuffed an offer of Phil Hughes, Melky Cabrera, Jeff Marquez and Mitch Hiligoss for Johan Santana. “"I'm definitely fully invested in a lot of young talent. You get attached to it," Cashman said. Raising the question: has the GM succumbed to the very irrational bias he embraced sabermetrics to curb and proceeded to overvalue Hughes, among others? Economists would call the “attachment to Hughes” Cashman revealed his “endowment bias”— peoples’ tendency to demand more to sell what we possess than what we’d pay to buy it.

Would Cashman value Hughes equivalently were he another team’s prospect? Why, for example, do the Yankees alone seem to project Hughes a can’t-miss, bona-fide ace? Former Blue Jays’ Assistant GM Keith Law regards him no better than a #2 starter. http://myespn.go.com/s/conversations/show/story/3007436

But more importantly, is Hughes so valuable that he’s worth the price of forgoing Johan Santana? Santana, after all, already is a bona-fide ace, if not the best pitcher in baseball, and pitcher, moreover, capable of giving the Yankees 200 innings the following two seasons. (Whereas Hughes won’t contribute more than about 150 to 170 innings the next two years; that is, if the Yankees honor their professed plan to cap his innings.)

An organization that once mortgaged its future, and bartered away all its young talent-- now that they abound with prospects-- runs the risk of overcompensating and idealizing them. The latter danger Cashman risks is especially prevalent because so many aging superstars compose the Yankees major league roster. How many more prolific years do a 38-yr-old Rivera, a 36-yr-old Posada, a 33 and 32 yr-old Jeter and A-Rod really have left? (And though teeming with young pitching, a recent Baseball America podcast identified the Yankees farm system as having scant hitting talent.) Yet Cashman, nonetheless, plans to entrust 60% of his pitching 2008 rotation to three unproven, rookies with inning caps. Does an aging Yankee lineup, where only two hitters, Cano and Melky, are under 30, have the luxury to wait for them to ripen?

Given Cashman’s history on pitchers, I wish I could say I trusted his judgment. I wish I could say I agreed with his decision to forego both the best pitcher in baseball while still in his prime and with it, the Yankees best chance to overtake the Red Sox next year. But on the future of Hughes and the fate of Santana will hinge the final reckoning.

J'ACCUSE: THE MITCHELL BLACKLIST

"Ninety-eight in New England was a summer of exquisite warmth and sunshine, in baseball a summer of mythical battle between a home-run god who was white and a home-run god who was brown, and in America the summer of an enormous piety binge, a purity binge... reviv[ing] America's oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony. In the Congress, in the press, on the networks, the righteous grandstanding creeps, crazy to blame, deplore, and punish, were everywhere moralizing to beat the band: all of them in a calculated frenzy with what Hawthorne identified in the incipient country of long ago as 'the persecuting spirit.'" --Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Well, baseball fans, it appears "the persecuting spirit" has returned because the "righteous grandstanding creeps" are at it again: the self-appointed arbiters of morality; the pious windbags bloated with their superior virtue and repressed envy; the sanctimonious hacks who presume themselves the guardians of the national pastime because some tabloid accords them a corner between advertisements to retail their pablum.

Baseball's Moral Guardians are out deploring and villifying and haranguing again. Only now they've come armed with a list of sinners. And to Inquisitor's altar they've gone, to ostracize and to punish, to blacken reputations and to tarnish legacies, to purge the accused from the record books and to restore to baseball some long lost, wholly imaginary purity.

Not flawed investigative methods; not selective, geographically-biased targets; not tenuous, circumstantial evidence; not witnesses of dubious character and suspect credibility testifying under prosecutorial duress; not the absence of an impartial judge or jury; not the suspension of the most basic procedural safeguards against false testimony, uncorroborated accusations, the right to confront hostile witnesses or to be notified of the specific charges-- no ambiguity has chastened their zeal to prosecute; no doubt has shaken their moral certitude.

No, like the Inquisitions into Communists in Hollywood and Witches in Salem, someone making his confessions before the Mitchell tribunal only need name you to exonerate himself before Cotton Mather's scribblers find you guilty and the mob comes clamoring for your neck.

• "Chad Allen, who has admitted using steroids, was a teammate of [Bart] Miadich. He said that Miadich’s size, muscle definition, and tightness of skin indicated to him that Miadich was using steroids." --- Mitchell Report, 12/13/ 2007
  


• "Well the Communist party functionaries, when they are such, are always secretive. They never announce themselves as Communist Party functionaries. But they have a quality of authority, a quality of talking with knowledge, and one makes the surmise that [Andrew Overgaard] is some kind of functionary." --Clifford Odets, House Un-American Affairs Committee Hearings, 05/19/1952
  

As Arthur Miller once wrote, "The witch-hunt capture[s] some significant part of the American imagination...most startling [is] the similarities in the rituals of defense and the investigative routines... should the accused confess, his honesty could be proved precisely the same way-- by naming former confederates...normal evidentiary proof [is] either de-emphasized, left in limbo, or not required at all... in the end, the charge itself, suspicion itself, all but becomes the evidence of [wrongdoing]... "

POPE GEORGE: THE INFALLIBLE
But as if the Mitchell's Blacklist wasn't reckless enough in accusation, indiscriminate enough in targets, unsound enough in method, and shoddy enough in evidence-- as if this wasn't outrage enough alone, Baseball's Scribes defended its fairness and justice in a contortion worthy of Alice-in-Wonderland.

Through the looking glass, implication became proof of guilt. Witnesses, facing federal indictment, epitomized forthright probity. And George Mitchell-- former politician, lobbyist for big tobacco, and card-carrying member of the ownership group that somehow acquired the Red Sox without the highest bid (from whom Mitchell drew a salary until 2006)-- was elevated into a paragon of virtue, wisdom, and infallibility.

After all, didn't Senator Mitchell broker peace in Northern Ireland? Well, yes. Did the Moral Guardians somehow forget that Bill Clinton brokered the Oslo Accords? The role of elder statesman however hardly immunized the former President of errant judgment, ulterior motives, ethical improprieties, or even flagrant lying, as the Lewinsky scandal dramatized.

How quickly the media sheds its cynicism for politicians when it suits their ends. All the better to dismiss the complaints that Mitchell's ownership affilliation suggested a conflict of interest and/or explained his zeal to smear players, variations in evidence notwithstanding.

THE BLACK HERRING

But why let a few equivocal facts, troublesome conflicts, or moral ambiguity inhibit the ecstasy of judgment when Baseball's Clerisy has a national pastime to purify, a blacklist to enforce, a laity to incite, column space to fill, and a pulpit to fulminate from on television.

• "We are probably at the darkest moment in baseball history, even worse, to me, than the 1919 Black Sox scandal." Bob Klapisch, "Yankees Hot Stove", YES Network
• "This is worse than the Black Sox scandal. This is worse than the Pete Rose betting scandal."-- Kevin Kernan, The New York Post
  
• "This makes April 15, 1947 [the day Jackie Robinson graced Ebbets Field] the greatest day in baseball history. George Mitchell's mass public shaming of cheats and frauds leaves December 13, 2007, running a close second." -- Ian O'Connor, The Bergen Record
• "These were the drugs that... ultimately damaged the games as anything that has happened to it since the Black Sox of 1919." --Mike Lupica, The Daily News

The tragic irony, or rather the ironic tragedy, is that any writer so obtuse, reckless, or hysterical as to conflate steroid use with throwing a World Series actually has a forum to purvey his canards in the first place. To miss the critical difference in the two transgressions, both in their underlying motive and the harm inflicted is to betray an intellectual shallowness, moral sophistry, and historical ignorance that alone should disqualify them as authorities fit to render judgment.

Let's leave aside the obvious differences the criminal law would draw between them: that it punishes bribery and racketeering far more harshly than illegal drug use. Or that, as such, that while prosecutors indicted and tried the Black Sox players, no prosecutor has filed charges against steroid users-- unless, of course, like Barry Bonds, they've lie about it. Leave it aside, for a moment, because no one would expect of a baseball writer the critical discrimination of our judiciary.

Still, consider the basic difference in the two offenses' respective motives and in their implications for the very game in which Baseball's Clerisy presumes itself expert.

The Black Sox players, remeber, didn't merely break the rules. They actually preempted them because in a sham competition, the rules are a nullity. The Black Sox players, then, didn't "cheat". By which, we mean, they didn't violate this or that prohibition. No, Comiskey's conspirators defiled the game's entire raison d'etre. They subverted its whole purpose: to enact a competition with an unknown outcome, a game in which both teams strive to win and which either, in theory, could.

The Black Sox players. as such, staged a fiction. Indeed, in identity, the 1919 World Series more closely approximated a theatrical performance where the author scripts the characters' fates before the play actually begins. The Black Sox players then impersonated prefabricated roles to simulate a competition, all the while sabotaging their talent to ensure the result they predetermined.

Performance enhancement, by contrast, springs from the exact opposite motive. Take confessed steroid user, Jason Giambi, for example. Giambi's drug use violates the rules, yes. But his goal is to augment his talent not to compromise it, to help his team win not to guarantee they lose, to realize the fan's expectations not to conspire to thwart them.

Both the steroid user's motive and his transgression still observe and preserve both the game's fundamental spirit, to compete, and its fundmental purpose, to win. If the steroid user distorts the game-- although no one has quantified precisely how as yet--he, unlike the Black Sox racketeers, doesn't subvert its objective or counterfeit its identity. However if steroid use is as prevalent and pervasive as Baseball's Mullahs contend, steroid use may not even offend this much. With enough users spread throughout the game, the drug-enhanced deviations tend to nullify each other and to have no influence on the outcome.

Why does steroid use pale in comparison to rigging a World Series? Just examine the fan's respective reactions. The Black Sox scandal drove fans away en masse for years afterward, nearly causing the sport's extinction. While during the steroid era, baseball's popularity has soared and it has attraced fans in unprecedented numbers.

Which seem to prove Jefferson's old verity about democracy's average citizen having the most developed instinct for justice, where money is the medium which best accumulates his moral sense and renders the fairest verdict. What's the distinction between 1919 and 1998; the altered game, from its impostor? Ask the fan: the former he will pay to see and the latter, he won't.

CHEATERS ANONYMOUS

And really when was the game ever pure anyway? Really, for all Baseball's Clerisy's execration and dudgeon about the blight on the game's integrity and the taint of its record books, how much more does steroid use sully their Platonic Ideal of Competitive Purity than all the unsportsmanlike infractions and rule violations baseball either has condoned or has ignored throughout its history. Doctoring the ball. Corking the Bat. Tarring fingers. Stealing Signs. Manipulative landscaping.

How does one measure the precise effect anyway? Both on the individual player's performance and the team's success in the aggregate.

Jason Giambi testified that he began using anabolic steroids and HGH in 2001 and ceased using them at the All-Star Break in 2003. (Even if you believe nonetheless that Giambi used the drugs after 2003, it is difficult to believe he persisted beyond 2004, when a doctor diagnosed him with a related pituitary tumor and he missed almost the entire season.) However, Giambi's statistics before and after his steroids use don't differ materially from the stats he amassed while taking them.

Non-Steroid Years

• 1998-- .295/.384/.489 27 HR, 110 RBIs
• 1999-- .315/.422/.553 33 HRs, 123 RBIs
• 2000--.333/.476/.647 43 HRs, 137 RBIs
• 2005-- .271/.440/.535 32HRs, 87RBIs
• 2006-- .253/.413/.558 37HRs, 113 RBIs
• AVG -- .296/.421/.556 35 HRs, 114 RBIs

Steroid Years

• 2001-- .342/.477/.660 38 HRs, 120 RBIs
• 2002-- .314/.435/.598 41HRs, 122 RBIs
• 2003-- .250/.412/.527 41HRs, 107 RBIs
• AVG.-- .302/.431/.594 40HRs, 116RBIs

Is there a statistically significant difference in these numbers? Not to the naked eye, certainly.

Do steroid enhance a hitter's performance more than, say, corking his bat or stealing signs? Do they enhance a pitcher's performance more than, say, doctoring the ball?

No expert has performed a long-term study on the precise effect of prolonged steroid use on athletic performance for obvious reasons. However, Dr George Griffing, Professor of Medicine at St. Louis University, has concluded that HGH not only doesn't improve athletic performance, it may actually cause a degradation in a player's proficiency.

"HGH has some definite and proven medical benefits. It is currently approved medically in the United States for two primary indications, short stature in children and growth hormone deficiency in adults. All of these HGH benefits, however, are in individuals with growth hormone deficiency. In people with normal GH levels, HGH does not improve athletic performance in terms of muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance.

In fact, several placebo-controlled studies have been negative. A 4-week, double-blind Swedish study using 2 doses of HGH and placebo found no differences in subjects exercising on a bicycle in terms of power output and oxygen uptake. In another study, a single injection of HGH increased plasma lactate and reduced exercise performance.

In addition to the lack of effectiveness for enhancing athletic performance, HGH has a downside. It can cause dose-related side effects including diabetes, carpal tunnel syndrome, fluid retention, joint stiffness, muscle pain, and high blood pressure."

More recently, a professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, respectively, drew similar conclusions about the effect of steroids as well. Among the 80+ names, Mitchell's blacklist identifies, the professors compared the statistics of 48 hitters and 23 pitchers before and after the Report alleges they used steroids. (The remaining players were excluded for insufficient data.) Their conclusions are as follows:

For pitchers there was no net gain in performance and, indeed, some loss. Of the 23, seven showed improvement after they supposedly began taking drugs (lower E.R.A.’s), but 16 showed deterioration (higher E.R.A.’s). Over all, the E.R.A.’s rose by 0.5 earned runs per game. Roger Clemens is a case in point: a great pitcher before 1998, a great (if increasingly fragile) pitcher after he is supposed to have received treatment. But when we compared Clemens’s E.R.A. through 1997 with his E.R.A. from 1998 on, it was worse by 0.32 in the later period.

Hitters didn’t fare much better. For the 48 batters we studied, the average change in home runs per year “before” and “after” was a decrease of 0.246. The average batting average decreased by 0.004. The average slugging percentage increased by 0.019 — only a marginal difference. So while some batters increased their totals, an equal number had falloffs. Most showed no consistent improvement, several showed variable performance and some may have extended the years they played at a high level, although that is a difficult question to answer.

Some players improved and some declined. But the pattern for the individuals’ averages was consistent, and the variability of players (with the exception of home run counts) was low. There is no example of a mediocre player breaking away from the middle of the pack and achieving stardom with the aid of drugs. ("More Juice Less Punch", New York Times, Op-ed, December 22, 2007)

Indeed, the overwhelming number of marginal, undistinguished players the Mitchell Report accuses would seem to illustrate the professor's last conclusion.

THAT WITCH DON'T HUNT?

But if Baseball's Guardians really wanted to see fairness restored and justice prevail, they'd spare us their pious moralizing about the game's purity and integrity. The fans, as they have throughout baseball's history, can uphold the game's soundness quite well on their own, policing the game with their pocketbooks.

No, if Baseball's Guardian bleed with compassion for the games' disenfranchised and dispossessed, the cause they should espouse is that of those with no representation: all the struggling, fringe minor-league players who never make the Show because some marginal major leaguer, propelled by performance-enhancing drugs, usurped his roster spot.

Which means the players most deserving of censure are not the all-stars who appear on Mitchell's Blacklist: Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Roger Clemens would have had prosperous major league careers with or without steroid. It's all the anonymous major-league player the Clerisy's crusade never mentions who most deserve sanction. But that's unlikely to happen.

Senators don't target the obscure and Columnists don't denounce the marginal because as Salem, HUAC, Ken Starr teach us, witches aren't worth the hunt unless you fell the mighty.

POHLAD'S POUND OF FLESH

"They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing."-- The Merchant of Venice

It isn't often that I thank the Baseball Gods for the Steinbrenners. Like many a Yankee fan I've always nurtured a rather ambivalent view of the Boss and his progeny. This off-season's developments offer a dramatically illustration.

For example, the Steinbrenners, one minute, can exhibit pettiness, duplicity, and callous ingratitude in disposing of the manager who guided their franchise through one of the great eras in Yankees history: 10 division titles; 6 Pennants; 4 World Series Championships.

In the next minute, the Boss Juniors can epitomize the very opposite traits-- magnanimity, self-effacement, endearing candor, wisdom and a largess both of spirit and pocketbook. They exercise Abreu's option. They indulge Andy Pettitte while he plays Hamlet. They re-sign Posada and Rivera (only after questioning the commitment of the one and offending the other.) And they top it off by consummating the unfathomable. They welcome Alex Rodriguez back without humiliating him. They forgive him his errancy without demanding his abasement. They don't allow rancor and slight to trump the business of winning. And at the exorbitant price of doing so, they never once recoil. A commitment the fans of most major league franchises only can envy and that we Yankee fans ought not take for granted.

ST. PAUL'S SHYLOCK
A cursory glance at the tycoons fraternity that comprises MLB's ownership club only reinforces Yankee fan's great good fortune. For all the Steinbrenners largesse, their net work qualifies them among the memberships' middle class.

Consider Carl Pohlad, the Twins' owner, the wealthiest owner in baseball. Forbes' magazine estimates Pohlad's net worth to total somewhere between $2.8 billion dollars and 3.1 billion dollars (a sum more than twice that of the Steinbrenners) which would rank him the 114th wealthiest man in America. (See "The Twins Are Not Sharing the Wealth," NYT, November 29, 2007) Indeed, the annual interest Pohlad's wealth accrues exceeds the Yankees payroll. However, Pohlad operates his team as though it were a municipal entity and refuses to spend a dime more than the revenue the Twins generate. Although many question whether Pohlad even spends this much.

Many reports (in addition to Twins fans) accuse Pohlad of pocketing a portion of the revenue sharing he receives instead of investing it to retain his players and/or to sign free-agents, the purpose for which MLB earmarked it. http://www.reason.com/news/show/32522.html. The Twins, evidently, receive $20 million annually from general revenue sharing and an additional $25 million from MLB's on-line media properties, yet their 2007 payroll totaled about $70 million, 19th in baseball.

As for whether the Twins' own chief revenue sources, their ticket sales and media contracts, cover the difference, including added expenses. Well, Forbes' last "Business of Baseball" article credits the 2006 Twins' with producing $14 million in operating income, from which they garner about $5.5 million in operating profit. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/33/07mlb_The-Business-Of-Baseball_Income.html

Not enough lucre, evidently, to sate Pohlad's money lust.

An avarice the Twins forthcoming new stadium only accentuates and makes all the more reprehensible. Because in 2010 the Twins will earn $30 million dollars a year more from their new $522 million dollar stadium -- 75% of the cost Pohlad extorted from the City of Minneapolis.

But with more money on the way, Pohlad still has the effrontery to cry poverty. So as the 2007 Winter Meetings approach, the Twins prepare to ransom their franchise's crown jewel-- Johan Santana, perhaps, the best pitcher in baseball-- because they refuse to pay him the $20 + million dollar over 6 years that he seeks.

Which would seem to suggest that a competitive imbalance plagues baseball less because it can't institute a salary cap than because it allows tight-fisted misers to own its clubs-- hidebound skinflints who buy baseball teams to ornament their portfolio with a vanity asset and who could care less about winning or their fan's allegiance.

Compare Pohlad's short-sighted parsimony to Red Sox owner John Henry. Last year, Henry, another billionaire who surpasses the Steinbrenners in wealth, reportedly drew Dice-K's $51 million dollar posting fee from his own vast personal resources. Henry bought Dice-K for the obvious reason of course-- because he wants to win and Dice-K was the best available commodity for improving the Red Sox's fortunes. But Henry also did so because he's an astute businessmen. He appreciates professional sports' fundamental economic law: nothing sells like success. Henry's investment brought him a championship and augmented his team's revenues besides. The Red Sox not only profited from a post-season gait that ran through the World Series; what's more, winning a Championship enabled them to raise their ticket prices from between 5% and 13% for the forthcoming season.

However, the simple verity that "If you win it, they will come" is a verity Carl Pohlad, for all his business acumen, evidently is too frugal and/or too myopic to apprehend. Because for very same $50 million Henry spent, Pohlad could increase the Twins' offer to Santana from the 4-year $80 million proposal Santana rejected to a 6-year $130 million contract he likely would approve. An investment that would assure Pohlad a World Series contender for his new ballpark and far beyond. With a 29-yr-old Santana and a 24-yr-old Liriano at the front of their rotation, the Twins would boast the best 1-2 combination in the AL. (Liriano, you may recall, went 12-3 with a 2.19 ERA in 2006 before an elbow injury disabled him and ended his season.) .


But that doesn't appear in the offing. So baseball's talent drain continues: from the frugal and myopic to the ambitious and visionary. The question for the Yankees is at what price Shylock's ransom?

A CALL TO ARMS
And it will be a hefty price at that because the Minnesota Usurer can smell the anxiety. Their mortal rivals have won their second World Series in three years and perhaps for the first time in history, threaten the Yankees' hold on their birthright. And the Yankees know it: they didn't just invest $100 million in two players over 35 to surrender the fight or to bide their time while their youth movement burgeons. The Steinbrenners understand the law of battle: You must strike the enemy before he grows too powerful to overcome.

Because for all the media cant about Joe Torre's tactical inadequacies and the demagogy about his failure to realize the team's "mission statement" the Yankees' haven't advanced to a World Series since 2003 for one overriding reason. They've suffered from a deficit of arms. As a consequence, they've had to muddle through the post-season with a middling starting rotation bloated with overpriced salaries, debilitated by age and injury, and bereft of a genuine ace.

(Albeit, observers have overrated the liability of the last shortcoming. During the Yankee dynasty era, the Yankees won less because they possessed a conventional ace in the Guidry, Beckett, Santana mold than because of their rotation's depth. From '96 through '01, a different pitcher occupied the #1 slot in October, depending on the quality of the season he was having: Cone/Pettitte in '96/'97, Wells in '98, Duque in '99, Pettitte in '00, Clemens '01. In fact, the #1, #2, and #3 slots were largely interchangeable because one or two equally proficient pitchers followed the #1 starter. This explains why the Yankees could drop the first game in nearly every ALDS and still win the series.)

Since 2003, however, the Yankees' starting rotation has lacked both quality and depth. By now, Yankee fans are all to familiar with the following damning stat. In the last seventeen post-season the Yankees have played, beginning with Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, their starting pitchers are 2-8 with 6.36 ERA. And in only four of those games has the team's starter given them a "quality appearance"-- defined as pitching at least 6 innings and yielding 3 or less runs. (Mussina in Game 5 of the '04 ALCS, Chacon in Game 4 of the '05 ALDS, Mussina in Game 2 of the '06 ALDS, and Pettitte, more recently, in Game 2 of the '07 ALDS.)

But with one transaction, the Yankees could consign this record of futility to a best forgotten past.

Add Johan Santana and overnight, the Yankees' rotation rivals that of the Red Menace to the North.

Slot 1-- Santana v. Beckett------------------------------------ Draw
Slot 2-- Joba v. Buchholz-------------------------------------- Draw
Slot 3-- Wang v. Lice-K----------------------------------------NYY
Slot 4/5--Schilling-Wakefield-Lester v. Mussina-?-------BRS

However, if the Yankees can manage to retain Kennedy and/or Pettitte returns, the fourth/fifth slot evens and the Yankees pull ahead overall.

YOUNG FLESH
The problem, of course, is that Shylock knows how much Santana would profit the Yankees. Or alternatively, cripple them, should he instead ransom Santana to the the Red Sox. And so, Pohlad will extract his weight in young flesh. At what price do the Yankees' balk? Because apart from the players they will have to cede, the Yankees also will have to pay Santana over a $120 million, besides. The financial burden to the Yankees then is two-fold. First, Santana's $20 to $25 million-a-year salary, obviously, would consume 10 to 15% of their payroll, forestalling the leaner, more flexible salary structure Cashman recently has striven to implement. Second, Cashman would have to yield three to four of the young, inexpensive players upon which the success of his plan depended.

Fewer younger players subject to the league minimum for 3 years and to arbitration for another 3 years still perpetuates reliance on the overpriced, inefficient market baseball's free agency system produces. A player earns the most in his career at the precise moment he is oldest and least productive.

Of course, the foremost problem in evaluating the Twin's ransom is that they haven't publicized their demands. At this writing however, baseball insiders at ESPN, SI, and the local tabloids have reported the Yankees' best offer for Santana to include Philip Hughes and Melky Cabrera, in addition to a third prospect ranging from Jose Tabata, Austin Jackson, Alan Horne, and Mark Melancon at the high end to Daniel McCutchen, Kevin Whelan, Alberto Gonzales and Jeff Marquez at the lower end.

The Red Sox meanwhile refuse to relinquish either of the two players the Twins would require: Clay Buccholz or Jacoby Ellsbury.

Is Hughes too high a price for the Yankees to pay? An that depends of course on one's estimation of Hughes' promise.

LAW-LESS LOGIC
Keith Law, one of ESPN's more insufferably insolent, self-declared experts, believes the New York media has overvalued Hughes and exaggerated his potential.

Law's opinion of Philip Hughes follows:

"I've never seen [Hughes] as a potential #1; best case scenario is a #2... He has just an average fastball; does not have plus fastball movement; has only one average or better secondary pitch (his curve); does not show an advanced feel for pitching; does not have a build that points toward durability, nor has he been durable in the past; does not show plus command, although I wouldn't rule it out down the road; and has shown below-average poise and mound presence...I've seen him lose his composure on more than one occasion...His fastball also isn't explosive...Clay Buchholz, for example... I've said before that I think he could be a #1 starter."

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=law_keith&entryDate=20070906; http://myespn.go.com/s/conversations/show/story/3007436

How much value should we place on Law's assessment? Well, those familiar with Michael Lewis' Moneyball will recall Law's pedigree. Toronto GM J.P Riccardi hired him to serve as the Blue Jay's counterpart to the Oakland Athletics, stat guru, Paul DePodesta. However, Law fancies himself more than just another sabermetric prodigy. Law thinks the part of Riccardi assistant qualifies him as a scout as well.

His sabermetric background notwithstanding, Law doesn't offer a single stat to substantiate his judgment. An rich irony considering Billy Bean adapted sabermetrical analyses precisely to eliminate his front-office's dependence on the very kind of subjective evaluations Law issues on Philip Hughes.

Hughes' Minor League Stats certainly impress: In 275 innings, he struck out 311 batters (1.13 per inning), issued only 66 BBs (.24 per inning), amassed an exceptional 2.83 GO/AO (Ground Ball:Fly Ball ratio), and held batters to a .164 Batting Average.

Compare Buchholz's Minor League stats: In 125 innings, he struck out 171 batters (1.37 per inning), issued 35 BBs (.28 per inning), posted a 1.09 GO/AO, and held batters to a .193 Batting Average.

Apart from Hughes' larger sample size and better GO/AO, the numbers almost mirror each other.

SHYLOCK'S BARGAIN
At first blush, it might seem improvident to trade a 21-yr old pitcher who can anchor the team's rotation for the next six years for a 29-year-old pitcher, even if he's the best in baseball. While Hughes is entering the prime of his career over the next six years, Santana will begin the autumn of his. What's more, over the same period, Hughes would probably cost the Yankees approximately $100 million less.

Year 1 through 3 Hughes $5,000,000 (pre-arbitration)

Years 3 through 6 Hughes $30,000,00 (arbitration eligible years)

Year 1 through 6 Santana 135,000,000

Forsaking Santana, accordingly, would save the Yankees an average of about $16 million-dollars-a-year that they then could reallocate for free-agent position players or relievers. It's a bargain, that in the abstract, it would behoove the Yankees to rebuff.

Alas, the Yankees aren't an abstract team playing in a baseball vaccum. Their an aging roster that plays in the AL East.

Four interdependent factors compel them, as such, to bear the sacrifice and to trade for Santana.

1) Pettitte's potential retirement only leaves them the Yankees with two starting pitchers the Yankees can rely on for 200 innings: Wang and Mussina. And perhaps, not even Mussina, given his performance last year.

2) The corollary to which is that the Yankees would have to rely on three rookies Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy-- none of which the Yankees will let pitch 200 innings or whose performance the team can project over that portion of the season they will pitch.

3) Forsaking Santana raised the possibility the Red Sox could obtain him and a rotation featuring Beckett and Santana very well could relegate the Yankees to second place for the next decade.

4) The Yankees need to win NOW. The Yankees had a sum total of 2 starters under 30 last year: Cano and Melky. Their next youngest starter is A-Rod, at 32. While Posada and Rivera are over 35. Jeter, Matsui, Damon, and Abreu are all 33-34. During the 3 to 4 years it may take for their young pitching to flourish, their position players may decline and/or retire. And with the exception of Jose Tabata and Austin Jackson, the Yankee farm system lacks high-end position prospects to replace their aging superstars.

So if the Twins will trade Santana for Hughes, Melky, and another prospect (that does not include Tabata, Austin Jackson, Melancon or Horne), the Yankees, reluctantly, will have to gouge themselves to award Shylock his pound of flesh.