Changing Priorities

There was a lot to hate about last night's game. Like so many games this season, the Yankees managed to not just lose, but lose ugly, with mental mistakes and failures in big spots. With this loss, the Yankees fall back to a six game deficit in the wild-card race, and I'm about ready to declare their playoff hopes dead. In order to make the playoffs now, the Yankees would have to win their next two games, sweep Boston next month in Fenway, play one game better than the Red Sox in the other 26 games left, and erase the 3.5 game lead that the Twins have. It's a ridiculously tall order made even more ludicrous when you look at the teams' remaining schedules and see that the Yankees play only 15 of their final 31 games at home while the Red Sox play 21.

This is why I think it's time for the Yankees to shift their priorities from a futile attempt to make the playoffs this year to gearing up for next season. The Yankees are going to have a lot of decisions to make this offseason, and they can help themselves in making those decisions by using the next month to evaluate what they can expect from their prospects and young players. For example, this winter the team will need to decide whether to re-sign Bobby Abreu and continue to use an outfield of Nady-Damon-Abreu, or find a replacement. They can make this decision much easier by playing Brett Gardner regularly over the rest of the season, and letting themselves see if he's good enough to be the center fielder next year. If he is, then an outfield of Damon-Gardner-Nady becomes a very attractive option.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the sooner the Yankees can accept their defeat in this season, the sooner they can start to work towards victory in the next.

The 2008 Replacement Level Yankees

In Sabermetrics, there's a concept called the Replacement Level. It's a way to look at a player's value to a team by comparing him to the player who would replace him if he wasn't there. Usually one would use a hypothetical replacement based on the kind of talent that's freely available. However, when you're looking at off-season moves for one team, you can move from the hypothetical to the real. So, I present to you the 2008 Replacement Level Yankees:

Position	Player	Salary
C	Omir Santos	$0.41
1b	Shelley Duncan	$0.41
2b	Robinson Cano	$32
3b	Wilson Betemit	$12
SS	Derek Jeter	$20
RF	Melky Cabrera	$0.41
CF	Johnny Damon	$13
LF	Hideki Matsui	$13
DH	Jason Giambi	$21
BN	Andy Philips	$0.41
BN	Alberto Gonzalez	$0.41
BN	Bronson Sardinha	$0.41
BN	Juan Miranda	$0.41
SP	Chien-Ming Wang	$32
SP	Mike Mussina	$11
SP	Phil Hughes	$0.41
SP	Joba Chamberlain	$0.41
SP	Ian Kennedy	$0.41
RP	Kyle Farnsworth	$5.5
RP	Kei Igawa	$4
RP	Chris Britton	$0.41
RP	Jose Veras	$0.41
RP	Ross Ohlendorf	$0.41
RP	Darrel Rasner	$0.41
RP	Jeff Karstens	$0.41

This is the team that the Yankees would field if they made absolutely no moves before opening day based, with one exception, on their 40 man roster. The exception is Omir Santos, who I put on the team because the Yankees have no catchers on their 40 man roster. Santos was the catcher for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, so I went with him. You could make an argument for their other catcher Raul Chavez, and you can argue with my bullpen choices considering how many pitchers are on the 40 man roster, but those are little details that miss the point of this exercise.

Obviously, I don't think this is the lineup that will take the field come spring training, let alone opening day. It's just a tool to help look at the team's needs, and to evaluate what they do to fill them. For example, it lets us see all the ramifications of the decision to exercise Bobby Abreu's option. Having Abreu on the team creates the same "problem," as last season; too many good players for too few positions. You can move Giambi to first and use Matsui to DH, but that's a huge defensive downgrade at first and Giambi is almost guaranteed to be injured in the process. You could bench Melky Cabrera and move Damon to center field, which would only be a small defensive downgrade, but you might overtax Damon's problematic back and legs. No matter how you slice it, the overall effect of this move is a small upgrade for a lot of money.

Of course, the Yankees have enough money to be able to afford these kind of moves, but I think there's a trade they can make that can make this move much better. All they need to do is make a trade with Rawlings for a couple of first baseman's gloves for Damon and Matsui. Ideally, the Yankees would just have to give them Carl Pavano, but cash would be fine. Both Damon and Matsui are athletes with good fundamental baseball skills, and it's reasonable to think that they could be better fielders than Jason Giambi by the end of spring training. It is, after all, a pretty low bar to clear. Additionally, taking time off from the outfield would help them avoid aggravating their chronic injuries. In other words, there'd be decent defense, better hitting and fewer injuries. That's a move worth $14 million³.

¹Estimated salary based on Major League minimum.
²These players are arbitration eligible, so I've just made educated guesses as to what their salary will end up being.
³The option was worth $16 million, but declining it would have required a $2 million buyout, so it effectively cost them $14 million to exercise it.

Options

It's been a dull week in Yankee land, with only a few small stories worth mentioning. The biggest news was the team's exercising their $16 million option to bring Bobby Abreu back for another season. Of course, this wasn't news at all, since Brian Cashman has for weeks implied that that was what he was going to do. Normally, I'd say that that $16 million would be better spent on something other than an aging right fielder whose production has been declining for the past few years. However, with A-Rod gone the Yankees have the money to spare, and the alternatives aren't that good. Without Abreu, the Yankees would either have to use Shelley Duncan, who's a good platoon player but not good enough to play every day, or downgrade their defense by moving Melky Cabrera to right and Johnny Damon to center. Of course the team could go the free agent route, but the pickings are pretty slim. The only possible free agent who I think would be a better choice than Abreu is Kosuke Fukudome.

Fukudome (whose name is pronounced Koh-skay Foo-koo-DOH-may), is the star right fielder for the Chunichi Dragons of the Japanese League. He's a patient hitter, with doubles power, posting a career line of .305/.397/.543 (AVG/OBP/SLG), and .329/.435/.600 over the past three seasons. Defensively, he's reported to be excellent. His speed and instincts are both above average, which makes for great range, and his arm is both strong and accurate. American fans may remember him from the World Baseball Classic last year, where he proved himself to be a clutch performer by hitting pivotal late inning home runs in both the semi-finals and finals.

Looking at how Japanese hitters have performed in the majors, I think Fukodome would perform significantly better than the declining Abreu, and would do so for less money (he's expected to cost around $12 million a year for three or four years and, as an unrestricted free agent, there would be no posting fee). That said, there's no guarantee that the Yankees would be able to sign him, and I can't fault Cashman for taking the sure thing. Plus, he now has the option of trading Abreu if he does try to sign Fukudome, much as he did with Gary Sheffield (though I'm not entirely sure if Abreu's no-trade clause is still in effect after he waived it last year).

In other option news, Andy Pettitte has declined his $16 million option for next season. According to his agent, he did so because the deadline came up and he needed more time to consider his future. However, he also said that his future consists of only two options; the Yankees or retirement, and he's not looking for more money. While the A-Rod circus might make you cynical about a player being honest in these situations, Pettitte's a stand up guy, and there's no reason to think that he doesn't mean what he's saying. It'd be better for the Yankees to know whether he'll be in their rotation, but you have to respect Pettitte's need to weigh his decision. I really do hope he comes back, but either way I wish him the best.

Wang to the rescue

Monday was just a terrible day for the Yankees. First came the news that Andy Phillips' wrist was fractured when he was hit by a pitch on Sunday, and will miss 4-6 weeks, which is essentially the rest of the season. If it wasn't for bad luck, Philips wouldn't have no luck at all.

Then, Roger Clemens left last night's game after allowing five runs over four innings in order to get an MRI on his elbow, which was "tightening up," according to Joe Torre. All that's known right now is that Clemens will definitely miss his next start, but he insists he'll pitch again this season. Of course Clemens is the kind of guy who'd say that if his hair was on fire, so I think I'll wait and see what happens after he heads back to Houston to see his doctors and get a cortisone treatment.

Finally, after Clemens left the game, the Yankees went on to lose the game 7-1, allowing the Mariners to narrow the Yankees' lead in the Wild Card race to just one game.

All of this meant just one thing; it was time for the Taiwan Kid to ride to the rescue. Chien-Ming Wang pitched a classically Wangesque game, throwing the sinker low in the zone and watching the opposition hit it right into the ground. The first seven batters he faced all hit ground balls, only one of which snuck through the infield for a hit, and out of the 26 batters he faced a ludicrous 17 of them were retired on ground balls. Supporting Wang's dominance were Jorge Posada, Bobby Abreu and Robinson Cano, who had four hits each, including two homeruns by Jorge, leading the Yanks to 12 runs.

As big of a blowout as it was, though, there were a couple of scary moments in the game. In the bottom of the seventh, Alex Rodriguez turned his ankle sliding into third base, and in the top of the eighth, Wang had to leave after retiring the first batter (on, of course, a ground ball) due to tightness in his lower back. Thankfully, the word is that they're both fine, though A-Rod may need a day or two off and Wang will probably get an extra day of rest before his next start (which shouldn't be a big deal with the off day on Thursday).

A-Rod's injury, by the way, led to the first major league at-bat for our former Attorney General, who seems to have found a new job rather quickly. Or maybe that's Alberto Gonzalez with a "z".

Anyway, tomorrow's rubber match pits the struggling Philip Hughes against Jarrod Washburn, who's been tough on the Yankees in the past. I'll be in Tier Box 635, Row F if anyone wants to say hello. Once again, just look for the shiny, shiny head.