"Enough is enough. I am bitterly disappointed, as I'm sure all Yankee fans are, by the lack of performance by our team," Steinbrenner said in a statement. "It is unbelievable to me that the highest-paid team in baseball would start the season in such a deep funk."
Oh yeah, that's good stuff. The best thing I read on that subject today was CNN/SI's article about the failing Yankees, which had a poll on why they sucked so much, and along with the potential choices of "Weak starting pitching" and "Nucleus past their prime" was the wonderful "Payroll too low" possibility. That just perfectly sums up why so many of us Yankee haters hate them so very much, and why we are always happy to look into the AL East standings and see the big losers sitting in last place with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. By the way, 19% of respondents picked the "low payroll" as the reason for their struggles, putting it in 3rd place among the choices, and about 5 times more likely than the "Joe Torre uninspiring" answer, which means that he's still getting an awful lot of credit for the earlier championships despite sleepwalking through the last 2 and 1/2 seasons or so.
On to more interesting stuff - both the Phillies and Mariners have begun the season at 6-6, putting the Phillies in a tie for 2nd place (along with every other NL East team except the Nationals) and the Mariners in a tie for 1st place (along with every other AL West team except the Rangers - sorry Jan). Neither team has played particularly inspiring ball, especially in the batters' box. The Mariners offense - the key (and only) benefactor of the offseason spending spree - has been anemic, while the Phillies led the NL in scoring for the first week only to go 6 straight games without scoring more than 4 runs. On a very related note, the Die Yankees Die fantasy team is positioned in a solid 3rd place (out of 12) after 2 weeks despite truly execrable hitting stats from a number of highly drafted "sluggers" - yeah, I'm looking at you Mssrs. Chavez and Dunn. Which is quite surprising since my team was built around offense, with 7 out of my first 9 draft picks on the hitting side of the ledger.
So
what has been the saving grace of my teams in this early season?
Shockingly enough, it's been pitching. From the surprising starts of
Mariners Jamie Moyer and Ryan Franklin to the excellence of Phillies
Jon Lieber and Brett Myers (pictured at right) to the 12 strikeout performance Saturday of Die Yankees Die's Mark
Buehrle, I've somehow been able to overcome poor hitting throughout my
teams with clutch pitching statistics from truly average starters.
Will it continue? That's somewhat less likely.
For the Mariners, Moyer and Franklin simply are not good at this stage of their careers - well, Franklin never was, and with Bobby Madritsch already injured and Gil Meche nursing a sore arm, the rotation is threadbare at best. If they can string together a month more of passable starts by the likes of Aaron Sele, King Felix could be ready to come up to the majors and provide much needed stability, but it doesn't seem likely. This team will need to be carried by its offense, which - outside of Ichiro and Richie Sexson - has not done much to impress in the early going.
The Phillies seem much more likely to sustain the strong pitching, especially if formerly highly tauted Brett Myers could make the leap into a successful starter this season. Lieber has looked strong, and should be at least solid. Randy Wolf still has ability despite his struggles; Vicente Padilla is healthy again and starting tomorrow against the Mets; and Gavin Floyd is waiting in the wings if any of them struggle. And the offense will certainly be strong. There are no real holes in the lineup - especially if Charlie Manuel gets his head out of his ass and starts incorporating the mediocre David Bell (who used to haunt me on the Mariners) into the Polanco/Chase Utley platoon at 2nd base, instead of blindly starting Bell every game. And I'm not just saying that because I own Utley and hate to see him languishing on the bench.
Speaking of Die Yankees Die, I pulled off the first big trade of the season, exchanging Travis Hafner, Dmitri Young, and Octavio Dotel for Mark Teixeira and Matt Lawton. Hafner has struggled early but had a great season last year, and Young of course had the 3 HR opening day to go along with a career of above average offense when healthy, much like Matt Lawton's career - only with less speed. But Teixeira is clearly the best player in the deal, a potential MVP candidate in an extreme hitters' park and one of the best hitters in the American League (although he's off to a slow start). I did have to give up Dotel, my top closer and 7th round draft pick, though, and that's a risky move. But I found myself with a surplus of closers in the earlygoing, carrying 5 actual closers (fully 1/6th of the majors' closers) after early pickups of Yhency Brazoban of the Dodgers and 4-saves-already Brandon Lyon of the D-backs. This allowed me to dangle the best of my closers (and the only one with real trade value) and bring back Teixeira in return. So of course, my offense-heavy team just traded another pitcher to improve my offense even further, which is possibly not the smartest move in the world, but we'll see. I don't have a single regular besides Vlad Guerrero hitting over .300 right now (Utley doesn't count), so my offense could use some help. Of course, I'm not complaining with a new offense rotation that includes Pujols, Vlady, Teixeira, Adam Dunn, and Eric Chavez. It's the pitching rotation that includes Doug Davis as my #3 starter that's a bit shaky.
Oh, one more note - I found this on Buster Olney's page on ESPN:
"That brings us to the 2005 Yankees -- 18 former All-Stars; sure Hall of Famers in Mariano Rivera, Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez; borderline Hall of Famers in Gary Sheffield and (down the road) Derek Jeter; one of the best hitters in the American League in Hideki Matsui."
I have no comment to add - I just found it very interesting that he nonchalantly placed Jeter into the "borderline" hall of fame group. I know there's really no chance of it happening and it's a long ways away anyway, but if Jeter somehow didn't make the Hall of Fame, that would be a very happy day for me. Every election year, in fact, would be a very happy day indeed. Oh and speaking of happy days, I'm sending out birthday wishes for Mr. Muller, who is turning 30 today. He is currently at RFK Stadium watching the Washington Nationals play the Florida Marlins, while some of us are slaving away at work. Well not me, but I'm sure somebody is slaving away.
Comments