BREAKING: 2008 Yankees Season Over, says Post

With the apparent foresight of 8 months, the New York Post on Sunday declared that the Yankees will not make the playoffs in the 2008 season. Granted, the sub-headline claims the team will "struggle to make the playoffs". Still, George King's article certainly reads like an epitaph sent out to the mourning fans of a team that's made the playoffs for 12 straight seasons.

King makes it clear that anyone looking through a Pinstriped Prism be on alert immediately in his piece, claiming that the team's young pitching has achieved a dubious level of "premature adulation". In other words, slow down that hype machine, Yankees fans; these rookies aren't really that good. If that's the case, and they've just been overly lauded without merit, you, even the most irrationally loyal fan, can't think the team can contend in 2008, can you? Really going right for the heart of the man or woman who thinks 2008 is their year already, George! And only in your article's first graf, no less.

With the rain adequately doused on the 2008 Yankees' parade, A-Rod, Abreu, Posada and Rivera's returns are cited as a case of wasted money. King's logic dictates that since you're banking your franchise on the arms of 3 20something pitchers who aren't yet anything to write home about (I mean, Hughes/Chamberlain/Kennedy only won 8 games combined in '07, even Mike Mussina did more than that), you should be stockpiling assets for 2 years from now, when you can really (hopefully) contend, with the development of whomever is left standing out of The Big 3.

This logic does not bode well for those that utilize hindsight at all, but then again, nothing the Post writes bodes well for those types of baseball fans. Had the team abandoned all its veteran Free Agents, as King is now suggesting, and gone in the rebuilding direction, one can only imagine the back-page abuse that would have been directed at the Yankees. However, that's not really the issue here, since you can't criticize what the Post never had a chance to write. The issue is the identity of the team, or at least what George King thinks their identity should be. Since they ended up opening the Steinbrenner purse and paying the old guard to stick around, now the angle has to be that the team is worse than it was last season and can not improve. Therefore since the team's faces stayed 90% the same, and since they got bounced in the first round last year, it's a sign of regression, and a sign of a team that thinks it can contend when really, uh...not so much. This should really be dubbed 2008 Chicago White Sox Syndrome (Orlando Cabrera, Nick Swisher, Octavio Dotel...Detroit Who?). The Yankees, however, don't quite fit into that mold just yet, as I'll argue here.

King's concern of identity crisis is a legitimate one to a degree, since it is impossible to expect or predict status quo performances from the retained Free Agents of 2007. A-Rod won't recreate his absurd numbers from 2007. Similarly, there is going to come a time soon when Jorge Posada's skills begin to decline, and it might be this season (the likelihood of them completely vanishing overnight seems very low, but for the sake of the argument, it is there nonetheless). Likewise for Mariano, who goes through rough patches more than he used to and no doubt that will continue.

To say that none of these players should have been brought back, however, makes zero sense. The crux of my argument against that thinking emerges when you consider the anemic possibilities for replacements for each player, both internally and externally.

Catcher
Paul LoDuca or some other retread for 1 year, instead of Jorge Posada for 4 years, when there is no internal "catcher of the future" lurking anywhere in the Yankees' farm system? To me, this is the easiest call out of the 4. Four, though, is the key number in regards to this particular scenario. The four year length of Posada's contract is no doubt frightening, and it puts a lot of pressure on Jorge to above all maintain his abilities with the stick, even if his legs fall out from under him within the length of his contract; at least after this season, the DH logjam will be somewhat lessened by the departure of Jason Giambi upon the expiration of his contract, opening up the possibility for Jorge to transition to a DH/occasionally playing the field kind of guy.

Closer
The elephant in the room here, is Joba Chamberlain. Since it's widely regarded that the Yankees were bidding against themselves for the services of Mariano Rivera, and since it's clear that Joba could handle the closing job based on his run in the bullpen in 07, why go to the lengths of a 3 year deal with Rivera? This to me is the only case where the departure of the old guard could have been covered from within. And yet out of the four, it would have been the highest-profile loss, yes even with A-Rod included. In terms of what he's meant to the pitching staff's success in the 9th inning for the past 10 years, a ton of noise would have been made about whoever was replacing Mo. That's even considering if Chamberlain was christened as the replacement. I don't think the franchise wanted to put Joba in the position of dealing with the endless "can you replace...can you close...can you handle the transition from 8th to 9th?" questions that would have come with being the 2008 closer. Plus, I really do believe that the organization wants him in the rotation in 2008, be it starting in April, July or September.


Right Field
One more year of Bobby Abreu, for 16 million, is in no way the same as the signings of Rivera and Posada; A-Rod exists in his own stratosphere, which we'll attempt to enter after this short talk. If anything, it's the biggest no-brainer of the 4 since the team had control of Abreu's option and had nobody to bid against at all. The number of dollars is a bargain considering the exorbitant contracts OFs are signing these days. Plus, the Yankees' few valuable position prospects just so happen to be outfielders, with one of them even playing full-time in RF. So, with that said, the retention of Abreu for only a year actually does lean more towards the youth movement than the "old guard" philosophy. You keep Jose Tabata and Austin Jackson motivated all throughout the 2008 season with the carrot dangling over their heads that might as well be playing a recording of Brian Cashman saying "You know, we don't have anyone signed to play right field for 2009, plus Melky Cabrera is looking at a make or break year, so..." (not any type of direct quote, mind you, but possible nonetheless). If competition is the buzz word of this upcoming 2008 Spring Training in regards to the pitching staff, it might as well be the modus operandi of the 2008 season for those two highly-touted outfield prospects as well. Plus if the season completely falls apart by June (possible depending on injuries, God knows what else), you can always peddle Bobby Abreu at the deadline to a team looking for an offensive upgrade. So he doesn't even belong in the same breath as the other 3 returning players.

Third Base
Basically, there was no one out there that was going to cover for the lost production of A-Rod. The scenario that George King proposed, letting everyone walk, would have only made sense if A-Rod was completely gone from the Yankees universe once he opted out, something that seemed possible in late October. Then you can get away with changing the identity of the team completely; however, since that didn't happen, you still stick to the formula of trotting out a deep, patient lineup of hitters to surround A-Rod and make sure you've still got the 9th inning in the hands of the tried and true. With these pieces still in place, you can still mash your way through the rough patches your own starting rotation encounters. Joe Crede, Scott Rolen or Eric Chavez playing 3rd, and someone like Hideki Matsui or Jason Giambi or Posada batting cleanup in lieu of A-Rod, would not have allowed you to throw 2-3 rookies into the rotation and asked them to develop on the fly. People seem to quickly forget that the rotation was in utter shambles for most of last season, when Carl Pavano (hah) was the Opening Day starter, then pulled a Carl Pavano, Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina both spent time on the DL, Kei Igawa was getting bombed, and so on.

Yet the team was carried at points by its offense, particularly A-Rod. That's why you pay him $27 million per year, because there are going to be points when he single-handedly wins you games; you couldn't find that anywhere else, and you're still going to need it at points in 2008. How that will be working in 10 years is another story, but this is more about 2008 than 2018.

The difference, though, will be that you won't be tossing never-will's like Jeff Karstens, Darell Rasner and Chase Wright at teams in desperation (that is, barring injuries to any of The Big 3, which will be the worst case scenario of this Spring Training), but instead will be trotting out your organization's supposed future and saying "give us a chance, learn on the job, mature as you will" because your team can still put up runs, especially against the teams with the thinner pitching staffs (Baltimore and Tampa, I'm looking in your direction).

To wrap up that article by George King, though, he also claims that Phil Hughes will somehow be dogged by the fact that he's the guy the Yankees wouldn't trade for Johan Santana. First, that's just wrong, since he was eventually included in the offer, which to me still was the best one Minnesota got (maybe I'm just partial to Pinstriped Phil and not Phil Humber). To be more accurate, the guy they wouldn't trade is Ian Kennedy, since he was the desired "seal the deal" throw-in prospect that the Yankees just wouldn't ante up.

This idea that Phil will be remembered as a "could've been Santana" demagogue is ridiculous, except for the possibility that it just hints at the idiotic questions Mr. King will be asking him upon his first bad outing of the season. Something real friendly like "How does it feel to know that you pitched so poorly, when the team could have had Santana instead?" Obviously that's a little too harsh for a beat reporter, and he'd ask something with a little more tact, but that's clearly the type of question he alludes to.

Furthermore, King questions why the team would give Robinson Cano a long-term deal while simultaneously saying goodbye to his mentor/taskmaster Larry Bowa, since Cano is simply, according to King, "not a hard worker". Glad to see that Cano is given zero possibility of maturing and becoming a hard worker on his own without Bowa; and wait, didn't the team just hire a taskmaster manager? Shouldn't Joe Girardi's rep for being a tight-ass be enough to cover for the defection of Larry Bowa? Also, it's not like Cano is suddenly making 15 mill a year for 10 years, they just signed him through his arbitration years to avoid having to negotiate year after year with him until he reaches free agency. Not something so outlandish for someone that's done nothing but produce since he was called up. So now we're to believe that his habits will deteriorate and production slow up, because he doesn't have to play year in and year out to up his arbitration number? Maybe that is accurate, considering how greedy and number-driven the modern athlete appears to be, but in this case I will plead Yankees Bias and say that I hope the presence of A-Rod as an emerging mentor for Melky and Cano (it's weird to think of considering A-Rod still loves having mentors himself at 32, but it's still a fact), plus the manager's philosophy of hard work and preparation, will be enough to keep Cano on the straight and narrow.

In closing, what the article as a whole gives readers is the image of this 2008 Yankees team as one marred by bloated contracts attached to players who no longer deserve them. It also discredits every young talent that Yankees fans can be and are excited about for one reason or another. If it's an attempt to set the bar low for the 2008 season in the Bronx, it succeeds; its only legitimate argument for setting that bar low, however, is the state of shambles that the Yankees' pen is in, something that I will write more in-depth about in the coming days (really cross your fingers about LaTroy Hawkins and Kyle Farnsworth, Yankees fans!).

The other problems that George King latches on to, as I've tried to explain in the above words, seem silly to me. If it's just for the sake of conjuring an eye-grabbing tabloid read, something that doesn't escape me since this is the New York Post I'm talking about, then so be it, he's doing his job and trying his hardest. The identity crisis, though, just doesn't seem to exist. The team's lineup is still good enough to trot out there against Boston, Detroit and Cleveland, and while there are question marks galore, don't try to create them about players who need not have them stuck above their heads. For me, that would be 20 year old pitchers with lots of ability, since they all come with questions (health, ceiling, consistency), as well as proven veterans, and a steady, young second baseman.

Dedicate your article's question marks to the mess at 1B and in the bullpen, instead of trying to drag down the starting rotation and lineup. My argument remains that one of those two will certainly be a strength coming into the season, and by the middle of the season when everyone is catching Pennant Race Fever, they should realistically both be strengths. Either way, this is all extremely premature since we're still 9 days away from the team's first full workout in The Girardi Era.

But don't let it be said that the New York Post isn't out there making bold statements in February, and stirring up doubt about each and every one of the 25 potential 2008 New York Yankees.