I’m a fan. I’ll take any meaningless stat I can and cling to it like its gold when it puts a Yankee in a positive light. One of the things I love at the games is how the second time through the order, the scoreboard will always have some good stat about Yankee hitters, no matter how bad they’re doing. I missed, however, what the board said about Wil Nieves as he was chasing his first hit. That would be some creative writing to give his hitless streak a positive spin.
Ferret Herder, you are fined one credit for violation of the Verbal Loyalty Statute.
John, I’m a White Sox fan. Cry me a river. The Kansas City Fuckin’ Royals are ahead of us. You think you got manager problems? Let Ozzie Guillen manage your bullpen and you’ll cry for mercy. Besides, your guys are gonna win the 'Series. You should be doing the dance of joy.
Hey, we got Girardi in the TV booth tonight. That is a breath of fresh air and great broadcasting. It is a shame that Kay keeps getting worse. At this rate in another 8 years he will be McCarver without the actual playing experience.
Enfant Terrible: What is up with that extension of Ozzie? I don’t get it. What am I missing? Any clues?
He’s Ozzie Guillen. For some reason he’s a God on the South Side.
Thank you. Michael Kay drives me to fits. He’s so obnoxious. Did I hear Kenny he’s going to retire? Also, didn’t Girardi say it was his last game to call?
Bring on Leiter and Murcer and O’Neill and ship Kay off to parts unknown.
Finally, as a Yankee fan, I am LOVING Terry Francona and his decisions 
On Kay: He seems to have a hard time separating his job in the booth from his job on ESPN Radio. In the middle of the game last night, he starts speculating on whether or not the Baltimore manager should be brought back. Both ex-players both sounded like they wanted to change the subject. You know, back to maybe the game at hand. Gerardi has more games this year. However, everyone is expecting him to be either managing or bench coaching next year. Nothing is definite. I don’t think Kenny is leaving, he was just giving the crew a year-end thanks for it being the last home game that he is doing.
Kay is better when Leiter or O’Neill are in the booth. They seem to be skilled in reigning him in. I suspect it is because he is actually friends with them and they are not worried about telling him when he is being a blowhard.
On Francona, only 1½ back now. Woohoo! This just might happen.
Jim {Welcome to the board Sleeps With Butterflies, you will need to find a thread to explain your user name at some point 
I will kindly ask you to get your ass back over into your thread and let us Boston fans do the bitching around here. Your Yankee gloating is not welcome!
:eek:
Winks aside, this is possibly why a few people stay out of the baseball threads. I know I do, because I’m really a bit sick of all the bandwagon Yankee haters.
Well, first of all, he was obviously teasing. And second of all, I, for one, have been a Yankee hater for a long, long time, and resent the implication that there’s any bandwagon element to my loathing.
If you don’t like having people hate your team, you shouldn’t have chosen to root for a team that is, at its core, fundamentally evil.
The Yanks are not fundamentally evil, they are only fundamentally wealthy and have an abnormally strong desire to win. (Ok, the whole expect to win every year part is over the top, but its is also more realistic than with any other team.)
I did treat BBS2’s post as teasing as obviously to anyone that knows a Yankee fan, I was carefully refraining from any gloating in this thread . In fact, I try very hard not to gloat as I know most baseball fans hate the Yankees and I like the fact this board stays civil and I would hope it continues to stay civil. This is the only place on-line where I can have a rational discussion with Red Sox fans.
Now some subtle gloating would be along the lines of the fact that with all the Yankee’s young players and especially the large crop of young pitching that the Yanks show no signs of fading any time in the near future and oh BTW, this was a rebuilding year for the Yanks.
Jim
Bandwagon? He’s from Boston. There may be bandwagon Yankee haters, but bbs2k ain’t one of 'em.
Yeah, well, you’re a poopy head.
Hey, I was wondering when you would show up.
And of course you know that the over-the-top anti-Yankee stuff is all in good fun, too. I don’t know how you can enjoy sports without a bit of trash-talking. If the Yankees win the World Series this year, I promise the angriest, bitterest, most over-the-top OP I can manage… but I’ll only mean about 10% of it.
Well, I don’t know about that. How was this a rebuilding year? It seems more like a treading water year to me: they didn’t go out and sell off the future to bring in Eric Gagne or Todd Helton, but neither did they “rebuild” in the sense of trading current assets for future prospects. The Yankee core is still, ultimately, pretty old - Matsui, Giambi, Pettite, Clemens, Mussina, even Rivera and Posada: any one of those guys could fall of the metaphorical cliff at any point. Mussina kind of already has. Even Captain Jawline will, probably sooner rather than later, no longer be able to produce at his traditional level.
I’ll be curious to see what the Yankees do in response. First, there will be the issue of A-Rod, and as much as it seems like a no-brainer to bring him back today, what will happen after he grounds into a double play with the bases loaded against the Red Sox? Even if he’s hit six home runs in the playoffs before that moment, if that moment comes he will get booed, and I think he’s sick and tired of getting booed.
If A-Rod flits off to Chicago or Anaheim, what then? Will they bring in a bunch of additional veterans and keep the Senior Citizen Convention active, which could strangle any kind of real rebuilding effort? Or will they rely on the young pitching - which, by the way, hasn’t proven anything at the big league level yet (with the obvious exception of Chamberlain)?
Rebuilding is when you turn the reins over to the kids and see signs that they can handle it. It’s what was happening in Cleveland a few years ago, or Milwaukee last year.
And should the BoSox somehow steal the World Series again, I promise the same. However, I’ll mean about 110% of it. 
Yankees have youth at 1B (Phillips), 2B (Cano), CF (Cabrera). Jeter and A-Rod are in their prime, and should both have 4-6 more really good years left minimum (although whether or not A-Rod stays a Yankee is another story). Shelly Duncan is primed for an OF spot; I’d prefer to see Chamberlain become Rivera’s understudy rather than a starter. They’re young pitching is very young, but they’ve shown that they can hang in the bigs, just not yet excel. They certainly threw enough pitchers at the wall this year, trying to figure out which were going to stick!
What I don’t see on the Yankees is a plan for a catcher after Posada. Good catchers are hard to find, and rookies need a few years of major league tutelage. Otherwise, I see a good mix of vets and rooks, and while there are some gaps that may come in 3-4 years, there are no ‘gotta fix it now’ issues outside starting pitching (and what team wouldn’t like better starting pitching).
They did turn things over to the kids more than anybody expected. People knew Hughes would pitch this year, but Chamberlain has made a big contribution, and lately Edwar Ramirez and Ian Kennedy have also helped out.
They did trade Sheffield for prospects last year, and although I like the guy, I sort of hope they do the same with Damon this year.
The Yankee farm system is said to have a lot of pitching and not too much position talent. I think right now that suits their situation fairly well, since they have time to address the second part.
As D_Odds pointed out, replacing Posada or even sooner replacing A-Rod will be very hard. It is almost impossible to find really productive catchers. There is no one-player replacement for A-Rod’s offense. We could try to shore up at multiple positions. A first baseman that can really hit and field a lot better than Jason should be one way in the next 2-3 years. Giambi is thankfully on his final year next year. Damon has two more years.
We have some spare pitching talent to try to get a key position player when the time comes.
As far as it being the Yankee version of a rebuilding year, the Yanks do not rebuild like other teams.
Yankee Mission statement Win every year conflicts with the normal way to rebuild.
So trading off Johnson & Sheffield for Prospects. Not going crazy over the winter for free-agents. (Really only bringing Andy Pettitte back home for too much money). Over-paying for the Rocket instead of trading some of the kids when they were desperate for a starter and making Melky the full time Center Fielder and easing Jason into a DH/PH role is how the Yanks rebuild.
As everyone loves to point out, salary does not mean the same thing to the Yanks as any other team. Adding Rocket would have been a big hit on any other team, for the Yanks it meant not trading away Kennedy or Chamberlain.
If the Yanks lose A-Rod, they will probably try to make due for a year and then either mid-season trade or after next season go after a bigger name.
Many years away the Yanks do have at least one good catcher prospect and several good OF prospects. The Yanks will need to make due at catcher when Posada finally runs down until either the kid is ready to produce or they go after some free-agent catcher.
I still think the Yankees might have their 2010 closer in Joba. It would not surprise me. Mo’ wants two more years. He will get them.
I like the idea of trading either Jason or Damon in the off-season. As I doubt anyone would want Giambi, it might be Damon. Outside chance of Godzilla, but I doubt they will trade him.
Biggest thing for the Yanks is easily whether A-Rod stays or go. I suspect the idea of a 3 year extension for silly amounts of money will look Ok to the Yankees when the Yes executives run the numbers on what A-Rod pursuing the Home Run record in pinstripes will mean to the Yankee Game ratings.
Jim
Chamberlain has pitched only eighteen innings, a lot of them on low impact situations. He’s been very impressive in those eighteen innings, but the sum total of his contribution isn’t very significant. The difference between having him and not having him is about five runs.
Compared to the way Farnsworth and company were pitching, I do think it’s significant psychologically, if nothing else. And it’s significant that they got a productive reliever from their farm system instead of overpaying for a player who couldn’t have done much better.
Besides, his pitching indicates he will be ready next year, either as a starter or setup man. I don’t know if they even expected anything from him in 2008, and he otherwise would have been a rookie question mark.
Oh, I think you’re mostly right about this. But there are two issues:
(1) the team has explicitly stated that the Yankees will not pursue A-Rod if he opts out. Scott Boras is Rodriguez’s agent; dude will be opting out. Will Cashman and the team’s administration be willing to lose face to that extent, having made a public declaration and then abandoned it?
And, more importantly:
(2) Will Alex want to come back? Look, say you got a job. And say for three years you performed in that job pretty well - better than any one of your co-workers, really one of the best in your industry. But for some reason, your co-workers hated you. The company shareholders made a point of discussing how little they thought of you, personally and professionally, in any forum they could find. Your accomplishments are constantly belittled, minimized, your modest failings trumpeted. Now, one year, you outperform even your own lofty standards. You lead your company to record profits. The shareholders are suddenly delighted with you. The company offers you a nice raise, nice bonus, to stay around.
But another company, in another city that suits you better as a person, offers you comparable money to come work for them. Their shareholders have been kind to you in the media; the employees there are all eager to work with you. You know perfectly well that the people in and around your present employer will gleefully return to cutting you to pieces the first time you slip up.
Isn’t there a part of you that would turn to your current employer, chuckle, and say, fuck y’all, before heading off to Anaheim (oops! I mean, to the other hypothetical company!)?