Don't plan to have a solid pitching staff... If someone is only GOOD like Gil Meche or Ted Lilly...don't buy him....better to have nobody than JUST GOOD pitchers. Oh, and don't buy relievers recommended by your solid, decent players. Look for a bargain fourth starter who, himself, admits that he's no star...
Hope that next year you can buy somebody who was amazing a few years ago. Don't look at who's amazing now, though. After all, what's the chance that Santana will get injured as he gets a bit older...Take the risk. Go ahead. Wait. Just Wait. Wait till next year! (Oh yeah, that's the Cubs slogan...)
Here's just a list of few good people we refused to buy because they weren't brilliant. And who needs them? Who wants to watch someone just keep the team in the game with their smarts and not their stuff?
Gil Meche
Ted Lilly -- not enough of a star to buy back. JUST GOOD.
Jamie Moyer -- met the age requirement, but just too plain consistent.
Barry Zito -- too expensive? Do you know how much we've paid Carl Pavano?
Daisuke Matsuzaka -- Actually, he was brilliant, but we gave him up for Lent or Yom Kippur or Ramadan or something...
Hideki Okajima --recommended by Matsui. Were we afraid he would be JUST RELIABLE?
Pedro Martinez --What? Were we afraid that having both Pedro and then eventually Damon would turn us into the Red Sox? I love Damon, but we took a fielder with a decent bat and no arm instead of a pitcher with a pretty decent arm who hits batters. Clemens hits batters.
Greg Maddux -- same problem as Jamie Moyer.
Tom Glavine -- same problem as Maddux and Moyer.
And here are some inexpensive pretty reliable guys we could have had
Steve Trachsel (I know he got injured in the playoffs. But didn't Clemens get blown up in some pretty important games for us? How about Mussina? If we care so much about the playoffs, where the heck is El DUQUE? Besides we have to GET TO the playoffs...)
Mark Redman -All right, he didn't do well for the Braves this year, but how much worse has he done than our cheap fourth starter from Japan...
Jason Marquis (granted, he had a bad year last year...but he's doing fine this year)
Jeff Suppan (I hate his politics, so I wasn't so interested. But, I doubt that's why Cashman turned his nose up.)
Brian Lawrence (One of Cashman's few smart moves was buying Jon Leiber and waiting for him to heal from his Tommy John surgery. He was very consistent. That of course meant we didn't re-sign him.)
Jon Lieber
Don't get a pitching coach with a scientific method or who specializes on re-treads or anything. Just expect your pitchers to be great forever. I'm sure Guidry does his best, but I don't think he was brought in to make guys better...Stottlemyre was a guy who liked to work with veterans and I didn't hear that we were shifting gears in hiring Guidry. That's okay, after all, maybe you can get two-for-one like you did with Andy Pettite -- don't buy him when he's not perfect, let him learn to pitch somewhere else -- then come back. Yeah, that could happen again...really. All we need is a pitching coach who trusts people to just be who they are...stars. Buy stars and let them be stars. Stars don't need coaching...
But, never ever be prepared to fix someone who's not perfect/experiencing trouble. After all, who are you, Baltimore? Oh yeah, Baltimore is having a pretty good season..Oh yeah, and didn't the Cardinals win the World Series with Dave Duncan who specializes in re-treads as their pitching coach? So what if Steve Trachsel has been more reliable than Mike Mussina or the battery of starters we have burned through. There is NO POINT in working with a pitcher with problems. Who needs consistency and a low ERA? We want brilliant pitching or nothing!
Oh, and so what if Trachsel outpitched us...He's still no (Fill in the name of a pitcher we don't have but are waiting, hoping to kind of buy. ) I'd rather have no pitcher than an okay one.
Five brilliant pitchers or nothing! After all, we have great fielders and they are learning to field behind nothing! So what if people come to us and consistently get worse. It's just "New York jitters". Yeah. Some pitchers instantly lose their mechanics the closer they get to the subway. It's a magnetic thing....
Bring up young kids and expect a miracle...
Hire veterans and expect them to be young kids...
Oh and bury your young fielding talent...Melky will learn a lot on the bench. Just keep playing Abreu while he doesn't hit...don't give Melky more time...Maybe when he's, say, 35, he can
earn a full time spot. But, then he won't be perfect and we'll trade him for someone a year older.
Oh, and put together a line-up with only ONE right handed-power hitter. So what if YOUR OWN RADIO ANNOUNCER NOTICES AND WONDERS WHY? (Thanks to John Sterling for pointing that out. Sterling and Waldman have been the only highlights of some games for me.)
The Yankees are still my team. I am just speaking my mind.
Can you imagine being a young pitcher in this organization? If I don't shine every time, I'll never be seen again...
If I were a star youngster, I'd get myself traded someplace else. Like St. Louis. Or Baltimore. Or the Mets. Or Detroit. Somewhere where they can cultivate young talent and work with pitchers.
I know we shelled him, but John Maine is having an otherwise great season. But, he was a re-tread...
Oh, and AS I WRITE THIS, EL DUQUE pitched SIX INNINGS giving up NO RUNS. But, we don't work with people who aren't perfect anymore.
Unless they are
1) Completely washed out (Pavano)
2) Highly neurotic and tempermental (Mussina)
3) Over 40 and semi-retired (Clemens)
They're still my team. But, to steal from ex-Yankee David Wells, "Perfect, they're not!" (Wells is pitching well this year...of course, we only buy people over 40 who are semi-retired or in decline...)
I don't want them to be perfect.
I'd settle for good.
2 comments:
I completely share your concern about what seems to be a fear of functionality on the part of the Yankees' hiring committee.
As for Pavano, I file him under INANITY. And, yes, I do remember Clemens taking AWHILE to warm up and also losing some key games during playoffs. Clemens may be great, but -- and here I differ from you -- he is in the same category as Pedro Martinez in terms of playing dirty. He gets cut slack for hitting batters - I refer to the Piazza incidents - because of who he is and doesn't get pulled out of games, just like Pedro when he was playing for Boston. I don't mind throwing inside. It's the intentional aiming at a batter I hate. I wonder if Clemens forgot about his proclivity as a batting National Leaguer as Pedro did as a Met. Are you sure you want a sickly Pedro? Maybe he's worth it for the 10 games he can pitch, though.
Trachsel? I would love Trachsel. You've been advocating him for a long time. We got rid of Loaiza, why? And we didn't pick up Buehrle when he was iffy with Chicago? And Wells speaks for himself. I agree with you.
I don't understand the Yankees rationale for anything. I don't want Clemens or Martinez, but they are both better than the purchases we DID make.
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