For the second straight year I kicked off the official AB4AR Season Preview series with the "What We Know & What We Don't Know" sub-series. It's a nice little way to make some assessments and quasi-predictions about the season to come while everything is still unofficial and unannounced at the end of Spring Training. It only seems fitting to keep with that theme to start the official AB4AR Season Review series, and we'll start with the infield just like we did way back in late March.
After an up-and-down 2011 season, 2012 was expected to be a bounce-back year for the Yankee infield. Robinson Cano was at the top of his game, and there was hope that a healthy A-Rod and more balanced Teix would help re-establish the middle of the Yankee lineup as the most feared in baseball. The Captain was supposed to be the wild card of the group, but as it turned out he ended up being the most pleasant surprise of the bunch. All in all, it's hard to say 2012 was a successful one for this crew, but it's also difficult to call it a complete failure.
(Ain't no lineup changes that fix tired. Courtesy of the AP)
Yesterday I made a comment on our daily TYA email chain that it seemed like most of the blogopshere was caught in a no man's land when it came to Yankee coverage now that the season was over. The combination of such a one-sided postseason exit with what was otherwise a very strong season seems to have put everybody in a situation where they aren't quite ready to go back and fully review 2012 and also aren't quite ready to let it go and start looking towards this offseason and 2013. Well if that's the case then I'm just as guilty as everybody else, because I've had this idea jotted down for a couple weeks, even going back to the start of the postseason against Baltimore.
The general consensus was that playing hard through the end of the regular season would benefit the Yankees because they would still mentally locked in and would not lose any momentum by having guys sit and rest down the stretch like they would if the division was already locked up. But for an older team like the Yankees, a team that was even more banged up than the poor Fraud Sawx and Blue Jays, did having to go all out for all 162 actually end up hurting them?
(How's that ankle going to respond the first time Jeter has to make a similar play to his left next year? Courtesy of Getty Images)
The immediate impact of Derek Jeter’s ankle injury was major and painfully obvious to anybody who watched the ALCS. Without him in the lineup or on the field, the Yankees managed to score just 2 runs in the final 3 games while giving up more than that and committing 3 official defensive errors, 5 if you want to be a stickler like me and give Chavez and Teix Es for their stay-back botches in Game 4. Even deeper than the on-field results, the entire attitude and morale of the team seemed to drop without the presence of The Captain. Say what you want about his robotic repetition of nothing comments to the media, but the tired, lifeless nature of the Yankees’ play in the final 3 games should stand as an example of just what kind of behind-the-scenes leader Jeter is in the clubhouse and how important he still is to the Yankees’ success. Losing Jeter for this year’s ALCS was a big enough blow to the Yankees, but the impact this injury has on next season could be even greater.
Hey, remember that big trade the Yankees made in January? They sent their best prospect to Seattle for a couple of young pitchers. One of them was supposed to be this 22-year-old stud who the Yanks could pair up with CC Sabathia to form a top flight 1-2 punch for the next 4-5 years. I think his name was Pineda? Michael Pineda? That's him, right? Yeah, well if you remember him you probably also remember that he had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his pitching shoulder and missed the entire 2012 season. Reports from Brian Cashman this past weekend have Pineda missing at least the first couple months of next season as well, so don't expect to see him as an option for the 2013 rotation, at least not right off the bat.
(Talking big-money contract desires after a historically bad postseason. Interesting strategy. Courtes of the AP
While most of the Yankee-related news to come across the wire this past weekend was related to injuries and guys getting their options picked up or not picked up, a small bit that may have flown under the radar was Joel Sherman's Saturday piece in The Post about the upcoming Robinson Cano contract situation. In it, Sherman made reference to Cano's reported desire to seek a 10-year deal worth "top-of-the-market dollars," phrasing that sounds all too familiar when talking about premiere infielders in pinstripes. It's almost certain that this declaration is Scott Boras-driven, as Boras is notorious for never wanting his clients to negotiate before their deals are up and always seeking top dollar. But if Boras, or Cano for that matter, really think they are going to get that deal from the Yankees, or anybody, they might want to start drinking some of that reality potion that Cash wanted Jeter to sip on a few years ago.
It's been a while since we've had the opportunity to dissect the subtext of some Cash commentary, so I was pretty excited to see he had plenty to say on ESPN Radio this past weekend. Naturally, the topic was Alex Rodriguez, because that's all the guys at ESPN NY care about, and while he tried not to give in to their craving for cheap ratings and pageviews, Cash did set the stage pretty well for what the Yankees intend to do with Alex this offseason and what their mindset is when it comes to keeping or moving him. If there was still any doubt in anybody's mind about how this organization views A-Rod these days, that was certainly cleared up in this interview.
"It's not like I'm going to hang phones up on anybody who wants to make any overtures about anything. You're talking about realistic stuff and unrealistic stuff. I don't think it's realistic at all for us to be moving forward with anything but Alex Rodriguez at third base.
He's still an above-average third baseman. ... That means despite the contract that we had committed to him, that he's an asset at this stage still. I don't see us doing anything there. I don't anticipate it. If someone wants to make phone calls, we're more than willing to do all that stuff with any of our players, and that's fine. You can run into something that way."
(Best believe we're going to keep the Horse talk to a minimum this offseason)
The players may be well on their way to cleaning out their lockers, making their golf plans, and setting the rest of their offseason schedules. But at AB4AR, we aren't doing any of that, because...
/obvious sports cliche coming
THERE IS NO OFFSEASON AT AB4AR, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!! WE'RE COVERING YANKEE BASEBALL 25 HOURS A DAY, 8 DAYS A WEEK UP IN THIS PIECE!!!!
Now that we got that out of the way, let me expound upon that idea a bit. Yes, it's true, there won't be any big offseason breaks for me during the MLB offseason, at least none that I'm planning. The baseball may be done but there's plenty left to talk and write about over the next 5 months, and I don't plan on missing any of it (unless I end up going to another wedding and miss something really exciting).
We'll start out taking a week or 2 to look back on the 2012 season and all its participants, the good, the bad, and the ugly, before handing out some Major League and Minor League end-of-year awards and putting 2012 to bed. Then we'll really move the focus towards the offseason; free agent profiles, potential trade targets, payroll talk, building a lineup for 2013, etc.. There will be a few non-serious Offseason Space Filler posts sprinkled in for days when there really isn't anything of value to talk about, and there will be AB4AR Prospect Week and the unveiling of the 2012-2013 edition of the AB4AR Top 30 Prospects list sometime in late December-early January.
And believe me when I say that I'm going to cover the Alex Rodriguez saga only as much as I absolutely need to. There are some things that will be worth discussing, and if some serious trade possibilities come up those definitely fit the bill, but if you're looking for a place to drag A-Rod through the mud for the next 5 months I suggest you look elsewhere. There's plenty more to talk about than just how much A-Rod sucks and how the Yankees need to get rid of him, and I intend to make all of that stuff my primary focus this offseason.
The Major League guys are done for 2012, but there's still plenty of fall and winter league play worth covering for the MiL boys. The Arizona Fall League has been underway for a few weeks now, and with the Yankees sending the full 7-man compliment of prospects there, including 5 of the AB4AR Top 30, that definitely warrants catching up on now that there isn't 100% focus on the postseason. After the jump, check out how this group has been doing so far.
One of the updates in yesterday's news roundup was a disconcerting one from Marc Carig, who reported that CC Sabathia was going to be heading to see Dr. James Andrews for his left elbow after admitting that it bothered him between his final 2 postseason starts and also for the majority of the season. The name "Dr. James Andrews" in connection with the word "elbow" is never a good thing in Major League circles.
Yesterday, the story became more clear with Jon Heyman's report that CC is not going for any kind of ligament-related issues but rather a bone spur in his left elbow that Andrews will look at later this week and most likely remove in a minor surgery.
There's the obligatory grain of salt that comes with any Heyman report that's Yankee-related, but when it comes to just news like this he's usually pretty reliable. A bone spur would certainly explain the discomfort the CC felt earlier in the year when he hit the DL for his elbow, and that discomfort that he was feeling again in the postseason would certainly explain his pitch selection in Game 4, when he wentheavier on the changeup to cut down on stress on his elbow. Bone spur surgery would be simple and not cause CC to miss the start of next season, which is a good thing. As long as that's all Dr. Andrews' review turns up, the big fella should be just fine.
While the NY tabloids and the endless stream of talking heads at ESPN want to brainwash you into thinking that everything wrong that happened with the Yankees this postseason was Alex Rodriguez's fault, the fact remains that, like the team's successes, it was a true group effort to accomplish getting swept by the Detroit Tigers. It's been a somewhat subliminal staging of The Blame Game taking place in the coverage of the Yanks' ALCS struggles, even within the blogosphere. So being the fair, reasonable, even-keeled blogger that I am, I decided to take it upon myself to definitively state for everyone how the blame for what happened should be divvied up. It took many hours of brain wracking to come up with this, so I hope you appreciate it. Because I did it for you, Yankee fans.
With the shock and disappointment of the Yankees being swept out of the ALCS still fresh, there has been a fair amount of updates, stories, and rumors already coming out relating to this team. Who's staying, who's going, who's on the hot seat? Almost any question you could ask has already started to be answered in the last day and a half since the final out of Game 4 fell into Prince Fielder's glove. Before we finish up looking back on the ALCS and the season that was, and start looking ahead to what the 2012-2013 offseason has in store, let's quickly reset what's happened in the last few days.
Truth be told, there's a small part of me that's glad the Yankees' season is over and glad that the inevitable didn't get delayed for one more game last night. I've been a walking zombie for the better part of the last 3-4 weeks with all that's been going on in my life, and the really late nights and really early mornings of writing weren't helping. And then there's the whole part where my apartment has devolved into the first stage of a future episode of "Hoarders." I've got assorted empty beer containers everywhere, pizza boxes everywhere, piles of mail sitting around, a bathroom that I'm almost afraid to go into because it's so gross, and a litany of other chores and assorted daily tasks that normal human beings keep up with regularly that have been dying on the back burner for the last month. So at least now that I don't have to stay up late drinking, cursing, writing, and getting 4 hours of angry sleep I have the opportunity to get reacquainted with the rest of my life. That's a good thing, I think. Now onto the links!
- EJ Fagan of TYA had a slightly more positive take on the first 2 games of the ALCS,commenting on the nature of being a Yankee fan and a offering a reminder to be happy that they made the playoffs again and passionate even if they lose.
- On Wednesday, Marc Normandin of Pinstriped Bible rehashed Phil Hughes' checkered injury history and the role it may be playing in his Major League failure to live up to his Minor League hype.
- On Thursday, Steve Lombardi of Was Watching asked, when the rumor mill was really swirling, if the Alex Rodriguez Era in pinstripes was worth it. Even if he doesn't get traded, which he won't, that's a question that is still worth asking.
- Bryan Van Dusen of The Greedy Pinstripes attempted to put a bit of a positive spin on the ALCS sweep by pointing out thatthe Tiger bats didn't exactly blow the Yankees' doors off. A small consolation to such a one-sided series outcome.
- Chad Jennings of LoHud discussed the Yankees' postseason shortcomings and had some statements from Brian Cashman regarding the direction the Yanks will take this coming offseason.
For this week's Friday Jam I'm going with "Rays On Pinion" by Baroness. This song has such a quietly kickass intro. It came on my iPod the other night when I was driving home and it made me feel like I was acting out some kind of opening scene of an action movie. An action movie starring me driving around in a green Honda CR-V, pretty sure nobody would watch that. Whatever, this song still kicks ass.
(Another strikeout?? I'm shocked. Courtesy of Getty Images)
A long while back in the summer of 2011 I wrote a short post gloating about the outcome of the '09 3-team trade that netted the Yankees Curtis Granderson. At the time, Jackson was struggling through a tough second season in the big leagues and Granderson was one of the top offensive players in baseball. That post, short as it was, is one of the top 10 most viewed posts in AB4AR history, and if you scroll down far enough on the page to see the "Greatest Hits" section, you'll still see it there, in all its glory. It's one of the most popular posts I've written, and I imagine it's only going to get more popular now that I've used this post to out my stupidity in writing that one. After last night, there's no doubt who the winner and loser of that trade really was.
The odds were already stacked way against the Yankees going into yesterday's Game 4. The likelihood of them winning the ALCS was incredibly low, and the reality of the situation was that even with CC Sabathia on the mound for them in Game 4 the chances of them getting a win to keep the series alive were incredibly low given the way they were playing. This was a team on its last legs, a team that had nothing left, and yesterday they played like it. They continued to not hit, setting the stage for all kinds of offseason talk around bringing in new players and re-evaluating their formula for building a lineup, and also added bad fielding and bad pitching to the mix to really make sure there would be no Game 5.
I hate to ever bring up effort in a discussion about a professional sporting event; I always assume that these guys are out there giving it everything they have. But that Yankee team on the field last night didn't look like a group of guys who even wanted to be there. The Yankees laid down and died in Game 4, and they probably would have been better off not even showing up.
That was awful. Just awful. I know there's things I should be happy about this season, but to go out in that fashion is just mind-numbing and incredibly disappointing. This team found its stride in the final 4 games of the regular season, entered the playoffs looking like they were primed to break out, and they just stopped hitting. They stopped hitting and never started again, they just got worse. Credit to the pitchers, but a heaping helping of blame and shame on the Yankee hitters. Heads are going to roll this offseason. Count on it.
The 2012 New York Yankees are dead. Long live the Yankees.
Seriously. It’s getting out of control. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s A-Rod attracting all this negative attention and drama, because that’s what’s always followed him around his whole career and that’s always been SOP since the day he joined the Yankees and the New York media horde that follows them. What surprises me is how logic has completely gone out the window when talking about A-Rod and his struggles and his future in the organization. It’s almost as if everybody has been sent back through a time warp to 2006-2007 when bagging on A-Rod for anything and everything was the “cool” thing to do and it's absolutely asinine.
(Ouch, guy. Very ouch. Courtesy of the Daily News)
Lost in all the talk about the sputtering offense, ever-changing lineups, and who Alex Rodriguez is or isn’t talking to in the stands has been the quietly valuable performance of a one Russell Martin. You remember him, right? The guy who spent the majority of the regular season batting below the Mendoza Line and then turned things around enough in September to probably earn himself a new deal with the Yankees next year? It wouldn’t be all that surprising if you had forgotten about him; his .172/.250/.310 tripleslash in the postseason isn’t exactly a resume builder and is more representative of his early-season struggles than his strong finish. But after playing through what is always a grueling regular season for a catcher, Martin has been out there behind the plate for every playoff game, has done a very good job back there, and that is something that should not be discounted.
(Good thing the tarp was out to protect against the rain that wasn't falling. Courtesy of the AP)
The Yankees have already gotten screwed enough by the scheduling of this year's postseason. They started the ALDS on the road despite winning their division and having the best record in the American League; they faced a compressed ALCS schedule that could have required them to use a 5th starter. So I guess it's only fitting to have them lose the one positive thing they still had going for them thanks to last night's rainout.
Personally, I thought it made more sense to start the game, try to get as much in as they could before the rain, and then wait it out and finish late night/early morning. It would have cost both teams their starters, but with the forecast in Detroit not looking much better tonight or tomorrow, at least they would have had a better chance of getting the game in. In any case, the Yanks and Tigers will try again tonight, and with CC still the scheduled starter the advantage is still Yankees. But there are a lot more negatives that came with last night's cancellation than positives.
It's officially do-or-die time for the New York Yankees. Their backs are against the wall, there is no tomorrow, and they've got to do the impossible. They have to take it one game at a time, and overcome the odds, but they're playing with house money tonight so all that's left is to go out and do it.
Did I cover all the cliches for the 0-3 hole the Yanks are in? Good. Glad that's out of the way. In all seriousness, the Yankees are in the best possible situation they could be for a must-win game tonight. They're got their ace on the mound, they've got their 2 best relief pitchers rested and available for 2 innings apiece if needed, and they've got a lineup that at least showed the ability to battle last night against the best pitcher on the planet. That doesn't change the fact that a win tonight only guarantees them one more day of must-win-ness, but it's something.
It's as simple as it could possibly be. The Yankees need to win tonight or their season is over. No stats needed to support that, no arguments for or against anything, and no looking ahead to the next situation. Win tonight or it's curtains.
The taking of hittable pitches, the popping up of hittable pitches, the swings and misses at balls way out of the strike zone, the glaring lack of power, and the constant shuffling of bodies is all frustrating enough when you watch the Yankee offense right now. But to me the most maddening thing has been their continued stubbornness in not adjusting to the Tigers' pitching strategy and failing to take outside pitches the other way. What is the deal? Has everybody just gotten that bad at staying back on the ball and taking it to the opposite field? Has Kevin Long turned every left-handed hitter into a pull-only baseball robot?? I refuse to believe that, but let's go to the numbers:
Robinson Cano- .420 wOBA in 119 PA hitting to the opposite field in the regular season
I knew it! I know for a fact that Chavez hit an opposite field HR against the Tigers in their own park earlier in the year, and I watched Cano hit one over the Green Mawnstah. Teix has pretty much given up on it, and C-Grand and Raul's numbers aren't pretty, but the other guys can get it done.
It's not like this group doesn't have the ability to go the other way; for whatever reason they're just not doing it in this series. The Tigers' pitchers have executed their game plan and are just straight up taking the Yankee lefties to school.
Justin Verlander is a great pitcher 25 hours a day, 8 days a week. The Yankee hitters are beyond terrible right now. On paper this was a decidedly one-sided matchup going into last night's game, and that's what scared me. The Yankees were dying to score some runs, anyway, anyhow, and they had to face the pitcher who's hardest to score them against. He wasn't even at his best, like he was in Game 5 of the ALDS when he closed out Oakland, but he was plenty good enough to beat this team and put them on the brink. Valiant effort by the relief corps backing up an early-exiting Phil Hughes, but an effort that was once again in vain. The fat lady isn't singing quite yet on the 2012 New York Yankees, but that bitch sure is humming loud.
I don’t know if it makes me overly pessimistic after only watching 1 game of this series so far, or realistic because of how bad the Yankee offense looked in Game 2, but I admittedly have little faith in this team tonight. The manner in which they carried themselves on Sunday, more than the negative results they produced, was very disconcerting and signaled a dying team. There was no energy, no emotion, no life from a team playing an incredibly important home playoff game, and that doesn’t bode well for the Yankees in the rest of this series. Now the half-empty, boo-filled Yankee Stadium didn’t help matters at all, so maybe a change of scenery will help guys relax, but relaxed or not, facing Justin Verlander tonight is going to be a tough task. Yes, the Yankees have hit him before, but they’ve done that when they’re healthier and swinging the bats much better than they are right now. With the way they’re not hitting and the way Verlander is pitching, a complete game shutout seems like a very realistic possibility tonight.
In the most literal definition, tonight is not a do-or-die game. If the Yankees lose, they still have a chance to run the table and win this series in 7 games. But realistically, a Yankee loss tonight pretty much seals this deal up and in all likelihood ensures that this series doesn’t make it back to New York. If the struggling hitters have just been waiting to make their adjustments at the plate, tonight would be the night to do it.
Kevin Long has done a lot of good things since becoming the Yankees’ hitting coach. He cleaned up Nick Swisher’s swing to help him make more contact, hit for a better average, and maximize the value of his power and pitch recognition skills. He did the same thing to Curtis Granderson’s swing to help him unleash his power potential in his speedy bat and make him a more effective hitter against left-handed pitching. He’s worked with Robinson Cano on pulling inside pitches with power, he did some things with Jorge towards the end of his career, and he’s helped Alex Rodriguez fix his timing and swing mechanics when A-Rod has been off multiple times during his coaching tenure. Sure, not all of his efforts have produced fruitful results (see Derek Jeter’s new swing last season or Teix’s new approach early this season), but overall Long has done a solid job, built a reputation as a coach that players in the clubhouse love working with, and inspired my “Dr. Long” Photoshop character that’s still one of my all-time favorites.
But in light of the offense’s collective disappearance in this postseason, the third straight season that the Yankees have had a playoff slump with the bats, the question is starting to be raised about Long’s future with the club and whether or not he deserves to have the spotlight shined on him for the lack of production from the lineup. It appears as though some of Long’s teachings have turned guys like Granderson and Cano into one-dimensional, dead pull hitters incapable of doing anything even remotely useful with pitches on the outside, and essentially provided opposing pitchers with an easy-to-follow blueprint for how to attack and shut down the Yankee lineup.
(Just sit down, Curtis. Courtesy of Getty Images)
The offense is fucking up big time in the postseason. They are the primary reason why the Yankees had to go 5 games to beat Baltimore in the division series and why they currently find themselves down 0-2 going on the road against Detroit. There’s no point in trying to say it any other way; these guys, with a few exceptions, have flat out sucked a dick at the plate and wasted what has been a great team pitching performance. The Yankee starting pitchers have allowed just 14 runs in 7 postseason games, a number that even in my wildest dreams I wasn’t expecting them to do, and yet the Yankees are 3-4 in those games. That’s almost hard to fathom given the names and reputations and career numbers in the Yankee clubhouse, but it’s a sobering stone cold fact.
Joe and Kevin Long have stayed consistent with their messages of guys “needing to step up” and needing to “make adjustments up there” to try to turn this around, but it just isn’t happening. The hitters clearly aren’t making adjustments, the small tweaks to the batting order and baserunning strategy are returning little to no dividends, and the clock is starting to count down on the Yankees’ season. At this point, the time for waiting and adjusting is over. The Yankees need a spark, something to try to generate offense where this is none, and it needs to start with a major shakeup of the lineup for Game 3.
(Best relief pitcher on the time right now. Didn't pitch in the biggest spots. Does not compute. Courtesy of Getty Images)
It got glossed over by almost everybody after Game 1 because of the 9th-inning drama and Derek Jeter injury in extra innings, and it got glossed over again yesterday thanks to Hiroki Kuroda's outstanding performance, the lineup's non-existent performance, and Jeff Nelson's horrible 8th-inning call, but I can't bite my tongue about it today. The failure on Joe Girardi and his staff's part to use David Robertson and Rafael Soriano in the 8th and 9th innings of both games in this ALCS is an absolute managerial disgrace of the highest order, and a much bigger contributing factor to the Yankees losses in those games than people realize.
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