On October 17th, 2003, a few minutes after midnight, Aaron Boone lofted a Tim Wakefield pitch deep into the left field corner of (the one and only true) Yankee Stadium. Three innings before, the Yankees were down 5-2 in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, against the Boston Red Sox, who were going on 85 years without a title. A spirited rally, put together through equal parts Yankee mystique and "clutch" hitting and Grady Little making a mess of things, allowed the Yankees to tie the game at 5, and in the 11th inning, Aaron Boone, a midseason acquisition from Cincinnati, hit the first knuckleball he saw, and hit it a long way. It was the latest exercise in misery for the Red Sox, and the latest verse in the latest Chapter of the history that is the New York Yankees. They were slated to face the Florida Marlins, with their team of mostly unknowns. They were four (seemingly guaranteed) wins away from a 5th title in 8 years, and just one disastrous half inning kept them from adding a 6th.
Nine years and one day later, on October 18th, 2012, Miguel Cabrera, once a 20-year phenom on the 2003 Marlins, lofted a CC Sabathia pitch deep into the left field seats in Comerica Park. The Yankees were now down 4-0 to the Detroit Tigers, a team that coincidentally set an AL record with 119 losses in 2003. The Yankees had a shot at turning the rout into a game again, in the 7th inning, when trailing 6-1, they had two men on and the highest paid player in the game, Alex Rodriguez, up to the plate. Rodriguez, who replaced Aaron Boone after Boone tore his ACL playing basketball in the 2003 offseason, couldn't deliver, and he and the rest of the Yankees flailed away meekly into the Detroit night, swept for the first time in over 30 years. Aaron Boone's home run was the last great moment of a Yankee dynasty, and Miguel Cabrera's home run was the last moment of the Yankees underachieving run of success. The Paradise that was gained in 1996, that lasted in full through 2003 is now over. The Yankees attempted to restore it many times using the skill of their checkbook, but that Paradise is now lost, and all that is left is old, overpriced, players playing in a new, overpriced stadium, with the ghosts of mystique and aura dying in the parking lot where the House that Ruth Built once stood.
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OK, that was my attempt to be an author for a minute. Chances are, the Yankees will once again be a playoff team next year. That is far more likely than the Yankees of 2013 emulating the Red Sox of 2012. They still have a lot of skilled players, and have flexibility to spend more. But the game the Yankees are playing has changed, the landscape isn't the same that they used to grow the 2001-2012 sustained run of excellence. It is harder today to use that checkbook, partly because the MLB is imposing stricter luxury taxes that have the same effect as a soft-cap, and partly because other teams are becoming smarter in locking up their young starters to affordable contracts in their arbitration years, making great players enter into Free Agency, and partly because of regional TV deals becoming more and more valuable that there now are more teams the Yankees have to compete with who can spend somewhat as much, and partly because the use of PEDs is less widespread so players age normally, making a group of 30 year-olds a dicier plan than it was in 2002. These four factors have combined to make the Yankees a less stable stock than it was a decade ago, and like most things, it really does start with A-Rod.
A-Rod was the Yankees first real luxury buy in the new era. Sure, they did acquire Giambi for a boat-load in 2002, but he filled a need, as did Hedeki Matsui. The Yankees already spent the most entering 2004, but A-Rod was more about the Yankees just, on a whim, deciding to go out and acquire the best player in baseball because their already good 3rd baseman decided to play a little pick-up (one of the greatest 'What If?'s in sports in the 21st Century is what happens if Aaron Boone doesn't tear his ACL). A-Rod came in the same year the Yankees signed an aging but still-excellent Gary Sheffield and over the next year, the Yankees brought in a bevy of pitchers that were all hyped and well-compensated, but for the most part, were lousy investments (Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown). Those Yankee teams were incredible on offense. 1-9, they had plate discipline and power and mixed the two in a combination that was downright deadly. Those teams didn't have much in the way of pitching, though, and also didn't have much in the way of success come October. It started in 2002, with a surprise four-game loss to the Anaheim Angels, and was more apparent after a larger surprise six-game loss to the Marlins in the 2003 World Series, which was capped off by a 6-hit shutout by Josh Beckett. However, it really started in 2004, when the Yankees became the first baseball team ever to blow a 3-0 lead, and they did it to the Red Sox.
The misery in 2004 begat three straight devastating first-round losses to the Angels, Tigers and Indians. None of those teams won the world series (unlike the teams that bested hte Yankees from 2001-2004). In all of those series, the Yankees great bats fell silent, headed by Alex Rodriguez who hit .133, .071 and .267 in those three series, and hit just one HR and a solo-shot at that. The Yankees from 2001-2004 could at least say that they were the best team in baseball through that period, still making two World Series and needing an epic comeback to keep them from another, but from 2005-2007, the Yankees were, incredibly, just an ordinary run-of-the-mill playoff team like the Twins that the Yankees loved to beat on. They were beat by teams with better pitching, and although unquantifiable, better 'clutch' hitting. They were beat by teams that were built much like the 1996-2000 Yankees. It was a weird time. It was impossible to say that the Yankees plan of outspending everyone was not working. They had made the playoffs in each of those three seasons. In contrast, the three teams they lost to made the playoffs just once in their combined six other opportunities (Angels in 2007). They gave themselves a chance, but they choked it away. In 2008, this wasn't even a problem, as the Yankees simply missed the playoffs, overtaken in the division by the Red Sox and the Rays a team that embodied everything the Yankees didn't.
Instead of trying to at least look into building the way the Rays did (or maybe they tried, but they best the Yankees could come up with was Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Betances and Banuelos who have done nothing), they decided to one-up themselves from 2004 and go on the biggest spending spree in baseball history, landing three of the four largest free agents on the market in Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett. Despite Burnett being awful, it worked as a silently dominant Yankees team in 2009 won 105 games and won the World Series. It was a return to normal, a promise finally reached. The Yankees had finally won their elusive 26th Title. Alex Rodrigeuz finally hit, setting a record for RBI in one postseason. The core-four got their fifth title. It was Camelot, Paradise re-found. The Yankees were loaded with talent and had seemingly overcome what ailed them from 2002-2007 in the postseason.
Three years later, here we are. What changed? Nothing. It is becoming more and more clear that 2009 was simply an anomaly. The Yankees had a dream set-up with meeting the Twins (their playoff punching-bag), then admittedly beating a good Angels team in a very good series, and then the weakest Phillies team in their four year run of success (how weak: their #2 starter was Pedro Martinez). They got a once-in-a-lifetime postseason from A-Rod, and a once-in-a-lifetime clutch hit from Mark Teixeira. It all worked. But that magic quickly went away the past three seasons. The Yankees still managed to win the division twice (Wild Card in 2010), and reach two ALCS's, but lost to the Rangers in 2010, and the Tigers in 2011 and 2012. The Yankees still spent more than everyone, but the signs that their way of operating was slimming were apparent. In this time, the Yankees could really only bring in one premier player in Curtis Granderson, and they had to give up quite a bit for him (including the younger, cheaper and better Austin Jackson). Their postseason losses mirrored, in many ways, the losses in 2002-2007, except there were two large problems. First, there was a real argument that they were losing to plain better teams (at least in 2010 and 2012) and secondly, that age was no longer just a number but an obstacle they were nearing.
The Yankees in 2012 are old. Alex Rodriguez has played about 210 of a possible 320 games the last two seasons. Derek Jeter played great in 2012, but showed signs of slipping in 2010-2011. Mark Teixeira has lost power. Curtis Granderson regressed into a black Adam Dunn (good OBP, great power, strikes out a lot), and CC Sabathia became fatter but no better (no worse, really, I guess). Mariano Rivera proved to be human (not as a pitcher, but as an athlete). The Yankees are aging, and there is little out there to remedy it.
In the middle of the 2000s, the Yankees were comically outspending the rest of the MLB, and teams had to adapt. Sadly, for the Yankees, they mostly have. Some chose to pony up the cash and join the Yankees, as many more teams found ways to increase revenue to give them the capital to spend on big acquisitions (look at Detroit, who knocked out the Yanks in 2010-2011 with Cabrera and Fielder). The others turned to locking up young stars to team-friendly long term deals in hopes that they would become players worth having under increased team control (Evan Longoria, Buster Posey, David Wright). The last reason that the Yankees competitive advantage has disapperaed is that PED use in baseball has declined so much that players are returning to aging normally. The Yankees plan of signing 30-year-olds to 7-10 year deals works well when the player will still be productive after 36. That is mostly no longer the case. The Yankees will have to reevaluate their standard operating procedure going forward if they want to remain very competitive in an increasingly rich and savvy AL.
That said, the Yankees shouldn't overreact to the way 2012 ended. Yes, the team set a record for the worst batting average in a single postseason, collectively batting .188. Yes, the Yankees scored 6 runs total in the ALCS, four of which came in one inning against the Tigers embattled closer. Yes, A-Rod, after being unceremoniously pinch-hit for in his last start of the season, decided to search for his nightly lay during the game. Yes, Curtis Granderson struck out an unholy number of times. Yes, Mark Teixeira continued his power outage with just one extra-base hit all postseason. Yes, the Yankees only good regular under 33 had an 0-26 streak in the middle of the playoffs. And yes, Derek Jeter had an age-defying season at 39 broke his ankle, but that doesn't mean the Yankees are garbage. It just means that the Yankees are in a position they haven't been since the pre-Torre days: a team without a solid plan. Just the fact that A-Rod could very well be leaving town signals one sad fact, that the paradise the Yankees gained in the mid-90's, that they carried through Aaron Boone, that kept them competitive in the mid-00's culminating with a win in 2009, has been lost. Now it time to find it again.
Nine years and one day later, on October 18th, 2012, Miguel Cabrera, once a 20-year phenom on the 2003 Marlins, lofted a CC Sabathia pitch deep into the left field seats in Comerica Park. The Yankees were now down 4-0 to the Detroit Tigers, a team that coincidentally set an AL record with 119 losses in 2003. The Yankees had a shot at turning the rout into a game again, in the 7th inning, when trailing 6-1, they had two men on and the highest paid player in the game, Alex Rodriguez, up to the plate. Rodriguez, who replaced Aaron Boone after Boone tore his ACL playing basketball in the 2003 offseason, couldn't deliver, and he and the rest of the Yankees flailed away meekly into the Detroit night, swept for the first time in over 30 years. Aaron Boone's home run was the last great moment of a Yankee dynasty, and Miguel Cabrera's home run was the last moment of the Yankees underachieving run of success. The Paradise that was gained in 1996, that lasted in full through 2003 is now over. The Yankees attempted to restore it many times using the skill of their checkbook, but that Paradise is now lost, and all that is left is old, overpriced, players playing in a new, overpriced stadium, with the ghosts of mystique and aura dying in the parking lot where the House that Ruth Built once stood.
______________________________________________________________________
OK, that was my attempt to be an author for a minute. Chances are, the Yankees will once again be a playoff team next year. That is far more likely than the Yankees of 2013 emulating the Red Sox of 2012. They still have a lot of skilled players, and have flexibility to spend more. But the game the Yankees are playing has changed, the landscape isn't the same that they used to grow the 2001-2012 sustained run of excellence. It is harder today to use that checkbook, partly because the MLB is imposing stricter luxury taxes that have the same effect as a soft-cap, and partly because other teams are becoming smarter in locking up their young starters to affordable contracts in their arbitration years, making great players enter into Free Agency, and partly because of regional TV deals becoming more and more valuable that there now are more teams the Yankees have to compete with who can spend somewhat as much, and partly because the use of PEDs is less widespread so players age normally, making a group of 30 year-olds a dicier plan than it was in 2002. These four factors have combined to make the Yankees a less stable stock than it was a decade ago, and like most things, it really does start with A-Rod.
A-Rod was the Yankees first real luxury buy in the new era. Sure, they did acquire Giambi for a boat-load in 2002, but he filled a need, as did Hedeki Matsui. The Yankees already spent the most entering 2004, but A-Rod was more about the Yankees just, on a whim, deciding to go out and acquire the best player in baseball because their already good 3rd baseman decided to play a little pick-up (one of the greatest 'What If?'s in sports in the 21st Century is what happens if Aaron Boone doesn't tear his ACL). A-Rod came in the same year the Yankees signed an aging but still-excellent Gary Sheffield and over the next year, the Yankees brought in a bevy of pitchers that were all hyped and well-compensated, but for the most part, were lousy investments (Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown). Those Yankee teams were incredible on offense. 1-9, they had plate discipline and power and mixed the two in a combination that was downright deadly. Those teams didn't have much in the way of pitching, though, and also didn't have much in the way of success come October. It started in 2002, with a surprise four-game loss to the Anaheim Angels, and was more apparent after a larger surprise six-game loss to the Marlins in the 2003 World Series, which was capped off by a 6-hit shutout by Josh Beckett. However, it really started in 2004, when the Yankees became the first baseball team ever to blow a 3-0 lead, and they did it to the Red Sox.
The misery in 2004 begat three straight devastating first-round losses to the Angels, Tigers and Indians. None of those teams won the world series (unlike the teams that bested hte Yankees from 2001-2004). In all of those series, the Yankees great bats fell silent, headed by Alex Rodriguez who hit .133, .071 and .267 in those three series, and hit just one HR and a solo-shot at that. The Yankees from 2001-2004 could at least say that they were the best team in baseball through that period, still making two World Series and needing an epic comeback to keep them from another, but from 2005-2007, the Yankees were, incredibly, just an ordinary run-of-the-mill playoff team like the Twins that the Yankees loved to beat on. They were beat by teams with better pitching, and although unquantifiable, better 'clutch' hitting. They were beat by teams that were built much like the 1996-2000 Yankees. It was a weird time. It was impossible to say that the Yankees plan of outspending everyone was not working. They had made the playoffs in each of those three seasons. In contrast, the three teams they lost to made the playoffs just once in their combined six other opportunities (Angels in 2007). They gave themselves a chance, but they choked it away. In 2008, this wasn't even a problem, as the Yankees simply missed the playoffs, overtaken in the division by the Red Sox and the Rays a team that embodied everything the Yankees didn't.
Instead of trying to at least look into building the way the Rays did (or maybe they tried, but they best the Yankees could come up with was Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Betances and Banuelos who have done nothing), they decided to one-up themselves from 2004 and go on the biggest spending spree in baseball history, landing three of the four largest free agents on the market in Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett. Despite Burnett being awful, it worked as a silently dominant Yankees team in 2009 won 105 games and won the World Series. It was a return to normal, a promise finally reached. The Yankees had finally won their elusive 26th Title. Alex Rodrigeuz finally hit, setting a record for RBI in one postseason. The core-four got their fifth title. It was Camelot, Paradise re-found. The Yankees were loaded with talent and had seemingly overcome what ailed them from 2002-2007 in the postseason.
Three years later, here we are. What changed? Nothing. It is becoming more and more clear that 2009 was simply an anomaly. The Yankees had a dream set-up with meeting the Twins (their playoff punching-bag), then admittedly beating a good Angels team in a very good series, and then the weakest Phillies team in their four year run of success (how weak: their #2 starter was Pedro Martinez). They got a once-in-a-lifetime postseason from A-Rod, and a once-in-a-lifetime clutch hit from Mark Teixeira. It all worked. But that magic quickly went away the past three seasons. The Yankees still managed to win the division twice (Wild Card in 2010), and reach two ALCS's, but lost to the Rangers in 2010, and the Tigers in 2011 and 2012. The Yankees still spent more than everyone, but the signs that their way of operating was slimming were apparent. In this time, the Yankees could really only bring in one premier player in Curtis Granderson, and they had to give up quite a bit for him (including the younger, cheaper and better Austin Jackson). Their postseason losses mirrored, in many ways, the losses in 2002-2007, except there were two large problems. First, there was a real argument that they were losing to plain better teams (at least in 2010 and 2012) and secondly, that age was no longer just a number but an obstacle they were nearing.
The Yankees in 2012 are old. Alex Rodriguez has played about 210 of a possible 320 games the last two seasons. Derek Jeter played great in 2012, but showed signs of slipping in 2010-2011. Mark Teixeira has lost power. Curtis Granderson regressed into a black Adam Dunn (good OBP, great power, strikes out a lot), and CC Sabathia became fatter but no better (no worse, really, I guess). Mariano Rivera proved to be human (not as a pitcher, but as an athlete). The Yankees are aging, and there is little out there to remedy it.
In the middle of the 2000s, the Yankees were comically outspending the rest of the MLB, and teams had to adapt. Sadly, for the Yankees, they mostly have. Some chose to pony up the cash and join the Yankees, as many more teams found ways to increase revenue to give them the capital to spend on big acquisitions (look at Detroit, who knocked out the Yanks in 2010-2011 with Cabrera and Fielder). The others turned to locking up young stars to team-friendly long term deals in hopes that they would become players worth having under increased team control (Evan Longoria, Buster Posey, David Wright). The last reason that the Yankees competitive advantage has disapperaed is that PED use in baseball has declined so much that players are returning to aging normally. The Yankees plan of signing 30-year-olds to 7-10 year deals works well when the player will still be productive after 36. That is mostly no longer the case. The Yankees will have to reevaluate their standard operating procedure going forward if they want to remain very competitive in an increasingly rich and savvy AL.
That said, the Yankees shouldn't overreact to the way 2012 ended. Yes, the team set a record for the worst batting average in a single postseason, collectively batting .188. Yes, the Yankees scored 6 runs total in the ALCS, four of which came in one inning against the Tigers embattled closer. Yes, A-Rod, after being unceremoniously pinch-hit for in his last start of the season, decided to search for his nightly lay during the game. Yes, Curtis Granderson struck out an unholy number of times. Yes, Mark Teixeira continued his power outage with just one extra-base hit all postseason. Yes, the Yankees only good regular under 33 had an 0-26 streak in the middle of the playoffs. And yes, Derek Jeter had an age-defying season at 39 broke his ankle, but that doesn't mean the Yankees are garbage. It just means that the Yankees are in a position they haven't been since the pre-Torre days: a team without a solid plan. Just the fact that A-Rod could very well be leaving town signals one sad fact, that the paradise the Yankees gained in the mid-90's, that they carried through Aaron Boone, that kept them competitive in the mid-00's culminating with a win in 2009, has been lost. Now it time to find it again.
