The Disconnect In Team Policies

[sauronthepower]

other than cano in the next season how many times have the yankees been burned by not extending their players?

This is true.

And, to tell the truth, most of us here were cheer leading when Cashman told Cano's people two years ago to accept their lot in life and wait until the free agency window to renegotiate. Cano appeared money hungry with the talk but in hindsight this would've been a good idea.

[Kinkotheclown]

I think the Blue Jays are in a probationary period right now.

They signed a heck of a lot of talent away from Loira (traded, whatever) if that squad way underperforms they may change financial gears very quickly back to reserved mode IMO.

They got tons of talent. I don't know if Reyes can stay healthy. Melky will be under close watch and who knows how much roids helped his last couple years. Buehrle will not be as good and I don't think he will be able to give them the innings he did last year. Johnson is another health question, especially pitching in the AL east.
They are all high risk, high reward guys. If they play to potential, they will be really tough to beat. If Reyes misses time, melky's last seasons were a fluke and Johnson gets lit up, they are screwed.

[sauronthepower]

They got tons of talent. I don't know if Reyes can stay healthy. Melky will be under close watch and who knows how much roids helped his last couple years. Buehrle will not be as good and I don't think he will be able to give them the innings he did last year. Johnson is another health question, especially pitching in the AL east.
They are all high risk, high reward guys. If they play to potential, they will be really tough to beat. If Reyes misses time, melky's last seasons were a fluke and Johnson gets lit up, they are screwed.

Very true.

I always like when a team goes gut or get out to win on a massive rebuild. This should be exciting to watch especially given that JJ is one of my favorite arms in the game.

If they fail for the reasons you mentioned above however, they may well back off big time when Cano's name comes up out of cost fear.

[rrzubnyy]

What names are on the free agent class for next offseason? Big names!

[infernoscurse]

big names dont win games they just sell tickets

they are big names now in the yankee lure but what big names we have in the championship run in the late 90's we had a well mix of star players, homegrown kids and role players that excelled from playing with other guys either past their prime or youthful. charlie hayes, brosious, strawberry, chilli davis, cecil fielder, graeme lloyd, leyritz list goes on

[jango2000]

Um.........yeah.

Sauron, this is what I'm talking about!

I WILL say that my three biggest complaints, overall and overarching, concerning this franchise are:

1) Cashman is utterly incompetent when analyzing, developing, scouting, and negotiating for available talent. He's a good executive and personnel manager and an utter farce as a baseball analyst.

For years I was a Cashman apologist, and I have always known that he operated in the most dysfunctional baseball family with that cadre of Tampa sycophants. And I can't blame him for that ridiculous A-Rod contract that was negotiated by Hank. But, either he is a very poor judge of talent or that entire minor league system should be eradicated. Everybody on this site is always talking about how we have to get younger, but if your young players suck, or more to the point your people suck at developing them, than what is the point? You just want players who look good in their swimsuits?

2) Seriously despise all that has become Cano. To me he is the complete manifestation of the Anti-Jeter. Non-clutch, lazy, unfocused, rally killer, leadership mute. AND, and this is a big freakin AND, I absolutely, unequivocally, 100% fuc£ing cannot stand or stomach that piece oh sh-t open-mouthed facial f@cking gape he gets like a petulant little c--t every time he lazily hacks his way back to the bench in the clutch.
I feel the exact same way. There is no question Cano is a major talent and the best 2nd baseman in the game. But he is not the kind of player you build a team around. Because he doesn't inspire. It is obvious by the look on his face that he just doesn't give a ****! These spoiled fans are going to learn something about the character of a team when Jeter steps away. You build a team around a player who not only plays great, but inspires his teammates by giving everything he has. It doesn't matter if he's a jerk, Paul O'Neil was a jerk, but he gave everything. So does Jeter. So does Mo. So did Posada. If Cano gave everything, he'd probably be the best player in the league. But he doesn't. And there's no point in paying him 200 million to watch his lazy *** trot to first into his late thirties when he's batting .236.

3) The galling lack of long term franchise vision going forward. We seem (and this article certainly doesn't show me anything to the contrary) to be stuck in a perpetual small time signing, repeated failed developmental prospect, positional backlog cycle with no clear long game vision going forward.

This is the main issue. Wanting to reset the luxury tax rate by getting down to 189m is not a long term vision for the future of the club. What everybody seems to forget when they say you can build a championship team without spending 200 million is that you have to put a great core together. You have to have a lot of high draft picks, which means you probably sucked for years (Tampa, Texas, & SF), you have to have a great scouting department, and you have to know how to develop players. There's no reason in the world that Joba Chamberlain shouldn't be our Matt Cain. We just mishandled him horribly and took away his confidence. And I love the guys on this site who scream that we should trade all of our prospects for Giancarlo Stanton. Which means you surround him with overpriced free agents or you field a team of minor league rejects around him. Everybody says it's all about pitching. And it mostly is, but you need those young hitters who can inspire, like Posey and Trout. Everybody talks about Montero not living up to expectations in his rookie year in a lineup with zero protection in a park that would challenge Mickey Mantle. Just watch, he will be a cornerstone player in two years. We should have kept him. To hell with the line that there was no position for him. Right now, he'd be our starting catcher. This is not long term vision.


I have been pretty consistant IMO in arguing these points so don't take it like I'm singling you out personally. If you happen to fall on the opposite sides ofthis arguement then that may account for your perception that I'm riding you in these forums which I can assure you I am not.

Keep it up, Sauron. You're making sense.

[rrzubnyy]

big names dont win games they just sell tickets

they are big names now in the yankee lure but what big names we have in the championship run in the late 90's we had a well mix of star players, homegrown kids and role players that excelled from playing with other guys either past their prime or youthful. charlie hayes, brosious, strawberry, chilli davis, cecil fielder, graeme lloyd, leyritz list goes on

They had David Cone, a big name at the time, they traded for Roger Clemens, a big name at the time, they had big names in Bernie and Jeter and Andy, they were outbidding every team for ElDuque and Irabu, who were the biggest names not drafted....Wells was a big free agent at the time.....

Sure they had a Scott Brosius and a Tino Martinez but they had a lot of big names who helped with the dynasty run....

[rrzubnyy]

[QUOTE=infernoscurse;25146395]big names dont win games they just sell tickets

Take away Wells, Clemens, Cone, El Duque and replace them with lessor names see how many championships they would have won.....

What were their WARs?

[infernoscurse]

el duque ? 4 year 6 million contract? David wells was making what logan makes now and they got clemens by trading wells, at the time they werent the top tier players other than clemens

oneill and bernie were solid players they werent arod , mcgwire, griffey, juan gonzalez among others who were wowing the league, we wow them because of the championships and what they brought to our team. But we werent star full, We had solid pitching the same way we have solid pitching now, they arent top of the league pitchers other than cc but they are dependable pitchers capable of holding the team to give them a chance to win

[ciaban]

The Angels have finite financial resources. Pujols and Hamilton alone are draining their salary structure in a very similar vein to ours and they do not have the financial ceiling to work with like we do. All that and Weavers going to be on that list very very soon.

The Dodgers just made a multi BILLION television and licensing deal. They basically imported the fabled lost New Orleans Federal Mint and are just running off their own small economy at this point AND they want to win.

well first things first, the angels were the ones to sign the 3 billion dollar extension not the dodgers, however, LA could sign one worth like 6-8 billion or start their own network.
Also Weaver was supposed to hit free agency this year, however before the start of the 2011 season he signed an extension and took a pay cut, two things boras hates to do(he takes 5 showers a day but still doesn't feel clean), and as far as their financial restraints are concerned, arte's signing of Hambone shows just how committed he is. Also, Hamilton and CJ Wilson contract wont impede our ability to resign trout or trumbo since they all hit free agency together.

I think the Blue Jays are in a probationary period right now.

They signed a heck of a lot of talent away from Loira (traded, whatever) if that squad way underperforms they may change financial gears very quickly back to reserved mode IMO.

this is fair, i guess depending on how successful they are next year will determine just how much more "IN" they wanna go.

[dayners81]

as a whole i don't mind the idea of getting under the luxury tax number, my problem comes with how they are doing it. Before the new threshold was established we made huge contract commitments that we can't get out of for a number of yrs, whats worse is that all the big contract belong to older players that aren't producing anywhere near expectation and they all have no trade clauses. Not much we can do their but putting a spending freeze on so quickly IMO is a mistake

IMO they should do 1 of 2 things. Trade as many valuable assets as they can to get prospects/young players to help with the rebuilding process. IMO thats the quickest way to get this team back to a championship caliber team. I hate that Hal is running around expecting the Yanks to be contenders without spending any more money to bring in new players. If the upper levels of our farm system was different i could see that but as we all know thats just not the case. I just don't believe with the age of this team and how much better the AL East has gotten better they can truly contend this yr or especially next yr. Quit putting false hope in the fans and just let them know we have to rebuild and go from their. Fans can handle a couple of rebuilding yrs if thats what their expecting but they get pissed when they are expecting to contend and end up with a 3rd-4th place team. Next yr is really going to be scary if we don't get some new talent and minimize the losses to FA.

The other option would be to take 3-4 yrs to get under the tax number so we don't have to gut the team or put out a substandard product with the expectation of winning like we have for the last 15yrs. With the new spending limits they have to start doing business differently.

Another thing i get really pissed of about is our scouting and player development systems. The teams like the Rangers, Braves, Rays, Nationals and a handful of others employ 2 times the scouts we do. If were going to compete with a smaller payroll you absolutely have to draft and develop better then what we have been doing over the last 3-4 yr and we can't do that without great scouting or getting very very lucky with our picks.

I just really hope they don't let Cano, Granderson and Kuroda go for nothing but a couple of picks in the 30's and just let guys like Hughes and Joba go for nothing. I agree with the people who think that if we out of it around the deadline we should trade anyone we can get value for that they don't plan on re signing or keeping next yr

I really don't care what budget the choose to operate with i just think their is a better more effective way of doing it than they have been for the last few yrs

[bfrap]

Why would you even try to argue w a guy who actually has the real world gaming experience of a guy like Morgan.
That's like me trying to argue computer engineering with Bill Gates. C'mon man, you're never going to be able to convince anybody that you somehow have more comprehension and knowledge than Joe Morgan about the game and you're going to look bad trying. Please try to refrain from sounding like you know more than Joe Morgan about the game of baseball.

Please.

How is Montero in a better place?

He's in an offensively far worse park than the bam box known as Yankee Stadium and he's on team which he could probably give a sh$t less about with absolutely no offensive pop (now that they've acquired Morse that has changed).

I would submit that Cashman should've been able to put in a developmental regimen to train a 20 year old to be anything other than a DH. If not, he should've traded him far earlier, when his value was at its apex and before he had exhausted all of the competitive ability of the minors. Maybe we could've even negotiated for Halladay or Haren had we known in advance that there was no feasible defensive position for Montero.

Just perhaps.

You will find that non-catcher HOF players rarely know strategy or rules of the game. I work as an Umpire from April until Oct. every year. I can tell you that before Mr. Morgan was released by ESPN, he regularly argued on air over rules that HE had wrong. Joe Morgan played in an ERA where many players simply played the game on instinct, and he was good at it. But you will find, that 80% of the game is played with only 20% of the rulebook. You can play for an entire lifetime and not see every rule enforced because their situations just don't surface all that often.

Also, arguing Bill Gates is not as hard as it sounds. He has not been on top of the industry in more than a decade. First because the industry grew too big for any one person to be on top of, and second because Microsoft makes so much money per hour that he no longer needs to work to make more in an hour than the rest of us will make this year combined. don't confuse microsoft with Bill Gates anymore. He may still own it, but he does not handle any of the day to day operations any more.

Why is Montero in a better place? Because in NYC, if he does NOT perform to expectations, he will be killed in the media and by the fans... in Seattle, well he will be allowed to just play. I think that is also why IPK has developed into one of the top pitchers in the NL. He was just allowed to go out there every 5th day and nobody treated him like he should be burned at the stake if he had a bad day... In NYC, you guys flame EVERYONE if they don't play all-star level baseball everyday.