Saturday, January 7, 2017

The Yankees need an owner who will step up

On paper, let's play the entire 2017 season tomorrow. One-sixty-two games, bang, done. Where do the Yankees finish? Well, I figure Boston, Cleveland and Texas win the divisions. Houston grabs one wild card. We chase the final slot. If Aaron Judge comes through, who knows? But one glaring deficiency will hurt us: It's the rotation, stupid. We don't have one.

Last year, Yankee pitchers threw 1,428 innings, overall. Our five main starters - Tanaka, CC, Pineda, Nova and Eovaldi - gave us 774, slightly more than half. The other 33 starts came from Luis Severino, Chad Green, Bryan Mitchell and Luis Cessa - S-GMC. If you figure a decent starter goes six innings, that's - um, okay, let's see, um, six times 162, anybody got a calculator? um, carry the two, GOT IT: In a winning season, a team's starters should throw about 972 innings. That's 200 more than our top five gave us last year. And, well, right now... nothing has changed.

Barring injuries, Tanaka can provide 200 innings (he did 199 last year), CC can again donate 180, and Pineda - let's say he repeats at 175. That's about 550 innings. With Eovaldi and Nova gone, we're down to S-GMC, four kids, each of whom would be shut down after throwing 150 innings... assuming any get that far. Forget the talk about needing a bullpen lefty. We need a starter.

Now, we could trade the future for Jose Quintana, and go right back to 2015. That would suck. What we need is a unicorn... an out-of-nowhere find: We need a thirtysomething retread who signs a one-year deal and has something to prove. The scrap heap is supposed to be Cashman's wheelhouse; he studies the waiver wire the way Trump does areola.

What we need is the next Bartolo Colon - the '11 model, which Cashman then signed as a 38-year-old bowling ball who had been taking exotic jungle therapies, which everybody knew were sketchy, but he was so cute and cuddly, and such a long shot that nobody asked questions until he was in the All-Star game, peeing King Kong's testosterone. We need a guy who right now is somewhere in a Honduras-based, Bond super-villian complex, drinking vampire blood smoothies. We need Bartolo II.

And we need an owner who is willing to own up. I won't name names. But this particular owner needs to get off his Hello Kittty fanny pack and sign a veteran pitcher for $8 to $10 million on a one-year deal. Somebody will bite. If this guy gives us 170 innings, we can get the rest from S-GMC, and in that season we just played tomorrow... we could snag that final Wild Card slot.

Moreover, this unicorn pitcher can disappear next winter, when the unnamed owner finally cuts his precious payroll and can once again afford butter. It's a one-off deal, a one-year expense. We don't need an outfielder. We need an owner. Anybody know of one we can trade for?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LIKED YOUR EARLY SUGGESTION OF R.A.DICKEY.....HE'S AN INNINGS EATER, THAT JUST MIGHT CATCH A LITTLE LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE BACK IN NEW YORK WHERE HE THRIVED........ BUT OUR GM, AND OWNER PASSED, AS USUAL...... NO VISION....NO CREATIVE THINKING.....

Unknown said...

Or just fans that understand the game.
Yanks are doing just fine and I'm loving watching them build an organization THE RIGHT WAY!

Try getting a clue sometime. :)

Anonymous said...

I call it a mystery rotation – – – a mystery because we don't know what we're going to get out of the starters and a mystery why the New York Yankees cannot field a better starting rotation.

Anonymous said...

With what's available, the Yankees really don't have a choice. It's either wait, trade the future, or trade/sign used up veterans who have nothing left. Waiting, using the kids, maybe the better strategy, at this juncture. If one of the handful of youngsters catches lightening in the proverbial bottle, it could be enough. Playing it safe gives the Yankees what they will need to know moving forward, with the kids.

Unknown said...

It's not the like the old days where we're hoping that someone that was just adequate in the minors becomes good in the pros. We have some really nice young arms in the system and I think that is why they havne't pulled the trigger on any starters to this point. Of course the asking price of anyone decent is 1/2 of it but if they didn't think there was a decent chance that at least one of the young starters does well (hoping for 2) I think they would feel forced to make a "Quintana" move as many feel they should. You can make a good argument for trading for him unless you think that the kids they want back will be as good or better. And if they are as good for 1/10th the cost thats a game changer. Not saying it's gonna happen but it might. Just as likely as the baby bombers all panning out over a whole season. ;)

Anonymous said...

HEY MR. UNKNOWN....I DO HAVE A CLUE WHEN IT COMES TO YANKEE BASEBALL, (AND YOU WILL FIND THAT OUT IF YOU HANG AROUND THIS SITE)......ANYWAY, I AM ALL FOR THE YANKEE YOUTH MOVEMENT, HOWEVER, KNOWING OUR BRASS,- THEY'RE NEVER REALLY COMFORTABLE GIVING OUR KIDS A CHANCE ON THE MAJOR LEAGUE LEVEL, (ESPECIALLY PITCHERS)....SURE, WE WILL HAVE 4 KIDS FIGHTING FOR 2 ROTATION SPOTS IN THE SPRING, BUT WHAT ABOUT "IN SEASON INJURIES", OR POOR PERFORMANCE, THAT INEVITABLY WILL HAPPEN?...... WE NEED AT LEAST ONE ESTABLISHED INNINGS EATER WHO IS RELIABLE TO JOIN THE FRAY...... DON'T BE BLIND, THE KIDS CAN'T DO IT ALL.

Unknown said...

Disagree. They've committed to the youth movement and we have the #1 rated farm system. Don't circumvent all that by trading 4 or 5 of them for one "decent, but not star" pitcher.
Do you REALLY think Quintana is worth what we got for Andrew Miller? Cuz that's what they are talking about.
Every Established Innings Eater was once a Kid too...................

Anonymous said...

We basically need an Aaron Small version 2.0.

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