This is Filip. Filip Bondy. (..what?) Filip has some beliefs about the New York Yankees. Sometimes, Filip thinks things that aren't true! I have been told that my job description entails shouting needlessly at screw-ups like Filip until I'm blue in the face (what's the deal with that figure of speech anyway?). So let's get started.
Betting on young arms cost Yankees the season
Starting pitchers’ injuries leave Bombers scrambling for makeshift rotations
Well this seems pretty reasonable. This is kind of what screwed up the Yankees this season. Point: Filip. Score: pnoles: 0, Filip: 1
By Filip Bondy
Oh boy. That's your actual name isn't it. That doesn't really help your cause. Score: pnoles: 1, Filip: 1
The Yankees are dead. Long live the Mets.
To which I thrust the following label into your face. "More hyperbole than you can shake a stick at." All hail the 77-61 Mets. Can you imagine how the Mets' royal subjects would address them? "Would you like a glass of wine today, Your Above-Averageness?"
By the way: The difference between the "dead" Yankees and the "long-living" Mets is 3 wins. I'm taking 2 points for this one, because those were two equally stupid sentences. Score: pnoles: 3, Filip: 1
In New York, nobody has much patience for non-playoff baseball teams — even those with 26 world championships, a 13-year postseason streak and a new, grandiose stadium on the horizon.
All of this is pretty fair and valid. Score: pnoles: 3, Filip: 2
The Yankees are mired hopelessly in third place right now in the AL East, and all that’s left is a postmortem analysis and a jolting prescription for the future, which is actually quite simple. The Yanks must remember again that they are the Yanks, and not the Oakland A’s.
The Yankees spent $209,081,579 this year. I'm pretty sure they're aware of the whole Yanks/A's inequality. Although this sounds a little ridiculous, I haven't given you a chance to dig your way out of this one, so no points are awarded here.
It is no great mystery where things went wrong this season. General manager Brian Cashman decided he wanted to be Billy Beane.
Again, this sounds insane. Brian Cashman spent $209,081,579. It is nearly impossible for him to identify with Billy Beane. But fine, you still haven't made your point yet, so no score for this. I'm getting very impatient though! What are you going to (finally) tell me?
And while it’s a nice, feel-good notion to develop your own homegrown stars through the minor-league system, the Steinbrenner Yankees never did that before when it came to starting pitchers.
I'm sorry....have you....paid attention to anything that's happened in New York in the past few years? The Yankees have finished 8th, 7th, 9th, and 6th in the AL in ERA over the past 4 seasons. Their offense has been fucking carrying them into the postseason each year. Can you really blame Cashman for taking a different angle here, especially given that he had a glut of young, seemingly MLB-ready starters? No, no you cannot. Score: pnoles: 4, Filip: 2
From Catfish Hunter to David Cone to Roger Clemens, the club’s aces were traditionally mercenaries, imported to get the job done for two or three years before retiring or moving elsewhere.
And baseball is a business that never evolves or changes. The Yankees were in a situation that is prospect-wise exactly the same as all those years in the past, competing in a market that is exactly as intelligent as the ones from decades past. Never change or adjust to the way business is currently being carried out. I, personally, invested in Krispy Kreme back in 2000, when everyone said it was going to do well long-term. And since nobody got smarter and figured out that you can basically make Krispy Kreme doughnuts in your basement, and that the company isn't anything special, the stock is still probably doing really well (I haven't checked it in the past 4 years to make sure).
What the hell was I talking about? Oh well, I deserve a point for working Krispy Kreme into the equation. He said something pretty irrelevant anyway. Score: pnoles: 5, Filip: 2.
You're falling behind, Filip! Be careful!
Cashman, however, decided to change all that because he and the Tampa cabal experienced a troubled history recently while chasing outside talent pools. In direct competition with Theo Epstein of the Red Sox, Cashman signed the wrong former Marlin (Carl Pavano vs. Josh Beckett), the wrong former Japanese star (Kei Igawa vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka) and the wrong former Arizona Diamondback (Randy Johnson vs. Curt Schilling).
This is actually fairly interesting to see side by side. Score: pnoles: 5, Filip: 3
Having been burned so many times before, Cashman went the youth route. He turned his back on Johan Santana, refusing in a proposed deal to give up the quintessential mediocre prospect, outfielder Melky Cabrera.
What are you talking about? He was offering Phil Hughes and Cabrera in a package together! And we're talking about Phil Hughes the phenom, not whatever you want to call him today. There is absolutely no way that you can claim that he simply turned his back on Johan Santana. Score: pnoles: 6, Filip: 3
Instead he dived headlong into the 2008 season with a projected starting rotation that included young arms Chien-Ming Wang, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and swingman Joba Chamberlain.
All four of those pitchers projected to pitch very, very well. But you're right, the Yankees should have totally signed like, Carlos Silva or something this offseason.
What followed was an unmitigated disaster, and one that should not have been wholly unexpected. You place your chips on immature arms, no matter how promising, and a raft of injuries and setbacks are bound to follow.
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Filip! My goodness! That is simply not a good thing to say! It's wrong! Very very wrong! Thing B does not directly follow from Thing A! That is not a theory! That is just a non-truth!
Who's leading the AL East? Who pitches for that team? Were Matt Garza and James Shields considered "mature arms"? John Danks and Gavin Floyd...are they having decent-ish seasons? How about Nick Blackburn and Glen Perkins? Is Tim Lincecum experiencing "a raft of injuries and setbacks?" "A raft of injuries?" Raft? WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT????
Score: pnoles: 7, Filip: 3 (I resisted the urge to give myself a billion points)
In New York, fans witnessed this sort of meltdown a dozen years ago with the Mets, when that organization figured Bill Pulsipher, Paul Wilson and Jason Isringhausen were the starting rotation of the future.
Stephen Drew is a baseball player.
Stephen Drew is a shortstop.
Therefore, all baseball players are shortstops.
I like using your logic, Filip. It makes proving things way easier!
Score: pnoles: 8, Filip: 3
One by one, these young Yankee arms and tendons met similar fates. Each one went down for at least a large chunk of the season. And while Wang and Chamberlain retain substantial promise, nobody even knows whether Hughes (9.00 ERA in six starts) or Kennedy (8.17 in 10 appearances) owns enough talent to succeed at the major-league level.
OK, sure. You aren't acknowledging how devastatingly unlucky any of this was, but Hughes and Kennedy are definitely, at the very least, question marks right now. Score: pnoles: 8, Filip: 4
This has left the Yankees in the uncomfortable position of slapping together makeshift rotations throughout the season. Even the unexpected resurrection of Mike Mussina wasn’t sufficient to offset the disastrous starting situation. As of this writing, the Yankees owned a 4.33 ERA, 16th in the majors, despite mostly solid efforts out of the bullpen.
But...but that ERA and MLB ranking is totally not out of line with anything the Yankees have been doing hiring mercenaries in the past few years! You really aren't convincing me of much here.
You can talk about the offense underachieving, and you’d be right there too.
Oh okay. I was reallly worried that you wouldn't even acknowledge this.
The Bronx Bombers were batting .273, sixth best in the majors, but their run production was ranked 13th. Alex Rodriguez had regressed into familiar non-clutch performances. Injuries to Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui didn’t help, and this was a team with too many DHs, too few Golden Gloves.
Alex Rodriguez has been one of the best 5 hitters in the American League this year. But he's just such a fun punching bag!
Too many DHs, too few Golden Gloves......alright so if a team's defense is bad, don't you think that adversely affects how many runs the pitching staff allows? This is just taking too much away from your argument that betting on young arms was stupid. Even if you didn't say anything blatantly wrong in this paragraph, the way you worded and analyzed that entire thing has me 100% convinced that you know zero things about baseball. Score: pnoles: 9, Filip: 4
Yet those were not the reasons the Yankees have dropped so far, so fast.
WHAT??!?!??!?! You're making me fairly angry right now Filip! Here are things you have said. The offense has been mediocre, 13th in MLB. The pitching has been mediocre, 16th in MLB. Now you're telling me that only the pitching is the reason that the team has been mediocre this season? Your brain is a disaster zone. Score: pnoles: 10, Filip: 4. This is quickly turning into a blowout.
They were goners because the starters collapsed and because the Tampa Bay Rays emerged from nowhere.
By counting on young pitching, the Tampa Bay Rays emerged from nowhere to surpass the New York Yankees, who were completely and totally stupid for banking on young pitching. Score: pnoles: 11, Filip: 4
They failed because Cashman threw money at position players, but not at starters.
Because the market for purchasing starting pitching in this offseason were terrible. You could either 1) Trade for one year of Johan Santana, or 2) Sign Carlos Silva. That's. About. It. Score: pnoles: 12, Filip: 4
From here, then, there needs to be a radical change of philosophy and course. Hank Steinbrenner needs to sit down with Cashman and tell him, flat out: We are not the A’s. If you want to be general manager of a small market team, that can easily be arranged.
Wooo hoo! You tell 'em Hank! Give him hell! That's the last time you'll put any faith in some of the best pitching prospects in the game on my watch!
It’s time to chase some free-agent pitchers again, to start making deals, to fill a rotation with 30 year-olds instead of 22 year-olds. The Yankees have a new, expensive stadium to fill, demanding outrageous ticket prices. They can no longer be outbid for the Santanas and CC Sabathias of the world.
Oh yeah, because 30 year-olds are automatically better than 22 year-olds.
The Yankees’ dynasty of the late ‘90s was built around a largely homegrown cast of position players, and with talented temps on the mound. Somewhere along the way, things got reversed in the Bronx. The Yankees chased expensive sluggers, and fell in love with their starters in the farm system.
BECAUSE THE COMPOSITION OF THE FARM SYSTEM CHANGED! HOW IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD TO UNDERSTAND??
Score: pnoles: 13, Filip: 4
That romance has failed. The sooner the Yankees remember their bullying, big-market roots, the faster their recovery.
Now that ever blood vessel in my head has popped, you're finally done speaking. Wow. In re: big-market roots, I guess leading MLB in payroll wasn't enough. Just fuck off, Filip. By the way, you owe me $61,343.87 for surgeries to repair all the damage you just did to my brain.
I win. 13-4.
