Do the Yanks really need another overpriced ($7 million per year?!) "GQ" feature boy?

I'd pass on Piazza, therefore, the Yanks (read Steinbrenner) are probably extremely interested in him, and not just doing him a hometown favor by feigning interest.

Speaking of the unappealing, The Boston Red Sox Today (soon to be formerly known as the New York Times, which is a part-owner of the afforementioned baseball club) is running this:

Theo and Kobe Leave Mentors Behind
By HARVEY ARATON
Published: January 24, 2006

Poor Phil Jackson and Larry Lucchino, who imparted all they know to Kobe Bryant and Theo Epstein, only to wind up imprisoned by their own patronage.

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That's as far as I got with this article.

Would you pay a nickel, or take a minute to ponder the similarities between Kobe (who scores 81 points per game, when he's not "scoring" with female hotel employees) and Kid Kong, Boston's boy GM in the grrilla suit? I'll pass on that, thanks.

Our bench is pretty weak. One injury to a regular kills us. Resting Posada without totally losing a bat is important.

I'm for Piazza if it's one year and 4 mil or under.

We'll make this easy:

Average AL DH 2005: .259/.337/.440
Bernie Williams 2005: .249/.321/.367

Bernie just can't do it any more.

That said, Mike Piazza 2005: .251/.326/.452

Shea actually played fairly neutral last year, so I won't make a park-factor argument here, but 85 points of slugging is nothing to sneaze at.

Meanwhile, Piazza may not be Johnny Bench behind the plate, he may not even be Jorge, but the alternative is Kelly Stinnett (career: .239/.320/.390). Stinnett is a nice upgrade over Flaherty, but he can't compete with Piazza at the plate.

I agree that that the upgrade to Piazza is not worth the $7-8 mil Daily News tosses around, but I wouldn't hesitate for a second if his price comes down to the $2-3 million that Newsday suggests. I might even give him $4 mil if it's a one-year deal.

Coming in as a pinch-hitter in 2005, Bernie had 11 at-bats and hit .273, .438, .545 with 4 RBI.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him come through as a fairly reliable DH/PH next season, posting several crucial RBIs and walks, to offset those rally-killing double-play dinks we love him so much for.

Stinnett's probably a better defensive catcher than Piazza, no?

Heck, I'd rather see the Yanks use Piazza money to get the 22 year old switch-hitting catcher Dioner Navarro back from the Dodgers.

Also, if Piazza is asking for $6million a year, I'd pass. He's not worth it. I'd offer him 3, plus incentives that could juice it to $4, and tell him to take it or leave it.

Bernie getting more than 300 PAs this season is a bad thing.

I've always liked Durazo - and he plays 1B on occasion.

You're right about curtailing the Bernie at-bats. I figure 250-300 is plenty.
But why would you pay Piazza twice as much as Bernie? Is there evidence that suggests Piazza would be twice as productive as Bernie?

How about getting a 4th outfielder with some offensive upside to rest Sheffield once in a while? Jeff DaVanon maybe?

1.000 fielding percentage last year, thank you very much...

;-)

Of course, I've also advocated signing Matt LeCroy and trading for the Pirates' Craig Wilson, as a way of stocking the bench/DH/RF mix and helping spell Jorge at catcher, so maybe I just have a thing for catchers who hit.

Making the bench a weapon would be a good thing. Having the likes of Bernie (sadly), Cairo/Escalona, and Stinett there does not make it a weapon.

Blatant misuse of statistics right there.

A 1.000 fielding percentage only tells us that Durazo caught everything that bounced into his lawn chair, not the size of the lawn chair itself (that being his range, which is a more important fielding stat). I'd give you his 2005 range factor, but looking it up I notice that he played a grand total of one game in the field in 2005.

(something, perhaps the emoticon, tells me pistolpete knew all this)

At any rate, looking at Durazo's career number's he's only slightly below league average in terms of range factor, and was actually well above average in the last season he played a significant amount of 1B (33 games in 2003). His Rate (my favorite fielding stat) concurs with the career mark (96, just below average, which would be 100), but disagrees wildly with regards to his 2003 performance (81 Rate, which is just dreadful).

Of course, fielding stats are the messiest room in the performance analysis house (to add another unnecessary metaphor). I suspect that the low Rate for Durazo's 2003 season has something to do with his ratio of assists to errors (3/2). By way of comparison, that's almost twice as bad as Jason Giambi's A/E ratio in 2005, a mightly low standard to say the least.

At any rate, to repeat an old argument: If ten batted balls are hit toward first base and player A fields the two hit directly at him cleanly and converts them into outs, but lets the other eight go by for hits, while player B fields those two cleanly and converts them into outs and does the same for the two next closest balls, but makes an error on the fifth closest ball, who is the superior fielder?

According to fielding percentage it's player A by a long shot (1.000 FPct vs. .800 FPct), but I think we'd all agree it's actually player B.

I bet he STILL thinks he's a starting catcher. And I bet there's some sad team out there that agrees.

I can't believe everyone's forgotten about Bubba-mania. If the Yankees need another bench player, it's not in the outfield (Bernie, Bubba) or at 1B (Phillips, Escalona. . .)

By the way, rumors are spreading that the Crisp trade is being held up because Mota didn't pass his physical. If this trade falls through, is debris going to pop back up talking about how Adam Stern projects to be better than Johnny Damon? Or perhaps he'll point out how Alex Gonzalez plays better defense than Jeter.

Right now, Phily is showing some interest in Piazza. So, if the Yanks don't tick of the Queens' Queens, then I guess the Phillies are willing to do it.

Let Posada catch 3/5 of the rotation and Molina 2/5. Posada has faded at the end of seasons (in my view - I don't have stats). Let Posada take 1/5 of the ABs at DH and if he could duplicate his '04 numbers (.272/.400/.481) in '06 with more rest the Yankees will approach 1000 runs with improved defense adding Molina.

And I like the idea of Molina talking smack in the locker room about beating the Yankees twice in the playoffs in '02 and '05. It should irk the Yankees core that the Angels have been more successful in the past 4 years. Adding Molina is looking forward while adding Piazza is looking back. Molina has about 700 games in the MLB and Piazza around 1700. Which one has something left?