Blogs – Page 239 – Keefe To The City

Mar 3, 2010

Deadline Dilemma

There was nothing on Monday to help ease the devastating feeling of Sunday’s gold-medal defeat. On Monday, the Knicks allowed 74 first-half points to the Cavaliers in an eventual 31-point loss … Alex Rodriguez was

There was nothing on Monday to help ease the devastating feeling of Sunday’s gold-medal defeat. On Monday, the Knicks allowed 74 first-half points to the Cavaliers in an eventual 31-point loss … Alex Rodriguez was linked to some sketchy doctor and needed for an FBI investigation … Jay Leno made his Tonight Show comeback in place of Conan O’Brien … Sadly, Jimmy Fallon still had his spot hosting Late Night … and I don’t even watch The Bachelor, but apparently he ruined the season finale by choosing the wrong girl. As if Sidney Crosby finding Ryan Miller’s five-hole seven minutes and 40 seconds into overtime wasn’t bad enough, the events of Monday just poured salt into the wound that Sid the Kid had opened the day before. On Tuesday, however, the gold-medal loss began to hurt a little less.

On Tuesday, the Yankees had their annual team outing, which resembled a 12-year-old’s birthday party, meaning it was the eve of the team’s spring training opener. And the tri-state area hockey teams resumed play after a two-week layoff, going undefeated on the eve of the NHL’s trade deadline.

The Rangers began a stretch of 20 games in 42 days by scoring four goals in a win against the Senators without Marian Gaborik. The Islanders helped improve their chances in the Eastern Conference playoff picture with a 5-3 win over the Blackhawks on the Island. And the Devils held off the West’s best in San Jose with a 4-3 victory against the Sharks.

With Wednesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline looming, it was the last chance for teams to decide whether they would be buyers or sellers, even though the local teams have pretty much cemented their roles for the rest of the 2009-10 season.

The Devils are built to win now and they know it, as does the entire hockey world. Lou Lamoriello sees a team with several key players in their mid-30s and a franchise goalie who is nearing 40. It’s why he went against his own philosophy and the culture he instituted in New Jersey to acquire Ilya Kovalchuk in a deal that cost him Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors, Patrice Cormier, a first-round pick in 2010 and a second-round pick in 2010. The Devils’ window of opportunity is slowly closing and this year might be one of the last chances the organization has to capitalize on the Brodeur Era. Lamoriello knows what he has and he is going for it all this season, even knowing that Kovalchuk’s time in New Jersey might only last through the team’s last game this season.

The Islanders, on the other hand, are built for the future. With a strong core of John Tavares and Kyle Okposo, the Islanders aren’t about to sacrifice the talented youth they have lacked since the lockout for a 19-game boost that will land them a matchup with the Capitals in the first round. The Islanders have been a pleasant surprise this season with a team of mostly 20-somethings, managing to stay in the thick of things in the playoff race. If the Islanders can find a way into the playoffs, they will have exceeded all expectations and completed an unlikely turnaround after finishing with a league-worst 61 points last year. And if they fall short of the playoffs, no one will be disappointed since they weren’t expected to achieve this much success this season anyways. The Islanders know where they stand in the Eastern Conference and what they will be able to achieve in the near future with their abundance of young talent.

That brings us to the Rangers. They aren’t really ready to win now, and they aren’t built for the future and don’t appear to be building for the future. They remain in the same spot they have been in for the past five seasons – good enough to make the postseason but not good enough to win in the postseason. There is a good mix of young and old on the Rangers, but to say the Rangers are a team capable of going the distance, well, it would be wishful thinking. Tuesday’s win over the Senators only added more confusion in the search to find out who the Rangers are, because no one – Glen Sather included – knows what to expect from the Rangers or when to expect to it.

Right now the Rangers are either …

Team A: A team that has won three straight, is peaking at the right time and is primed for the stretch run after finally realizing its potential after five months of inconsistent play.

Or …

Team B: A team that has won three straight, but a team that picked the wrong night to play above its head and in turn, only masked its offensive problems.

If the Rangers are “Team A” and have actually found the rhythm that all of New York has waited for them to find, then there is no need to alter the roster or change the team’s current landscape. If Glen Sather thinks that the team he saw smoke the Senators on Tuesday is the team that will come to play for the remainder of the year, then he doesn’t need to tinker with the team’s current makeup.

But if the Rangers are “Team B,” then they picked the wrong night to play like a team built to win this season since there aren’t any games remaining before the deadline for the Blueshirts to show their true colors. Sather needs to know if Tuesday’s win was false hope or a sign of things to come. He needs to know if the Rangers can make a run the rest of the way as currently constructed, and he needs to decide quickly.

Had the Rangers laid an egg in Ottawa and started the stretch run off with a weak effort, it would have been easy to say that without Gaborik the Rangers are a disaster, and it would have made it easy for Sather to make some sort of move on Wednesday to shake up the roster. Instead, the Rangers took it to the Senators without their leading scorer, and no one knows if this team is OK without Gaborik and a contender with him. No one knows whether or not this team should go forward as is, or if change is needed.

In all likelihood, Sather will stand pat at the deadline, and I’m not sure that isn’t the right move. I’m also not sure it is. I’m not really sure what to make of the Rangers’ situation or what to expect of them over the next six weeks. I’m not sure that there is a move that can be made at this point that will take the Rangers to the next level and get them through March and April and beyond. And even if a move of that caliber exists and Sather makes it, there is no guarantee that he will be able to justify it in the postseason since the Rangers are currently on the outside looking in.

If Sather has been able to maintain his position with the Rangers to this point, it’s safe to say that there isn’t a trade he can make or pass up that will cost him his job. There isn’t a level of success the Rangers need to achieve or a playoff round they need to reach for him to remain general manager.

Sather put the Rangers into this awkward position of being a perennial five through eight seed in the Eastern Conference, and it should be on him to get them out of their five-year funk. Just don’t count on it happening by 3 p.m. because at 3:01 p.m., chances are the Rangers won’t be a team built to win now or a team built for the future. They will still just be the same old Rangers. Who that is, I’m not sure?

Blogs • NHL • Team USA

Feb 25, 2010

Heavenly Hockey

Thirty years after the original “Miracle on Ice,” one game separates Team USA and the gold-medal game and a chance at history.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com on Feb. 25, 2010.

If you like hockey, then you liked Wednesday. And even if you don’t like hockey, chances are that you probably watched it at some point on Wednesday because it was on for 11 1/2 straight hours. Hockey had its version of March Madness, and in this case, the Elite Eight. Aside from not being able to watch three of the four games in high definition, it was a perfect day for a hockey fan. It was a day I didn’t want to see end, and on Sunday it will be a tournament that I wish didn’t have to disappear for four years. But if Gary Bettman has his way, the magic of Wednesday won’t ever return.

Between trying to decide if Pierre McGuire’s tenure as a “sideline” reporter between the benches has been a bigger failure than the FoxTrax puck was, and wondering if the over 2 ½ will hit on how many times Eddie Olczyk says “active sticks” during the USA game (it went under, he only said it once), I tried to imagine watching Olympic hockey without NHL players and I couldn’t.

Since allowing NHL players to participate in the Olympics in 1998, the decision has been the only one the game deserves credit for in recent years. Now the league is prepared to tell their fans – the ones they have left – that the Olympics will have to do without NHL players in the future because the league is losing too much money during the two-week layoff.

Gary Bettman isn’t exactly crushing it in approval rating and he is certainly isn’t winning any popularity contests. The same man who has watched two teams relocate from Canada during his tenure as commissioner is now ready to destroy the best thing the game has going for it.

With Bettman at the helm, fighting has been basically taken out of the game thanks to the instigator rule, a trapezoid has been painted behind the net and two-line passing has been allowed. He contemplated changing the size of the net, first allowed goalies to expand the size of their equipment and then created restrictions for them. He permitted the change of the overtime format to 4-on-4 and OK’ed shootouts deciding games and playoff berths. He let the Sabres change their colors to red and black before they changed them back, and then there was that time where the NHL didn’t play for an entire season. If people cared about hockey then Bettman might have to answer for his decisions. But no one cares enough to make a stand because Bettman chased away casual fans, and the only fans remaining are those that would watch the NHL no matter what type of mud Bettman drags it through.

It didn’t have to be like this and it doesn’t have to continue to be like this. I can’t remember the last time people I wouldn’t expect to be excited about hockey were this excited. Team USA’s resurgence, and the overall talent level of the tournament has casual fans finding out that there are other stars in the sport than Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Even if those fans missed entire first periods because they were trying to find out what NBC ancillary channel the Olympics relegated hockey to, they have still become attracted to the game. There is a throng of new hockey fans with a desire to watch a sport that can use as many fans as it can get. And the commissioner who has spent the last six-plus years trying to attract new audiences is ready to deprive his newest fans of the reason they watched hockey in the first place.

On Monday I wrote about how Americans were interested in how Team USA would perform in the tournament, and mainly how they would perform against Team Canada. Well, according to the New York Times, the USA-Canada game matched MSNBC’s election-night viewership and was the most-watched sports program in Canadian history. It was a non-elimination game and it had more viewers in both countries than Game 7 of last season’s Stanley Cup final, in which the game’s biggest star was playing against one of the game’s most popular teams.

Did NBC do the NHL – its business partner – an injustice by not airing important preliminary games and even the Canada-Russia quarterfinal on its main station? Yes. If the games were on NBC, more people would have stumbled upon them while looking for The Office or 30 Rock, but the amount of positive exposure the NHL has received during the tournament can’t be rivaled by anything the league has done itself to increase popularity.

Maybe the NHL and the television networks of future Olympics can work out a marketing partnership or the networks can promise to put the intriguing matchups on their No. 1 channel in place of the biathlon or ski jumping or curling. If the NHL is so hung up on trying to make money off the Olympics rather than letting the Olympics work its magic for the NHL, then OK, find a business strategy that works. Just don’t sacrifice the participation of NHL players as that strategy.

The Olympics deserve the best hockey players from each country and that means NHLers. NHL-filled rosters offer an experience for viewers that isn’t duplicated at any other time. Sure, there is the IIHF World Championship each year, but that takes place during the NHL playoffs, so many of the top players aren’t available, and those who are usually decline to play. Amateur lineups would create a tournament similar to the World Junior Championships, and teams like the United States and Canada would be at a disadvantage against the European teams that include former NHL players currently playing in the KHL or European elite leagues.

The uniqueness of the event creates a bond among each country’s fans that rarely happens. The tournament allows for fans of NHL rivals like the Rangers and Devils to pull for each other’s players in the same way Yankees fans are asked to pull for Red Sox, and Mets fans for Phillies with home-field in the World Series on the line at the MLB All-Star Game. There aren’t too many times Rangers fans hope Zach Parise scores a goal and hope Henrik Lundqvist gives one up. For a week, Devils fans are allowed to hate Martin Brodeur and love Chris Drury.

Most importantly, NHL players in the Olympics just makes for better hockey.

Yes, the two-week break and lack of an All-Star Game is costing the NHL money today, but maybe Bettman doesn’t see what this tournament is doing for tomorrow and the future of the game. The Winter Classic is nice, but it’s not doing the trick, and the only thing that could get the game back on the map in the United States would be an American star equivalent in talent to Crosby or Ovechkin. The Olympics are doing a job that Bettman has tried to do since he cancelled the 2004-05 season, and no one cares that there wasn’t an All-Star Game or a skills competition this February. Fans want to see competitive hockey games with the world’s best players. They don’t want – or need – to see Zdeno Chara skate untouched and put all his weight into a slap shot that goes into an open net at 103 mph. Fans want to watch Olympic hockey with NHL players. They can live without the All-Star Game and its festivities once every four years.

Right now, there is a buzz in the hockey world following Canada’s rout of Russia and Slovakia’s upset of Sweden. United States fans are anxious for Friday’s semifinal against Finland and sports media outlets are asking whether or not Team USA can knock off Team Canada twice in the same week if they meet again. Players like Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane are watching their stock rise thanks to national television exposure. It has all contributed to one very pleasant surprise because when was the last time the talk anywhere focused on hockey?

If Team USA takes home the gold, it will be the perfect ending to a perfect tournament, and will do wonders for the final weeks of the NHL season. I suggest you watch because it might never be the same again.

Blogs • NHL • Team USA

Feb 22, 2010

Digging for Gold

Team USA’s 5-3 win over Canada sent a message to the hockey world four years after the U.S. was embarrassed in the Olympics.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com on Feb. 22, 2010.

Mike Milbury predicted that Team USA would lose to Canada in Sunday night’s pregame show. At that point, I knew that an upset was assured because, let’s be honest, when has Mike Milbury ever been right?

It’s hard to remember Milbury ever having been right as general manager of the Islanders. He wasn’t right when he drafted Rick DiPietro ahead of Dany Heatley and Marian Gaborik, and traded Roberto Luongo. Or when he traded Zdeno Chara and the second pick in the 2001 draft (Jason Spezza) for Alexei Yashin. During his time with the Islanders, Milbury compiled a long list of questionable and controversial decisions in his quest to become the worst GM in hockey history. He was wrong again on Sunday night when he picked against his own country.

After letting a 1-4-1 performance in 2006 resonate for four years, Team USA made wholesale changes for 2010. General manager Brian Burke scrapped the entire ’06 roster except for Chris Drury and Brian Rafalski, choosing youth and inexperience to replace the face of USA hockey. Burke skirted conventional wisdom by replacing the team’s core of Mike Modano, Keith Tkachuk, Bill Guerin and Doug Weight. On Sunday night in Vancouver, Burke’s moves paid off in a game Eddie Olczyk referred to as “tremendously tremendous.”

Doc Emrick isn’t used to seeing Martin Brodeur get lit up, and he probably can’t recall a two-goal game from Brian Rafalski’s tenure with the Devils. These two factors — Brodeur’s shakiness and Rafalski’s offensive outburst — contributed to Team USA’s first win over Canada since 1960. Team USA entered Sunday’s main event at plus 250 on the money line. They left with all of Canada calling for Roberto Luongo to replace Brodeur in Tuesday’s quarterfinal qualifier.

Ron Wilson’s club won in exactly the manner that Burke envisioned they could when he selected the next wave of American talent. Burke built the current squad with an emphasis on speed and goaltending, and it was enough to drop a Canadian team that outshot the Americans 45-23. Team USA limited their mistakes, stayed disciplined and remained out of the box, and Ryan Miller did his best Jim Craig impersonation with a 42-save performance. Team USA was outplayed and outshot by a roster that perhaps no Americans other than Patrick Kane or Zach Parise would crack, but they stuck to Wilson’s system and capitalized on the few opportunities they were afforded.

The win was the most significant for Team USA in Olympic competition since the second Herb Brooks-led team knocked off Russia in the 2002 semifinals. The game created interest in the young club for the American people, and the winning result has turned that interest into an attachment. People now seem to care about the team’s outcome in Vancouver, and this wouldn’t have been the case had Ryan Miller played more like Martin Brodeur. The dream of achieving gold in the tournament for the first time in 30 years has hockey back in the spotlight, and it’s going to be a challenge to sustain the current hype around the team and the sport.

Gary Bettman would love for that enthusiasm to carry past the end of the week and into the stretch run of the NHL season, however, just keeping Americans attached for this week is a step in the right direction. It might be wishful thinking to believe that Team USA can bring the game back to where it was prior to the 2004-05 lockout, but it seems to be a possibility, at least for the moment. Team USA has a chance to change the landscape of hockey in the United States, and give the NHL the boost of interest the league has unsuccessfully tried to achieve through rules changes, marketing and the Winter Classic.

An upset of Canada and the revival of American hockey in the Olympics won’t carry as much weight if Team USA falls in quarterfinal action or loses to Canada in a possible rematch. Team USA knocked off the favorites on their home ice. They have proven they can play with — and beat — any team in the tournament, and in doing so, they have made the goal medal game their end game. If Sunday’s win was their last of the 2010 Games, this last week of perfect hockey from Team USA will be a letdown.

Many hoped that after the 2006 debacle, Team USA would contend for a medal game in the tournament, though no one truly expected them to beat Canada and earn the No. 1 seed for the playoff round. As long as the Americans didn’t bow out the way they did four years ago, it would have been a successful trip to Vancouver. The expectations changed on Sunday, and now it’s up to this Team USA to show America and the world that they aren’t the same team that won only once — against Kazakhstan, no less — in the ’06 Games. It’s up to them to prove to Sidney Crosby that Sunday’s 5-3 win wasn’t “just one game.”

A week ago Team USA was hoping to avoid embarrassment and provide a respectable showing in Vancouver. Now they are the top seed in the tournament and three wins away from achieving Olympic glory, and improving the outlook on the game for the entire country.

Let’s just hope Mike Milbury doesn’t decide to jump on the Team USA bandwagon.

Blogs • MLB

Feb 19, 2010

Santana or Halladay? Who Gets the Ball?

Everyone listens to the Mets when they open their mouths in spring training, but no one ever takes them seriously. Over the last two seasons, the Mets have made headlines by sharing their pipe dreams

Everyone listens to the Mets when they open their mouths in spring training, but no one ever takes them seriously. Over the last two seasons, the Mets have made headlines by sharing their pipe dreams and senseless predictions with the media.

“Let me tell you this: Without [Johan] Santana, we felt as a team we have a chance to win in our division. With him now, I have no doubt that we’re going to win in our division. I have no doubt in that.” – Carlos Beltran, Feb. 16, 2008

False.

“Of course, we’re going to be the front-runner. Of course, we’re going to be the team to beat.” – Francisco Rodriguez, Dec. 13, 2008

Second verse same as the first.

“We’re expecting to go out there and win the National League East and go deep in the playoffs and win a World Series.” – David Wright, Feb. 18, 2010

To be determined.

Beltran’s lock for the division didn’t hold true in 2008, and K-Rod’s words didn’t hold up either, as the $37-million closer added to the Mets’ problems with career highs in ERA, WHIP and blown saves. Wright’s expectations have yet to play out, but let’s be honest, we all know how that story ends.

On Thursday, Johan Santana made headlines for a different reason. He didn’t call out the Phillies or proclaim the Mets as the odds-on favorite to win the World Series – an annual tradition his teammates started. Instead, Santana called himself the best pitcher in the division.

“In our division?” Santana replied when asked who the best pitcher in the NL East is. “Santana.”

It’s hard to get on Johan for thinking so highly of himself, even if Roy Halladay now calls the NL East home. Had Santana answered with Halladay’s name, it would have been a bigger issue than it already is. And if Halladay were ever asked the same question, you’d expect him to believe that he is the best pitcher in the NL East and not Santana.

Who is the best pitcher in the NL East? Santana or Halladay? We know what Mets fans think and what Phillies think, and everyone else would probably be split down the middle given their favorite team or personal allegiances.

So, here’s a better question: if you had to play a game for your life, would you start Santana or Halladay? No Mets jersey. No Phillies jersey. Who do you give the ball to?

The difference in their career stats is slim. While Santana has postseason experience, Halladay has spent his entire career in the AL East. Pitching against the Yankees and Red Sox on a consistent basis in the spring and summer isn’t exactly pitching in October. Then again, Santana would probably want us to leave October out of the equation since he’s 1-3 in the second season.

Both of them have Cy Youngs, sub-3.50 ERAs and unimaginable K /BB ratios. Santana might own a few strikeout titles, but Halladay owns something much more valuable: the ability to instill immense fear.

Paul O’Neill likes to talk about pitchers that make players check the calendar weeks in advance to see if they will miss them in an upcoming three-game series. Roy Halladay is that type of pitcher, and there is no other pitcher in baseball that is given the W before the game even starts. Santana might possess a similar intimidation, but in no way is it to this degree.

It doesn’t matter who is starting against Halladay or what lineup he will face, it is predetermined that he will win and there is really nothing that can be done about it. The best possible scenario you can hope for is that he has an “off” day and allows three runs. There is no such thing as working the count against Halladay, and there is no point in trying to keep the game close to get a shot at the bullpen. He is his own bullpen and his own closer.

Since Halladay broke into the league in 1998, the World Series champion has come from his division six of 12 seasons. He has made 78 starts and 83 appearances against the Yankees and Red Sox, going 32-20 with a 3.58 ERA. His only losing campaign in 12 years came at the age of 23, which is pretty remarkable considering he has never pitched for a division winner, and only once has he pitched for a division runner-up.

Halladay is the only pitcher whose removal from the AL East translates into four or five additional wins for the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays and Orioles this season. He is the one pitcher whose trade status last season had the ability to drastically alter a pennant race, and whose mere placement on the market caused a fan base to turn on its front office. He was the sole reason that the Blue Jays stayed out of the basement in the AL East all these years, and he was a symbol of hope for an organization that hasn’t experienced postseason play since 1993.

Roy Halladay is more than just a 148-76 record. He’s more than a career .661 winning percentage or 3.43 ERA. He’s more than a pitcher who dominated the AL East and the best two teams in baseball for a decade. He’s more than a pitcher who handled the competition with ease for a large portion of the Steroid Era. He’s Roy Halladay, the best pitcher on the planet.

Mets fans won’t want to admit that the best pitcher in baseball is a member of their division rival. They surely won’t want to admit that they would give the ball to that pitcher in a must-win situation, but it’s the right call.

In a game for everything, Halladay’s presence would have the other team believing they can’t win, and his actual stuff would finish them off. You have to give him the ball.

Blogs • Yankees

Feb 17, 2010

Some Questions Still Unanswered

Five questions surrounding the Yankees as spring training begins.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com Feb. 17, 2010.

The first day of pitchers and catchers is the first official day of the season. It’s a day that represents the closing days of winter and the excitement for spring and summer. It grants new life to the 29 teams that didn’t finish the previous season with a win, and gives hope to clubs looking to be this season’s dark horse. Today is that day.

Coming off a world championship, Tampa should be relaxed for the first time in a decade. New York’s real baseball problems are in Port St. Lucie at Mets camp where Omar Minaya is trying to build a rotation on the fly and trying to figure out exactly who is going catch that rotation. No one in Queens is satisfied with the situation at first base or in right field, and the team’s center fielder isn’t going to be ready for Opening Day. It’s a good time to be a Yankees fan.

But even with the Yankees boasting a team as good if not better than their 103-win club of a year ago, there are still a handful of minor housekeeping matters to be taken care of over the next six weeks. Here’s five questions surrounding the Bombers at the beginning of spring:

1. Can the veterans stay healthy?
The difference between the 2008 and 2009 Yankees was 14 regular season wins and another 11 wins in October. A serious rash of injuries created this difference. Aside from Alex Rodriguez missing the first month of the season, the Yankees were remarkably healthy in 2009. In 2008, they weren’t as lucky.

The injury bug wreaked havoc on the ‘08 Yankees, landing the following players on the disabled list at least once: Jonathan Albaladejo, Wilson Betemit, Chris Britton, Brian Bruney, Joba Chamberlain, Johnny Damon, Dan Giese, Phil Hughes, Jeff Karstens, Ian Kennedy, Hideki Matsui, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez and Chien-Ming Wang. Starters landed on the DL, as did their replacements, and their replacements’ replacements. It was a disaster from Opening Day through Game 162 in what was the worst season in the Bronx since 1993.

This season, the Yankees are somewhat younger than they were a year ago after trimming Johnny Damon (36) and Hideki Matsui (35) from the roster. However, there is still cause for concern as the team’s superstars get up there in age.

Here are the current ages for the starting lineup: 26, 27, 28, 29, 29, 31, 34, 35 and 38.

Here are the current ages for the starting rotation and closer (Hughes and Chamberlain included): 23, 24, 29, 33, 33, 37 and 40.

There are a lot of 30s listed there, and they are all very significant players on the roster. The Yankees are going to need good fortune and a bill of health similar to 2009 to make another October run, and they are going to need to leave camp healthy.

2. Who’s going to play center field?
When the Yankees traded for Curtis Granderson, I thought they finally had a long-term solution in center field. I was also thinking that Johnny Damon was going to be back in left, but that is clearly not the case. As of now, it looks like Granderson will be in left and Brett Gardner in center, and maybe that is for the better.

The Yankees lost 24 home runs and 82 RBIs from Damon, and 28 home runs and 90 RBIs from Hideki Matsui. Granderson is going to be asked to make up for the offensive production lost with Damon. Nick Johnson will be an upgrade in the on-base department over Matsui, but he isn’t going to be able to provide the power that Godzilla gave the Yankees at DH – unless he becomes a product of the short porch.

With Granderson in left, there will be less wear and tear on his body than there would be in center, allowing him to be stronger offensively. No one is counting on Gardner’s bat anyways and any offense he can provide the team is a plus, but not needed.

If the Yankees feel that Granderson’s game has diminished in center like it appeared to be during the final weeks of last season, then Gardner is the right man for the job. It’s safe to say whatever decision is made at the end of spring training will be changed more than once throughout the year.

3. Who’s going to be the long reliever?
Joe Girardi didn’t think it was necessary to have a long reliever on the Opening Day roster last season. It didn’t take him long to change his mind.

Early on, the bullpen was overtaxed and it didn’t help that the team was asking Edwar Ramirez, Phil Coke, Jose Veras and Brian Bruney to get important outs. Chien-Ming Wang pretty much caused the bullpen fatigue for the first couple of weeks of the season, and the relievers didn’t recover until the Yankees finally made wholesale changes. The same thing can’t happen this season.

Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre will be the long reliever candidates since no matter what the Yankees say, the competition for the fifth spot in the rotation doesn’t include them.

When it comes down to it, Gaudin is the better option. He is more reliable (3.43 ERA in 42 innings with the Yankees) and has had previous success in the majors. Gaudin’s high pitch counts forced Girardi to have a short leash with him in most of his starts, but the ability to help the team is certainly there. I don’t know if you can say the same for Mitre.

Mitre might only be a little over a year removed from Tommy John surgery, but it’s not like he was some stud before his injury. Mitre allowed 71 hits in 51 1/3 innings with the Yankees last season, and posted a 1.63 WHIP, which was only worse than the pitcher formerly known as Chien-Ming Wang’s 2.02 and the always-exciting Edwar Ramirez’s 1.96. I would like to think that the best team in baseball would have someone more reliable than Mitre in the bullpen and serving as the long reliever. Give it to Gaudin.

4. Which A.J. Burnett will show up?
The difference between winning 95 games this season and 105 games depends on which A.J. Burnett comes to pitch.

There’s no doubt that Burnett has No. 1 stuff, but many times, he pitches like a No. 5. His potential no-hitters can quickly turn into four-run deficits, and when his game begins to south, there is no way to right the ship until five days later.

Burnett proved himself in the postseason after finishing the regular season with just 13 wins in 33 starts. His performance in Game 2 of the World Series made up for all the eggs he laid throughout the summer, but it wasn’t enough to fully gain his trust.

When Burnett takes the mound, you hope that you get the guy who allowed one hit to the Red Sox over 7 2/3 innings in August and not the guy who allowed a grand slam to Jason Varitek in April. The season won’t be won or lost because of Burnett, but he has the ability to make the Yankees untouchable in the division and the league.

5. How will the Yankees handle Derek Jeter’s contract situation?
A lot of newspapers will need to fill space between now and the end of the season, and they will argue about the contract status of Derek Jeter to do so.

When Jeter, Casey Close, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner sit down to hammer out a new deal for the face of the franchise and the face of the game, they are going to give Jeter what he deserves: whatever he wants.

Jeter isn’t going to be given a low-ball offer filled with incentives like Joe Torre was, and he isn’t going to be left hanging in the balance like Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada were. Jeter is going to be given a multiyear deal for a lucrative amount of money, and there is no other way it will happen and there is no other way it should.

Speculation can be justified when it comes to the contract statuses of Mariano and Girardi, or with Posada at the end of next season, and that’s because they are not Derek Jeter. There is only one Derek Jeter, and because of that, he ‘s going to get treated and taken care of in a way that no other player will or should. End of story.