A Biased Look at the New York Yankees, the Greatest Franchise in the History of Sports
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Joe Torre isn’t banking on Carl Pavano being ready in early April. Regardless, he’s going to be careful and it looks like he’ll use Pavano as he would a fifth starter and he probably won’t see a start in the first couple of weeks because of all the off days. Because of back problems, Pavano hasn’t gotten into his normal pitching routine this spring and he hasn’t thrown from a mound yet.
There’s no doubt the Yankees need arms. While I’m not banking on Carl Pavano returning to his 2004 form, if he can stay off the disabled list, it would go a long way towards the Yankees ending their World Series drought. PECOTA projects him to throw 168 innings and honestly, I’d be happy with that if most of those were near the end of the season.
The boss has been pretty vocal this offseason. First he piped in about how he didn’t like the WBC. And now he’s predicting a World Series win. This is why Steinbrenner is the best owner in baseball. Possibly ever. He’s a consumate winner and he pushes his team to follow his lead. You don’t see any of the other owners predicting they’ll win, because they don’t have the confidence in their teams that Steinbrenner has.
This is some great news. Gary Sheffield has been the best Yankee hitter if you look out over a two year span. Alex Rodriguez had the MVP season in 2005, but Sheffield put together two great season since he’s been in pinstripes and he’s my favorite to win the MVP this year. He’s that good. And it sounds like Shef is excited about it too. So paying him $13 million in 2007 will most likely (we’ll get to that in a minute) be a bargain.
The biggest concern is injury. Will Carroll recently published his Team Health Report for the Yankees. and while I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s a subscription only column, he gives Sheffield a red light. He talks briefly about his thigh injury and the fact that he’s getting up there age wise. And if you don’t subscribe to Baseball Prospectus, it’s great. You could warrant paying just for Will Carroll’s stuff alone, and you get a ton more.
Like their projection system, PECOTA. The weighted average mean for Sheffield is 35 homeruns and a .306/.392/548 line. Remember what I said about the MVP? Those are MVP numbers right there. And he only has a collapse rate of 11%.
And this is also a good read on Sheffield as well. He’s on a mission to bring the Yankees a championship. Gotta love that Yankee pride.
Pretty good read here with some analysis over at Baseball Musings on the Yankees strategy of using the waiver to try to find an arm to fill out the Yankees’ pitching staff.
A lot of times, players use the press to gain leverage when they want to leave the time. Mike Mussina loves the Yankees so much, he’s made a public statement saying how much he wants to stay with the team.
Mussina’s probably a future Hall of Famer. He’s got a 224-127 career record, but his last two seasons have been pretty mediocre. His strikeout rate continues to decline and for the time in his career outside of the strike shortened 1994 season, he’s gone two straight seasons without logging 200 innings.
However, we have a monster lineup, so average pitching will get the job done. And if Mussina can pull a flashback to his better days, so much the better. I say we re-sign him now while his value is diminished, although I have a feeling this will all wait until the end of the year. Regardless, you love it when you have a guy playing for his job.
In other Yankee news, Kevin Brown looks like he’s going to retire. Brown had a rock solid career, but his time with the Yankees has been pretty pedestrian. No major loss here seeing as how he’ll be 41 this year without a great chance of getting back into his peak form.
By the end of last season, Randy Johnson was using John Flaherty as his every day catcher, and the results were impressive. Randy Johnson finsihed the season 12-2 with Flaherty behind the plate and a pedestrian 5-6 with Posada. Of course this took the bat out of the hands of one of the better hitter (although Posada did go through pretty much a season long slump of sorts, he was still a step up from Flaherty). And now Flaherty’s gone.
So Johnson and Posada are making a concerted effort to get back on the right track as spring training kicks off. Just in case though, Kelly Stinnett is the new back up catcher, and he played with Johnson in Arizona.
George Steinbrenner isn’t stopping his players from playing in the WBC (okay, he did with Jorge Posada), but he’s not particular happy about it. He’s got four of his studs playing in the classic, along with the chance for two others is they make their respective teams. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Johny Damon are all playing for the U.S. and Bernie Williams is playing for Puerto Rico. Miguel Cairo is trying to make the Venezuela team and Ramiro Mendoza is hoping to pitch for Panama.
The other interesting news is Red Sox owner John Henry is doing his best George Steinbrenner impersonation. He’s fed up with the inequities of the league’s revenue sharing policy. While it’s never good to see yourself agreeing with anything to do with the Red Sox, it’s nice seeing the Boss will have someone in his corner when the CBA negotiations roll around.
And I wouldn’t really call this news, but the Yankees signed Scott Erickson to a minor league deal. Erickson has been nothing short of awful the last few years and he couldn’t even get the job done in Chavez Ravine, a pitchers park. Erickson had some great seasons in the 90s, but since the turn of the century, his ERA has been on the north side of 5.00.
Pitchers and catchers reported today. It’s been a few long months, but baseball is back. And in case you’re wondering, my prediction is, Yankees win. Everything.
George Steinbrenner is an amazing human being, and this story validates that.
Thanks to Baseball Musings for yet another scoop.
Yes, that’s the blogosphere. I don’t do this often enough mostly because of time constraints but the best source of information are the other blogs out there. Here’s what Yankee fans are talking about….
Pinstripe Alley has a short post about Brian Cashman salivating over Roger Clemens (don’t we all). If Cashman pulled off bringing the Rocket back to the Yankee’s, I’d never, ever say anything bad about him again.
Bronx Banter’s latest consists of “minor notes,” including some comments on the Darrell Rasner signing and Rickey Henderson signing on with the Mets to be a spring training instructor.
The Weblog That Derek Built has a great analysis of Shawn Chacon. He digs into Chacon’s PECOTA card and comes up with some discouraging news.
Over on the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog, SG used BP’s PECOTA projections and ran them through 100 Diamond Mind simulations. The result? The Yankees win most of the time, which is the way it should be. He also has a very interesting interview with Mitchel Lichtman, who invented the fielding metric UZR and who contributed to an upcoming book called… The Book.
Off the Facade talks about the Yankees defense and does a position by position analysis of where the Yankees stand.
Good stuff all over the place. Be sure to check it out.
There’s no doubt the Yankees need arms and they added one more to the mix. Darrell Rasner had a solid season last year for Harrisburg, the Nationals AA affiliate. He struck out 96 in 150 1/3, but he had some outstanding control and only walked 29 batters. His ERA was solid (3.59) as was his WHIP (1.19). He also held his own in 7 1/3 innings after getting called up in September.
According to John Sickels’ Baseball Prospect Book, his main pitch is a low 90s power sinker. He gives him a C+ grade and says because of his ground ball tendencies, he’ll thrive with a good defense behind him. He just turned 25 in January.
To make room on the 40 man roster, the Yanks designated Jason Anderson for assignment.
The Yankees avoided heading to arbitration this year by signing Shawn Chacon to a one year, $3.6 million deal. While the Yankees might be MLB’s savior, Chacon was one of the Yankees saviors last season. After a 1-7 record with the Rockies in 2005, Chacon went 7-3 for the Yanks with a 2.85 ERA. Rock solid, and I’m looking forward to seeing him pitch in pinstripes for an entire season. Plus he has one of those cool, looping curveballs.
Also read that Mel Stolllemyre, the recent ex-pitching coach, is going to stay on with the team as a spring training instructor. Not sure if this is more of a benefit to the pitchers or to new pitching coach Ron Guidry, but it’s a solid move.
I almost spit my breakfast all over my monitor when I read this headline over at Tigerblog. I mean, Brian was a big help in getting my site moved over to this URL and he’s always been pretty reasonable whenever I had a wacky idea, but my first response to this was, WTF.
Then I read Vince Gennaro’s column and it made a ton of sense. The Yankees actually make players more valuable.
Everyone who is anyone is gearing up for the 2006 MLB season. My first step is going to be purchasing my New York Yankees Opening Day tickets. It is a tradition in my family for us all to take the day off of school or work to head down to Yankee Stadium for Opening Day. The Yankees have had some great seasons recently and for years they have been the strongest force in the league and feared by other teams. They are my favorite New York team so I always buy Yankees tickets and take the family out to support our local boys and the sport we enjoy so much.
This year�s spring schedule looks exciting and I�ll be buying St. Louis Cardinals tickets and Philadelphia Phillies tickets so I can see the Yankees while I am on the road this spring. The New York Yankees regular season home opener will be April 4, 2006 against the Oakland Athletics at McAfee Coliseum. Hopefully there will be some May flowers blooming when I use my Yankees versus Boston Red Sox tickets. Come July, I will be wishing I had bought Yankees box seats as the weather heats up and we host the Seattle Mariners games from the 17th to the 19th.
Our pitching core is the biggest reason I am so excited to buy my New York Yankees tickets this year. Some are calling our bullpen a true �Murderer�s Row�. Shawn Chacon�s talent on the mound and the addition of Johnny Damon at bat has Yankees fans really excited. Damon�s contribution to the outfield should be significant in the spring and regular seasons.
In New York there are plenty of sports teams to keep a baseball fan busy in the off season. But, going to New York Giants home games or watching New York Knicks basketball and New York Rangers hockey on TV, really never compares to watching my favorite baseball team try to make it to the World Series year after year. Yankees baseball games are a part of my history and of my future. I bought World Series tickets in 2003 when the New York Yankees battled the Florida Marlins. I�ll be spending baseball season watching Atlanta Braves games, Chicago White Sox games and Oakland Athletics games to scope out and hopefully curse the teams that threaten the Yankees chance to win the 2006 World Series.
Robinson Cano could have been one of the biggest surprises of 2005. Cano didn’t make minor league guru John Sickel’s Top 50 position players prospect list and he got a rather mediocre grade of B- in Sickel’s 2005 Baseball Prospect Book. Now this isn’t meant to discredit Mr. Sickels because he’s right much more then he is wrong. I’m just using it to illustrate that Cano even slipped past an expert like Sickels, as he did a bunch of other people including me.
Cano was called up in early May and never looked back. He hit .297 and while he has to work on his plate discipline (16 walks, .320 OBP) he did hit fourteen homeruns for the Yankees (and four for the Columbus Clippers for a total of 18). The most homeruns he ever hit in a season was 15 when he belted fourteen for the Greensboro Grasshoppers (the Marlins Single A affiliate) and then one later in the season when he belted one for the Yankee short season affiliate, the Staten Island Yankees.
Regardless, Cano gave the Yankees consistency at a position where the Yankees were lacking just that since trading Alfonso Soriano. And this MLB.com column talks about how Cano hopes to perform even better in 2006. Thie Yankees fan hopes he can follow through and provide the Yankees with yet more offense.
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