It's Over

Yes, it's been a couple months since my last post and in that time the Yankees have managed to not be in the playoffs for the first time since 1995 and Yankee Stadium is no more.

The beginning of this season I fell into the trap of assuming the Yankees would make it to the playoffs again. I figured the offense would be as good as it's always been and the pitching would hold up. Both failed to deliver although I would say 89 wins considering what happened is not too bad, but this is the Yankees and so this is a huge failure. On all accounts though, this day was bound to happen. The Yankees have aging players--I would even argue Jeter is among them--and no coherent plan to build things up from the farm system.

On that point (the farm) I do want to say the Yankees can learn a lot from some recent teams that have made the playoffs with strong farm system teams--the Indians, Rays, Brewers, and even the Red Sox. We are seeing some light in the changes Cashman has made since 2005 in building the farm with arms like Hughes and Chamberlain and even Cabrera, but no "stars" yet.

But it will be interesting to see how the Yankees move forward. First off, they need pitching...badly. Assuming Pettitte and Mussina retires, that leaves Wang, Hughes, and questionably Chamberlain and Kennedy in the rotation. Seeing that Sabathia is a free agent I am expecting the Yankees to go after him hard--especially since they didn't bid on Santana last year, something Hank Steinbrenner seems to regret. They may need to sign or trade for a #3 starter on top of that as well. On the offense side, with Giambi most likely leaving and no 1st baseman to replace him, the Yankees may go after Texiera.

This will be a lot of money. Sabathia will likely get top dollar either matching or surpassing Santana's deal and Texiera is obviously very costly as well (especially since his agent is the greedy Scott Boras). These moves will continue the spending trend the Yankees have bolstered since 2001 something as Buster Onley pointed out in a recent article on ESPN has stunted the player development growth.

But back to missing the playoffs. Any way you cut it, the AL East is even more competitive than ever before. I personally did not see the Rays doing what they did and figured they'd have another losing season, but they are for real and honestly I think that's great. The Red Sox are solid because they have balanced great player development with key free agent signings and the Blue Jays seem to be over .500 these last few seasons on the verge of being in contention for the Wild Card. The point is, for the Yankees to compete they will have to either win the division or have a good enough record for second place to take the Wild Card and 2008 is an indicator that this is harder to do.

I will write more when the Yankees make post season moves. In the mean time the playoffs start today and despite my lack of baseball watching this year, I'm looking forward to watching as much as I can. Here is my prediction: it will be the Angels vs. Brewers. Yeah, I'll go with an underdog in the NL, but I think the Brewers are on a good roll right now.