Yankees – Page 184 – Keefe To The City

Feb 18, 2015

Mike Lupica Takes the Easy Way Out on Alex Rodriguez

Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News picked apart A-Rod’s apology letter, so it’s time to pick apart Mike Lupica’s column.

Last week, when I wrote The Latest Alex Rodriguez Apology, I thought I was done talking about A-Rod’s suspension and off-the-field issues when it comes to A-Rod. But then Mike Lupica got all worked up about A-Rod’s hand-written apology and decided to write about it and tell Yankees fans how they feel and should feel when it comes to the guy who single-handedly carried them in the 2009 playoffs to the World Series and a championship.

So let’s look at Lupica’s “Alex Rodriguez Takes Easy Way Out” and pick it apart the way he picked apart A-Rod’s hand-written apology.

To the end with Alex Rodriguez you wouldn’t believe the guy if he told you water was wet, even if he wrote that out in the schoolboy cursive handwriting he used on Tuesday when he apologized to the fans for being a very bad boy.

I’m not sure if A-Rod actually wrote the letter, but if he did, he certainly has some nice penmanship. Easily “S+”- or “O”-worthy penmanship if we’re talking elementary school report cards. And we all know you can’t teach neat handwriting, it’s a gift, so A-Rod’s gifts clearly extend outside baseball.

I know A-Rod didn’t come up with the idea to write the letter or what the letter should say, but who cares? He doesn’t owe anyone an apology and I don’t think anyone would take any apology he gives sincerely, especially after he gave one six years ago and did the same exact thing he said he no longer does and would never do again. But clearly, some people feel they personally need A-Rod to say sorry to them. Mike Lupica is one of those people.

Maybe his handlers, the ones who have always done such a bang-up job for Rodriguez, thought he would look more sincere making it a handwritten note. Most fans reading it probably wanted to write one back: Shut up and get out.

Who are these “most fans” Lupica talks about? Actually, who are the “fans” he ever talks about? Lupica wants to pretend that he is so in touch with the common man and the fan, as if he were one himself, and not just a cynical sportswriter, who walks around the Yankee Stadium press box eating soft serve ice cream in jeans and a blazer while a game is going on.

As a Yankees fan, the last thing I wanted to do when I read A-Rod’s hand-written apology was to write one back to him that says: Shut up and get out. If anything, I would have written back and said: “No need to apologize. Just please hit 30 home runs with 125 RBIs this year because no one else is going to do it. If you do that, no one will boo you.”

So this is the way Rodriguez decides to play it, deciding not to hold some kind of press conference before spring training, opting out of the visual of his lawyer sitting next to him and telling him which questions he could answer, and which ones would require him to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights, so as not to face self-incrimination. But then DEA informants — it is exactly what Rodriguez is — rarely want to tell their stories in public.

What good would have come from an A-Rod press conference? What good has come from his hand-written apology? What good would have come if he went door-to-door apologizing to all of these “most fans” that supposedly want to tell him to “Shut up and get out”? A-Rod isn’t going to “get out” for three very basic reasons:

1. The Yankees owe Alex Rodriguez $61 million over the next three years and that’s not including his bonuses.

2. The Yankees have decided to cut back on spending and need a drawing card to sell tickets. A-Rod is that drawing card.

3. The Yankees don’t have a reliable power option for their offense and A-Rod is now one of many options (like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann) that the Yankees are hoping they can possibly get lucky with.

The Yankees are a business and A-Rod helps their business.

He somehow never managed to tell a version of his relationship with a now-convicted drug dealer like Anthony Bosch at his own arbitration hearing, which means under oath.

Now he tries to control his own cockeyed narrative about his drug use — is he really going to try to convince us once again that he didn’t know what he was buying from Bosch and using? — with a written apology that is like a nuanced legal brief, one in which the only thing he really admits is that he did an historic amount of time.

If he is trying to “convince you once again” then that must mean that he convinced you once before? Did A-Rod actually convince you that he never knew what he was taking or buying or putting into his body? If he did convince you and you believed him then what else are you going around living your life believing that isn’t true?

It is one thing to tell his story to a writer or to the new commissioner, Rob Manfred, behind closed doors. Or to do the same thing, again behind closed doors to Hal Steinbrenner of the Yankees and his team president, Randy Levine, and his general manager, Brian Cashman. It would have been quite another thing for Rodriguez to have answered questions out in the open without a lawyer present.

Poor, Mike Lupica. A-Rod didn’t hold a press conference, so Lupica is going to have to do some work and brainstorm and think of something to write in February in the worst month for sports. Without A-Rod, where is he going to get a few free 500-word columns from?

And that really wasn’t the visual he wanted, taking questions from the New York media and the national media, then having to stop for whispered conversations with his current attorney, Jim Sharp, before he might say something contradictory to what he has already told the feds; and what he might eventually say as a witness in upcoming Biogenesis-related trials for (Cousin) Yuri Sucart and a former Miami coach named Lazer Collazo.

“I served the longest suspension in the history of the League for PED use,” he writes.

Notice the language here. Rodriguez never uses the word steroids, the way he never used that word back in 2009 when he begged everybody for his first second chance. He doesn’t say “my” PED use. Just PED use. Alex Rodriguez remains as cute as his handwriting, and slicker than spit.

Does Mike Lupica know what A-Rod used exactly? Not all PEDs are steroids, just like not all rectangles are squares.

“I accept the fact that many of you will not believe my apology or anything I say at this point,” he writes. “I understand and that’s on me.”

There you have it, Rodriguez’s own weird version of accountability. He really is a beauty, a dream character, mostly in his own mind. Even as he asks the fans to believe how sorry he is for everything he’s done, he admits that the same fans to whom he is speaking probably don’t believe he’s really sorry. It will come out in the ESPN piece written by J.R. Moehringer that Alex is in therapy these days. Of course he is. It is about time, and better late than never, for somebody who really could be the buffet at a psychiatrist’s convention.

Maybe his idea of a confessional is whatever he has been saying to Moehringer who, and you can bank on this, surely will be as skeptical about Rodriguez’s ability to tell the truth, about everything except snowfall amounts, as anybody else who has spent significant time with him during his time on the stage.

But nobody gets Rodriguez’s Oprah moment now in some big room or hall or under some circus tent somewhere, with a roomful of Oprah Winfreys firing questions at him the way Oprah fired them at Alex’s patron saint, Lance Armstrong. He takes his message to his fans, whoever the hell they are at this point in what is left of his career.

Last year, I wrote Ryan Braun Deserves the A-Rod Treatment for Fake Apology and J.R. Moehringer wrote for ESPN, Ryan Braun “Won an MVP, got busted for steroids, twice, called the tester an anti-Semite, lied his testes off, made chumps of his best friends, including Aaron Rodgers, and still doesn’t inspire a scintilla of the ill will that follows Rodriguez around like a nuclear cloud.” So why is it that A-Rod is still the face of PEDs and this era? Why is he such a horrible person for using PEDs, but players like Braun can return to normalcy and someone like Andy Pettitte can have his number retired by the Yankees?

I haven’t come across any Yankees fans who don’t want A-Rod back. I’m sure they are out there, but they can easily be swayed by a few early-season “A-Bomb from A-Rod” drops from John Sterling. If A-Rod is productive and helps the Yankees win, there won’t be a fan who won’t root for him if it means Ws and there won’t be a fan who won’t be happy with the Yankees winning if it involves an admitted PED user. There isn’t a fan of any team who is willing to trade wins for losses because of a PED user.

“I’m ready to put this chapter behind me,” Rodriguez writes, in script, stopping himself from putting it into verse the way Amar’e Stoudemire did on his way out of town.

Most of the fans to whom Rodriguez spoke on Tuesday — and from the heart! — are probably wishing that there was some way for Stoudemire to take Alex Rodriguez back to Texas with him.

“Most of the fans” who Lupica is making up are probably not relating Alex Rodriguez to Amar’e Stoudemire.

A-Rod and the Knicks. That’s all Mike Lupica has. Well, that and trying to be a political writer over the last few years as well. And also the Yankee Stadium press ice cream. Those four things. (I think he might still have a radio show too? So maybe five?)

He writes an open letter the way Ray Rice wrote an open letter in the Baltimore Sun. Rice did it because he needs a job. Rodriguez has one, a real good one with the New York Yankees, at least $61 million still coming to him over the next few years. Bosch, his drug dealer? He goes to jail now for 48 months, three months shy of the maximum sentence he could have gotten for operating the kind of drug ring he was operating.

Alex Rodriguez used performance-enhancing drugs. Ray Rice punched a woman in the face. As you can see, we have two very similar people here.

A-Rod broke the rules to stay healthy and gain a competitive advantage. The same rules that were broken and the same competitive advantage gained by the stars of Mike Lupica’s book Summer of ’98. Ah, good old, 1998. The tag line on Lupica’s book is “When Homers Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball Reclaimed America.” We all remember that magical season when baseball was pure and clean and stand-up guys like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased down Roger Maris’ 37-year-old record. I can’t believe A-Rod would try to tarnish a game and completely disrespect fellow players like McGwire and Sosa by choosing to use performance-enhancing drugs.

The star of that ring, still batting cleanup there, still a big name at Biogenesis, was Alex Rodriguez. He doesn’t go to jail. He goes to spring training. Is this a great country or what?

Alex Rodriguez is a baseball player, who used performance-enhancing drugs and because he tarnished records he should go to jail. That’s what Mike Lupica wants. He wants A-Rod in jail and not in Tampa at spring training. Do not pass GO, A-Rod, and do not collect $200.

Does Lupica think all performance-enhancing drug or steroid users should go to jail? They must have illegally bought steroids or drugs or supplements and who do you buy them from? Drug dealers, of course. Forget people like Chris Davis who was suspended for taking Adderall, that he was once allowed to take and is now allowed to take again. Like Lupica said about A-Rod, notice the language Davis used when he admitted to using Adderall. He said Adderall instead of steroids and all PEDs are steroids, so that tells us that Chris Davis used steroids, which he must have bought from a drug dealer. But Chris Davis doesn’t go to jail. He gets to go to spring training in Sarasota. Is this a great country or what?

He was going to be baseball’s all-time home run champ. Even after he admitted to being a drug user, he managed to have his best baseball October and lead the Yankees to a World Series. Judge me on what I do going forward, he said back in 2009. That is exactly what everybody has done.

Andddddd there it is. Mike Lupica, like every old-school baseball nerd is still heartbroken that Alex Rodriguez didn’t turn out to be who they thought he would be and could be or who they thought he should be. He was supposed to be the star of this generation and maybe the best player ever. He was supposed to save the game and the home-run record from Barry Bonds, but instead he ended be just like Bonds. How dare a baseball player who once signed a 10-year, $252 million contract and opted out of it to sign a 10-year, $275 million contract let everyone down. We should all expect more out of someone who made $197,530.86 per game for two years (2009 and 2010) to play baseball.

Now he is back, panhandling for redemption and another second chance, trying to make one last first impression, the richest drug informant in all of baseball history. One more record for Alex Rodriguez.

Now he is back, with there years left on his contract, and a chance to do what he did six years ago when this happened: help the Yankees win the World Series. And if he does that, no one will care what he wrote in his letter or that he didn’t hold a press conference that Lupica wouldn’t have even attended, all so he could mail in another “column”.

Winning cures everything and the last time A-Rod was in this spot, he won.

Blogs • Yankees

Feb 11, 2015

The Latest Alex Rodriguez Apology

You know what happened the last time A-Rod used PEDs, lied about using them and then apologized? The Yankees won the World Series.

We have been here before with Alex Rodriguez. Six years ago, A-Rod apologized at spring training after telling Peter Gammons on ESPN that he used PEDs in 2001, 2002 and 2003 with Texas, but only after Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated told everyone that the man who could pass PED-user Barry Bonds’ home-run record was in fact a PED user himself.

I never believed that A-Rod stopped using PEDs before he got to the Yankees. If he had used them for three seasons in Texas, in which he hit 156 home runs with 395 RBIs, why would he stop taking anything that he took in Texas (and possibly Seattle) now that he was headed for a big market? If A-Rod truly wanted to play in Boston or New York after having watched his best friend Derek Jeter win four World Series in his first eight years in the league and after having watched all the attention placed on the 2003 ALCS as he was sitting home as AL MVP of a last-place 71-91 team, he certainly wasn’t going to risk a drop in production as he headed for either of baseball’s hottest markets as the focal point of the rivalry. Jesse Spano wasn’t about to stop using caffeine pills as she made a run at Stanford while also being part of Hot Sundae as they tried to become the girl version of New Kids on the Block and A-Rod wasn’t about to stop using whatever made him the best hitter in the league as he made a run at becoming the best player ever.

I didn’t care that A-Rod used PEDs in Texas, and since I never believed he stopped using them when he became a Yankee, I didn’t care about that either. And I certainly don’t care that he used them again, lied, got caught lying and is now admitting to his lies. I don’t care that he tried to sue the Yankees and withdrew his lawsuits or that the Yankees might have to pay him $6 million when he hits his sixth home run of the season.

The only thing I care about is that A-Rod’s off-the-field actions have once again caused all Yankees-related discussion to not be about actual baseball, and that discussion isn’t ending any time soon. We still have nine days until pitchers and catchers report and 14 days until the full team reports to Tampa and once the team reports, A-Rod will have to give another apology directed to his teammates and fans, identical to the one he gave six spring trainings ago. In a city where the basketball teams suck and the mainstream media pretends hockey doesn’t exist until the playoffs, the timing of A-Rod meeting with the Yankees couldn’t be better. When it comes to winter and A-Rod, Opening Day can’t come soon enough.

I won’t boo A-Rod on Opening Day because of what he did and I won’t boo him if he hits his 660th home run at the Stadium to tie Willie Mays or if he hits his 661st there to pass him the same way I didn’t boo him when he hit 600th there in 2010. (I would say I didn’t boo him when he hit his 500th either, but back then his quest for the record wasn’t tainted.) I won’t boo A-Rod for using PEDs or chasing an already-tainted record. I care about the Yankees winning and a healthy and good A-Rod helps the Yankees win. (But I would boo him if he went 0-for-32 or consistently came up short in a late-and-close situation.)

In the movie Celtic Pride, after Daniel Stern’s character Mike O’Hara splits up with his wife again, he has this exchange with Dan Akroyd’s character Jimmy Flaherty.

Mike: Carol and I split up again.

Jimmy: Really?

Mike: Yes, what are you smiling about?

Jimmy: Last time you broke up, the Celtics won the championship.

Mike: That thought crossed my mind.

So what am I smiling about? Well, the last time A-Rod got caught using PEDs, lied about it and then had to apologize, the Yankees went 103-59 in the regular season and won the World Series and A-Rod went 19-for-52 (.365) and hit six home runs with 18 RBIs in the postseason.

That thought crossed my mind.

Blogs • Opening Day • Yankees

Feb 10, 2015

The State of the Yankees’ Rotation

Here was the Yankees’ 2014 Opening Day rotation: 1. CC Sabathia 2. Hiroki Kuroda 3. Masahiro Tanaka 4. Ivan Nova 5. Michael Pineda And here is how many starts each of those pitchers made in

Here was the Yankees’ 2014 Opening Day rotation:

1. CC Sabathia
2. Hiroki Kuroda
3. Masahiro Tanaka
4. Ivan Nova
5. Michael Pineda

And here is how many starts each of those pitchers made in 2014:

1. CC Sabathia: 8
2. Hiroki Kuroda: 32
3. Masahiro Tanaka: 20
4. Ivan Nova: 4
5. Michael Pineda: 13

And here are the other pitchers who made at least one start for the Yankees in 2014:

David Phelps: 17
Brandon McCarthy: 14
Shane Greene: 14
Vidal Nuno: 14
Chase Whitley: 12
Chris Capuano: 12
Esmil Rogers: 1
Bryan Mitchell: 1

What does all of this mean? It means the 2014 Yankees got 85 starts from pitchers who weren’t in the Opening Day rotation and 53 percent of the season was started by pitchers who weren’t in the Opening Day rotation.

Despite 60 percent of the rotation missing nearly the entire season and 80 percent of it missing a lot of the season and despite the offense somehow being worse than 2013’s, which featured Travis Hafner, Vernon Wells, Kevin Youkilis and Lyle Overbay, the Yankees missed the playoffs by four games. With the five-team, two wild-card playoff format, the Yankees are always going to be in the mix for a playoff spot and over the last two years they have proved that if they can just stay afloat and even barely over .500, they will be in the playoff picture down the stretch.

For the last two years I would have done a lot of unimaginable things for the Yankees to have clinched one of the two wild-card berths. (That’s depressing to think about and write about considering the team went to the playoffs in 17 of 18 years from 1995-2012.) The same playoff format I vehemently spoke out against had become my best friend and the second wild card that I hated more than the idea of a pitch clock had become the Yankees’ entrance to the playoffs. Back in 2012, had I known the Yankees would be decimated by injuries for two straight years, I probably would have been leading the campaign to add a playoff team and turn a six-month, 162-game grind for two teams into a one-game playoff for a trip to the division series.

The problem is no one wants to be in the one-game playoff (especially the team that clinched the first wild card and wouldn’t have to play a one-game playoff if it were still 2012). If it’s a last resort, that’s one thing. But on Opening Day, no Yankees fan is saying, “I hope we get a wild-card berth this year!” That thought process is saved for Mets, Cubs, Blue Jays, Mariners and Twins fans. It’s all about winning the division and guaranteeing yourself a five-game series in October and not one game where anything can happen (Hello, Oakland) even if both World Series teams last year were wild-card winners.

This year the Yankees are using the same slogan they have for the last two years. I’m not talking about their “Our history. Your tradition.” I’m talking about the “Hope and If” mentality they have settled on, which is equivalent to “We hope we hit a 16-team parlay!” It’s the same strategy the 2013 Red Sox used and it worked out for them, so the Yankees have decided to bank on the idea that it can work for them by hoping that a combination of health and low-risk, high-reward players pay off and the big-name players play to their career numbers. “We hope this thing will go in our favor” and “If this happens we will be good”.

Right now, the Yankees’ infield is Mark Teixeira (.216/.313/.398), Stephen Drew (.162/.237/.299), Didi Gregorius (.226/.290/.363) and Chase Headley (.262/.371/.398). Their outfield is Brett Gardner (.256/.327/.422), Jacoby Ellsbury (.271/.328/.419) and Carlos Beltran (.233/.301/.402). There’s a good chance by Memorial Day I could be longing for the days of Overbay, Wells and Hafner. With an offense as unpredictable since … ever … the Yankees are going to have to heavily rely on their rotation to win low-scoring games. The issue there is that on paper the names in the rotation are attractive, but hearing about a devastating injury to the rotation that could destroy the rotation and derail the season could once again happy at any second.

I have never really liked James Shields and I never wanted the Yankees to sign him. I would have much rather had Jon Lester or Max Scherzer. But over the last week, as his signing somewhere became more imminent, I started to join the “Get me James Shields” movement for the sole reason that the Yankees’ rotation (and therefore season) hinges on the health of Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda, who made a combined 33 starts last season. So when Shields signed with the Padres for a not-so-ridiculous four years and $75 million, I wondered why the Yankees didn’t sign up the pitcher who hasn’t pitched less than 203 1/3 innings in any of his eight full seasons in the league and who is a reliable front-end starter.

Brian Cashman talked with Mike Francesa on WFAN on Friday about the overall state of the franchise heading into spring training next week, so I did the only thing I know how to do when Cashman speaks and that is to comment on his comments. This time I focused on his comments on the rotation.

On if he’s worried about Masahiro Tanaka.

“You have to be cautious, you have to be honest. There is risk, nonetheless, no matter what. Tanaka had a great winter. He finished the season as a healthy player. He wasn’t prescribed any different regimen because of what happened last year. He went back to his normal throwing routine, rest routine, all that stuff … We hope he can be Tanaka.”

Last year in my 2014 Yankees’ Order of Importance, Masahiro Tanaka was No. 5. (CC Sabathia was No. 1.) This year, Tanaka is going to be No. 1. When healthy, he is in the elite tier of starting pitchers in baseball. I wouldn’t take him over Clayton Kershaw or Felix Hernandez, but he is right there, right after them.

The problem is his health and the problem is that his elbow may or may not be one pitch away from putting him on the shelf for a calendar year and possibly destroying his career. That pitch could come on Feb. 21. It could come on April 6. It could come sometime in July. It could come in September. It may never come. Every time I sign on Twitter or hear Tanaka has a bullpen session or during any of his starts, there could be news that he is going to have to undergo Tommy John surgery, so I will have to live on the edge of my seat.

But like Cashman said, “There is risk, nonetheless, no matter what,” and that’s true of any pitcher.

On the durability of Michael Pineda.

“In terms of the shoulder, he had a healthy season. What we saw was very exciting, very promising and again, if he can maintain health and stay on the field we believe we’re going to have a very quality arm every five days to take the that position.”

I like to believe that Michael Pineda is going to pitch a full season for the Yankees at some point. Then again, I also believe that March 1 is the start of spring.

When Pineda pitched last season, he was great. He was as good as advertised when the Yankees traded for him three years ago and as good if not better than he was in the first half of 2011 with the Mariners. Watching a young starter consistently deliver front-end performances was refreshing after watching Phil Hughes do the exact opposite for seven years.

But the key with Pineda has always been health (or a total disregard for wear he places his pine tar). If he can finally pitch a full season for the Yankees for the first time in his four years with the team, they have a top No. 2 starter or even a No. 1-A. Another “if”.

On what he’s expecting from CC Sabathia and if he needs to reinvent himself.

“He’ll be a cautious guy for us in the spring just because of the surgery he came off on the knee. He’s working hard. I saw CC at the Stadium last week … There might be some tweaks here and there. Again, as these guys become older they make some adjustments. We saw Pettitte go through that. He’s an amazing pitcher. We believe he’s going to be a healthy player. We know pitchability is there. I don’t know if we’re going to see the No. 1 or 2, but we do expect to get the 200 innings and the high-end pitchability.”

(My computer knows “pitchability” is a word because of these Brian Cashman “State of the Yankees” addresses.)

Here’s what I wrote about CC Sabathia in the 2014 Yankees’ Order of Importance when I ranked him No. 1:

He’s still No. 1 on the list and has been since he got here in 2009. The only way it will change is if Sabathia really hasn’t figured out how to pitch with less velocity like his former teammate Andy Pettitte and his so-called best friend Cliff Lee (who he couldn’t convince to come here after the 2010 seas0n). If Sabathia tries to pitch with a power-pitcher mentality and tries to pitch the way he did pre-2013 then he won’t be No. 1 on this list a year from now. If he isn’t No. 1 on this list a year from now then the 2014 season will end the same way the 2013 season did.

Apparently, Cashman and I are on the same page when it comes to CC needing to learn how to pitch and realizing that he can’t just blow people away when he needs to get out of a jam anymore.

The thing to notice here is how confident Cashman is that CC is healthy and that he will give the Yankees 200 innings. Usually, Cashman uses words like “hope” to project his players’ seasons, but his word choice of “believe” and “expect” make me think that Sabathia will be a full-season pitcher. What kind of full-season pitcher?

It would be nice if CC could be 2009-2012 CC, but there’s a better chance it’s going to be 60 degrees here in New York tomorrow than there is of that happening. But 2013-2014 CC isn’t going to cut it. We need something between 2012 (15-6, 3.38) and 2013 (14-13, 4.78). Somewhere between that would be 14.5 wins, 9.5 losses and a 4.08 ERA. Sign me up right now for 15-10, 4.08. Please sign me up for that right now.

On what he likes about Nathan Eovaldi.

“He’s not a finished product. He’s got a big arm. I know every time I talk to Larry, he’s excited about the player’s makeup, work ethic … The player is motivated. He hit 200 innings last year and 24 years old. So again we have someone with that type of ability, you connect him with Larry, it gives you a chance to dream a little bit more.”

Clearly, Cashman thinks highly of Larry Rothschild.

I was devastated when the Yankees traded Martin Prado. He was the most reliable hitter in the 36 games he played for the Yankees last year. He was supposed to be the most important piece of Joe Girardi’s lineup for the next two years since he has played first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field and right field in his career. But now he is a Marlin.

If Eovaldi can put it all together as a hard-throwing, 24-year-old starting pitcher he will be much more valuable than the 31-year-old Prado. But like most of the Yankees, he’s an unknown, with one full season of starts in his career (2014) and in that season he allowed the most hits (223) in the league.

For a third straight year, the offense is full of question marks that the Yankees hope go their way, and because the offense is full of overpaid underachievers, the Yankees will again rely on the rotation to carry them. The 2015 Yankees: Hope and If.

Podcasts • Yankees

Dec 16, 2014

Podcast: Chad Jennings

The Yankees lost David Robertson and Brandon McCarthy to free agency and the team’s offseason strategy seems to be a questionable one so far.

It’s been a so-so offseason for the Yankees so far. They got their shortstop of the future, signed an elite reliever and re-signed their third basemen, but let their homegrown closer and reliable starter/midseason reclamation project leave in free agency. They re-signed Chris Capuano to provide some rotation stability, but it’s going to take more than an addition of the veteran left-hander to the rotation for the 2015 Yankees to get to where they want to be. Unless where they want to be is where they have been the last two seasons.

Chad Jennings, the Yankees beat writer for The Journal News and the LoHud Yankees Blog, joined me to talk about the Yankees’ offseason and their decision to not re-sign David Robertson and to a lesser extent Brandon McCarthy, how the remaining list of question marks on the team can be answered and what the level of comfort should be for Yankees fans with two months until spring training.

Blogs • Yankees

Dec 16, 2014

The State of the Yankees: Post-Winter Meetings Edition

The 2015 Yankees’ roster is starting to take shape and it’s easing my pre-Winter Meetings fears.

The 2015 Yankees are starting to come together. Maybe not necessarily in the way I hoped they would be coming together, but at least they are coming together and some of the questions are being answered and the holes being filled.

Before the winter meetings started, I wrote The State of the Yankees: Winter Meetings Edition and commented on Brian Cashman’s recent comments to Mike Francesa. Now that the winter meetings are over, I thought it would be good to look at the current state of the team now that it’s more of a team by looking at three Yankees-related players to sign in the last week.

Let’s start with the worst part of the past week and work out way up, so that we can end things on a positive note.

The Ugly
David Robertson should have never been a free agent. He should have been taken care of prior to the end of the 2014 season and therefore he shouldn’t be the White Sox closer right now. But the Yankees gambled and lost with a homegrown impending free agent and decided to make a lateral move by bringing in Andrew Miller, who is pretty much a left-handed Robertson. I wanted both Robertson and Miller this offseason and if I had my pick between the two, I would have picked Robertson, but the Yankees got only one and now their bullpen is in the same shape it was in last year. It’s currently Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller and then the Goof Troop, which features a combination of Shawn Kelley and Adam Warren, neither of which I would trust to tell me the day of the week. Maybe Justin Wilson ends up being reliable or someone else steps up and becomes a trusted commodity for 2015 since the majority of relievers work on a year-to-year consistence basis. But if no one steps up, on the days when Betances or Miller are unavailable, it’s going to be another mental and emotional grind watching the Yankees’ latest collection of misfits try to navigate their way through the final outs of games the Yankees are winning.

The idea of having Robertson and Betances and Miller to lock up games after the sixth and asking a rotation that aside from Masahiro Tanaka has trouble going past the sixth inning anyway is such a beautiful idea that it makes me physically sick to think that it could have happened and now it won’t. And it could have easily happened. The White Sox gave Robertson four years and $46 million. The Yankees gave Andrew Miller four years and $36 million. So for $46 million, the Yankees could have had the best on-paper bullpen in the entire league and arguably their best bullpen since … well, ever. If you think $46 million is a lot of money to give to someone to pitch about 65 innings, just remember that last year, the Yankees gave a five-year, $85 million deal to Brian McCann with catcher being the deepest position in their farm system, three years and $45 million to a then-36-year-old Carlos Beltran and oddly enough he broke down, couldn’t throw a baseball and played in only 109 games and seven years, $153 million to Jacoby Ellsbury, which was money that could have been used to re-sign Robinson Cano. The Yankees could have re-signed Robertson, they just didn’t want to, and I’m not sure why.

So, goodbye, David Robertson. I will remember him becoming David “Copperfield” Robertson (it has always worked better than those who use “Houdini”) in Game 2 of the 2009 ALDS when he escaped the bases-loaded, no-out jam to extend the game before Mark Teixeira’s walk-off home run, which to date is one of only about two or three positive things Teixeira has done in four postseasons with the Yankees. Robertson proved himself as a middle reliever, the go-to seventh-inning guy, the best setup man in the league and then one of the most reliable closers in the game. Goodbye, David Robertson. You will be missed.

The Bad
I wanted Brandon McCarthy back and thought the Yankees should have extended him before the end of the season, so that like Robertson, we never get to this point. (The same goes for the next and last person in this column.) But I understand the Yankees not wanting to invest in a multiyear deal with a pitcher with a history of varied success in the league and injury problems. So McCarthy hit the open market and got paid (four years, $48 million from the Dodgers) more than double what he has made in his career to date. I don’t have a problem with the Yankees not signing McCarthy, but I have a problem with Cashman saying the Dodgers “went to a level we couldn’t play on” as if the Yankees suddenly became the Rays or A’s. Maybe instead of “couldn’t” he could have said “didn’t want to” so that I didn’t have to worry that the Yankees are suddenly poor. It probably wouldn’t have been in the Yankees’ best interest to give a 31-year-old, coming off his only full season as a starter in the league, a contract that will end he’s 35. Then again, the Yankees’ current rotation is Masahiro Tanaka, who could be out for at least a year any time he throws a pitch (though I guess you could say that about any pitcher), Michael Pineda, who has made 13 starts in three years a Yankee (all last season) and CC Sabathia, who was rumored to have a career-ending injury last year and hasn’t looked like CC Sabathia since the end of 2012. When you look at a rotation that is full of question marks, a $12-million-per-year starter isn’t that outrageous, even given McCarthy’s spotty history.

The Yankees have to bolster their rotation. Chris Capuano is a good insurance policy and Hiroki Kuroda would be a nice addition and certainly provide stability, but those two aren’t going to take the Yankees to where they need to be. With Jon Lester off the board, that leaves Max Scherzer (yes, please) and James Shields (ehh, OK) as the only two free-agent starters left that can change my comfort level on the 2015 Yankees.

The Good
Welcome back, Chase Headley! If I had done a Yankees’ Offseason To-Do List, Headley might have been No. 1 because he allows the Yankees so much more flexibility when he’s in the lineup. Here is the Yankees’ Opening Day infield without Headley:

1B – Mark Teixeira
2B – Martin Prado or Rookie
3B – Alex Rodriguez or Martin Prado
SS – Didi Gregorius

And here’s the Yankees’ Opening Day infield with Chase Headley:

1B – Mark Teixeira
2B – Martin Prado
3B – Chase Headley
SS – Didi Gregorius

Headley being back on the Yankees means that both Rob Refsnyder and Jose Pirela will get more time in the minors, Martin Prado can play second or wherever he’s needed and not be forced to play only third base with A-Rod being an unknown and A-Rod can continue to be an unknown and not someone who is needed to be healthy and productive.

The four-year, $52 million deal for Headley might be too much, but as I always say, “It’s not my money,” and sometimes you have to overpay for things in the time of need. Last week I bought a Christmas tree in the Upper East Side and if I were to build a village around it with those light-up figurines, people might think the tree is part of the village. But my apartment needed a tree, that was the going rate for a tree of that size since the next size was double in price and then an additional fee or a stand that I wasn’t going to save, so I bought that tree. For the same price, outside the city, I could have bought a 12-foot tree or a forest of similar trees. But like the free-agent market this offseason, the Christmas tree market isn’t exactly a bargain.

I think we can all agree that there was never a four-year, $65 million deal on the table for Headley and that was a negotiating ploy. I know Cashman said, “Chase wants to be a Yankee,” and if he did take a 20 percent pay cut to be a Yankee then he is a legend in my book and I will buy a Chase Headley shersey right now, but I have a hard time believing the guy who was born in Colorado, grew up in Colorado, went to college in Tenneessee and California and played 908 games for the Padres before playing 58 games for the Yankees wanted to be a Yankee so bad that he was willing to leave $13 million on the table. But like I said, if he really did, I think I found my new favorite player in the post-Derek Jeter era. He did say he took less money to be a Yankee and maybe that $13 million is the difference he is talking about, so for now, Chase Headley is my favorite Yankee as usher in this new era.

Where is that era taking me? I have no idea. A little over a week ago, I said that on a scale of a 1 to 10, I was a 10 before the Yankees traded for Didi Gregorius and signed Andrew Miller and then that 10 became a 7. The Yankees didn’t re-sign Robertson or McCarthy and the rotation still scares me more than the thought of the Yankees relying on A-Rod to provide middle-of-the-order power, but for now I’m a 5 and with a couple of months to go until spring training, a 5 isn’t the worst place to be.