View Full Version : Here's how the Yankees' season went bad (article)
jlw1980
09-15-08, 06:05 AM
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8560852/?MSNHPHMA
The games are only about nostalgia now at Yankee Stadium. The worst New York Yankees team in 15 years already has removed the drama from the final homestand ever at this famous building.
The autopsy to discover why the 2008 team closed the Stadium in such horrendous style will show many long-standing diseases. For years, the Yanks kept trying to buy their way out of problems, and the bill finally came due in full with an older team with diminished skill and health. For a period from roughly 1996-2005, the Yanks disregarded the value of amateur acquisition, mainly via horrible drafts. That led to a current team starving for prime-aged core players.
But not all of the Yankees' problems have been metastasizing for years. You can track some decisions from last offseason that doomed this club. Though the final homestand now will be exclusively about fondly recalling glorious long-ago history, the Yanks need to go into this offseason making sure they learn from recent history or be doomed to repeat it. Here are five examples:
4bronxbombers
09-15-08, 06:10 AM
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8560852/?MSNHPHMA
Eh, that's only part of the problem IMO.
What are the 5 examples in the last sentence?
Joel hates the Yankees.
What ya gonna do.
yankeegeek
09-15-08, 06:38 AM
Joel hates the Yankees.
What ya gonna do.
I might be in the minority here, but I don't think that he hates the Yankees. He isn't Lupica. I think that Joel is a very fair writer. To me he is the best of all these writers.
jlw1980
09-15-08, 06:50 AM
Eh, that's only part of the problem IMO.
What are the 5 examples in the last sentence?They're all in the article. It lists them one-by-one, then goes into detail about each one. :)
I think it was a great article and fair. There are many more reasons why the season went bad but these five can be a starting point to analyze what management has done and how it can do a better job.
One thing that needs to be changed is that Cashman, Hank and Hal all have very different viewpoints on what needs to be done and on the philosophy on how to build for the future. These have to be resolved and melded together before we move on. We do need to better evaluate out farm talent and the talent available out there. We do not need a reoccurance where Cashman and Hal says that since ARod opted out we won't resign him and then Hank goes out and signs him for insane terms. We do need to evaluate who to give long term contracts to and for what duration and we need to do this soon. Jeters contract runs out at the end of the 2010 season.
How long to resign him for?
Andy
Toaderly
09-15-08, 07:34 AM
Jeters contract runs out at the end of the 2010 season.
How long to resign him for?
Andy
If I was a betting man, I'd say they'll re-sign him for 8 years and $200 million.
montrealer
09-15-08, 07:50 AM
If I was a betting man, I'd say they'll re-sign him for 8 years and $200 million.
Jeter won`t leave before A-Rod..............it will be another "Stupid" if the Yanks extend him.
montrealer
09-15-08, 07:52 AM
The Yankees have committed themselves to put A-Rod as the future Face of the Yankees.....right or wrong it`s done.
The best part about reading the article is the comments the come after from readers. Its all Red Sox fans crapping on the Yankees and their front office. Do Sox fans have anything better to do?
4bronxbombers
09-15-08, 08:26 AM
They're all in the article. It lists them one-by-one, then goes into detail about each one. :)
oops. My bad. I only read what you quoted. :o
DEADSOX
09-15-08, 08:34 AM
The Jeter situation at the end of next year will be a really sticky situation, I can't wait :)
BRNXBMRS
09-15-08, 09:21 AM
Joel hates the Yankees.
What ya gonna do.
He doesnt hate the Yanks, he is a very good objective writer. BTW he is a Reds fan.
ZIM 2002
09-15-08, 10:34 AM
I thought it was a very good article. Whether or not one agrees with the Santana part, it is hard to argue that the Yankees have not been successful in talent evaluation, and maybe in personality evaluation.
THEBOSS84
09-15-08, 10:36 AM
The Jeter situation at the end of next year will be a really sticky situation, I can't wait :)
If the Yanks give him the $18.9M he has averaged over the life of his last contract, it'll tell us a lot.
If I was a betting man, I'd say they'll re-sign him for 8 years and $200 million.
Jeter is amn intellegent and a team player. Jeter's contract runs through 2010 with his salary in $2010 at $21 million.
I truly believe he will sit down with whatever the Yankee management will be at the end of the 2010 season and negotiate a new contract. I don't think he'll ask for an extension before that.
Jeter will be 35 on 5/29/2010 . I think he'll ask for no more than a four year contract at that time. Salary will depend how well he's playing at the time and what the market is (I don't mean the stock market). I further believe at the end of that contract he'll go from year to year with no more than a two year contract each time.
I may be niave but Jeter has seen what ARod's contract has done in the fans minds and Jeter wants to be the most beloved Yankee ever.
I don't think his resigning will be as hard as others seem to think it might.
Jeter is classy, ARod is not and by that statement I am not knocking ARod, just comparing the two personalities.
Andy
Yes, the Yankee dependence on Hughes and Kennedy was a huge mistake, and they paid dearly for it. But the bottom line is they couldn't replace the production of Posada and a healthy Matsui. The decline of Abreau and Melky didn't help. If those guys had more typical years they could have scored enough runs to make up for the spotty (being generous) starting pitching.
Regarding Jeter, he will retire a Yankee and will be remembered as the greatest shortstop in team history, regardless of the fact that his declining reflexes would make him the centerfielder of the future.
Hobbes40
09-15-08, 01:41 PM
There are a lot of silly things in that article, but one of the most glaring ones to me was that he spent a lot of time saying that the Yankees should have been willing to trade Hughes for Santana. Right or wrong, the Yankees WERE willing to trade him for Santana. They just weren't willing to send half the farm with him.
On the other hand, his points about Cano's contract and earning one's way into the rotation do make a lot of sense.
There are a lot of silly things in that article, but one of the most glaring ones to me was that he spent a lot of time saying that the Yankees should have been willing to trade Hughes for Santana. Right or wrong, the Yankees WERE willing to trade him for Santana. They just weren't willing to send half the farm with him.
On the other hand, his points about Cano's contract and earning one's way into the rotation do make a lot of sense.
The Mets also wound up signing Santana to a six year contract worth $138 million and that was probably too steep. Looking at the fact that he was 29 when signed and looking at his career stats, the Mets probably overpaid for him. If the Yankees signed him he would have cost another 25% because of the luxury tax. Certainly no bargain for a pitcher who has had only one 20 win season
Andy
Yankee Fan in Boston
09-15-08, 05:09 PM
The Mets also wound up signing Santana to a six year contract worth $138 million and that was probably too steep. Looking at the fact that he was 29 when signed and looking at his career stats, the Mets probably overpaid for him. If the Yankees signed him he would have cost another 25% because of the luxury tax. Certainly no bargain for a pitcher who has had only one 20 win season
Andy
If he was pitching for the Yankees during that run he probably would have had more 20 win seasons. I agree, though -- I doubt he is worth that contract in the last couple years, and I think we'll be in a better place in the future having kept our guys.
Chairman-of-TheBoard
09-15-08, 06:42 PM
Joel hates the Yankees.
What ya gonna do.
Not true at all. This was a very fair article. It was aimed straight at someone who has not been at the top of his game for a few years now: Brian Cashman. Becket was obviously available and Cashman passed. Santana was available and Cashman passed. Cashman doled out some crippling contracts like Giambi, Pavano and Igawa while passing on Tino in '02, Matsuzaka, Haren and Harden.
Face it, the mistakes of NY's front office are glaring deficiencies and automatically going after the biggest homerun hitter at whatever position IS NOT WORKING.
I think honorable mention for "Target #2" in this article was ARod. For everything he said about Alex, is he wrong? Joel may hat the Yankee, may not. I don't know and don't care. However, this article was spot-on. Dumb decisions by Steinbrenner and Cashman, and mortgaging the future by giving ARod 10 years is the summation of Joel's point.
35Knucklecurve
09-16-08, 03:04 PM
I thought it was a very good article. Whether or not one agrees with the Santana part, it is hard to argue that the Yankees have not been successful in talent evaluation, and maybe in personality evaluation.
I'm glad you mentioned personality evaluation. Players like Kevin Brown, Sheffield and to some extent, Randy Johnson are great examples of being willing to overlook the negatives in hopes of grabbing that one guy who'll take you to another WS championship. I think Steinbrenner was obsessed with signing RJ at all costs and from the first day he set foot in NY, Johnson was miserable. I won't throw Pavano in there because I don't think there were any glaring signs that this guy just will not pitch unless every single inch of his body is healthy and is clueless as to what it means to be accountable to your teammates. Sheffield has a long history of being a malcontent and Brown had more issues than a magazine. Also, you can have all the talent in the world, but not everybody can play take the pressure of playing for the Yankees. Even A-Rod, who is probably one of the most talented players every to play the game has struggled at times. You don't just sign players, you sign people.
NYYRules#1
09-16-08, 03:06 PM
It was a fair article for the most part, although I disagree with some of it. The criticisms of the Yankees' FA signings over the past decade are absolutely accurate. However, I'd disagree about the prospects. It's easy to look at them with 20/20 hindsight, but you have to remember that prospects are all about potential, and just because someone has potential doesn't mean it'll translate into results. That doesn't mean they should be traded out-of-hand though, as sometimes you'll get some prospects you htink highly of that go bust, and sometimes you'll get some that turn out to be good MLB players. You have to take the good with the bad when developing prospects, and looking back on every single prospect who went bust and saying they should have been traded does no good. I'll put it this way - if you had a policy of trading every Ricky LeDee, D'Angelo Jimenez, Drew Henson, Eric Almonte, and Marty Jansen, then we'd be looking back and ripping into the Yankees FO for trading every Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Robinson Cano, and Andy Pettitte when they were prime prospects. That's not to saythat every single prospect should be held on to, but even with the most discerning of eyes, it's impossible to sort out every future bust from every future star. I'd rather lean on the conservative side and hold onto prospects that have the signs of being potential future stars than trading them away, especially given the Yankees' financial resources and our ability to contend for just about every player that hits the FA market. The best time to trade a prospect is when he's showing signs of potential failure that other teams haven't yet caught onto, but sometimes that time never comes, and it's impossible to trade them at their high value.
I also disagree about A-Rod. This is the best player in the game and has shown no signs of slowing down (his best season was last year, and he's had a great season this year even with all the criticism). You do what you have to do to keep him. We saw what this offense woud look like without him in it in May, and it wasn't a pretty sight. 10 years might be a bit much, but I think he'll be a great player for at least 7 of those 10 years. It was worth it.
Chairman-of-TheBoard
09-16-08, 05:09 PM
I also disagree about A-Rod. This is the best player in the game and has shown no signs of slowing down (his best season was last year, and he's had a great season this year even with all the criticism). You do what you have to do to keep him. We saw what this offense woud look like without him in it in May, and it wasn't a pretty sight. 10 years might be a bit much, but I think he'll be a great player for at least 7 of those 10 years. It was worth it.
I also agree that 10 years was a tad ludicrous. A very good point in what the Yank's offense looked like without him earlier this season. Wow. That sucked! However, ARod will always be controversial/a lightening rod/etc simply because 1) he is good and every MLB team would take him in a heartbeat, 2) he gets paid a lot to do it. I don't like why he will always be criticized, but I would much rather have him then not.
hellonewman
09-16-08, 05:26 PM
"Miguel Montero?" :o:confused::wtf:
jlw1980
09-19-08, 06:25 PM
The Jeter situation at the end of next year will be a really sticky situation, I can't wait :)Agreed. It will be interesting.
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