Thursday, January 30, 2014

Today, the Yankees officially signed a light-hitting thirdbaseman from Oakland named "Scott." Dare we think of the last time this happened?

Posted by el duque at 7:30 PM

Today... Scott Sizemore.

Not long ago...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Be careful what you wish for, el duque. A couple of points to consider here:

1. Brosius was not a light-hitting third baseman overall, as Sizemore is. Brosius was an above-average hitter in his peak years; he tanked in 1997, so the Yankees scooped him up when his stock was low--but Sizemore has never had--and never will have--numbers of the kind that Brosius put up in 1995, 1996, and 1998. Regrettably, after a great 1998, Brosius regressed to his more modest norm in the years after that. Meanwhile. . . .

2. . . . because of the Casman's congential distrust of young prospects, after acquiring Brosius the Yankees discarded Mike Lowell, who turned out to be at least twice the player that Brosius was and savored the karmic retribution of helping to break the hearts of Yankee fans in 2003 and then repeatedly with none other than . . . the Bosox!

As you well know, Cashman's addiction to the scrap heap at the expense of young talent is a long-standing disease that has gradually eaten away at the firm foundations built by Buck and Stick, to the point that the internal organizational rot is irreversible.

I'm sure there's a washout somewhere named Tony or Clete or Graig or Wade who wants to play third base for the Yankees, so why settle for "Scott"? First-name nostalgia, coupled with earnest finger-crossing, is as good a strategy as any other than Cashman has come up with lately.

January 30, 2014 at 8:28 PM
JM said...

Not that Anonymous doesn't have a couple of points there, but Brosius' value was not as a hitter or even a defender, although I recall he seemed to do just fine at that. The thing that made those late-90s Yankee teams great was that they played and won as a team, which is no mean trick. Scottie was a great teammate, and he was a clutch guy. O'Neill, same thing. Tino, ditto. Jeter, ditto. Posada, ditto. Bernie, ditto.

Individually, those guys were certainly good to excellent players, but it was the team performance and cohesion that made the difference. Lots of teams have had a collection of stars that just don't gel, some Yankee teams among them.

So the big question mark this year isn't 'can we live without Cano' or 'will CC return to form' or 'can Jeter play again' or 'is Sizemore a good hitter'. The one and only question is, can this bag of strangers find the chemistry to perform beyond the sum of their individual abilities.

The answer, I think, is probably not. But ya never know...

January 31, 2014 at 8:36 AM
KD said...

I met Brosius 3 years ago at an Embassy Suites in Raleigh, NC at the cooked-to-order omelette station. I could not believe my eyes! I screwed up my courage, went up to him, shook his hand, and thanked him profusely for the 2001 post season and World Series. he was very gracious and told me that many, many people have stopped him with their stories about that post season and what the Yanks meant to them back then.

God, I really love the Yankees.

January 31, 2014 at 9:50 AM
Anonymous said...

John M. misses a crucial point here, which is strange, since he made the point himself. All those nineties Yankee-dynasty players he mentioned were indeed "good to excellent," so the chemistry was merely the icing on the cake of superb baseball talent and skills. On the other hand, there are examples of Yankee (and other teams, like the A's of the early seventies) on which all the players detested one another yet they excelled on the field.

John M. fantasizes that the 2014 season will be a Hollywood script: The Bad News Bears or Major League--scrappy no-talents dig deep and win by sheer dint of character and will, minus the talent. But the only Hollywood script that will apply to this bunch of has-beens, never-weres, and cripples is Escape from New York.

January 31, 2014 at 2:20 PM

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