MFY Off-Season/Pre-Season Circus

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: The Bronx Bombers are in danger of falling below .500 for the first time in 20 years And it's about time!

Christ, we just want a team to compete....

[Edgy MD]

Blue Jays 15
Yankees 1

Waiting for the third inning to start.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Edgy MD wrote: Blue Jays 15 Yankees 1 Waiting for the third inning to start.

This is just a terrible score Edward. Terrible because it's a meaningless spring training game and not regular season or postseason. I guess if it prompts the Yankees FO to make a desperation move that blows up in their faces that would be good.

[Edgy MD]

Bottom of the fifth and it's 17-4.

I love the happy hometown spin MLB webpages give everything. Yankees.com reports, "Pair of doubles gives Yankees a third-inning boost."

Great!

Sucker.

[Valadius]

Derrek Lee rebuffs the MFYs, opts to stay retired rather than jump on board a sinking ship.

[Frayed Knot]

The Yanx seem almost overly concerned with defense in recent years even at corner positions.
Derrek Lee was a terrific 1Bman but has been retired for a year and a half. Meanwhile Carlos Lee played last year and they're not considering him nor do they want to let Travis Hafner break out his glove even for a short time and even though he's already on their roster.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

MLB network reporting that Teixireiaxa or however the heck he spells it could be out for the season.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

lolololol

[Frayed Knot]

metsguyinmichigan wrote: MLB network reporting that Teixireiaxa or however the heck he spells it could be out for the season.

Yaneberknow with those wrist tendon injuries.
Clean breaks like the one Granderson got are easier to predict and recover from in most cases.

[Edgy MD]

This is going to be one strange opening day in New York. Both teams are at home and the highest-profile healthy dude will be... C.C. Sabathia? He's starting late, too, though.

I guess it's Cano. But he still has to get through spring training without getting suspended. Plus he has to survive the deadly World Baseball Classic.

[Frayed Knot]

-- The Angels and Yankees are closing in on a deal that would send Vernon Wells to the Bronx, sources confirmed to MLB.com on Sunday.


Wells seems like one of those aging vets (aging?, hell, he brings the team average down several notches) and on his last legs guys (although he's still only 34) who suddenly hit like one home-run every six ABs in a part-time role once he hits the Bronx (see GlenAllen Hill, Andruw Jones, Raul Ibanez, others) even though he's pretty much just warmed-over goo coming in: (2011-12 stats = .222/.258/.409 with 26 HRs over 748 ABs)

They of course need to work out the money involved (owed $42 mil over the next two seasons) and what if anything goes back the other way (the more of one the less of the other). Wells had tumbled to fifth on the OF depth chart in Anaheim.
Think about how much the Angels have paid over a virtually continuous stretch of seasons, first to Gary Mathews Jr. and then to Vernon Wells, and how little they've gotten from either.

[Edgy MD]

They've gotten value out Torii Hunter. Third time's a charm.

And Trout has taught them that growing a centerfielder of your own is much more gratifying.

[ashie62]

I wouldn't be surprised if Jeter missed a couple of months and finishes his career as a DH as a Yankee.

[Frayed Knot]

Ashie62 wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if Jeter missed a couple of months and finishes his career as a DH as a Yankee.

Jeter already DH'd nearly one game in six that he played in last season - and that was before the broken ankle.
Add that to the idea that there's no reason to think that ARod (who DH'd in 1/3 of his games in 2012) is going to be able to play his position any better when he gets back (assuming he even does) so he'll need to be parked there on a regular basis ... and then there's Travis Hafner who they see as nothing but a DH as they're apparently not even considering him as one of the options to replace Teixeira while he's out during the early (and maybe longer) part of the season.

Being able to fall back on the DH is a great option for AL teams but not when they need it for multiple players concurrently.

[ashie62]

What do you do with an icon at the ass end of his career with an injury that could end such career?

Got me..

[Frayed Knot]

Well, they're going to have to deal with it somehow and he's likely to miss a chunk or several chunks of time this year.
All I'm saying is that the rest of that roster makes the option of 'ahh, let's just stick him at DH' easier to say than to implement.

[metirish]

Apparently the MFY's will pay $13 million if the $42 owed Wells......great deal Angels GM, that he got any of it picked up is surely a good thing....Cashman is desperate......

[bmfc1]

Despite all of this goodness, Will Leitch still picks the MFYs to win the AL East:
http://nymag.com/news/sports/games/yankees-2013-4/

[Edgy MD]

Hours after his being cut loose by the Red Sox, the Yankees sign Lol Overbay.

He may be as good a bet as Teixiera.

[G-Fafif]

Via Bronx Banter, classic MFY Circus/DB action: Tony Kornheiser on the Boss in full flower -- very much an a-hole then as later.

George Steinbrenner is charming, generous, philanthropic, well-connected, wealthy, energetic and a delight to be with. He is also imperious, tyrannical, impatient, tough, nasty and almost impossible to work for. If he has to pick a label to hang his psyche on, he picks none of the above. He picks misunderstood. �No one has been able to capture the real me, how I feel,� he says. �But I guess it�s tough. It�s hard for me to convey what I really feel. It�s not something I can easily say.� He lists among his friends such people as Senator Edward Kennedy; Thomas P. O�Neill, better known as Tip, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Cary Grant, the legend, and Barbara Walters, a close personal friend of Anwar el-Sadat. He lists among his prominent positions, spots on the boards of trustees at the University of Tampa. the Culver Educational Foundation, the University of South Florida Foundation. He is the Florida state chairman of the American Cancer Society. He lists among his accomplishments, assistant varsity football coach at both Northwestern and Purdue, chairman of the Democratic Party fund raising effort in 1969 and 1970, all sorts of charitable work for poverty foundations and sports-for-youth federations and co-producer of such award-winning Broadway shows as �Seesaw� and �Applause.� Oh, and he brought the Yankees back from comatose to champions in five years. Yet what people remember him for most are his felony conviction for election-campaign fraud in the time of Watergate, and the weekly reports of his threats to fire Billy Martin, the manager of the Yankees, a 49-year-old Fonzie who has been described by John Schulian of The Chicago Sun-Times as �a mouse studying to be a rat.� George Steinbrenner, who very much would like to be a man of the people, a working-class hero, hasn�t a shot. He takes his satisfactions privately; he gets his beatings publicly. �I�m the heavy,� he says. �I don�t like it, but I don�t know how to change it.� �TWO THINGS ARE important to George,� says a close friend who believes he needs anonymity on this one to stay close. �Two things�winning and power.� Steinbrenner does not dispute the former; he pleads guilty, with an explanation, to the latter. �Only if I can use it for good, to help those less fortunate than me,� he says. He is sitting in the restaurant in his Tampa hotel, the Bay Harbor Inn. He puts his elbows on the table and leans forward: This one is coming from the heart. �I�ll tell you when I really bristle,� he says. �I�ll be sitting at some board meeting, and I�ll hear some big shot say��Look at those people.� And you�ll know exactly which people he�s talking about. �All they want is their unemployment checks.� Well, let me tell you something. I�ve been to the South Bronx; how many of those big shots have been to the South Bronx? You gonna tell me that�s all that guy wants in life? No way. . . . If he had the opportunity that I had, God knows he might be a better man than all of us. �Now look, I�m no crusader, I don�t want it to sound like that. I�m no Robin Hood. I just like to help people, that�s my bag. They call me a flaming liberal; guess I am.� The little guy, Steinbrenner claims kinship with the little guy. The cabby who has to fight the traffic every day, the bartender, the hotel worker, that�s his cast of characters; he talks about them so often you�d think he did his senior thesis at Williams College on Damon Runyon instead of on the heroines in Thomas Hardy�s novels. His favorite little guy is the one who stops him on the street and thanks him for bringing the Yankees back. He makes it seem there are a legion of little guys out there on the streets of New York, patrolling every comer just waiting to spot him and shake his hand. �Class,� he says. �What class they have.� He shrugs. �I wish I had class like that,� he says. �I wish I had the class to go up to a stranger and thank him for something. I don�t.� Now it may be a bit hard to swallow that, to fully swallow how a man who likes the feel of a chauffeured limousine can claim this spiritual tie to the little guy. Especially since he�s so hard with his own little people, his secretaries and his office personnel. Especially since he stays at the Hotel Carlyle and wears $40 shirts and sits fifth-row center at the theater, house seats. But down deep, even if he knows it isn�t readily visible, George Steinbrenner feels like one of the guys. Down deep, he�s at a fraternity party. All his life, through military school and through board meetings, he acted one way and coveted another, and down deep, he wants to be one of the common people, if only for a handshake. Of course his hero is the cabby. The common denominator in New York City is the traffic; Steinbrenner sees it even through the window of his chauffeured limo, he feels it, he sits in it. When you�re stuck on 37th Street, it doesn�t matter if you�re stuck in a cab, or a bus or a limo. You�re all alike. For maybe the only time in his life, he�s down with the people. �I�ve always kept my emotions inside me,� he says. �They tell me I don�t let myself go, and that�s true. It�s a mark of strength among Germans, you know. . . . it isn�t that frequent that I really enjoy myself. It�s hard to explain, but the feeling I got after winning a World Series wasn�t what I thought it�d be. I remember saying to myself�I wonder why I�m not more excited? But then I saw the happiness I got was seeing happiness in others, and when that cabby comes up to me and says, �Thanks for bringing the Yankees back,� even if it�s just �Thanks for spending your money,� it�s unreal. I feel so good about winning one for New York. This is the greatest city in the world and its people are the greatest people in the world. And I just hope they like me.�

[bmfc1]

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/28/derek-jeter-to-new-york-drop-dead/

[Frayed Knot]

Almost time to wrap up this off-season thread, so I'll do it by noting that, of the 42 staffers at Baseball Prospectus, only 11 picked the Yanx to make the playoffs at all, and as many picked them to finish last in their division as to finish first (5 each).
Gotta go back to the early '90s to find those kind of predictions.

The fascinating part of the whole thing isn't just how they finish this season but also how this year sets them up for next year and beyond.
Only five of their current players are currently signed beyond this season - and those five aren't necessarily the players or prices that you'd want. Only Teixeira (still good assuming he recovers but expensive and declining), ARod (like Teixeira only expensive-r and declining-er), Sabathia (he's avoided the injury bug ... so far), and now both Ichiro and Vernon Wells of all people are under contract for 2014.

Jeter is on the final year of his multi-year deal (although he has an option) as are Cano & Granderson, while Mariano, Pettitte, Kuroda, Joba, Hafner, Hughes & Youkilis are all on one-year contracts this season with enough time to qualify as FAs (or for Social Security). Some of the younger players (Gardener, Robertson, Nunez, Cervelli, Nova, Pineda) will still be under team control beyond 2013 but aren't yet signed and those are hardly their key guys.

Now if you plan things right, having a bunch of players on one-year deals can be a good thing. In this case though, they'll have a payroll cap to get under (or so they say) while still having most of their expensive guys AND have to do all that while finding someone to man 2B, SS, DH, CF, Catcher, Closer, and at least two rotation spots in an age when other teams are locking up their prize FAs more often than not, making 2009-like mega-signing insta-make-overs (Sabathia, Burnett & Teixeira all at once) much tougher to do.

[Ceetar]

What do you think, 4:1 odds they sign Santana?

[Edgy MD]

I still wonder if potential suspensions for A-Rod and Cano loom.

[MFS62]

Ceetar wrote: What do you think, 4:1 odds they sign Santana?

Sure. He can take Feliciano's spot on the DL.

Later