Spoiled

We're spoiled.

Red Sox fans are spoiled, Yankees fans are spoiled.

And it's not just from the oversaturation of the rivalry by the media, it's the players.

To whit, consider the 5th starter.

I suppose this all fits in with the Roger Clemens thread that kicked this all off, but stay with me.

Curt Schilling's "We don't need him ," comment about Clemens was ill-considered, but who would Clemens have been replacing? Beckett is finally living up to his ace potential, the Schilling of today still retains enough of the Schilling of old, Dice-K's had some bad innings, but his K/IP ration can't be argued with, and Tim Wakefield's having another of his, "all right - hit this knuckler - really, I dare you," seasons.

So, again, who does Clemens replace in Boston?

The 5th starter - the seat that Julian Tavarez is keeping warm for Jon Lester.

To digress into Tangentown for a moment, I have reason to believe that Julian Tavarez has a reason to sabotage the Red Sox this season.

That reason is... me.

In 2004, I attended a spring training game between the Cardinals and the Orioles.

The Cardinals had the game in the bag when they brought Tavarez out to close things out in the 9th.

He promptly squandered much of the team's lead and had basebunners arrayed on the diamond behind him.

Then, it began to rain.

We were in the Marlins' A-Ball stadium in Jupiter, FL. This was a place where a capacity crowd wouldn't much exceed the 4,000 mark, and we weren't close to it that today.

When the rain (which only lasted about 15 miuntes) began to come down, most of the crowd headed for the covered concourse to escape the weather. Pete Bratton and I were among the dozen or so people who stayed to watch the outcome.

Pete and I were right behind home plate.

Tavarez was taking roughly 15 minutes between pitches at this point. This behavior is what prompted me to yell;

"They're not going to call the game just because you're afraid to throw the ball!"

This was perhaps my proudest moment at a professional sporting event since I picked my nose on the Jumbotron at a Nashville Predators hockey game. And just as I know that all the people in the crowd in Nashville saw me that night, I know Tavarez heard me.

Admittedly, Tavarez made more of a case for my conspiracy theory last year with his gasoline artist tendencies out of the pen, but this year he's been downright respectable as a 5th starter.

And Jon Lester, cancer-free, should win about 60% of the time...

Which brings me back to my original point:

We're spoiled.

The leading case for this is Bronson Arroyo.

On the one hand, Bronson Arroyo is responsible for the two events that derailed A-Fraud's reputation ("We don't throw at .240 hitters, the bitch-slap incident), but more importantly, he was a savvy under-the-radar pickup by the Theo Epstein Red Sox - cheap, available, and promising.

In 2004, Arroyo was the Sox 5th staret, and went 10-9 during the regulare season, and was nails as a relieve in the World Series.

(Of course, does anything prove the inferiority of the NL vs. the AL more than the fact that Bronson Arrroyo went form a disposable 5th starter in Boston to an All-Star in Cincy despite the fact that he's an extreme fly-ball pitcher pitching in one of the most homerun-friendly stadiums in the MLB?)

By way of contrast, Josh Beckett was 9-8 in '03, started changing clothes in a phone booth, whupped up on the Yankees in the World Series and decided, "Forget this Dolphin Stadium noise, I'm going to Fenway."

The point here is that Red Sox fans have higher-than-realistic expectation of a 5th starter. Clemens would have been awesome, but with Tavarez/Lester, they're losing less than one might think. Besides, this means they have the money to add a contract later in the season, though ther aren't any obvious flaws (a shutdown right-handed set-up man would be nice) that need to be addressed.

On the contrary, I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, the '07 Yankees starting rotation.

Hughes struggled once, dominated once, then got hurt.

Wang needs start keeping the ball down again.

Mussina has always been a guy who seems like he'd be a greate #2 in the classic 1-2 punch (think Koufax and Drysdale) starting rotation. Unfortunately for the Yankees (and before that, the Orioles), he's never found his #1.

Andy Pettite is the closest thing the Yankees have to an ace, and I think that even Teddy has to agree that he's really only a 2-3 at best. I mean, he won 19 games in 2000 (4.35 ERA) and 21 in 2003 (4.02 ERA), so he's certainly a member of the Derek Lowe Joy Luck Run Support Club.

The simultaneous return of Pettite and Clemens (as opposed to their simultaneous flight to Houston in '04) is an interesting subplot. I can never fully trust Pettite as an ace or sub-ace primarily because of an article by Buster Olney I read a few years back.

Unfortunately, I don't have my sources and I'm not all kickass-hyperlink, so I can't give you the original source story, but here's the gist:

Andy Pettite lives his life the way he pitches: He never shakes the catcher off.

After the Boss made all these derisive comments about Pettite in the '03/'04 off-season and made it sound like they'd be doing him a favor if they brought him back, Pettite was courted by the Astros.

The Astros made it very easy on him - "Hey, Andy, come on down, you get to play in Texas, you'll be near your family. You like your family, right?"

In the end, the Yankees actually outbid the Astros, but the Astros made it easy for him.

I imagine this season the Yankees made it easy for him again:

"Come on, Andy - the Astros are losers. You liked it here, right? Besides, if you come back, maybe Roger will, too..."

The cynic in me says that Clemens/Mussina/Pettite/Wang/Hughes is going to make Schilling/Beckett/Matsuzaka/Wakefield/Lester look like... well, pick your year and insert a Devil Rays rotation (but subtract Kazmir).

Still, as Curt Schilling (then of the Diamondbacks) said in '01, Aura and Mystique are stipper names - and we'll have to wait to see whether this year's Yankees turn out to be the old school, kickass, 25-cent peepshow Times Square, or the new, lame, limp and Disney-fied version.

P.S. Despite Kei Igawa's incredible relief effort against the Sox, he still got sent down to A Ball. i look forward to seeing him and his interpreter the next time I have to go to the gas station for beer. I mean this literally, as the Yankees' A-Ball affiliate is the Charleston Riverdogs, and all those guys live in my apartment complex.