Cashman Returns

[TheKilo]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spcashman1001,0,167039.story

 

Brian Cashman has agreed to return as the Yankees general manager on a three-year contract, Newsday has learned.

 

Cashman deliberated over the decision about whether it was time to move on after 11 seasons as GM, but gave the Yankees an affirmative answer this afternoon. In the end, a Yankees source said, it came down to what was best for his family. The new contract will be for slightly more than Cashman had been making, putting it at in the ballpark of $2-million per year.

 

Neither Cashman nor Yankees co-chairman Hal Steinbrenner, with whom Cashman negotiated the deal, could immediately be reached for comment. The two work closely together, and met at Yankee Stadium on Monday, and that relationship was a huge positive for Cashman in making up his mind.

 

The Yankees are expected to make an official announcement this afternoon.

[Cocos Disciples]

Gom, I'll take those season tickets.

[redsoxrules]

LOL GOM

[Gom]

I'm cancelling them. If anyone wants the tickets before I cancel them, let me know.

 

THIS IS TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE NEWS. THE YANKEES HAVE BEEN RESIGNED TO THE SECOND DIVISION FOR THE NEXT DECADE.

 

Seriously, if anyone wants to pay for the season tickets next year and is willing to give me the money upfront, they can have any and all of my tickets. I refuse to pay for a product I know will suck.

[BoSox21]

*giggle*

[Cocos Disciples]

I'm cancelling them. If anyone wants the tickets before I cancel them, let me know.

 

THIS IS TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE NEWS. THE YANKEES HAVE BEEN RESIGNED TO THE SECOND DIVISION FOR THE NEXT DECADE.

 

Seriously, if anyone wants to pay for the season tickets next year and is willing to give me the money upfront, they can have any and all of my tickets. I refuse to pay for a product I know will suck.

 

Don't you have 9 tickets? You're an idiot if you actually cancel them. I'd take em, but I'm in Boston...

[redsoxrules]

I'm cancelling them. If anyone wants the tickets before I cancel them, let me know.

 

THIS IS TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE NEWS. THE YANKEES HAVE BEEN RESIGNED TO THE SECOND DIVISION FOR THE NEXT DECADE.

 

Seriously, if anyone wants to pay for the season tickets next year and is willing to give me the money upfront, they can have any and all of my tickets. I refuse to pay for a product I know will suck.

 

you dont want to see the new stadium?

[Gom]

you dont want to see the new stadium?

I do, but I refuse to give money to a team that will finish in 4th next year.

[ARod2212]

Then don't buy season tickets in Toronto. The Yankees will be better next season, relax.

 

They weren't even that bad this season. They won 89 games with a ton of injuries in a ridiculously competitive division.

[TheKilo]

Their offense was the problem, and how much of a rebound can you really expect?

 

Third place next year, book it.

[Cocos Disciples]

IMO the East is going to be a hectic 4 team race next year. Anything could happen.

[BoSox21]

Then don't buy season tickets in Toronto.

 

the way their rotation is gonna be next year, hell the O's might even pass them

[a700hitter]

Then don't buy season tickets in Toronto. The Yankees will be better next season, relax.

 

They weren't even that bad this season. They won 89 games with a ton of injuries in a ridiculously competitive division.

Injuries is an excuse. The Red Sox lost a ton of games by All Star caliber players, traded their best offensive player, played another 6 weeks without their second best player, and lost Schilling for the season. The rays were missing Crawford for the last six weeks, Longoria for a month, and they were essentially without a closer for the entire season. The Yankees problems run much deeper than injuries. They stunk. There record is quite misleading. They got as close as they did, because they picked up some ground when the games really no longer mattered to the Rays and the Sox. They were a third place team pretty much wire to wire this season and they were fighting to stay out of 4th place. Your aging offense, relic SS, idiot manager and unaccomplished GM will have to overcome numerous obstacles to return to the post season next year. Among those obstacles are: the relic at SS with no range (he will hurt the sinkerballer Wang tremendously) and the idiot manager and GM.

[VA Sox Fan]

I do' date=' but I refuse to give money to a team that will finish in 4th next year.[/quote']

 

 

Was your first year of "fandom" in 1996?

[Gom]

Was your first year of "fandom" in 1996?

No. It was 1983. I was 11.

 

My first year of tickets [at least 20 games] on my own was 95. My first year of season tickets was 02.

[Soxfan1]

Their offense was the problem, and how much of a rebound can you really expect?

 

Third place next year, book it.

 

A potential lolwut.

[jacksonianmarch]

Was your first year of "fandom" in 1996?

 

hahaha

[ARod2212]

Injuries is an excuse. The Red Sox lost a ton of games by All Star caliber players' date=' traded their best offensive player, played another 6 weeks without their second best player, and lost Schilling for the season. The rays were missing Crawford for the last six weeks, Longoria for a month, and they were essentially without a closer for the entire season. The Yankees problems run much deeper than injuries. They stunk. There record is quite misleading. They got as close as they did, because they picked up some ground when the games really no longer mattered to the Rays and the Sox. They were a third place team pretty much wire to wire this season and they were fighting to stay out of 4th place. Your aging offense, relic SS, idiot manager and unaccomplished GM will have to overcome numerous obstacles to return to the post season next year. Among those obstacles are: the relic at SS with no range (he will hurt the sinkerballer Wang tremendously) and the idiot manager and GM.[/quote']

Keep telling yourself that. It's cool. 89 wins is 89 wins. You know, how many it took to win the AL Central. In 163 games.

 

Important injuries, tough division, and still finished 16 games over .500. I'm not broken up about it, just a tough break.

 

And quit with the 'relic at shortstop' baiting. Name me a better shortstop this season in the AL. Maybe Peralta? In a ridiculously down year for Jeter, in which played hurt most of the summer, he was top 3 in the AL.

[CrespoBlows]

Keep telling yourself that. It's cool. 89 wins is 89 wins. You know, how many it took to win the AL Central. In 163 games.

 

Important injuries, tough division, and still finished 16 games over .500. I'm not broken up about it, just a tough break.

 

And quit with the 'relic at shortstop' baiting. Name me a better shortstop this season in the AL. Maybe Peralta? In a ridiculously down year for Jeter, in which played hurt most of the summer, he was top 3 in the AL.

 

Offense and defense?

[TheKilo]

Third place

[ARod2212]

Third place

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp?ymd=20061002

 

It happens.

[schillingouttheks]

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp?ymd=20061002

 

It happens.

 

Remember all the s*** we were getting from Yankee fans about OUR payroll being pretty high and settling for third?

 

I don't know nor care to remember if you were one of them, but you can all eat a shitload of f***ing crow.

[26 to 6]

Serve it up. I'll get it while it's hot.

[a700hitter]

And quit with the 'relic at shortstop' baiting. Name me a better shortstop this season in the AL. Maybe Peralta? In a ridiculously down year for Jeter' date=' in which played hurt most of the summer, he was top 3 in the AL.[/quote']I'm not baiting you. I hope Derek Jeter plays another 5 or 6 years at SS for the Yankees. He has never had good range, but he is quickly becoming a statue like Bernie Williams did. An immobile SS is a big problem for a staff where the ace is a sinkerballer.

[jacksonianmarch]

a700 makes a good point. Jeter did seem to improve his range this yr just from watching him, which he attributed to agility training in the offseason. That being said, the man turns 35 next yr and has already lost about a step and a half from his prime. Its time for him to move to CF, 2B, or 1B. Looking at our staff, Wang and Pettitte are two extreme GB pitchers and having them on the mound 40% of the time (hopefully) means a lot of balls getting past Jeter. That being said, I think the entire package with his offense still has him as a top 5 SS in all of baseball. But if he moved to 2b, he'd be even more valuable and less of a defensive liability. One thing I can always say about Jeter is that he fields very well when the ball is hit within 2 steps of him in either direction. So he doesnt kill us. But the range outside of that will affect us once or twice a week, which is enough to put the thought in your head.

[BoSox21]

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp?ymd=20061002

 

It happens.

 

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/ps/y2004/home.jsp?view=bos_nyy

 

It happens.

[jacksonianmarch]

Injuries is an excuse. The Red Sox lost a ton of games by All Star caliber players' date=' traded their best offensive player, played another 6 weeks without their second best player, and lost Schilling for the season. The rays were missing Crawford for the last six weeks, Longoria for a month, and they were essentially without a closer for the entire season. The Yankees problems run much deeper than injuries. They stunk. There record is quite misleading. They got as close as they did, because they picked up some ground when the games really no longer mattered to the Rays and the Sox. They were a third place team pretty much wire to wire this season and they were fighting to stay out of 4th place. Your aging offense, relic SS, idiot manager and unaccomplished GM will have to overcome numerous obstacles to return to the post season next year. Among those obstacles are: the relic at SS with no range (he will hurt the sinkerballer Wang tremendously) and the idiot manager and GM.[/quote']

 

The sox had the MLB ready talent waiting to take the place of the injured guys though. Ours was a bit more green. The blossoming of Lester when you lost Schilling is exactly the reason why you guys are in the playoffs. We were hoping for the same from Hughes and Kennedy, but didnt get it yet. This is why kids take time to develop and some of them get it all of a sudden like Lester did. Once Lester started pitching like an ace, your team had a young, healthy, 3 headed monster in the rotation. And behind that, you had a reliable 4 who was there to take the ball every 5th day. When you get 119 starts out of the quarter of Lester, Matsuzaka, Beckett, and Wakefield, then you are doin pretty good.

 

I think Schilling is the one who said it best. The team that gets the most innings/starts out of their starting pitchers will win the division. And with him being out, but with Lester assuming his role, the sox only really had to hold their breath 20% of the time. For us?

 

Well, our GM was kinda foolishly thinking that we could get by with 2 rookies in the rotation. We had the depth at the start of the yr, though. This was what sucked so bad. Here's our original 5.

 

Wang

Pettitte

Mussina

Hughes

Kennedy

 

We all know what happened to them. But what sucked was Joba stepped in as an ace then got hurt. Horne was lost for the season, and he was in consideration at the outset of the season for a rotation spot. We lost Marquez. Chase Wright went down. Steven White bombed out. Humberto Sanchez needed another elbow surgery. Kei Igawa likes to pitch in no pressure environments. And the beat went on. We lost a lot of our contingency plans early on, before we lost Hughes and Kennedy. But take a look at our start leaders.

 

Mussina 34

Pettitte 33

Rasner 20

Wang 15

Ponson 12

Chamberlain 12

Kennedy 9

Hughes 8

Pavano 7

Aceves 4

Geise 3

Bruney 1

Igawa 1

 

If you consider our opening day rotation plus Joba who was in our plans, 111 games were thrown by them. 69% of our games were started by one of our top 6 pitchers. If you consider the sox original top 5 and add in Buchholz who was in their plans, the sox saw 83% of their games started by their top 6 pitchers. That extra 14% equates to 23 games. We finished only 6 games behind you guys and one game better than the team that will play this afternoon in the playoffs. 89 wins is not a terrible, atrocious, absolutely shitfest season. It just wasnt good enough.

 

I am not gonna say that pitching injuries are the only reason we fell apart midseason, though. Posada to Molina is an upgrade defensively, but is an automatic out offensively. You take a guy with a career OBP of .380 and drop him to a guy who had a 2008 OBP of .268 and you have problems. Over 600 ABs, the difference is 72 baserunners. As good as Molina was at throwing and catching, I dont think he made a 72 baserunner difference, not to mention the difference in TB over 600AB (59 total bases). That is a massive dropoff. Once again, the contingency plan wasnt there. Francisco Cervelli, our 22 yr old minor league catcher broke his wrist and missed 2.5 months and rehabbed for another month. Had he not broken his wrist, he would have been up in the bigs with Molina at catcher getting valuable experience and also proving to be an offensive upgrade from Jose (almost anyone is). If you figure every player would appear in 140 games if healthy, Posada's lost game total was 93.

 

Other injuries hurt a lot as well. ARod played the fewest games he has played this millenium due to a quad injury. We were 6-11 in his absence. Johnny Damon missed 2 weeks with a shoulder injury. Jeter played hurt for half the season (mostly because he dives into pitches that hit him on the hands). Pettitte's shoulder and how badly it hurt his performance down the stretch.

 

I am not saying we are crying in our beer or whatever. But we suffered key injuries to very important players on both offense and pitching and the guys we had to back them up couldnt maintain. What I guess I am saying is that this is the least resilient yankee team I have watched in yrs. They all had injuries in the past, albeit not as bad as they were this yr, but I also dont think we had the guts to sustain in their absence. This team needs to get deeper which it will with guys graduating the minors. But we also need to get younger, something that this contract purge can allow us to do.

[Optimist]

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/ps/y2004/home.jsp?view=bos_nyy

 

It happens.

 

Well, that was pointless.

[a700hitter]

The sox had the MLB ready talent waiting to take the place of the injured guys though. Ours was a bit more green. The blossoming of Lester when you lost Schilling is exactly the reason why you guys are in the playoffs. We were hoping for the same from Hughes and Kennedy' date=' but didnt get it yet. This is why kids take time to develop and some of them get it all of a sudden like Lester did. [/quote']You said it all in this quote. It wasn't the injuries that cost the Yankees their season. It was the lack of bona fide major league talent behind the injured players. That shows an organization that was inappropriately thin in talent at certain levels. The reason for the Yankees failure was a poorly constructed organization, not the injuries. Every one has injuries. What separates the good organizations from the also rans is the ability to cope with the injuries with players within or outside of the organization. There were no internal alternatives and the external stop gaps of Marte, Nady and Sexson were quite inadequate.

[jacksonianmarch]

a700, I was pointing out how the alternatives went down before the bigger guys did. The injuries at all levels are what really killed us. We lost our top MiLB pitchers and our best catching option from the minors before Hughes' rib went snap. One error that we can retrospectively assess, though, is the fact that the yankee rookies and young kids didnt step to the dish when they were asked to carry the team. Its a sign of immaturity. Kinda like how the sox would have been f***ed last yr had they lost Schill for the entire yr. But that extra yr of Lester's dev't allowed him to learn and become the ace he is now.