Comments on: No one feels worse than LaTroy Hawkins

By: Realist

Realist — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:52:45 +0000

I would say more of a “long reliever” waiting to start…but it’s all semantics at this point

Had Joba been there last night and possibly the night prior and had the Yankees won……lot’s of “hads”and speculation…the Yanks would be .500.

By: J.R.

J.R. — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:29:04 +0000

I completely agree last night was just hindsight and 2nd guessing. Adittionally the pen was essentially a man short because Joba was acting as a 6th man in the rotation.

By: Realist

Realist — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:38:43 +0000

Opinions are like assholes…everyone has one but no one wants to hear anyone elses…..

That said….

Joba came up as a starter and he needs to prove he can or can’t excel at it at the MLB level. If he can it benefits NY, if he can’t nothing gained nothing lost…it is a waste to use him as the 8th inning guy, especially when getting to his speciality spot is hindered due to the starting rotation’s limitations.

His value as a starter is greater and the need is greater to the team, as of now. Any value on his use in the 8th inning of that crap game last night is hindsight at best and holds little to no value in the greater scheme of what this team is trying to achieve.

My 2 cents…

By: Glen L

Glen L — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:28:26 +0000

I’m all for bringing up Karstans to piggyback Joba his first few starts and act as a longman … its pretty clear Ohlie has contracted the Krazy Kyle disease .. he can be very effective for an inning, but not longer … running him out for 2-3 innings just isn’t going to work … Karstans could hopefully solve this

By: A.D.

A.D. — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:26:20 +0000

Not slamming you but not sure what you’re getting with, the team is profitable, the 35 mill loss wouldn’t occur if the Yanks sold their TV rights to a cable network like everyone else, instead they have their own which make a ton of money in its deal with the cable company. And it very much does matter, you better belive things would be different if the Yanks weren’t making money, then you’d see crazy moves.

When you refer to reactionary, not sure what you’re getting at, I suppose one could view moving Joba to the pen reactionary, but I see it as a rebuiling step/move which still helps the team now. Reactionary would be trading away some of the young pitching for a Derek Lowe or something like that, because the young pitching has struggled, which is exactly what they havent done.

Maybe i’m not understanding your angle, but I think the issue is less Joba pen availablitly & more having the right guys (i.e. real long reliever) in the pen for games where a starter doesn’t go long

By: Nefarious jackson

Nefarious jackson — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:23:26 +0000

‘what playoffs’??? brad k =CLULESS

start the season with Joba in rotation … to shut him down in august? right there you lose all credibility— you’re right, you will be slammed, get a clue before you waste our time

By: J.R.

J.R. — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:10:29 +0000

Dont jump the gun on that one.

By: brad k

brad k — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:22:22 +0000

what playoffs?

By: J.R.

J.R. — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:57:32 +0000

If we had started Joba in the rotation, we would have had to shut him down early august and no playoffs for him.

By: brad k

brad k — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:46:48 +0000

You know that his career W-L is 57-77 and he has 46 blown saves. He is a career 4.75 era what did we expect. I don’t see the organization fixing this and I don’t see Cashman fixing this. At this point in the season the only real and tangible evidence of Cashman’s great experiment is Chamberlain and now he is unavailable to help us in games like last nights. Don’t get me wrong I am happy to see him move into the rotation I just think this was about the dumbest way of doing it. The season shouldn’t be experimental, at least not this early in the season. If you wanted him to start then he should have come out of spring training ready to start. It’s just more evidence of the poorly thought out and convoluted logic that Brian Cashman is using to guide this franchise.

I’m sure I’ll get slammed for this but here are the hard facts. This team isn’t built for re-building or experiments and here is why. With a consistent projected salary range of about $200 million the Yanks have been paying around $25 million/year in luxury tax for the past 5 years. Add to that the revenue sharing split and we are talking about better than $100 million a year. The Yankees had a reported operating loss of around $35 million last year. I know, I know that doesn’t include the revenue from Yes Network and so on. It doesn’t matter whether or not they are really “losing” money as an organization what matters is that at the end of the day they have $35 million less to work with. Add that to the $100 million in luxury and revenue sharing and we are giving/losing almost as much as the next 3 highest payrolls in baseball. If you are going to rebuild then you do it with the cheapest payroll you can, like say the Marlins. When you build a $200 million last place team you will always be reactionary and act out of desperation which is exactly what the Yanks have done the last 2 years. This whole notion of Cashmans that we could build from within and remain competitive is and was ridiculous.