Many, if not most Yankee fans are licking their wounds right now over their dreams of seeing Cliff Lee in a Yankee uniform being dashed by his decision to sign with the Phillies. I wanted to add a few notes of perspective for those who think the Yankee chances for next year and beyond are greatly diminished.
1-Long term deals on pitchers rarely work out well
Sam Borden of LoHud discusses this in his column this morning. He writes:
The rejection is a blessing. The Yankees may not think so. Not right now, at least. But they also thought giving Carl Pavano a four-deal was going to work out.
Examples like that are littered all over baseball, carcasses of long-term deals for pitchers that went sour. Mike Hampton. Kevin Brown. Russ Ortiz. Barry Zito. Did the Yankees get a positive return on their deal with Mike Mussina? Sure. But let’s not act like they’ve got a great batting average on these deals, either. Kei Igawa hasn’t exactly been a good investment for $46 million. A.J. Burnett sure doesn’t look like one, either, at just about twice that price.
If Lee had signed with the Yanks, we’d be reading article after article about all the things that could go wrong, and how rarely these deals go right. Remember what wrote recently, that when the money gets as crazy as this, the winner most often the team that finishes 2nd in the bidding. You’re paying for past performance for a 32 year old pitcher.
2-The Yanks aren’t worse off today
As difficult as it may be to hear right now, the Yanks haven’t suffered any significant losses from the team that went to the ALCS this past year. The 2011 Yankees aren’t any worse than the 2010 team, they just didn’t get any better by adding Lee. Here’s the players that the Yanks have lost so far this off season from last year’s roster:
Javier Vazquez-Marlins
Lance Berkman-Cardinals
Juan Miranda-Diamondbacks
Do any of those losses concern you? Nope. There are still some key potential losses in Andy Pettitte and Kerry Wood, but until they sign with other teams (or in Andy’s case officially retire) they are still in play. Brian Cashman now has an extra 23 mil to play with, and we all know he’s going to spend some if not all of it to improve the club. It’s also worth noting that two of their main rivals from 2010, the Texas Rangers (Lee) and Tampa Bay Rays (Crawford, Soriano, Pena) have suffered huge losses and have much work to do if they just hope to stay even. The field is worse, and while the Red Sox have improved lets not forget they finished with 89 wins and were 7 games back last year. The Sox needed to improve to catch up.
3-Lee would guarantee nothing
The 1990s Atlanta Braves teams had starting rotation that featured 3 future Hall of Famers in Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, and was rounded out by some fine pitchers like Steve Avery, Denny Neagle and Kevin Millwood. The won 104 games in 1993 and 100+ games for three straight years from 1997-1999. The have one World Series championship to show for a decade of dominating the National League. Further, the team that went all the way in 1995 wasn’t one of their best editions, going 90-54 in the regular season. Point being, we’ve seen All-Star rotations assembled before and it doesn’t necessarily translate into winning championships. It may improve your odds a bit, but we all know the playoffs are still a crapshoot. Adding Lee simply doesn’t mean as much as most fans would like to think it does.
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I’m not buying #2.
Javy was a huge disappointment overall, but from May-June he was actually pretty good and surprisingly a stabalizing force in the rotation. If Pettitte retires, I can’t put any faith in Nova or Mitre to step up and provide any form of consistant production. If Pettitte retires, the rotation will have become significantly worse.
Also, the Red Sox were an 89 win team last year after suffering injuries at practically every position. I can’t help but wonder whether they would have been at about the same record as the Yanks or Rays last year if they weren’t so blitzed with freak injuries to their key players. This year, their team improved and we cannot bank on their group getting totally disabled to the same capacity that we can bank on our squad staying totally healthy. Last year’s results aren’t that relevant frankly.
As good as Javy was for that stretch, he was equally horrendous before and afterward. He didn’t give the team much of a chance to win during his down times, so overall I can’t see his contributions as a positive. 10-10 with a 5.32 ERA (5.56 FIP) is something you should be able to replicate, if not improve upon with someone like Ivan Nova.
On the Red Sox, some injuries were freakish (Youkilis, Ellsbury) but others were all too predictable. Josh Beckett has been hurt and missed time each of the past few seasons. Ditto for Dice-K, whose innings load appears to be catching up with him.Mike Cameron is an aging player who can’t be expected to play everyday at this point of his career. Pedroia is too small too hold up very long as an everyday player. Lackey’s health history was shaky enough that they added a clause in his contract. While I agree last year was excessive, its reasonable to question many key players next year as well.
Well, if you are projecting injuries based on Dice-K’s innings and Cameron’s age, then you must be anticipating huge losses of playing time for the more ancient Yankees this year. And the key injuries to the Sox were certainly not Cameron and our #5 starter. The key injuries were to guys in their prime: Youklis, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Martinez, the heart of the lineup.
I do expect Alex and Posada to miss time, as they have the past few years. Despite that the Yanks still won 95 games last year . When Jeter or Mariano start spending time on the DL, we’ll have to consider them as well . But up to now, they haven’t .
Although the Red Sox are stronger, we should not overrate them. They are also losing two of their most productive bats from last season in Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre. As for their starters, it would be difficult to find a more overrated (and overpaid) group than Beckett, DiceK, and Lackey. Their interest in Blanton indicates their own misgivings about their rotation. And Papelbon, the meltdown-in-waiting, is still their closer.
To Steve S’s post, one might add a fourth point, which many of us have noted: the Yankee rotation you see today is probably not the one that will take the field in 2011, and most certainly not the one that will be there after the trade deadline.
Agree about Beckett, Lackey and Dice-K being overpaid, at least last season. But the top of the rotation (Lester and Buchholz) is surely the most UNDER-paid top two in baseball. So it goes. Cashman may find a way to put together a better 3-4-5 group than the Red Sox. But even with their struggles, the Sox rotation, at this point at least, is way ahead.
Agree completely that adding Gonzalez and Crawford is only a small step up from last year’s production from Martinez and Beltre.
Way ahead? Hahdly as they say in bahsten. beckett, lackey, matsusaka, lester, bucholtz.
sabathia, pettitte, hughes, burnett, nova. Not as far apart as you claim.
Are you counting on Pettitte the way so many Yankee fans were counting on Lee? Not a done deal by any means…
Wood didn’t have enough innings to be missed all that much.
I have a good feeling about AJ having a bounce back year. He’s had better seasons in the past and isn’t that old.
I think adding Montero’s bat will give our offense a pretty good bump.
I definitely agree about us probably not being any worse than last year, and having TB slide down a notch makes another postseason appearance quite possible.
The simple fact that Lee”s not on a strong AL team softens the personal disappointment. Cashman pulled out all the stops and Lee was set up to receive the biggest contract for a Yankees starter. I can get onboard with the “patience” is a virtue train. However, Cashman cannot field a team starting both Nova and Mitre. That simply cannot happen. If Pettitte doesn’t come back, a move will have to be made out of necessity.
If Garza gets traded, the Rays are definitely taking a flier on 2011 and will be rolling with a young rotation where there is a big drop off from David Price to their new #2. That said, the Rays rotation should be darn formidable in 2012 as Hellickson and Niemann get additional seasoning.
Ain’t no chance in h-e-double hockey sticks that Mitre is in the rotation.
Dollars to doughnuts.
Have to disagree with some of the general thrust of this post. While the signing of Lee would not have guaranteed anything, it very likely would have significantly improved post-season probabilities, which is what Yankee baseball is all about, for the next 3-4 years at a minimum. Sure with Tampa and Texas both diminished, the Yankees are quite likely to make the play-offs even with a somewhat less than stellar starting staff. However, as currently constituted, making it through three rounds of the play-offs is an unlikely proposition. Just to demonstrate how Lee changes the equation, if he had been with the Yankees instead of the Rangers last year it is hard to conceive of the Rangers winning that series and the Yankees would have entered the WS with starting pitching virtually on a par with the Giants, with a far superior team in the field and a better closer. In other words, big favorites. Without him or a reasonable facsimile, this is not the case.
Agree that 7 years is a long time to give to a pitcher and in a perfect world it’s a mistake because it is more likely than not his 6th and 7th year’s performance will not match the value of the contract. However, there is some historical precedent as shown last week that a pitcher can maintain a high level of performance through the age of 38 and all we have to do is look back to 2009 to see how a 37 year lefty can be pivotal in helping a team win a WS. Further, it is hard to project, even in a worse case scenario, how much Lee’s contract would have hampered the Yankees in its latter stages. By 2016 and moving forward, Posada, Mariano, Burnett, Jeter, possibly CC and Texeira will be gone and a whole new set of players and most likely new salary parameters for the team will be in place. Impossible to analyze
However, in the short run (2011-2013), the absence of Lee or an equivalent is a major loss in trying to win another WS.
Also, as a consolation… at least we didn’t give up a top prospect to grab him for last years playoffs only and not win anything ala Texas Rangers