Comments on: 2008 Postmortem: What Went Wrong?

By: OldYanksFan

OldYanksFan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:08:09 +0000

So….. EVEN with injuries, our pitching staff was decent (and even better if you consider the horrid fielding behind them) and our ‘failure’ was due to Posada’s loss, an under performing offense from a combined 3 players (a 1/3rd of our O) and terrible D……
So we fix that by……
Doing anything to sign TWO stud pitchers…..
And ignoring offensive needs at 1B, CF and maybe RF?

I’d rather miss the playoffs in 2009 then do something to compromise 2010-2015.

And Cliff, a great analysis, but you have to add poor RISP from ARod and HORRIBLE RISP from Giambi. I don’t know if it can be done, but if ARods and Giambi’s RISP was simply the same as their OPS, I’m betting we get close to 7 games out of it.

By: Shaun P.

Shaun P. — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:22:09 +0000

[1] [2] I don’t expect Posada to bounce back to his ’07 production levels eighter, but if he could contribute, say, ~30 VORP, that’s a heck of a lot better than Molina’s minus ten.

Some improvement from CF, some improvement from Matsui at DH, some improvement with Cano, and I think the offense will be OK. As long as they sign Tex.

The pitching staff actually doesn’t worry me at all.

By: knuckles

knuckles — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:34:44 +0000

So…you’re saying we should have rooted for injuries to BOS/TAM instead of btching about Cashman and the team makeup?

Ahh…how many day’s til P&C?

By: ms october

ms october — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:49:22 +0000

yes cliff, great analyis.
good to think about this as we have had time to remove ourselves from 2008 and move to 2009.

[1] even though the erratic nature of the bullpen is always there, i do think the yanks are in a position to play the scranton shuffle with some of the pieces that don’t perform.

while i agree that a lot of it comes down to starting pitching, the offense just cannot be neglected.
even though the (apparent) loss of giambi and abreu should help pick up some wins defensively their offense has to be evenly replaced and perhaps even built on – meaning one of these spots needs to be more offense than abreu and giambi provided.
i don’t think we can just count on a posada return and a cano bounce back to boost the offense. 1b and one of the corner of (or cf) spots needs to be at least adequately replaced for the yanks to get about 95 wins, which is probably what will be needed to get back to the postseason.

By: Cru Jones

Cru Jones — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:22:30 +0000

Wow….Nice analysis….So all the b*tching and moaning on the Banter wasn’t warranted? LOL.

With Posada, the apparent nail in the Yankees’ season’s coffin, not being a sure thing in ’09, where do we get the extra wins? Can the bullpen expect to perform at such a high level, or will there be regression that the starting pitching will have to pick up?

Seems like it all comes down to starting pitching….