Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Smarter Than Me
I assume that Brian Cashman is smarter than me. I begin with that assumption. So I'm figuring he really does have some trick up his sleeve that's going to convince me this offseason hasn't actually made the Yankees worse. Because that would be uncharacteristic.
Cashman is an underrated general manager. People look at the payroll number and say, "Well, even I could put together a great team with that kind of scratch!" But they couldn't. Given the enormous contracts that are givens in the Yankees lineup (Jeter, Mo, Granderson, CC, Tex, and especially Mr. Rod, to name a few), it's amazing he has any room left to put together 25 major league players at one time. But every year, just when you think he's folded his tent and decided third place isn't really all that bad a place for a season or two, Cashman does something--usually a small thing--that makes a huge difference sometime during the baseball-playing year.
This year, and I know it's not even January yet, but still--I'm not seeing it.
I understand this whole business with getting under $189-million (a number virtually every other team would be ecstatic to reach) in 2014. I get that there can't be large multi-year contracts, especially with Robinson Cano becoming a free agent after next season. I comprehend all that. But it's absolutely un-Yankee to see that the team is not going to be as good and shrug. That's not Cashman. I don't believe that's Hal Steinbrenner. But it sure does seem to be what's happening so far.
The big signing of this winter so far is that of Kevin Youkilis and his bizarre batting stance to fill in for the suddenly fragile Mr. Rod for at the very least half the 2013 season (and if you think Mr. Rod will be back on the 4 end of the 4-6 months we've been told it'll take for his hip to fix itself, well, I have some beachfront property in Kansas I'd like to tell you about). Other than that, it's been all retaining players from the 2012 Yankee roster, including Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Hiroki Kuroda and Ichiro Suzuki.
Of course I don't have an argument with any of those signings, but the 2012 roster didn't exactly set the world on fire in October, and not adding something other than Youkilis doesn't improve the team.
Add to that the losses of Russell Martin, Nick Swisher and Raul (Mr. Late-Inning Homer) Ibanez, and you see a bleaker, not brighter, future for the coming season.
But Brian Cashman is, don't forget, smarter than me. So I have to operate under the assumption that he knows something I don't. A lot of things I don't. And I'm guessing at least one of those things Cashman knows that I don't is that there are moves coming other than a three-man platoon at catcher and the speediest, least powerful corner outfielders in recent memory.
It might come in the form of some outfielder we haven't thought about yet, the kind Ibanez was last year, who seems to be a bargain basement barrel scraper and turns out to be an emergency regular and prodigious game-saver nobody saw coming.
It might be that there's a blockbuster trade in the works that will bring some crazy good catcher this way in exchange for some autographed pictures of Jeter and digitized recordings of Bob Sheppard useable to introduce any player you like.
Or it might be that Cashman is so smart he knows that Austin Romine is ready for prime time, that Jayson Nix has been holding back on his power stroke his whole career or that Ivan Nova can play a killer right field.
But I know there's something coming. I don't know what, but something.
Because Brian Cashman is smarter than me.
Cashman is an underrated general manager. People look at the payroll number and say, "Well, even I could put together a great team with that kind of scratch!" But they couldn't. Given the enormous contracts that are givens in the Yankees lineup (Jeter, Mo, Granderson, CC, Tex, and especially Mr. Rod, to name a few), it's amazing he has any room left to put together 25 major league players at one time. But every year, just when you think he's folded his tent and decided third place isn't really all that bad a place for a season or two, Cashman does something--usually a small thing--that makes a huge difference sometime during the baseball-playing year.
This year, and I know it's not even January yet, but still--I'm not seeing it.
I understand this whole business with getting under $189-million (a number virtually every other team would be ecstatic to reach) in 2014. I get that there can't be large multi-year contracts, especially with Robinson Cano becoming a free agent after next season. I comprehend all that. But it's absolutely un-Yankee to see that the team is not going to be as good and shrug. That's not Cashman. I don't believe that's Hal Steinbrenner. But it sure does seem to be what's happening so far.
The big signing of this winter so far is that of Kevin Youkilis and his bizarre batting stance to fill in for the suddenly fragile Mr. Rod for at the very least half the 2013 season (and if you think Mr. Rod will be back on the 4 end of the 4-6 months we've been told it'll take for his hip to fix itself, well, I have some beachfront property in Kansas I'd like to tell you about). Other than that, it's been all retaining players from the 2012 Yankee roster, including Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Hiroki Kuroda and Ichiro Suzuki.
Of course I don't have an argument with any of those signings, but the 2012 roster didn't exactly set the world on fire in October, and not adding something other than Youkilis doesn't improve the team.
Add to that the losses of Russell Martin, Nick Swisher and Raul (Mr. Late-Inning Homer) Ibanez, and you see a bleaker, not brighter, future for the coming season.
But Brian Cashman is, don't forget, smarter than me. So I have to operate under the assumption that he knows something I don't. A lot of things I don't. And I'm guessing at least one of those things Cashman knows that I don't is that there are moves coming other than a three-man platoon at catcher and the speediest, least powerful corner outfielders in recent memory.
It might come in the form of some outfielder we haven't thought about yet, the kind Ibanez was last year, who seems to be a bargain basement barrel scraper and turns out to be an emergency regular and prodigious game-saver nobody saw coming.
It might be that there's a blockbuster trade in the works that will bring some crazy good catcher this way in exchange for some autographed pictures of Jeter and digitized recordings of Bob Sheppard useable to introduce any player you like.
Or it might be that Cashman is so smart he knows that Austin Romine is ready for prime time, that Jayson Nix has been holding back on his power stroke his whole career or that Ivan Nova can play a killer right field.
But I know there's something coming. I don't know what, but something.
Because Brian Cashman is smarter than me.
Monday, December 17, 2012
You Gotta Have...
There's been something eating at my Yankee fan sensibility for some time now, and I just tonight realized what it is. Something has been missing from the team for a number of years, something that doesn't show up on the stat sheets, so the sabermetric maniacs can't measure it, which bugs them. And that's why the Yankees are always a big threat on paper at the beginning of the year, and then do well and...
Heart. These Yankees don't play with heart.
There are many good things about Joe Girardi as a manager, and most of them have to do with pitching. No. All of them have to do with pitching. He manages a bullpen masterfully, he keeps his starters fresh and knows who to plug in at any given moment. I don't know if he's calling pitches from the dugout, but his catcher always seems to know which way to go at the most opportune times. Joe Girardi is a terrific pitcher's manager.
With the lineup, well, there's not that much that needs to be done when everybody's healthy, but Girardi does seem to know when to give a guy a rest, when to DH somebody, who to plug into a spot when there's an injury or a day on turf that an infielder might not have the legs to handle. Raul Ibanez hit all those clutch home runs at the end of the 2012 season because Girardi knew when to send up Raul Ibanez.
So that's not the problem, then. Girardi can find the right pitcher and the right player when it's necessary. What he doesn't seem capable of doing is inspiring them when things get tough.
Say what you want about Joe Torre's Yankee career; his players would have left limbs on the field for that manager. There's a lot of talk these days about how the dynasty of the late 90s and 2000 wasn't made up of All-Stars, and it wasn't. Nobody had ever heard of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera or Bernie Williams when they started their run. Paul O'Neill was a nice average hitter. Scott Brosius had hit .203 the year before winning the World Series MVP award.
Joe Torre was not a great tactician; he wore out bullpen arms like other people wear out tube socks. But he could inspire. When he left in 2007, his players looked positively stunned. Jeter appeared to be lost for words, which Jeter never is. The thought of someone other than Joe Torre managing the Yankees was pretty much unthinkable.
I'm a very outside observer, but from the cheap seats, it looks like the Yankees wouldn't actually notice if Joe Girardi didn't show up for spring training.
Again, on the field, Girardi is a good, if not great, manager. He runs things smoothly (except when pinch hitting for a possible Hall of Famer--the steroid thing isn't going to help--in a playoff game). When he gets thrown out of a game, he looks like he's trying to get thrown out of a game. He raises his voice and flails his arms because he seems to think it's part of the show. Then he runs his hand over that Marines brush cut and walks calmly down the tunnel to the clubhouse, probably cracks open a cold protein shake and does some pull-ups.
Inspiring? Not really.
It could be argued--probably with a great deal of evidence, too--that players making gazillions of dollars, who are professionals and veterans (mostly) shouldn't need outside motivation. They should go out there and play their hearts out because that's what they're supposed to do. And I won't argue with that, except to say that one look at the 2012 playoff Yankees would rapidly lead to the conclusion that this team was professional-izing itself to an early exit. They didn't hit, but they didn't panic. Even when they should have been panicking.
This winter, the Yankees are putting together pretty much the same team that left the field having been beaten in four games by the Detroit Tigers, plus a fairly washed-out Kevin Youkilis, who is very professional. We'll get Ichiro back in right field, Pettitte and Kuroda back in the rotation, some closer-by-committee experiment behind the plate (this is all assuming Brian Cashman doesn't have a secret plan up his sleeve) and some version of Mariano Rivera--never count him out, even at 43!--to finish games in which they're ahead.
But will they have heart? In 1996, Paul O'Neill ran at full tilt on a bad leg to save the 1-0 victory in Game 5 of the World Series. That was heart. In 2012, Derek Jeter broke his ankle on a play and still tried to flip the ball to Cano to get the out even when he was lying on the ground in agony. That's heart.
Will Curtis Granderson show us something other than a calm demeanor (and homers and strikeouts) in 2013? Will Robinson Cano at least look like he's something more than smooth at second base? Will Mark Teixeira be cool and professional without fail for another year?
The 2012 Yankees had some guys with heart. Jeter has it in spades. CC Sabathia would pitch with his arm hanging off his shoulder if he had to. Russell Martin had an awful batting average, but you could tell it was killing him. He wanted it so badly.
And of course there was someone with a lot of heart, Nick Swisher. And once he's back in the fold, you know...
Oh, yeah.
This team doesn't seem inspired. And so this team is not, and has not been, inspiring. Baseball is more than stats, sabermetricians. Joe Torre understood that. Joe Girardi has a binder.
Heart. These Yankees don't play with heart.
There are many good things about Joe Girardi as a manager, and most of them have to do with pitching. No. All of them have to do with pitching. He manages a bullpen masterfully, he keeps his starters fresh and knows who to plug in at any given moment. I don't know if he's calling pitches from the dugout, but his catcher always seems to know which way to go at the most opportune times. Joe Girardi is a terrific pitcher's manager.
With the lineup, well, there's not that much that needs to be done when everybody's healthy, but Girardi does seem to know when to give a guy a rest, when to DH somebody, who to plug into a spot when there's an injury or a day on turf that an infielder might not have the legs to handle. Raul Ibanez hit all those clutch home runs at the end of the 2012 season because Girardi knew when to send up Raul Ibanez.
So that's not the problem, then. Girardi can find the right pitcher and the right player when it's necessary. What he doesn't seem capable of doing is inspiring them when things get tough.
Say what you want about Joe Torre's Yankee career; his players would have left limbs on the field for that manager. There's a lot of talk these days about how the dynasty of the late 90s and 2000 wasn't made up of All-Stars, and it wasn't. Nobody had ever heard of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera or Bernie Williams when they started their run. Paul O'Neill was a nice average hitter. Scott Brosius had hit .203 the year before winning the World Series MVP award.
Joe Torre was not a great tactician; he wore out bullpen arms like other people wear out tube socks. But he could inspire. When he left in 2007, his players looked positively stunned. Jeter appeared to be lost for words, which Jeter never is. The thought of someone other than Joe Torre managing the Yankees was pretty much unthinkable.
I'm a very outside observer, but from the cheap seats, it looks like the Yankees wouldn't actually notice if Joe Girardi didn't show up for spring training.
Again, on the field, Girardi is a good, if not great, manager. He runs things smoothly (except when pinch hitting for a possible Hall of Famer--the steroid thing isn't going to help--in a playoff game). When he gets thrown out of a game, he looks like he's trying to get thrown out of a game. He raises his voice and flails his arms because he seems to think it's part of the show. Then he runs his hand over that Marines brush cut and walks calmly down the tunnel to the clubhouse, probably cracks open a cold protein shake and does some pull-ups.
Inspiring? Not really.
It could be argued--probably with a great deal of evidence, too--that players making gazillions of dollars, who are professionals and veterans (mostly) shouldn't need outside motivation. They should go out there and play their hearts out because that's what they're supposed to do. And I won't argue with that, except to say that one look at the 2012 playoff Yankees would rapidly lead to the conclusion that this team was professional-izing itself to an early exit. They didn't hit, but they didn't panic. Even when they should have been panicking.
This winter, the Yankees are putting together pretty much the same team that left the field having been beaten in four games by the Detroit Tigers, plus a fairly washed-out Kevin Youkilis, who is very professional. We'll get Ichiro back in right field, Pettitte and Kuroda back in the rotation, some closer-by-committee experiment behind the plate (this is all assuming Brian Cashman doesn't have a secret plan up his sleeve) and some version of Mariano Rivera--never count him out, even at 43!--to finish games in which they're ahead.
But will they have heart? In 1996, Paul O'Neill ran at full tilt on a bad leg to save the 1-0 victory in Game 5 of the World Series. That was heart. In 2012, Derek Jeter broke his ankle on a play and still tried to flip the ball to Cano to get the out even when he was lying on the ground in agony. That's heart.
Will Curtis Granderson show us something other than a calm demeanor (and homers and strikeouts) in 2013? Will Robinson Cano at least look like he's something more than smooth at second base? Will Mark Teixeira be cool and professional without fail for another year?
The 2012 Yankees had some guys with heart. Jeter has it in spades. CC Sabathia would pitch with his arm hanging off his shoulder if he had to. Russell Martin had an awful batting average, but you could tell it was killing him. He wanted it so badly.
And of course there was someone with a lot of heart, Nick Swisher. And once he's back in the fold, you know...
Oh, yeah.
This team doesn't seem inspired. And so this team is not, and has not been, inspiring. Baseball is more than stats, sabermetricians. Joe Torre understood that. Joe Girardi has a binder.
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