The Art Neuro Weblog

The Day After
George Steinbrenner has made a public release about the Game 7 loss.

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was more gracious about Wednesday night's Game 7 loss to the Boston Red Sox after being up 3 games to none than he was about losing the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1981 after being up 2-0.

His statements then and now:
2004: ``I congratulate the Boston Red Sox on their great victory. I want to thank our loyal fans for their enormous support. Of course, I am disappointed because I wanted a championship for them and for our city. You can be assured, we will get to work and produce a great team next year.''

1981: ``I want to sincerely apologize to the people of New York and to the fans of the New York Yankees everywhere for the performance of the Yankee team in the World Series. I also want to assure you that we will be at work immediately to prepare for 1982.''

You can't fault the owner's intention in last night's loss. He put 185million dollars where his mouth was to deliver a winner. Well, you could fault him for his execution, but that is part of the fun of the next 6 months. The MLB Post Season that leads to the World Series is a cruel process where 29 losers are produced. In that context the 162 game regular season fades into the record books as largely irreleveant and a series of serendipitous plays and bounces impact on the game in a way that creates nice story lines but does not truly reflect the strength of the teams.

Indeed, the 3 division and 1 Wild Card per league should be producing 6 winners and 2 lucky seconds; instead they go into the reputation grinder that is the MLB post-season. With the yankees, it is George Steinbrenner's own fault that he has made the 162 game dominance of the Yankees worthless if they cannot win the World Series. Let's face it folks. The Yankees turned over 60% of their roster from last year's World Series losers to create a team that lost to the Red Sox in a historic collapse. Then what the hell is it worth to have won 101 games this year? What the hell did it mean to beat the Red Sox to the goal line?

I'm not railing against the Wild Card; in fact I like the Wild Card system. I'm just pointing out that there's something wrong in the way the baseball world values the World Series win over the Division win. The Division wins are wrought with 162 games of play over 6 months. World Series are won on fortuitous sequences of plays for 3 weeks.
On a day to day level, I'll take the dominance of the Braves or Athletics who never seem to win much in the post-season over the World Series wins of the Marlins any day, because during the season, you are more likely to see winning ball-games; and they are why one watches these things anyway. I mean, win or lose, I'd watch the Yankees even if they were perennial non/semi-contenders as they were in the 1980s, but that's another story.

Doubtless, the internal noises of George Steinbrenner will be totally different to the bland statement quoted above. Here comes another winter of signing malcontents. :)

Replacing the Components of A Magic Souffle
The Yankees of the 1996-2001 era were a different team to the one today. Sure those teams had Bernie, Jeter, Mariano and Posada, but oddly enough, that's about the extent of it. Today, the team is far more talented than the predecessors who won, but have been so far rather unlucky in their quest. What happened? Every time they failed to win the World Series they have added a more talented position player to replace a departing position player.
Here is a short list:

Tino Martinez is replaced by Jason Giambi (and understudy Tony Clarke and John Olerud this year)
Scott Brosius is replaced by Robin ventura, then Aaron F. Boone and evenutally A-Rod
Paul O'Neill is replaced by Juan Rivera, Raul Mondesi and then Gary Sheffield
Soup du Jour for Rondell White, Then Hideki Matsui

The only place they took a serious hit was Second base where the predecessors were Chuck Knoblauch who 'lost it'; followed by Alfonso Soriano who was a lamazing, but also amazingly flaky, who got traded for A-Rod. This year, they went through with a weird combo of Enrique Wilson and Miguel Cairo. They ought not count on Cairo to be their starting secondbaseman next year.

Of the calls made, only the Hideki Matsui deal could be said to be a total positive in character and talent. Let's face it, Hideki was a groomed Yomiuri Giant that won 3 championships in Japan. The guy is the closest thing to getting a 'Yankee Great' from somewhere outside the Yankees. This was an excellent move. It also didn't cost a draft pick.

At the moment, Jason Giambi is looking like a bust. This may change depending on how he turns up next season; the question is, how much of his 2000 ALMVP form will he retain as he slides down the next 4 years of his seven year contract. The thing that gets me about the Giambi contract is that it wouldn't have cost the Yankees not to sign him, and thrown that money at a good pitcher in 2001-2002 after their loss to the Diamondbacks. They had Nick Johnson who got traded for Javier Vazquez. I would have rather saved the money.

The A-Sor for A-Rod trade in review. This is still a good trade for the regular seaosn. Alfonso Soriano was a rather free-swinging player who didn't fit into the Yankee method of grinding down the pitcher through eating up pitchcounts. Now a couple of caveats on this. A-Rod at 3B is far less valuable than A-Rod at SS. While this issue was widely discussed and debated earlier this year, I think the problems were not in this year but going forwards.
A-Rod is blocking Eric Duncan, who must tbe the Yankee thirdbaseman of the future. The team must sort out this log-jam, and I think the solution involves moving Jeter or A-Rod to 2B, because I don't think I can handle a Yankee future where Eric Duncan gets traded for a middle -relief pitcher who blows up in the post-season. The team is going to have to get a little imaginative, and perhaps ask Derek Sanderson Jeter a.k.a Captain Amazing to take one for the team and give 2B a challenge.

Paul O'Neill retired and then there was a black hole in RF. For a While they tried the home-grown Juan Rivera which was somewhat disappointing. Then they tried Raul Mondesi, which we all know turned into a lump of coal in 12 months. This year's solution was Gary Sheffield, who put up an MVP-worthy season with a bum shoulder. Gary was a good solution, but the better one perhaps was Vladimir Guerrero because Vlad is younger; however Vlad was also looking for a long term contract. Given the inflexibility in the rest of the roster, Sheffiled's 3-year deal may come as a blessing down the road.

Looking at this, the Yankees have madee 1 excellent move, 2 questionable moves of which 1 is yet to play out, and 1 reasonable move. To be honest, the Yankees wouldn't have had 61 regular seaosn comeback wins in a 101-win season (where the pitching staff didn't have a 15-game winner) without Sheff, A-Rod and Matsui, even if they were missing Giambi.
So it still goes back to the pitching.

- Art Neuro