The Man in Blak

Eighth? Torre must be nervous as hell.

I think I can live with Miller and Morgan screwing up names. As long as I don't have to hear Berman talk about "young" Chris Duncan or ramble off some useless football analogy for two minutes without taking a breath, I am content.

You know, I would never consider ESPN to be a bastion of journalistic integrity, but this is becoming a new low, even for them.

I'd say that the Yankees are, in general, professional with each other, but I'm not sure I'd stretch to say that they "get along fine", especially after that SI article about ARod earlier in the year. To me, it seems like everybody has some unrealistic expectations for ARod and the rest of the team (Jeter, in particular) doesn't seem too interested in helping him. I don't know if it's because ARod overshadowed him during his years in Texas or if it's because he's got a bigger contract (which would be kind of funny, given how much Jeter gets paid), but you can draw a clear contrast with how Jeter has dealt with ARod and how he's dealt with other players who have struggled in the past (Knoblauch is a good example).

Yes, you're correct. I had that series mixed up with the '05 series. Out of all of the series I mentioned above, that's probably the only one that's really close to an asskicking, just because the Angels tore the pitching staff to shreds (8.00+ ERA). That being said, the Yankees still kept it competitive and scored a fair amount of runs in their own right, which is why I wouldn't consider it a complete domination...like this year's Oakland/Minnesota series, for example.

Virtually anything can happen in a short series in baseball. In 2001, the Yankees went seven games with a very strong Arizona team. In 2002, they ran into an Angels team that was just unbelievably hot at the time. In 2003, they forgot to bring some pitching against the Marlins, who came in with a truckload of momentum from coming back on the Cubs 3-1. 2004 is just creepy voodoo shit or, more rationally, a four game losing streak at the worst possible time. In 2005, their pitching forgot to show up against a hungry Angels team. In all of these series, the Yankees were never dominated. With the exception of 2002 (four games out of five) and the 2003 World Series (six games out of seven), they always went the maximum length of games. And, if a couple of things break differently in some of these series (Dave Roberts doesn't steal a base, Rivera doesn't give up a bloop single, Jeff Weaver forgets to show up at the ballpark), the results are drastically different. Having the largest payroll doesn't guarantee you the best team, but it does reduce your risk of losing. If baseball is a game of poker, then the Yankees are the big stack at the table; they're capable of losing any hand and, if a particular series of events happens, they're certainly capable of losing the chip lead or getting busted out. But, on the whole, they have more options in how they can play and they can lose more hands without "going broke."

http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/sa....aspx?year=1995 Yankees Payroll Ranking in MLB 1995: AL-2nd, MLB-2nd (Toronto) 1996: AL-1st, MLB-1st 1997: AL-1st, MLB-1st 1998: AL-2nd, MLB-2nd (Baltimore) 1999: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2000: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2001: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2002: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2003: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2004: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2005: AL-1st, MLB-1st 2006: AL-1st, MLB-1st

Morneau with a homer to cut the lead to five. You know, I hate to say that the Twins "choked" here, since they weren't necessarily overwhelming favorites, but I think it's plain to see that they're playing about as badly as they have at any point this year. Credit to Oakland for capitalizing on every mistake and completely shutting down the "pirahnas" at the plate.

Another error from Bartlett puts Kotsay on first, who comes home on a two-run Milton Bradley home run. And ESPN still won't shut up about the damn coffee "incident."

They are looking at their twelfth straight playoff appearance, though, and they have traditionally had one of the highest (if not the highest) payrolls over that period. Payroll doesn't guarantee you a championship, but it reduces risk. Everybody always wants to point at the lower market teams like Oakland and Minnesota as a counter-example to payroll, but even they don't have a sustained level of success like the Yankees do, simply because they can't really recover when injuries strikes or other things go badly (see last year as an example of this). Even though the Yankees don't necessarily apply this financial advantage in the most efficient way, they still wield it in a way that can single-handedly knock other teams out of the running. Outside of Boston (who also outspends the competition by a remarkable amount), how many other teams were even considered possibilities for A-Rod or Abreu when trade offers came around? Could Kansas City or Tampa Bay have even made a run at Jason Giambi when he hit the free agent market? Of course, payroll isn't everything for the Yankees either, as there are other clever moves that the Yankees have made that haven't involved payroll (Brian Bruney, Shawn Chacon, Craig Wilson, etc.). But the problem is that, though everybody can make those moves, the Yankees have more than enough resources to compensate for their mistakes. Bonehead contracts like Pavano and Wright, which would cripple a team like the Twins, are laughers for the Yankees. The St. Louis Cardinals (who aren't even a small market team, mind you) can make plenty of savvy pickups of high caliber talent like Jim Edmonds or Scott Rolen but, once they screw up and give a marginal guy like Isringhausen an expensive contract extension, the purse strings tighten and the ability to improve through the free agent market signficantly declines (see the last offseason as an example). The free agent market is a perfect example of this. There was a study done in one of the BPros, I believe, that demonstrate that the most valuable free agents are on the extreme ends of the payroll spectrum - the upper-tier talent that you pay a premium for, or the low money deals that can turn into a major value bargain. Middle-tier free agents, like Kris Benson, are the worst bang for the buck, as the premium you pay for "reliability" isn't worth the overall mediocrity that you get (which can typically be found in much cheaper alternatives.) Small market teams may have enough money to make a run for a middle tier guy, if they're lucky, but the Yankees will have the first pick of anybody that they want, just by virtue of the fact that they can virtually outbid anybody in that upper tier, as well as have their share of the "lesser signings." Sure, they can't sign everybody and just because they sign an upper tier free agent doesn't mean it's the best available choice (Sheffield over Vladdy, a few years ago). But, as I mentioned before, those mistakes don't kill them - in fact, they have so little impact on the Yankees that they're still able to absorb payroll by taking on other team's costly contractual mistakes in salary dumps. It's not the Yankees fault that they can leverage a payroll advantage in this way - MLB essentially encourages teams to pocket money with revenue sharing and the lack of a salary cap/floor structure. But let's not say that there's no advantage there at all.

If we're going to examine performance with such an arbitrary set of endpoints, let's take a look at the other Yankee regulars through that time period: 2004 ALCS vs. Boston, Games 4-7 Jeter - 4/19, 1 R, 5 RBI, 2/1 K/BB Rodriguez - 2/17, 1 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 5/3 K/BB Sheffield - 1/17, 6/4 K/BB Matsui - 5/19, 2 R, 2/2 K/BB Posada - 4/17, 2 R, 1/4 K/BB 2005 ALDS vs. Anaheim Jeter - 7/21, 4 R, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 5/1 K/BB Rodriguez - 2/15, 2 R, 5/6 K/BB Sheffield - 6/21, 1 R, 2 RBI, 2/1 K/BB Matsui - 4/20, 4 R, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 3/2 K/BB Posada - 3/13, 3 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 2/6 K/BB 2006 ALDS vs. Detroit, Games 1-2 Jeter - 6/9, 3 R, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 1 K Rodriguez - 1/8, 4 K Sheffield - 1/8, 1 R, 1 RBI, 2 K Matsui - 3/8, 1 R Posada - 3/6, 1 R, 1/2 K/BB Total Stats Over Last 11 Playoff Games Jeter: 17/49, 8 R, 3 HR, 11 RBI, 8/2 K/BB Rodriguez: 5/40, 3 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 14/9 K/BB Sheffield: 8/46, 2 R, 0 HR, 3 RBI, 10/5 K/BB Matsui: 12/47, 7 R, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 5/4 K/BB Posada: 10/36, 6 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 4/12 K/BB Couple of observations: 1. Everybody did a fairly remarkable job of tanking the final four games in the Boston series, Sheffield worst of all. Posada is the only one with that can even claim even a mediocre line, due to his insane ability to draw walks in the playoffs (roughly one in every four plate appearances over this span). 2. Virtually everybody has seen a marked decline in power (with the exception of Jeter). In Jeter's case, this seems to match with observations that he's much more of a pull hitter in the postseason. For everybody else, this could just be a function of facing tougher pitchers in the postseason (which is a given). 3. Sheffield is virtually at A-Rod's level through this time, hitting below .200 with virtually no power. 4. The HR and RBIs that A-Rod has in this span are all from Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. He has not driven in a run in the last ten games. (God dammit, ESPN just scooped me on that.)

The Dodgers are an odd team. They were 4th in the NL in runs scored and they led the league in OBP, but they were in the middle of the pack in slugging. That, and the anecdotal evidence ("they just kept putting together clutch hit after clutch hit") seems to indicate that they built their offense on lengthy rallies, which is fine in the regular season, but might be a bit harder to sustain in the playoffs when the quality of pitching improves.

Look, I'm not going to argue that Rodriguez hasn't struggled in these situations, because the statistics, in general, seem to bear that out. I'm just talking about this specific at-bat, though; it seems like a lot of people are more than willing to portray ARod as "choking as always", but is it realistic to imagine that anybody (let alone ARod) was going to do anything with that sequence of pitches? At some point, you just have to tip your cap to the other pitcher and, twice today, Rodriguez ran into a situation where the other pitcher was just dealing with all sorts of unholy stuff.

Have you even seen that first at-bat that you're criticizing him for?

Isn't that the whole point behind the question, though? It's not like the Mets wouldn't play those teams if they were in the Amercian League anyway. And Wainwright gets him looking for the final out in the ninth and a win for the Cards.

Edmonds drives in Pujols with an infield hit, thanks to Walker blowing the transfer from his glove (great dive, though). 2-0 Cardinals, and about five runs away from having a decent lead for Weaver.

Pujols drives in the first run with a single and then escapes a rundown to get to second base. 1-0 Cardinals. Part of the problem was the cutoff guy, who might have batted down a perfectly good throw home. Sure, it got Pujols into a rundown, but it seemed like the rest of the infield was a little surprised that they were attempting a play at second base there.

Is Berman going to be calling this whole series? *mute button*

Wait until we get to Fox and the Lasorda flappy-head pops up and reminds us to watch the playoffs. It's your duty - Judy! Zumaya has got this whole "Brad Lidge before Pujols broke his spirit" thing going on.

"We've got two heavy sluggers here, a heavy slugger against a heavy slugger with Derek Je-Jet, er, Sheffield's bat speed against Zumaya's fastball."

Yeah, a decent throw has Granderson dead to rights at third base there. This, of course, is completely ignored by Miller & Morgan. Great save by Granderson on that line out - very close to being doubled off there...

Given that Inge is seemingly incapable of hitting in the playoffs thus far, it's probably a good thing that he was able to move Thames over to third for Granderson. And there's Granderson with an RBI triple. Tigers get the lead, 4-3.

Guillen ties it up, 3-3, with a homer in the 6th.

Okay, now you should get onto A-Rod for a weak strikeout.

Jeter padding his post-season stats again.