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A Treadmill To 1965?

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Although they were able to avoid a sweep (and prove the ongoing persistence of patriarchy) by winning the epochal Wang/Bush matchup on Saturday, in light of their 10-15 start we Yankee haters have visions of 1965–when the Yankees finally collapsed after 40 years of dominating the American League–dancing in our heads. (Chris Russo playing LBJ’s post-Selma speech and various #1 singles form 1965 on Saturday was a nice touch.) Unfortunately, I think these hopes are perhaps exaggerated; I still think the Yankees have, at worst, a 70% chance to make the playoffs and about a 1 in 3 chance of winning the division, although that’s better than I would have hoped last month. In the medium term, though, they’re in trouble, and that could start this year. At the beginning of the season I mentioned Steinbrenner’s “treadmill,” and their gratifyingly awful start caused me to look up the Bill James essay from which I stole the concept. I think it’s relevant to the current situation:

The New York Yankees are trapped on a treadmill. Although they have not won anything since 1981 the Yankees have the best winning percentage of any team during the 80s…They are acutely aware of this, and so the winter of 1987-8 was spent in frantic preparation to make the 1988 season the season in which the great nucleus of this team is surrounded by a cast good enough to life the Yankees off that 85-to-92 win treadmill, and onto the championship rung. There is an irony in this, for it is exactly this philosophy that creates the treadmill from which the Yankees are so anxious to escape…

The problem with the Yankees is that they never want to pay the real price of success. The real price of success in baseball is not the dollars that you come up with for a Jack Clark or a Dave Winfield or an Ed Whitson or a Goose Gossage. It is the patience to work with young players and help them develop. So long as the Yankees are unwilling to pay that price, don’t bet on them to win anything. (1988 Baseball Abstract, 92, 95)

The similarities should be obvious. Although there’s a tendency of the media to assume that the Yankees’ success is all about free agency, that’s not correct. The 1998 team–which is easily the best team of my lifetime–was not a team built by free agency at all. With the exception of Cone, the core of the team consisted of homegrown players or players acquired by trading homegrown players. The free agents were role players. Moreover, Steinbrenner had learned to back off, to delegate to his baseball people and not go crazy every time the team lost a couple games.

The current Yankees have nothing in common with this team, except that some of the homegrown nucleus that is still there, and Rodriguez, who was acquired for the last quality player the Yankees produced. But the nucleus is declining. Jeter is a poor defender, and it’s now clear the 1999 season was a fluke; he’s a very good but not great hitter. Williams is in major decline as a hitter and is a near-joke in CF. Posada is still good but is 33 and has been worked very hard for the last few years. Even Rivera seems to be in some decline. What the media has been saying about the Yankees for many years is now true; they’re a team dependent on free agency. And when you do that, you need to get the best ones. But it was the Mets, not the Yankees, that got the real blue chips. Pavano was a poor singing; an up-and-down pitcher who’s not going to win consistently with the bad defense the Yankees are putting behind him. The Wright signing was spectacularly bad. In addition to that, they’re poorly constructed. Unlike the Red Sox, they’ve pissed away the roster positions around their outstanding-but-old core, signing the Ineffable Veteran Leadership of Tino Martinez and a second baseman who doesn’t get on base, doesn’t hit for power and can’t turn the pivot. The bullpen is dubious, and between the pressure cooker and the swiss cheese defense it’s very difficult for all but the best pitchers to succeed. And they have no bench and no depth, which give them a very narrow margin of error; if Johnson or Rodriguez goes down for a significant period, they’re in serious trouble.

Having said all that, I still see the Yankees winning 90-5 games. There are some key differences with 1988: the team they began with was better, they added one of the 3 best pitchers in baseball, and they have stable management. The Red Sox haven’t opened up much distance and their #1 and #2 starters are still hurt, although the back of their rotation is far better than the Yankees’. Which brings us to the real key for Yankee-haters: the Orioles. I look at that rotation and can’t see them in the playoffs. But they may well score more runs than the Yankees (granting that I remain skeptical that Brian Roberts has turned into Joe Morgan), their bullpen is strong, and the rotation certainly has good arms in it. I wouldn’t want to bet on Lopez and Chen and Bedard all pitching as well as they’re capable of. But I hope they do. Go O’s! But when it comes to the Yankees, the question is not so much if they’ll collapse as when. The treadmill is running at peak capacity, and the 38-year olds are about to start falling off.

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