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Guest Column: Aceves is the new Mendoza

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The following is a guest post by Rebecca Glass. RAB regulars may know her better as Aunt Becca-Optimist Prime. While not chatting up a storm on RAB, Rebecca maintains her own site at This Purist Bleeds Pinstripes. Any readers interested in submitting guest posts can contact me via e-mail at ben at riveraveblues dot com.

During Thursday’s game, Ken Singleton asked Michael Kay if he remembered Ramiro Mendoza. Kay sputtered for a minute, wondering why Singleton would ask him such an obvious question before Singleton corrected himself and asked after Mario Mendoza.

While the exchange was innocuous, just the mention of the name “Ramiro Mendoza” while Alfredo Aceves was on the mound seemed, at the very least, apropos.

***

The long man is traditionally the bullpen’s least important reliever: to be used in mop-up duty, low-leverage type situations when the starter’s appearance is cut short due to ineffectiveness or injury, and the manager needs an arm to abuse for an inning or five. Some long men are quite good. Some…well, some you end up with a 20-1 Twins win over the White Sox or that game where Texas scored 30 runs against Baltimore.

Typically, long men are the least acknowledged players on a team because when things are going well, they don’t appear. When a starter gives inning and the set-up men and closer do their jobs, the long man becomes redundant.

Still, the Yankees should know — perhaps more than any other team — that a good long man can make all the difference in the world. Even when things are going right.

The most underrated player of the Yankees during the “Dynasty Years” may very well have been their long man, Ramiro Mendoza. It wasn’t that Ramiro Mendoza was an exceptionally good pitcher–he had a career ERA of 4.30 and WHIP of 1.34 , but that Mendoza was more than a long man.

He didn’t just come in and mop up; he could spot start, throw short relief and do pretty much whatever the Yankees needed of him that day. The day after, he could then do something completely different and perform all of these roles to a standard of general competency.

Mendoza’s number will never be retired by the Yankees and only hard core fans beyond our generation will ever know his name. But I’m not entirely sure the Yankees win three straight, and four of six over all from 1996-2001, without him. (Ed. Note: In 1996, Mendoza made 11 spot starts and one relief appearance, but from 1997-2002, he was a pitching savior for the Yanks. Over six seasons, he won 50 games and had a 3.86 ERA and a 118 ERA+. You can’t buy that kind of versatility anymore.)

***

So why bring this up? Because if you’ve been watching Yankees baseball at all with the devotion that would bring you to RAB, you’d know that Alfredo Aceves is kinda sorta doing everything that Ramiro Mendoza did.

And he’s doing it better.

Okay, so there’s a giant enormous argument to be made for “Holy small sample size, Batman.” I acknowledge that. And hey, if Sabathia, Burnett, Joba, Hughes, Pettitte, and/or Wang all do their collective jobs, the sample size is probably still going to remain pretty small and not rival Mendoza’s 100+ innings pitched in four of the nine seasons he pitched (and four of his six seasons during the great run in the Bronx).

Still, though, Aceves’ meteoric rise through the minors last season, from high A to the majors, is Joba-like, and while, at 26, Aceves isn’t projected to be a future ace, he did come through as a starter. Given how successful Aceves has been in the bullpen thus far, it’s perhaps hard to imagine that he was a starter so recently.

Yet, few pitchers, starter or reliever, could throw two innings one night and then three the next. It’s different than a closer, who might throw one inning three nights in a row, especially if they are ‘easy’ innings, which many of the elite closers do without breaking a sweat.

Aceves threw two critical innings in the game on Wednesday, when it was still 5-3, and then three innings last night. While those innings were low-leverage by the 6-0 score, they become higher leverage considering that the Yankees needed to fashion so many innings from the pen.

That kind of versatility, especially in light of the relative (lack of) talent of the short relievers with any sort of hair, is invaluable for the Yankees.

Just consider this: Aceves was recalled from SWB on May 5. On that day the Yankees were 13-13 and had lost three straight. Since then, they are 11-4, and have won nine straight. Aceves didn’t win most of those games, and the ones he won, he didn’t do so on his own. But we can’t say that he hasn’t helped.

The sample size is too small right now to be able to do a full comparison — perhaps at the end of this season we’ll have a better idea — but right now, Alfredo Aceves could very well be that ghost of Ramiro Mendoza we have wanted for a while.

Guest Post: Skipping Joba now to save him later

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The following is a guest post by Samuel Avro. While at work, Samuel Avro covers the energy industry and is the editor of Consumer Energy Report. If not making it to the New Yankee Stadium in the opening two months doesn’t annul the fact, Samuel is a die-hard fan of the Bronx Bombers. Those readers interested in submitting guest posts can contact me via e-mail at ben at riveraveblues dot com.

With Joba Chamberlain firmly entrenched in the starting rotation and the “Joba Rules” a mere memory of the Joe Torre Era, the much-hyped fan-favorite entered the season with a different, albeit strictly-enforced, set of rules.

Gone are the days when a pitcher’s arm wasn’t babied and their innings limit was simply the endurance they were able to sustain. What has increasingly become known as the “Verducci Effect” (due to SI writer Tom Verducci’s yearly compilation of young pitchers he deems at risk) has taken root in the management circles of MLB. While by no means gospel, the rule of thumb is that a pitcher under the age of 25 should not increase his innings total by more than 30 frames over the previous season.

As the Yanks’ righty pitched only 100.1 innings in 2008, the gospel would say that Joba should expect to reach his cap at the 140-150 inning range this season. (While according to Verducci’s rule it should be capped at about 130, Joba threw 110 professional innings in 2007 and could sustain an increase this year of around 40 innings.)

Since Joba has already pitched 40 2/3 innings, If he were to average even a little less than 6 innings per start, he’d be on pace to hit his cap well before the end of the season. The Yankees are left with two options which would allow Joba to remain in the rotation for the rest of the season, while continuing to build up arm strength for seasons to come: They can simply pull him early from a lot of starts; or they could skip his starts in the rotation every now and again, keeping some innings in the tank for later in the season.

To be sure, neither of the options is ideal. If the kid is able to cut down on the walks and can have enough pitches in his arm to allow him to go deeper into games, the last thing I’d want to see is his getting yanked prematurely in a game he is dominating. As far as skipping his turn in the rotation goes, no one knows how his arm will respond when deviating from its normal routine of throwing every five days.

What I’d like to see (for lack of a better idea) is somewhat of a hybrid mentality of the two options. Skip his starts every once in a while, and perhaps limit his innings in games where he isn’t at his best.

Currently, with Chien-Ming Wang coming off another stellar start for SWB, the Yankees have their chance to skip a start of Joba’s without messing around with the rotation. Depending on when Wang returns to the big-league club, the Yankees can easily skip one start of Joba’s without playing around too much with the rotation as a whole.

Since the scheduled starting day of Phil Hughes is not aligned with that of Wang’s, the Yankees — if Wang returns this week — can simply move A.J. Burnett’s day up to Thursday (Joba’s next scheduled start) and have Wang pitch on Friday with Joba rejoining the rotation and filling in for the place of Hughes next week. If the Yankees opted to keep Wang in the minors for one more start, the same plan can be carried out next week when he rejoins the team. That is, the Yanks can push A.J.’s start up by a day to Tuesday with Wang taking Joba’s start on Wednesday. Thursday is an off day.

I know that many people will want the Yankees to just place him in the bullpen near the end of the season as a solution to the innings cap problem, but the days of tinkering with his pitching persona should be over. He’s a 23-year-old pitcher who has the potential to be one of the dominant starters of the next decade. Moving him to the bullpen should be used only as a last resort if the other options are not feasible.

Though the season is still young, the front office will have to start thinking of the solutions before it’s thrust upon them in the midst of a pennant race. They can’t wait to confront the issue when it has already become too late.

Stale memories of an old Stadium

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This is a guest column by Travis G., regular commenter and author of Yankees Etc..

Remember when you used to love going to Yankee games? For me, although I certainly did, it’s hard to even recall why.

Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up. My father’s company (that he co-manages) was able to acquire box-seat season tickets when the Yanks were at their lowest: 1989 (“It’s a whole new ballgame” was the motto that year; I still have a bumper sticker with it.) I went to at least 10 games each year through the 90’s — saw the Jeff Maier home run in ’96, Tino’s Game 1 grand slam in ’98, Clemens spraying the fans with champagne in ’99, and the following year throwing a bat at Mike Piazza. Each year though, my access to tickets waned as demand among my father’s clients increased. My father and his business partner sold all the playoff tickets in 2001 for several reasons: they were bordering on unaffordable, the offers/requests from buyers/clients were too strong to turn down, and they (and I admittedly) thought they’d be in the World Series about every year.

So I guess you could say we were part of the problem — the reason the attending fan base started to change to more corporate/casual-fan types (the ‘glitterati’ — you know, people who glitter). We definitely deserve some of the blame, but other reasons for that change include the success of the Yanks, the ensuing demand for tickets, and the freedom that gave the Yankees to raise prices astronomically.

There used to be knowledgeable, passionate fans in attendance, but a side effect of the team’s success is that those fans were forced out by demand. In fact, my wife and I prefer sitting in the $18 upper deck seats where the fans actually care about the game.

Does anyone, anyone, still do the YMCA? I pity the grounds crew that must endure that contrived garbage (aimed purely at casual fans) on a nightly basis. Then there’s the relentless audio bombardment that doesn’t let up until “New York, New York” has played several times. And what ever happened to organic chants, cheers and general fan enthusiasm? On countless occasions have I witnessed organic chants snuffed out by the PA system blaring some canned chant or music that we’ve heard a thousand times.

There’s just a lack of understanding of what the fans want, like the refusal to show video replays (of close plays) on the jumbo-tron. I know they don’t want to show up the umpires, but they do it all the time in the NFL, why not in MLB? I had no idea Jeff Maier had even reached over the wall until I got home that night to see the replay. That brings me to my next point: while all the cons of attending a game have increased over the years, the pros of watching from home have also increased. The advent of HD, surround sound, the YES Network and DVR have combined to make the home-viewing experience better than being there. And where would you rather sit, on a plastic folding chair or your living room couch?

Then there’s the food situation. I can order in a large pizza for the price of about three disgusting slices at the Stadium. $9 for shit beer? No thanks. I’ll take my favorite, Dogfish Head (ed. note: this man has good taste in beer), which runs $9 for a six-pack. At my only game this year, the trio in front of me ordered food and drinks through the waiter service. It took almost two hours to get something akin to two beers, a soda, chicken fingers, a hot dog, and a sandwich (for $71 plus tip). It’s basically fast-food quality, only slow. I learned my lesson long ago and now bring soda, water, sandwiches, peanuts and seeds to every game. It saves money and time (outside of tasting better). The vendors don’t even come down to the box-seats; to get food you have to order through a waiter (and wait the requisite hour plus) or leave your seat to catch up to a vendor or wait in line at the food court.

Transportation has become more difficult. Instead of spending an hour (each way) and $20+ getting to and from the Stadium, I can spend that time walking my dog, cooking dinner, watching the post-game show, watching another ballgame, etc. Parking is absolutely FUBAR around the Stadium, and I have a knack for being the first car locked out of the parking lot (it’s happened twice) – I mean I was literally the very first car that cops started putting traffic cones in front of to block out of the garage. You might suggest taking the subway, which I did many times when I lived in Manhattan and Queens, but it’s hardly better than driving, only more cost efficient. The worst subway ride of my life followed a Yankee game: a hefty, teenage boy stood near me holding the ceiling rail on a hot summer day (you know what that means), and the stench emanating from him was unbelievable. It was hold your breath horrible, and there was no where to go as the train was completely packed.

On top of that, my wife and I have a talent for attending rained out/rain delayed games, which now kills us because we live in Philly (have since last May). I was upset to find out the new Stadium will not have a retractable roof. I know it would cost about $400 million, but they’re spending over a billion dollars already, and the Stadium’s supposed to last more than 50 years, why not make the investment that would ensure a complete and on-time game every single day? Yet another reason we have and will be attending fewer games.

My father’s tickets, $250 a seat this year, will jump to the $500-$2500 range next year, and they’re not even being guaranteed the same seats in the new Stadium. He’s going to try to “move back” to affordable territory: back section of the field level or front section of the upper deck (we hope).

With all that being said, I’m certainly going to a game at the new Stadium, but more for the novelty, not to watch my beloved Yankees.

This might come off as whiny, but don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy attending games in person, just not as much as I used to and the preceding was a summary of my problems as a cathartic exercise. I know this is a season to celebrate the Stadium, but I for one will miss nothing but the history. As far as I’m concerned, the original Yankee Stadium was destroyed in 1974.

The realities of youth movements in New York

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This is a guest post by frequent commenter Steve S.

I guess I am writing this in order to be contrarian because I partially believe it and part of me wishes it weren’t true. For the past three seasons, prior to the Johan Santana trade I was a firm believer in the youth movement. Especially with regard to the apparent failures of free agent pitching and those acquired by trade.

In 2004, I thought Cashman was brilliant in avoiding Curt Schilling and acquiring Javier Vazquez (sidenote: Yankees gave up way too quickly on that one), especially considering Arizona’s demands for Schilling (ed. note: Nick Johnson and Alfonso Soriano). By 2005, I was convinced that Randy Johnson on a short deal was the right move, especially considering the fact that they managed to hold on to Wang and Cano in the initial trade deadline fervor. I admit I was concerned about Pavano and no one in their right mind expected Jaret Wright to work out.

As I was saying, I was a firm believer in developing pitching and the necessity to do it. Part of it was that these guys were failing, but what made convinced me was the way these guys were melting. Even Arod to an extent had been affected (thankfully his physical talent was able to overcome some of the mental difficulties). All of these guys seem to not just fail with respect to difficult expectations, but they weren’t even performing up to their normal standards. Contrary to popular belief Randy Johnson actually did well, but it was as if the minute he arrived here he went from stud pitcher to good pitcher with fundamental flaws in his delivery and his makeup. Javier Vazquez was great for the first half and then completely folded in the second half. Pavano, who most knowledgeable fans would have predicted a four ERA and probably between 10-15 wins, couldn’t stay on the field — and I say knowledgeable fans because anyone who expected this guy to be anything more than a number three starter hadn’t paid attention. And this is all when the farm system was barren of top pitching prospects.

So when Wang came up and succeeded it became apparent that the Yankees needed to change their course. Because starting pitching through free agency and trades had dramatically changed since 1996. You couldn’t go get David Cone, David Wells or Roger Clemens to front the rotation. So when I saw the reports on Phil Hughes I salivated, and his continued success made me long for this change in philosophy. However, I missed something that has now become apparent to me. This whole New York phenomenon regarding the unrealistic expectations of fans and the media and to an extent the organization is fundamental and isn’t just limited to superstars or free agents. It extends to these kids now. Whoever gets to the forefront becomes public enemy number one because there are so many revisionists out there.

This leads me to the current situation. Brian Cashman has done a remarkable job with restoring and righting this thing because the reality was that the Yankees couldn’t realistically continue down the path they were on forever. Especially in light of every small to mid market team locking up their young players to long term deals so early on (thank god for Scott Boras or else the hot stove would be so boring). As we can see one month into this, people are more than just squirming; there is a wholesale panic out there. And while it is not justified, the reality is that it is having an effect.

Ian Kennedy has been awful, but as everyone has noted here, there are glimpses of improvement. The only issue becomes how is this affecting him mentally. His comments before being sent down were the best portent of his ability to handle adversity in the New York media. And his performances have not even come close to what he was able to do in the minor leagues. Which leads me to believe that he might just be feeling overwhelmed. I think we all forget, and its even more prevalent now in age of sabermetrics and closely following the minor leagues, that these guys are human and they cant always perform the way the back of the baseball card or baseball reference.com says they should.

The same may unfortunately apply to Joba now since people are foaming at the mouth at this midseason change. If he stumbles at all, people will have the ignorant reaction to restore him to the bullpen. I’m saying this all now and acknowledging that hindsight is 20/20. I was one of those people who celebrated these moves. But now I’m starting to get weary because I fear what all this can do to these kids and this organization. I never expected people to be so quick to judgment, but I should have. And what I hate to say is that Brian Cashman should have to. By basing so much of this year, the year after the Red Sox won their second World Series in four years, on these kids the Yankees may have put the Arod target on the “Big Three’s” backs. And there is no telling if in this market, with this much money invested, whether the Yankees can fully execute this plan. The Red Sox had a third place finish; what would happen in New York if the Yankees crumbled in late August and finished in third place? The White Sox survived a year of John Danks and Gavin Floyd being awful, and now they are reaping the rewards. Could that happen in New York?

I just hope Brian Cashman has the backbone and the longevity to carry this plan to fruition. And more importantly, I hope these kids can survive this kind of scrutiny, because if they do flop, it’s going to set things back, both because the organization might start avoiding the youth again and because they might invest in what has become an even worse free agent market. And I think the blame falls on the fans. Not just on the impatient fans, but for those of us who lose sight of the intangible reality of playing in New York and the fact that these kids can sometimes mislead us when they are pitching in Scranton or Trenton.

How blogs have changed the way we follow our beloved team

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Thankfully, I have this piece by Larry K. from Save Phil Hughes.

Although I was into baseball as early as seven years old (I actually still have all 792 baseball cards of the Topps 1988 set in an album in storage somewhere), and I have vague memories of occasionally watching the pitiful teams of 1989-1991, my rabid devotion to the Yankees didn’t fully develop until closer to 1993/1994.

I vividly remember my heartbreak in August 1994 upon reading in the Daily News that the players had indeed gone on strike after threatening to do so all year, especially given that the Yankees incredibly had the best record in the American League, and Paul O’Neill was leading the league in batting average. (Joe’s note: I was at the final game that season. Sadness.)

The 1995 season is the first I can recall really getting hardcore into Yankee games on a regular basis. It was also the year I’d attend my first playoff game, and boy was it ever a classic — Game 2 against the Mariners at Yankee Stadium. My childhood idol Donnie Baseball blasted a home run in the bottom of the sixth, and Jim Leyritz would go on to hit a walkoff shot in the bottom of the 15th, the first of many of The King’s legendary playoff moments. Unfortunately, like every Yankee fan, I’ve never been able to purge that horrible image of Ken Griffey, Jr. rounding third and sliding into home with the winning run in Game 5. Thankfully the following season was one for the ages, but I don’t need to reminisce about 1996 here. We all know how it went down.

As I became crazier and crazier about the Yankees in the mid-90s, my intellectually curious self sought to augment my enjoyment of the games with supplemental material, like any good baseball fan would — and the only avenues available at the time were New York’s daily newspapers. I quickly discovered that the Times’ sports section was a routine disappointment and the Post’s — while an improvement over the Times — still felt lacking.

And so it was the New York Daily News that became my holy grail of Yankee coverage. Everything about the News’ coverage of the Yankees felt superior — the game recaps, the columnists, the analysis, the secondary stories, the notebook. Even to this day, on the rare occasion that I pick up a physical copy of one of the dailies, I always gravitate towards the News.

Of course, as anyone reading this knows, these days the mainstream media has essentially become irrelevant. I first discovered Bronx Banter, the granddaddy of all Yankee blogs, during the 2004 season, and was instantly hooked. Alex Belth’s analysis and perspective seemed so fresh and advanced, and was only bolstered when Cliff Corcoran came along and truly upped the ante.

Now once any junkie gets hooked, they always need more, and fortunately the Banter provided a plethora of links to other insightful folks blogging about the Yankees. Shortly thereafter I discovered the brilliance of the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and the Pinstriped Bible and Blog, and it escalated from there. Steve Goldman’s careful and critical sabermetric analysis of the team in particular really started to change the way I watched the game, as a greater understanding of advanced statistical metrics significantly enhanced my enjoyment.

Later on Peter Abraham’s Lohud Yankees Blog hit the scene, providing fans with an unprecedented level of updates and access, and to this day remains the pinnacle of mainstream media coverage of the team.

As I continued to devour these and several other Yankee blogs on a daily basis, eventually I came across a new site that quickly established itself as the new go-to Yankee site for me: the one you’re reading right now, River Ave. Blues. Right off the bat I knew I had found gold, as these were three guys who just got it. They’re an incredibly intelligent, even-keeled trio (their eternal optimism even during this latest stretch of offensive ineptitude is something every Yankee fan should strive for), and their multiple daily contributions have truly become essential reading for any informed Yankees fan. It’s gotten to the point where just about everything Ben, Joe and Mike write is almost exactly what I’d say about any given Yankee topic myself, essentially rendering my opinion useless. (ed. note: I accepted this guest submission before reading this paragraph.)

Anyway, getting to the point I’m trying to make (and yes, I do have one) is that all of the terrific amateur work being done online by these highly informed and astute Yankee fans has truly rendered the mainstream media useless. Outside of Pete Abe and maybe Tyler Kepner at the Times, there really isn’t a single writer in the mainstream media worth reading. I used to have respect for Mark Feinsand, but the Daily News has made sure to strap its baseball dunce cap tightly on his head. And it’s kind of appalling that the people who are actually paid to report on the team are one-upped multiple times every day by folks who write about the team free of charge. If there were any justice, perhaps one day we’ll see our boys at RAB getting paid to do what they do best.

And Bill Madden, who back when I first starting reading the News in the 90s seemed like the most knowledgeable and best baseball writer in the city, has resorted to spewing inane drivel like this column, in which he incredibly believes that Joba Chamberlain is far more valuable as an 8th inning setup man as opposed to a starter. I mean, this argument has been rehashed to death. If you understand the value in moving Joba to the rotation (which, thankfully, the Yankees do), then congratulations, you actually have a brain, and have a decent understanding of how baseball works.

Be it April or October, the Yanks are flawed

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This is a guest post by Lou Poulas. In conjunction with Razzball.com, Lou runs the Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame, where the greats of the Fantasy Era are immortalized in html.

We all know by now, even if we don’t admit it to any Met fans we might be on speaking terms with, that the glory years of Yankee dynasty from 1996-2001 are long since over. I admit I originally thought Buster Olney’s book was a bit outlandish in claiming Luis Gonzalez’s bloop single was the dynasty’s swan song, but in retrospect the facts are undeniable. Whether you are in the camp that claims the “new” Yankees don’t have the heart to win or with their alter-egos who state the Bombers haven’t had the pitching to succeed, the facts remain unalterable – the team hasn’t made it to the World Series since 2003 and has been bounced out of the postseason in the first round three years running.

There are several statistics that tie these post dynasty Yankee teams together and one I would like to explore is there early season lack of success. The Dynasty Yankees of 1996 through 2003 had a combined April winning percentage of .640 (126-71) while the most recent versions of team have struggled to reach the .500 mark with an overall record of just 43-49. Each of these teams however, recovered during the regular season to make the postseason, averaging 97 wins in the process.

Quiet bats have been a recurring theme in the early going and trends emerge when looking at the basic rate stats for each April when compared with the rest of the season:

Mar/Apr Rest Season
2004 .230 / .336 / .387 .274 / .356 / .469
2005 .274 / .357 / .422 .276 / .354 / .455
2006 .299 / .395 / .495 .282 / .357 / .456
2007 .268 / .347 / .421 .293 / .369 / .470

Only in 2006, when the Yankees had a somewhat successful start to the season at 12-10, did the offense fail to improve considerably after a slow start.

On the mound it has been a somewhat different story. Each season the bullpen has been strong early only to fade late (thank you Mr. Torre) as the average April ERA for relievers has been a solid 3.68 but jumps to 4.49 over the rest of the season.

Yankee starters however, have had their issues too. Only in 2006 did they compile an ERA better than league average when Mike Mussina (2.31 ERA) and Sydney Ponson (3.13 ERA) of all people, were great, winning eight of nine in ten starts. In 2004 the starters ERA’s were equally bad both in April and the rest of the season; and in 2005 and 2007, the April’s were long months but at least things got markedly better as the season progressed.

Still, these mid-season corrections haven’t been enough to add a 27th World Championship banner to Yankee Stadium. Once October rolls around the trends seem to reverse again – the bats go cold, the pitching coughs up some runs, and the Yankees are lucky to make it out of the 1st round. In the losing series each postseason, the Yankee stats have been poor:

2004 – 5.17 ERA, .282 / .371 / .469
2005 – 4.40 ERA, .253 / .347 / .392
2006 – 5.56 ERA, .246 / .289 / .388
2007 – 5.89 ERA, .228 / .300 / .404

In looking at the failures at a player level however, there is no apparent common theme to harp on. We can’t point to Alex Rodriguez or Jorge Posada or any batter and blame them for recurring post-season lapses. We can’t point to Mussina, Chien Ming Wang, or any starter and call them out, as each has had their fair share of both success and failure since 2004. Just like in April, the Yankees, like any team, simply get cold at the wrong time.

In truth, over the past four seasons the Yankees have played in 5 post-seasons series, only St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox have played in more. Post-season winning is not a God given right as many us want to believe, and in fact, might be dumb luck. Witness just the handful of breaks Yankee fans enjoyed during their championship run:

1996 – Jeffrey Maier, Tim Welke, Mark Wholers’s slider
1998 – El Duque’s Game 4 against Cleveland, Mark Langston’s non-strike to Tino Martinez
2000 – Only 87 regular season wins; Three 1-run victories in the World Series

What we witnessed during the Yankee dynasty years was a once in a lifetime run that is duplicated only every 20 years or so, if not longer. These were great Yankee teams, but as with all great teams, a few bounces here or there and their legacies are much diminished, and the current squad has less to live up to. The current Yankee squad, like every other baseball team, has flaws. These are apparent in April or October.

Are the Yankees paid too well to win?

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This is a guest post by Paul Vinelli.

After enduring another horrific start from Andy Pettitte (earning $16 million this season), a strange question enters my mind:

Are the Yankees’ players paid too well to win?

I’m not an economist, so my logic is almost entirely anecdotal. My formative years with the Yankees were the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, the team nearly always sported one of the largest payrolls in baseball. Steinbrenner and company signed “tough, proven” pitchers (Rick Rhoden, Andy Hawkins), over-hyped “stud prospects” (Hensley Meulens), platooned “aspiring sluggers” (Kevin Maas, Mike Blowers) and routinely overpaid one-dimensional outfielders (Deion Sanders, Jesse Barfield). It was a culture of meddling ownership, fiscal irresponsibility, reckless trades, and dismal grooming of young talent.

As a result, while growing up I always believed in the illusion that the Yankees could compete because the team could afford to swallow its most dreadful mistakes in supplementing the efforts of superstars like Mattingly, Henderson, Winfield, and Righetti. However, with the introduction of sabermetrics and the new generation of free-spending owners, I fear that the current squad fields too many mistake signings and that this affects overall performance.

While the current Yankees administration continues to overpay its players, the competition has become far savvier in how it allocates its resources. The Angels and Tigers have owners that are willing to spend money — and they do so relatively intelligently. The A’s have Billy Beane. The Mariners’ front office is clueless (witness the Bedard trade), yet their team still competes somehow. Cleveland has a bunch of young studs, and the Rays’ collection of prospects might be the best in baseball. Most terrifyingly, the Red Sox employ terrific scouting and top sabermetricians while wielding a payroll that rivals New York’s.

And what of the Yankees? Two years ago I considered the Mussina signing to be unwise ($22 million for 07-08) and in 2001 I was rabidly against bringing on Giambi (my friends and I deem the current championship drought as “the curse of the contract”). Andy Pettitte earns $16 million this year, though fortunately his deal is only for one year. Left field is entrusted to the immobile Matsui and the feeble-armed Damon ($26 million combined this year and next). Abreu was re-signed for a ghastly one-year sum, and his effort in RF is best categorized as “easy-going.” If Jorge isn’t splitting time between 1B and DH by the end of 2009, I’ll honestly be surprised. Carl Pavano – ’nuff said.

I believe that the Yankees have repeatedly tendered these ridiculous contracts in the past few years in order to give the elder Steinbrenner one last shot at the title. I respect this win now approach — however, the dynastic nucleus is aging (Pettitte, Jeter, Posada, Rivera) and there is a management struggle at the top (Hank vs. Hal vs. Cash vs. Levine). I’m not sure that if the team even wanted to make a big move (e.g. trade for Sabathia mid-season) that it even could foster the consensus to do so.

Hopefully when the current contracts expire the team will choose to focus on building from within instead of signing another big name to patrol left field. This might require a year or two of non-playoff growing pains, but I’m just hoping that 2008 won’t be one of those years.