Can the Trio Save New York?

Ever since the realignment of Major Leauge Baseball before the 1994 strike, it’s like the American League pennant race consisted of only three spots.  It was always assumed that the Yankees would be there come October. It was inevitable just like death and taxes.  Even then, you can make a decision to not pay your taxes, but chances are if this happens, someone is going to pay.  For a while there, nothing could stop the Yanks.  Not anymore.  New York has placed their hopes in the hands of Brian Cashman and three young pitchers, and for the first time in a long while they actually look vulnerable.

The reason for the Yankees certain success was largely in part to formulaic approach that George Steinbrenner used to construct his teams beginning in the 1990’s.  Their ’96 edition featured four position players that were 29 or younger, and four starting pitchers that were 31 or older.  It seemed that Steinbrenner finally found the perfect harmony between youth and experience.  Using this blueprint they were able to capture 12 straight playoff appearances, and starting in ’96, the Yankees were able to reel off four World Series victories in five years. 

This year’s edition has the same disparity in age between their position players and pitchers, it’s just reversed. 

Instead of young position players and wily veterans lining the rotation, the Yanks have the polar opposite.  As the Sporting News points out, New York could potentially have only two position players under the age of 32 in their opening day lineup:  second baseman Robinson Cano (25), and center fielder Melky Cabrera (23).  As far as their rotation is concerned, they could have three players, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Ian Kennedy that have 115 2/3 innings of big league experience between them.

This doesn’t look like its going to fair well for the New York faithful.  Can this band of new jacks really be counted on to provide the city with a trip to playoffs, let alone a ring, the very result they have come to expect and demand?  They certainly have the potential to be one of the best rotations in baseball someday, but it doesn’t look like that day is now.

By all accounts Chamberlain isn’t even ready to handle the wear and tear that goes along with pitching every fifth day in a Major League rotation, so he is slated to start the season out of the bullpen.  Which could prove to be a wise move in the long run, it’d be disastrous if he suffered the fate of, well, any young pitcher that played for Dusty Baker, but his impact won’t be fully felt until he makes the move.

The team, namely general Brian Cashman, thought enough of Hughes and Kennedy that they allowed Johan Santana to slip away to their cross town rival instead pulling the trigger on a deal that would have sent at least one of them to Minnesota in return for the ace.   In the long run, this will likely prove the be the right decision, but if it doesn’t materialize like right now, it could cost Cashman his job.

In an interview with ESPN, Hank Steinbrenner stated that if missing out on Santana ends up costing the Yanks that “someone is going to pay,” which was obviously a reference to Cashman who is in the last year of his contract.

Such a rash move would be shortsighted, to say the least, but that’s the mentality in New York.  Ever since George Steinbrenner acquired the Yankees in 1973 the future didn’t matter, no season was more important than the upcoming one.  If they needed a bat, he bought one, if they needed an arm, he bought one. 

Prospects were merely a means to get proven players; he rarely had the patience to let the work of scouts come to fruition.  In fact, from the day the boss stepped into his office, until the day he handed the reigns to his sons, the Yankees never once had a season in which they got 70 starts from pitchers age 25 and under.  The last time this happened in New York was in 1970.

It’s certainly a new mentality from a new regime of forward thinking baseball people, but we’re still talking about the Steinbrenner’s here.  If they fail to make the playoffs there’s a good chance that things will revert to the old way, the proven way, and, as far as  New York is concerned, the right way.