If your belief is true, I would stay far away from it. I hope I might be right. We need some young lefties on the staff, in the worst way.
With the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox (at least) all in the bidding, 15-17mm/year is quite likely the pay bracket we’re talking about.
But a 10-year contract for a 28 year old pitcher? I’d be amazed if anyone even goes to 7. If I were a GM with the $$$ I’d max out at 5 years plus an option at those rates, even for a Barry Zito. I wouldn’t even give Dontrelle Willis a 10 year deal, and he’s 24.
What’s the longest deal ever signed by a pitcher? Is it still Mike Hampton’s 8-year deal he signed with Colorado after bolting the Mets following the 2000 World Series? …Yeah, that turned out real well, didn’t it?
Hampton and Kevin Brown. Another great contract.
I am hesitant to give a pitcher 5 years, never mind 7 and never 10.
Torre is officially coming back next year for the final year of his contract.
I don’t understand why anybody should be shocked that the Yankees lost to the Tigers. The Tigers had the best pitching staff in the league, been that way all season. As long as their pitchers stepped up and had good outings, they had an excellent chance to win three of five. Their pitchers did so. End of story.
All this chatter about the Yankees “Greatest Lineup Ever!” and “All-Stars at every position” neglected to mention the one most important position on the field: pitcher’s mound. Bats alone don’t win playoffs; that fact has been proven time and again by teams like the Indians, Rangers, and yes, Yankees. The Tigers didn’t have anywhere near the batting muscle of the Yankees, but they had plenty enough to hit Yankees pitching. They also had enough pitching (more than enough, in fact) to make all those “All-Stars at every position” look pathetic at the plate. Result? A “shocking” Tigers victory in the ALDS. “Shocking”, that is, to the self-styled experts who paid no attention to the oldest cliche in the game: Good pitching beats good hitting.
What happened to the Yankees? It’s really just that simple. It wasn’t luck, it wasn’t a fluke, it wasn’t Torre’s management, it wasn’t A-Rod going AWOL. They just ran into the Tigers’ pitching at a time when the Tigers’ pitchers were on top of their game, and they didn’t have the pitching to counteract with. That’s all.
That is a very nice theory, but where was this great pitching in the last 50 games when they lost 31 times? Or in the last 3 games when KC swept them? I think it was perfectly reasonable to look at Detroit as not being the same team from earlier in the season. I think there were plenty of reasons to be surprised by what happened.
The Tigers’ slide during the final six weeks was due more to their lack of hitting than any collapse of pitching. As for the last three games, when their pitching was off, that’s like saying “Where was the Yankees great hitting during those games when they got shut out by Tampa Bay (8-0), Kansas City (5-0), and Baltimore (5-0)?” Some games are going to go that way. Sometimes hitters (and pitchers) just aren’t on their game that day.
But what I said was, the Yankees ran into Detroit’s pitchers at a time when they were on top of their game. And I wasn’t the least bit shocked or surprised by the result.
Maybe that’s exactly it. If you build a team full of All Stars, maybe you get a team that plays like…an All Star Team. Enough talent to win a lot of games, but no chemistry. No fire-in-the-belly.
Slash the payroll, build the team from the bottom up.
Any team, even one that goes 95-67 like the Tigers did, will have bad stretches. It’s wise to pay attention to the 162-game data sample, not 50 games.
The dismissal of the Tigers was just foolish. They were not patsies; they are a tremendous pitching-and-defense team and they proved it all year. They supposedly had a tough second half, but the Tigers’ second half ERA was STILL better than the Yankees’.
In a short series, depth is less important, and front line talent more important, than in the regular season. The team with stronger front line starting pitching had an even larger advantage in a short series than they do over a 162-game season, because your top 3 starters can pitch almost all your games in the playoffs. And the Tigers had exactly one thing that was definitely better than the Yankees; front line starting pitchers.
It’s nuts to think the Yankees are somehow a bunch of heartless losers because they were beaten by the best pitching staff in the world.
I understand the ERA part of it and I know I was not calling them heartless losers.
The following are the reasons why I thought the pitching was more evenly matched.
Wang and Moose gave us good chances to win. Both pitched less well than anticipated. Johnson and Wright were both expected to be bad, but so was Kenny Rogers, the worst Post season pitcher in the history of the game. That was the largest shock by far. The Tigers still had the better bullpen, but the offensive difference should have made up for this gap. The Yanks did own the #1 run differential in the majors. That usually counts for something.
In your thread: 2006 Major League Postseason Predictions and Bragging Thread
My prediction was "Yanks over Detroit in 4. In his game Rodgers finds a way to choke it. " So while I expected one loss, I never expected Rodgers to win.
The Postponement was probably the best thing that could have happened for Detroit, Moose is the ultimate creature of habit, and it may well have thrown him off his game.
Jim
They built a fuckin softball team. Hitting is fun to watch. In playoffs, baseball 101 says pitching shuts down hitting. This is not new. That is whay happened plain and simple. The togers had a clear edge in pitching.
The Tigers, too…dad.
You needs a spell check real bad.
Jim, like I said, the Tigers played like that for two thirds of the season. That last part was pedestrian. Part of the problem is many people (the fans included in the beginning of the season) didn’t get to watch the Tigers. They just got Sports Center highlights of them, much like the fluke year the Royals had a few years ago. If anything, this Tigers team kind of reminds me of that team. Young pitching, veterans on their team (even Matt Stairs!), etc.
The Yankees didn’t have “superior talent”. They had damned fine hitting. If anything, the Tigers had superior talent, in the purest sense of the word. Perhaps we’re muddling “talent” with “potential”. The Yankees, as individuals, have met their ceilings and are worming their way down. The Tigers are on the way up, and, what looks for a long time.
I fucking hope.
Pitching > Hitting
Defense > Offense
(I hope I have those pointing the correct way…)
Prior to this year Rogers’ postsaeason career comprised 20 innings, some of them pitched 10 years ago. I mean, come on.
I picked the Yankees, too, but it was a slim call; they were not overwhelming favourites, even if they WERE slight favourites. They got beat. It happens; I’m just saying it’s crazy to think Joe Torre is some sort of idiot because the Tigers have a great pitching staff.
Ridiculous, yet still intriguing idea:
A-Rod and cash to Florida for Cabrera and Willis.
A-Rod gets to go to Miami and play in a zero-pressure environment, the Marlins become an instant contender in the NL East, and the Yankees get younger and better.
Wilbon suggested sending him to the Marlins on PTI yesterday, and it’s just crazy enough of an idea to work. The Marlins would get someone who can draw fans, they’ve got enough young pitching to absorb the loss of Willis and they get a defensive upgrade at third over the converted outfielder Cabrera.
I hear ya. But Georgie–and, heck, he may be the primary culprit–ought to be able to expect more for his $200M. If the Yanks had lost this year as they did following two years of WS championships, for example, it’s a different story. You shrug and say, you can’t win 'em all.
This may be unrealistic, but if I’m spending $200M, I want to win way more than my fair share, and two years in a row bounced in the first round–I’d be unhappy too (and I’m not a Yankee fan, BTW). I’d think of it this way (an oversimplification, I know): I could have pocketed $100M for the last 3 years and fielded a team that produced the same WS results (compared to other teams with similar payrolls, worst cases). That’s a lot of scratch.
No, really, he shouldn’t. They finish in first place every year. You say Steinbrenner should expect to win more than his fair share, and he DOES win more than his fair share; they’re buying a postseason berth every year, something no other team can do, although the Red Sox have tried. This year they had a staggering array of things go wrong that would have destroyed any other team, and they STILL won, in large part because they just buy the wins. You cannot expect more than that. There’s a limit as to how good a major league team can be; 95-100 wins and a first palce finish every single year is about the upper limit for sustained success. What happens in the postseason is just too luck based to draw any conclusions.
The Yankees were actually very lucky from 1996 to 2000 to win as many playoff series as they did; the 2000 team, in particular, was one of the worst teams to ever win a World Series. But that’s the way it goes. Since then they’ve been somewhat unlucky. You cannot, realistically, construct a better team.
Sure, but had the Yankees pocketed $100 million they’d have in fact done a lot less - they would have missed the playoffs both years, attendance and YES viewership would be lower than they would have been, and revenue would be going down.
brianjedi: I would not trade you Miguel Cabrera for A-Rod straight up even if you covered some of the salary difference.
I think this is an important point. The expectation level is perhaps too high, based on the first 5 years under Torre. It’s not realistic to expect that a high payroll will guarantee winning a 5 or 7 game series, especially when you’re relying on hitting instead of pitching. A big payroll should “guarantee” a 90+ win season and get you into the playoffs.
I disagree, though, that you can’t construct a better team with that money. They make a goodly number of mistakes and pay lots of money for some mediocre performers, but overspend enough to cover for that most of the time.
You have just described the average Yankee fans pipe dream. It is not a conceivable trade. I hope you are right anyway. 
RickJay: There are many Yankee fans that seriously question Torre’s postseason on field management for the last 4 years. This is not knee-jerk and not new to this year. Most Yankee fans were surprised he survived the Red Sox debacle of 2004. I questioned heavily his handling of the staff in the 2003 World Series. While most Yankee fans were happy to see Joe retained, I was upset when out of nowhere he got the biggest contract extension ever for a manager.
It was a strange move and hard to fathom. Torre did a better job this year than he has for many years, it points out Torre is a better manager when he needs to manage and not just sit back and wait for the three run home run. Ideally, someone higher up would have protected Torre from himself and not let Sheffield the dirt bag back into uniform. I am so happy to see this bad seed go. I want to trade A-Rod as he is our best and most expendable trading chip. I want Sheffield gone as he is genuinely a bad apple. A jerk and a bum. The Yanks need youth. The Yanks need Gene Michaels back in charge of development and that we finally have. We need to get our payroll down to the $140 million range to minimize the damn whining by other fans and to get away from the All Star at every position. It failed in the 80s and it is failing in the 00s.
Jim
What Exit?, what your describing is not letting the Boss make any decisions. The Boss doesn’t chase Abreu. The Boss doesn’t look at a young, now Met, center fielder (even though he damn near single-handedly beat the Yankees); he sees Randy Johnson and remembers what he did 5-10 years ago. I really can’t see Cashman and Torre saying “Let’s bid on Randy Johnson instead of Carlos Beltran.” It’s not like there was a question about Bernie already being on his last legs in center field.
Yes and no, it is not just the “Boss”. The Tampa contingent over the last few years that especially included Neuman and Conners have given a lot of bad advise to George. As far as George not making personnel decisions, that would probably be for the best. Cashman and Michaels supported by Swindel seem to make the soundest decisions. Cashman from what I hear wanted Vlad and not Sheff. I have no clue why they did not go after Beltran. George demanded, Sheff, Giambi and Johnson. A-Rod it would appear they were all in agreement on. The wall was solid on Damon, except we all know, George wanted him on the team, but we do not know if anyone objected. Abreu was played well and carefully and appeared to be a Cashman decision. The one thing this year has shown, is the Yankee’s execs are finally working together and not against each other. We no longer know for sure, who wanted which player or coach. The last clear look behind the scenes was when Connors finally got pushed out in the Pitching Coach debate. Torre (and most Yankee Fans) wanted Guidry, Cashman wanted Kerrigan but was happy to compromise and Connors wanted and promised he could get Leo Mazzone or Neil Allen. When it turned out Leo Mazzone just used the Yanks to get a little more money out of Baltimore, Connors finally got pushed out of loop. This is the same genius that rushed Jose Contreras to the majors without time in AAA to acclimatize. While running the pitching development, he failed to develop anyone and seem to preach the five-inning starter mantra to ensure that no prospect would blow out his arm, but also ensure that no starter was ready for the majors. This off-season should be interesting behind the scenes in player development. I have heard Michaels is very unhappy with the steadily reduced innings pitched by Hughes towards the end of the season. He wanted Hughes to build up endurance and arm strength, and not to worry as much about a chance of an arm injury. The theory is, if you teach a kid to pitch 5 innings in the minors, you cannot expect him to throw seven in the majors. I believe Ted Lilly was a good example of this poor development strategy; it took him years to recover from it.
Jim
Sounds good.
Please leave Matsuzaka Daisuke for us West-Coasters.