Not sure how much better it is going to get. Tex looks bad going on about two full seasons - at least batting lefty. Arod is getting old and while every nowe and then hits a bomb and has a nioce game he can’t seem to maintain it and get hot for a week or two or three like he used to. Cano has GOT to come out of it, right? But if that is your 3-4-5 the team is not going to win the east. And their DH position is pathetic. Too bad they haven;t had a young player who can hit in their system for years (oh yeah they did…)

Same shit, different start.  Looks good, then the bloop & the blast.  Man, when Hughes throws a mistake, people do not miss it.  Some guys hang a pitch and it gets popped up or ripped foul.  Not Hughesy!  No.  His get squared up & hit to the moon.  I was momentarily excited about his velo, too.  Silly me.

Playing Nunez in the OF: what I said yesterday.  Stupid.

But it didn’t really matter, because the offense stunk.  Martin at DH, Nunez in LF… ugh.  They need Gardner & Swish back.

[1] That wound is going to be open and copiously salted for a long time.

But if that is your 3-4-5 the team is not going to win the east.

Eh, no one in the East looks any better to me.  They’ve scored enough runs to win most nights, if they’d gotten better starting pitching they’d be in first pretty easily.

Yeah, giving up Montero stunk, but where would they be without Pineda?

Not excited at all by this team except when CC pitches.

Call me when Hughes is a reliever.  Was not signing Yu the decision that will cost Cashman his job?

How can this offense look so bad when it’s projected to score so many runs… and appears to be doing a reasonable facsimile thereof?

It was nice to see Hughes throwing hard in the early innings (albeit on GameDay), but seems like the velo dropped off as the game went on.  I wonder if his plan was to go all-out in the first just to do whatever he could to avoid the early hook.

Frustrating game, but I’m not worried about the offense.  It’s just a case of a couple of guys missing from the lineup and a couple more of them slumping.  They have enough hitters that they can usually count on 4-5 of them swinging the bat well at any given time, thus avoiding the dreaded team slump.

Was not signing Yu the decision that will cost Cashman his job?

I’m not sure that’s on Cashman.  It really depends on whether he pushed for it and was told it didn’t fit in the budget.

But I’d sure like this team more if they had Darvish in the rotation and Montero at DH/backup C.

edit: Or C.J. Wilson + Montero.

It’s just a case of a couple of guys missing from the lineup and a couple more of them slumping.

Yeah.  Missing 2/3 of arguably the best OF in baseball is not a good thing.

Amazing how good Swisher’s fielding looks after you’ve seen the alternatives.

[8] They logic on Yu was high risk. The logic on Wilson was…not risk…musta had some reason. Oh yeah, cost. So they went with dealing Noesi and Montero for Pinata. For the surefire, can’t miss rookie pitcher, and those are always sure things.

Noesi is in the rotation. We could use him right about now, and beyond, regardless (but especially) what might happen with Pettitte. Because you still have two clunkers to kick to the curb in Garcia and Hughes. You can never have enough starting pitching.

In the interest of hindsight, how does what they pay for Jones and Iguana, versus keeping Montero as DH, affect your ability to grab Wilson or Yu ? Edit: I mean budget-wise.

In the interest of hindsight, how does what they pay for Jones and Iguana, versus keeping Montero as DH, affect your ability to grab Wilson or Yu ? Edit: I mean budget-wise.

Darvish’s salaries by season:

2012: $5.5 million
2013: $9.5 million
2014: $10 million
2015: $10 million
2016: $10 million
2017: $11 million

This doesn’t include the posting fee, which doesn’t count against the salary cap.

Wilson probably would have cost the Yankees $20M per season, but he might be worth it.

Jones is on pace for 280 PA, Ibanez on pace for 455.  They both get bonuses for PA which would put the total expenditure for them at $6,060,000 for 2012.

It’s not very likely they could have gotten Darvish or Wilson and stayed under the 2014 $189M target without letting both Cano and Granderson walk.  Of course having Montero may have made it easier to let them do so.

It’s fair to say this offseason was a bad one.  Maybe not as bad as the 2003-2004 offseason that saw them signing Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright and Tony Womack, but it might be the second worst-one of the last decade.

Thanks SG. I kind of felt intuitively it would turn out that way.

It’s fair to say this offseason was a bad one.  Maybe not as bad as the 2003-2004 offseason that saw them signing Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright and Tony Womack, but it might be the second worst-one of the last decade.

Not to pick a nit, but technically it IS the worst offseason of the decade, so far. 03-04 was in the prior decade, now closed, so it will stand as the worst of that decade*, and they’ll never take that away from us.

*Non-ARod Opt-Out Division

[12] Pay him $40M this year, $1M/y going forward.

[14] Is probably intended facetiously, but if the alleged strategy is to run above the luxury tax most years, but dip below every third or fourth year to reset the progressive penalties or something, couldn’t they structure their longer term deals with peaks and dips that synchronize ? So a 3 year deal always has, say, two years at 40% of contract value and one year at 20% ? Just synch the 20% years to coincide in ‘14, ‘17, ‘20 and have the total payroll dip below the line in those years ?

[14, 15]  I feel sure Bud would disallow such deals.

Games like last night’s are just depressing.  Hughes wasn’t even horrible, though I am still excited to see him back in the bullpen.  But everything was kind of meh.

Anybody been checking in at PB?  Things kind of falling apart over there.

[15] My understanding is that the luxury tax is based on the AAV of contracts, so as to prevent what you are suggesting.

[14] Is probably intended facetiously, but if the alleged strategy is to run above the luxury tax most years, but dip below every third or fourth year to reset the progressive penalties or something, couldn’t they structure their longer term deals with peaks and dips that synchronize ?

Isn’t it based on average annual value?  Not sure if that includes years pre-2014 or not though.

My hypothesis is that Kei Igawa and Dice-K to a lesser extent are the reasons the Yankees didn’t spend the money on Darvish.

Not defensible rationally.

[19] AAV for all years.  So front-loading, backloading, signing bonuses, etc don’t matter.  They made a change recently for performance bonuses and how that is calculated in, but I’m not sure exactly how it would work.  However, I am sure that any deal that was obvious to circumvent the luxury tax, Bud would veto…

For all those cursing Cashman for not signing Yu after 1 month, Dice-K was good his first year too.  Just sayin’.

Matsuzaka was never as good as Darvish in Japan, and Darvish is bigger than him and has better stuff.

Other than that, sure.

[20] Perhaps so.  But then the Montero-Pineda deal was defensible rationally, and look where that got us! 

-Smokes objective pipe, rubs crystal ball- In the year 2014… Gary Sanchez is the starting catcher. Campos and Pineda comprise two fifths of the rotation. Montero tops out under an .850 OPS and does not improve defensively. -takes long toke- Oh yeah….

23 - Agree. I’m just positing that the NYY Organization said to themselves, let’s not get burned by another Japanese pitcher.

23 - Agree. I’m just positing that the NYY Organization said to themselves, let’s not get burned by another Japanese pitcher.

I agree that this was probably their thought process.  I’ll also say that if they’re going to lump every pitcher from one country into the same bucket, then they’re idiots and I’d rather see a new organization.

I agree with [22].  Darvish certainly looks good so far, but I don’t think it’s fair to draw any firm conclusions about his long-term value after one month of data.

[27] Add to that the strong possibility that getting Igawa in the first place was a panic-reaction to losing out on Dice-K.  Knee-jerk, followed by knee-jerk.

Matsuzaka was never as good as Darvish in Japan, and Darvish is bigger than him and has better stuff.

Other than that, sure.

Darvish pitched in significantly lower run environments.  He was also much better his first month than Darvish has been.

So in conclusion, the Yankees screwed up and we’re back to complaining?

Phew.

[32] sounds about right.

At least Hughes seems to have abandoned his cutter.  Now he needs to figure out how to not throw 25 pitches an inning.

[32] Get shelled in the first inning and yanked after 20 pitches in the second ?