I’m so glad that someone finally made this point because I was looking at those championship teams the other day searching for that giant youth movement. I mean most of the key guys were either free agents or trades.
Excellent comments from start to end you can always tell that here when the first thing they do is attack you personally instead of your facts.

Its that confluence of events which cannot be replicated, because the same team of people who brought us the Pettite, Rivera Bernie Jeter drafts etc had previously AND subsequently failed miserably at drafting well or finding young talent worthy of a spot on the roster. This shows how hard it is to draft successfully, and the hurdles even quality picks have in making an impact on the major league roster.

Also, it seems that the Yanks have been unable to re-tool at midseason as they had in the past ( with the exception of Abreu a few years ago) because the wild card, revenue growth/sharing and parity have left fewer sellers in the market – gone are the days of Cone/Justice/Fielder/Neagle/Weaver/Hill/Polonia/Lloyd/ coming over in July to re-vamp the roster.

While the Yanks did get a burst from Joba/Cano/Wang in the last few years, its basically impossible to get a front-line starter now from another team, where just a few years back it was an All-Star pitcher moving (Colon, 2x, Johnson etc to name a few) each summer, and the Yanks were in on all of them!

We at RAB also weren’t dead set on “rebuilding while winning.” The three of us have constantly said that if we don’t make the playoffs this year, no biggie. It’s about amassing talent and figuring out what you can do with that talent. We thought it wiser to hold onto our young players than trade then for a $130 million contract. Two months of poor play doesn’t change that stance, nor should it. Long term goals are not failures because we’re losing in the short term.

The main point is how HORRIBLE the current pitching staff is compared to the champion Yanks of that time. Its laughable. Mo is obviously the same, but besides him, there is not 1 other member of this current disgrace of a bullpen who would come close to making the bullpen back then, especially from the 1998 season. Except for Wang, who might be the 5th starter on that group (but certainly 3rd or 4th from 2000 on), the older versions of Moose and Pettitte plus Rasner, please. The rotation in 1998-1999 was great, hell the rotation in 2003, though old, mightve been even better.

Ive written earlier about this since those teams i consider part of my golden era (high-school to beginning of college, which i never finished, but thats another story!!) and to me nobody will ever stack up to them, but the fact is the main differences have clearly been the pitching, and ill be totally honest, ALOT of good/bad luck.

I also agree our cupboard was a bit more bare in the 90′s than it is now.

Don’t panic, folks. Like the only good thing to come out of Boston once said, “life’s a journey. not a destination.”

I urge you to take a look at the early careers of Rivera, Posada and Bernie before telling us what’s in store for Hughes and the others.