That game sucked. Kuroda has been pretty bad. I’m worried about the starting rotation.

I love how Toronto entered the game on a three game losing streak and in a hitting slump and exited it looking like the best team in baseball.

Actually, no, I don’t.

Mariano Rivera isn’t walking through that door. Michael Pineda isn’t walking through that door.

But Cody Eppley and Jayson Nix have walked thru that door.

Did anyone watch the last four innings? I watched some Joey Gallo farns on BIO. Danny Greene from Cleveland. 8 seconds of the sixers game. Fun evening.

Meet the New nE same as the old nE making 2 errors at 3b in AAA

Darvish, 7 K 2 BB 1 ER. in 7 2/3. Sigh.

[7] Seriously.

For a second I thought the headline read “Don Slaught helps Drabek drop Yankees,” and thought they’d lost to the ‘91 Pirates.

It’s a pity the end of the world is only set for December. 4 more months of dreadful Yankee baseball.

I am actually looking foward to a Phil Hughes start.

There I said it.

It vexes me.  I’m terribly vexed.

Actually, wait, no I’m not.  I’m just starting to not give a shit.

[He says, until the next game]

Is there anybody on this roster with any upside? It’s glutted with guys either at their peak and on the wrong side of their peak. I think we would all be more excited and entertained if Jesus or Pineda was actually playing regularly. High end young players are scarce on this team, and the front office has been reluctant to expose some of their more successful prospect to major league time even with their issues in the bullpen and the rotation. Cashman and Girardi seems to be recycling fungible veteran free agents more than they have in the past. This is not a good sign for the farm system.

[1] Pettitte’s return is the new Clemens return.

[6] Send him down to AA to rebuild his confidence.

And to think, we dealt Montero for Pinata because Nunez was too future-value-ey.

[7] Sometimes, when the hype about pitchers like Dwarvish comes along, the hype is right.

[11] I’m not looking forward to any starts. This is the year of Buck’s revenge.

[13] The price of winning.  I guess.  I don’t know.  The standard reply is that the Yankees don’t get good draft picks because they’re too busy winning.  Also teams don’t typically trade prospects for prospects.  But that only goes so far.

I also think the Yankees are poor talent evaluators.  Like when they dumped a pile of AAAA arms and a decent OF prospect for a league average journeyman OFer that was having a helluva hot streak (who then promptly plummeted back to earth).  Or when they dumped three useful parts for Javy Vazquez (again) and Boone Logan (who is nice, but is he that much better than Mike Dunn could have been?).  Or when they signed Rafael Soriano to be the 8th inning guy (though, maybe they saw the future and realized that they would need a back-up back-up closer this year - not that they’ll be in any save situations though).  Even as much as I like Granderson (and his newly developed power stroke) - the Yankees had an excellent defensive CFer in Gardner and nice prospective one in Jackson.  So they traded away Ajax and IPK who hadn’t had any success in NY, but it is now 4th in the NL Cy Young voting in AZ.  In hindsight, the Yankees gave up 17 cheap WAR for 9.3 non-cheap WAR.

What I think the Yankees are running into is the Win Now mantra finally biting them in the ass combined with MLB’s efforts to target the Yankee’s financial advantage. 

It’s a complicated situation all around made worse by a rash of injuries.

shall we play a game?

20-17
21-19
25-13
20-17

Is there anybody on this roster with any upside?

Really, aside from the established guys who are under-performing who you hope at best can be closer to their projections there’s only Nova,  Hughes and Phelps.  That’s about it, and it’s part of what makes this team kind of boring.  I guess Pineda would have fit in this group if his career wasn’t in jeopardy.

Yeah, Ibanez is outperforming Jesus Montero, but it’d be more fun to watch Montero and think about the fact that he probably has 3 or 4 more years of development in front him.

I also think the Yankees are poor talent evaluators.  Like when they dumped a pile of AAAA arms and a decent OF prospect for a league average journeyman OFer that was having a helluva hot streak (who then promptly plummeted back to earth).

That’s not fair.  They also got a lefty who threw off flat ground for three seasons when they inexplicably declined his one year option so they could sign him for three years.  Game 6 of the 2009 World Series was sweet though…

If the injuries and starting pitching continue at the current rates we’ll get to see the entire Yankees MiL pitching staff. So we can look forward to that!

If they Yankees had gotten Darvish, he would have been awful.

No takers here…but the Yanks’ record right now is identical to their record at this time in 2009.

[20] and this is practically the same team - just three years older and in various stages of decline.

Arod OPS since 2009:
.933
.847
.823
.795

Teixeira’s OPS since 2009:
.948
.865
.835
.687

Other differences, Pettitte is 3 years older and hasn’t pitched in a year and a half, AJ was inexplicably good in 2009, Rivera is out for the season, Posada’s near .900 OPS has been replaced by Martin’s .632.  On the plus side, Granderson is much better offensively than Melky was in CF and Swisher can be reasonably be expected to replicate his output.  But, the mother of all corrections outstanding, this team is not the 2009 Yankees and I wouldn’t bet a dollar on them winning a playoff series let alone winning the whole shooting match.

[19] Without going into the stats, it seems to me that most Japanese league pitchers come over and have solid-to-spectacular first years and then tail off.

[21] Well, luckily playoff series betting is essentially the same as rolling dice in craps, so as usual the key is just getting there.

It could easily be argued that the Yankees starting pitching has more upside than 2009, despite the advancing years.  Their bullpen, even with the loss of Rivera, remains an asset.

I guess I see the Rangers as the class of the AL this year, but don’t see the Yankees really being that far off.  My larger point is that the 2009 team started off with the same record…this team, on paper, projected to be one of the best in the AL this year, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t continue to be the case.  It’s a long season.

this team, on paper, projected to be one of the best in the AL this year, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t continue to be the case.

Some of the key assumptions in that projection have changed.  I’m in training this week at work and can’t really spend much time blogging, but I am going to try and do a revised estimate of the team’s strength next week.  My guess is they’re more like an 86-88 win team right now.