“Olaf… does almost ceaselessly repeat ‘there is some shit I will not eat’.”-- E.E. Cummings.
"Why did he write that book?”
Why? Is it really that difficult to understand? Money? No, only the shallow and the envious cannot divine more complex motives than the banality of their own. Only the petty and the malicious cannot abide a man who refuses to dignify them. They accused Torre of pious Sainthood. Torre, meanwhile, never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he was, Human. And it is for this reason that many of us forgive him the sin of pride and whatever the book-- the book that no one has read and about which everyone has an opinion-- whatever that book may reveal, we will continue to cherish him.
Why did he write that book? Well, just imagine, if only for 1,000 words or so, that You are Joe Torre.
*****************
You have three kids, two ex-wives, a sick older brother, and a third wife who’s pregnant. You have alimony and child support, mortgages and credit card bills. You grew up dirt poor, so whatever extra you’ve earned you’ve frittered away instead of saving. So at 55-years-old, you have no money, and you’ve just been fired from what looks like your final job in the only profession you’ve ever known.
But then suddenly the revolving managerial door in the Bronx opens for the 8th time in ten years. Sure, you know the risks. You’ve been around the game long enough to understand what working for the notorious, overbearing, meddlesome owner entails or anyway, you think you do. The man even warns you when you meet, “rent; don’t buy.” But hey, it’s job, right? And you’re desperate—desperate to return to the game, desperate to provide for your family, desperate for the elusive ring, desperate for one last chance before it’s too late, to prove the detractors wrong.
Thirteen years? HA! Try thirteen hundred.
“Overbearing?” “Vindictive?” “Meddlesome?” Buddy, you have no idea. He’s not a tyrant to work for; he’s much, much worse. He’s Machiavelli and Mephistopheles, all in one. First, he beguiles you. Then he subdues you. Finally, he steals your self-respect. And then, you’re powerless either to walk away or to resist him. He owns you. He calls you in the middle of games. He browbeats you during every losing streak. He interferes with your every decision and pries into your personal life. He disparages your players and then blames you when they wilt because of it. If you get too popular or too secure, he cuts you down to size. He dismisses your closest coaches to punish and to intimidate you. He leaks his plans to fire you, twice, to watch you squirm. He fixes the Damoclean sword above your head and thrives on your fear of it falling.
As for Gratitude, well, that’s impossible for a man you can never please. And nothing you accomplish—not 13 consecutive playoff appearances, not 6 AL pennants, not 4 World Series victories in six years-- is ever adequate to satisfy him. In fact, the only greater crime than frequent losing is winning once too often. For then you gain popularity and esteem that he resents because it erodes his control. It infuriates him to know he can no longer dispose of you at whim and that the fans may revolt.
Meanwhile, when the aging tyrant finally mellows, the assorted lackeys, courtiers, and sycophants whose counsel he keeps rush in to fill the vacuum. And, believe it or not, they’re more malicious, more petty, more ruthless, more vengeful, more insidious. More insidious and lethal because they’re totally incompetent. And for their ineptitude, guess who pays? The manager.
The Old Man, at least, lavished money on premiere talent. His cronies, on the other hand, signed players like Jared Wright, Tony Wommack, and Kenny Lofton. They pillaged and desolated Gene Michael’s farm system. Between 1995 and 2006, one starting pitcher they drafted made the major league roster. One! Andy Pettitte and him, they drove away, and Roger with him.
Why the difference between 1996 to 2003 and 2004 to 2007, you ask? Oh, they want you to believe because I didn’t work hard. I didn’t want to win. That’s deceitful, self-serving nonsense. The front-office never learned how to evaluate pitching, pure and simple (by the looks of that five-year contract for AJ Burnett that still haven’t.) Before 2004, my rotation was Cone, Wells, Duque, Clemens, and Pettitte. And in the bullpen, I had Mendoza, Nelson, Stanton, Lloyd and Wetteland. After 2004, my rotation consisted of Brown, Vasquez, Pavano, Wright, Unit, Irabu, and Igawa; the bullpen, of Karsay, White, Heredia, Quantril, and Farnsworth. Who’s to blame? The dim-witted cronies? No. The inept scouting director? No. The erratic and mediocre GM? No, for the organization’s failure to win a fifth World Series in 13 years, I’m tasked.
All the while my sworn enemy, the viceroy President has spent the last four years, harboring his delusions of grandeur, nursing his puny grievances, sharpening his dagger and waiting--- waiting for the day when the Mayor has been ingratiated, the Stadium deal has closed, and the scepter has passed—waiting to seize the opportunity and bury his knife in the small of my back.
But the bastard didn’t even have the mercy to be quick and honest about it. Giuliani’s men stab you slowly, grin, and call it a suicide. You want to fire me. Look me in the face and be done with it. But they wanted to see me beg and scrape and crawl. They wanted me to confess to their incompetence and sign my own death warrant.
I need incentive clauses and bonus options now to drive me? I’m not motivated? How dare you! How dare you reduce me to the baseness of your aims! Money is the currency of your regard. Not mine. Don’t confuse my price with my passion. Remember: I played the Game. I’ve given it my body, my soul, my heart, every second that it beats. My devotion to the Game, my respect for the Game -- my compulsion to win, at any price, because the game demands no less—my motivation, sir, exceeds your comprehension. It’s inalienable.
Not motivated? After losses, I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I pace the room till 5:00am, tossing and turning in bed re-hashing every out, every decision, the cancer of self-doubt ravishing my insides. Not motivated? You think it’s easy to massage the titanic, all-consuming egos of celebrity athletes, assuage their imagined grievances, shower them with constant validation, and guard their fragile psyches so they perform. Leading men is always arduous, but of course, no follower would ever know that it. Not motivated? How dare you! Just wait, I’ll show you motivation.
Et tu Brian? Thirteen years together and you can’t level with me? You couldn’t summon the courage, or hell, the professionalism, to tell me I’d lost your endorsement. You didn’t have the decency to let me know before I, once again, had to grovel like some insubordinate vassal. Et tu Brian? You didn’t have the compassion to spare me the abasement and humiliation. Are you duplicitous or spineless or just plain selfish? I wouldn’t have asked for your patronage, or asked you to jeopardize your job to save mine. All I asked for was the Truth but after ten years clinging to the title of GM, perhaps that’s something you’re no longer equipped to provide. I sure as hell hope the title is worth what it has made of you.
Still, I’d planned to forbear. No, I wasn’t going to allow King’s George Court to reduce me to retaliate. Sure, the intrigues, the blood lust, the ingratitude and callousness, the conniving subterfuge and the low, petty spite, sure it wounded. The humiliating ultimatum before 07’s Game 4. The ensuing weeks left dangling. The incentive-laden one-year farcical offer that only would have deferred the deathwatch, burdened the players, and enlisted me as an accomplice in surrendering my last shred of pride. Yes, that hurt. That after thirteen years of dutiful, loyal, proud, discreet, self-effacing service to the Yankees; after four World Series rings, 6 AL pennants, 10 division titles; after lending some dignity and class to the organization and restoring an image tarnished by decades of public recriminations, the revolving managerial door, a banished owner, a decimated neighborhood, and failure’s rancid stench-- after all of this, I merited no more than Michael Kay and a handshake.
Even still I could have forgiven the indignities, the affronts, the bluster, the innuendo, the bile, the scapegoating, the constant terror of losing a game, a job, a life, even the scurrilous campaign waged in the press not two minutes after I exited. I could have forgiven and forgotten. I would have forgiven and forgotten, but for the final blow.
This final obscenity even I could not abide. To delete me from the Stadium’s past, to elide my thirteen years, to efface me from the history of the Game I cherish, the Game that saved my life, the Game that I idolize more than you can ever know. NO! NO! NO! No, I’ve played the loyal, discrete, magnanimous Zookeeper one time too many. THIS SHIT, I WILL NOT EAT!
Not any more, no, this time, I’m writing the history. And if I break the code along the way and the fans finally see the Shit behind the curtain, so be it.
Let justice be done though the Bronx fall. This time, I will be vindicated.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
THE TRIBE OF RUTH, GEHRIG, AND DIMAGGIO: A FAN'S NOTES
(I wrote the following entry for Peter Abraham's Lohud Blog site, http://yankees.lhblogs.com. It appeared on January 6, 2009)
I’m a Jew, New-Jersey born.
To this day, however, the only religion I’ve ever believed in doesn’t enshrine a Wall in Jerusalem but a Park in the Bronx. The New York Yankees—my religion, my faith, my salvation… my folly and my cross.
Yes, suffering yet another October of dull heartache and desolating withdrawal, shorn of the day’s ritual and consolation, I can succumb to doubt. Isn’t there something pathetic, perverse, even ill, I fret, in an ostensibly grown man surrendering his emotions to the fate of 25 Olympian jocks on a ball field? Isn’t it just a game?
To the rational skeptic, my fervor, no doubt, conjures the stereotype of a David Puddy, Seinfeld’s raving shirtless buffoon decked in team-colored face paint or worse, I evoke a jackbooted, banner-waving, English soccer hooligan. Or maybe, with the glasses, I appear just another pencil-necked, athletically-frustrated, stat geek who worships a sport he can’t play.
More charitably, perhaps, like Fever Pitch’s neurotic, lovable, overgrown adolescent, Ben Wrightman, I simply await the respectable, forbearing girlfriend to save me-- to become a man and put away childish things.
“You’ve always loved the Yankees. But have they ever loved you back?” She’d inquire, and suddenly, epiphany would descend.
“My god, honey, you’re right. Heck, forget the Yankees. Let’s go pick china patterns.”
Of course mocking a Hollywood romantic comedy for its facile sentimentality is a bit like chiding John Henry his vain battle with his Steam Drill, 200 miles to the south.
That is, whether the Yankees requite my love-- or pace Sonny Lo Sprecchio’s related insinuation in A Bronx Tale, whether A-Rod’s concern for my career rivals mine for his-- isn’t, after all, the relevant question. Undoubtedly, they don’t. No more, for that matter, than does Chazz Palminteri reciprocate my admiration for A Bronx’s Tale.
Ah, but they repay it, as any Art worthy of the name rewards its disciple.
True, a fan’s allegiance may not win him love and nurture, still less honor, glory, or riches, save vicariously. Still, beyond the casual spectator’s entertainment or the professional’s expertise and remuneration, the devoted fan receives what Aristotle once recognized as classical drama’s great satisfaction—emotional catharsis. Or, as the Yankee fan who has been delivered from prolonged agony, resigned despair, or nervous apoplexy by the shocking, momentous, eleventh-hour miracle of a Chris Chambliss or Aaron Boone home run to touch near celestial ecstasy—as he might call it, in other words, a more acutely felt, profoundly rewarded engagement with life.
Whether this emotional investment in an agency beyond my control qualifies as godly, I can’t say. One thing I can swear to however. The Yankees have brought me as close to Divinity as I’ve ever reached.
Indeed, first love comes and goes. Passion and desire flag and fade. Youth and adulthood yield to middle age and dotage, and birth hurtles toward death.
But the Yankees—the tribe of Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio, like the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob—the Yankees are forever.
I’m a Jew, New-Jersey born.
To this day, however, the only religion I’ve ever believed in doesn’t enshrine a Wall in Jerusalem but a Park in the Bronx. The New York Yankees—my religion, my faith, my salvation… my folly and my cross.
Yes, suffering yet another October of dull heartache and desolating withdrawal, shorn of the day’s ritual and consolation, I can succumb to doubt. Isn’t there something pathetic, perverse, even ill, I fret, in an ostensibly grown man surrendering his emotions to the fate of 25 Olympian jocks on a ball field? Isn’t it just a game?
To the rational skeptic, my fervor, no doubt, conjures the stereotype of a David Puddy, Seinfeld’s raving shirtless buffoon decked in team-colored face paint or worse, I evoke a jackbooted, banner-waving, English soccer hooligan. Or maybe, with the glasses, I appear just another pencil-necked, athletically-frustrated, stat geek who worships a sport he can’t play.
More charitably, perhaps, like Fever Pitch’s neurotic, lovable, overgrown adolescent, Ben Wrightman, I simply await the respectable, forbearing girlfriend to save me-- to become a man and put away childish things.
“You’ve always loved the Yankees. But have they ever loved you back?” She’d inquire, and suddenly, epiphany would descend.
“My god, honey, you’re right. Heck, forget the Yankees. Let’s go pick china patterns.”
Of course mocking a Hollywood romantic comedy for its facile sentimentality is a bit like chiding John Henry his vain battle with his Steam Drill, 200 miles to the south.
That is, whether the Yankees requite my love-- or pace Sonny Lo Sprecchio’s related insinuation in A Bronx Tale, whether A-Rod’s concern for my career rivals mine for his-- isn’t, after all, the relevant question. Undoubtedly, they don’t. No more, for that matter, than does Chazz Palminteri reciprocate my admiration for A Bronx’s Tale.
Ah, but they repay it, as any Art worthy of the name rewards its disciple.
True, a fan’s allegiance may not win him love and nurture, still less honor, glory, or riches, save vicariously. Still, beyond the casual spectator’s entertainment or the professional’s expertise and remuneration, the devoted fan receives what Aristotle once recognized as classical drama’s great satisfaction—emotional catharsis. Or, as the Yankee fan who has been delivered from prolonged agony, resigned despair, or nervous apoplexy by the shocking, momentous, eleventh-hour miracle of a Chris Chambliss or Aaron Boone home run to touch near celestial ecstasy—as he might call it, in other words, a more acutely felt, profoundly rewarded engagement with life.
Whether this emotional investment in an agency beyond my control qualifies as godly, I can’t say. One thing I can swear to however. The Yankees have brought me as close to Divinity as I’ve ever reached.
Indeed, first love comes and goes. Passion and desire flag and fade. Youth and adulthood yield to middle age and dotage, and birth hurtles toward death.
But the Yankees—the tribe of Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio, like the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob—the Yankees are forever.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
CASH AND BURN; RINSE AND REPEAT
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the hallmark of a “first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Well then, by Fitzgerald’s measure, Brian Cashman belongs among the great geniuses of modern baseball. Witness the contradictions.
In 2007’s off-season, deprecating costly, long-term contracts for pitchers, Cashman spurns a deal for Johan Santana, champions young, farm-grown starters, and entrusts 40% of his rotation to two rookies. In 2008’s, the GM offers CC Sabathia a 6-year contract commensurate to Santana’s, pursues two more 30-plus free-agent starters demanding 4-year deal besides, and announces that his two rookie prodigies, Hughes and Kennedy, now have to prove themselves in AAA.
Just this September, the GM can conclude an anemic lineup, down 180 runs scored from one year ago, bedevils the Yankees. By November, the GM can jettison two of his most productive hitters, Abreu and Giambi, and forswear Mark Teixeira, the one free-agent most equipped to compensate.
One April Cashman can risk his rotation to youth, inexperience, and innings caps because the offense is supposed to compensate. The next April, Cashman can risk his lineup to age, skill regression, and two 35-year old veterans rebounding from major injuries (Posada and Matsui) because the formidable high-priced, re-engineered rotation he envisions supposedly will ensure success.
One minute the Yankees GM is lavishing $6 million more dollars and committing two more years to Damaso Marte, a middle-reliever, a notoriously unreliable commodity. The next minute the Yankees GM won’t offer arbitration to one of his most consistent, durable, and productive hitters in Bobby Abreu because he fears having to pay him over one year $6 million more dollars than he’s worth. Yet the contradictions continue. For he’s, at once, binding the organization to rebuilding its farm system all the while, in forsaking compensatory draft picks, squandering his most fertile opportunity for doing so.
Is there a method to Cashman’s madness, a key to the apparent contradiction, a long-range plan? Not one, evidently, to which he’s either willing or seemingly able to adhere. To the contrary, the impression the Yankees Front-Office creates is of frantic, ad hoc, remedial reaction. Each off-season the Front-Office adopts a new recipe but without first learning the lesson the prior year’s failure exposed. A recipe best described as follows: Trial. Error. Abandonment…. Reaction. Overcompensation. Failure…. Rinse and Repeat.
2008 FOLLIES REVISITED: YOUNG PITCHING
Of course, consistency in the face of error constitutes its own kind of madness. And to Cashman’s credit, he’s currently trying to rectify the critical error in judgment he made last year by forgoing Santana and exposing 40% of his rotation to the inconsistency, innings caps, and injury-risks of rookie starters—an error that derailed the Yankees 2008 season.
Last year, to recall, Cashman calculated that the team’s prolific lineup would hedge against a rotation anchored by two rookies under 23. A hypothesis more sound in theory than practice. The Twins, after all, followed this very formula. In ’08, they finished 3rd in the AL in Runs Scored and their rotation of Blackburn, Slowey, and Perkins, all in their first full season, accounted for over 50% of the team’s starts. And the team found itself in September playing a one game playoff for the division title.
However, Minnesota isn’t New York. The Twins pitchers benefited from low expectations. In contrast, the clamor in the Bronx to demote Hughes started in April, even before he disclosed the rib injury. And the Scranton bus arrived for Kennedy soon thereafter. Not without cause, however. By May 1st, in the 12 games Hughes and Kennedy had started, they’d combined for a 9.16 ERA in 46 innings, and the Yankees went 2-10. The Yankees were 12-5 otherwise in April, and 14-15 in total. And from this middling performance, over the easy part of their schedule, the team never recovered.
THE OFF-SEASON: THE ERROR OF OVERCOMPENSATION
Last year’s error, however, has instigated this off-season’s ill-considered knee-jerk reflex. Overcompensating for one deficiency now risks incurring its inverse. A rotation constituted of youth, inexperience, and fragility in 2008 will have wrought in 2009 a lineup composed of diminished power, infirm veterans, and fading stars.
The plan for 2009, reportedly, contemplates as follows. Cashman hopes to leverage $80 million dollars in expiring contracts by signing two among Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe, and re-signing Pettitte at a lower salary. If successful, his rotation would consist of Wang, Pettitte, two free agents, and Joba, the 5th starter, confined to approximately 130 innings. As such, Scranton would provide in Hughes, Aceves, and Kennedy a ready stable of arms to bolster the Bronx rotation when fatigue, injuries, or innings limits exact their toll, as they invariably will, and require reinforcements.
All well and good, except for the caveat. Signing two of Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe, according to Cashman, would preclude a third for Teixeira. And with the departure of Abreu now all but certain, the Yankees need Teixeira as badly as they do Sabathia.
For as Cashman himself conceded just two months ago, the lineup’s regression in Runs Scored, On-Base Percentage, and RISP average in 2008 accounted as much for the Yankees’ finishing in 3rd place as did their injury-decimated rotation. But thus far rather than remedying the problem, Cashman has seen fit to exacerbate it.
He’s disposed of two of his most productive and patient hitters. Giambi and Abreu ranked 2nd and 3rd in OPS+ at 128 and 120, respectively, and led the team in pitches per plate appearance at 4.3. Meanwhile, the acquisition of Nick Swisher mitigates their loss but hardly compensates for it. For all Swisher’s youth, proficiency in drawing walks and pitches per plate, his career OPS+ is only 112. And in the 3 of his 5 major league season, his OPS+ didn’t exceed 101; that is, the league average.
THE MIRROR IMAGE FALLACY: 2009’s INADEQUATE LINEUP
For some reason, Cashman imagines that without Abreu, Giambi, or hitter of Teixeira’s caliber, his lineup nonetheless will be sufficiently formidable to contend in the AL East. His projection ostensibly depends on (i) Matsui and Posada fully recuperating and recapturing their 2007 seasons; (ii) Cano, A-Rod, and Swisher, all rebounding from sub-par 2008s; (iii) Damon and Nady reproducing their prolific 2008 stats and not reverting to their mediocre 2007 numbers; and finally, (iv) his revamped pitching rotation affecting a dramatic improvement over its last two incarnations in performance and stability.
The irony is that the GM’s plan for 2009 rests on assumptions no less tenuous or speculative than his plan for 2008. Actually, the associated risks of depending on Hughes and Kennedy’s in 2008 mirror the associated risks of relying on Posada and Matsui in 2009. The one is the converse of the other. The youth, inexperience, and fragility of Hughes and Kennedy made their performances as impossible to predict as age, injury, and skill regression now cloud the futures of Posada’s and Matsui’s.
Posada, after all, will be a 38-year-old catcher in August, a position notorious for the precipitous fall in productivity its players undergo as they age. (Mike Piazza, recall, didn’t last beyond the age of 38.) More problematic still, Posada is recuperating from a torn labrum, about as dire an injury to catchers’ and pitchers’ career as exists in the age of modern medicine. To compound the unknown, this is the second time in Posada’s career has had surgery for the injury. How can the Yankees expect Posada, at 38, and recovering from injury no less, to equal his career averages, let alone reprise the unprecedentedly productive season he had in 2007?
Expecting Matsui to reproduce his 123 OPS+ suffers from the same willfully blind optimism. Matsui is no youngster either. He turns 35 in March, and among the Yankees’ cohort of over-33 players, Matsui has aged least gracefully. Perhaps, his consecutive game streak in Japan has worn him down. Whatever the reason, the chronically arthritic knees he suffers from has robbed him of mobility, precipitated two separate operations on them last year, and subjects him to an ongoing risk of swelling. (His two operations last year only addressed its effect; the arthritis itself is incurable.) Matsui was a notorious streaky hitter to begin with. It’s doubtful he can go an entire season without the pain or swelling impairing his swing.
Now, Cashman, it’s true, can project greater productivity from A-Rod and Cano in 2009. But that’s only half the picture. The other half assumes what they add, Damon, Nady and perhaps, even Jeter won’t subtract by contributing less than last year. Damon’s OPS+ was 118 last year. His career average is 103; and in 2007, it was 97. The Yankees should expect a regression accordingly. Same applies to Nady, whose OPS + was 128 last year (105 with the Yankees), 107 in 2007, and 108 for his career.
As for Jeter, his OPS+ in 2008 dropped 18 points below his career average, 120 (career), 102 (2008). But then again, how much offensive improvement can the Yankees expect from a 35 year old short-stop?
Then too, as their roster is currently constituted, the Yankees don’t have a genuine three hitter. The three-hole is a critical position in any lineup, but especially in the Yankees’ because the player precedes A-Rod, a guess hitter, who depends on disciplined hitters like Abreu and Teixeira in front of him to work counts and to expose a pitcher’s full repertoire.
TREADING WATER IN THE AL EAST
Of course, Cashman’s new model stresses pitching and defense. Never mind that the above lineup only upgrades his outfield’s defense and Posada’s return may diminish it behind the plate. Never mind because signing two premiere starters, Cashman contends, supposedly will buy in runs allowed what he sacrifices in runs scored.
Once again, though, the Yankee GM’s model excludes too many unseemly details that qualify it. First it scants the competition. In past off-seasons, merely keeping pace with the Red Sox was enough because the Yankees still could make the playoffs finishing behind them. The emergence of the Rays, however, means that the Yankees, by keeping pace, fall behind. It isn’t merely six wins—the six wins separating Boston and the Bronx last year-- the Yankees have to gain. It is six wins over and above their constantly improving competition.
The addition of David Price to the Rays rotation, even under innings caps, and a left-handed bat either to DH—possibly, Jason Giambi-- or to play right-field will only further strengthen a team that was 8-wins better than the Yankees last year. And the Red Sox will do likewise by signing Mark Teixeira and trading Lowell, as they hope, and/or by fortifying their bullpen, with Ramon Ramirez’s acquisition and/or that of another free-agent reliever.
Unfortunately, the current Yankees’ lineup for 2009, listed below, examined through the prism of age and injury, pales before any the team has fielded in recent memory. Compare it, by contrast, to their two AL East rivals’ projected lineups.
To excel the Rays and Sox, the Yankees need to improve in every facet then, not just their starting pitching. In fact improving the pitching while neglecting the offense—a lineup that now has to contend with either Gardner or Melky in CF-- offers a prescription less for surpassing the Rays and Red Sox than for emulating the Blue Jays or for worse, disaster.
Recall: the Blue Jays finished 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the entire AL the last two seasons in Runs Allowed, 610 in 2008, 699 in 2007. However, they won 83 games in ’07 and 86 games in ’08, largely because of a deficient lineup. They scored 753 in ’07 (10th in the AL) and 714 in ’08 (11th in the AL). Below, I list the Yankees totals, for comparison, and their league rank.
The table illustrates, first of all, that the Yankees sustained the greatest change either team experienced over the last two seasons in both aggregate numbers and rank, and their lineup accounted for it, not their pitching staff.
Secondly, the Jays’ failure to improve by more than 3 wins from ’07 to ’08 despite yielding 90 less runs illustrates the peril of neglecting your offense. The Jays’ static lineup, ranking about the same over the two seasons, vitiated whatever comparative advantage in the AL East their pitching gained them.
Do the Yankees really want to emulate the Jays in this regard? That’s the risk they run by letting their lineup founder, however dramatically they augment their pitching staff.
Then, too, would signing Sabathia and Burnett automatically improve the rotation as much as we’d like to believe? Don't forget, replacing Mussina's season last year won't be easy. Wang can only hope to duplicate Mussina’s 2008. Innings caps, moreover, will again confine Joba to about 130 innings. And, finally, consider, too, which incarnation of Andy Pettite, if he returns, would the Yankees receive in 2009, the 2007 or the 2008 version. All of which reinforces why the Yankees need to improve their offense, along with their pitching. Bolstering the latter alone is fraught with too much risk, and in and of itself is unlikely to gain them another 6-7 wins.
Cashman's recent intimation that they can't afford to do both-- in the year they open a Stadium recent figures estimate will garner them, at minimun, an additional $200 million in revenue-- is risible. Actually, with $80 million dollars in contracts expiring, were the team to sign Sabathia ($25 million) and Teixeira ($21 million) and re-sign Pettitte at ($10-12) the total still wouldn't consume the windfall. What's more, after 2009, Damon’s, Matsui’s, and Nady’s contracts, totaling another $35 million, expire as well.
Finally, if the Yankees are committed to re-allocating some portion of that $80 million anyway, isn’t a $21 million a year investment in a 28-year-old first baseman a sounder investment than $15 or $16 million for a fragile 32-year old Burnett or an aging 36-year-old Lowe?
All of which begs the question: in Brian Cashman, do the Yankees have a first-rate intelligence and a second-rate General Manager.
In 2007’s off-season, deprecating costly, long-term contracts for pitchers, Cashman spurns a deal for Johan Santana, champions young, farm-grown starters, and entrusts 40% of his rotation to two rookies. In 2008’s, the GM offers CC Sabathia a 6-year contract commensurate to Santana’s, pursues two more 30-plus free-agent starters demanding 4-year deal besides, and announces that his two rookie prodigies, Hughes and Kennedy, now have to prove themselves in AAA.
Just this September, the GM can conclude an anemic lineup, down 180 runs scored from one year ago, bedevils the Yankees. By November, the GM can jettison two of his most productive hitters, Abreu and Giambi, and forswear Mark Teixeira, the one free-agent most equipped to compensate.
One April Cashman can risk his rotation to youth, inexperience, and innings caps because the offense is supposed to compensate. The next April, Cashman can risk his lineup to age, skill regression, and two 35-year old veterans rebounding from major injuries (Posada and Matsui) because the formidable high-priced, re-engineered rotation he envisions supposedly will ensure success.
One minute the Yankees GM is lavishing $6 million more dollars and committing two more years to Damaso Marte, a middle-reliever, a notoriously unreliable commodity. The next minute the Yankees GM won’t offer arbitration to one of his most consistent, durable, and productive hitters in Bobby Abreu because he fears having to pay him over one year $6 million more dollars than he’s worth. Yet the contradictions continue. For he’s, at once, binding the organization to rebuilding its farm system all the while, in forsaking compensatory draft picks, squandering his most fertile opportunity for doing so.
Is there a method to Cashman’s madness, a key to the apparent contradiction, a long-range plan? Not one, evidently, to which he’s either willing or seemingly able to adhere. To the contrary, the impression the Yankees Front-Office creates is of frantic, ad hoc, remedial reaction. Each off-season the Front-Office adopts a new recipe but without first learning the lesson the prior year’s failure exposed. A recipe best described as follows: Trial. Error. Abandonment…. Reaction. Overcompensation. Failure…. Rinse and Repeat.
2008 FOLLIES REVISITED: YOUNG PITCHING
Of course, consistency in the face of error constitutes its own kind of madness. And to Cashman’s credit, he’s currently trying to rectify the critical error in judgment he made last year by forgoing Santana and exposing 40% of his rotation to the inconsistency, innings caps, and injury-risks of rookie starters—an error that derailed the Yankees 2008 season.
Last year, to recall, Cashman calculated that the team’s prolific lineup would hedge against a rotation anchored by two rookies under 23. A hypothesis more sound in theory than practice. The Twins, after all, followed this very formula. In ’08, they finished 3rd in the AL in Runs Scored and their rotation of Blackburn, Slowey, and Perkins, all in their first full season, accounted for over 50% of the team’s starts. And the team found itself in September playing a one game playoff for the division title.
However, Minnesota isn’t New York. The Twins pitchers benefited from low expectations. In contrast, the clamor in the Bronx to demote Hughes started in April, even before he disclosed the rib injury. And the Scranton bus arrived for Kennedy soon thereafter. Not without cause, however. By May 1st, in the 12 games Hughes and Kennedy had started, they’d combined for a 9.16 ERA in 46 innings, and the Yankees went 2-10. The Yankees were 12-5 otherwise in April, and 14-15 in total. And from this middling performance, over the easy part of their schedule, the team never recovered.
THE OFF-SEASON: THE ERROR OF OVERCOMPENSATION
Last year’s error, however, has instigated this off-season’s ill-considered knee-jerk reflex. Overcompensating for one deficiency now risks incurring its inverse. A rotation constituted of youth, inexperience, and fragility in 2008 will have wrought in 2009 a lineup composed of diminished power, infirm veterans, and fading stars.
The plan for 2009, reportedly, contemplates as follows. Cashman hopes to leverage $80 million dollars in expiring contracts by signing two among Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe, and re-signing Pettitte at a lower salary. If successful, his rotation would consist of Wang, Pettitte, two free agents, and Joba, the 5th starter, confined to approximately 130 innings. As such, Scranton would provide in Hughes, Aceves, and Kennedy a ready stable of arms to bolster the Bronx rotation when fatigue, injuries, or innings limits exact their toll, as they invariably will, and require reinforcements.
All well and good, except for the caveat. Signing two of Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe, according to Cashman, would preclude a third for Teixeira. And with the departure of Abreu now all but certain, the Yankees need Teixeira as badly as they do Sabathia.
For as Cashman himself conceded just two months ago, the lineup’s regression in Runs Scored, On-Base Percentage, and RISP average in 2008 accounted as much for the Yankees’ finishing in 3rd place as did their injury-decimated rotation. But thus far rather than remedying the problem, Cashman has seen fit to exacerbate it.
He’s disposed of two of his most productive and patient hitters. Giambi and Abreu ranked 2nd and 3rd in OPS+ at 128 and 120, respectively, and led the team in pitches per plate appearance at 4.3. Meanwhile, the acquisition of Nick Swisher mitigates their loss but hardly compensates for it. For all Swisher’s youth, proficiency in drawing walks and pitches per plate, his career OPS+ is only 112. And in the 3 of his 5 major league season, his OPS+ didn’t exceed 101; that is, the league average.
THE MIRROR IMAGE FALLACY: 2009’s INADEQUATE LINEUP
For some reason, Cashman imagines that without Abreu, Giambi, or hitter of Teixeira’s caliber, his lineup nonetheless will be sufficiently formidable to contend in the AL East. His projection ostensibly depends on (i) Matsui and Posada fully recuperating and recapturing their 2007 seasons; (ii) Cano, A-Rod, and Swisher, all rebounding from sub-par 2008s; (iii) Damon and Nady reproducing their prolific 2008 stats and not reverting to their mediocre 2007 numbers; and finally, (iv) his revamped pitching rotation affecting a dramatic improvement over its last two incarnations in performance and stability.
The irony is that the GM’s plan for 2009 rests on assumptions no less tenuous or speculative than his plan for 2008. Actually, the associated risks of depending on Hughes and Kennedy’s in 2008 mirror the associated risks of relying on Posada and Matsui in 2009. The one is the converse of the other. The youth, inexperience, and fragility of Hughes and Kennedy made their performances as impossible to predict as age, injury, and skill regression now cloud the futures of Posada’s and Matsui’s.
Posada, after all, will be a 38-year-old catcher in August, a position notorious for the precipitous fall in productivity its players undergo as they age. (Mike Piazza, recall, didn’t last beyond the age of 38.) More problematic still, Posada is recuperating from a torn labrum, about as dire an injury to catchers’ and pitchers’ career as exists in the age of modern medicine. To compound the unknown, this is the second time in Posada’s career has had surgery for the injury. How can the Yankees expect Posada, at 38, and recovering from injury no less, to equal his career averages, let alone reprise the unprecedentedly productive season he had in 2007?
Expecting Matsui to reproduce his 123 OPS+ suffers from the same willfully blind optimism. Matsui is no youngster either. He turns 35 in March, and among the Yankees’ cohort of over-33 players, Matsui has aged least gracefully. Perhaps, his consecutive game streak in Japan has worn him down. Whatever the reason, the chronically arthritic knees he suffers from has robbed him of mobility, precipitated two separate operations on them last year, and subjects him to an ongoing risk of swelling. (His two operations last year only addressed its effect; the arthritis itself is incurable.) Matsui was a notorious streaky hitter to begin with. It’s doubtful he can go an entire season without the pain or swelling impairing his swing.
Now, Cashman, it’s true, can project greater productivity from A-Rod and Cano in 2009. But that’s only half the picture. The other half assumes what they add, Damon, Nady and perhaps, even Jeter won’t subtract by contributing less than last year. Damon’s OPS+ was 118 last year. His career average is 103; and in 2007, it was 97. The Yankees should expect a regression accordingly. Same applies to Nady, whose OPS + was 128 last year (105 with the Yankees), 107 in 2007, and 108 for his career.
As for Jeter, his OPS+ in 2008 dropped 18 points below his career average, 120 (career), 102 (2008). But then again, how much offensive improvement can the Yankees expect from a 35 year old short-stop?
Then too, as their roster is currently constituted, the Yankees don’t have a genuine three hitter. The three-hole is a critical position in any lineup, but especially in the Yankees’ because the player precedes A-Rod, a guess hitter, who depends on disciplined hitters like Abreu and Teixeira in front of him to work counts and to expose a pitcher’s full repertoire.
TREADING WATER IN THE AL EAST
Of course, Cashman’s new model stresses pitching and defense. Never mind that the above lineup only upgrades his outfield’s defense and Posada’s return may diminish it behind the plate. Never mind because signing two premiere starters, Cashman contends, supposedly will buy in runs allowed what he sacrifices in runs scored.
Once again, though, the Yankee GM’s model excludes too many unseemly details that qualify it. First it scants the competition. In past off-seasons, merely keeping pace with the Red Sox was enough because the Yankees still could make the playoffs finishing behind them. The emergence of the Rays, however, means that the Yankees, by keeping pace, fall behind. It isn’t merely six wins—the six wins separating Boston and the Bronx last year-- the Yankees have to gain. It is six wins over and above their constantly improving competition.
The addition of David Price to the Rays rotation, even under innings caps, and a left-handed bat either to DH—possibly, Jason Giambi-- or to play right-field will only further strengthen a team that was 8-wins better than the Yankees last year. And the Red Sox will do likewise by signing Mark Teixeira and trading Lowell, as they hope, and/or by fortifying their bullpen, with Ramon Ramirez’s acquisition and/or that of another free-agent reliever.
Unfortunately, the current Yankees’ lineup for 2009, listed below, examined through the prism of age and injury, pales before any the team has fielded in recent memory. Compare it, by contrast, to their two AL East rivals’ projected lineups.
To excel the Rays and Sox, the Yankees need to improve in every facet then, not just their starting pitching. In fact improving the pitching while neglecting the offense—a lineup that now has to contend with either Gardner or Melky in CF-- offers a prescription less for surpassing the Rays and Red Sox than for emulating the Blue Jays or for worse, disaster.
Recall: the Blue Jays finished 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the entire AL the last two seasons in Runs Allowed, 610 in 2008, 699 in 2007. However, they won 83 games in ’07 and 86 games in ’08, largely because of a deficient lineup. They scored 753 in ’07 (10th in the AL) and 714 in ’08 (11th in the AL). Below, I list the Yankees totals, for comparison, and their league rank.
The table illustrates, first of all, that the Yankees sustained the greatest change either team experienced over the last two seasons in both aggregate numbers and rank, and their lineup accounted for it, not their pitching staff.
Secondly, the Jays’ failure to improve by more than 3 wins from ’07 to ’08 despite yielding 90 less runs illustrates the peril of neglecting your offense. The Jays’ static lineup, ranking about the same over the two seasons, vitiated whatever comparative advantage in the AL East their pitching gained them.
Do the Yankees really want to emulate the Jays in this regard? That’s the risk they run by letting their lineup founder, however dramatically they augment their pitching staff.
Then, too, would signing Sabathia and Burnett automatically improve the rotation as much as we’d like to believe? Don't forget, replacing Mussina's season last year won't be easy. Wang can only hope to duplicate Mussina’s 2008. Innings caps, moreover, will again confine Joba to about 130 innings. And, finally, consider, too, which incarnation of Andy Pettite, if he returns, would the Yankees receive in 2009, the 2007 or the 2008 version. All of which reinforces why the Yankees need to improve their offense, along with their pitching. Bolstering the latter alone is fraught with too much risk, and in and of itself is unlikely to gain them another 6-7 wins.
Cashman's recent intimation that they can't afford to do both-- in the year they open a Stadium recent figures estimate will garner them, at minimun, an additional $200 million in revenue-- is risible. Actually, with $80 million dollars in contracts expiring, were the team to sign Sabathia ($25 million) and Teixeira ($21 million) and re-sign Pettitte at ($10-12) the total still wouldn't consume the windfall. What's more, after 2009, Damon’s, Matsui’s, and Nady’s contracts, totaling another $35 million, expire as well.
Finally, if the Yankees are committed to re-allocating some portion of that $80 million anyway, isn’t a $21 million a year investment in a 28-year-old first baseman a sounder investment than $15 or $16 million for a fragile 32-year old Burnett or an aging 36-year-old Lowe?
All of which begs the question: in Brian Cashman, do the Yankees have a first-rate intelligence and a second-rate General Manager.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Money can't buy you love perhaps. Recent history, in fact, indicates it can't even guarantee a playoff appearance, let alone a championship. However as Congress' recent bailout of the banking sector demonstrates, cash certainly can assuage anxiety, restore confidence, and renew hope.
So for all us Yankee fans who recently watched the Red Sox and Rays, fortified by seemingly endless reserves of young talent, march through the playoffs and have wallowed in resentment, despair, and self-pity ever since-- well, have faith, and remember Scarlett O'Hara's credo. For tomorrow is indeed another day. This time, quite literally.
For tomorrow the Yankees can begin to offer contracts to free agents. Tomorrow, the Yankees can begin to leverage their financial might to compensate for a farm system, that while beginning to show the first signs of growth after a decade of neglect and plunder, will not yield the likes of a Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youklis, or Jacoby Ellsbury; Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, or BJ Upton for years to come.
No, it won't earn the Yankees many admirers in the industry or among the games' self-appointed moral guardians in the media. Before the Steinbrenners have spent so much as a penny, in fact, baseball's Reds have already launched their annual jeremiad about the gluttunous Yankee payroll and have accused the Bronx robber barons of cornering the market and destroying baseball's competitive integrity. The irony is how many of these same media hacks would impose on the Yankees a financial tax they themselves would bridle at paying. The New York Daily News, for example, recently quoted one of the most consistently strident and dogmatic advocates for a salary cap in baseball, The Million Dollar Mad Dog, Christopher Russo, as follows, "I voted for McCain. I think there is an element of people sitting on their fannies. 'Lets go tax the wealthy up and down to make sure the guy on Main Street can sleep until 10 o'clock in the morning.' That kind of thing... steered me to McCain." Let them all eat Yankee Franks, says the Mad Dog.
The truth is that in the NBA and NFL, salary caps, actually, enshrines an aritocracy of talent, crowning dynasties like the Spurs and Patriots and perpetuating losing franchises by preventing them from spending enough money to re-arm. This is why NFL and NBA teams, to improve, depend so heavily on their drafts.
Baseball, in contrast, more readily approximates the liberal democratic ideal. In many ways, in fact, it mirrors the U.S.'s own system of liberal welfare state capitalism. No law prohibits Microsoft, for example, from mustering its $21 billion in cash reserves to throttle and ravage would-be competitors. They just have to pay taxes. So too with the Yankees.
In 2005, Forbes reported that the Yankees earned $354 million in revenue, $77 million of which baseball exacted and redistributed to 16 small-market teams through revenue-sharing, another $34 million of which the Yankees paid in luxury taxes. (Steinbrenner's Tax Shelter, Forbes, 05/08/06) Together, the two levies constitute the equivalent of a 31% tax, about as high the 35% rate both Microsoft and Chris Russo probably paid last year.
Accordingly, the Yankees will have no reason to apologize for if in the forthcoming weeks they spend prodigious sums of money and sign multiple players from among, perhaps, the most talented free-agent class in baseball. After all, the Red Sox responded likewise after failing to qualify for the playoffs in 2006, going on a $210 million off-season spending spree that netted them Dice-K, J.D. Drew, and Julio Lugo. What's more, with the 2008 season's end, $80+ million in Yankees player contracts have expired which they now can re-allocate to address their most pressing needs. Onward, Cash.
WHOM TO SIGN AND WHY
PRIORITY #1: The Ace
That the Yankees foremost priority should be to marshal every last resource to sign CC Sabathia strikes me as so self-evident it's not worth arguing. Rare is it for a team to rectify the mistake they made one year the next.
The 2008 season, as such, could best be called Cashman's Folly. For it demonstrated the hubris of constructing a rotation in the New York crucible that hinges so greatly on the performance of rookie pitchers confined by innings caps. It's one thing to cultivate starting pitchers and to integrate them slowly into the rotation. Quite another, to bear the risk of injury and inconsistency that comes with assigning 40% of the rotation to two untested, under-25 pitcher with innings limitations to boot and still to expect the team to thrive and qualify for post-season. The risk only intensifies, in fact, when two 35+ starters comprise another 40%.
Apart then from the quality start a pitcher like Sabathia can offer every fifth day, he, in anchoring the rotation and providing 200+ innings, also alleviates the pressure on the starters who follow him. He would allow the Yankees, then, to exercise more patience with, and thereby assist in, the ongoing development of Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Alfredo Aceves, or whomever else earns a Bronx audition in 2009.
Priority #2: The Three Hole
According to SI's John Heyman and other reporters privy to the Yankees thinking, the front-office's second priority is to sign one of the other two or three other premiere free-agent pitchers-- A.J. Burnett, Derek Lowe, or perhaps, Ben Sheets. With this decision, I admantly disagree.
Let's begin by assuming the Yankees sign Sabathia (if they cannot, then in this eventuality, I can't argue with signing Burnett or Lowe or both). Andy Pettite already has indicated he wishes to return and would accept a one-year deal to do so. Should the Yankees oblige Pettitte, then, they'd begin with a rotation of Sabathia, Wang, and Pettitte. I'll address the 4th and 5th spots below in Priority #3.
To my mind, the Yankees' lineup last year was almost as deficient as their starting rotation, if not more so. They scored 179 less runs than in 2007. Their on-base average declined from .366 to .344; their slugging percentage dropped from .463 to .427; their batting average with runners in scoring position fell from .293 to .261.
Nonetheless, the Yankees would compound the regression the lineup already has shown. That is, the Front-Office intends not to re-sign their 3rd and 5th hitters, Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi, two of their lineup's most proficient hitters last year in two of the three statistical groups above which accrued a shortfall from the previous year -- on-base percentage and slugging. Only Alex Rodriguez exceeded Abreu and Giambi in OPS (on-base + slugging percentage). Giambi and Abreu also led the team in the number of pitches they saw per plate appearance, each with 4.3 P/PA.
Yes, Posada and Matsui may return next year, but relying on either player to recuperate fully at their advanced age, to reproduce their 2007 totals, and to stay healthy for the season's duration is as presumptuous and reckless as Cashman's decision last off-season to entrust 40% of the rotation to rookies. Perhaps, the Yankees can assume Posada and/or Matsui could fill the five hole and compensate for Giambi's loss. Neither however is a genuine 3 hole hitter even when fully realizing his potential.
The only two players available via free-agency who promise the Yankees sufficient production as three hitters in (i) their ability to get on base, (ii) work counts, and (iii) amass extra-base hits are Mark Teixiera, Manny Ramirez or Abreu himself. (It is impossible to project how Adam Dunn-- a career NL player, with a low average and high strike out totals and a questionable passion for the game-- would perform in New York. But each caveat presents its own risk.)
Ramirez is limited to LF or DH and will command a $100 million contract besides. He's the least desirable option as such. Teixiera and Abreu, to be sure, present risks as well. Teixiera is a younger than Abreu, a better hitter and fielder, but nonetheless will commit the Yankees to at least a seven year obligation, if not more. Abreu, on the other hand, only desires a 3-year contract and might even acquiesce to two years with a vesting option, if the Yankees offer it because he wants to return to New York. I concede his speed has diminished and he's lost some range in RF but he's not nearly as much a defensive liability as his critics insist. Nor for that matter does his anointed succesor, Xavier Nady, represent a dramatic improvement.
Re-signing Abreu has the added virtue of enabling the Yankees to play Nady at 1B or to trade him for first-baseman while Nady still has value. (Nady is a Boras client and will accompany Damon and Matsui on the free-agent market at next season' conclusion.) Alternatively, after re-signing Abreu, they Yankees could trade Matsui, freeing the DH position for Damon, Abreu, Nady, and Posada to rotate through, and could audition Juan Miranda at 1B or perhaps even sign Giambi for one-year.
Either way, with Brett Gardner expected to play CF in 2009, Jorge Posada returning from labrum surgery, Matsui suffering from chronically arthritic knees, Derek Jeter reverting to his free-swinging ways and his GDP numbers increasing annually, and A-Rod always prone to press, the Yankees need a sure-fire, prolific bat in the three hole almost as much as they do Sabathia. Only two free agents fit the bill, Teixiera and Abreu. The Yankees would err greatly in not signing one or the other.
Priority #3: The Innings-Eater
Another reason why a 3-hole hitter should take precedence to a second starter is cost efficiency. Mark Teixiera is a young elite talent and one of the best players in baseball at his position, and probably will remain so for the lion share of his contact. Abreu, similarly, joins Pujols and A-Rod as one of only three players in the game to amass 6 consecutive seasons of 100 RBI's. He also happens to be one of the game's most durable players as well, playing 150 games or more every year since he became a starter in 1998. Plate discipline, his great asset, what's more, is one of the more age-resistant player skills. The Yankees, accordingly, can expect to receive production roughly commensurate to their outlay by signing either.
The same cannot be said of AJ Burnett certainly, and perhaps not of Derek Lowe either. Burnett lives on the disabled list, having thrown 200 innings or more in only 3 of the last 7 seasons. (No Maas.org, cleverly, refers to him as the baseball market's equivalent to a sub-prime mortgage.) Lowe, on the other hand, while more durable, will turn 36 next year, wants a 3-4 year contract at $15+ million, despite not qualifying as one of the best pitchers in the game, and finally, hasn't pitched in the AL since 2004.
The Yankees would profit more accordingly from signing one or more less prestigious, second or third-tier pitchers who would cost them less and necessitate a shorter contractual commitment, but upon whom they can rely alone, or in tandem, to pitch 200 innings: John Garland, Paul Byrd, Randy Wolf, Mike Mussina (if for a year, two at most) or perhaps, some combination of one-year contracts for Brad Penny, Carl Pavano, and Eric Milton.
The Yankees rotation would then consist of Sabathia, Wang, Pettite, Innings-Eater, and Joba. Then as injuries mount and innings caps are reached, the organization could integrate Hughes, Aceves, Kennedy, Coke, Brackman, etc., as their performances and health warrant.
What the Yankees actually do is anybody's guess. The marketplace unfolds according to a logic of its own that can upend even the best laid plans. Count on it, for this reason, to dictate one or more choices the Front-Office otherwise wouldn't make.
Still, should the Yankees somehow achieve a reasonable facsimile of the three priorities above, I'm confidence they'll resume their role as perennial contender in the AL East.
So for all us Yankee fans who recently watched the Red Sox and Rays, fortified by seemingly endless reserves of young talent, march through the playoffs and have wallowed in resentment, despair, and self-pity ever since-- well, have faith, and remember Scarlett O'Hara's credo. For tomorrow is indeed another day. This time, quite literally.
For tomorrow the Yankees can begin to offer contracts to free agents. Tomorrow, the Yankees can begin to leverage their financial might to compensate for a farm system, that while beginning to show the first signs of growth after a decade of neglect and plunder, will not yield the likes of a Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youklis, or Jacoby Ellsbury; Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, or BJ Upton for years to come.
No, it won't earn the Yankees many admirers in the industry or among the games' self-appointed moral guardians in the media. Before the Steinbrenners have spent so much as a penny, in fact, baseball's Reds have already launched their annual jeremiad about the gluttunous Yankee payroll and have accused the Bronx robber barons of cornering the market and destroying baseball's competitive integrity. The irony is how many of these same media hacks would impose on the Yankees a financial tax they themselves would bridle at paying. The New York Daily News, for example, recently quoted one of the most consistently strident and dogmatic advocates for a salary cap in baseball, The Million Dollar Mad Dog, Christopher Russo, as follows, "I voted for McCain. I think there is an element of people sitting on their fannies. 'Lets go tax the wealthy up and down to make sure the guy on Main Street can sleep until 10 o'clock in the morning.' That kind of thing... steered me to McCain." Let them all eat Yankee Franks, says the Mad Dog.
The truth is that in the NBA and NFL, salary caps, actually, enshrines an aritocracy of talent, crowning dynasties like the Spurs and Patriots and perpetuating losing franchises by preventing them from spending enough money to re-arm. This is why NFL and NBA teams, to improve, depend so heavily on their drafts.
Baseball, in contrast, more readily approximates the liberal democratic ideal. In many ways, in fact, it mirrors the U.S.'s own system of liberal welfare state capitalism. No law prohibits Microsoft, for example, from mustering its $21 billion in cash reserves to throttle and ravage would-be competitors. They just have to pay taxes. So too with the Yankees.
In 2005, Forbes reported that the Yankees earned $354 million in revenue, $77 million of which baseball exacted and redistributed to 16 small-market teams through revenue-sharing, another $34 million of which the Yankees paid in luxury taxes. (Steinbrenner's Tax Shelter, Forbes, 05/08/06) Together, the two levies constitute the equivalent of a 31% tax, about as high the 35% rate both Microsoft and Chris Russo probably paid last year.
Accordingly, the Yankees will have no reason to apologize for if in the forthcoming weeks they spend prodigious sums of money and sign multiple players from among, perhaps, the most talented free-agent class in baseball. After all, the Red Sox responded likewise after failing to qualify for the playoffs in 2006, going on a $210 million off-season spending spree that netted them Dice-K, J.D. Drew, and Julio Lugo. What's more, with the 2008 season's end, $80+ million in Yankees player contracts have expired which they now can re-allocate to address their most pressing needs. Onward, Cash.
WHOM TO SIGN AND WHY
PRIORITY #1: The Ace
That the Yankees foremost priority should be to marshal every last resource to sign CC Sabathia strikes me as so self-evident it's not worth arguing. Rare is it for a team to rectify the mistake they made one year the next.
The 2008 season, as such, could best be called Cashman's Folly. For it demonstrated the hubris of constructing a rotation in the New York crucible that hinges so greatly on the performance of rookie pitchers confined by innings caps. It's one thing to cultivate starting pitchers and to integrate them slowly into the rotation. Quite another, to bear the risk of injury and inconsistency that comes with assigning 40% of the rotation to two untested, under-25 pitcher with innings limitations to boot and still to expect the team to thrive and qualify for post-season. The risk only intensifies, in fact, when two 35+ starters comprise another 40%.
Apart then from the quality start a pitcher like Sabathia can offer every fifth day, he, in anchoring the rotation and providing 200+ innings, also alleviates the pressure on the starters who follow him. He would allow the Yankees, then, to exercise more patience with, and thereby assist in, the ongoing development of Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Alfredo Aceves, or whomever else earns a Bronx audition in 2009.
Priority #2: The Three Hole
According to SI's John Heyman and other reporters privy to the Yankees thinking, the front-office's second priority is to sign one of the other two or three other premiere free-agent pitchers-- A.J. Burnett, Derek Lowe, or perhaps, Ben Sheets. With this decision, I admantly disagree.
Let's begin by assuming the Yankees sign Sabathia (if they cannot, then in this eventuality, I can't argue with signing Burnett or Lowe or both). Andy Pettite already has indicated he wishes to return and would accept a one-year deal to do so. Should the Yankees oblige Pettitte, then, they'd begin with a rotation of Sabathia, Wang, and Pettitte. I'll address the 4th and 5th spots below in Priority #3.
To my mind, the Yankees' lineup last year was almost as deficient as their starting rotation, if not more so. They scored 179 less runs than in 2007. Their on-base average declined from .366 to .344; their slugging percentage dropped from .463 to .427; their batting average with runners in scoring position fell from .293 to .261.
Nonetheless, the Yankees would compound the regression the lineup already has shown. That is, the Front-Office intends not to re-sign their 3rd and 5th hitters, Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi, two of their lineup's most proficient hitters last year in two of the three statistical groups above which accrued a shortfall from the previous year -- on-base percentage and slugging. Only Alex Rodriguez exceeded Abreu and Giambi in OPS (on-base + slugging percentage). Giambi and Abreu also led the team in the number of pitches they saw per plate appearance, each with 4.3 P/PA.
Yes, Posada and Matsui may return next year, but relying on either player to recuperate fully at their advanced age, to reproduce their 2007 totals, and to stay healthy for the season's duration is as presumptuous and reckless as Cashman's decision last off-season to entrust 40% of the rotation to rookies. Perhaps, the Yankees can assume Posada and/or Matsui could fill the five hole and compensate for Giambi's loss. Neither however is a genuine 3 hole hitter even when fully realizing his potential.
The only two players available via free-agency who promise the Yankees sufficient production as three hitters in (i) their ability to get on base, (ii) work counts, and (iii) amass extra-base hits are Mark Teixiera, Manny Ramirez or Abreu himself. (It is impossible to project how Adam Dunn-- a career NL player, with a low average and high strike out totals and a questionable passion for the game-- would perform in New York. But each caveat presents its own risk.)
Ramirez is limited to LF or DH and will command a $100 million contract besides. He's the least desirable option as such. Teixiera and Abreu, to be sure, present risks as well. Teixiera is a younger than Abreu, a better hitter and fielder, but nonetheless will commit the Yankees to at least a seven year obligation, if not more. Abreu, on the other hand, only desires a 3-year contract and might even acquiesce to two years with a vesting option, if the Yankees offer it because he wants to return to New York. I concede his speed has diminished and he's lost some range in RF but he's not nearly as much a defensive liability as his critics insist. Nor for that matter does his anointed succesor, Xavier Nady, represent a dramatic improvement.
Re-signing Abreu has the added virtue of enabling the Yankees to play Nady at 1B or to trade him for first-baseman while Nady still has value. (Nady is a Boras client and will accompany Damon and Matsui on the free-agent market at next season' conclusion.) Alternatively, after re-signing Abreu, they Yankees could trade Matsui, freeing the DH position for Damon, Abreu, Nady, and Posada to rotate through, and could audition Juan Miranda at 1B or perhaps even sign Giambi for one-year.
Either way, with Brett Gardner expected to play CF in 2009, Jorge Posada returning from labrum surgery, Matsui suffering from chronically arthritic knees, Derek Jeter reverting to his free-swinging ways and his GDP numbers increasing annually, and A-Rod always prone to press, the Yankees need a sure-fire, prolific bat in the three hole almost as much as they do Sabathia. Only two free agents fit the bill, Teixiera and Abreu. The Yankees would err greatly in not signing one or the other.
Priority #3: The Innings-Eater
Another reason why a 3-hole hitter should take precedence to a second starter is cost efficiency. Mark Teixiera is a young elite talent and one of the best players in baseball at his position, and probably will remain so for the lion share of his contact. Abreu, similarly, joins Pujols and A-Rod as one of only three players in the game to amass 6 consecutive seasons of 100 RBI's. He also happens to be one of the game's most durable players as well, playing 150 games or more every year since he became a starter in 1998. Plate discipline, his great asset, what's more, is one of the more age-resistant player skills. The Yankees, accordingly, can expect to receive production roughly commensurate to their outlay by signing either.
The same cannot be said of AJ Burnett certainly, and perhaps not of Derek Lowe either. Burnett lives on the disabled list, having thrown 200 innings or more in only 3 of the last 7 seasons. (No Maas.org, cleverly, refers to him as the baseball market's equivalent to a sub-prime mortgage.) Lowe, on the other hand, while more durable, will turn 36 next year, wants a 3-4 year contract at $15+ million, despite not qualifying as one of the best pitchers in the game, and finally, hasn't pitched in the AL since 2004.
The Yankees would profit more accordingly from signing one or more less prestigious, second or third-tier pitchers who would cost them less and necessitate a shorter contractual commitment, but upon whom they can rely alone, or in tandem, to pitch 200 innings: John Garland, Paul Byrd, Randy Wolf, Mike Mussina (if for a year, two at most) or perhaps, some combination of one-year contracts for Brad Penny, Carl Pavano, and Eric Milton.
The Yankees rotation would then consist of Sabathia, Wang, Pettite, Innings-Eater, and Joba. Then as injuries mount and innings caps are reached, the organization could integrate Hughes, Aceves, Kennedy, Coke, Brackman, etc., as their performances and health warrant.
What the Yankees actually do is anybody's guess. The marketplace unfolds according to a logic of its own that can upend even the best laid plans. Count on it, for this reason, to dictate one or more choices the Front-Office otherwise wouldn't make.
Still, should the Yankees somehow achieve a reasonable facsimile of the three priorities above, I'm confidence they'll resume their role as perennial contender in the AL East.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
SEARCHING FOR JOE TORRE
We're all familiar with the phenomenon of celebrity seduction. The pubic figure who insinuates herself into our hearts and implicates herself in our lives. The public figure we've never met but with whom we imagine, and as such forge, an intimacy.
Some quality-- his life story, his triumphs and adversity, her talent or her beauty, the intimates she recalls and corrects perhaps-- seduces us and we fall in love with the idealized image we've projected out of our own unfullfilled need.
A bond then forms every bit as fast and deep and enduring as those we enjoy with friends, family, and loved one. Indeed, sometimes a purer and more potent bond because it remains untainted by the human failings that mark all our relationships with conscious or unconscious conflict and ambivalence.
I can't recall when I adopted Joe Torre for this role, or perhaps, more accurately, when I imagined Joe Torre adopted me for mine. I only know that when the Yankees scapegoated and then disposed of him in such a spiteful, petty, and undignified fashion last year, I felt the fury and indignation my own father would have aroused had the Yankees humiliated him, instead of a man I'd never met and never knew. (See my blog post, "The Golden Age of Joe," October 9, 2007)
A further irony is that Joe Torre probably recovered more quickly than I did. He'd secured a job in LA within the month. It took much longer for my anger to subside. But it did. As the year passed and Joe Torre receded from my TV screen and a new season began, I barely thought about him. Sure, on occasion, as the 2008 Yankees foundered and their new manager made a colossal ass of himself by acting the role of autocratic martinet, some momentary wave of nostaglic yearning would overcome me. I missed the other Joe on those occasions.
Yet through most of 2008, my plan to adopt the Dodgers as my surrogate team never really unfolded. Old allegiances die hard. They also are slow to be born. Sure I checked their place in the standings every once in a while. But the 3-hr time difference coupled with the new league inhibited much more than that. My heart wasn't into it. The vagaries of the Yankees' fate left no room for rival lovers.
Now that Joe Torre has returned to his familiar place in the post-season and I've seen more of him, I'm grateful to him because it has stirred some of the old fondness. There was the comforting Joe I watched after every traumatic loss, every bit as possessed of the old reliable power to console me.
Sure, I'm rooting for the Dodgers to succeed, if only to see Joe revel in a little malicious pleasure and retrospective vindication at Cashman, the Steinbrenners', and Randy Levine's expense. I hope to hell the press reports are accurate and it pains them to see Torre in the NLCS. That it should bother them only dramatizes just how small they really seem.
But that rooting interest only takes me so far. For the passion the Yankees summon, as it turns out, there is no substitute, however abject their front-office. Seeing the Dodgers win, turns out to be little more satisfying the seeing the Red Sox lose. It's a transitory pleasure, but hardly a satisfying one. In the end, unless, it's the Yankees, I'm just not invested, Joe or no.
And Torre himself now begets far more the detached fondness and residual sentiment I might feel for an ex-wife or girlfriend than a filial love or allegiance. Which of course has led me to wonder what it was about Joe Torre exactly that had inspired my devotion in the first place.
I think I now understand it. But to explain, if you'll forgive the digression, I only can relate a bit of my own story.
THE UN-NATURAL
Dissolve 2008. Cue "Take a Chance on Me" by Abba. Cut to the North Edison Little League Field, a brilliant Spring afternoon in Central Jersey. The camera fixes on a dejected nine-year-old boy, sitting at the far end of the dugout, by himself sulking. He slides a pack of Pop Rocks from his back pocket, but he tosses them to the ground, inconsolable. After striking out for the twentieth time that season, he actually considers entertaining his teammates' fondest wishes and quitting.
However passionate my love for baseball as a kid, few things vexed me more than the gap between the player I was and the player I so desperately wanted to be. (In retrospect, it was probably through the game that I first attained the bitter wisdom that much as Americans love to pretend otherwise, you cannot be whatever you want to be.) So after four years of little league and shedding, for as long, copious tears of frustration, I hung up my cleats and called it a career.
Still, I enjoyed one season of near glory.
It wasn't the first season I allude to above; that one was disastrous. As an August baby, I didn't reach the age minimum until one year after most of my classmates. By third grade, they were entering their second year in the Piedmont League, I, my first. Although, for some reason, a friend of mine's father drafted me for his team, the Reds, notwithstanding. Perhaps, a team of nice, obedient Jewish boys he could manage mattered more to him than winning.
Mr. Bosco, let's call him, was a patient and forbearing manager, but he quickly discerned that I wasn't going to be much help to him either at the plate or in the field. I don't know what terrified me more, striking out or getting struck. Either way, I did a lot of both. Mr Bosco, as a consequence, batted me 14th or 15th on a team of 16 players, in accordance with the league rule that every team member had to bat. And in the few games, he had to cast an extra for deep, deep, deep right-field, I watched the game from a spot in outfield 250 ft. removed from home plate and where no ball, I suspect, ever landed.
At season one's end, my batting statistical line read something like this, .000/.100/.000. That is, I didn't earn a hit all season, and the few times I made it to 1st base was because the pitcher walked me or hit me with the ball. With the cruel blunt candor of nine-year-olds, my teammates delivered their estimation of my talent. "You suck," they told me often that season. And I believed them. Without a hit to my name, how could I imagine otherwise?
Only I didn't suck, not entirely anyway. I just didn't know it yet.
THE JOE I KNOW
During the off-season that year, I still believed anything was possible and I was determined to improve. Only I didn't now where to begin.
Most kids of course turn to their father. But my father, in this case, didn't have the resources to help much, however greatly he tried. He grew up poor in Manhattan's Lower East Side housing projects where kids aren't exactly encouraged to play baseball. And while he could probably identify the parts of a car engine with his eyes closed, to this day, he'd probably be hard-pressed to explain a balk or the infield fly-rule. He rooted for the Yankees, sure, but he never had the luxury of thinking all that much about the game, still less had anyone guided him on how to master it.
Fortunately, a genuine, real live, accomplished athlete existed among my parent's friends. Let's call him Joe Santos. Imagine a more introverted, more conciliatory Mario Cuomo. A star athlete in baseball and basketball in high-school, Joe might have played professional, low-A baseball one day. But his parents, like my father's, were immigrants and they envisioned a more practical and financial secure future for their son. So Joe filled prescriptions for a living and satisfied his love for the diamond, by teaching his sons the game and coaching little league in South Jersey.
That summer our families spent a few Saturdays together as they did every year. And after explaining my predicament to Santos, he took me out to the field and offered his sage instruction. He re-configured my batting stance, taught me how to plant the back foot and how to step with the front foot, how to take outside pitches to the opposite field and how to pull those inside. And for some inexplicable reason, perhaps sensing some untapped, unappreciated talent, he sent me to the mound to pitch to him.
"Do you know you have a natural curve?" he asked. Me? Me! A natural curve? "Yes," he said, "You're a natural pitcher. Next year tell your manager you can pitch." After which, he dispensed a veritable reservoir of tips on the art of pitching-- and of breathing.
And come next season, that's precisely what I told my next manager when asked my position. Pitcher, I said. The success followed from there. I swear, by season's end, I'd experienced the most dramatic improvement in North Edison Piedmont League history. I'd even registered my first official hit in the very first game-- a little blooper over Joey Gordon's head at 2b. And from that game on I never hit lower than 6th or 7th in the lineup and even hit 2nd and 3rd on a few occasions.
But my first taste of the exaltation athletic competition can bring the anointed came on the mound. I was a "natural" pitcher of sorts. I had two pitches in my repertoire-- a ball and a strike. I have no idea whether the ball curved on its own, but when I could throw strikes, only the Piedmont League's best hitters would tag me. When I was erratic, on the other hand, well...
Still, by season's end, I'd compiled a winning record and the manager chose me as an alternate to the Piedmont League's Eastern Division All-Star team. Alas, my brief baseball career peaked at 10. It was pretty much downhill from there.
PLATONIC JOE
Now, I'd like to tell you the adjustments Joe Santos made to my stance along with the pitching advice he imparted that summer account for the great transformation. However, I suspect, in truth, something more precious and less esoteric explains why I flourished that second year-- an explanation which, perhaps, brings us back to Mr. Torre.
Sure, I received an invaluable lesson in baseball mechanics. But Joe Santos taught me something more important. He taught me I didn't suck, after all. He put his arm on my shoulder and explained that great truth every baseball player, some day, discovers: that the very best in the game, fail more often than not. And he instilled in me, more importantly, the confidence that with every new at-bat and every forthcoming pitch, I had sufficient ability to overcome the last one.
In so many words the message rang, "It's a tough game and you WILL fail, but my arm will never leave your shoulder. My faith in you is boundless, unconditional and enduring."
In the superb film, "Searching For Bobby Fisher"-- adapted by Steven Zallian from the book Innocent Moves Fred Waitzkin wrote about his chess prodigy son, Joshua-- Fred Waitzkin (Joe Mantegna) and his wife Bonnie Waitzkin (Joan Allen), in a climactic moment, clash about the costs competition has exacted on their son. Bonnie has always bridled at it. However, she's indulged her vicariously competitive husband. (For a living, Fred Waitzkin, as it happens, covers the New York Yankees for one of the local newspapers.)
Josh has just suffered through a devastating losing streak and his father has been riding him hard, and in their dramatic scene, Bonnie, worried about the continued consequences for her increasingly sullen and withdrawn son, explodes.
"He's not afraid of losing," she cries, "He's afraid of losing your love. How many ball players grow up afraid of losing their father's love everytime they come up to the plate?" She asks him. "How many?"
"All of them," Fred shouts. All of them? All?
Look, I don't know if Joe Torre would ever qualify as the diamond's managerial equivalent of a chess prodigy. Lord know, his management of the bullpen left much to be desired in his years as Yankees manager, and as he was nostalgic enough to remind us the other night in Game 4 of the 2008 NLCS.
But I do know what Derek Jeter has said about him ever since the Yankees and Torre parted ways. It has resonated with me ever since.
"Joe Torre was like a second father to me," Jeter said.
A second father, perhaps, whose love he never could squander; a second father whose unequivocal and infinite faith he could never lose. A second father to him, A second father to us.
How many Yankees grow up afraid of losing their second father's love?
For twelve years, none of them.
And for twelve years, through them, none of us.
Some quality-- his life story, his triumphs and adversity, her talent or her beauty, the intimates she recalls and corrects perhaps-- seduces us and we fall in love with the idealized image we've projected out of our own unfullfilled need.
A bond then forms every bit as fast and deep and enduring as those we enjoy with friends, family, and loved one. Indeed, sometimes a purer and more potent bond because it remains untainted by the human failings that mark all our relationships with conscious or unconscious conflict and ambivalence.
I can't recall when I adopted Joe Torre for this role, or perhaps, more accurately, when I imagined Joe Torre adopted me for mine. I only know that when the Yankees scapegoated and then disposed of him in such a spiteful, petty, and undignified fashion last year, I felt the fury and indignation my own father would have aroused had the Yankees humiliated him, instead of a man I'd never met and never knew. (See my blog post, "The Golden Age of Joe," October 9, 2007)
A further irony is that Joe Torre probably recovered more quickly than I did. He'd secured a job in LA within the month. It took much longer for my anger to subside. But it did. As the year passed and Joe Torre receded from my TV screen and a new season began, I barely thought about him. Sure, on occasion, as the 2008 Yankees foundered and their new manager made a colossal ass of himself by acting the role of autocratic martinet, some momentary wave of nostaglic yearning would overcome me. I missed the other Joe on those occasions.
Yet through most of 2008, my plan to adopt the Dodgers as my surrogate team never really unfolded. Old allegiances die hard. They also are slow to be born. Sure I checked their place in the standings every once in a while. But the 3-hr time difference coupled with the new league inhibited much more than that. My heart wasn't into it. The vagaries of the Yankees' fate left no room for rival lovers.
Now that Joe Torre has returned to his familiar place in the post-season and I've seen more of him, I'm grateful to him because it has stirred some of the old fondness. There was the comforting Joe I watched after every traumatic loss, every bit as possessed of the old reliable power to console me.
Sure, I'm rooting for the Dodgers to succeed, if only to see Joe revel in a little malicious pleasure and retrospective vindication at Cashman, the Steinbrenners', and Randy Levine's expense. I hope to hell the press reports are accurate and it pains them to see Torre in the NLCS. That it should bother them only dramatizes just how small they really seem.
But that rooting interest only takes me so far. For the passion the Yankees summon, as it turns out, there is no substitute, however abject their front-office. Seeing the Dodgers win, turns out to be little more satisfying the seeing the Red Sox lose. It's a transitory pleasure, but hardly a satisfying one. In the end, unless, it's the Yankees, I'm just not invested, Joe or no.
And Torre himself now begets far more the detached fondness and residual sentiment I might feel for an ex-wife or girlfriend than a filial love or allegiance. Which of course has led me to wonder what it was about Joe Torre exactly that had inspired my devotion in the first place.
I think I now understand it. But to explain, if you'll forgive the digression, I only can relate a bit of my own story.
THE UN-NATURAL
Dissolve 2008. Cue "Take a Chance on Me" by Abba. Cut to the North Edison Little League Field, a brilliant Spring afternoon in Central Jersey. The camera fixes on a dejected nine-year-old boy, sitting at the far end of the dugout, by himself sulking. He slides a pack of Pop Rocks from his back pocket, but he tosses them to the ground, inconsolable. After striking out for the twentieth time that season, he actually considers entertaining his teammates' fondest wishes and quitting.
However passionate my love for baseball as a kid, few things vexed me more than the gap between the player I was and the player I so desperately wanted to be. (In retrospect, it was probably through the game that I first attained the bitter wisdom that much as Americans love to pretend otherwise, you cannot be whatever you want to be.) So after four years of little league and shedding, for as long, copious tears of frustration, I hung up my cleats and called it a career.
Still, I enjoyed one season of near glory.
It wasn't the first season I allude to above; that one was disastrous. As an August baby, I didn't reach the age minimum until one year after most of my classmates. By third grade, they were entering their second year in the Piedmont League, I, my first. Although, for some reason, a friend of mine's father drafted me for his team, the Reds, notwithstanding. Perhaps, a team of nice, obedient Jewish boys he could manage mattered more to him than winning.
Mr. Bosco, let's call him, was a patient and forbearing manager, but he quickly discerned that I wasn't going to be much help to him either at the plate or in the field. I don't know what terrified me more, striking out or getting struck. Either way, I did a lot of both. Mr Bosco, as a consequence, batted me 14th or 15th on a team of 16 players, in accordance with the league rule that every team member had to bat. And in the few games, he had to cast an extra for deep, deep, deep right-field, I watched the game from a spot in outfield 250 ft. removed from home plate and where no ball, I suspect, ever landed.
At season one's end, my batting statistical line read something like this, .000/.100/.000. That is, I didn't earn a hit all season, and the few times I made it to 1st base was because the pitcher walked me or hit me with the ball. With the cruel blunt candor of nine-year-olds, my teammates delivered their estimation of my talent. "You suck," they told me often that season. And I believed them. Without a hit to my name, how could I imagine otherwise?
Only I didn't suck, not entirely anyway. I just didn't know it yet.
THE JOE I KNOW
During the off-season that year, I still believed anything was possible and I was determined to improve. Only I didn't now where to begin.
Most kids of course turn to their father. But my father, in this case, didn't have the resources to help much, however greatly he tried. He grew up poor in Manhattan's Lower East Side housing projects where kids aren't exactly encouraged to play baseball. And while he could probably identify the parts of a car engine with his eyes closed, to this day, he'd probably be hard-pressed to explain a balk or the infield fly-rule. He rooted for the Yankees, sure, but he never had the luxury of thinking all that much about the game, still less had anyone guided him on how to master it.
Fortunately, a genuine, real live, accomplished athlete existed among my parent's friends. Let's call him Joe Santos. Imagine a more introverted, more conciliatory Mario Cuomo. A star athlete in baseball and basketball in high-school, Joe might have played professional, low-A baseball one day. But his parents, like my father's, were immigrants and they envisioned a more practical and financial secure future for their son. So Joe filled prescriptions for a living and satisfied his love for the diamond, by teaching his sons the game and coaching little league in South Jersey.
That summer our families spent a few Saturdays together as they did every year. And after explaining my predicament to Santos, he took me out to the field and offered his sage instruction. He re-configured my batting stance, taught me how to plant the back foot and how to step with the front foot, how to take outside pitches to the opposite field and how to pull those inside. And for some inexplicable reason, perhaps sensing some untapped, unappreciated talent, he sent me to the mound to pitch to him.
"Do you know you have a natural curve?" he asked. Me? Me! A natural curve? "Yes," he said, "You're a natural pitcher. Next year tell your manager you can pitch." After which, he dispensed a veritable reservoir of tips on the art of pitching-- and of breathing.
And come next season, that's precisely what I told my next manager when asked my position. Pitcher, I said. The success followed from there. I swear, by season's end, I'd experienced the most dramatic improvement in North Edison Piedmont League history. I'd even registered my first official hit in the very first game-- a little blooper over Joey Gordon's head at 2b. And from that game on I never hit lower than 6th or 7th in the lineup and even hit 2nd and 3rd on a few occasions.
But my first taste of the exaltation athletic competition can bring the anointed came on the mound. I was a "natural" pitcher of sorts. I had two pitches in my repertoire-- a ball and a strike. I have no idea whether the ball curved on its own, but when I could throw strikes, only the Piedmont League's best hitters would tag me. When I was erratic, on the other hand, well...
Still, by season's end, I'd compiled a winning record and the manager chose me as an alternate to the Piedmont League's Eastern Division All-Star team. Alas, my brief baseball career peaked at 10. It was pretty much downhill from there.
PLATONIC JOE
Now, I'd like to tell you the adjustments Joe Santos made to my stance along with the pitching advice he imparted that summer account for the great transformation. However, I suspect, in truth, something more precious and less esoteric explains why I flourished that second year-- an explanation which, perhaps, brings us back to Mr. Torre.
Sure, I received an invaluable lesson in baseball mechanics. But Joe Santos taught me something more important. He taught me I didn't suck, after all. He put his arm on my shoulder and explained that great truth every baseball player, some day, discovers: that the very best in the game, fail more often than not. And he instilled in me, more importantly, the confidence that with every new at-bat and every forthcoming pitch, I had sufficient ability to overcome the last one.
In so many words the message rang, "It's a tough game and you WILL fail, but my arm will never leave your shoulder. My faith in you is boundless, unconditional and enduring."
In the superb film, "Searching For Bobby Fisher"-- adapted by Steven Zallian from the book Innocent Moves Fred Waitzkin wrote about his chess prodigy son, Joshua-- Fred Waitzkin (Joe Mantegna) and his wife Bonnie Waitzkin (Joan Allen), in a climactic moment, clash about the costs competition has exacted on their son. Bonnie has always bridled at it. However, she's indulged her vicariously competitive husband. (For a living, Fred Waitzkin, as it happens, covers the New York Yankees for one of the local newspapers.)
Josh has just suffered through a devastating losing streak and his father has been riding him hard, and in their dramatic scene, Bonnie, worried about the continued consequences for her increasingly sullen and withdrawn son, explodes.
"He's not afraid of losing," she cries, "He's afraid of losing your love. How many ball players grow up afraid of losing their father's love everytime they come up to the plate?" She asks him. "How many?"
"All of them," Fred shouts. All of them? All?
Look, I don't know if Joe Torre would ever qualify as the diamond's managerial equivalent of a chess prodigy. Lord know, his management of the bullpen left much to be desired in his years as Yankees manager, and as he was nostalgic enough to remind us the other night in Game 4 of the 2008 NLCS.
But I do know what Derek Jeter has said about him ever since the Yankees and Torre parted ways. It has resonated with me ever since.
"Joe Torre was like a second father to me," Jeter said.
A second father, perhaps, whose love he never could squander; a second father whose unequivocal and infinite faith he could never lose. A second father to him, A second father to us.
How many Yankees grow up afraid of losing their second father's love?
For twelve years, none of them.
And for twelve years, through them, none of us.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
HANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER
"A little more than kin and less than kind"--Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2
Listening to Brian Cashman is rarely a particularly informative experience, still less a consoling one. Rarely does one talk so much and say so little. Indeed, at the task of a Chief Executive to inspire confidence in the organization he leads and his stewardship of it, the Yankees' GM has never excelled. Perhaps, the old Steinbrenner gag rule compels him to mince words. Perhaps, he fears candor and elaboration will jeopardize future transactions. Perhaps, he just lacks the glibness the 30-second sound byte requires.
Whatever the reason, Yankees fans, by now, have learned not to expect tedium from his semiannual press conferences and obliqueness from the sporadic interviews he grants on talk radio. I wonder whether Cashman realizes that the opacity encourages the very distortion of his record about which he now complains. Because he chooses to veil the front-office's inner workings in secrecy and darkness, fans construe what the few select columnists and reporters with access to the inner sanctum reveal as the gospel truth.
So while Brian Cashman has held the title of GM for over ten years now, we're really no closer now than when the Yankees promoted him to a definitive evaluation of his performance. Did he advocate the Mussina signing? What about Carl Pavano, Jared Wright, and John Lieber? Did he engineer the trades for Javier Vasquez and Kevin Brown? What about the decision that precipitated them, i.e., forfeiting the exclusive negotiating period with Andy Pettitte that led him in 2003 to sign with the Astros? Was Cashman the same guy dissuaded by Pettitte's injured elbow in 2003 but not four years later when he chose to re-sign him instead of acquiring Johan Santana?
Between 1998 and 2005, when he held the GM position in name alone, the Front-Office's decisions occurred behind an impenetrable curtain of faction and unaccountability.
THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS CONTRACT
Still, the veil of ignorance persists largely because Brian, since assuming the title's full powers, has chosen not to lift it. Actually, he and Girardi, together, have intensified the organization's penchant for secrecy. Only now Cashman bridles at its consequence. For ever since the Yankees announced the GM's return earlier this week, Cashman has used the occasion of his press conference and the talk radio tour that follows to vent. The press, he complains, has distorted his record. So does Brian take the occasion to enlighten them by acknowledging which egregious over the last decade he did not render but the press nonetheless has unfairly attributed to him? No, of course not.
Actually, the indignation Cashman has affected and the defiance he has expressed, given how the Yankees fared this season, has caused me to wince more than once at its flagrant temerity. Joe Torre loses in the ALDS three years in a row and he incurs the organization's wrath, threats of dismissal one year, a salary cut the next. For some reason, the Yankees want their manager to apologize for not winning a World Series since 2000 and to agree to performance incentives to spur him to do better.
And the man who served as GM during the identical period? Well not only is he rewarded, not only is he not the least bit contrite, he is outright defiant. Evidently, he think he has performed brilliantly. What chutzpah!
Appearing on Max Kellerman's program on October 2, 2008, Cashman lambasted the media for not "getting their story straight." He didn't traipse into the organization in 1998 and inherit the championship core Gene Michael and Bob Watson assembled, he admonishes. No, says Cashman, people forget he was the Assistant GM under Bob Watson and the Assistant Farm director before that.
Too bad, Brian doesn't seem to understand where this logic takes him. Because if he deserves credit for the farm system's great successes in drafting and cultivating the dynastic foundation that won four World Series in six years, then so too, he deserves blame for the woefully deficient system that in the eight following years failed to produce a single commensurate talent. One accounting follows from the other. You are either responsible for Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Bernie, Mo AND Dave Parish, John Ford Griffin, Danny Walling, Jon Poterson and C.J Henry or for NEITHER. Which is it?
Still, listening to Brian insinuate besides that he was instrumental in the Yankees' trade of Roberto Kelly for Paul O'Neil recalled to mind Tom Harkin's famous retort about Bush I: that is, "President G.H.W. Bush was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple."
Likewise was Brian Cashman responsible. When the physical strain of working for George sent Gene Michael and Bob Watson around the bases one time too many, they retired to the bench and the Yankees sent Brian Cashman in to pinch-run. Sure he ended up standing on 3rd base, but it ain't because he hit a triple.
I'd grant him far more credibility if he acknowledged his mistakes besides. After all, when was the last time the Yankees GM allowed that about a major decision concerning the Yankees' future, he erred? (Confessing this off-season in Theo Epstein's presence that perhaps he didn't get enough talent in return for Mike Lowell ten years ago hardly qualifies.) More importantly, does Cashman admits to the errors privately? His recent display of unapologetic arrogance would suggest not. Actually, his farcical defense of Carl Pavano this year-- and implicitly thereby his signing of him-- begs the question whether Cashman ever believes he's wrong.
One would think that the season after the Yankees missed the playoff for the first time in fifteen seasons -- even if injuries largely explain why-- and with the organization nonetheless planning to raise ticket prices to new unprecedented heights, that their foremost public official would try to assuage his angry and exasperated fan base. One would think the Yankees' fate this season would counsel remorse, some solace or assurance from the GM it's an aberration, a contrite mea culpa perhaps. Cashman however is totally unrepentant. You'd think he just won the World Series rather than a contract extension.
Most infuriating still, with every passing day, the Yankees' prospect for signing CC Sabathia seems to dim. With every passing day, the Rays and Red Sox, increasingly show the signs of having dynastic pitching staffs. With every passing day, the Yankees' outlook for 2009 appears no more promising than their 2008. With every passing day, it looks more and more like the front-office squandered a once in a decade opportunity last off-season to acquire an ace in his prime and without surrendering their premiere prospect, Joba Chamberlain, to do so.
And yet, Cashman expresses no regrets, he issues no apologies, he instead insists, still, that in forsaking Santana, he made the right decision. Why? Because in 2012, when Mariano and Posada have retired and Jeter and A-Rod have devolved into average hitters, Phil Hughes, might, just might, be a 1 or a 2 starter. And if so, by then, will it matter? Will it matter if the Yankees' lineup produces as many runs as the 2008 Blue Jays.
The only thing missing from Cashman's public protests is the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner hanging in the background, under which it would be fitting for him to deliver all his press conferences.
Then at least he'd have finished the picture his little fit of pique intimates. Then, the parallels with the Bush family would be complete.
Cashman and Dubya each would have arrived on 3rd base and tried to steal 2nd.
Monday, September 29, 2008
A POST-MORTEM
Now that the Yankees's 2008 season has expired and injury and ineptitude have done their worst, the post-mortem has commenced. In the forthcoming months, the columnist and talk radio hosts will pore over the rotting flesh, pronounce their cause of death, and deliver their nostrums on how to resurrect the body for next Spring. Unfortunately, most will confuse the illness with the symptoms or propose cures more lethal than the disease.
Naturally, the Yankees GM's office won't help to clarify matters either. Their vested interest in the regimen they prescribed for this season precludes an objective autopsy, certainly not one they're going to publicize anyway. The Cashman mantra has become, "Never admit error, never apologize, never express regret." Accept responsibility but never say why.
Already the Front-Office has begun to circulate the convenient half-truth that the Yankees didn't fulfill expectations because injuries struck and their hitters failed them. But when only two pitchers in your entire rotation have started 25 or more games and when you enjoy the dubious distinction of the only pitching staff in baseball without 3 or more starters who threw 115 or more innings, something far more endemic is amiss.
Still, Cashman insists he didn't seal the Yankees fate in January by entrusting 40% of his rotation to two pitchers under 23 with less than 100 major league inning between them. As recently as this Sunday The New York Times quotes him defending himself by citing the Minnesota Twins' example of Blackburn, Slowey, and Perkins. Of course, Cashman omits the caveat. All three of the Twins pitchers are 25 and over, and the Twins boast a long, venerable history of evaluating and developing young pitchers that the Yankees don't possess. Indeed the struggles Maddux, Glavine, Clemens, Sabathia, Haren, and Beckett all underwent in the major leagues when they were 20, 21, and 22 provide the far more apposite and informative precedent that Cashman conveniently skirts.
And with Johan Santana a Met, CC Sabathia already telling friends he wants to return home to the West Coast, and the Blue Jays offering the oft-injured AJ Burnett a lucrative 3-year contract extension, the Yankees confront yet another off-season in which an ace will elude them and another Spring with a starting 5 of Wang, Youth, Senescence, Injury-Risk and Enigma.
Worse, many of the writers who cover the team and pride themselves on independent judgment have succumbed to the front-office's cant and have espoused the snake oil cures they're peddling.
In the Pythagorean formula Bill James derived, we must acknowledge, he, in many ways, revolutionized our understanding of the game. For the debate about the respective importance of pitching and hitting to a team's performance had raged since the game's beginning. Yet it was not until James' revelation that we discovered we could quantify the relationship.
Winning Percentage = RS^2 + RA ^2 / RS^2. As simple and self-evident, perhaps, as E=mc^2, but relying just as much on the inspiration of genius to see it.
However, the Jamesian theorem also carries with it a danger. It lend itself to fallacy because it encourages analysts to examine Runs Scored and Runs Allowed in a vaccum, as separate and independent variables, and to forget that baseball is a complex and interdependent system.
That is, the Yankees RS total does not rise or fall on its lineup's performance alone. The team's RS total depends as much on the other half of the equation-- their opponents' RA, i.e., the potency of their staff and the proficiency of their defense.
Blaming the Yankees' anemic lineup this season in general and the shortfall in production from A-Rod, Cano, and Posada for the Yankees fate in 2008, then, tells a partial and misleading story. It's like attributing a patient's anemia to the fall in his red-blood cell count without ascertaining whether he's eating enough iron or whether his g.i. system is digesting it.
To be sure, the Yankees scored fewer runs in 2008 than 2007 not only because they're team OBA and RISP, .369 and .290 respectively in 2007, fell to .342 and .262, respectively, in 2008 but because their opponents' pitching improved as well-- the opponents, in particular, in the AL EAST
THE AL B-EAST
In 2008, the Yankees scored 789 runs in total, 323 of those runs scored against the AL East opponents. In contrast, in 2007, the team scored 420 runs against the same four opponents, and 968 runs in total. I enumerate the break down by team below.
Naturally, the Yankees GM's office won't help to clarify matters either. Their vested interest in the regimen they prescribed for this season precludes an objective autopsy, certainly not one they're going to publicize anyway. The Cashman mantra has become, "Never admit error, never apologize, never express regret." Accept responsibility but never say why.
Already the Front-Office has begun to circulate the convenient half-truth that the Yankees didn't fulfill expectations because injuries struck and their hitters failed them. But when only two pitchers in your entire rotation have started 25 or more games and when you enjoy the dubious distinction of the only pitching staff in baseball without 3 or more starters who threw 115 or more innings, something far more endemic is amiss.
Still, Cashman insists he didn't seal the Yankees fate in January by entrusting 40% of his rotation to two pitchers under 23 with less than 100 major league inning between them. As recently as this Sunday The New York Times quotes him defending himself by citing the Minnesota Twins' example of Blackburn, Slowey, and Perkins. Of course, Cashman omits the caveat. All three of the Twins pitchers are 25 and over, and the Twins boast a long, venerable history of evaluating and developing young pitchers that the Yankees don't possess. Indeed the struggles Maddux, Glavine, Clemens, Sabathia, Haren, and Beckett all underwent in the major leagues when they were 20, 21, and 22 provide the far more apposite and informative precedent that Cashman conveniently skirts.
And with Johan Santana a Met, CC Sabathia already telling friends he wants to return home to the West Coast, and the Blue Jays offering the oft-injured AJ Burnett a lucrative 3-year contract extension, the Yankees confront yet another off-season in which an ace will elude them and another Spring with a starting 5 of Wang, Youth, Senescence, Injury-Risk and Enigma.
Worse, many of the writers who cover the team and pride themselves on independent judgment have succumbed to the front-office's cant and have espoused the snake oil cures they're peddling.
Writers like John Heyman and Joel Sherman, to name two, will ascribe the Yankees' ills this year to the precipitous decline from the 968 runs they scored in 2007 to the less than 787 runs they scored in 2008. And then in the very same column, the prescription they advance would rid the Yankees of two of their most productive hitters this season, Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi, without identifying commensurate replacements. '3' and '5' hitters with .375 and over on-base-averages and .850 OPSs don't grow on trees. Or when they do, to pluck them, Scott Boras will charge 150 million dollars. Meanwhile, placing faith in the recovery of a catcher with a torn labrum and a Japanese DH with chronically arthritic knees to mitigate the loss rings less of a cure however than than the sound of whistling as you pass the grave.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU BEATIn the Pythagorean formula Bill James derived, we must acknowledge, he, in many ways, revolutionized our understanding of the game. For the debate about the respective importance of pitching and hitting to a team's performance had raged since the game's beginning. Yet it was not until James' revelation that we discovered we could quantify the relationship.
Winning Percentage = RS^2 + RA ^2 / RS^2. As simple and self-evident, perhaps, as E=mc^2, but relying just as much on the inspiration of genius to see it.
However, the Jamesian theorem also carries with it a danger. It lend itself to fallacy because it encourages analysts to examine Runs Scored and Runs Allowed in a vaccum, as separate and independent variables, and to forget that baseball is a complex and interdependent system.
That is, the Yankees RS total does not rise or fall on its lineup's performance alone. The team's RS total depends as much on the other half of the equation-- their opponents' RA, i.e., the potency of their staff and the proficiency of their defense.
Blaming the Yankees' anemic lineup this season in general and the shortfall in production from A-Rod, Cano, and Posada for the Yankees fate in 2008, then, tells a partial and misleading story. It's like attributing a patient's anemia to the fall in his red-blood cell count without ascertaining whether he's eating enough iron or whether his g.i. system is digesting it.
To be sure, the Yankees scored fewer runs in 2008 than 2007 not only because they're team OBA and RISP, .369 and .290 respectively in 2007, fell to .342 and .262, respectively, in 2008 but because their opponents' pitching improved as well-- the opponents, in particular, in the AL EAST
THE AL B-EAST
In 2008, the Yankees scored 789 runs in total, 323 of those runs scored against the AL East opponents. In contrast, in 2007, the team scored 420 runs against the same four opponents, and 968 runs in total. I enumerate the break down by team below.
- 2007.................................................2008
- Baltimore -- 107.................................Baltimore-- 91
- Boston -- 93.......................................Boston-- 93
- Tampa-- 133......................................Tampa-- 76
- Toronto-- 87......................................Toronto-- 65
- TOTAL= 420...................................TOTAL= 323
The 97 run decline accounts for approximately 50% of the difference between the Yankees total runs scored in 2007 and 2008. 968 (2007) - 789 (2008) = 179 total run differential. 97/179 = ~54%
In fact, 26% of the total decline in the Yankees RS total over the last year stems from the Yankees' performance against one team, the Rays (47/179). Which is the result one should expect against a Rays pitching staff that dramatically improved from 14th in the AL (5.53 ERA) in 2007 to 2nd in the AL with (3.80 ERA) in 2008.
Add to this the improvement in the Blue Jays staff ERA from its 4.00 ERA in 2007 to its 3.51 ERA in 2008 and together, the Jays and the Rays, pitching staffs explain ~40% of the decline in the Yankees' run production from 2007 to 2008 [47 (rays) + 22 (jays) / 179 (run differential)].
The Orioles and Red Sox pitch staffs' performance, by contrast, varied little from their performances the previous year. The Orioles pitching staff practically duplicated its futility of 2007, a 5.17 ERA, by posting a 5.13 ERA in 2008. The Red Sox staff ERA, meanwhile, stayed about the same as well, declining from 3.87 to 4.01. (The Yankees' staff ERA, on the other hand, improved by about as much, from a 4.49 ERA in 2007 to a 4.30 ERA in 2008). And the Yankees RS totals against the Red Sox in 2007 and 2008 mirror each other, and the RS totals against the Orioles over the two years don't differ much either.
Further illustrating that the decline in Yankees' RS total owe far more to their opponents' improved pitching than their lineup's inadequacies, the Red Sox lineup's experience, in many ways, parallels the Yankees.
In 2008, the Red Sox scored 839 runs, 2nd in the AL. (In 2007, the Red Sox scored 867 runs, 3rd in the AL.) Yet they didn't fare much better this year against the Jays and Rays than the Yankees did. In 2007, the Red Sox scored 113 against Tampa; in 2008, 87. In 2007, the Red Sox scored 91 against the Jays, in 2008, 60.
Three of the top four rotations in the AL (1st Toronto, 2nd Tampa, and 4th Red Sox) are in the AL East. Collectively, the Yankees will play 33% of their games against them.
The first three starters of the Rays' likely 2009 rotation posted the following numbers: Kazmir (3.50 ERA), Shields (3.56 ERA), Garza (3.70 ERA) = 552 innings
The Red Sox: Matsusaka (2.90 ERA), Lester (3.21 ERA), Becket (4.03 ERA)= 552 innings
The Blue Jays: Halliday (2.78 ERA), Litsch (3.58 ERA), and if he stays, Burnett (4.07 ERA)[ if not McGowan (4.53 ERA), by June]= 643 IPs
The Yankees' likely rotation for 2009? If its Wang (4.00 ERA)(200 IP), Mussina and/or Pettitte (4.00 ERA)(200 IP) and if for the remaining 300 IPs they have to rely on Chamberlain (2.76 ERA)(65.1 IP) and Hughes (6.62 ERA)(34 IPs), then in 2009, our post-mortem may very well commence in August.
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