Austin Romine has had a very quiet spring training. He showed up for pitchers and catchers, and we’ve heard very little of him since. By many accounts, Romine is the #2 prospect in the Yankee organization, and I think quite a bit underrated by everyone commenting on him. Jesus Montero is a much sexier prospect, and his sexiness diminishes Romine’s considerable accomplishments and abilities.
I remember writing about Romine right after he was drafted. My reaction was that the Yankees may have found themselves first-round talent in an obscure high school in Arizona. Romine’s scouting report – good power, a rocket arm, good mobility, and enough athleticism – sounded like a younger version of Toronto’s 1st round pick J.P. Arencibia, who has since mostly succeeded in the minor leagues. The Yankees were able to find Romine because he had little exposure to MLB scouts at his obscure high school, despite all the positive signs, including a family history in the majors.
I prefer to keep things pretty simple when I evaluate prospects. What can Romine do? He can play plus defense at catcher, and he has better hitting skills than most peers at his position. While the hitting skills may or may not develop, the defense is already there. We’ve seen with guys like Omir Santos and Francisco Cervelli that defense alone can carry a catcher to the majors, so he doesn’t have to hit a whole lot on top of that in order to be valuable. Romine might be the most certain commodity in the Yankee system.
I think that there are a number of other reasons to believe Austin Romine will be a successful major league catcher:
- The Florida State League was particularly hard on hitters this season, and Romine, the FSL Player of the Year, still hit .276/.322/.441, improving on his raw power in a much tougher environment than he was subject to in Charleston. While that line seems modest, Romine was in fact top-10 in many offensive categories, including slugging, home runs, doubles, and total bases. He was younger than his competition, and the only catcher (besides Jesus Montero) to show that kind of hitting.
- Austin Romine was only 20 years old in 2009. At the beginning of his third professional season, Romine will be 21 years old and entering Double-A. He will be one of the youngest players at his level. While Jesus Montero was a prodigy who hit for power as a teenager, we can’t expect Romine (nor Montero) to be any where near the end of his hitting development at this stage in his career. He could add even more power.
- The average catcher hit .254/.316/.408 last year. It really doesn’t take a whole lot of stick to be a big competitive advantage as an every-day catcher. We don’t really know how much Jorge Posada’s defense hurts the team, but I’d wager that if you replaced him with a plus defensive catcher, you would earn 2-3 wins at the very least. By that logic, a .750 OPS Romine could be one of the best catchers in the league, which isn’t really asking a lot of a guy who could hit 20 home runs.
Overall, Yankee fans should have a lot of confidence in their second-best hitting prospect. A year from now, I could easily foresee a scenario where Romine is a top-50 prospect in all of baseball.
Sports are a big part of my life. I’m not athletic – I was my pitch-to-yourself softball team’s catcher, and the only sport that I’ve ever been reasonably good at is ultimate frisbee. But between the hockey and baseball seasons, I don’t spend a whole lot of time during the year without devoted day-to-day following of my favorite teams. I’m a total filmy, but I probably enjoy movies like The Rookie, Invincible, Miracle, Mystery Alaska, Tin Cup, and Bull Durham more than any Coen Brothers or Wes Anderson film. And of course, I’ve been having a blast blogging about baseball for more than 4 years now.
I really loved Vancouver’s Winter Olympics. I’m always in the woods for the Summer Olympics, and the 2006 games were on tape delay, so this is the first time in a long time that I’ve truly experienced the thrill of the international competition. My friends will tell you that I was screaming like a madman when Team USA would make a tough shot in curling, or when Shaun White made a sick run for the half pipe gold medal. But USA Hockey’s dramatic, amazing run to the finals got me going more than the Yankees World Series run this year, or the Devil’s 2003 win that I got to be present for. Even though Canada won, I couldn’t have been more satisfied watching the best hockey game that I’ve ever seen to cap off the best Olympic tournament ever.
What is it about sports that does such a great job of lifting the burdens of life off our shoulders and bringing out the best in us? I think that it is sport’s ability to draw real, unpredictable drama with meaningful outcomes, but at the end of the day, after the best athletes in the world have poured bit of their soul into the competition, no one gets hurt, no one gets killed, and the losers have a chance to come back and fight another day. There are no real losers in sports. Fiction requires us to suspend our disbelief, and real-world drama leaves someone else with an unhappy ending. We get to watch the story unfold knowing that no director or author is controlling the outcome, and that uncertainty can give us the same adrenaline rush experienced by the players in the game. Its no mistake that Bob Costas, one of the industry’s best storytellers, is anchoring NBC’s coverage of the games.
The Olympics offer the purest of sporting events to enjoy. The best athletes in the world are competing not for money or for an arbitrary, artificially created professional club, but for king and country. And now we have to wait two more years to see it again. Until then, I’ll be watching plenty of the MLB and NHL, and waiting for the 2014 USA hockey squad to demand their rematch against Canada.
Photo Credit: Ryan Remiorz – AP
Longtime readers know that one of my pet peaves is the arbitrary designation of how good a starting pitcher is. People like to classify guys as “#1 starter”, “#3 starter” etc. Its not an uncommon way to classify players in sports – because its fairly intuitive. I’ve been involved in a lot of debates about whether or not Scott Gomez was a “true #1 center’ for the Devils – and I absolutely hate the designation.
Each team in a normal rotation has to carry 5 starters. The Yankees have Javy Vazquez, Andy Pettitte, C.C. Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett, and the last spot is up in the air. Besides for an extra start or two possibly handed to C.C. Sabathia due to off days, and a few taken away from the Joba/Hughes competition for the same reason, but for the most part until the playoffs the rotation order is completely meaningless. Whether or not Javy Vazquez is the #2 or #4 starter has absolutely no impact on the game. But the label has a lot of intuitive appeal, which in my opinion is the most important part of a statistic, so I think that giving the language some real meaning, we can better place in our minds our players.
I am a fan of a methodology used by The Hardball Times awhile back. To quote the article (using the 2006 Twins):
For the purposes of this article, it’s necessary to define exactly what a #1 starter (or #2, or #3) is. To keep things as simple as possible, I used ERA as a measure of pitching ability. I also figured that each rotation spot accounts for 32 starts. On many teams, the #1 guy isn’t the same for the whole season. For example, let’s look at the 2006 Twins. Here are all of the pitchers who made more than one start for Minnesota last year:
Starter GS ERA Liriano 16 2.16 Santana 34 2.77 Bonser 18 4.22 Radke 28 4.32 Garza 9 5.76 Silva 31 5.94 Baker 16 6.37 Lohse 8 7.07By ERA, Francisco Liriano was the best of these guys, but he only made 16 starts. So, he made half of the “#1 starter” starts. Since Johan Santana is next in line, I assigned 16 of his starts to round out a composite #1 starter. Thus, the Twins #1 starter was half Santana, half Liriano. Santana’s remaining 18 starts were assigned to the composite #2 starter.
Intuitively speaking, that distribution is a reflection of the fact that, while Liriano was in the rotation, Santana was #2. When Liriano was in the bullpen or on the disabled list, Santana was #1. Here’s how that shakes out for the Twins staff:
Starter GS ERA Liriano 16 2.16 Santana 16 2.77 #1 Total 32 2.47 Santana 18 2.77 Bonser 14 4.22 #2 Total 32 3.40 Bonser 4 4.22 Radke 28 4.32 #3 Total 32 4.31 Garza 9 5.76 Silva 23 5.94 #4 Total 32 5.89 Silva 8 5.94 Baker 16 6.37 Lohse 8 7.07 #5 Total 32 6.88
I think its a pretty good method. In a perfect world, we would use ERA+ or something more complex, but for the purposes of keeping it intuitive, I’ll stick with the THT method. The biggest problem with the method is it doesn’t account for innings, but it is meant for the purpose of illustration more than calculation. The article crunches the numbers for all 2006 AL teams. I wish I had 2009 numbers, but I don’t really have the database power to generate those numbers. From 2006:
- #1 Starter 3.7
- #2 Starter 4.24
- #3 Starter 4.58
- #4 Starter 5.09
- #5 Starter 6.22
If we look at the 2009 Yankees, we get the following:
- #1 Starter: 3.37 ERA
- #2 Starter 4.00 ERA
- #3 Starter 4.15 ERA
- #4 Starter 4.70 ERA
- #5 Starter 7.5 ERA
Relative to 2006, the Yankees held a pretty solid advantage in the #1-4 spots, and completely fell apart at the #5 spot. Chien-Ming Wang and Sergio Mitre are to blame. I think that this really shows what the addition of Javier Vazquez means to the team. Even if Chamberhughes doesn’t improve on Joba’s 2009 performance, the Yankees essentially get to replace 32 starts of 7.5 ERA with 32 starts of Javier Vazquez, who at the very least is a pretty good bet to have an ERA in the low 4s. If Vazquez were to replace 6 innings a game with an ERA of 4.20, my quick and dirty calculation says that is a 6 win improvement over last season.
Injuries and spot starts will happen, so this isn’t a straight-up replacement, but I think it is a very good way to conceptualize why the 2010 Yankee rotation is built so well.
Furthermore, I think that this method demonstrates how valuable healthy starting pitchers are, even if they don’t excel. If a team starts the year with 5 starters who each get 5 starts, even if the worst ones aren’t very good, they have a pretty big competitive advantage. The slope is quite steep for teams once they start to reach down in to their depth charts. This is where the Yankees grade quite well – their top 4 starters have been exceptionally healthy in the past few years. In fact, they average 33.25 starts per season in the past 2 seasons.
And to make one last point: what if some combination of Chamberhughes becomes a pretty good pitcher? They both certainly have the ability to throw up an ERA in the 3s. If they were to, for instance, toss in 32 starts with a 3.80 ERA and 6 innings per start, and you combine that with Javy’s addition, the rotation could be 8 wins better than last year. And the Yankees won 103 games in 2009.
Long story short: current roster construction combined with some good health luck could mean a rotation capable of 1998-like heights.
In part 2 (hopefully some time this week, real life is kicking my butt right now) I’ll take a look at what really interests me about this: evaluating starting pitching prospects. So I’ll basically be bashing BA, which is always fun.
For the third straight year, I have the pleasure of announcing to you that I have been published by Maple Street Press in their yearly season preview magazine Yankees Annual 2010. It is an absolute pleasure to write for them every year. In the past, I’ve contributed long-form pieces on Joba Chamberlain and the Yankee farming strategy. This year, I actually have two articles in the Annual.
The first article is titled, “Who Says Farming Doesn’t Pay: Yanks Collect Dividends Through Plan B” and is one of my favorite long-form articles that I’ve ever written. I look at what the Yankees did in their World Series run when things didn’t go according to plan – when Alex Rodriguez goes down with surgery, or Jorge Posada and Jose Molina both find themselves on the disabled list at the same time, or Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez explode, or Chien-Ming Wang forgets how to pitch. Its a four-page recap of a lot of stories that probably will be forgotten as the championship season fades into history, but were very important to the team’s eventual success.
The second article is called, “Prime Prospect: Jesus Montero Arrives”, and is what you would expect. I go through Montero’s history, abilities, and scouting report, and I throw in a few charts and graphs to hammer home how special Montero is. And of course, I editorialize quite a bit. Its a three-page summary of what a lot of people here have probably already read, but with some added bonuses to make it worthwhile for the hard core fan.
Pending Pinstripes author Greg Fertel also contributed a must-read piece on the rise and fall of Phil Hughes. He’s planning on writing a post soon on it, so I will be link to it when he does.
The rest of the magazine is packed with some really excellent writing. Our editor Cecilia Tan has some really great scouting reports on every Yankee pitcher and batter, including full spray charts, hit zone charts, and pitch location charts. The Annual sports a robust minor league section, historical looks at Lou Gehrig and Ricky Henderson, and some great accounting of the 2009 season. And best of all – not a single page is devoted to advertisement. I can’t highly recommend it enough.
You can purchase advance copies online here. The magazine will hit newsstands, bookstores, and plenty of other places in the tristate area on March 2nd.
From Deadline Hollywood:
EXCLUSIVE: The Trade, a film that tells the true tale of 2 New York Yankees pitchers who caused a national scandal by swapping wives in the sexually-free 1970s, has finally hit the big leagues. Ben Affleck has become attached to direct and potentially star in the Warner Bros film. (Let me say that for a Yankees fan like myself, it would be worth it just to see Ben Affleck, and possibly Matt Damon, forced to wear the New York pinstripes. That has always been considered a potential obstacle for two die-hard Boston Red Sox fans and renowned Yankees haters.) Teammates Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich stunned the country when they disclosed in spring training 1973 that they were trading wives. Peterson had fallen in love with Susanne Kekich and his teammate fell in love with Marilyn Peterson. Fritz and Susanne remain a couple till this day, while Mike and Marilyn drifted apart. Affleck and his former Live Planet partners Matt Damon and Sean Bailey have long been intrigued with the project, with Affleck eyeing the role of Peterson and Damon the role of Kekich.
The 1970s Yankees produced a lot of scandals and stories, and this just one of them. Affleck and Damon seem to be taking a lighter tone for it, considering that Seinfeld writer Dave Mandel is working on the screenplay. I’m sure that the two Boston natives are chomping to take some good-natured swipes at the Yankees on camera.
The Yankee Universe (not our trademark!) needs to respond. Billy Crystal and Spike Lee, get on it.
NoMaas.org again brings us a great Yankee interview. Brian Cashman sat down to talk all things Yankees. Its really a great read. I recommend reading the whole thing. I’d like to comment on a few things.
SJK: On to the 5th starter competition — Joba Chamberlain lost significant juice on his fastball last year, in some estimates over 2 mph. How concerned are you about that and is that something which will weigh into your decision about who becomes the 5th starter?
CASH: Performance will dictate. He was inconsistent last year. He has completed his development program. May the best man win.SJK: But, speaking of what you just said about sample sizes, how can you make a decision based on Spring Training?
CASH: You are forced to make those types of decisions. You take into account their prior history, but really no one is coming in with an edge. We’ll see what we see. Maybe someone shows up out of shape or pulls a hamstring, that helps make a decision. Maybe someone is throwing ball better than someone else.SJK: Will Phil Hughes’ reported innings limits factor into the 5th starter competition?
CASH: No, it will not be a factor on his chances of becoming 5th starter. We will mandate what his innings limits will be and Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland will have full authority on how they would manage those innings – just like last year with Joba. They could truncate it at the beginning, it doesn’t matter me. It only matters to me if they exceed their limits.SJK: Is the loser of the Hughes/Joba battle going to be permanently placed in the bullpen or is this just a 1-year situation?
CASH: There is no permanent anything. Your team has to be flexible. The great thing is we have guys who have the ability to both go in the bullpen and start. If somebody gets hurt, somebody’s performance suffers…Chad Gaudin can start and relieve, Sergio Mitre can start and relieve, Aceves can start and relieve, Hughes and Joba can start and relieve. These guys have the ability to succeed at both ends, some more than others.
I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely the mindset that I want to hear coming from Brian Cashman. He pretty much said, “Whomever works hardest and proves themselves best will get the spot. We’ll worry about the innings and bullpen stuff after that.” That’s fantastic. Play off the competition between the two. He didn’t say it outright, but the loser seems to be destined for the bullpen, not Scranton, even though he may be converted back to starting. Great news.
He’s also not making any excuses for the players. “[Joba] has completed his development program. May the best man win.” That puts the onus squarely on the player’s head. I love it.
SJK: If the season were starting tomorrow, who would be your starting CF?
CASH: Curtis Granderson. But if Gardner proves our team is better with him in CF and he can be an everyday outfielder…he has a lot to show in a short amount of time in Spring Training. We believe he is better in CF and we believe Granderson would be terrific in LF. But, Granderson was acquired to be our everyday CF and that is our expectation.
Brett Gardner isn’t going to be handed the center field job, but he will have a shot at it. Cashman doesn’t seem to have much of a concern that moving Granderson will harm his long term viability in center. He’s basically arguing what I’ve been advocating for, “If the team is better off with Gardner in center, Gardner will be in center.”
SJK: Do you think we’ll see Jesus Montero in the Boogie Down at some point in the season?
CASH: I don’t see him in the Bronx this season. He needs to take his next step in the process.SJK: Do you think his future is behind the plate?
CASH: We hope so. His value is highest as a catcher. His bat will find a way into the middle of the lineup, that’s without a doubt. Whether he stays behind the plate, is a first baseman, a rightfielder, a DH – that remains to be seen. But he’s got one of the best throwing arms in the minors, he’s got some of the best blocking…he’s just so big, mechanically he takes a lot longer in his release. That’s an area he needs to shorten up.
This is the most interesting portion of the interview to me, because we get some genuinely new information, even if we could have deduced some of it before:
- 2010 isn’t Montero’s year. We pretty much assumed this already, but Cashman confirms it. Jesus Montero already doesn’t really have a spot on the roster, and they probably don’t consider him one of their early depth call-ups. He has development left, and I’m sure the Yankees are in no hurry to get his arbitration clock running. We might even see him start in Double-A, though I doubt it.
- Outfield is an option. I can’t remember a Yankee official ever once mentioning Jesus Montero as a potential right fielder before. Not only does Cashman do that, but he mentions Montero’s strong throwing arm (which he exaggerates a bit, but we have heard in the past of a plus arm) and struggles with footwork behind the plate. I don’t remember Mark Newman ever really discussing Montero in another position. So please correct me if I’m wrong, but this might be a first.
Good stuff NoMaas. Way to ask the right questions.
Mark Polishurk on MLB Trade Rumors did a little speculation today on what kind of contract Derek Jeter will command one year from now. A quote:
Something in the neighborhood of a six-year contract that pays Jeter around $22MM per year (a nod to his uniform number) might be a total more to the liking of both parties. Jeter gets a slight raise from his previous contract, is locked up until he’s 42 years old, and is amply rewarded for his contributions to the team while still leaving the Yankees with a bit of flexibility to sign other players (like, for example, fellow Yankee legend Mariano Rivera, whose deal is also up after 2010)
Polishurk labels this as a reasonable contract after reading Tyler Kepner’s quote:
After Rodriguez defied the Yankees and opted out of his contract in October 2007, the Yankees talked tough but eventually gave him what he wanted: a 10-year, $275 million contract that locks him up through his 42nd birthday. The agreement was forged in the brief period when Hank Steinbrenner was heavily involved, before his more restrained brother, Hal, assumed sole authority atop the organization.
Will Jeter demand a contract that also takes him through age 42? Will he seek to make more than Rodriguez?
I’m going to reach into the Rahm Emmanuel vernacular for a moment here: Both of those proposals are frakking retarded. Derek Jeter is going to be a 36 year-old shortstop with a questionable defensive history and a bat that despite a strong 2009 is on a downward trend. He’s a fan favorite and a Yankee legend. By no means does he deserve a 6-year, 22 million dollar contract, and the notion that he has any chance of getting a contract worth more per annum than Alex Rodriguez’s deal requires more opium to come up with than it took to write Kubla Kahn. Considering how few public comments, anonymous or otherwise, either the Yankees or Derek Jeter’s agent have made regarding his next contract, these numbers are nothing but pure speculation.
Read Tyler Kepner’s article. I usually love Kepner, but it is a shoddy piece of journalism designed to try and create Jeter-Arod drama where absolutely none exists. He should be ashamed to have sunk to the level of lesser New York newspapers.
Look, I love Derek Jeter. He was my second favorite player growing up to Tino Martinez. He’s a fan favorite, and probably deserves to be paid a little bit above market value because of it. He also has some additional leverage in contract negotiations because of it. But the Yankees are not going to to blow the bank to avoid a few weeks of bad headlines, and Derek Jeter doesn’t get to fiat his salary being higher than any one on the team. He is a declining player, and therefore deserves a declining salary.
If Derek Jeter and his agent somehow put the Yankees in a spot where he demands more money than Mark Teixeira or Alex Rodriguez or whomever, the media will probably put pressure on the Yankees to pay the captain. There is little doubt in my mind that the Yankees will be seen as the villains in this contract negotiation. However, Derek Jeter should be the one to be blamed. He would be exploiting Yankee fan’s love for him in order to further enrich his own lives, at the expense of allowing the team to go out and win games. 36 year-olds don’t get huge contracts for a reason: they are old men. They break down, get injured, or just plain stop being able to play effective baseball very quickly and unpredictably. Putting the Yankees on the hook for a 120+ million dollar deal for some silly symbolic reason will do more harm to the chances of the Yankees winning the World Series in the first part of this decade than any bad trade or bad p.r. could do.
Give him Jorge Posada’s 4-year, 60 million dollar contract. That’s more than any other team will pay for Derek Jeter. Add in the Arod-style record-breaking incentives that Kepner suggests if you want. But don’t hamstring the team with another bloated albatross contract after we’ve already dug ourselves a huge hole with Alex Rodriguez’s ridiculous deal. Yankee fans should speak up and demand a market value contract for their captain, unless they care more about watching Derek Jeter’s hair grow grey than they do about winning titles.
I really enjoyed watching the Olympic opening ceremonies last night. The cultural show was a let-down, perhaps because I’m comparing it to Beijing but also perhaps because Canada seemed to overemphasize parts of its culture to the point of caricaturization at times. I’m ethnically Canadian, though I don’t have a lot of connection to my past, and nothing in the show made me all that interested in forming a connection, though I did like what they did with projection on the stage. But that’s all for another blog.
There is something special about watching the Olympics that I have trouble describing. Watching the athletes walk in so obviously proud to represent their country, or seeing Los Angeles Kings defenseman Jack Johnson fly to Vancouver so that he could make the opening ceremonies even though he has a game to make in California today, has resonance. More and more of these Olympians are highly-paid, highly-endorsed stars, but you don’t sense it watching them. They have a look in their eye that you don’t see in professional sports – and everyone has it. Its a sense of purpose. Of course, they are there to personally compete in the toughest stage in the world, but they are also there to represent their country.
National Hockey League players were actually forced to concede other things in order to secure the right for them to play in the Olympics. They enjoy it that much. Hockey players aren’t paid all that much on average less than baseball players, but they still walk around with that glimmer in their eye. In fact, it seems as if these professional athletes, who have plenty of time for personally-satisfying competition back in the NHL, are even more eager to play for the sole purpose of national pride. That’s why they fought tooth and nail for the chance to play in the Olympics, and significantly altered their schedule (the NHL loses money because of the Olympics) in order to do so.
The International Olympic Committee has stated that baseball will no longer be played in the Summer Olympics unless MLB ponies up and sends the biggest stars in the world to play. This should function as impetus to start the discussion on MLB’s side. The World Baseball Classic proved itself this season to be a silly little venture into international competition, largely because of its pre-season timing. MLB should interrupt its season, just like the NHL does, in order to allow its players to compete on that stage. Its not as bad of an interruption as it sounds – the whole thing could be played, theoretically, in 10 days, just like the NHL does.
In many ways, baseball is the perfect professional sport to play in the Olympics. Unlike hockey, baseball functions in a way to allow a real all-star team to function. All-star hockey teams at the Olympics stumble as their players learn chemistry with their line mates. Except for a few positional relationships, this is not a problem in baseball. Teams wouldn’t need to practice together. They could simple move to the Olympic village one day and play ball.
How would MLB do it? I think that there are two possibilities. Let’s assume that they would need 10 days off in order to do it, which is what the NHL does. Teams would play 3 play-in rounds against their group, and then the best 8 teams would advance to a single-elimination playoff. The All-Star game would be eliminated, which gives you 3 days. At that point you need to find 7 days, which could come from a combination of the season starting sooner, ending later, and an off day or two being eliminated. I’d propose shortening the season, but the league would never do that. But really, this looks very doable from a logistical standpoint.
From a business standpoint, I think that a good bit of harmless nationalism could do baseball a lot of good. MLB is trying to expand to China and Europe, and the Olympics are a great stage to introduce people to the game. MLB wouldn’t directly derive revenue from the games, but could find ways to market their players and teams around it. Interest in baseball would be rekindled in a lot of American fans. Baseball lacks true international competition, so this would be a great niche to fill.
But overall, they should do it because athletes sometimes need to compete for something other than money and teams that they are arbitrarily placed on. I’ve seen the look in Derek Jeter’s eye while he plays in the World Baseball classic, and that’s a glorified exhibition tournament. This would be the real thing, with players in top shape, and on a platform infinitely bigger. Get it done, Selig.
(By the way… Zach Parise and Ryan Miller are going to lead the underdog USA team to a gold medal! You heard it here first.)
Not that long ago, the Yankees had more pitching depth than they could have dreamed of. The Triple-A rotation was so full that qualified pitchers had to move to Double-A, and the team even let a few go in the Rule V draft. An impressive amount of pitching has left the organization over the past two years. Off the top of my head, the Yankees have traded, let loose, or seen the (maybe temporary) demise of: Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens, Daniel McCutchen, Ian Kennedy, George Kontos, Kei Igawa, Eric Hacker, Jeff Marquez, Steve White, Tyler Clippard, Matt DeSalvo and Phil Coke, while Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Alfredo Aceves sit comfortably in the major leagues.
While there’s not a ton of major league success there, that’s the nature of depth pitching. A lot of it won’t work out, so having many options is necessary to ensure a not-so-disastrous outcome if a starter goes down. I’m going to separate Yankee depth into three categories: ready now, ready potentially some time this year, ready potentially some time next year.
Ready Now
Right now, the Yankees would almost certainly go to their major league roster before their Triple-A group to fill long and short term vacancies in their rotation. The loser of the Hughes/Chamberlain competition is definitely the best option, but Chad Gaudin is no slouch. I get the sense that Alfredo Aceves will be a reliever from here on out, since the Yankees felt it necessary to carry two legitimate long relievers on their roster. Sergio Mitre is one of them, and he seems terribly out of place. Gaudin can do everything that Mitre can, but better. I don’t understand why the Yankees are holding on to Mitre, and I’m a little bit worried that they’ll feel obligated to use him as a spot starter. Uninspiring names like Jason Hirsch follow here. Hopefully, we won’t have to see any pointless veteran call ups in the rotation this year.
Regardless, the Yankees have so-so depth here. It depends on how you view Hughes or Chamberlain. Will they undergo a mid-season conversion in the case of long-term need? I think that they should but we’ll see. If all we need this season is for Gaudin or Mitre to fill a few spot starts, we’re going to win the division by a mile.
Potentially Ready This Season
Now, we dip into the Triple-A roster. Ivan Nova is already on the 40-man roster, so I’d expect him to (all else being equal) be the first call up. Nova isn’t as safe a bet as you’d like for someone in this position, but he’s got some upside, and the Yankees sure do love him. At some point, we’ll see him in the majors in 2010. Zach McAllister is next, who does not own a 40-man spot. I don’t really expect the Yankees will be at all hesitant to burn one of McAllister’s options, so he’s not far behind Nova in turns of depth. Really, we’ll probably see the guy pitching the best get the call-up.
Below the “big two” are two names that will take a little bit of development to make their season debuts. The first should be familiar to fans of this blog: Wilkins De La Rosa. De La Rosa is a converted outfielder who spent the first part of his pitching career throwing absolute gas from the left side in relief. I was probably not the only person to be surprised to see the Yankees convert him to starting, and then see him stick there. Long term, a lot of people see De La Rosa as a relief pitcher, but he was very strong in the Trenton Thunder rotation, so we’ll see. The second is Lance Pendleton, who is a less familiar name. Overcoming some major injuries in his career, Pendleton has set himself back on track with a really strong 2009 performance (149 innings, 3.14 ERA, 130/46 K/BB), and will start the season in Double-A. He’s 26 years old, so the Yankees could fast track him if he performs.
The next two to watch are Ryan Pope and Jeremy Bleich. Both are fairly healthy, talented pitchers who have some learning issues to overcome before being put into the major league pitcher. Bleich proved especially hittable last season, allowing a 6.65 ERA and 84 hits in 65 Double-A innings. The good news on Bleich is that his strikeout rate neared the magical 1 per inning mark, with 60 during that time. Ryan Pope is less talented, but slightly more established than Bleich. His full season at Double-A reminded us why Carlos Silva (his comparable) was a really bad guy for the Mariners to sign. Pope allowed a 4.78 ERA and 155 hits in 141 innings despite only 34 walks allowed.
A few more names could pop up if they have exceptional seasons. D.J. Mitchell put himself on the map last season, and will likely start the season in Double-A. George Kontos could make a late-season surgery comeback, as could Christian Garcia or Alan Horne. But really, this is the 2010 list, and it is much weaker than last season.
Potentially Ready Sometime in 2011
Here, the Yankees look to start rebuilding their solid pitching depth. 2009 standouts Adam Warren, Josh Phelps and Hector Noesi all have a lot of good things about them. Warren and Phelps join Mitchell as NCAA veterans with good enough fastballs to be be able to learn how to pitch in the major leagues, similar to guys like George Kontos, Tim Norton, and Ross Ohlendorf in the Yankees’ past. I always feel that guys like these are chronically underrated on draft day. I’m willing to bet that at least 1 of the crew pitches in the majors that year.
Andrew Brackman lurks in the background, offering so much promise despite the frustration that he causes fans. Manuel Banuelos is only going to be 19 years old, but couldn’t have pitched any better in his major league debut. He’s got enough talent to climb to the majors if the Yankees are willing to push him. Finally, Jairo Heredia, who missed all of 2008, is another guy with tons of talent and polish who will open just a few strong months away from a Double-A promotion.
Conclusion
I listed a lot of names here. Fact is: the Yankees don’t have the depth they had before. Sitting with Hughes, Joba, and Kennedy in your back pocket is a really nice place to be. The guys at the top have a lot of question marks, and below them doesn’t lie a whole lot of immediate hope. The good news is that the Yankees could very quickly put themselves in to a position to return to the lands of abundance, and that’s a real nice place to be.
There is another piece of good news: the current rotation. Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, and Vazquez are one of the most exceptionally healthy top-4s in the major leagues in the past few years, and Joba Chamberlain has a pretty good health record himself. This isn’t 2007 or 2006, when the Yankees opened the season with huge question marks to answer. They shouldn’t need the depth, which affords them the luxury of time.
I’ve touched on this idea nin the past, but I would like to fully form it today.
The pre-lockout New York Rangers and the current New York Knicks have more in common with the 2000s New York Yankees than a home city. All three functioned with a huge payroll relative to their competition. While the Yankees managed to put together winning teams during their time of payroll advantage, the Rangers and Knicks did not, and I’d be willing to say that all three teams were huge disappointments relative to their payroll.
Economists have a term to describe a weird phenomena in developing countries called “Dutch Disease”. Dutch Disease refers to a strange currency phenomena that I don’t really understand, but the jist of it is pretty simple: developing countries rich with natural resources do worse than countries that have fewer natural resources. Its a paradox that many very smart people in developing countries know about, but can’t really do much to stop.
I think that the Knicks, Rangers, and Yankees suffered from Baseball Dutch Disease in a very specific way. They were victims of trying to be normal teams. Normal teams, with normal payrolls, are a part of a rebuilding/contention cycle. They load up for a championship or three, and then spend a few years overcoming the hangover while their team leaves for free agency or gets old. It takes some time for the poor teams to build up the cheap base of players to do it again, but moderate to large payroll teams have the resources to shorten the cycle. No one so far has been immune to it – though I think the Yankees can be (that’s for another post).
All three teams tried to buy their way to contention. This can, and often is, a legitimate way to win games. Big stars are big stars because they help teams win games. However, free agents are generally signed as they exit the prime of their careers to long term contracts. While these teams can afford to load up with high-paid stars, they can’t afford to not play these same stars. That means that Alex Rodriguez is all but guaranteed a spot in the Yankee lineup until his contract is up. So is Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Mark Teixeira, C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, etc. They will be on the roster through their decline years, and the Yankees will have to play them.
This is where Baseball Dutch Disease comes in. Teams sign a number of players to big, long term contracts. Those players get old, or generally aren’t as good as the team hoped they would be. The team signs or trades for a few more older players to make up the difference. These players get old or don’t play well, but the team is now left with no payroll room. All of the sudden, the Knicks or Rangers or Yankees resemble a zombie team – lots of former stars who are paid a lot of money, but aren’t really good, and can’t do anything to get rid of them. The zombie team plays a lot like a low payroll team: lots of mediocre, not a lot of great.
Those teams with smaller payrolls can have the same problem, because 1 or 2 bad bets set them back until the contract is over. Moderate to large payroll teams, on the other hand, are forced into a balance of big contracts and young players. This means that they will have to rebuild every once in awhile, but they won’t have to wait for a bunch of bad contracts to run out at any given time. This is how the New York Rangers, the second or highest paid team in hockey, didn’t make the playoffs for almost a decade before the NHL’s salary cap. Its a strange paradox.
The Yankees have for the most part been very lucky. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Mike Mussina, and others have generally functioned out outlyers: they aged gracefully. Still, their pitching and defense woes in the middle-late part of the decade could have been a lot worse had the team not been populated with unusual Hall of Famers.
Dutch Disease is not inevitable. It is a symptom of a preventable problem: the rebuilding/contention cycle. In order to insure that the Yankees don’t end up burdened with Dutch Disease, and I think Brian Cashman is thinking this way, they need to stop thinking in terms of “loading up for this year”, which is what the 2000s teams did. This may create a World Series favorite team for a season or two, but it does it at the expense of long term success.
Young players are key to the equation. The average starter (Closer, top-5 startering pitcher, 9 position players) on the 2010 roster that has at least entered their arbitration years cost the Yankees 15 million dollars – 17.65 if you look at only free agents. Even if you pay everyone else on the roster the minimum, that means that at any given time the Yankees can only have 9 or 10 big contracts on their roster. If any kind of critical mass of these contracts (let’s say 6 or 7) falls in to decline, the team is powerless to go out and get more players, except for promotion from the farm system.
Figure that a team in perpetual contention needs to look a lot like the 2009 Yankees: plus players at every position, stars at a few, and few holes. The 2009 Yankees had, by my count, 16 star-caliber players on their roster when the season began. Some didn’t work out, some did. But had the team replaced a few Robinson Cano’s, Joba Chamberlain’s, Phil Hughes’, David Robertsons, etc with the types of players that they did in the mid-2000s (Miguel Cairo, Buddy Groom, etc) for the same salary, they would probably have not won the World Series.
So there is the solution: young players offset the older ones. Essentially, having a Robinson Cano allows you to have another Mark Teixeira, or two Nick Swishers. That is the value in Jesus Montero – if he becomes a young, cost-controlled star, we can go get another star and have two studs on the roster. If we trade him or he doesn’t work out, we get to have 1 stud and 1 dud.
This is why the team was probably right not to go get Matt Holliday, even though he was signed to a good contract. Holliday would get old right around the time that Sabathia, Teixeira, and Burnett (not to mention Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson) start getting old. He would probably put the Yankees over critical mass. Even if they have the payroll space, this may mean that the Yankees should wait a few years before spending on another 2-3 players (probably after Jeter/Posada/Mo start to get cheaper).
I hope that made sense. I’ve been snowed in for awhile (1 week now) and I’m starting to go a little crazy.
