It’s not unreasonable to expect a 90-win team from the third-place Yankees this year, but no matter how anyone tries to spin it, for a team expected to win the World Series each year, 90 wins is hardly a plateau to celebrate. To that end, everyone and their mothers will offer up their takes on fixing the Yankees. We start with Joe Sheehan’s free column on Baseball Prospectus.
Here’s what the Yankee fan suggests:
- Sign Mark Teixeira
- Bring back Bobby Abreu
- Avoid the Pitchers (except for maybe Sabathia)
- Put Joba in the rotation and leave him alone
- Re-sign Mussina or Pettitte
- Pick up Carl Pavano’s option
- Don’t touch the bullpen
On the surface, Sheehan’s suggestions make sense, and we’ll spend some time over the next few weeks delving more in depth on these issues. But there are a few problems. Sheehan would again have the Yanks head into the season with Hughes and Kennedy expected to play a big role on the team. Since Joba won’t be able to make 34 starts next year, someone else will have to, and it would fall on the other two members of the erstwhile Big Three to pick up the slack.
The Carl Pavano move makes some financial sense. For $11 million ($13 million less than the $2 million buyout), the Yanks can have insurance better than Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson.
The rest of the argument rests on the realization that, this year, the Yanks’ problem was their offense and not their pitching. Considering that Ponson finished third in innings pitched on this team, it’s a hard idea to grasp, but he’s on the money. Had the Yanks come close to approaching their projected runs scored totals this year, the team would be playoff-bound. Instead, they’ve scored nearly 200 fewer runs this year than last, and they’ll be going home when the season ends this weekend. Convincing the pitching-obsessed team of this reality may be a bit tougher.
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