Still Here, Rock the Vote Edition

Yeah, one post for the entirety of October was pretty lame. All I can say in my defense is that I'm working on a super-secret project that I keep on assuring my wife, La Chiquita, will be worth it. With the Phillies beating the Rays last week, the world's undivided attention turns to our national elections, tomorrow. For those of you who've been waiting until the end of the baseball season to pay attention, my BP colleague Nate Silver has set up a site, FiveThirtyEight.com, to catch you up. On the left side of this page you'll see the site's widget with its latest posts. It's politics done stathead style, so if you like the kind of baseball writing we (used to) sling around here, you'll love this.

Anyway, get informed and get to the polls. Regardless of who you vote for, get out there and vote.

Why I'm Rooting for the Rays

I was talking to a fellow Yankee fan the other night, and we were discussing the ALCS. I mentioned that I was cheering for the Rays to win it all this year, and the answer I got back was "I hear you. I root for two teams: the Yankees and whoever is playing the Red Sox." It got me thinking, because that wasn't what I was feeling. The moment the Yankees were eliminated, my loyalties shifted to the Rays. It would have been that way if the Angels had beaten the Sox in the ALDS, and it'll continue to be that way if the Bostonians pull some of their 2004 voodoo to dig themselves out of the 3-1 hole they're in in this series. The Rays are the postseason for me now.

It's not that the other contenders to the crown don't have legitimate claims. The Phils have more history and longer-suffering fans. The Dodgers have Joe Torre, and all the warm feelings I have for him and his coaches, particularly (sigh) Donnie Baseball. The Red Sox have...well, my respect, at the very least. They're all good teams, and the Sox are possibly a great team. But my pick, for reasons more emotional than logical.

It's because they play in the toughest division in baseball. Because they've built their team intelligently, and a couple of my former Baseball Prospectus colleagues (Chaim Bloom and James Click) have helped them do it. Because their fans range from displaced Expos loyalists to Cubs fans who've been kicked in the cojones by their team a few too many times. Because, basically on a lark, I wrote an article in 2007 (which I mentioned in this space) about how the Rays could win it all, back when that prospect wasn't even a twinkle in PECOTA's eye. Now I want to see it become reality.

And because, with the Rays being a rising power in the AL East, the sooner they win it all, the sooner complacency and bad decision making will set in, hopefully derailing the whole venture before the Yanks spend the rest of the decade sucking their exhaust in the standings. Hey, just 'cause I'm on your side for one postseason, doesn't mean I'm not still a Yankee fan.

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Sadly for Donnie Baseball, the Phils also hold a 3-1 lead in the NLCS against the Dodgers. Joe Torre's team had an excellent chance to even the series in Game Four, until Torre's uncertain management of the bullpen in the eighth inning opened the door for Charlie Manuel's squad. As manager of the Yankees, Torre was a good postseason bullpen manager, because he knew that he had one guy (Mariano Rivera) who was much better than everyone else in the 'pen, and possibly the whole staff. Torre was never afraid to extend Rivera to multiple innings, where needed, in pursuit of those World Series rings. In Monday's game, Torre had an opportunity where he probably should have used his closer Jonathan Broxton, the way he used Rivera back in the day. Instead, the Phils tied the game against setup man Cory Wade, and won the game on a two-run homer by the Power Hamster, Matt Stairs, against a closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone Broxton.

Again, while the Dodgers being in the playoffs while the Yanks cool their heels at home will invite comparisons between Torre and Joe Girardi, there should be caveats. Torre was always a better big picture manager than a strategic one: his big achievement as a Yankee was helping to professionalize the organization, so that things didn't degenerate into chaos the second that anyone experienced adversity. More importantly, the decision on who would manage the Yankees in 2008 was never really between Torre and Girardi. It was between Torre and Torre--whether to continue the then-current administration. Then, when the Yankees wouldn't come to terms with Torre, it was between Girardi and Mattingly (and a few other interviewees who never really seemed to be in the picture). So the question isn't whether Girardi is better than Torre--I doubt even Girardi himself would claim that to be the case--but whether Mattingly would have handled the Yankees better than Joe did. Given the personal problems that delayed the start of Donnie Baseball's coaching career with the Dodgers, the short-term answer was likely no. The long-term answer...I don't know. What do you think?

Mo' Cash, Less Problems

A sizable bit of the expected drama for this off-season went away today, with Yanks GM Brian Cashman re-signing with the team for three more years at the helm of the front office. Cashman, who'd had "complete authority" under his last agreement with George Steinbrenner, apparently was willing to live with Hank Steinbrenner's vision of an "advisory board"--either that, or the New Boss's vision was just a negotiating point. Still, it's good that the Yankees aren't out there looking for someone new to run the shop, since it's hard to imagine anyone stepping into Cash's role without missing a beat. Cashman's return is also good news for the Yankees' young players, who likely won't be freely available to anyone who has a superannuated marquee name.

In other soothing news, Will Carroll has the lowdown on Mariano Rivera's shoulder surgery over on Unfiltered. The procedure--called a Mumford procedure--isn't as scary as what we usually expect when we hear the words "Yankees' best pitcher to have shoulder surgery."

Sweet and Sour

The Yankees ended the 2008 season with a doubleheader at Fenway after Saturday's rainout. In the early game, Mike Mussina finally bagged his 20th win in a season, capping a campaign that would have been worthy of the Comeback Player of the Year award, in any season where Cliff Lee's body wasn't possessed by aliens. The late game was a little more like the Yankees' season as a whole: a desperate struggle to beat a Boston team that hardly seemed to be trying to win, marked by a tough time scoring runs and some bad pitching by Darrell Rasner. A win, and a season-ending sweep of a Red Sox team that was clearly in tune-up mode for the final series, would have allowed the Pinstripers to finish their season with 90 wins and given us a small psychological boost going into a long, hard winter. But this wasn't really a season for feel-good endings, so the Red Sox nabbed with a walk-off tenth inning victory, the immortal Jonathan Van Every knocking in Alex Cora for the win.

For the first time since 1993, the Yankees season ended with the Yanks on the outside looking in at the postseason. In 1993 I'd just graduated college, a cell phone you could barely fit in a coat pocket was a cutting-edge luxury, and next to nobody had heard of the Internet. It's been a long wild ride for the Bronx faithful, and I'm grateful that it lasted this long. Looking, ahead, 2009 promises big changes. Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu are free agents, Jason Giambi and Carl Pavano will be free agents if their options aren't picked up. In different ways, the Italian connection of Mussina, Giambi and Pavano have each been emblematic of the 21st Century Yanks. Mussina (like the Yanks) has been good but not great over the past eight years. Giambi has been simultaneously frustrating and underrated; despite all the steroid drama, there were only two real bad years out of the Giambino's seven in the Bronx. Pavano--well, he's been the symbol of how far the Yankees have fallen from the late 90s peak, an overpriced player whose name itself became a punchline.

We'll have October to watch everyone else play for the World Series title (can I hear a "Lets go Rays"? OK, maybe not...) and some months after to see how this particular Humpty Dumpty tries to put itself back together again. Will the Yanks stick with their homegrown players, despite a season that presented significant setbacks for each and every one of them? Should veteran warhorses like Mussina and Pettitte and Abreu return next season? Will CC Sabathia get fitted for a set of XXL pinstripes, and if so, will it be a mistake of Pavanoriffic proportions? Time will reveal all things, and we'll have time to discuss it, starting with September in Review tomorrow, and season reviews to follow.

Some odds and ends:

Schadenfreude is such a lonely word: For all the Lupica talk about how New York is now the Mets' town again, they finished with the exact same record as the Yankees, and they're now just as likely to win the World Series. I wasn't exactly rooting against the Flushing warriors, but given the way that Mets fans stunk up the joint during this year's Subway Series, I'm not exactly sad that the Phillies overtook them for the division title, again, and that the Brewers snuck past them to grab that Wild Card.

Joe vs. Joe: First of all, congratulations to Joe Torre, as well as his pinstripe alumni coaches--Don Mattingly, Larry Bowa, and Mariano Duncan--for making it to the playoffs in his first year managing the Dodgers. This is the type of news that's bound to set off all sorts of recriminations about how the Yankees would have been so much better if Torre, not Joe Girardi, had been at the helm for Yankee Stadium's final season. There's no way to tell, but let's get some perspective here, in the current Yankee manager's defense. First of all, the Dodgers won the weakest division in baseball, with a record five wins worse than the Yankees. Second, both managers had to deal with injuries--each lost his staff ace about 100 innings into the season--but the Dodgers got a historic second-half push from an extremely motivated Manny Ramirez, who hit almost .400 over the last two months of the season. Xavier Nady was nice, but not that nice. Third, Torre gave Juan Pierre 400 plate appearances, which is kind of as bad as giving Melky Cabrera 450 PA, just without the excuses of youth and defense. I wish Torre the best, and missed him (and Donnie Baseball) during the Stadium's swan song, but it really doesn't pay to look backwards.

Brief Political Digression: Friday's presidential debate looked like a draw from here--each candidate seemed to do best in the areas they were expected to have trouble. McCain managed to dominate the conversation during the section of the debate that was on the economy, dragging the discussion to comfortable terrain where he could talk more about earmarks and spending than market regulation. Obama didn't back down during the foreign policy section of the debate, despite McCain's constant digs at his lack of experience and supposed naivete. The absolute worst line of the entire debate, from McCain: "I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict." So the key to victory is avoiding failure? Thanks for the tip...

At BP: The Last of the Last

Here's a taste from my article up at Baseball Prospectus on the final game at Yankee Stadium (sadly, it's a pay article on BP's system):

Another neat gimmick that fell short in the execution was the Yankee Stadium countdown clock, which I mentioned in my piece on the Yankee Stadium home opener. The idea was that in the fifth inning of each home game, once the game became "official" a special guest would turn a crank, and the number of games left at Yankee Stadium would be reduced by one on a special scoreboard. Throughout the season, people registered disappointment with this because the "special guests" were often not terribly special or particularly associated with Yankee baseball. Often the person turning the crank would be an obscure executive from Met Life, the promotion's sponsor. In the middle of the fifth inning of Yankee Stadium's last game, Yankees announcer Michael Kay shows up on the big screen, spouts some doubletalk about how there can be no final game at Yankee Stadium, because Yankee Stadium is forever, then he turns the crank, making the special countdown scoreboard go from one to—I kid you not—"Forever." Two observations on this come to mind: first, thanks for the season-long voyage toward innumeracy, you've managed to make us all dumber; and second, with the Stadium packed with VIPs, at least a half-dozen of them Hall of Famers, Michael frickin' Kay was the person selected to turn that crank? Really?

Also at BP (but this time, free), Brother Joe got to share some of his feelings about the closing of the Cathedral:

Of course, you cannot praise 85 years of baseball players in one sitting. It’s too much to handle, there are too many greats to name at once, especially given the franchise we’re talking about here. Even the video clips seemed to miss a handful of significant players, and there was only so much time and space to have Yankee greats be announced and trot out to their positions. It was left to us to fill in the gaps.

So you let loose for Hideki Matsui, and hope that Rickey Henderson can hear you yell. A chant of "Paul O’Neill" fills the air, and in your heart you want Dave Winfield to feel the love as well. The crowd goes wild for Derek Jeter, and you just know that Scooter is hearing the echo, tucking into a cannoli and smiling. You can’t cheer them all, so you cheer the one out loud and the rest in your heart, the ones who are there, the ones who live in your memory, and the ones who set the stage for your memories, the heroes you know by stat lines and stories and grainy black-and-white footage. You cheer, and when you try to chant, your voice catches and you realize this is all hitting you a little harder than you thought. The video board shows Chris Chambliss hitting a huge home run, and you realize this is the only chance you’ve had to cheer your first favorite player in more than 20 years, and you do just that, standing out among a crowd of people with no understanding of why the short guy is so excited.

As promised, some more pics:


Brother Joe wasn't sitting with us for the Stadium's swan song, but he did come by to visit during the pregame. After the game, we stood outside the Stadium (by the manure-smelling Gate 2) talking about the day, the game, the monolith next door, soon to be our team's new home. Joe (a brother from another mother) and my actual brother Jeff are the two living people most responsible for me taking my love of the Yankees above the level of casual fan, and it meant a lot to me that the three of us were outside the Stadium together as they closed the shutters on the public entrance. "If I had a press pass, I'd see day break in there," Joe said. Amen.

Brother J and I (he's on the left and I'm on the right) at the end of the game. After one of our fellow Sunday plan holders took the pic, I noticed that we were out of focus, but the Stadium wasn't (he'd wanted to make sure we got the scoreboard in the background). My brother and I agreed that, on this night in particular, the focus should be on the Stadium, so we decided not to re-take the shot. I think it puts things in perspective.

You can find more of my photos from in this Picasa album, which I'll be updating with more pics soon.

Zero Games Left: The End of Yankee Stadium

My brother J and I saw off the Cathedral in style yesterday, spending about eleven hours there en route to the Yanks' 7-3 win over the Orioles, the last Yankee win on the plot of land they've called home since 1923.

It was a bittersweet day, more celebration than wake for the defunct arena. I'll have more thoughts on it later on today at Baseball Prospectus, and there will be more pictures and discussion here on the blog once I've gotten some rest. Until then, just know I feel very lucky to have spent a very special day at the Stadium.

18 and Over?

The Yankees, having no real shot at the postseason themselves, tried to help out the Twins by taking three out of four from the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox, but the Twinkies spit the bit by getting swept in Cleveland. Tonight's game featured good performances by two Yankees whose contracts are up when the season's over--Mike Mussina, who registered his 18th win of the season with a strong six-inning effort, and Bobby Abreu, who clouted a pair of big homers against former Yankee Javy Vazquez. Abreu wound up with six RBI, and Mussina cruised after escaping a big jam in the first inning, and allowing only one run on two hits and two walks. Moose's win keeps the possibility of his first 20-win season alive. It'll be a tough road to get here--he'd have to beat the Blue Jays and Red Sox, on the road--but at least it's a chance.

Meanwhile, the weather's been nice for Yankee Stadium's last week. Yesterday, I was in Riverside Park, where the local tweens were showing off their sk8er boi skillz. Hopefully, the good weather will hold up for the Yanks and Orioles to send out the Stadium in style this weekend. One way or another, I'll see you in the Bronx Sunday night.