AB4AR's 2013 "Best And Worst Of The Year": The Postseason/Offseason

(Still can't quite believe this happened.  Courtesy of Getty Images)

We've got 2 down and 1 to go on the 2013 AB4AR season recap.  Yesterday it was the regular season and today it wraps up with the best and worst of the postseason, or the offseason really since the Yankees failed to make it to the postseason this year.  Out of everything from the past 3 months, here are the choicest selections.

AB4AR's 2013 "Best And Worst Of The Year": The Regular Season

(This never gets old.  Never.  Courtesy of MLB.com/ESPN)

Yesterday we took a look back at the best and worst blogs AB4AR had to offer from January 1st of this year to March 31st, and I have to say that I almost impressed myself going back over that early-year work.  It was decidedly more good than bad, even if my umpteenth post jumping the gun on Michael Pineda was completely ludicrous.  Time to see if that trend held when the regular season started.  Today we're reviewing the highs and lows of that long, often times boring, sometimes downright painful block of time from April 1st to the end of September.  Let's dive right in.

AB4AR's 2013 "Best And Worst Of The Year": The Preseason

(Joe, Randy, Lonn, and Hal at the Jorge retirement presser.  Courtesy of Getty Images)

The 2013 calendar year is winding down and there's little going on in the way of Yankee news right now, so let's take a look back at the year that was for AB4AR.  2013 was another record year for the site, more posts, comments, and pageviews than ever before.  A big thank you goes out to everyone who read regularly and commented to help make that happen.  I know I'm woefully behind the times when it comes to blog design, layout, social media tie-ins, and all that, and it really just comes down to the fact that I don't have or want to have the time for all those other things.  I'm just a Yankee fan who likes to write about the Yankees and do as much as I can in the time my day job and social life will allow me, and to have more people than ever recognize and follow that basic, rudimentary format this year means a lot to me.

As we did last year, we'll break the 2013 review down into 3 parts: preseason, regular season, and postseason/offseason.  Today we'll tackle the preseason, the block of time from January 1st through the end of March, when the hot stove season was winding down and Spring Training was ramping up.

2013 AB4AR Comment Of The Year

There were more comments this year than I've gotten since I started AB4AR in the summer of '09, but there was one that stood out head and shoulder above the rest.  It came from a post I did on the idea of trading Robbie Cano in February and it captures almost everything I want to see in my comments.  Here it is again, in its full glory:

"THAT'S IT!!!! I'VE HAD ENOUGH!!!! I've listened attentively to all your pessimistic bullshit all winter and now you've gone over the edge. Maybe you just don't have anything to write about and are wallowing in some kind of self-induced hysteria. But I am up to my neck with your gloomy outlook and all the dire, negative nonsense coming out of your blog this off-season and I've had enough. So, I'm casting off! All this negative energy is really really bad for the brain Brad - and it's no wonder nobody is responding anymore to your rantings. It's just poison. If you were a Cubs or Astros fan, I could see where you would be down and out, but these are the FUCKING NEW YORK YANKEES you're talking about! MY TEAM! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!!!! So goodbye for now! There must be some people out there who are looking forward to an exciting season, but you are not one of them. Since October your blog has been bile! I'll check back in with you in a few months when your meds starts kicking in again."

Outstanding.  Just outstanding.  Don't get me wrong, I would prefer that the comments on this site be a little more analytical and I'm always down to engage in a little back-and-forth debate with anybody who takes the time to comment here.  But in terms of just sheer, unbridled emotion, it doesn't get any better than that.  It's got everything: all caps, multiple exclamation points, profanity, insults towards me as a writer and a person.  It's brilliant.  To know that something I wrote elicited an emotional fan response of that nature is absolutely terrific because that's exactly the type of fan and writer I used to be when I started this site.

Shout out to my man James for taking home the first ever AB4AR "Comment of the Year" award.  Your free non-existent AB4AR t-shirt is in the mail.  And everybody else take note, I want more of this next year.  If I'm pissing you off that much, feel free to let me know about it.  I probably won't respond to it as quickly as I would a more calm, rational comment, but I'll at least get a good laugh out of it.

2013 AB4AR Season Review Wrap-Up

(Courtesy of USATSI)

I didn't get to this over the weekend, but if you missed any of the 3-week 2013 season review, here's your chance to catch up.  The "2013 Storylines" reviews can be found here.  The "What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned" reviews broken down by roster group can be found here.  And last week's group-by-group and season prediction reviews can be found below:

- The Lineup

- The Rotation

- The Bullpen

- The Bench

- The Predictions

I'm especially proud of this year's predictions.  A step in the right direction for sure, even if it was the prediction equivalent of a wobbly, tiny baby step.  The 2013 season is officially over in my eyes and the associated eyes of AB4AR.  Time to bury it and move on to 2014.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Predictions

(Still my favorite image of the season)

Well we made it.  We've come to the end of the 3-week season review extravaganza, and I don't know about you readers but I've been exhausted by it and I'm glad it's over.  We finish it off, as always, with a review of my preseason predictions and some honest self-reflection about my skills as a baseball prognosticator.  Admittedly, my track record in making season predictions is not a sparkling one.  2011 was a tough year, 2012 even tougher.  I honestly didn't even go back and recap my 2013 predictions post before I started writing this and there's no way I could remember them all off the top of my head, so this should be interesting.  Here we go...

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Bench

(Courtesy of Robert Sabo/NY Daily News)

The Yankee bench wasn't going to be very good this year.  We knew that going in when they started scraping the bottom of the barrel to bring guys like Juan Rivera and Matt Diaz into spring camp to compete for a spot.  The whole lotta nothing that the team did to address its holes in the lineup trickled down big time to the bench, where guys who were better suited for part-time roles got forced into everyday duty and there was nobody left to replace them on the bench.  Well, nobody who could produce at a replacement level.

It was a non-stop revolving cast of characters on the Yankee bench this year, necessitated by injuries, poor performance, ownership's tight grip on the payroll, and sometimes just the need to have a warm body at a position.  If you read the "What We Thought We Knew/What We Learned" post from last week, you know this isn't going to be pretty.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Bullpen

(Courtesy of Getty Images)

It's no coincidence that the Yankees have had both Mariano Rivera and a consistently strong bullpen for the last 18 seasons.  When you've got the G.O.A.T. out there closing down the 9th inning, that makes the rest of the 'pen much easier to construct.  The Yankees have excelled at constructing strong support staffs in front of Mo in his time as closer, through free agency and their own farm system, and with Mo finally deciding to show mercy on the rest of baseball and retire after the 2013 season, that support staff was going to be put to the test as part of a transitional period to a new era of Yankee relief pitching.

As usual, the Yankee 'pen wasn't short on depth in 2013.  In fact, they had more viable options than available spots near the end of Spring Training.  What it didn't have was the strong depth of talent that it usually does and the end result for the group in Mo's final season was a step down from what we've come to expect.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Rotation

(Courtesy of Reuters)

The Yankees got a pretty good collective effort from their starting rotation in 2012, and they appeared to be primed to at least repeat and hopefully improve upon that in 2013.  The same 5 faces were back for another run, giving the rotation a familiar blend of right and left handers, old and young guys, and plus stuff and plus command from multiple sources.  We thought the biggest issue surrounding this group coming into the season was injury concerns and how each of them would hold up physically.  We learned that the issues ran much deeper than that, and the rotation as a whole was unable to build on 2012's performance.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Lineup

(Too many ABs for these guys.  Courtesy of the AP)

I gotta be honest, people.  These first 2 weeks of season recap posts have been much tougher to write than I thought they'd be.  I figured after taking a week off from the long, slow, disappointing but ultimately predictable death that was the 2013 Yankee season, I'd be recharged and ready to look back on everything that happened with a sharp analytical mindset.  Instead, I've just ended up reverting back to the feelings of sadness and boredom I had while covering this team this year.

But whatever, we've reached the final week and it's time to look back on the 2013 edition of the New York Yankees.  We've reviewed the major storylines that defined the season, we recapped the lessons learned, now it's time to put it all together and put a bow on it.  The Yankees entered 2013 with a lineup that had been decimated by their intentional downgrading of it through a few key free agent decisions and the unintentional and unexpected rash of ST injuries that cost them more than a few of their big names.  It was an uphill battle for the lineup for most of the season and a battle the lineup was incapable of winning.  Years from now, people will look back on this season and recall how they got to watch some of the worst Yankee lineups ever to take the field.  That tells you everything you need to know.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Recap)

2 down, 1 to go.  The storylines have been revisited, the lessons have been learned, and next week we'll start the final week of the 2013 AB4AR Season Review series.  Most, if not all of the lessons learned in 2013 were learned in a negative light and many of them paint a potentially harrowing picture for what might be in store in 2014.  If you missed any of this week's positional lessons, here's the recap to prep you for tomorrow.

- The Infield

- The Outfield

- The Rotation

- The Bullpen

- The Bench

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Bench)

(Jayson Nix, ladies and gentlemen.... )

The less I say about the 2013 the better.  It's just going to make me upset recapping how the Yankees took their recent "build the bench with cheap, aging veterans and a few young guys" approach to new lows this season.  It was a sorry, sadsack group of misfits, washed up has-beens, and "who the hell is that guy???"s that had to set the bar for the worst collective bench in Yankee history.  There wasn't much we didn't know about them when the season started, and there wasn't a lot of new ground broken in what we learned when it was over.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Bullpen)

(Courtesy of the AP)

If there was anything that could conceivably derail the Yankees' yearly tradition of having one of the best bullpens in baseball, it would be the loss of Mariano Rivera.  That's a reality they had to face for the first time in 2012 after he went down with a season-ending ACL tear, and it's a challenge they met head on thanks to an all-around "next man up" effort from the remaining healthy cast.  Rafael Soriano proved to be a valuable signing when he was there to take over the closer role last season, allowing everybody else to stay in their usual roles and not compromising the depth in the 'pen that has become a Yankee staple.

Soriano was out after last season, a compensatory draft pick taking his place, and Mo made his gallant return to his 9th inning throne.  Also returning from injury were Joba Chamberlain and David Aardsma, along with much of the same cast that did the job in 2012.  The Yankee bullpen was once again primed for a big year in 2013, with a few minor (and 1 major) details that needed to be ironed out.  The late-inning crew did their job, but it was those unresolved details in the middle relief department that really defined the 2013 bullpen's campaign.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Rotation)

(Courtesy of the AP)

There was a time in the mid-aughts when it felt like the major talking point every offseason was "the Yankees need more starting pitching" and there were always new faces being brought in to achieve that goal.  It even carried over into and after the 2009 season when they won the World Series.  In the past few seasons, however, that talk has quieted and the Yankees have established some consistency with their starting rotation.  They entered 2013 with the same projected starting 5 they had in 2012, and even added a little more younger depth behind it than they'd had in years past.

That all looked like a good sign for a club that was going to need to lean on its pitching to be successful this season, although there were still a few questions that needed to be answered.  Those answers turned out to be the ones the Yankees didn't want to hear and 2013 ended up being a tougher year for the rotation than they hoped for.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Outfield)

(Never got enough of these 3 together.  Courtesy of Reuters)

After a few years of familiar faces and familiar expectations, the Yankees shook things up in their outfield for 2013.  Gone was Nick Swisher, the plus-offense, passable-defense right fielder from the previous 4 years and gone was Curtis Granderson, who missed a big chunk of time early in the year due to a broken forearm and a bigger chunk later due to a broken finger.  In their places were 2012 trade deadline acquisition Ichiro Suzuki, out to prove his strong SSS performance wasn't a mirage, and Vernon Wells, a former All Star who was past his expiration date and had pretty much been a piece of shit for 3 of the last 4 seasons before the Yanks traded for him in March.

Yeah, it was a new and not so improved group in 2013, one that inspired more concern than confidence when evaluating them before the start of the season.  The lessons we learned from them this season were hard, painful lessons, ones that any intelligent baseball fan didn't really need a refresher course on.  After the jump, re-live some of that pain again.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Infield)

(Courtesy of Reuters)

Once the biggest pillar of the team's offensive strength, the Yankee infield came into the 2013 season a crumbling, weather version of its former self and the first place to point to when making a case against handing out long-term contracts to players approaching their 30s.  The Yankee infield was old, injured, and regressing at the corners, older and more injured at shortstop, and heading for free agency while already on the wrong side of the age 30 threshold at second.  That was just in Spring Training too, and none of those descriptions changed for the better once the regular season started.

It was long and difficult year around the Yankee infield, one that I don't think anybody quite saw coming.  I know I didn't back in March when I first outlined what we knew and didn't know about this group.  Even in my attempt to stay grounded with my expectations, I was still way too optimistic about the prospects of 2013 being a good year for the infield.  Lesson learned there I guess, along with these others.

2013 Season Review: "What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned" Primer

Week 1 of the 2013 AB4AR Season Review series is in the books and week 2 starts tomorrow afternoon.  Transitioning from the major season storylines, next week will be a look back at the things we thought we knew about the 2013 Yankees before the season started and what we ended up learning after the 162 games were up.  In preparation for that week-long series, here's a recap of March's "What We Know & What We Don't Know" preview posts.

- The Infield

- The Outfield

- The Rotation

- The Bullpen

- The Bench

2013 Storylines Review: End Of An Era

(Courtesy of Howard Simmons/NY Daily News)

The Giants have won a few championships recently, and the Cardinals are trying to get another one of their own this postseason.  But the last true baseball dynasty was the 1996-2001 New York Yankees.  Those Yankee teams, driven by an up-the-middle core of homegrown players and a ton of smart acquisitions that fit the team's yearly needs and clubhouse environment, played in 5 of 6 World Series in that span and won 4 of them.  Were it not for that fateful Luis Gonzalez bloop single, it could have been a clean 5-for-5.  Those days are long gone, and while the 2009 championship was fantastic, it's a footnote to the extended era of success the Yankees have had up until 2013, an era defined by those '96-'01 years and the key players involved.

The Core Four lost its first member when Jorge Posada retired after the 2011 season, and it stood to lose at least 1 more after 2013 when Mariano Rivera announced that this season would be his last.  Another connection to that era of dominance was leaving, and the Yankees were drawing closer and closer to the official end of that era.  Between the year-long celebration of Mo, Andy Pettitte's retirement announcement, and the health-related struggles of Derek Jeter, 2013 did indeed end up being the final chapter of the last great Yankee dynasty.

2013 Storylines Review: All About Robinson Cano

(Courtesy of Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News)

When you're a flashy, talented, good-looking middle infielder in his early 30s playing in New York, chances are you're going to be the man.  That's the makeup of Robinson Cano, and under a different set of circumstances he would probably be the king of New York.  Unfortunately for him, he's come up in the Yankee organization during the Core Four Era and he's always been somewhat overshadowed by those players and the other bigger names and bigger contracts that have been brought in.

All that started to change a few years ago when those bigger names started to hit their mid-30s decline and Cano started to be recognized for his true talent.  Over the past few seasons he's risen up to be recognized as the best second baseman in baseball and one of the best all-around players in the game, and that upward trend hit its peak this season as he entered the final year of his current contract.  Cano could be the key to the Yankees' future as they move away from the Core Four years, and as the top potential free agent on the market this coming offseason he finally forced his way into the spotlight.

2013 Storylines Review: The Walking Wounded

(Exhibit A.  Courtesy of The NY Daily News)

Injuries.  Nothing can kill a team's chances for success faster than injuries.  Every year you know going in what players are going to perform well, what ones aren't, and you can reasonably anticipate a handful of players having better seasons than usual and a handful having worse.  What no manager ever knows is how injuries are going to affect his team, when they're going to strike, and how long they're going to last.  The Yankees, to a certain extent, bucked that trend in 2013 by heading into the season with a well-known collection of injuries: Jeter's ankle, A-Rod's hip, CC's elbow, Mo's knee.  And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

In my "Walking Wounded" preview post in March, I pointed out that "the Yankees' main backup options for their injured regulars are injury risks in their own right" and said, "If the Yankees are going to be a player in the postseason race in 2013, they're going to have to find a way to overcome these injury hurdles."  They never did and more than anything that could be the reason they finally fell out of the postseason race in late September.