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Larry Mahnken and Aaron Gleeman have excellent takes on the Vasquez-Johnson deal. Like many Yankee fans, Larry is sad to see Nick go, but thinks the Yankees made a good trade, while Aaron thinks both teams benefited from the deal.

David Pinto responded to my post this morning. He writes:

Where I would disagree with Alex’s analysis is that the Yankees don’t have to crash and burn. As an example of this, I’ll point to Atlanta. Every year, Atlanta seems to be able to point to their weaknesses and address them. And every year (expect 1994) they’ve won the division. They don’t let the team get old and stale. They improve with a combination of free agent signings (Pendelton, Sheffield) and bring up youngsters (Justice, Millwood, Lopez, Furcal, Giles). And they don’t seem to destroy their farm system doing it either. If everything works out, the Yankees win the division again this year. But Jeter, Williams, Giambi and Posada become bigger question marks every year health wise. It doesn’t take much bad luck to see those four hurt , and then where is the offense?

I agree the moves the Yankees are making aren’t as bad as the moves they made in the 80’s, but I think the treadmill is moving, and it possible that it will reach high speed very quickly.

I agree with David that the Yankes don’t have to crash and burn. Personally, I wish they wouldn’t. However, I’m just looking at this from a realistic point of view. Why bring common sense into the equation? History tells us that Steinbrenner doesn’t function in a rational world. George is not going to change his spots this late in the game. If anything, he might become increasingly frantic as he gets older. It’s true that his deals for Mondesi and Boone already indicate a return to his impetuous ways of the eighties. Still, we aren’t at the point of no return just yet. Perhaps, we will be soon as David suggests. I can’t dispute that. In the meanwhile, the Yankees will still be a very good team. They may even win another championship. But what goes up must come down, and they Yanks will eventually fall from grace. And when they fall, they will fall hard. Hey, every dog has his day, right?

Earlier this week Buster Olney wrote a column about how George Steinbrenner is up to his old tricks once again and that the 2003-04 Yankees are starting to resemble the Yankee teams of the 1980s:

It all seems familiar. From 1976-1981 — a period of six years — the Yankees had dominant pitching, with Sparky Lyle and Ron Guidry and Goose Gossage and Catfish Hunter, won two World Series and played in two others and made the playoffs every year but one. Steinbrenner asserted even greater control, lured free agents, stripped the farm system. By 1983 the Yankees had a lineup of Roy Smalleys and Steve Kemps, aging hitters who had seen their best years, and by 1986 the Yankees’ leading starter was Dennis Rasmussen, an 18-game winner; no other pitcher won 10 games.

After the Yankees traded for Javier Vasquez yesterday, I heard many fans bemoan the fact that in trading Nick Johnson, the Yankees are in fact headed back to the dark ages of the eighties. First of all, dark is a relative term: while the Yankees didn’t make the playoffs between 1982-1994, they weren’t terrible for all of those years. Plus fifteen years is a drop in the bucket for a Cubs fan or a Sox fan or even a Phillies fan. Hey, when was the last time the Mariners were in the World Serious? Secondly, I don’t think the Yankees will spin back that far so long as Joe Torre is managing the team. (We’ll talk again next year.)

We’re headed back to the dark ages. Is this true? Well, yes and no. Indeed George has taken control of player transactions in a way that he hasn’t in a long time (anyone paying attention could see this going down from jump last winter when Steinbrenner bashed Jeter in the papers). But what else would you expect him to do? Did anyone actually believe that King George would go out quietly, with humility and dignity? Who do you think we are dealing with here? Gene Autry?

Now that Steinbrenner is spending cash freely and loading up on free agents like Gordon, Quantrill and Sheffield, Yankee fans are reminded of the shopping sprees of the eighties. The team is getting older, and more expensive, but I think that it is premature to think that this is the 1982 Yankees. The Yankee teams in the 1980s did not have Mariano Rivera, or a starting rotation with the likes of Mike Mussina, Javier Vasquez, and (hopefully) Andy Pettitte.

I checked in on some of the old Bill James Abstracts last night and found a few interesting excerpts regarding the old Yankee philosophy. In the early part of the decade, the Yankees, like many teams simply misunderstood what their needs were:

Whenever you talk yourself into thinking that you need a player that’s when you pay too much for him. And that’s what George has been doing in the last few years.

Hello, Davey Collins. James writes that the approach Steinbrenner took during the first free agency period of 1976-1981 worked out better:

Ignore the needs of your team, ignore the strengths and weaknesses of the players available. Just identify the best player out there, and go after him.

…What I’m saying is this: Great players’ careers are relatively much less vulnerable to fluctuations in value than are ordinary players’ careers. That’s why great players hang around until they’re 40; if they have a bad year, they still have value. There is a security in them.

from the 1984 Baseball Abstract

Hello, Gary Sheffield. Obviously by the end of the decade, things had gone terribly wrong for the Yankees:

The New York Yankees are trapped on a treadmill. Although they have not won anything since 1981, the Yankees have the best winning percentage of any team during the decade, or should I turn that around: although they have the best winning percentage of any team during the eighties, the Yankees have not won anything since 1981. They are acutely aware of this, and so the winter of 1987-1988 was spent in frantic preparations to make the 1988 season the season in which the great nucleus of this team is surrounded by a cast good enough to lift the Yankees off of that 85-to 92-win treadmill, and onto the championship rung. There is an irony in this, for it is exactly this philosophy that creates the treadmill from which the Yankees are so anxious to escape.

…The Yankees don’t believe in staying with a young pitcher or a young player through the bad stretches; they want everybody to succeed now. When a young player goes through a down phase or when a veteran has an off year, the Yankees give up on him. The pressure, the fear of making a mistake and getting shipped immediately to Columbus, inhibits the development of young players, and in many cases flatly destroys them. That means that over a period of time, nobody on the roster is getting better, while some people are getting worse. To keep from slipping back, you have to keep bringing in new taletn, players who are on the top of their game. That drives the treadmill. But when the treadmill starts to gain on you, when you start to slip back toward the middle of the pack, what do you do? You turn up the power, of course. You bring in more players who are coming off of good years. You put more pressure on the players. You give up more quickly on the kid who has a couple of bad outings. So then the treadmill runs faster.

…The problem with the Yankees is that they never want to pay the real price of success. The real price of success in baseball is not the dollars that you come up with for a Jack Clark or a Dave Winfield or an Ed Whitson or a Goose Gossage. It is the patience to work with young players and help them develop. So long as the Yankees are unwilling to pay that price, don’t bet on them to win anything.

From the 1988 Baseball Abstract

Does any of this feel familiar? Yes, the Yankees have essentially given up on developing players for the next few years. The players they have developed are now veterans. But the old Columbus shuttle isn’t as frequent as it used to be. If this were the old days, Jeff Weaver’s head would be spinning more than Jim Beattie’s did. Yes, George is acquiring proven stars to lead the way, a ploy that ultimately failed during the eighties. But from what I can tell, the Yankees are doing a relatively good job of identifying their needs. They needed a right fielder, and are going after the best–OK, maybe the second-best–one available. They needed to upgrade their bullpen, and went out and signed Gordon and Quantrill (who are a far cry from the likes of Osuna and Acevado). They need starting pitching, they traded for Javier Vasquez.

I don’t see a Steve Kemp or a Jack Clark yet, although if they sign Kenny Lofton he would fit that category just fine.

The Yankees have sacrificed their prospects to win now, and guess what? They’ve been to six of the last eight World Serious’ and have won four of them. That’s got to come at a price. You can’t have everything. The Yankees can’t stay on top forever. One year, gasp, they will actually miss the playoffs. I don’t know that it will be in 2004, but it’s bound to happen. George isn’t just going to sit back and say, “OK, we made the Serious this year, let’s take a few steps back and build for the future.” This man is in his seventies, and desperately wants to win another title or three before he leaves us.

No, the Yankees will have to crash out of playoff contention, and suffer through some hard times before they start to rebuild their farm system again. The best way for this to happen on George’s watch may be to get the old man suspended again.

Things go in cycles. I empathize with the panic that Yankee fans must be feeling, but they need to relax. As John Harper correctly points out, yesterday’s trade was proof that Brian Cashman still exerts a degree of influence over his boss:

This was something of an anti-Steinbrenner deal that’s all about solid baseball evaluation, not marquee value. It’s also a deal for which The Boss surely will put GM Brian Cashman on trial, pending the results.

Chances are Steinbrenner had barely heard of Vazquez before his baseball people identified him as a target this offseason. Curt Schilling is more Steinbrenner’s idea of a big catch, which is at least partly why he was so furious when the Red Sox got him.

…As a result, one person with knowledge of the Yankees’ internal discussions said yesterday that Cashman, with the support of superscout Gene Michael, had to do a hard sell on Steinbrenner to convince him that Vazquez was the way to go.

…”[Cashman] gave (Steinbrenner) a lot of numbers on Vazquez to show how good he could be for the Yankees,” the person close to the situation said yesterday. “He made the point that Vazquez is still getting better, and that he’ll be twice the pitcher he was with Montreal because he’ll have more run support. (Cashman) did his homework on the guy.”

I heard a lot of Yankee fans crying yesterday about how losing Nick Johnson is the sign of the end. “We’re headed back to oblivion.” Can you imagine how we must sound to other fans around the country who would kill to have these kind of problems? The Yankees were not going to retain the classy chemistry of the ’96-’01 team indefinetly, and I think that may be what is so upsetting to Yankee fans. But instead of living in a fantasy world and believing that the Yankees were going keep the David Cone-Paulie O spirit alive forever, we should appreciate just how precious and special that team was in a George Universe. Then we can wake up and appreciate that for all of his bluster, for all of his arrogance, George Steinbrenner is once again putting together a very good team for 2004. I urge Yankee fans to enjoy the spirit of the season and be thankful for what we have and not complain about what we don’t have.

My man Christian Ruzich has a cinematic take on the Yankee-Expos deal. It’s “lol” as they say in cyberspace.

I’m sure that as festive as the off-season has been thus far for us in the northeast, fans around the country aren’t necessarily moved by the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry (not to mention the moves the Phillies have been making). Good thing that we are generally too self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing to care what the rest of the country thinks. On that note, David Pinto and Edward Cossette discuss a good article by Howard Bryant of The Boston Herald which accuses the Red Sox of being the evil twin of the New York Yanks.

David also has an interesting comparison between Flash Gordon and Paul Quantrill that you should check out. And Jay Jaffe has a tremendous piece of work on how the Yankees should build their starting rotation (one that will evidently need updating as of this afternoon).

According to Lee Sinins, the Expos have called a 2:00 press conference to announce a major move. ESPN is reporting that the Expos have traded Javier Vasquez to the Yankees in exchange for Nick Johnson, Juan Rivera, and a third player, believed to be southpaw reliever Randy Choate.

Is there any surprise that MLB is trying to make news on the day that Barry Bonds is due to tesitfy in court? I don’t know, is there any surprise that the Yankees made the deal on the day that the Red Sox introduced their new manager? You do the math.

And what about Sheff? Gary is talking the talk (like the straw that stirs the drink) in an interview with USA Today. This should end all speculation about whether or not he’ll be in New York next year:

“We’re not going to lose, you can be assured of that,” Sheffield said. “(Yankees owner) George (Steinbrenner) didn’t even bring up the Red Sox during our talks. I don’t think they’re even a concern to him.

“He just kept talking about how bad he wants to win more World Series championships. The Red Sox can say what they want, but look at us. Who’s going to beat us? Nobody.

“I know I speak my mind, but I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk. And if we don’t win the World Series, everybody can come and see me first, because I’ll take the blame.”

…”I really thought the final chapter of my story in baseball would end wearing a Braves’ cap, but I think there would have been a little piece missing, not knowing what it’s like playing in New York, and with George and the Yankees.

“I know there’ll be more criticism. I know the expectations will be great. But there’ll be no more pressure in New York that I don’t already put on myself.”

Sheffield has not been introduced as a Yankee yet, and he’s already talking like Reggie Jackson. This is not Paulie O’s Yanks anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed. Red Sox fans must be licking their chops; with Clemens gone, at least there will be one easy target for them hate in New York (as if they needed an excuse).

More later…

According to a report in The New York Times, Gary Sheffield will be wearing Yankee pinstripes next year, but the Bombers could wait until as late as next week to announce the deal. They have yet to officially introduced Tom Gordon or Paul Quantrill as the newest members of the Yankee bullpen, but they did announce that they had signed left-handed specialist Felix Heredia to a two-year deal (John Flaherty has also been resigned to a one-year deal to be Jorge Posada’s backup, a move that will continue to vex those who think the Bombers make horrible choices with utility players).

Steve Karsay, who is in Tampa working-out said that Sheffield was around the Yankees complex yesterday. Jeff Weaver, who had been working with pitching guru and Friend-of-George Billy Conners this fall before Conners had heart surgery last week, has made some adjustments to his delivery. According to the Times:

Weaver said in a telephone interview that Connors altered his arm angle, telling him he had been throwing sidearm too often and swinging his leg too far behind him in his delivery. Weaver was relieved to find a mechanical cause for his struggles.

“It’s like if you practice a bad golf swing over and over, you’re not going to really notice what you’re doing after a while,” he said. “I was throwing sidearm for so long, I didn’t even realize I was down so low and really dropping my head.”

Somewhere in Florida, Pat Jordan must be thinking, “Well, it’s about time.” Late this summer Jordan told me:

Iíd raise [Weaver’s] arm level about 45% and have him thrown 3/4 overhand, instead of that side arm shit that he throws. If he got his arm up, and was throwing 93, 94 miles an hour

Mike C over at Baseball Rants is one of the great baseball historians in the blogging community. Stop by and catch his latest on the new Hall of Fame ballot. Mike isn’t alone, as Rich Lederer is right up there with him. Rich has a nice tribute to Warren Spahn up at Rich’s Weekend Baseball BEAT (not for nothing, but Mike C is due up next in Rich’s interview series with bloggers).

Here is a good passage from “On the Run,” Maury Wills’ autobiography:

I refuse to get upset with modern ballplayers who can’t bunt or run the bases. They said the same things when I was playing.

So it doesn’t drive me nuts to got to a game and see players who can’t execute fundamentals. There were only a handful of players when I played who could do the little things like bunting properly. The game hasn’t really changed that way. Managers get made because someone didn’t sacrifice a man over, but very few managers insist that their players learn to bunt.

…They don’t have a column in the papers to tell who’s leading the league in sacrifice bunts. You don’t see guys demand that their salaries be doubled because they lead the league in sacrifice bunts. There’s not glory for bunters. All bunting does is win ballgames.

…Learning to bunt takes a lot of time. The manager ends up assuming that some guys can do it and others can’t and he leaves it at that. You have to have time for infield practice. You have to have time for batting practice, the great priority. You have time for all that other stuff, but you don’t have time for bunting.

If Wills wasn’t a great bunter, odds are that he would not have lasted in the big leagues too long, no matter how fast he was. I think he makes a good point about bunting. Think Frank Howard or Rocky Colavito were ace bunters?

Gary Sheffield is still not a Yankee, and who knows if and when he will come to the Boogie Down (though I suspect he eventually will). There is a new member of the Yankees today though. According to Peter Gammons, reliever Paul Quantrill has signed a two-year deal worth $6.8 million. I remember not looking forward to seeing Quantrill come out of the pen when he pitched with Toronto a few years back. But as David Pinto points out, Quantrill is a groundball pitcher moving to a team with a mediocre defense. My man Cliff isn’t too thrilled with either Flash Gordon or Quantrill.

The Yankee bullpen is improving and I’m sure there will be much ink devoted to how much money the Bombers are spending on their relief corps. (You can just see the snide remarks about how the Yankee bullpen costs as much as the total payroll of some teams. Mike Lupica, can you hear me knocking?)

As for the Kevin Brown-for-Jeff Weaver scenerio, it seems to be a lot of hooey. The New York Post says the deal is not likely to go down, at least not as it is presently structured. The Dodgers could be interested in moving Brown for a hitter, and the L.A. Times says that the 39-year old righty would be open to being dealt.

Lastly, David Pinto has a link to an interesting article on New York’s favorite imported monster, Godzilla Matsui, who talks about his first year in the Major Leagues.

Jon Weisman, over at Dodger Thoughts, thinks swapping Kevin Brown for Jeff Weaver makes sense for L.A.:

Brown is a significant injury risk with a huge salary on a pitching-rich team. Especially with the ownership in transition, they would be eager to add flexibility to the payroll. Moreover, he is the symbol of the misguided excess of the failed Kevin Malone “Bring ’em on” era. If the team can trade the other symbol of the Fox era, Gary Sheffield – which they did fairly easily – they could and should absolutely trade Brown. He is Cisco stock purchased at $80 a share.

Of course, Jon would be love to see Nick Johnson thrown in the deal too, but he’ll settle for Jeff Weaver. I don’t see how a one-for-one deal would go through. Right now, it seems like a whole lot of wishful thinking. But it’s good to know that Yankee fans aren’t alone in wanting to see this trade made.

There is no question as to who is running the Hot Stove Show in New York, reports Buster Olney. That’s right, the Boss of Bluster himself, George M. Steinbrenner. Olney thinks this is a bad sign for Yankee fans.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ ace pitcher, Matt Morris has a letter-to-the-editor today in the St. Louis Dispatch, defending the character of Tino Martinez, who was recently traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. There was noise out of St. Louis this past season that Martinez was a disruptive force in the clubhouse. Morris calls out a Novembeer 23rd article written Bryan Burwell–and if anyone has a link to the piece, please send it along–and basically goes on to say what a stand-up guy Martinez is:

I have a hard time believing that anyone who has ever stepped between the white lines with Tino believes his desire is anything less than a champion. He wanted to play every day and was angry when he didn’t. That is and always will be the kind of player I want behind me when it’s my turn to take the ball. We should all have the same attitude. If you can find one player, coach, manager or front office executive who believes Tino’s so-called attitude was part of our problem, then this club isn’t going in a championship direction.

When he played for the Yanks I found Tino to be a high-strung guy, even a bit of a red ass, but not a jerk. It says something about him that one of his former teammates would be willing to defend him in print.

(more…)

Tom Boswell weighs in on the Yankee-Sox rivalry, which seems to get hotter with each passing season.

I hit a couple of used bookstores in Middlebury, Vermont last weekend and came away with a few good items. The first shop must not have recovered from when I was there last spring, because they had zilch in the baseball section. Vexed, I found another shop that had three shelves full of just baseball books. Ohhhh, bacon. I didn’t end up buying much on the count of I didn’t have too much money to spend and I’ve already got a stack of books at home I haven’t read yet.

Of course, I did pick up inexpensive copies of books I already have and love, so I can give them away as gifts. They include, “Here Me Talking to Ya,” an incredible collection of interviews with jazz musicians compiled by Nat Hentoff, and “Life On The Run,” Bill Bradley’s fine account of a year-in-the-life of a professional basketball player.

But I did get a few baseball books of interest, including, “All Those Mornings,” an autobiography by Washington Post scribe Shirely Povich; “Charlie O and The Angry A’s,” by Bill Libby; a nice, first edition copy of Curt Flood’s autobiography (written with Richard Carter), “The Way It Is,” and Maury Wills’ autobiography, “On the Run,” (written with Mike Celizic).

There was a book of letters exchanged by Joe and Phil Neikro during the 1987 season, that looked like fun and a couple of books by Charles Einstein on Willie Mays that I’d like to get to at some point too. But I chose the Wills book because I remember Bill James commenting on it in one of his books. So far, it hasn’t been a disapointment. In the first fifty pages, Wills comes across as a true son-of-a-bitch. He tells the reader that he is a drug addict. One of thirteen children, and went on to have seven of his own. He was married while he was still in high school and he and his wife never got along. (He claims to have never seen his wife naked either.) Wills writes about what a lousy father he was, and how the woman he loved after he left his wife, slept with his son Bump. A loner on the Dodgers, he talks about being a bed-wetter until he was in his early ’30s. Oh yeah, he also mentions that he single-handedly revolutionized the game of baseball. A sombitch, yes. Boring? No.

Gary Sheffield is not a Yankee…yet. The Daily News reports that negoitations have hit a snag, with the two sides divided by…you guessed it, dollars. But Kevin Kernan thinks the deal will eventually happen, and that Sheffield is a perfect fit for the Yankees. Rob Neyer also thinks that signing Sheffield (as well as Boston inking Schilling) is a risk well worth taking:

Sure, Sheffield might pull something or strain something, and wind up playing 120 games instead of 145 (which is roughly his norm). But if not Gary Sheffield, then who? If you can afford to pay him what he’s asking, he’s worth the risk, and the same goes for Schilling. The Yankees and the Red Sox are essentially playing a different game than all the other teams, and spending big money on great players who might be slightly more likely to get hurt is just a part of that different game.

While Yankee fans wait for Sheffield, the Bombers are involved in a series of other moves. There is talk that Kenny Lofton will come to New York to play center field. (If that happens, we can kiss our boy Nick Johnson goodbye, don’t you think?) Yesterday, the much-maligned third baseman, Aaron Boone agreed to a one-year deal; the Yanks resigned weeble-wobble utility infielder Enrique Wilson to a one-year contract too.

The bullpen is also changing. It’s improving, aging and getting more expensive as Tom “Flash” Gordon has reportedly inked a two-year deal worth $7.5 million to set up Mo Rivera. Paul Quantrill, a right-handed sinkerball specialist could join the Yankees soon too. Fianlly, Brian Cashman is close to resigning left handed relievers Felix Heredia and Gabe White.

Whew. If that’s not enough for you, Newsday is reporting that the Yankees and Dodgers are talking about a Jeff Weaver-for-Kevin Brown swap:

The Dodgers haven’t agreed to take Weaver, of course, and they may very well never agree to do so. Yet the trade would bring some positives to Los Angeles, as well. It would give the Dodgers some payroll relief, and they could reinvest the money they saved to improve their ailing offense.

…Money is the primary reason the Dodgers would consider such a trade, but it isn’t the only one. While Brown put together an excellent 2003, it came in the wake of two injury-plagued seasons. He made just 10 starts in 2002, when he sprained his right elbow and underwent lower back surgery, and 19 starts in 2001, when he tore a flexor muscle in his right elbow and required surgery. Including a 17-day stay on the disabled list this past season because of an abdominal strain, he has made 11 trips to the DL since 1990.

Chew on that one. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are still after Keith Foulke, and Pedro Martinez is interesting in working out a contract extension. This just in from the pundits at ESPN: The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry never sleeps.

Rich Lederer has the latest installment of his interview series up. Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus is featured this week, and Will gives a lengthy, highly engaging and entirely enjoyable interview. Surprised? Didn’t think so. Don’t sleep.

Terry Francona is expected to be announced as the next manager of the Boston Red Sox this week. He could have been introduced as early as today, but according to Bob Hohler in The Boston Globe, he will have to wait a bit longer. Meanwhile, Bill Madden–who is not a fan of Theo Epstein and the John Henry regime–thinks that Francona is a poor cherce to lead Boston to the World Serious.

Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor are the most impressive new candidates eligible for the Hall of Fame. I would assume that both men will make it in. Hopefully after Eck is selected, the voters will reconsider both Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage. Maybe someone like Rich Lederer will write an analysis about the great modern closers and illustrate just how deserving Sutter and the Goose really are.

According to Peter Gammons, the Yankees are set to sign free agent outfielder Gary Sheffield to a three-year deal worth somewhere between $36-$38 million. The only question is: when will the deal be announced?

New York may wait until after the Dec. 7 deadline for teams to offer salary arbitration to former players who became free agents to finalize the deal with Sheffield, a baseball official with knowledge of the Yankees’ deliberations said on condition of anonymity.

If the Atlanta Braves don’t offer arbitration to Sheffield, the team that signs him after Dec. 7 would not lose any amateur draft picks as compensation.

The signing of Sheffield is inevitable. The suspicious part of me fears that this is Danny Tartabull all over again, but to be fair, Sheffield is a much better player than Tartabull ever was. Sure, there should be concerns about the health of a 35-year old player, not to mention Sheffield’s history as a malcontent. One the other hand, the optimist in me says, here is a great hitter, coming off his best season. (Since when do the Yankees sign players who are past their prime?) If he can remain healthy, he should continue to produce for the next three years.

Aaron Gleeman thinks it’s a good move for New York:

The immediate reaction from many people seems to be that New York is making a mistake, mostly because Sheffield does nothing to solve their defensive problems up the middle.

I certainly agree that the Yankees middle-infield and middle-outfield situations are pretty bad on the defensive end. That said, Sheffield is one of the best hitters in baseball and adding his bat to the lineup is going to be a massive improvement over the production New York got from their right fielders last year (.256/.317/.465).

And really, what is the difference if you are improving a team by 50 runs on offense or 50 runs on defense? It’s the same 50 runs. Actually, I don’t think that’s completely true, but you get the general idea. And improving the team by 50 runs on defense would probably require more than just signing one player, which is all they had to do to improve the offense that much.

I never used to like watching Sheffield hit. He just had too many tics. He was so hyped up I felt uncomfortable just watching him. He made me nervous. But Sheff doesn’t seem to spit as much during an at-bat as he used to though, and I have to admit I’ve been won over during the past few seasons by just how impressive an offensive player he is. Sheffield’s bat speed is tremendous, and boy, does he ever hit the ball hard.

Yeah, I would have liked to have Vlad, but the Yankees aren’t interested in adding another long-term contract. Sheff wants to play here, and George wants him. Like it or not, here he comes.

The Yankees are also close to inking Tom “Flash” Gordon to a two-year, $7 million pact to serve as Mariano Rivera’s set-up man. Paul Quantrill and LaTroy Hawkins remain options as well.

It’s windy and cold here in Vermont this morning, but there are many happy Red Sox fans in these parts regardless. The Red Sox have pitching! This is a moment that should legitimately make Yankee fans nervous. For the better part of 85 years, Boston is a team that has been defined by its offense. If only they had pitching, if only…Well, adding Curt Schilling sure is a good place to start. Buster Olney sure thinks so:

Throughout the Yankees’ dynasty of 1996-2001, they viewed the Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles as sleeping giants, dangerous franchises that were operated incompetently. But now the Red Sox are being run effectively, efficiently, and they are starting to win some of the battles the Yankees always won in past years. They’ll have their next chance on the field in the 2004 season.

Dan Shaughnessy, a writer who has a lot invested in the Red Sox being good but not champs, says this move makes Boston the favorites in the American League East. He also raises an eyebrow over how the Yankees were squeezed by Arizona:

Truly there is something about this deal that does not make sense. In their talks with the Yankees, the Diamondbacks wanted Alfonso Soriano and Nick Johnson in exchange for the 37-year-old Schilling. Dealing with Boston, Arizona settled for Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge de la Rosa, and a minor leaguer to be named, likely Michael Goss — four players who do not equal one Nick Johnson.

Conspiracy theorists believe the Diamondbacks stuck it to the Yankees in retaliation for New York snatching David Wells last winter after Wells made a handshake agreement with Arizona. Look for the Yankees to go after Bartolo Colon now that the Red Sox have Schilling. And brace yourself for New York’s eventual signing of Gary Sheffield.

“I guess I hate the Yankees now,” said Schilling last night after the deal was announced.

Fortunately for Yankee fans, there are some silver linings here. Let’s talk Turkey. We hope that Schilling starts to break down. We hope that he gets in trouble with the press, and that the antiquated Fenway Clubhouse isn’t big enough for both Pedro and Schilling. (Fat chance.) OK, I’m bitter. These might be flimsy hopes, but you got to start somewhere. Meanwhile, Schilling admits that he hasn’t always been kind to Prince P:

“The one thing I know about being a visiting player is that I hated the fans,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of disliking players until they’re on your side. A guy like Pedro, I think I was quoted in the middle of the playoffs when that situation occurred [involving Karim Garcia and Don Zimmer] as calling him a `punk.’ I can’t take it back. I felt that way at the time, and I’ve played with guys that have done the same thing and I thought it was pretty sweet as a teammate. It’s going to be different from anything I’ve ever done on a consistent basis and it’s going to be a challenge.”

As Gordon Edes notes, the Red Sox should not pop open the champagne just yet:

Of course, it’s a great deal for the Red Sox. But adding Curt Schilling, as good as he is, guarantees nothing, except an over-the-top response from the Yankees, who are virtually certain to add either Bartolo Colon or Javier Vazquez while returning Andy Pettitte to a rotation that will be missing Roger Clemens and possibly David Wells in 2004. In the euphoria that followed his successful pursuit of Schilling last night, Sox GM Theo Epstein acknowledged as much.

…Before planning on that parade down Boylston Street that Schilling was imagining in his musings during last night’s press conference, remember this: The A’s, with their fabulous threesome of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and Mark Mulder, have yet to play in a World Series. The Yankees, despite their rotation of impeccable pedigree, have not won a World Series since 2000.

The Sox led the AL in starters’ ERA by a wide margin over the Bombers in 2002 and didn’t even make the playoffs. Same thing in 2000.

I think it is fitting to end today’s entry with the Red Sox Don, Peter Gammons, who gives the lowdown on the deal, and aptly praises Boston’s GM, Theo Epstein.