IMPORTANT BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT

PLEASE CHANGE YOUR BOOKMARKS AND FEEDS TO THE NEW URL, YANKEEANALYSTS.COM. TYU IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH THE NEW YORK YANKEES OR YANKEES UNIVERSE.

Minor Surgery For CC

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 5:00 pm No Responses »
Oct 272010

Joel Sherman and George King had the scoop:

CC Sabathia was diagnosed with a minor meniscus tear of the right knee that will require surgery, The Post has learned.

Sabathia was diagnosed yesterday at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and is expected to undergo surgery in the coming days. The Yankees do not consider the procedure significant and expect Sabathia to recover within three weeks and be fully ready for spring training.

Nevertheless, the worry with signing Sabathia to the largest-ever pitching contract always had been the two Ws: weight and workload. He has carried a lot of both, and, thus, it is hard to look at any surgery — especially on a joint — as minor.

The Yankees already are planning a full-court press for free agent Cliff Lee, and any concerns about their ace, Sabathia, only would make the Yankees more motivated to solidify the top of the rotation.

While the writers do make a valid point about needing help at the top of the rotation, one could argue that injuries like this can help make a case against Cliff Lee. As EJ noted earlier, there are risk inherent to signing older players, one of which is an increased likelihood of injury. Even a minor injury to a pitcher who is considered a “horse” might drive home the idea that handing a large contract to a pitcher on the wrong side of 30 may not be the most prudent idea. I still prefer Lee and would not shy away from handing him a big deal, but I am sure that health and age are two considerations that Brian Cashman will weigh when putting together an offer for the star lefty.

As for Sabathia, I am not a doctor and therefore cannot comment as to whether we should be concerned about his health going forward. I will say that many have told me that this is an outpatient procedure and should not be indicative of an underlying problem that could cause a recurrence. Hopefully this surgery becomes nothing more than a footnote to an otherwise healthy Yankee career for CC.

Tagged with: , , ,

Girardi-Yanks Closing In On Deal

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 3:11 pm 2 Responses »
Oct 272010

Joel Sherman has the scoop on the widely expected move:

The Yankees and Joe Girardi are closing in on a three-year contract that will pay him somewhere between $9 million and $10 million, The Post has learned.

Girardi would receive a bump from a contract that expires Saturday that was paying him $7.5 million over three years. The raise would make Girardi the fifth- or sixth-highest paid manager in the major leagues.

The sides believe the deal could be finalized Wednesday or Thursday.

When the deal is complete, the Yankees will move on to more complicated issues involving free agency for Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and formulating a plan to chase the diamond of the free-agent class, Cliff Lee.

Despite all of the handwringing and doubts about Girardi’s return, this issue was handled quickly and without any drama. Hopefully the Derek Jeter negotiations have a similar feel and end with a similarly fair contract.

In exclusive BREAKING news, 3 sources tell me that Incarcerated Bob is full of it.

Tagged with: , , ,

Against a Cliff Lee Signing

Posted by EJ Fagan at 1:00 pm 50 Responses »
Oct 272010

Cliff Lee is a really good pitcher. He’s become a modern-day Curt Schilling: dominating the playoffs unimaginably well. He is healthy. He has no makeup issues to worry about. But we still shouldn’t sign him.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Cliff Lee is going to make bank this off season. He is going to command somewhere around 20 million dollars for 5-6 years, possibly more. If I’m wrong about that, and Lee signs a Halladay-like short term deal, my argument in this post doesn’t really apply.

Cliff Lee is going to turn 32 years old next season. At some point, old players start to decline. It tends to start around 34-35, and descend rather steeply after that. The Yankees were lucky when Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte were productive into their mid and late 30s. They were the exception to the rule. We can count on our players beginning to decline around that age.

One player declining is not a big deal. The Yankees can afford it. The problem is that the Yankees’ “New Core”© are almost all right around the same age. Mark Teixeira will be 31 next year. Nick Swisher will be 30. Curtis Granderson will be 30. Alex Rodriguez will be 35. C.C. Sabathia will be 30. They are all right around the same age as Cliff Lee. Our younger core includes Brett Gardner, Phil Hughes, and Robinson Cano. Besides those guys, all of the players that we will be counting on for production (assuming guys like Granderson and Swisher stick around) will start to decline somewhere around 2014-2015.

The Yankees can afford to have a lot of high-priced players on the team. What they can’t afford is to have their high-priced players sitting on the bench. The Yankees will be writing in Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia, etc in to the lineup every as regulars until their contracts expire. If they play poorly or below expectations, then the Yankees have to make up that production elsewhere. This is why the team should spread their risk out among a diverse set of ages. At any given time, they shouldn’t let the majority of their lineup (or, more accurately, the majority of their payroll) decline all at the same time.

That’s part of the bargain you make for a free agent, right? You pay for a few late years of a guy’s prime, and then keep paying him through his decline years. I’m aware of that, and fine with it. But timing is what its all about.

Getting locked into an aging and declining team is how the New York Yankees become the New York Knicks.  We all saw the 2005-2008 Yankees start to get locked into this problem. Luckily, the aging Yankee veterans defied the odds and were productive far in to their 30s. The Yankees can’t count on that happening again. They’ll be stuck with a mediocre team until the contracts clear out. The team needs those expensive contracts to clear out one at a time instead of all at once. Cliff Lee’s contract puts him right there with Mark Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia.

The team needs to aim younger than Cliff Lee. They need a guy in the Hughes/Cano/Gardner age group, not someone in advanced age. Or they need to sign someone to a shorter, cheaper contract. Who is that guy? I’m not too sure. He may not exist. But he should be in his mid to late 20s, or be a very short term commitment. Zach Greinke comes to mind. There are also internal solutions in the minor leagues, which I will be talking a lot about this winter.

I’m going to be a fan of the New York Yankees in the second half of this decade. I want the team to be in it for a shot at the World Series every year. Panicking following “only” getting to Game 6 of the ALCS and feeling like they have to sign the biggest guy out there is a quick way to ruin things. It reeks of the mid-2000s short-term philosophy of the team. Cliff Lee is a great pitcher, but he’s not the right pitcher for us.

Tagged with:

Savers and Drainers, Pitcher Edition

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 4 Responses »
Oct 272010

We looked at the Yankee savers and drainers on the offensive side of things yesterday, so today, let’s look at the pitching side of things. Again, we’ll go top 9 guys in fWAR order.

1. CC Sabathia, 5.1 fWAR worth $20.4MM. Salary: $23MM. Value: -$2.6MM
2. Phil Hughes, 2.4 fWAR worth $9.5MM. Salary: $0.447MM. Value: +$9.053MM
3. Andy Pettitte, 2.3 fWAR worth $9.2MM. Salary: $11.75MM. Value: -$2.55MM
4. Mariano Rivera, 1.7 fWAR worth $6.8MM. Salary: $15MM. Value: -$8.2MM
5. Joba Chamberlain, 1.4 fWAR worth $5.6MM. Salary: $0.487795MM. Value: +$5.1122MM
6. A.J. Burnett, 1.3 fWAR worth $5.2MM. Salary: $16.5MM. Value: -$11.3MM
7. David Robertson, 0.7 fWAR worth $2.9MM. Salary: $0.462650MM. Value: +$2.437MM
8. Ivan Nova, 0.5 fWAR worth $1.8MM. Salary: N/A. Value: N/A
9. Kerry Wood, 0.4 fWAR worth $1.5MM. Salary (Yankees only): $8.3279MM. Value: -$6.8279 $2.0279MM. Value: -$0.5279MM.

Ivan Nova’s salary wasn’t listed on Cot’s, but we can assume he gave the Yankees at least decent value because there’s no way he made anything close to $1MM this season. Kerry Wood’s value looks a lot worse than it is because the Yankees picked up most some of his salary from Cleveland and with just 26 innings for the Yankees, there’s no way he could’ve come close to matching his value he came close to matching his salary with them, but couldn’t quite get there.

CC Sabathia’s high salary makes him look less valuable, but the fact that he came so close to matching it just goes to show how awesome a pitcher he is.

Phil Hughes was essentially the pitching version of Brett Gardner: cost controlled talent producing at a relatively high level and giving the Yankees a ton of value. Hughes hits arbitration for the first time this year, so it will be interesting to see what his salary is going forward.

Joba Chamberlain, also arbitration eligible for the first time, provided a good deal of value for the Yankees, too–the second most on the team after Hughes. It’s worth noting that fWAR likes Joba a lot more than bWAR which had him at 0.4 WAR.

A.J. Burnett…well, yeah. The numbers speak for themselves there.

Mariano Rivera’s numbers look odd because he’s so highly paid, yet as a closer, he doesn’t pitch enough innings to rack up a very high WAR. Rivera did have the fourth highest fWAR among AL relievers, behind Matt Thornton (2.2), Joakim Soria (2.1), and Neftali Feliz (1.8).

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

What to do at Catcher?

Posted by Steve S. at 9:01 am 7 Responses »
Oct 272010

One of the trickiest areas to address this off season is the Yankee Catcher position. As we all saw during the ALDS, an aggressive base running team like the Rangers can expose the Yankee defensive deficiencies and is a major problem in the playoffs. It’s becoming generally accepted that 39 year old Jorge Posada will see less time at the position next year, yet most Yankee observers think Francisco Cervelli can’t hit enough to play the position full time.

This has led many fans to the notion that super-prospect Jesus Montero could be the answer. It’s already being discussed, Brian Cashman said this at his year end press conference:

“I do have people who believe he is ready at the catching position with a tremendous offensive bat,” Cashman said. “But nothing gets handed to somebody. You have to take it and earn it. He’ll have a chance to come to spring training and fight for something, and he’ll either show he is ready for something at a higher level or not.”

There’s little question his bat is ready. The issue with Montero has always been his glove, especially at a defense-intensive position like Catcher. BP’s Kevin Goldstien recently had this to say about Montero:

Some would argue that Montero is the best pure hitter in the minors, as the 20-year-old hit .351/.396/.684 during the second half of the season for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Despite his tender age, he’s big-league ready, and now the question is where he’ll play on the field. He’s made great strides behind the plate, but the upgrade is merely from embarrassing to simply bad. Few scouts see him as an upgrade over the slow, deficient and aging Posada. No matter where Montero ends up, the bat is going to play in the middle of the order for one of the most dangerous lineups in baseball.—Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus

I always weight the opinions of outside observers over those you hear coming from the team, since teams have an obvious interest in promoting their own prospects for trade purposes. The fact that Montero has been dangled twice in potential deals (Halladay/Lee) makes me suspect the internal evaluation of Montero is much closer to BPs than it is to what the Yanks say publicly. As such, a platoon of Posada-Montero looks like a license to steal for the American League. That won’t go over well with the Yankee manager, who himself was a defensive-oriented Catcher and will have much to say about how these pieces are employed. It also won’t go over well with the Yankee pitchers, some of whom have had their issues with Jorge throughout the years. Hard throwers like CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Joba Chamberlain need a backstop who can block their hard breaking pitches in the dirt, and the aging Posada and unathletic Montero both suffer in that area.

This leads us to Cervelli, who is an uninspiring option in the eyes of most Yankee fans, and for good reason. His bat is weak, posting an .694 OPS for the 2010 season in half a season (314 PAs) worth of work. After a strong 2009 where he threw out 43% of baserunners, he followed that in 2010 with a piddling 14% caught stealing rate, which was even worse than Posada’s rate of 15%. Some of that is certainly due to being AJ Burnett’s personal catcher, since AJ makes little to no effort to hold runners on and gives Cervelli little chance. All reports I’ve seen have Cervelli with better ‘pop times’ than Posada (time it takes to catch and throw to 2nd) so we shouldn’t read into this that Cervelli is worse at throwing out baserunners than Jorge is. But suffice to say that neither Yankee Catcher was able to control the running game last year, and teams noticed this and those who had the skills to take advantage, did. Futher, Cervelli wasn’t much better than Jorge at blocking the plate. He allowed just two passed balls in 2010 but a whopping 35 wild pitches while Posada allowed 32, so neither Yankee catcher was able to block the plate with any effectiveness last season. To put these numbers in some context, Miguel Olivo led Baseball with 49 WP as an everyday Catcher. Defensive liability Victor Martinez threw out 22% of baserunners. If you put both Jorge and Cervelli’s numbers together, they would have been at the bottom of baseball in CS%, and led in wild pitches and passed balls among qualifying players at their position.

Some have suggested importing a free agent like John Buck on a 1 year deal, but he’s not exactly a defensive specialist either. The teams that have given the Yanks the most trouble in recent years are the ones that run the bases aggressively.  For years, the Angels gave the Yankee all sorts of trouble by running all over them, and now the Rays and Rangers have picked up where they left off. What’s worse, there doesn’t appear to be a solution at hand for the 2011 campaign. Brian Cashman will need to work the phones to find himself a catch and throw backstop if the Yanks hope to reverse this trend anytime soon.


Tagged with: , ,
© 2011 TYU Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha