welcome back, cliff! yeah, i read about the arduous job from steve goldman yesterday. we're sure glad you're here...

craig wilson signed with the Bravos for 1yr/$2mil

Welcome back from Mount BP '07, Cliff.
Great to see you back at the Banter.

Surprised you're lukewarm about the Unit trade. I'm excited about the prospects/suspects the Yanks received for Johnson. Bottomline: I'd rather see the Yanks' young pitchers try (and even fail) than sit through another Big Uninspired performance. While I appreciated his effort, working through the pain and all, Randy's last game against Kenny Rogers was enough for me.

I imagine you're 30 degree less than lukewarm about Mientkiewicz and Cairo.

1 Here's hoping Cashman, upon returning from vacation, will try to trade Doug Out for Wilson.

Welcome back Cliff. Honestly, the involvement of both you and Goldman just may get me to fork over the cash, moreso than on anything else - I know then it will be quality.

Care to elaborate on your "lukewarm" comment?

Me, I see an inherent contradiction in:

"It's time for the Yankees get back to their roots".

and acquiring a gajillion RHP.

Further:

"We're very proud of the depth we have from the lowest level to the top and excited about the potential."

If he's talking about the pitching, then he should feel okay. It's just everything else - namely the players that play everyday -that's lacking. And those were the roots of the Mean Gene Dynasty.

There has been a lot of "why did he.... why didn't he" stuff said about the RJ Trade.
"Cashman moved when Arizona offered Ohlendorf. The right-hander went 10-8 with a 3.29 ERA last season in 28 starts for Double-A Tennessee."
I think that's our answer. Cashman wanted Ohlendorf, and the rest was the best window dressing he could get. I don't think the deal was done because it was bombastic. RJ wanted out, and Cashman made the trade which furthered his 'announced' goals.

Nobody can predict what RJ would have done as a Yankee. He could have gone either way. However, we have missed some deals in the past because we had nobody young to trade. We have spent our way into the red. Nobody wants a 'rebuilding' year at the sacrifice of the post season.

But look at Cashman's formula. If we have quality people working in the background, and we donate our financial resources to building the farm, and STILL have enough cash to buy the occasional high-end FA... we should be unbeatable.

2 years ago, between a depleated farm and an already old team, many of us feared what the future of the team would be. We've seen it before. In 1963, we have a team full of high quality veterans. by 1965, we had a team of over-the-hill veterans with no farm to pick up the slack. Look at the 1965-1970 teams... and that's where we were headed.

I don't know if Jim Dean was rooting for the Yankees in 1965, but I was. If may have been the worst period in Yankee history since the Babe. With free-agency in place, we may never get THAT BAD again, but we were headed straight in that direction. In 2 years Cashman has turned us around, while still keeping him in the PS hunt.

That's the big picture. That's what Cashman is paid 5 mil/yr........ errr... 2 mil/yr to do. Is Cashman the best? The worst? Does he wear brown shoes with a black suit? I don't know and don't care. FINALLY this team is headed in the right direction, and I'm happy Cashman is steering the boat.

CLIFF LIVES!!!

(welcome back, dood)

as per the RJ trade (yeah yeah yeah, it's been done, but i was too busy to comment at the time):

i can't help but feel like Cash$ could have gotten more, but i AM stoked about what he DID get. i am really hoping that this off-season is an indication of the kind of moves we are going to be making in the future. many of the teams that have won over the last few years have not been cavalcades of stars, rather, collections of young(ish) everyday-reliable players with a few superstars peppered in. it appears that cashman has begun to move towards the young(ish) part of that equation with the acquisition of so many Young Righty Prospectish pitchers. now he needs to learn how to fill holes with players with a little more upside than Minty Boy at 1B.

4 "I don't know if Jim Dean was rooting for the Yankees in 1965, but I was. It may have been the worst period in Yankee history since the Babe."

Do the Dallas Green and Stump Merrill teams qualify for also-rans or honorable mentions?

The late eightees was the same story -- probably a more relevant anti-pattern, since free agency was in place. The farm was depleted, so the team overspent every year on past-their-prime free agents to fill the holes created by the failures of the previous year's past-their-prime free agents. Because they were signing Type A free agents, they lost their first round draft picks and were unable to rebuild the farm.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Vizcaino's HR rate last year was almost identical to Farnsworth's (as were his K and BB rates). That's kind of interesting, since Vizcaino's GO/AO rate is much higher. Could it be that Vizcaino has a sinker that sometimes forgets to sink?

Welcome back Cliff, and thanks to you (and Steve and the rest of the BP crew) in advance for the annual. Can't wait to get my hands on this year's edition!

I too would love to have your take on the Unit trade, and the status of the bench too.

4 "If we have quality people working in the background, and we donate our financial resources to building the farm, and STILL have enough cash to buy the occasional high-end FA... we should be unbeatable."

The Yanks should be consistently great with that formula, and that nicely sums up why I like Ca$hmoney so much too.

6 Chyll, I really hate to sound like some old duffer reminiscing about the bad old days but there was a feeling of hopelessness from 66 till about 72 which had settled into the ball park that made those years as bad as anything I can remember from a competitive sense. As a kid it was great though; there were no lines for anything.

6 I remember that in the early nineties all I could say to my Sox friends was [in classic dork nasalness]:

"The Yankees had the best record of all teams in the 80's."

Ugh.

8 Except the farm isn't being built. RHP is being built.

It's like just planting carrots and expecting sustenance.

I mean I like carrots and all, and they're good for you, but you can't eat them every day. Further, it's like expecting carrots every year when you're in an area where they don't grow all that often.

4 and 8 "... that nicely sums up why I like Ca$hmoney so much too." I'd like to add an enthusiastic "me too" to that as well.

10 I'd trade Doug Out for a bag o'carrots.

9 And then along comes Big Daddy Stein! That's a nice little investment they made for 8.7 million.

That's fine and all, sport. But to a kid growing up in the 80's, losing was all I knew until 1996.

I went to my first game in 1983 as a five year old. So, for me, and my early mind, there were a few years of hopelessness in there.

Baseball cards gave hope of a better tomorrow in guys like Bam Bam and Roberto Kelly. It was like a vision from the future.

Sorry, we had the best record in baseball during the 80's and the best or near the best offense in the league. I lived through both and believe me, you have no idea how bad it was in the late 60's and early 70's. The O's looked like they would never loose and we were owned and managed by a group that really didn't give a crap and EVERYONE knew it. We were a joke in the late 80's and early 90's. We were just plain sad and believe it or not the objects of pitty in that previous period.

I just wanna know who that tall lanky guy was who was introduced as the new DBacks pitcher. He was vaguely familiar, but that smile didn't register with anyone I knew.

I bet we'll someday be saying the same thing about a certain 3rd baseman we know and love. "Who is that happy guy over there?!?. I don't remember him."

It's unfortunate, really.

13 No, my parents were Yankee fans and conspired with God to turn the franchise around... the way nature intended.

14 To me, growing up, it felt pretty hopeless especially since it took me from age 5 to 19 before I saw them win anything.

You may have felt better about the 80's because you experienced 1977 - 1981 (and maybe 1921 - 1928). I didn't have that luxury. My generation had nothing.

Except for, like I said 10, that retort to all my Sox friends.

One more note on that: To a kid being born in 1997, I'm not going to dismiss their feelings if the Yanks don't win another until 2016 even if they continue to make the playoffs most years (only because of the wild card). To that kid, life as a Yankee fan is going to suck if the Sox win the pennant a few years and especially if the Sox and Mets play in the Serious.

I pray I don't live through that period again. I also pray that I don't end up in elementary schoool again.

17 Honorable-mentionably droll... you folks hovering in cyberspace without anything to say are getting all this, right?

14 Yeah, the Yanks have had their pitiful periods, but I don't think they've ever been pitied.
I'd say pinstripe haters are pitiless creatures regarding the Yankees.
As bad as things got for the Yanks in the Vietnam Era, and as powerful as the O's and A's had become, the Yanks were still dreaded and despised in the Yankee-hating conscience.
I'll never forget seeing "The Bad News Bears" for the first time.
1976. I was ten years old, shocked, thrilled, and delighted by the language of the movie, and Matthau's performance.
I thought the Yankees, cast as the villains of the story, was a cliche, and an inaccurate one at that, because the Yanks, despite all I'd read about them in my baeball history books, had done nothing but inspire hostile indifference for as long as I'd been alive. (thought that sentence might never end?)
In 1975, when the movie was shot, they finished in 3rd place, around 5 games over .500.
Yet in the "Bad News Bears" the Yankees remained the corrupt, powerful beast that could never be defeated.
I remember the audience cheering Tanner's line: "Hey Yankees, you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straignt up your ass!"
Don't get me wrong, I was rooting for the Bears, but the line struck me as humorously inapporpriate as just about any in the movie.
Pity the Yanks? They could lose for a hundred years and I don't think they'll ever be pitied by their haters.

"Hey Red Sox, you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straignt up your ass!"

In 2004, that would have ended up on the front page of the Post, and they probably would have sold out for the first time in their existence. In 1975, that likely would have met with blank confusion, long and hard laughter or (in RSN) the gnashing of teeth and rioting in the theaters. Try it out with some other teams; I'll bet the reaction would be no less ambivelent for 1975.

12 How about a case of carrot juice?

10 Jim, you've said that stocking up on RHPs and nothing else is not the way to build a farm system. I agree with you, and I bet Cashman does too. However, like Rome, a farm system isn't built in a day. The system lacks impact bats right now (beyond Tabata, who's 18, and Jesus Montero, who's 16) but that could be turned around as soon as the 2007 draft.

And, think about it like this. Where are the greatest number of potential holes for the 2007 Yankees? The pitching staff. Not one of the projected starters is a guarantee to make 30+ starts. In fact, I'd say odds are high that both Moose and Pettitte miss a month. (Insert your own Pavano joke here - no offense to the Pavano bandwagon.) The pen has similar issues. Mo missed over a month last year, Farnsworth can't pitch back-to-back because of his back, and Proctor may be a timebomb thanks to Torre's extreme usage of him in 2006.

What is the best possible remedy for that? Tons and tons of young pitching that, if needed, could be called up to the majors very soon and do reasonably well.

Its very hard to find decent replacement pitching in in-season trades, as we all know from the last two years, unless you overpay, which the Yanks aren't willing to do (and shouldn't be). Trying to find decent pitching on the 'free talent' market gets you guys like Kris Wilson, Tim Redding, Scott Erickson, etc. and hoping and praying that they work out like Chacon and Small did in '05, which is almost certain to never happen again.

On the hitting side, the odds of injury (of the non-fluke variety) to one of the regulars are much lower. And getting a decent replacement, either by trade or by 'free talent' is likely easier, as there are more such guys available. Or you can go for better than decent and get an Abreu-like guy by taking on salary, which the Yanks can easily do, or give up some of the plethora of young pitchers that teams covet. Caveat - if Posada gets hurt, getting an equal replacement for him is impossible; getting a league average catcher though, ought not to be hard.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I wouldn't be so down on all the RHPs the Yanks have. Let's see what the landscape looks like come July. If the Yanks spend their first 10 picks on right handed pitchers, then its a different story. I bet they won't.

If people are gonna talk about carrots, you might as well say it: Bugs Bunny. He's ambidextrious, can play the entire field by himself and has a hell of a repertoire.

Only, you can't bring him on road games; the Dodgers had to give up on him because he was always going right instead of left at Albuquerque...

23 I once saw him strike out three men on a single pitch.

He would be well worth the commitment.

10 14 That was my answer to Met fans who teased me endlessly in the 90's. That didn't work so well.

But to the Sox Fans, I would always just smug say "Groundball to first base..."

That would quiet them pretty quick. No longer now... Sigh.

10 Jim, come on, you're being myopic. Pitching in the aggregate is in high demand. The way I see it, Cashman is stockpiling assets. He can then turn those pitching assets into position players. The way you tell the story, Cashman is going to take the next 5 years off and hope that Ross Ohlendorfer (or whatever his name is) can learn to play all 9 positions. That would be clearly crazy.

20 Slice, admittedly a very small sample but my uncles who were died in the wool Dodger survivors were, during the late 60's, lamenting the "god awful state" the Yankees franchise had fallen into. They actually agreed that they wanted them to get better so that it would be "fun" to hate them again. My Grandfather stormed out of the house one day during one of their little "Balantine klatches". It was hard to take.

I remember reading articles by both Dick Young and Red Smith about the deplorable state of the franchise and I believe it was Red Smith's term "the objects of pity" that caused Mike Burke to go on the air on WPIX and squeal about all the "hyperbolic nonsense" being printed.

I can't recall that "BOSTON RED" ever pitied us then but we were sure as hell getting it elsewhere and did it suck.

I suppose each of us has a time that we can look to that simply stunk. I guess the important thing is, no matter when that time was that we are grateful for the good times we are experiencing now. I guess the point is the bad times really help one appreciate the good. Never in my life did I ever expect to experience a run like this. It has really been a lot of fun since '95. Hell it would have been fun in '94 if things hadn't gone south.

25 How about "Six down, twenty-one more to go" ?

24

A sabermetric analysis of Bugs Bunny

http://tinyurl.com/g4u6w

(quite possibly the BEST mix of humor and baseball in a single post ... ever)

23 & 24 LOL, great idea Chyll. It might already be in the works:
http://tinyurl.com/2w6knt

BTW, here is a recap of one his most famous performances...
http://tinyurl.com/3y696n

30 The guys at USSM are hilarious. Derek Zumsteg's Adventure-based recap of the '06 offseason had me laughing so hard, my co-workers asked if I was OK.

http://tinyurl.com/yucob2

(If you go to tinyurl.com, you can turn on their preview feature, which will show you a snapshot of the page before taking you there; guess I had it wrong yesterday, SSTN.)

29 Beat me to it... Your article is better. The one I posted is more of a Cliff Notes version.

Before I post my link, are any of those the USS Mariner posts on Bugs? That's the single most amazing thing I've ever read.

22 I disagree about most needing pitchers. Injuries happen, especially to old players. Last I looked every position player was over the age of 30, except the 2B and he missed 6 weeks last year with a hammy.

Further, every OF is going on their year 33 season and their catcher is going on his year 35 (turning 36 in August) season.

For those positions there is absolutely no "depth" in the system. At AAA or A+. When Jesus and Jose have at least two good MiLB seasons under their belts, then talk to me about them. Until then, they don't exist.

As for the pitchers - before they acquired 6 additional RHP this off-season, they already had Karstens, Rasner, Hughes, Clippard, Beam, Bean, Veras - should I go on?

26 You're being dense (we can sling insults around all day). Pitching prospects are extremely unpredictable. So they're less valuable than legit position prospects. It will take trading two or three of those recently acquired arms to get one position prospect back. What does that tell you about value? (Hint: I'll give you two fives for a ten). Why? Because no one knows what the pitchers will be worth (unless they're Phil Huge) but they have much better knowledge of what the position prospect will do.

Further, if Cashman had any intention of acquiring position prospects, why go through all the trouble of acquiring pitchers to then turn around and trade them? Why waste all that energy when your dealing partners had good position prospects but no where to play them?

I'm just talking about what they needed this off-season. And more RHP wasn't it. I've been very consistent on that point since the Unit deal.

Sure, the June draft will tell us more. But around then I have a feeling we'll be enduring AB's from Cairo and TR Nieves.

6 You be the judge. Yankees fall from grace.
1961 - 1st out of 10 teams
1962 - 1st out of 10 teams
1963 - 1st out of 10 teams
1964 - 1st out of 10 teams
1965 - 6th out of 10 teams
1966 - 10th out of 10 teams
1967 - 9th out of 10 teams
1968 - 5th out of 10 teams - 83 wins - Roy White hits his stride
1969 - 5th out of 6 teams - Bobby Murcers first full year
1970 - finally fielding a team with some hope, they won 93 games. The main reasons were a mature Roy White, Bobby Murcer, the aquisition of Danny Cater (who hit .301) and especially some funny looking kid from the farm who played catcher and won ROY. God bless you Thurman.

Basically, from 1961 - 1964, a four year span, the average was:
1st place out of 10
From 1965 - 1969, a five year span, the average was:
7.5th place out of 10

101 years of standings: http://tinyurl.com/2yhgrh

I went against the tide by becoming a Yankee fan (at age 6) in 1970. The Mets were the toast of the town, of course, but there were a couple of glimmers of hope in the Bronx: 93 wins and a hard-nosed, energetic, rookie catcher.

31 Thanks Shaun, that was hilarious. That adventure game concept brings back memories of the old days when people would just sit in front of their computers and type away, no graphics, just typing and reading endless streams of text... Boy, I'm glad we don't have to do that anymore. Oh, wait...

Actually, I loved those text only games. Maybe that's one of the reasons I love this site so much. ;-)
/Zork-geek memory-lane discussion

35 You beat me to it. The emergence of Munson signalled the start of the new era. Then George and Gabe came on board in '73 and went to work on the rest of the pieces.

And by the way, people over-play George's spending. Most of the pieces were filled by means of brilliant trades (Lyle, Nettles, Piniella, Chambliss, Maddox -- an interim step, Bonds -- who we flipped for Rivers and Figgy, Randolph, Dent).

Sure, Bugs Bunny struck out three men with one pitch. But he's just another RHP...

39 Why have one RHP when you could trade him for six!?

34 The only way to get quality returns in a trade is to develop a surplus. Right now, the Yankees don't have one. If you sign 10 middle-of-the-road pitching prospects and 3 of them pan out, you have a surplus. You can then trade one of them for someone else's surplus, e.g. a young catcher.

41 See, that is exactly Cashman's logic. Except it's backwards.

Cashman: If only one-in-ten RHP become major leaguers then if we have 20 we'll have two solid major league pitcher!

Jim: Except Cash, for that same price, you'd have ten full-time position players.

Cashman: We'll have two major league pitchers! Have you seen how expensive those are!

39 with a powerful paralyzing perfect pachydermous percussion pitch. Which he uses to paste pathetic palookas. We could use that as there are several pathetic palookas in our division.

37 Zork + Executive Suite / (King's Quest x 7) = many skipped classes in H.S.