Upon Reasons for the Loss
Joe Torre tightens up, and won't make his guys move with hit and runs and straight steals. A team waiting for a HR may get a solo job (ala Abreu and A-rod's efforts) but the 3-run/game-tying shot just never happened.
The starting pitching was the Achilles that everyone seemed to think it was. Wang over-threw in Game 2, and a strong Cleveland lineup got the best of him Game 1. Clemens is an old man whose body couldn't take it this year (possibly b/c of no HGH). Andy Pettite could not clone himself, and didn't get the Game 1 start he should have.
The bases loaded with 1 out never turned into the big inning it should have on the numerous occasions it happened.
The Game was not held up to allow the plague visited on Cleveland to abate.
Cleveland is a good team.
Jeter was surprisingly stagnant, and killed some rallies. A-rod was unsurprisingly stagnant, and didn't pick us up as he did all year.
I have more concrete thoughts, but it sucks to go home early again.
posted by Charlie at 10:47 AM
14 Comments:
My condolences for the defeat, but in the interests of full disclosure, I hereby admit that I was rooting for the Indians. Don't think its fair to pin this on the old man, but it might be time for a change for change's sake. Cleveland looked like the hungrier team and played more loosely. But that's not an indictment of either the Yanks or Torre. You just can't expect to win them all. Sometimes ya gotta tip your hat to the other team and move on.
What the Yankee fans don't understand is that the 96-00 run was a once in life time run in the wildcard era. It's really hard to win series after series each year, particularly when you don't have a shutdown ace. Wang is an excellent pitcher, but he doesn't scare anyone. Petitte is a big-game pitcher, but his penchant for clutch performances is so memorable mostly because those performances contrast so starkly with his otherwise above-average performances most of the other time. Maybe Hughes and Chamberlain will develop into the kind of pitchers who can dominate good postseason lineups and lead you back the to the word series. They have the talent, but its a lot to ask for. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that it's not fair to blame the offense or the manager for failing to get the team to the world series where it has been proven over and over again that the best way to get to the world series is with excellent starting pitching. This team had good starting pitching at best. Bring back Petitte and Wang, but don't count on them to be a 1 and a 2 on a world series winning team. Count on them being a 2 and a 3 and hope that either Joba or Hughes develops into a true ace.
You had a better lineup than Cleveland, but Cleveland's second best pitcher (Carmona) is better than your best pitcher (Wang). That's not the formula you want for winning championships, let alone short series.
Looking forward to your take on the pending free agents (Arod, Posada, Rivera, Abreu) as well as what to do with Mussina and Giambi.
What I did notice most this year was that the breaks that any team needs to make it forward didn't seem to materialize. The Indians play very well defensively, and that counteracted one of the Yankees greatest strengths, what I call "pile-on-ability". The Yankees take an error at first, or a misplay in the outfield, or some other mistake, and turn it into a 4-5 run inning. The first two men in an inning would make out, and they would come up with a walk, and then a 2-run HR. Not so in this series.
Colorado v Boston should be a good series, but i'll be honest, i dont know if I care about baseball anymore this year except to see the Sox not win.
The Indians are an easy team to root for. Small market team from a downtrodden town with some young studs like Sizemore, Fausto, CC and Victor Martinez. I might be pulling for them, although you know how much I love the Big Papi. I have no feelings whatseover for the 2 national league teams and not sure if I care at all about that series. But I wouldn't count Arizona out. Webb is a stud and he'll be rested and ready for game one.
Steinbrenner's open threat during the middle of the series was a disgrace.
Torre's been the model of good sportsmanship for an entire generation of young baseball fans in NYC.
Yanks replace Torre before he's ready to retire, they lose me as fast as country radio when they banned the Chicks. Loyalty. It should mean something.
Kevin, you're right about Torre -- he's a class act who has made it harder (but not impossible) to hate the Yankees. Whereas Steinbrenner is an ass who makes it quite easy. Query, if you gave up on country radio when they banned the Chicks, why do you root for a team owned by a republican, ex-con piece of crap who was convicted for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon? Progressives are much more at home rooting for the Mets -- an underdog franchise despite their being from New York. After all, how can anyone with a sense of social and economic justice be comfortable rooting for the Yankees and everything they represent? It's time to leave the dark side and meet the Mets. You will be welcomed with open arms to the land of blue and orange.
As for Torre, a large part of me feels that he has earned the right to write his own ending, but at the same time, he hasn't won since 2000 with an annual payroll of $200 million; he makes double any other manager in the game (he makes $7 million, and Pinella is second at $3.5); and his contract has expired. I would have been disgusted if they had fired him last year, but I'm kind of ambivalent right now. If I were a Yankee fan, I might be most concerned with the veterans' reaction to any Torre firing. Will Torre's discharge mark the end of an era which will culminate with the exit of Posada, Rivera, Petitte and Arod as free agents? These guys might be more willing to seek one last big payday on the free agent market without their loyalty to Torre pulling them back to New York. It oughta be an interesting offseason either way.
Anonymous,
I don't resent Republicans for existing or disdain them for not liking a music group for making political statements. Country radio pissed me off because the Dixie Chicks were huge, flag-waving supporters of the format, proudly taking the mantle of the format's ambassadors at the height of the pop crossover era (Shania/Faith/Lonestar.)
Radio not only stopped playing them, but actively worked against them, the end result being poured gasoline on the fire. Two of the Chicks had to move because their homes were vandalized after local country stations announced where they lived, among other things.
Many people make the mistake of reading "Not Ready to Make Nice" as an anti-Bush song, or as something political, but the song was directed more at country radio and the Nashville industry than anything else.
As for the Yankees, I get to decide what they represent to me, and Torre's Yankees represent good sportsmanship. Look at that manager, going into that ball club that lost the game that his job depended on. He tells him he's proud of them for how far they'd come that year, and that there are bigger things than winning or losing. They came together as a team, and they have a great future. Then he calls up Cleveland's manager and congratulates him.
Torre is the face of the Yankees for me, no matter what foolishness Steinbrenner pulls behind the curtain. Torre proved that you can teach superstars to play for the team, to play with class. Did you see Derek Jeter escorting Phil Rizzuto's wife Cora during the pre-game tribute to her late husband? CLASS.
The Yankees have been a disciplined, dignified team under Torre's leadership, and that's an intangible that's worth more than just winning. It's the height of insanity that the future of man who has led his team to 12 post-season appearances is even in question. The willingness to sacrifice true leadership for a blind shot at maybe getting a little further in the playoffs next year (assuming that even happens), is woefully misguided.
As for becoming a Mets fan because they come closer to the ideals of social and economic justice than the Yankees...I just don't get the analogy. Sorry. The Mets have a huge payroll, too - highest in the National league, and third behind the Yankees and the Red Sox (the other team that bitches that the Yanks buy championships, while doing their best to do the same.) They've just done less with it.
The Yanks have built up a fortune by winning and reinvesting the profits into the team. They make baseball games across the country more profitable just by showing up.
You are absolutely right about Torre. He brought class and dignity to a franchise that has lacked both for as long as I have been alive. As I stated in my prior post, he made it harder to hate the Yankees. While I as a baseball fan do not wish to see him fired, I as a Yankee hater hope that they make the mistake of firing him because his firing and subsequent replacement with an unqualified Steinbrenner crony like Mattingly could very well lead to the return of the bedlam and the Bronx zoo atmosphere which preceded Torre for decades.
No point in any in depth discussion of the politics of baseball, but please do not compare the Mets' payroll to the Yankees'. While it is true that the Mets had the largest payroll in the NL this year, they were still closer to the Marlins than the Yanks. The Mets payroll the past few years has been approximately $100 million less per year than the Yanks'. $100 million equates to 10 star players in a sport where you play 9 men at a time. That difference is huge. What kind of team would the Mets have had if they had added 10 players worthy of $10 million per year contracts or 5 players worthy of $20 million per year contracts? When it comes to payroll and resources, the Yanks are in a league of their own. As for your comment that other teams have done less with the money, the Yankees come in last every year in wins per dollar spent. And that is a fact.
The argument that the Yanks make other teams more profitable by showing up at their ballpark in simplistic and naive. Yes, teams like the Royals get a few thousand more fans in the seats when the Yanks are in town. However, the tradeoff is that teams like the Royals lose money the rest of the year because they are unable to field a competitive team in the current financial structure which most benefits the Yankees.
In the NFL, the Green Bay Packers (town of 60,000) can compete with the New York Giants because men like Wellintgton Mara who owned the big market teams (the Giants were the Yankees in those days) decided to put the interests of the entire league ahead of their own and to share all revenue equally. In MLB, the owners of the big market teams like the Yanks have historically been a bunch of pigs who refuse to share revenue and who have fought every effort to do so (Yanks only team to vote against the last CBA). As a result, there exists an unlevel playing field which benefits the richest teams in the biggest cities to the detriment of the poorer teams in the smallest cities. I will not be impressed with anything the Yankees do until we have revenue sharing and a salary cap in baseball. I know that revenue sharing will hurt the Mets as well, but I don't care. It is necessary for the long-term health of baseball. I have friends from childhood who rooted for small-market teams who were baseball fanatics until teh mid 90's, but couldn't care less about baseball now because their teams have no chance of winning every year and they're sick of watching the Yanks and the Red Sox in the playoffs every year.
With regard to your statement that the Yankees built a fortune by winning, you should read a little more history of the team you follow. The Yanks were second class citizens in this City (behind the baseball Giants) until new ownership (which had been unsuccessful in their efforts to purchase the Giants) bought the Yanks in the late teens and turned a losing franchise around by purchasing star players from every other team in the league, including Babe Ruth among many others. He paid $125,000 for Ruth plus a $300,000 interest-free loan for which he received a mortgage on Fenway Park. With the profits derived by these purchases of other players and with Ruth's star power drawing fans at record paces, he built the then state of the art, seventh wonder of the world Yankee stadium and the Yankees became the preeminent franchise in all of sports. They have remained so ever since, with only the late 60's and early 70's as an exception. The Yanks sucked in the late 60's and early 70's because that was the only time in baseball when there was anything close to a level playing field. The amateur draft was instituted in the late 50's/early 60's meaning that the Yankees couldn't just purchase the best amateur players (like they did with DiMaggio from the SF Seals) and there was no free agency until the mid 70's so they couldn't just sign other teams players like they have ever since, starting with Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield.
Couple of Charlie thoughts here-
1)While the Yankees do have the highest payroll by far, they also operate within the rules of baseball. Any owner who wants to go out and spend like Steinbrenner is welcome to do so. The Wilpons spend a good deal more than all but 3 teams (I think the Dodgers pay a ton too). The Yankees pay luxury tax out the a$$, and enable small-market owners to sign single players to huge contracts without spending a dime of their own money. George is not the richest owner in baseball, that is a fact too. But he does spend the most on his team, as he is allowed to do. we've never come together on this question:
"What stops other owners from spending like the Yankees?"
2) I do believe that the Yankees pay more for players because they are the Yankees. A 500K player will make 1.5 mil on the Yankees, because the Yankees can't ask for a lower rate, after all, they pay 10 of their players 10+ million.
3) I don't think its overly simplistic to note that teams sell 15-25 thousand more tickets to games where the Yankees come into town. however, i do agree that this is where the Yankees contribution to other team's profitability ends, with the exception of huge luxury tax payments.
4) The part about the "money through winning" is interesting. The Yankees did become an early 20th century Juggernaut by purchasing players and building a strong team. However, they became the YES Network Yankee mega-machine because of years of winning, and 26 Championships.
5) Revenue sharing is for cheap billionaires who won't spend and want to solely profit. And the last time I looked, Colorado, Arizona and Cleveland are not big-market teams, but they are playing for the 'chip while NY sits at home.
Do you prefer the baseball economic system over the football system?
I admit I dont know a ton about the football salary cap structure. However, I know that as a Yankee fan, the idea of a "salary-cap casualty" does not exist, because as long as our owner is willing to pay, we can have whichever players want to play for us.
Football has benefits and drawbacks just like baseball. Parity reigns in football, and the only dynasty (the Pats)regularly shed guys who were the team's heart and soul. However, I think the system screws players with some of the "franchise player" tags, and the organization also gets screwed with the guaranteed money and tax hits.
Football necessitates prudent spending, but it also limits an owner like Steinbrenner, who would break his bank to put a winner out there.
Football doesn't just "limit" an owner like Steinbrenner; it prevents its creation as well. Steinbrenner does not spend on account of his personal wealth, but on account of the wealth of the franchise he owns. He has the largest revenue stream by far and uses that money (not his own personal money) to pay players. In football, the largest source of revenue (tv) is shared equally by all teams, resulting in only marginal differences among the teams' respective revenue streams. Even without a cap, no team would be at a great advantage unless the owner (like a Dan Snyder type) was willing to go into his pocket and spend his own money. The cap prevents even that from occurring.
While its true that there are billionaire owners who don't spend on their teams in baseball, that's because their baseball teams don't generate sufficient revenue to justify the additional spending and they would have to operate at a loss and dig into their own personal fortunes to pay the players in order to compete with Steinbrenner, Henry, etc.. Steinbrenner does not have to do this. He plays with house money.
Why should other teams have to operate at a loss to compete with him? And, more importantly, how long will baseball be able to maintain franchises which require owners willing to spend their own money to compete?
I agree that a cap screws the players and sounds rather un-american, but it's probably necessary to establish parity vis a vis football and to ensure the long-term health of the small market teams. I could live without a cap so long as there was greater revenue sharing of tv money. Think about how much money the Yanks, Sox, Cubs, Braves and Mets make from TV revenue and contrast that with teams like the Royals, Reds, Marlins and Twins. How can these teams be expected to compete? There is more parity right now than there was a few years ago b/c of increases in shared revenue and the payroll taxes charged against the big market teams (Yanks and Sox). Baseball needs to continue down that path.
So flip your arguement. If the Yankees have the largest revenue stream, why should they be limited to spending the same amount as the Royals? You are effectively eliminating their incentive to constantly be successful and create revenue.
George made an investment, and did spend his own money. He spends money he could otherwise profit from.
I still don't understand how putting money into a team, even out of a billionaire's pocket, and turning that into a playoff appearance and/or World Series, wouldn't mean more money all around?
I personally think basketball has a great combo of cap and latitude. The Knicks pay huge luxury tax, but also are free to do so. (they also have sucked despite spending) Trades are more common, and the players are paid like kings.
Because the big $ is in television -- not attendance. No matter how good a team like the Royals gets, the TV money will never be there b/c the market is too small. Look at the Marlins, they did exactly what you said and it didn't work. The owner paid for players and won a series while losing money, but no new revenue came in so the owner dumped the players and dropped payroll. They did this twice.
What I'm saying is that the Yanks should have to share their revenue so teams like the Royals can afford the same payroll. If you have no small market teams, MLB loses a lot of fans and then the big market teams are worth shit as well.
Charlie, check out this site for a good MVP discussion.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/my-2007-mvps/
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