2004 In Review, Part IV: End of An Era

Part I, Part II, Part III

Last time, I wrote what could be charitably described as "A Brief History of the Yankees," from about 1974-1995. When I left off, the Yanks had just lost the 1995 Division Series to Seattle.

As painful as the loss to the Mariners was, the '95 season showed the seeds of good things to come. Andy Pettitte and Sterling Hitchcock came up from the minors to be major contributors in '95. Bernie Williams had the first of eight straight .300 seasons. Derek Jeter got a September cup of coffee with the club, Jorge Posada got a small demitasse--one game as a defensive replacement. Mariano Rivera got hit around in a few starts with the big club, but he also showed great promise. Placed on the postseason roster, he gave some powerful hope for the future with a couple of clutch appearances in the Division Series.

Still, you couldn't convince me of that at the time. After the losing seasons of the early 90's, after the scuttled 1994 season, after Seattle came back from 0-2 in the 1995 Division Series, I began to worry. I was a fan of the most storied franchise in baseball, and the more involved I got as a fan, the worse things had gotten. I started to wonder if I was a jinx.

But when the Braves went up 2-0 against the Yanks in the 1996 World Series, I was relatively calm. The Braves, with their teenaged phenom Andruw Jones, had just crushed Andy Pettitte and the Yanks at home, and it looked like the whole thing was a mis-match. But we'd had "wait til next year" after the strike, then "wait til next year" again after the Seattle Series. Still, it felt like the team was making progress--last year we make it to the playoffs, this year we make it to the Series, maybe next year, we win the Series.

I could hold on, I told myself, one more year at least. If we lost in '97, though, I was convinced the Bleacher Creatures would find me and mete out some anti-jinx justice, like in Master and Commander.

Then, the worm turned. The Yankees swept the next four games, winning the title at the Stadium. I'll spare you the gory details, but the big turning point came in the 8th inning of Game 4 when Mark Wohlers, after twice blowing the fastball by Jim Leyritz, threw a slider with two men on and a 6-3 lead. Leyritz smoked that slider to tie the game, and the Yankees never looked back. That was the real beginning of the Golden Era.

The Yanks finished second to the Orioles in 1997, and lost the Division Series to the Indians, but that barely smarted after after finally having tasted the champagne the year before. The Yankees didn't sit still, they retooled. For the 1998 season, they brought on Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Brosius by trade, and Orlando Hernandez on a reasonable three-year deal out of Cuba. That 1998 team crushed the opposition. Only two losses to the Indians marred the postseason. In 1999, they traded for Roger Clemens, fresh off of two Cy Young Awards in Toronto. This time, the team lost one post-season game.

In 2000, it looked like the team finally slacked off. They finished first in their division, but with only 87 wins. They were the fifth-best team in the league. And it didn't matter--the Yanks went five games with the Oakland A's in the ALDS, but still won the title. Against the Mets in a Subway Series. Could things get any better.

Now, Buster Olney would say that the Yankees Dynasty ended in October of 2001, with the Game 7 World Series loss to the Diamondbacks. But I would say that the Golden Era ended somewhat earlier, in December of 2000. That's when the Yanks signed Mike Mussina.

It's hard to fault Mussina for the end of an era. It's not really about Moose, he was just a sign of the changing times. At first, when the Yanks became contenders again, New York fairly rejoiced. These Yankees, the Joe Torre Yankees, were a good group of guys--hard working, god fearing, professional. After years of ignoring the farm system, the Yankees had home-grown talent on display. Even after the first wave of talent--Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera, Posada--there were still prospects bubbling throught the Yankee minor league system. Prospects like Alfonso Soriano, D'Angelo Jimenez, and Ricky Ledee made the future seem bright, and that's not even counting the prospects the Yankees sent off in trades.

But as the wins piled up, as one championship followed another, people started to sour on the Bronx Bombers. For reporters, I think it got boring writing the same story year after year--the Yanks win; they're a professional bunch of guys; they're all great, even though none of them except Wells ever says anything interesting in interviews; they'll be in the hunt to get X All Star this winter; of course, they'll get him. For fans, Bud Selig's PR machine had established as a key to success making the next labor conflict about the "competitive-balance destroying Yankees."

As if folks didn't already have enough reasons to hate the Yankees, already.

The signing of Mike Mussina was the breaking point. The Yanks had acquired big players every off-season, and dished out big money every year of their run to re-sign their own players. But Mussina was the first big free-agent signing. His six-year, $84MM contract might not have been the biggest payout ever to a starting pitcher (future Yankee Kevin Brown had signed a bigger contract two years earlier), but it was a change in direction. After 2000, every off-season has featured big free agent signings: Jason Giambi in 2001, Hideki Matsui and Jose Contreras in 2002, Gary Sheffield in 2003, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright this winter.

At the same time, after 2000, the last remaining blue-chip prospects in the system came up--Soriano and Nick Johnson. The cubbard was now bare, and it hasn't been replenished over the last four years. The progress the Yankees made during George's exile was spent, and all that carried the franchise now was momentum, and big money.

I know I promised this would be the end, but I'm going to give this one more part, and try to end the wrap up before January ends...

to be continued

Flotsam & Jetsam

Before I finally finish the year-end wrapup, a few odd items:

Yanks Owe City Dough (Steve Zipay, Newsday)

Damnit, Newsday doesn't rhyme their headlines like a real city tabloid should, but I'll do it for them! The Yanks apparently underreported their Stadium income to the City, and will now pay $3.6MM to make things right.

Not much to talk about, here, although the mention of underreported income might be of intertest to the Commissioner's office, which collects revenue sharing money from the team.

Now That's An Arbitration Demand! (ESPN.com)

Roger Clemens is making Randy Johnson feel bad. Just after the Big Unit got his heavy-duty extension from the Yanks, the Rocket put in a request for A-Rod dollars--$22MM--in arbitration with the team.

The result has been that the Astros have made Clemens the Majors' highest-priced pitcher, at $18MM on a one-year deal. It makes me feel better, so long as the Rocket has bailed on New York, that at least he's not pitching for ridiculously discounted prices.

Can a Reality Series be Far Behind? (Michael Morrisey, NY Post)

With Alex Rodriguez and Curt Schilling bickering in the press like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, is there any doubt that someday ESPN is going to stick these two in an apartment, and make a reality show out of it ("Next season on 'Strange Roomies': Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield!")? I mean, this is almost as pitiful as the Orel Hershiser/Matt Williams feud some years back. Why don't these boys just kiss and make up?

Admittedly, that would make for a very different reality show. On pay cable, I think.

Mets Lead Exciting Lives

This one's a catch-all, since the cross-town rivals have definitely set the pace this off-season. First, Pedro, then Beltran. Now, Mike Piazza's getting married to a Playmate of the Year, rendering the Anna--er, Kris Benson signing somewhat redundant. That is, unless Wilpon's goal is to collect hot player spouses. Maybe the new Mets network will have a Spice Channel component? Anyway, you have to wonder if maybe the Mets would've outbid the Yanks for Carl Pavano, if only he'd popped the question to Alyssa Milano.

(BTW, when the Mets have Benson pitching to Piazza, would that be the all-time hot wife battery? I originally wrote "all-time spousal battery" but that's more Ike Turner than Hugh Hefner.)

Now, the Mets' protracted pursuit of Carlos Delgado begs the question: are the Mets soon to be the baseball team in town. This is something I'll have to look at in greater detail (probably once Spring Training rolls around, given how many unfinished projects I have right now).

Right now, I'll leave things with the comment I made on Alex Belth's Bronx Banter website:

The Mets are serious contenders, with or without Delgado--they've already picked up the best starter and the best position player on the free agent market this winter. They better contend after spending those kinds of dollars.

If the Yanks stumble (meaning 2nd place, with or without the Wild Card), and the Mets get going (meaning playing meaningful games in mid-September), there are lots and lots of people in this town who will jump bandwagons, and declare the Mets New York's team. Since I never liked the bandwagon Yankee fans all that much (I think they're the ones that keep demanding "Cotton Eye Joe" during the 7th inning stretch) I won't shed many tears if that happens.

Two notes on this. First, I think Omar Minaya's done a great job getting Pedro and Beltran, even though he arguably overpaid for both players. Omar's M.O. (say that a few times fast...) is to make a big splash when he starts out with a club, and these guys are the right answers, at least for the next 2 years.

Second, let me clarify about bandwagon jumpers. I don't really hate them. Every time a New York team gets hot, lots of people will suddenly jump on the bandwagon, non-fans and more casual fans alike. And some of those folks actually become serious baseball fans, lifelong fans, after the fad dies down. That's a good thing.

But if you're going to come into Yankee Stadium to heckle the Yankees, you better not still have the price tags on your new team's jersey or cap. And I better not have seen you a couple of seasons ago, cheering for the Yankees. Flip flops of that sort just make you a punk.

2004 In Review Part III: A Little Context

See Part I and Part II

In the last section of the 2004 Year in Review (which I heartily hope to complete before 2005 is over) I talked about the Yankees' "unhappy" streak of division titles and playoff losses. While I wrote that, the one phrase that kept repeating through my mind was "It wasn't always like this."

The way I reckon it, there have been five eras of Yankee baseball in the time that I’ve been a fan.

From 1974 through1980 was the Thurman Munson Era. George Steinbrenner was at the helm, and big money was flying to free agents from the minute the market first opened. The players were wild and rebellious, closer to a travelling band of Hell's Angels than the current MLB stock of jet-setting millionaires. This era culminated with three straight pennants from 1976-1978, back-to-back championships in the latter two years. After a decade-long championship drought (the “Stottlemyre Era”) Munson’s Yankee teams brought winning back to the Bronx.

I hardly remember this time. My first clear memory of being a Yankee fan was Munson’s death in 1979. Aside from that, there are snippets—an outfield strewn with Reggie bars, Bucky Dent going deep over the Monster, Dick Howser getting fired after a 100 win season—but no coherent memories. Still, looking back, it's striking that these Yankee teams were not products of the farm system: of the core players of these teams, only three--Munson, Roy White, and Ron Guidry--were home-grown.

The next era, the Dave Winfield Era, started when the Yanks inked Dave Winfield to a then-unprecedented 10 year, $10 Million deal, in 1981. The Yanks lost the FernandoMania World Series that year, and then entered baseball purgatory. Throughout the 80’s,the Yankees were a team that was good, but not quite championship caliber. Sometimes, it felt like the myth of Tantalus—the fruit was always just out of reach, but the team always kept their heads above water. Second or third place was the norm: a winning season, the like of which most teams would envy, but not a championship season. For the most part, even second place didn’t mean much excitement, as the pennant races often died out pretty early in September.

(Author’s Note: For any poor souls out there who don’t recall the pre-Wild Card days, once upon a time in baseball, finishing in second place meant you go home, with no post-season snacks.)

What made things difficult was that by the mid-80’s, the Mets had home-grown a good team, and were heralded as the new dynasty of the National League. That dynasty never quite materialized—the franchise was good for two division titles and one championship from 1984-1996, although they did contend in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1990.

Still, you couldn’t get Mets fans over the reversal of the natural order of things, and as the 80’s wore on, their crowing over the Yankees’ championship drought grew. In 1986, when the Red Sox met the Mets in the World Series, the whole thing was quite intolerable—Yankees fans were mocked at all turns. I remember the day after Dave Henderson hit the shot off of Donnie Moore, I asked Brother Joe what we could root for in a Mets/Red Sox World Series. His reply was, “a couple of airplane crashes.”

If Yankee fans were like Tantalus, starving for a championship, at least it was clear who had cursed us. The Boss. It was like living in an Eastern European dictatorship. We couldn’t vote him out of office, and we couldn’t make him leave, no matter how hard we protested. You just hoped that some crazy rich guy (the fantasy was usually Donald Trump, in a suit of white armor) would buy the Yanks, or else that the Boss would die.

The problem was that George was too competitive to ever let the team build a farm system, while at the same time, collusion meant that the Yankees couldn’t pick up premier free agents unless their owners wanted to let them go. So if you got excited about Doug Drabek, or Fred McGriff, or Jay Buhner, you were SOL, because George was going to trade them (and many others) away for “proven veteran talent” to make sure the Yankees never had a losing season. At the same time, the Yankees couldn't simply sign a Jack Morris, or a Tim Raines to supplement the talent the farm system was hemorrhaging.

From 1981 to 1988, when you talk about home-grown talent, you had Don Mattingly, who came up from the minors to become one of the inner circle Monument Park Yankees...and you had Guidry, from back in the 70's. Aside from that, the only other contributor drafted by the Yanks may well be third baseman Mike Pagliarulo. (The Yanks might get credit for developing Dave Righetti, but in fact he was drafted by the Rangers before being traded after the 1978 season.)

The Winfield Era ended in 1988, when, after a career season, Big Dave suffered a back injury that would cost him the 1989 season. The team tumbled to its worst record in over 20 years, 74-87. In 1990, things got worse, as the team plummeted to 95 losses, Winfield was traded to the Angels, and Don Mattingly was put on the DL with the back problem that would plague him for the rest of his career.

However, it seems that every cloud, no matter how dark, has its silver lining. At some point, George Steinbrenner had the great idea of siccing a degenerate gambler on Winfield to "dig up dirt" on the ballplayer's charities. When the Commissioner's Office got wind of this, George was in big trouble. One magic day at the end of July, 1990, Faye Vincent banned the Boss from baseball. For life.

It was terrific. You knew the "lifetime" part of the ban wasn't going to stick, but for years, Yankee fans had been praying for someone to save us from George. And with one incredibly stupid move, George obliged. By the time the Boss was reinstated, in the Spring of 1993, everything had changed.

I call the period from 1989-1995 the Exile Era. It was the time when I came into my own as a fan. Showing an impecable sense of timing, I became a Yankees ticket plan holder just as the franchise started to tank, so I was at the Stadium every other Sunday of the baseball season, watching my team sink into the mire. Although 1990 was the low point, the next two years were pretty hard, also, as the farm system spit out the eventual gold nugget (Bernie Williams) a few semi-precious stones (Roberto Kelly, Jim Leyritz, Pat Kelly, Scott Kamieniecki) and loads of pyrite (including, but not limited to: Dave Eiland, Jeff Johnson, Oscar Azocar, Hensley Meulens, Sam Militello, and the immortal Kevin Maas).

Still, there was something hopeful in the air, the feeling that the Yanks were finally rebuilding, rather than just treading water by trying to be competitive every year. Gene Michael, who'd been put in charge of the baseball operation, had a target of being able to really compete by the time Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993. From time to time you had a Steinbrennerish move--such as signing Danny Tartabull in January, 1992--but for each one of those, you had great transactions like the Steve Sax deal, in which the Yanks picked up young pitchers (Melido Perez, Bob Wickman) for an about-to-implode second baseman.

When Steinbrenner came back, he was looking at a much different ballclub, but he was also a much different Boss. He actually seemed to listen to his baseball people this time around. He wasn't quite so bombastic with the press. During the '92/'93 off-season, it looked like the team might be back to its old ways: expensive veterans Jimmy Key, Wade Boggs, and Spike Owen were brought aboard. But Michaels also brought in a young pitcher, Jim Abbott, and in what was a controversial trade at the time, traded Roberto Kelly for a lefthanded slugger coming off a horrible season, who was 18 months older than Kelly and had a reputation as a headcase and a crybaby, to boot.

That would be the now-sainted Paul O'Neill, ladies and gentlemen.

The Yanks finished in second place to the repeating World Champs in 1993. But the same core of players came back strong in '94, taking first place sometime in May, and staying in first place through August 11, when the players went on strike...and never came back to finish the season.

That was painful. The Yanks had the best record in the American League, the second best record in baseball when the strike hit, we all thought it would just be a short work stoppage, and it just went on and on. The season was pulled away from us piecemeal.

It's hard to complain about this, considering how much worse things turned out for the Montreal franchise, the guys who had the best record in baseball at the time of the strike. Immediately after the strike, the Expos were dismantled, with one of the choicest pieces--closer John Wetteland--coming to the Yankees.

When the 1995 season finally got underway, things just weren't the same. The Red Sox were in control of the Division, and it took the Bombers until early September just to get over .500. Still, because of that new invention, the Wild Card, the Yanks weren't out of the running. The Yanks won 19 of their last 23 games to finish as the AL's first Wild Card, in second place behind Boston. When the Yanks won the first two games of their best of five series against Seattle (and the Sox got swept by the Cleveland Indians in their Division Series) it looked like this was The Year.

And then the Yanks lost three straight. Foiled again.

Now, if you've read this far down the page, you're probably wondering. At the top, this says "2004 In Review", and this guy's talking about Oscar Azocar and the 1995 season. What gives?

The one thing that was missing, looking at 2004, was some context. After seven straight division titles, lord knows how many years with the top payroll in the game, the illusion sets in that it has always been like this, the Damn Yankees always win.

It hasn't always been like this. Between 1981 and 1995 the Yankees never once won their division. In 1981 and 1994, strikes intervened, delivering the Yankees into the playoffs the first time (they weren't the best team in their division that year, just the team with the best pre-strike record) and robbing them of the playoffs the second time around. About a third of the time during that streak, the Yankees finished in the "second division"--the bottom half of the divisional standings.

Right now, that's unimaginable to some people, both Yankee fans and detractors. They figure the team's a Frankenstein's monster, an unkillable beast. They thought that back in the '70s, too.

I think you can't really appreciate what it is to be a Yankee fan now, if you don't consider what it was like to be a Yankee fan back in the 80's or early 90's. Everything requires a little context. So the next time, I'll wrap up by talking (briefly, I promise) about the Golden Era, and the as-yet-unnamed period of the present day.

Triple Play Time

Another Prospectus Triple Play is up and out (link above).

Read it, and come back here. It's OK, I'll wait.

This features my first really visible flub. (At BP, that is. My editors are great there--whereas here, editing myself, you're lucky that what you're reading is in English.) I somehow omitted the word "six" with regard to the number of franchises who haven't had a 250 strikeout guy in their history. You can get the meaning of the sentence, since it refers to the actual franchises themselves, but it's still confusing. My bad.

[UPDATE: It's been fixed! As I said, my editors rock...]

Still, I thought it was an interesting phenomenon. Either the Yanks, despite enjoying a huge market advantage over the years, haven't until invested in big strikeout pitchers until recent decades, or perhaps there is a strikeout-reducing environment in the Bronx that has suppressed the team's K numbers. Anyone have any ideas about this?

Paper Tiger

MLB and the Players' Association got together to toughen up the league's performance enhancing drugs policy. The changes are largely cosmetic: a one-year ban is now on the 4th offense rather than the 5th offense; a first offense is now 10 days' suspension, up from confidential counseling and no suspension under the old policy; HGH has been added to the list of banned substances--even though they don't test for it. The biggest addition is random year-round testing, although the devil is in the details regarding its implementation.

It's easy to make too much of this "tougher" policy. The media's the biggest winner in this thing, since you know they had to hate the idea that anyone could test positive for 'roids, and that they might not hear anything about it until the second offense. You're bound to hear lots of nice things from the press about this new steroid policy, even though the penalties aren't much stronger.

As Mike Lupica points out in the Daily News, the suspensions aren't really what will prevent PED usage in the majors--what will accomplish this goal is shame. Jason Giambi doesn't need a suspension to be punished for his PED abuse (which, by the way, wasn't against MLB rules at the time), fans' reactions at stadiums around the country should do the job.

The thing to keep in mind is how much the self-interest of all parties involved drove this new agreement. Public opinion about steroids had gotten to the point where it probably looked like Baseball might take a hit at the gate and in the ratings. Like it or not, the Commissioner's office and the MLBPA are partners when something stands to hurt the bottom line.

The owners get John McCain off their backs. The Union gets to stop looking like a bunch of drug pushers. The press gets to villify the abusers. Ain't it grand?

Buried in all this is the fact that MLB has apparently won its fight against the government regarding the urine samples MLB collected in 2003, which the Justice Department seized last year as part of the BALCO investigation. It's the right decision, particularly given the leaky nature of all things BALCO.

Extra Extra Long

I promised I wouldn't report this one 'til it was done...and now it's official.

Sure, we had to get past Jerry Colangelo, Paul Depodesta, Bud Selig, a small army of doctors and one slightly-ruffled CBS cameraman to get here, but Randy Johnson is finally a Yankee.

The deal? Javy Vazquez, Dioner Navarro, Brad Halsey and $19 Million, plus $36 Million more to sign the Unit for 2006 and 2007.

Leaving the money aside, it's fair. Vazquez was perhaps the most coveted pitcher the Yanks have ever acquired...and he suffered a meteoric loss of standing, from being the stud that's going to carry the Yanks for the next four years, to the dud who couldn't stop Game 7 of the ALCS from becoming a laugher. More on him in another post. Dioner's an undersized catcher with one really good minor league season under his belt. We wish him well. Halsey's a relatively unheralded lefty who deserved better than he got last season.

Lets get all of the negatives out of the way now: he's old (41), he's whiny crotchety (see cameramen, above), one of his knees is practically bone-on-bone (see Synvisc), his back's not much better, and the money ($55 Million over the next three years) could've gone a long ways to getting Beltran.

On the other hand, Randy Johnson is unique. Hall of Fame type talents are rare enough in themselves, but in Johnson, you're talking about someone who bloomed into a HOF talent at the age of 29. People just don't do that. He's the real Yankee-killer, a guy who pitched 10 innings in about 48 hours against the Yanks in 1995, and then threw in back-to-back games to beat the Yanks in 2001, each time collecting matching W's for his team. Pitchers just don't do that anymore. Since 1998, he's missed the 240 innings mark...once. Pitchers don't do that anymore, either.

Yeah, he's 41, and sure, the whole thing could blow up in the Yanks' face. But he's a 41 year old who was the best pitcher in his league last year. He's a much-needed strikeout pitcher (since heaven knows the Yankees aren't going to win on defense this year). A guy who, when he can pitch, won't give you "six and out" like the 2004 starting staff did. An Ace.

Sure, it cost the Yanks plenty to make this move. Javy and Halsey may flourish with a non-Mel Stottlemyre pitching coach, and Beltran may bring a pennant to Shea. But it's hard to be unenthusiastic when the team's finally gotten a guy I've wanted in pinstripes for the past decade-plus.

NOTES

Ruben (Ain't Nothin' But a Sammich) Sierra signed one-year, $1.5M deal. That's a lot of cheddar for a pinch-hitter, one of those "for luxury's sake" features like a marble tray table on a private jet. Keep him under 200 AB's, and things should be OK.

Has another team's GM ever dominated a Yankee off-season like Omar Minaya? It was like Omar pursued Pedro and Beltran just so that Cashman wouldn't have to.

It's appropriate that Wade Boggs will have a Red Sox cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. But seriously, would Red Sox fans have given a damn otherwise? I was living in Boston at the time, and I can tell you--I've never seen fans distance themselves from a star player as fast as New Englanders ran away from Boggs in '92 (all but chased out by calls of "Give us Scott Cooper!"). Boggs went from being the team's bragging point, to being just some bum you hadda get out of town in about 20 minutes.

The funniest thing was, when he reached the Bronx, Boggs wasn't the "25 guys, 25 cabs" type that everyone expected. He suddenly became a team player--heck, a team leader--and he got to do his horseback victory lap for the World Champs in 1996. A nice second career Boggsie had in New York, a second career that got him into the Hall of Fame.

2004 in Review, Part II: An Odd Season, Indeed

One of the big things that I've tried to do in this space over the past year is to give a perspective on what being a Yankee fan was like for the 2004 season. I'd like to put in one last word on that topic.

Last season, for the seventh season in a row, the Yankees finished first in the AL East. For the third straight season, they both won over 100 games, and finished with the best record in the American League. And for the fourth season in a row, they were beat in the playoffs by the eventual World Champions.

Coming into 2004, the Yankees had already revamped their entire pitching staff, trading for Javier Vazquez and Kevin Brown to replace Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, expanding the roles of Jon Lieber and Jose Contreras to plug into the spots vacated by Jeff Weaver and David Wells, and signing Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill to shore up the bullpen. By the end of 2003, the Yanks had also picked up Gary Sheffield as a free agent, to play right field.

That is to say, the 2004 Yankees looked like they were a complete team on January 1, 2004. Every starting position was accounted for, the pitching rotation was set, only the last few bench spots were in question.

Then Aaron Boone busted his knee shooting hoops, and the Yankees, who were already guaranteed to have the Major's highest payroll, pulled an incredible, luxurious feat: they got A-Rod.

Surely, some thought, this made the Yankees unbeatable. They reached the World Series in 2003, and yet they had added the most coveted young pitcher in the National League, another pitcher who was second in the NL in ERA, one of the best outfielders in baseball, and finally, the reigning AL MVP shortstop.

Thankfully, they still play the games. The literal fantasies of "unbeatability" came to an end in March, when they dropped the opener to the Devil Rays in the Tokyo Dome, and the figurative ones were doomed in April, when the Red Sox crushed the Pinstripers two weekend series, winning six of seven games, the last three a sweep at Yankee Stadium.

Still, the team didn't curl up and die. Standing at 8-11 after the Red Sox left the Stadium, the Yanks won 8 straight, caught up with the Sox by early June, and by July 2, had left them rather decisively in the dust. At one magical moment in time, the Red Sox were broken, their fans fit to surrender, and the Devil Rays, of all people, were looking like they were headed for the #2 slot in the AL East.

Still, the sailing wasn't too smooth. The Sox surged back in mid-August, to make everything interesting. The pitching got terribly thin, with Brown and Mussina blinking in and out of effectiveness, with injuries (self-inflicted and otherwise), and Javy and Paul Quantrill taking massive spills in the second half.

We all remember how it ended: the Sox got the Wild Card, both they and the Yanks tore through their Division Series partners, and then the two teams met for what has to be the biggest debacle in Yankees history--up 3-0, then down 4-3, done in by Curt Schilling's stigmata-ankle, among other sorrows.

So, coming within a game of the World Series would be satifying for some. Heck, reaching the World Series in 2003 would've been a jamboree for some franchises. It doesn't feel that way in Yankeeland. Not at all.

To be continued...

A Short Break for Housekeeping...

A few notes while trying to say something coherent about the 2004 season:

Tino In The Fold

Tino Martinez, after a three year exile to St. Louis and Tampa Bay, has returned to the Bronx on a one-year, $2.75MM deal, with a $3MM option for 2006.

After two sub-par seasons with the Cards, Tino posted a .262./.362/.461 mark for Lou Piniella's Devil Rays in 2004. Still, Constantino's 37 years old, and prior to last year (a bad year for AL first basemen) hadn't been above league average since 1998. Expectations should not be high.

I didn't comment on the Mike Stanton/Felix Heredia swap last month--it was kind of hard to get worked up about. If money's no object (and there's a good bit of debate about that) getting rid of a lefty who was so ineffective that he had to be sent down to the minors, so Billy Connors could hold his hand, is hardly controversial. There are several dozen lefty relievers I'd rather have come out of the Stadium bullpen next summer, and Mike Stanton isn't the worst of them.

But he isn't the best, or the cheapest, either.

Like Tino, you have to feel that the reason for the Stanton acquisition goes beyond on-the-field baseball. Whether it's an attempt to bring that 1998 chemistry back to the Bronx, or to appeal to fans that think the team has lost its "soul," these are not pure baseball moves.

Still, at $3MM for a one-year commitment, Tino's not a horrible insurance policy, given that we don't know what, if anything, Jason Giambi will bring to Legends Field in a few weeks. Tino's a good enough gloveman that he could be a (relatively) low-offense first baseman if Giambi can't play the field, or a 300 AB fill-in if Jason miraculously comes back from the tumors and parasites and potions that have made him persona non grata in the Bronx.

Boggs and Ryno in the Hall, the Goose Abides

Congrats to former Yankee Wade Boggs, and to Ryne Sandberg, the BWAA's picks for the Hall of Fame class of 2005.

Boggs and Ryno are similar players--infielders who dominated their positions in the 80's, but who were also regarded as selfish players during their time.

I've discussed before why I think both players were well worthy of admission, so I'm not going to belabor that point. Really, the story of this election is the guys who are left on the outside, looking in. Goose Gossage gained 79 votes, and broke the all-important 50% barrier. The bad news is he's still mired behind a couple of guys who are--in my humble opinion--less-worthy candidates. Fellow closer Bruce Sutter is well ahead of Goose, at 66% of the electorate, only 43 votes shy of admission. He could get in next year, at Gossage's expense. Jim Rice is 80 votes away from admission.

It all comes down to a showdown on next year's ballot, before the likely Hall of Famers start coming hot-and-heavy again. The remaining likely candidates--Sutter, Rice, Goose, Andre Dawson (52%), Bert Blyleven (41%), Lee Smith (39%), and Jack Morris (33%)--all have their best chance next year.

My personal theory is that Rice's increase was due to increased Boston attention, due to Boggs (look at Bill Simmons' column if you want to see what I mean). Maybe that disappears next year, leaving room for the voters to put both Sutter and/or Gossage in the Hall (most likely both, as a "very special relievers episode" of the HOF induction ceremony). But if he doesn't get in next year, Gossage will probably be at the tender mercies of the Veteran's Committee, in whatever form it might exist when Goose makes that ballot.

2004 In Review, Part I: Happy Anniversary

This is not only the beginning of a New Year here at the Weblog That Derek Built, but also the (slightly belated) anniversary of my opening up shop to publish my not-so-deep thoughts online.

Last New Year's Eve, after Brother Joe and I traded off baseball tomes as Christmas gifts, he needled me about how I should write more. At that time, I wrote an extremely small circulation newsletter--just an email with cc:'s to a few friends, really--entitled "To All My Yankee Fan Brothers (And a Few Others)". This was where I'd complain about trades, discuss the 2001 gut-punch in Arizona, and argue baseball economics with my pals (well, there, the ballpark, the pool table, and whatever bar I could drag my baseball-loving friends to).

The problem was, I didn't write all that often. Often, when I did, the emails were rather massive and unwieldy. Joe wanted more, and wanted more people to see it. Since one of my annual New Year's resolutions was to write more often, I was intrigued.

I'd obtained a high-speed earthlink account some months earlier, but I hadn't really had much time to look at the "free webspace" that came with the account. New Year's day, I began eyeing earthlink's web tools. By January 2, I was playing about with layouts and graphics. On January 3 I published my first post, about David Wells signing with the Padres. That's the link above.

Including that one, there've been 193 posts to the WTDB, between the old site, and the Blogger website you're reading right now. Between some posts for the Page O' Stuff (which has been inactive for the off-season) and my work at BP, I think I've fulfilled my pledge to write more in 2004.

Looking at my year's output, I started hot and heavy, with short entries about everything under the sun. I've calmed down a bit to write 2-3 times per week. Not good enough, by my count. I miss the multiple-posts-per-day days, and I hope they return soon.

Top three things blogging taught me in 2004 (in no particular order):

1. You need to check if the assertion you're making is factually correct. This sounds kind of basic, but it's the #1 reason that Internet geeks beat up on mainstream media folks. When you talk about baseball all the time, you wind up continuously making assertions based upon experience, memory or common sense. Sometimes, experience, memory or common sense turn out to be just plain wrong.

I've never been so aware of this phenomenon as I am when I'm blogging. In this age of freely-available online information, it's simply unforgiveable to say something like "Jim Rice could never have hit 400 homers if he hadn't played in Fenway" without actually checking Rice's splits on Retrosheet to see if Rice actually hit for better power at home.

I've had dozens of articles that I've started to write, then had to scrap after I learned that a premise, or a vital factoid or anecdote I'd thrown in, was totally wrong. It's frustrating, but it makes you a better writer.

2. You never know who's reading you. When you don't exactly have the highest readership rate online, it's easy to forget that the people whose work you're critiquing can and sometimes do read what you've written. Generally speaking, I have no regrets--I'm sincere about the things I write--but it's a good reminder that when you're upset or outraged about someone's work, you should treat it as though you've written them a letter. Expect a response, and don't say anything about someone you wouldn't tell them to their face.

3. The world doesn't stop turning, even when your fingers are away from the keyboard. This is the flip side of lesson 1. All the contemplation it takes to try to make sure everything is fresh and well-researched is constantly at battle with the need to keep up with the news. Take too long to publish a game story, and who's interested anymore? Take too long to write up a nice gag about the Penny/LoDuca trade, and one of the principals might come up lame, already. Sometimes it's better to rush headlong into the fray, rather than wait for the perfect turn of phrase that comes too late.

I'm writing these things down more as a reminder to myself than as advice to the blogging public or the world at large. Hopefully, 2005 will teach me a lot more.

I have more people to thank for this site's success in 2004 than I could possibly name. I'd like to thank everyone that's linked to the WTDB, or who simply read what I've been writing for the past year. I'd really like to thank everyone who's posted comments, and I encourage you to keep up the good work. Hopefully, you'll all stick with me in 2005.

On Again, Off Again, On Again?

As per the link above, the saga of Randy Johnson goes on, this time as Vazquez/Navarro/Halsey and $9MM directly to the D'Backs in exchange for the Big Unit.

One of the lessons of the past year is that "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over". We saw it with A-Rod and the Red Sox, the Red Sox falling 10+ games behind the Yanks in July, and finally the crushing loss in the ALCS. So until the Yanks give a press conference, with Randy wearing an XX Long Yankees jersey, there is no news, here.

Since I'm going away for the weekend, this will probably be my final post of 2004. We'll be back in 2005 with a year-in-review, and the anniversary of the Weblog That Derek Built. Thanks to everyone who's come by to read us this year, and may you all have a safe and Happy New Year.

--Derek

Tip Not Included

The Yanks got the bill for making (and dishing out) lots of money earlier this week. They're getting charged $25MM in luxury taxes (for having a total payroll over $120.5MM) and they're donating another $60MM to MLB's central fund as revenue sharing on their reported 2004 revenues of $315MM.

Given that there'll be another luxury tax uptick next year (it's almost physically impossible that the Yanks could get under the salary threshhold in 2005, given their long-term commitments) they'll probably give baseball $100MM or more next year.

I just hope that some of these teams start spending this bounty. I'm lookin' at you, Pittsburgh! Cincinnatti's doing their part, signing Eric Milton to three years, $25.5MM. Given that Cincy's stadium is a homerun derby heaven, and that Milton was extremely tateriffic in 2004, this could be dangerous to fans seating in the outfield bleachers.

Still, it's the willingness to spend, and not the wisdom of the expenditure, that we're looking at here. Carl Pohlad pockets the Twins' revenue sharing money, and the Royals ain't spending a dime, no matter how much in subsidies they get from New York, Boston, or Anaheim.

The Diamondbacks have a pleasant history of crying poverty, turning their pockets inside out, and then giving out big contracts like they were lollypops. They feel Troy Glaus and Russ Ortiz are worth a combined $78MM over the next four years, and all I can say is, good for them!

Still, I hope that the next time we have the "the Yankees are ruining the game" conversation (given the Randy Johnson and Carlos Beltran rumors, this'll probably be any minute now), people will remember the $85 Million the Yanks are giving baseball, and the $78 Million the maxed-out credit card folks in Arizona are doling out to free agents. Or the Reds passing out $33MM to two pitchers who didn't even pitch league average last season (Milton and Paul Wilson posted identical 92's in ERA+ last year).

Halls Within a Hall

The problem of Hall of Fame voting is that there is only one Hall, and many candidates with widely varying qualifications. Because of this, I tend to think of the candidates in tiers rather than simply whether they are in or out. So here's how I see the baseball writer's ballot, which is due for submission on December 31.

The Broom Closet of the Immortals

2005 Inductee: Wade Boggs

This is based on my theory that, to combat the Hall's drooping standards of admission (while not breaking the hearts of anybody presently in the Hall) you could simply build a separate wing -- maybe a small room, or a large broom closet -- and put the extra-special guys in there. Y'know, so Ted Williams doesn't have to rub shoulders with Lloyd Waner and Babe Ruth doesn't have to keep the same company as Rube Marquard.

The one Immortal in this year's batch is Wade Boggs. How many HOF thirdbasemen would you pick over Boggs? My list is Schmidt and Brett, maybe Mathews. Whenever you're in the top three ever at your chosen spot, there's a good chance that you're someone special.

But it's even more basic. When you saw Boggs play, you knew you were watching a Hall of Famer. Check his list of comparables at bb-ref: seven Hall of Famers, and Tony Gwynn, who'll be in in a couple of years. You could eliminate the bottom 80% of the membership of the Hall, and Boggs would still make it. He's simply one of the very best players in Major League history.

The Hall of Well, Duh!

2005 Inductees: Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage, Ryne Sandberg

These guys haven't quite gotten there with the voters, yet, but there's no good reason for it. Each would be an above-average Hall of Famer, and should be an easy choice for the writers, yet each has a flaw or counter-argument toward admission.

Blyleven to the Hall of Fame is such a cause celebre that I'm barely qualified to comment on it. Better to just point you to analysis by Rich Lederer, who is one of the curveballing Dutchman's most vocal advocates. The short version is that Bert's run-preventing skills were well above those of other HOF pitchers, and he was a valuable pitcher for almost all of his long career (ERA+ under 100 in only 5 of his 22 seasons). I would add that he pitched well in the postseason, too.

The counterpoint is a low winning percentage (from pitching on losing teams) , no Cy Young awards, only one 20 win season. Also, it seems like Mr. Blyleven was somewhat of a cad, particularly to the press. While it's easy to dismiss this view as small-minded, but it actually boils down to something that's a real detriment for someone wanting to be admitted to the Hall of Fame--in a sense, Blyleven wasn't famous.

I wasn't self-aware, much less aware of baseball, during the early part of Bert's career, but I never heard of him as one of the best pitchers in baseball, much less one of the best pitchers ever. People raved about Blyleven's amazing curveball, but as for the overall package, I never heard someone speaking with awe of him.

It's a problem, but not one that should keep him out of the Hall of Fame. He's currently in the Hall of Well, Duh! because the voters have had a few chances to do right by him, and haven't really put a proper effort into it.

Now, maybe it's just the fact that I'm a Yankee fan, but I was always aware of people being in awe of Goose Gossage. For nearly a decade, Goose was near the top of the list of pitchers you'd least like to bat against. He had a blazing fastball, was a scary guy, and was brought in to pitch the highest-leverage innings his teams had. Nine All-Star teams, four top 5 turns in the Cy Young voting, and two top 10 showings in the MVP voting all point to people agreeing that he was a damn impressive guy. Great, even.

The problem is, the Hall of Fame doesn't exactly know what to do with relievers. Almost intrinsically, it's impossible for a reliever to be as valuable as a starting pitcher throwing two or three times as many innings per year. In addition, pitchers like Gossage, who were relief aces before the current save fetish that's taken over major league managers, don't have the kind of numbers many writers associate with closers. Gossage's career high in saves--33 in 1980--would have ranked 14th in the majors in 2004.

Jay Jaffe has some good work over at BP (get that subscription, already!) that deals with the disparity between starters and relievers, putting the reliever threshhold around 70% of the standards for starters. By those standards, and the more visceral "I know greatness when I see it" standard, Goose should be in.

Ryne Sandberg's another one of those guys that, during his career, you figured was a lock for the Hall. He was a nine time gold glover at second base, with ten All Star appearances in his 15 full-time seasons. But the amazing thing about Ryno was his power--the kind of power you simply didn't see out of a middle infielder in the 80's and early 90's. So...power, defense, what was there not to like?

Sandberg's hurt somewhat by the modern awareness of park effects, as he did much better in the Friendly Confines than anywhere else during his career. He is also hurt by the year he lost to a premature retirement. All that still doesn't change the fact that he was the best second baseman in the National League, for most of his career. He should be in the Hall.

The Hall of Maybe

2005 Inductees: Tommy John, Bruce Sutter, Alan Trammel

With these guys, it wouldn't be a travesty if they got into the Hall of Fame. It also wouldn't be tragedy if they didn't.

Sutter and John come to this from opposite ends of the spectrum. John got far on his longetivity, while Sutter's career was cut short by arm problems. Both candicacies depend heavily on non-performance related "extra credit." Tommy John is better known for the ligament transplant surgery that bears his name than for his pitching. Sutter is credited with two "innovations": the popularization (or revival) of the split-finger fastball, and the implementation of the one-inning, only-with-a-lead closer.

Those are some significant achievements (although the value of that last one is somewhat dubious) but I think the careers of these two pitchers fall a bit short.

Trammel's not an extreme case, like Sutter and John, he's a tweener. His career falls right between the two definitive shortstops of his time. Ozzie Smith was the classic shortstop--thin, short and fast, with no power and a ton of leather; while Cal Ripken was the prototype for the A-Rod/Nomar/Jeter/Tejada junta that would follow--bigger, more powerful, not as dependent on glovework. Trammel had a medium build, and strong offense for a shortstop of his day, but easily overshadowed by the slugging shortstops of the present. His glovework was excellent (four gold gloves), but not as spectacular as Ozzie's.

The vote's been going against him the past few years, but on the merits, he really should be in the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Prematurely Bronzed Plaques

2005 Inductees: Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Jim Rice, Darryl Strawberry

If you saw these guys play, at the right time, you were dead sure you were looking at a Hall of Famer. You might have daydreamed about induction ceremonies, and the wording of the inscription on their plaques. And in each case, you would have been a bit hasty.

From 1984 to 1987, Don Mattingly's batting average ran between .324 and .353. He scorched the ball with great extra-base power, and was the toast of New York City.

From 1982 to 1987, Dale Murphy averaged 36 homers per year. And this was at a time when 40 homers in a year was pretty rare.

From '77 to '79, Jim Rice led the league in homers twice, came in second once, and had a slugging percentage that hovered around .600.

Darryl Strawberry defined the word potential. In 1980 he was the first overall pick in the amateur draft. When he hit the major leagues, three years later, he was the Rookie of the year. Three years after that he was the best hitter on the best team in baseball. By the age of 28, Strawberry had 252 home runs, and it really seemed that the sky was the limit. He was the kind of player where you stopped what you were doing whenever he came to bat.

But for each one of these guys, something happened on the way to Cooperstown. A back injury in 1989 turned Mattingly from a superlative hitter to a below average one. Murphy inexplicably stopped hitting well in 1988. He never recovered his form. Rice's power fell off in his late 20's, and he later fell victim to a growing awareness of park effects. A number of smaller problems (alcohol, legal problems, injuries) and one huge problem (cocaine) scuttled Strawberry's career.

If you started bronzing those HOF plaques early for these guys, you're now left with useless hunks of metal--and memories of guys who, in their day, could give most of the men in the Hall of Fame a serious run for their money.


Hall of Pretty Darn Good

2005 Inductees: Dave Concepcion, Andre Dawson, Steve Garvey, Jack Morris, Dave Parker, Lee Smith

With these guys we're talking for the most part about long careers, winning teams, mystique and aura. There's no questioning that they were stars, or that they had periods of excellence. It's just that they weren't quite excellent enough for the Hall of Fame.

Concepcion and Garvey share in common Gold Gloves, All Star appearances, and connections to a dominant NL franchise of the 70's (the Reds and the Dodgers, respectively). They also shared a lack of OBP (both players ended their careers in the .320's) and power.

Dawson and Parker were slugging outfielders, both credited with great defensive prowess by the powers that be (a conclusion with which the defensive statistics of both men seem to disagree). The primary problem with these two is that outfielders tend to have to slug a whole lot to meet Hall of Fame standards. Dawson hit about 100 more homers over his career than Parker, but made up for it with 16 fewer points of OBP. Since Parker's OBP was .339, you can see that neither man was particularly gifted at getting on base. These two basically stand in the same limbo as Dwight Evans, who had better on base skills than either man.

Lee Smith and Jack Morris are united by meaningless statistics. For Smith, it's the All-Time Saves record, perhaps the least meaningful major record kept by MLB. It doesn't seem, at any point in his career, that Smith was the best reliever in baseball, or even in the top three. He was just really good, for a good long while. For Morris, it's the "most wins in the 80's" stat. Did that make Morris a better pitcher than Roger Clemens or Steve Carlton? Morris never posted an ERA under 3.00 in his entire career.

Although each player was an All-Star on multiple occasions, neither captured a Cy Young award. Neither really dominated the league. Smith winds up with too few innings to make it as a reliever, while Morris doesn't have enough wins to make it as a Don Sutton-type.

None of these guys would be the worst player in the Hall of Fame. Most could have arguments built for them, based upon comparison to some of the Hall's lesser lights. In my humble opinion, that shouldn't be how Hall of Famers are made.

The Hall of the Extremely Competent

2005 Inductees: Jim Abbott, Tom Candiotti, Chili Davis, Mark Langston, Jack McDowell, Willie McGee, Jeff Montgomery, Otis Nixon, Tony Phillips, Terry Steinbach

There's no shame being on this list. Everyone here put in 10 years in the bigs, most were, at one point or another, fan favorites. Everyone except Abbott and Montgomery saw the postseason, most played in at least one All Star game. These are some good careers:

Abbott pitched a no-hitter, and provided an inspiration for thousands of kids with disabilities. Candiotti was one of a line of Major League pitchers keeping the knuckleball alive, and had a nice cameo in the movie 61*. Chili Davis was a "professional hitter" from both sides of the plate, who retired with three World Series rings. Mark Langston was an ace strikeout artist, with a career that just wasn't quite long enough, or quite great enough, for the HOF. Jack McDowell got to live the life of a rockstar, based on being a star pitcher. He won a Cy Young award, and was a horse for the White Sox teams of the early 90's. Willie McGee was a league MVP, a terrific centerfielder, and one of the oddest-looking major leaguers of his time. Montgomery was an ace reliever right around the time that title began to lose its cachet, and also around the time Kansas City's first division run ended. He quietly had an excellent career. Otis Nixon was a pure speedster, perhaps the last of that breed that we'll see for quite some time. He shares the Major League record for most steals in a single game, with six. Tony Phillips was a great utility player, playing multiple positions in all but one of his 18 major league seasons. He exceeded 100 walks in a season five times, in a career marred by drug use. Terry Steinbach was one of the core players of the Alderson A's mini-dynasty; he was an All-Star MVP in 1988, and got a World Series ring the following year.

If this group gets five HOF votes, total, I'd be shocked. Barring a miracle, all of them will disappear from the ballot next year. Some will say they had no business being on the ballot in the first place. But I like the opportunity the HOF vote gives us, each year, to remember these competent veterans, and to look at their careers.

It reminds me of a line from an obscure cable movie, called "Lush Life." In the film, Jeff Goldblum and Forrest Whitaker play musicians, Jazz session players, and at one point Whitaker is lamenting that although the two played with plenty of Jazz greats, they weren't great musicians themselves.

Goldblum interrupts him. "You've got it all wrong. Those guys [the Jazz greats] need us. Without us, there wouldn't be enough music to go around."

Without these extremely competent players, there wouldn't be enough baseball to go around. You won't get a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, guys, but you'll have thousands of fans remember you fondly.

RIP: Eddie Layton

As 2004 rustles to a close in YankeeLand--amidst the gnashing of teeth over the non-trade of Randy Johnson--real sad news comes to the Bronx Faithful, with the passing of Eddie Layton.

Layton provided the soundtrack of Yankee Stadium--not the contrived "Cotton Eye Joe" stuff--for over 35 years. He retired in 2003, after the Marlins beat the Yankees in the World Series. It was always somewhat ethereal watching Eddie play at the stadium: he'd sometimes play the organ with a handful of World Series rings on his fingers, and because of the audio delay, his hands would seem to move out of time with the music. But the most memorable thing was the smile he had on whenever they put him on camera.

Either he really loved what he was doing all those years, or he missed a true calling as an Oscar-worthy actor. I, and many other Yankee fans, will hold him dear in our hearts and memories.

Still Alive!

This has probably been my longest absence from this space this year, and for that I apologize. Last time I went on vacation, I carefully arranged for guest-bloggers, and wrote practically until the day I left. This time, I left before dawn on the 17th, my one guest had technical difficulties, and I was unable to find--rather, unable to get an opportunity to search for--Internet access while abroad.

So, if you're one of the dozen or so people that still visit this site, I'm happy you're still checking in. It wasn't all fun and games while I was in the Dominican Republic--I did catch some Winter League baseball, and I'll be filling you in on what a crazy experience that was. I also worked on a few other items that have been pending far too long on this site.

For right now, I'll leave you with the last thing I did before the vacation, a Yankees piece that was published at Baseball Prospectus (yes, there's some Pirates and Marlins info mixed in, too). It's fun, and it's part of Prospectus' free content:

Prospectus Triple Play

Week in Review Part II: Beware the Loaiza

Read Part 1

Issue 2 -- PavaNO!!!

Looming even larger than the Jaret Wright deal is the rumored four year deal the Yanks are closing in on with Carl Pavano. The salary numbers I've heard range from $36 Million to $43 Million over that span.I've addressed the Pavano situation elsewhere, so let's just quote from last month's Prospectus Triple Play:

The big question for his off-season suitors is: was Pavano's performance this year a sign of greater acedom to come, or just a blip on the screen? Pavano is still relatively young (he'll be 29 in January), has demonstrated the ability to toss 200 innings per year over the past two seasons, and is a Proven Playoff Performer(tm) with a 2-0, 1.40 ERA postseason in 2003 and a high-profile World Series start. Sounds like "Show Me the Money!" time, right?

Not so fast.

[Stats Chart I don't know how to reproduce on my own web page snipped.]

Pavano doubled his previous high WARP1 value in 2004, while maintaining a flat strikeout rate in the mid-5's. Carl had an excellent 2004, but those don't look like the peripherals of an ace pitcher. Pavano may just have discovered a way to become the righthanded Jaime Moyer, but he's going to ask teams for a lot of money to prove that he can repeat this performance. Triple Play's advice: don't open the vault doors, guys, you might just wind up paying Curt Schilling money for Brian Lawrence performance.

Pavano's a prime candidate to "go Loaiza" on the team that signs him. Esteban Loaiza, as Yankee fans will remember from bitter first-hand experience, was a mediocre pitcher who showed promise and great "stuff" for a long time, and then settled in as a mid-rotation innings-eater from 2000-2002.

Then, in 2003, Loaiza had an improbable, near-Cy Young season: 20-9, 2.90 ERA for the White Sox. Unfortunately for Loaiza (and fortunately, for the White Sox) 2003 wasn't Esteban's walk year. In 2004, Loaiza fell flat on his face. At the end of the season, Loaiza could not best a gimpy Kevin Brown or an ineffective Javy Vazquez for a post-season rotation spot. What looked like a pitcher finally fulfilling his potential in 2003, turned out to be just another mediocre mid-rotation guy in 2004.

Maybe Carl Pavano really has turned a corner. Maybe he won't be bothered by moving to a stronger offensive league, having a worse defense behind him, and being in a more offense-friendly ballpark. I'm just saying there's no evidence to think he can repeat his 2004 performance, and nine or ten million dollars a year will be a bitter pill to swallow if we get the 2003 Carl Pavano, rather than the 2004 edition.

One of the emerging patterns from this off-season seems to be a propensity for picking up guys who have beaten the Yanks in the past, or have come from recent playoff teams -- Pavano pitched well for the 2003 Marlins, Womack was a 2001 Diamondback, Wright beat the Yanks as a Cleveland Indian. Since the mid 90's, the Yankees have benefitted from extreme advanced scouting of potential opponents come playoff time.

I wonder if all that advance scouting is skewing the Yankees selections in the off-season. The Yankees obviously scouted Pavano this way in 2003, and likely scouted both the Braves (Wright) and the Cardinals (Womack) this fall. Likely, all three of the free agents the Yanks have pursued so far have inch-thick dossiers in Tampa. Gene Michael, often mentioned behind the Womack signing, is the Yanks chief advance scout for the playoffs.

I would rather believe that there's a bias towards players that have been abundantly scouted by the Yankee advance machine than credit the other option: that the Yankees are out to get "proven winners" -- like Pavano, Wright, and Womack -- despite the fact that they haven't been terribly good over the past several years.

[By the way, in keeping with the subtitle of this section, other free agents I don't want the Yanks to pick up, such as TiNO! Martinez and Eric MiltOH, NO!]

Week In Review Part I: Hate to See You In Pinstripes

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a baseball blog, right?

Actually, there are a couple things in the pipeline -- some work for Baseball Prospectus, an article I'm doing for the blog on this year's Hall of Fame class, as well as the fact that I'm trying to clean things up at the office before I go on vacation next week. Still, this entry's been percolating for a while -- the Jaret Wright rollercoaster really bogged me down over the weekend.

Issue 1 -- Subject: Kill Me Now, Please

That was the subject line of an email I wrote to Brother Joe, after I learned -- all in a single blow bad enough to send me into a horrible case of the blues -- that at the arbitration deadline, the Yankees signed Jaret Wright and Tony Womack for a combined $27 Million.

No, I'm not over it yet. I may not be over until Wright's $21 Million deal expires in November, 2007.

It's as if the team got these guys only to spite me. I've spent a good deal of both men's careers detesting them. Why? With Wright, it's simple. He was a 21 year old kid in his rookie year of 1997, when he got a couple of postseason starts against the Yankees in the division series. He didn't pitch that well, but he won both his starts en route to sending the Yankees home early for their only postseason series loss between 1996 and 2000.

I didn't hate him for the fact that he won, so much as for his nasty, sneering attitude. From the smack young Jaret talked, you'd think he pitched a no-hitter in Game 2 of the ALDS, rather allowing 3 runs in six innings. And he also had a penchant for throwing inside, which was none too charming.

Wright turned out to be a plague we wouldn't have to bear for long. He performed around league average in 1998, and in 1999, his control -- never a strong suit -- went to pieces. He posted an ERA over six in 134 innings, hit the disabled list, and was gone. Bad shoulder. Over the next three years, combined, he pitched 99 innings. He was only 26 years old, but it looked like that was all she wrote.

We'll get back to Wright in a minute.

My antipathy for Womack is a different matter. Sure, the Yanks had a postseason run-in with him -- a little something in Arizona, around 2001, I think -- but even before his first at-bat against the Yanks, I disliked Tony beyond all reason.

You see, Womack also came up to the majors to stay in 1997. He was no 21 year old phenom, though, just a 27 year old marginal middle infielder with some speed. The comment on Womack in Baseball Prospectus '97 read simply, "A speedy, light-hitting shortstop who has somehow picked up three cups of coffee."

Then, in 1997, Womack became a regular lead-off hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His OPS that year was .700 -- roughly 18% below league average -- and his defense at second base was also well below average. But he stole 60 bases, so he was installed as a regular.

Now, it's easy to take for granted small advances that happen during one's lifetime -- to forget, for example, that most of America didn't have a cell phone or an Internet connection just ten years ago. In 1997, Prospectus was publishing just its second annual, and Moneyball wasn't even a gleam in Michael Lewis' eye. Although there were a hard core of people who were hip to the importance of on base percentage and park effects (not to mention the high break-even point for base stealing), it was a small, but vocal, minority.

It was at this point that Tony Womack became the centerpiece of an ideological battle. Conventional Wisdom said that if you had a fast guy that could steal a lot of bases on your team, you batted him leadoff, particularly if he had no power, like Womack. Sabermetric wisdom said that if you batted a guy like Womack leadoff, you'd just give him a whole bunch more opportunities to make outs (since the #1 batter comes to the plate more often than a #8 batter does), and the bases he'd steal wouldn't make up for his lack of power or plate discipline.

Back in 1997 and 1998, the Pirates were all too happy to hand Womack nearly 700 plate appearances, and watch him make nearly 500 outs. In 1999, Womack became a Diamondback, and they followed suit -- just they put Womack in right field, one of the big power positions in baseball, where Tony's lack of production would really stand out. And so -- through no fault of his own -- Womack became a whipping boy for people who embraced the new baseball thinking -- one of the Things That Were Wrong With Baseball.

Since I was one of those people, I always disliked Womack. It wasn't anything he'd said or done, just the way he played baseball, and the decisions of managers and GMs to write his name -- in ink -- onto the roster and the lineup card.

In 2001, Womack got a measure of revenge against me by hitting a double off of Mariano Rivera, extending the rally that ended game 7 of the 2001 World Series. But in 2003, it seemed that low performance would finally put Womack out of the league. He went through three teams that year, and finished the season posting a .190 batting average in Colorado.

But both of my hated foes made big comebacks in 2004. Womack, for the first time in his career, batted .300 with the Cardinals. He still didn't post a league-average OPS, but he did play in the World Series for the second time in his career. Womack earned his way in 2004 with a big April, and a very good first half overall -- .319/.364/.427 before the All-Star break. By the Stathead tools, the cracks in Tony's game showed up in the second half. Although Womack maintained a decent .298 batting average after the All-Star break, his plate discipline and particularly his power went missing -- Womack had 27 extra base hits pre-ASB, and only 9 after.

Wright, on the other hand, had a life-altering experience. Picked up by the Braves in late 2003, Jaret "Found Leo".

You all probably know by now how I feel about Leo Mazzone -- he's managed to pick up some pretty sketchy subjects from the garbage heap, and somehow make pitchers out of them. Among Leo's fixer-uppers, Jaret Wright will stand out as a bonafide, fit-for-cannonization miracle.

Wright, a pitcher who'd had an ERA under six just once in the past five years, went 15-8 with a 3.28 ERA for Mazzone's Braves this past season. He struck out 159 batters in 186 innings, and had career highs in strikeouts, strikeout-to-walk ratio, and home run ratio.

Great! If Wright's cured of his suckiness, why not back up a truckfull of money to make him a Yankee?

There are a couple of reasons to believe that Wright isn't someone you'd want to invest big money in. First of all, he's a guy with serious health issues -- there's a reason he only pitched 99 innings between 2001-2003. [UPDATE: This consideration became even more worrisome as we learned over the weekend that Wright failed his first Yankee physical. Sadly, it seems that the Yanks accepted the results of a second, presumably better physical examination, and the Wright contract is still a go. How comforting.]

Second of all, it there's the Mazzone effect. The Sabernomics weblog did a study of Leo's charges, before, during, and after being under the Master's tutelage. I found this particularly intriguing:

Also interesting is the fact that the effect [of Mazzone improving his pitchers' ERAs] seems to go away when pitchers leave. This may be because Mazzone imparts useful everyday help, not just new knowledge to fix an old problem, or maybe the Braves know when to dump guys.

Yankee fans might remember some anecdotal evidence of this effect, in the form of lefty reliever Chris Hammond. Hammond, you will recall, was the pitcher who answered the call when the Yanks did their "We've offered the same contract terms to Mike Stanton and two other lefties. Whoever responds first is a Yankee." negotiation ploy in 2002.

Chris'd seen a big career resurgence that year, under Mazzone in Atlanta. Prior to joining the Braves organization, Hammond had been out of the Majors since 1998, his career derailed by arm troubles. Under Mazzone, Hammond posted an ungodly 0.95 ERA, and looked like one of the better relievers in the league.

The Braves passed on giving Chris a big raise after his career resurrection -- that honor went to the Yankees, who got a serviceable, but unimpressive reliever who was eventually eclipsed by both Felix Heredia (in his pre-Run Fairy days) and Gabe White. The Yanks wound up unloading Hammond's contract on the A's after the 2003 season.

You'd think, after Hammond, the Yankees would be smart enough not to give top dollar to a pitcher the Braves passed on. But here we are, three guaranteed years at $7 Million per.

So that's a whole lot of caveat emptor for two players. One was overrrated for much of his career, the other injured for much of his, both are coming off the best years of their careers to be given big money by the Yankees.

It's kind of like learning that your spouse has spent your nest egg on lottery tickets. I hope the Yanks get lucky with these guys. I hope the brain trust -- the brainiest of which (Gene Michael) is said to have signed off on the Womack deal -- knows something I don't about these fellows.

I just don't like our chances.

A Night at the Theater

Last weekend, my girlfriend's pal Anne was in town, so we all went to the Classic Stage Company's production of Death and the Ploughman -- as part of the typical you-are-in-New-York-you-must-do-cultural-stuff tourist situation. The production was pretty good (considering that Ploughman's a fifteenth century, three character play, with lots of didactic speechifying) with a spartan theater-in-the-square set and no props except two benches, a suitcase, and an umbrella.

As we were leaving, La Chiquita -- a onetime German major -- commented on the fact that Goethe's UrFaust was playing at the CSC on Monday, so I got tickets as kind of a surprise. UrFaust is basically the first draft version of Faust that Goethe made, a story he would rewrite over and over for the rest of his career. The performance we saw on Monday night wasn't a full staged production, but rather a reading with all the actors in their street clothes, reading from scripts they rested on a series of lecterns at the front of the stage.

The production featured two "name" actors: F. Murray Abraham and Michael Cumpsty. Abraham, who played the role of Mephisto, was a particular draw for me, since he was the lead in one of my favorite movies, Amadeus. Cumpsty, who played Faust, is a British stage actor with a deep, booming voice, who's had a number of small movie and TV roles.

[SIDE NOTE: I have a favorite embarassing resume item for each of the above actors. For Abraham, it's a 1991 fencing film called By The Sword, co-starring Eric Roberts, which is one of the great unintentional comedies of our time. For Cumpsty, it's the 1993 spoof movie Fatal Instinct, where he's the spoof version of the husband in Sleeping with the Enemy. I wish they'd had a Q&A after the reading, just so I could ask the guys about these films that they've probably forgotten ever having made.]

The reading was a gas. With the rich voices provided by Abraham and Cumpsty, at first it felt like watching a radio play. The young actors they had for the remaining parts did excellent work, also, and as they went along, the players seemed to get deeper into the spirit of the thing, acting their parts out more and more, rather than just reading them. Things remained somewhat informal, with Abraham at one point casting an aside to the audience at one of the more awkward line readings, "That's supposed to be a big laugh line. I don't get it, either."

Now, by itself, none of this is all that noteworthy (or blogworthy, as it were). Except that towards the end of the piece, in a scene where Gretchen (the young woman Faust seduces with the help of the Devil) is being tortured by evil spirits, a young man entered the theater by the main entrance, and stood just off-stage, as if waiting to make his appearance. The guy -- tall, blond, pretty fit -- was completely, full-monty naked, except for his shoes and socks.

It says a lot for my experience of off-Broadway theater that my only immediate reaction was "That's peculiar. No one else is in costume."

After a few seconds, F. Murray Abraham (and only F. Murray Abraham) gets up from his seat and says, in his stage voice, "Hey! We're doing a play, here!" And prodding Naked Guy with the edge of his script binder, Abraham pushes the guy back out the main entrance. Shortly, the Creative Director of the CSC follows Abraham out the door.

The actors keep on playing. The ones that are seated exchange looks between them. After a couple of beats, the actress playing Gretchen (who's on her knees because she's supposed to be praying in that scene) says, "Can we take this from the last line?" And everyone in the theater, actors and audience, broke up laughing.

After the laughing was over, the play went on. After everyone took their final bows, I kept expecting for someone to make an announcement about Naked Guy -- who he was, why he showed up, or even just apologizing for the disruption. Nothing. Naked Guy remains a total mystery.

As they say, only in New York.

Week In Review: Yankee Blue

To begin with, I owe an apology to Mike Lupica. And Lisa Olson. And Ray Ratto. And Bill Madden. And Phil Mushnik. Everyone who seemed to have a hate-on for Jason Giambi, and against steroids.

...

OK, I'm back from the bathroom after vomiting up all the crow I just ate. Couldn't keep it down. Filthy stuff, that.

I've been on the run a lot this week, and was on the run to a court in the depths of Long Island when I heard the news. I was in a cab, on a ride that cost about the price of my regular commute for the entire week, when the story led off the newscast. Jason Giambi admits steroid use. This was leading the news not on one of the local sports radio outfits, but on the all-news station, WINS (I know, sounds like sports radio call letters, don't it?). This was the story of the day.

Now I was stuck on this long-ass ride now with a driver that couldn't stop talking about it. What the hell was Giambi thinking, that damn loser? Didn't he ever hear of Lyle Alzado? Why didn't Jason realize that he already had all the money he needed? What about the children, the poor little ones that look up to Jason as a role model?!?

The driver didn't know this, but I've defended Giambi in the past, and I've written a thing or two about steroids. Still, I didn't really have much to say on that long ride -- I chatted with the driver about MLB's steroid testing policy, agreed that it would probably get tougher, now, talked to him about Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco. But I didn't have much to say about Giambi. I was kind of in shock.

The thing was, this news wasn't really a surprise. Giambi's weight loss last Spring was suspicious, and a writer I admire very much said once that looking at Giambi in the Yankee locker room, you could see where he'd gotten "more tatoos to cover up the acne" that steroid use can cause. Giambi had been called before the BALCO grand jury in 2003, and had developed a variety of illnesses and injuries during his time with the Yankees that raised eyebrows -- patella tendonitis, intestinal parasites, staph infections in his eyes, and ultimately a tumor, allegedly in his pituitary gland. So I thought it was possible, maybe even probable, that Giambi had been on the juice at some point in his career.

But knowing something is different than suspecting it. Knowing is different than admitting it's possible. That's what Giambi's grand jury testimony means to fans -- we can no longer plead ignorance, or give Jason the benefit of the doubt.

He's a cheat, a knowing cheat, and a liar.

Before we go on on that path, let's say a few things about grand jury testimony. Revealing grand jury testimony is a crime, the exceptions mainly being if the testimony becomes part of the public record at trial, or if the grand jury witness tells their own story. As we've seen before with the Sheffield leak right before the playoffs, the BALCO investigation is leaking like a sieve. Grand jury testimony is being quoted verbatim, and the San Francisco Chronicle claimed to have seen transcripts of Giambi's testimony.

I'd love to see some prosecutions of the cretins who are leaking grand jury minutes -- although, since the leaks might just come from the Justice Department, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Ironically, right before I got in the cab where I learned about Giambi, I'd been reading an Op-Ed column in the New York Times by Eugene Volokh, about creating a "journalist's priviledge" that would protect both mainstream journalists and bloggers from being forced to reveal their sources in court. One of Volokh's ideas had some resonance to this situation, at least a day before the story hit the written media:

Lawmakers could pass legislation that protects leakers who lawfully reveal information, like those who blow the whistle on governmental or corporate misconduct. But if a leaker tries to use a journalist as part of an illegal act - for example, by disclosing a tax return or the name of a C.I.A. agent so that it can be published - then the journalist may be ordered to testify.

In this case, under Volokh's rule, a judge would be able to compel the SF Chronicle reporters on the Giambi story to testify and reveal the source of the illegal grand jury leak. He's got my support...

Back to Giambi -- a lot of great work has already been done discussing the Giambi situation, and I don't want to rehash it. The best blog entry I've seen so far on the subject comes courtesy of Cliff's Big Red Blog. Cliff Corcoran's take on the situation is balanced and fairly comprehensive; other good angles have been examined by some of the usual suspects -- Jay Jaffe, Alex Belth, Brother Joe at BP, Sean McNally at Replacement Level Yankee.

In the mainstream media, Giambi's public flogging is being executed with no small measure of vindictiveness. After all, Giambi, aside from being a steroid-shooting cheater, is The Man Who Dared Lie to the Reporters.

Oddly, the mildest rebuke of all may have come from Mike Lupica, who went easy on Jason as a tradeoff toward hunting bigger game -- Barry Bonds:

Giambi gets no sympathy for being the kind of drug cheat that Barry Bonds and all the others have to be, even if he deserved better than he got from these prosecutors who promised him his grand jury testimony would be sealed and then gave him up in front of the world. So Giambi, who wanted to take drugs so he could hit more home runs and make more money, takes the fall for everybody. By telling the truth. You wonder if Bonds, the one they've been after all along, will ever do the same.

Lupica's Daily News colleague, Bill Madden, won't even give Giambi credit for honesty in front of the Grand Jury, insisting that instead, Giambi was too stupid to lie:

In the face of all the adversity these past two seasons in New York, Giambi crumbled. Apparently, things weren't much different on the witness stand where, unlike Bonds, he didn't have the capacity to cleverly answer the steroid questions without actually answering them. (By contrast, it matters not that Giambi lied to the media all spring about the same issues - we're easy to lie to.)

Things get even more breathless when you listen to Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post:

He thought he'd fooled the world, Giambi did. Thought nobody noticed how a skinny singles hitter blossomed into a powerful home-run freak overnight. Thought nobody heard the whispers that tailed him. He's been lying the whole time.

If Mike paid any attention to the grand jury testimony, or Giambi's career, he'd have noticed that Giambi "blossomed into a powerful home-run freak" before he started using steroids in 2001 (heck, he won the MVP the year before he started using), and maybe even realize that Giambi had never been a "singles hitter". Don't let the facts get in the way of the story, I guess.

Over at Newsday, John Heyman unloads on Jason with both barrels, talking about the first baseman's carousing ways, and demanding that Giambi "Ask that any statistic or trace of him be expunged from record books, right down to his date of birth". In today's Daily News, class act Lisa Olson puts the smackdown to Giambi's dad, presumably because she thinks it's a fun thing to do, or perhaps as a measure of revenge for causing her "to blush" with his off-color tales of nights on the town.

Personally, the feeling I have about Jason is closer to sadness than anger. Sure, I'm ticked that Giambi denied using 'roids for over a year after he came clean under oath. I'm upset that the Yanks have this sack of damaged goods on the roster, with no defensive value, possibly no bat anymore, nothing but a black hole, owed $80someodd Million dollars over the next four years.

But mainly, I'm sad for the Yanks. It had looked like 2004 was going to be a good year for the team, and in many ways it was. But the way the ALCS ended, paired with the major disappointments presented by Kevin Brown and Javy Vazquez, and now an off-season dominated by steroids and Giambi -- well, it's all pretty depressing.

The worst part about all of it is there's a scent of doom around the franchise at this moment. The so-called Fall of the Yankee Dynasty, retrospectively marked by Buster OIney as the end of the 2001 World Series, takes on more life each time this franchise suffers a black eye like the one Giambi has given it. When these things happen, we're reminded that the "legendary, sainted" 1996-2001 Yankees would never have done low-class stuff like shoot up Human Growth Hormone. Those Yankees, the Real Yankees, also would have found some way to beat the Red Sox in the ALCS, and of course, they wouldn't have lost to the Marlins last year, so they'd be on course for a three-peat in 2005. Sure.

Right now, rumors abound of these "Real Yankees" making returns to Yankee Stadium. Joe Girardi is the bench coach, now, but you get the feeling he could be told to suit up at any minute. Ditto Luis Sojo. Mike Stanton has already returned to the Bronx (more on this in a moment), and this Giambi news only makes it more likely that Tino Martinez will return to lead the team at first base.

This phenomenon requires a more substantial discussion than I can give now, but here's a summary of what I think about it: in baseball, you have to move forward, you have to continually improve. Those 1996-2001 teams didn't stand still, they always made changes -- David Wells, Chuck Knoblauch, Roger Clemens -- and added kids from the minors like Spencer, Ledee, and Soriano. You can't go backward, as much as nostalgia and a few seasons where you don't bring home World Series rings might tempt you.

Speaking of going backward, the big call around town has been for the Yanks to void Giambi's contract for juicing. Unless someone had some foresight of this when they made up Giambi's contract (and I think we'd have heard of that by now, if they had) I don't see how this is possible. Set aside the "illegal grand jury transcript" evidentiary problem, and the "what did the Yankees know, and when did they know it" problem. Even then, you have the most simple problem of them all: the Collective Bargaining Agreement has already set out what the punishments are for steroid use, and having your contract voided isn't among them.

This is the downside of having a steroid policy. In 2002, when steroid testing wasn't in place, maybe the Yankees could have tried to void Giambi's contract, maybe Bud Selig could have used his "best interests of the game" powers.

But the same agreement that imposed steroid testing on players also established a regime for disciplining them for steroid-related offenses. You can say that the disciplinary measures of the 2002 CBA are too soft, but the fact of the matter is, no matter what disciplinary system they chose, it wasn't going to be "one strike, you're out" an automatic ban for a first offense.

The Yankees can still try, and they have plenty of lawyers with more experience, and more knowledge of the situation, than I have. The Yankees can also try to bully Jason, remind him how nasty Yankee fans can be, and convince him that he doesn't want to play out the rest of his career in pinstripes. Heck, maybe they convince him that he just wants to hang up his spikes, period, and wouldn't he like a nice 60 cents on the dollar buyout as a parting gift?

I wish them the best of luck in this. They can't trade Giambi, couldn't trade him even before he came out as a liar and a cheat. They probably can't keep him on the DL for the next four years, like the Orioles did with Albert Belle, or the Mets with Mo Vaughn. But they have to do something, because I have a hard time imagining how I could ever cheer for the man again.

Don't get me wrong. I wish Jason the best of luck, particularly for his health, but also for his game. It's not impossible that he could come back next year, healthy and steroid-free, and slug 30-40 homers on the season. But for purely selfish reasons, I hope it's not with the Yankees. As a fan, I have to wonder, how can you revel in someone's accomplishments when you can't stand to look them in the eye? I know I can forgive the juicing and the lies, but how can I ever like this guy again?

So I apologize to the mean-spirited representatives of the Fourth Estate, who tried to warn us this day was coming. I'm sorry, damn you.

Uh oh. I just realized I forgot to apologize to Selena Roberts. Oh, man, I think I'm going to be sick again.