Friday, December 19, 2008

The New York Yankees 2008 Off-Season or How I learned to stop worrying because we have no soul

I love those references.... AH, it makes me feel so safe and warm.

I do not however feel safe and warm when the Yankees spend more money than God on two pitches;
one of which started the first half of last season losing more games than he lost all of last season and the second never really living quite up to expectations from when he left his previous team a few years earlier.

This is like a Yankee knee jerk reaction, when you lose in the regular season, make sure you spend money on players like a kid in a candy store who happen to find a twenty on the corner.

In fact in signing A.J. Burnett and C.C. they pretty much took a pile of cash and set it on fire. They did the same when they signed Jaret Wright (product if an overly productive contract year), Kevin Brown (same thing) and Carl Pavano (well, that was all potential there).

Now to add to the fact they spent large (three times the size of the Rays payroll) on two guys, the Yankees actually had the audacity to ask New York for more funds for their new stadium, "The Place that Taxpayers Might Have to Build".

Though the fact remains and this is one thing both of us at Sal's 401K believe is key to a championship team. Oh, that's right Yankee fans, your team has not won a single World Series since that dumb Subway Series that is barely a Series at all. Might I digress, Yankee teams are composed of mostly 33 year old plus players who were assembled by a dollar amount rather than a strategic purpose.

See, baseball teams much like other teams need to have chemistry and I just don't see the chemistry and of course key role players on the New York Yankees. The point I always make, and it angers Yankee fans is that in 2004 the Boston Red Sox traded Nomar Garciaparra. You may have remembered him, he was the franchise player. Well, they traded him and acquired Orlando Cabrera who was not as much as a power hitter as Nomar was. He didn't make the same wage as Nomar. But he was pretty flashy on the field with defense and his speed helped add some horsepower and stolen bases when they needed it. In fact their key stolen base was by Dave Roberts, some backup outfielder who doesn't hit 30 homers a year. Try finding that on the Yankees.

Fact remains that the New York Yankees get drunk with their check book everytime they lose. Though as usual they will probably unload most of the old guys when they realize they weren't worth it to begin with. Maybe they will unload their crappy young players... like Joba.

Sal Sez: "When I was with the Yankees they made me shave my mustache off. I killed a trainer at spring training when he tried to shave me."

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