Can the Yankees catch Cleveland to make the wild card this year.? Or have they made a hole too deep to crawl out of.
(Knock wood) If Jebus loves us, the Yankees will continue their slide to the bottom. In all likelihood, George will fire Torre in the next few weeks, money-whip a couple of pitchers, and buy his way into the playoffs again. Where they will get swept in the first round, I hope, leaving George stuck with a monster payroll of losers.
The Yankees have made some disastrous pitching decisions which has put them where they are today. Despite how maligned he is, A-Rod was a good acquisition, even though it’s definitely likely you could have bought two individual players who would have been better than him for the same price (maybe.)
For too many years they infused the roster with high priced, older free agents who did not have a long shelf life. People often forget that their great years in the late 90s weren’t filled with superstars. Derek Jeter came up through the Yank’s farm system.
Look at some of the guys from the Yanks roster in '96:
Joe Girardi
Tino Martinez
Mariano Duncan
Wade Boggs
Derek Jeter
Gerald Williams
Bernie Williams
Paul O’Neill
Ruben Sierra
Darryl Strawberry
Tim Raines
Cecil Fielder
You have some genuinely impressive names on there, for sure. Derek Jeter is a future Hall of Famer, Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. But Wade was old then, and they were only paying him $2m/year (he wasn’t in the top ten of the league salary-wise.)
In 1996, Derek Jeter made $130,000 and provided a .778 OPS (damn nice for a Rookie at the short stop position.)
The top paid guys in the lineup were Ruben Sierra and Cecil Fielder (who was the best paid ballplayer in the American League that year.) But a successful, world championship team does need high caliber talent. The thing about the 1996 Yankees is, most of their depth were in bargain players who performed well; guys like Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill, up-and-comers like Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte.
It takes time to build a baseball team by carefully managing your farm system and your prospects, making good trades, and picking good free agents to infuse your roster. I think there’s a problem when every off season you hire multiple high-contract free agents to “solve your problems.” That’s the sign of a problem. Every team signs free agents in the off season and the Yanks are by no means the only one who sign big-name guys. But over the past few years, they’ve been notoriously bad at not only hiring the high-dollar free agents, but hiring the ones that they don’t need. You need to use free agents to fill in the spots you need filled in because you haven’t produced a good player at that position in your farm system or haven’t traded for one. But it can’t be the primary means of acquiring pitching talent or hitters, for example.
Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Javier Vazquez, Carl Pavano, Jeff Weaver, Jose ohmygod Contreras, and the list goes on. And who deserves the blame? The Boss deserves some of the blame. But some of the blame has to fall on Cashman too, Carl Pavano who has been an amazingly bad hire was Cashman’s guy, not Steinbrenner’s. Torre I think has done well, but a baseball manager has no influence over the team on the field, and you can’t win when half your pitching staff is not pitching because they’re busy screwing models (ala Pavano) or because they’re moving into a retirement home (ala Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson.)
Yanks won 11 out of 12 ,then got swept by Rockies. Roger lost. Up and down but they still make you nervous. Cleveland is probably watching them closely.
It was chicken little who wrote off the damn yankees. No one, except maybe the royals, is out of the wild card hunt.
The Indians, Tigers and Twins will fight for the AL Central, and the two losers will fight the evil empire for the wild card slot. If, God Forbid, the Yankees get the wc, we will never hear the end of it, “Oh, what a great comeback” yada yada yada.
Hee hee hee. “Swept by the Rockies”.
Too bad the All-Star break is coming up. That’s when we traditionally have all talent surgically removed from the team. Still, “Rockies sweep Yankees” sure looks good in print
Oakland’s ahead of New York, too.
Minnesota, too.
Seattle, too.
You can’t just pass one of the teams ahead of you, you have to pass them all. New York can play well and still miss the playoffs if Cleveland plays well. Or they can play well, have Cleveland collapse, and still miss the playoffs because Oakland plays well. Or they can play well, have Cleveland and Oakland both play badly, and still miss the playoffs because Seattle plays well. Or they can have all those three teams play well and still miss the playoffs because Minnesota played well. FOUR teams are ahead of NY in the wild card race, without counting division leaders, and one team (Toronto) is right behind them. They need to outplay all five of those teams, or else hope for a Boston collapse of epic proportions.
It’s not just how far behind you are the leader, it’s how many teams there are to overtake, because while one team collapsing is reasonably likely, four or five teams collapsing is very unlikely.
New York’s chances right now are not good. They could still catch up and make the playoffs, sure, but if I was forced to bet on it I’d bet against it.
Are you kidding? It’s still June. There are more than 90 games still to play, and the Yankees are only 6 games back of Cleveland/Detroit in the loss column for the Wild Card. With a starting rotation that included Clemens, Pettite, Musssina, and Wang, it would be ridiculous to count them out at this stage.
This may be a whoosh, but compared to where they’ve been the Rockies aren’t a bad team anymore: 4 games over .500, an emerging superstar in Matt Holliday, and a pitching staff that isn’t that horrible (4.35 team ERA in Coors is not bad, and Brian Fuentes is an upper-echelon closers).
I think even the Rockies aren’t dumb enough to tear out the young talent on this team, but of course the quesion still remains as to whether or not a team can win in that freaky ballpark, one that, eventually, gets to even the best pitchers in the game.
While I agree with the general statement, when it’s June, and you’re watching how far back you are from the Wild Card, and you qualify that amount by giving only the total down in the loss column (they’re 6 1/2 games back overall; the Tigers have currently played one more game than the Yanks), its beginning to sound desperate 
They’ve made it plenty hard on themselves, but no, they aren’t out of it. If they can sustain the level of play they had at the beginning of this month, which isn’t a guarantee, I think they can do it.
Not a whoosh, just a hijack.
I expect some fantastic trade, right before the deadline, to acquire a big-name pitcher who will immediately fail to deliver, and they’ve a reputation for doing well this part of the season but being unable to carry over to the second half.
I hope I’m wrong, but the players will probably go on strike if I am.
The “problem” my paranoid little mind keeps coming back to is that the Dodgers have one of the best, most developed young pitching staffs in the major leagues. That means Cashman will be waving big money and big names at us to try and steal some pitching. But that’s a long shot at best. The Yankees will need a proven producer, and I can’t see us dealing Lowe, Penny, Wolf or Schmidt, even if Schmidt has proven to be a disappointment this year. Of course, if they’re willing to deal A-Rod, all bets are off. 
What was that about playees in the yank-off?
As an Orioles fan, i beg to differ.
As for the Yankees, i think it’s crazy to discount them this early in the season, although i’m certainly rooting for them to miss the playoffs.
The only reason I wouldn’t discount them is that they’re still in the hunt after having major issues with their rotation. They were dipping deep into AA to get someone, anyone, who could give them 4-5 innings to start off a game, and even those guys were getting hurt. If their starting rotation is somewhat settled down, where you can count on 6-7 innings and 3-4 runs from your starters, they’ll win a lot more than they did early on.
zamboniracer:
Hey! I resent that remark - pick on the Rangers this year, why don’tcha? Heck, we’re only 2.5 games out of 4th place, we’ve got a good chance of climbing out of the cellar, especially if the Chisox deal Buhrle, as many suspect they will.
I’ll only say I hope they do make it, because if such a flawed team gets in via the wild card it will only make it easier for a better team to advance further. Of course, I’m still not sold on Boston winning the division, so the Yankees might get in through the front door when all is said and done.
Now that the starting pitching is starting to gel, there is an excellent chance of making the playoffs. The problems are the bullpen and players getting into slumps. A-Rod is bound to cool off in comparison to his hot start and Abreu took forever to get going. But Rivera is 1/10 the pitcher he once was and not having a reliable stopper could be what ends the streak of postseason appearances.
Here’s my prediction: The Yankees win the American League East, with the Sox a game or two back. I’m arguing from precedent here. The Yanks’ current win-loss record is immaterial.