It appears to be raining throughout the country. In addition to the rain outside my window, last night the 2006 season kicked off with a game between the second and third best teams in baseball that was ruined by a nearly three-hour rain delay. Tonight, with bad weather already looming over the Bay Area, we may see a repeat of last night’s mess except with the first and fourth best teams in the game as the participants.
For those who might misinterpret that last statement as the homerism of an admitted die-hard Yankee fan, it is the host Oakland A’s whom I believe are the best team in baseball, with the hometown Yankees coming up fourth (for what it’s worth, I expect the Red Sox to do battle for fifth place with whomever emerges from the National League scrum).
The A’s won just 88 games last year, but, as I predicted at the outset, 2005 was merely a trial run for the team that will take the field tonight. Among the Athletics who enjoyed their first full major league season last year were closer and AL Rookie of the Year Huston Street, starting pitchers Dan Haren and Joe Blanton, outfielder Nick Swisher, and first baseman Dan Johnson. Meanwhile, young stars Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden battled injuries in what would have otherwise been just their second full seasons in the bigs. All of these players can be expected to improve this year, be it due to increased health, experience, or a combination of the two.
To this emerging core, the A’s have added the explosive bat of Frank Thomas and the explosive personality of Milton Bradley. There’s no guarantee that either will stay healthy long enough to make 300 plate appearances, let alone twice that many, but for as long as they are in the line-up, they will represent a tremendous improvement over the departed Scott Hatteberg and Erubiel Durazo and demoted Bobby Keilty (temporarily in triple-A to give the A’s an extra pitcher to cope with the impending rain) and Jay Payton.
Payton’s removal from the lineup gives the A’s a righty power bat on the bench that similarly upgrades the team’s support staff, which last year involved way too much Eric Byrnes (which is to say, any). The Bradley trade, meanwhile, also netted Antonio Perez, a high-on-base utility man who pushes futility man Marco Scutaro—who spent a large chunk of the past two seasons starting in place of injured middle infielders Crosby (in 2005) and Ellis (in 2004)—yet another notch down the depth chart.
Elsewhere the A’s have added a pair of former Yankee hurlers. Erstwhile swing man Esteban Loaiza, who put up handsome numbers in the pitchers paradise of RFK last year with the Nationals, joins Oakland as a fifth starter, taking over for Kirk Saarloos and his 2.99 K/9. Meanwhile, my one-time pet cause, Admiral Brad Halsey, will slide into the bullpen as a long-relief lefty behind the similarly repurposed and regally named Joe Kennedy. The Paperboy, who just turned 25 years old in February, can also deliver more effective spot starts than Saarloos and could very well work his way into the A’s rotation to stay should Loaiza regain his Yankee form. Either way, these two ex-Yanks again push a player who got way too much exposure last year, in this case Saarloos, further down the depth chart.
Some of these improvements will likely be offset by the regression that can be expected from set-up man Justin Duchscherer, who appeared to make the leap in his second full season at age 27, and second baseman Mark Ellis, who returned from a year lost to labrum surgery to be more productive than in either of his previous two major league seasons. But then those two are young enough (the older Ellis will be 29 on 6/6/6) that their improvements could very well be real. Meanwhile, Barry Zito and Eric Chavez are not only still in green and gold, but both are younger than both Duchscherer and Ellis.
On top of all of that, this is a ballclub that fell five games shy of their Pythagorean record in 2005, the fulfillment of which would have tied them with the Indians just two games behind the Angels, Yanks and Red Sox in the overall American League standings.
As for the Yankees, they actually exceeded their Pythagorean record by five games last year, but that’s become an annual event for the Bombers. In fact, nine of Joe Torre’s ten Yankee clubs have exceeded their Pythagorean record, the one exception coming in 1997. Call it the Mariano Rivera effect. With Rivera slamming the door, the Yankees are able to win more close games that would be expected given their overall run differential, which in recent years has been further skewed by some extremely problematic starting pitching. It’s the latter that explains why the A’s didn’t experience a similar effect given their excellent end game in 2005. Unlike the Yankees, the A’s also managed to lose small due to strong starting pitching that was often victimized by an offense that scored fewer than four runs per game for the first two months of the season. (see pages 132 to 137 of Mind Game for my analysis of these effects on the Yankees’ Pythagorean records).
Unlike the A’s, the Yankees can expect regression (Sheffield and Mussina due to age and nagging injuries, Rodriguez and Chacon because of abnormal 2005 production, Sturtze and Small because the clock has struck midnight, and possibly even Jeter, who’s thirtieth birthday is receding in the rearview) that will, at minimum, offset whatever improvements they might enjoy elsewhere (a full season of the rejuvenated Giambi, full-seasons of more experienced Cano and Wang, possible rebounds to previous levels of production by Johnson and Matsui, and perhaps even a bit of bounce from Wright, courtesy of that Mussina curve, Proctor, given a new more suitable role, and Bernie, who couldn’t be much worse than last year).
Will all else evening out, the Yankees’ offseason moves aren’t sexy enough to inspire much enthusiasm, but despite their drab appearance, they all represent improvements, even if those improvements are largely because of the atrociousness of the players being replaced. I’ve prattled on enough about my expectations for the Yankees this year elsewhere, but allow me to jump the gun on my usual roster breakdown just a tad and give you some specifics:
Who’s Replacing Whom?
Johnny Damon replaces Tony Womack and Tino Martinez
Kelly Stinnett replaces John Flaherty
Miguel Cairo replaces Matt Lawton and Rey Sanchez
Andy Phillips inherits Ruben Sierra’s at-bats
Shawn Chacon takes over Kevin Brown’s starts
Chein-Ming Wang takes over Al Leiter’s starts
Kyle Farnsworth replaces Tom Gordon
Mike Myers replaces Mike Stanton, Buddy Groom, Wayne Franklin and Alan Embree
Ron Villone replaces Paul Quantrill and Felix Rodriguez
Using VORP (Value (Runs) Over RePlacement), the eight departed players in the first six lines above combined to cost the Yankees 25.6 runs last year, this despite a positive 10.4 VORP from Martinez. The six players taking over their playing time combined to be 92.3 runs above replacement, and there’s a decent chance that Wang and, given enough playing time, Phillips could improve enough to compensate for Chacon’s regression. That’s nearly a twelve-run improvement right there.
While Damon et al. are all essentially guaranteed to be more productive for the Yankees in 2006 than the players they are replacing, Kyle Farnsworth is more likely to break even with the departed Flash Gordon. The advantage there being that Farnsworth is eight and a half years younger than Gordon, has nearly 1400 fewer major league innings on his right arm, and a cleaner (though not perfect) injury history to boot. For identical money, the Yankees made a significant upgrade, though that improvement may not necessarily show up on the balance sheet given that Gordon’s 2005 is already on the books.
The laundry list of miscast and past-due LOOGies that follows Mike Myers’ name should be reason enough to appreciate his signing. And while Ron Villone isn’t exactly good, he should at least be able to pass through airport metal detectors on road trips, something Quantrill and Felix Rodriguez were unable to do last year given the giant forks sticking out of their backs.
This of course doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that the Yankees finally have a crop of replacement players worth using in Columbus this year, but I’ve beaten that horse to death already, so I’ll take this opportunity to shut the hell up and present the rosters for tonight’s game.
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