Check out my take on the Yankees in the wake of the A.J. Burnett deal over at SI.com.

There are so many things to dislike about A.J. Burnett and his new Yankee contract that I don’t know where to start. I suppose I’ll start with in the cheapest, easiest place, with a comparison of Burnett and Carl Pavano at the moments at which they signed their big Yankee contracts:

There’s no question that A.J. Burnett has better stuff that Carl Pavano. There’s also no question that Carl Pavano’s contract was a smarter, better investment at the time it was signed than Burnett’s is today. None. Pavano arrived in New York off not one, but two consecutive 200-inning seasons (Burnett managed just 165 2/3 innings in 2007), was three years younger, signed for one year less (making him a whopping four years younger in the final year of his deal), and the average annual salary of Pavano’s deal was 40 percent lower than that of Burnett’s.

Oh, and here’s another little nugget, the two pitchers’ career K/BB rates entering their Yankee contracts:

Pavano: 2.28
Burnett: 2.25

One could argue that the comparison between these two pitchers isn’t entirely fair. Pavano’s performance (or lack thereof) during the length of his contract was an extreme case that is extremely unlikely to be repeated, even by a pitcher with Burnett’s sketchy history. At the same time, the Pavano contract was widely panned upon it’s signing, long before anyone knew just how badly things would go, and I think it’s clear that this Burnett contract is an even worse move. It may not be entirely fair, but it is extremely informative, if for no other reason than it’s illustration of the fact that Brian Cashman, a general manager I have long defended in this space, did not learn from one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

ESPN is reporting that the Yankees have signed A.J. Burnett to a five-year deal worth $82.5 million dollars. I cannot help but react emotionally to this signing. It is an inexplicably awful, irresponsible, wrong-headed move. I hate hate hate it. It makes me physically sick. Combined with the New Stadium, it is enough for me to question my allegiance to this team. I cannot be consoled. I assume many of you feel the same way. Consider the comments of this post group therapy . . .

While everyone was talking about CC, AJ, Melky and Mike yesterday, the Yankees lost four players in the Rule 5 draft, the most of any organization (the Angels lost three pitchers, the Rockies were the only other team to lose more than one player in the major league portion of the draft). To me this is evidence of how well stocked the Yankees farm system is, at least in terms of pitching.

Remember, the Yankees traded away Jose Tabata and three pitchers (Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens, and Daniel McCutchen) at the trading deadline (Tabata, Karstens, and Ohlendorf are all on Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster; McCutchen is not yet Rule 5 eligible). They traded two more pitchers in the Nick Swisher deal (Jeff Marquez and Jhonny Nuñez, both now on the White Sox’s 40-man, with Nuñez being replaced in the Yankees’ system by the non-Rule 5 eligible Kanekoa Texeira), let Darrell Rasner head off to Japan, cleared out another eight spots on the 40-man roster via free agency (some of which were filled by players activated from the 60-day DL), filled the remaining empty spots on the 40-man, and still had enough talent in their system to be the most targeted organization in the Rule 5 draft. That’s impressive.

Since I didn’t address them at the time, here’s a quick look at the six men added to the 40-man roster this offseason as well as the four men taken in the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft yesterday and, for yucks, the two taken in the Triple-A portion of the draft.

First the 40-man additions listed in rough approximation of their proximity to the major leagues:

Steven Jackson – RHP

The last remaining player from the deal that sent Randy Johnson back to Arizona after the 2006 season, Jackson utilized an improved split-finger fastball to have a break out season in relief for Triple-A Scranton this year. After the All-Star break, Jackson posted a 0.87 ERA while striking out 26 in 20 2/3 innings against just eight walks and no homers. On the season, he struck out 91 in 79 2/3 innings while allowing just four homers. A big righty who will turn 27 in March, Jackson could be part of the fungible minimum-wage portion of the Yankees bullpen in 2009.

(more…)

Okay, so the Yankees have landed the big fish, with CC Sabathia agreeing to a seven-year deal worth roughly $161 million. Now what? The rumor mill has had them going hard after first Derek Lowe, then A.J. Burnett, with Ben Sheets and Andy Pettitte serving as backup options who could be had with shorter term contracts.

This prompts two questions: Exactly how much money to they have left to spend? and What about the offense?

With regards to the first, let’s do the math on the money coming off last year’s payroll and how much of that has already been spent:

all costs in millions of dollars; *estimated prorated portion of 2008 salary

In addition to the above, the Yankees have four arbitration eligible players. Three of whom had poor 2008 seasons and thus are unlikely to have much negative effect on the bottom line. Those three are Chien-Ming Wang, Brian Bruney, and Melky Cabrera. The last is Xavier Nady. The Yankees paid Nady roughly $1.12 million of his $3.35 million salary last year. Nady would cost the Yankees an extra $2.23 million even without getting a raise and is coming off a career year. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect his salary to exceed $5 million in 2009. To make things simple, I’ll just round down the Yankees net savings in the chart above to $40 million.

(more…)

Just because I think the Yankees need Mark Teixeira more than they need CC Sabathia doesn’t mean I’m not thrilled that the Yankees have landed the big lefty. CC Sabathia is, in my opinion, the best pitcher in baseball. He’s 28 years old, left-handed, a work horse who can give you 240 innings a year, and he’s only gotten better throughout his career. I’m not concerned about his weight. I’m not concerned about his workloads. And I’m not concerned about the length of the seven-year, $161 million contract the Yankees just gave him. He’s an ace, a horse, and the thought of having him and Joba Chamberlain as a pair of opposite-armed aces atop the Yankee rotation well into the next decade give me goosebumps.

Here are a few things to like about Sabathia.

• Though he was just 17 when taken by the Indians with the 20th overall pick in the 1998 amateur draft and started 33 games in the major leagues as a 20-year-old rookie, the Indians were careful about his workloads through his age 25 season, extending him past 200 innings just once in his first six major league seasons and rarely allowing him to throw more than 120 pitches in a start (and never as many as 130).
• Though scouts have always griped about his weight, Sabathia’s only DL stay resulted from a groin strain early in the 2006 season. He missed a month, threw eight shutout innings in his second start after returning, and didn’t have any reoccurrences.
• Sabathia’s walk rate declined every year from 2004 to 2007. The only reason it didn’t go down again in 2008 was that he set an impossibly low standard in 2007 by walking a mere 1.38 men per nine innings.
• Sabathia’s strikeout rate increased every year from 2002 to 2006 and he set a new career high by striking out 8.93 men per nine innings in 2008.
• Something of a fly ball pitcher in his early twenties, Sabathia has a 1.41 GB/FB rate over the past four seasons.

(more…)

The answer to “what went wrong?” is surprisingly quick and easy: Jorge Posada got hurt, and the team couldn’t compensate for that loss because they were too busy compensating for other problems.

That was the conclusion of my postmortem on the Yankees 2008 season. Note that I’m not blaming Posada’s bum shoulder for the Yankees’ failure to make the postseason for the first time since 1993, but rather the combination of Posada’s injury and the team’s other failures, most significantly Robinson Cano’s collapse. Had Cano been productive, the Yankees very well may have survived the loss of Posada, but the combination of the two simply took too many runs off the board.

Heading into 2009, we’re hearing very encouraging reports about Cano’s off-season training regime in the Dominican Republic and his continued work with hitting coach Kevin Long, but little about Posada. With Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu departing as free agents and the team focusing on improving their pitching rather than replacing those runs on offense, the Yankees will need more than a comeback season from Cano to return to the postseason, they’ll need a full contribution from Posada as well, and if Posada’s shoulder hasn’t recovered enough to allow him to catch his usual slate of 140 or so games, they’ll have to find a much more productive replacement for him than Jose Molina, who is a fine defensive catcher, but a miserable hitter.

Here are the men who started behind the plate for the Yankees in 2008:

OPS+ adjusted for position except for *

Entering the season, Chad Moeller’s career line (.224/.284/.346) was not significantly better than Molina’s (.243/.279/.345), both men were the same age, and Molina had hit well for the Yankees down the stretch in 2007 and had a hot streak for them in April of this year, so it’s really only in hindsight that the choice of Molina over Moeller seems like an obvious mistake given Moeller’s 60-points advantage in on-base percentage. Still, as the season progressed and Molina’s bat failed to restart following his late-April hamstring injury, it became increasingly obvious that the Yankees needed to try someone else behind the dish. The late-July trade for Ivan Rodriguez, who was hitting .295/.338/.417 for the Tigers, seemed like a brilliant solution to that problem. The Yankees didn’t miss Kyle Farnsworth given the strength of their bullpen and the 6.75 ERA he posted with Detroit, but Rodriguez was never given more than three starts in a row, didn’t hit when he did played, and was largely abandoned down the stretch, starting just five of the Yankees’ final 18 games.

Moeller and the now 37-year-old Rodriguez are both free agents this offseason, but looking at the catchers remaining in the Yankees’ system, the organization is surprisingly strong and deep at the position over the long-term, thanks largely to its efforts of the past couple of years:

*on May 1, 2009

(more…)

The Yankees have a lot of parts that could use some fixin’. The team has decided to focus on the starting rotation despite the many young starting pitching prospects working their way up through the organization. Last week, I largely focused on first base, where the Yankees have a big hole and the free agent market offers the perfect player to fill it. During the 2008 season, two major areas of concern were second base and catcher, but the Yankees have very talented players signed to long-term contracts at each of those positions, both of which are very shallow in terms of the talent available league-wide. Third base is not broken, nor, for the moment is shortstop or the bullpen, but the Yankees’ outfield and designated hitter situation very much is.

Here are the players who started for the Yankees at the three outfield positions and DH last year:

*adjusted for position

Center field was a disaster, the aggregate numbers at the position having been inflated slightly by Johnny Damon’s .294/.378/.529 line in 33 starts there. With Damon helping out in center and DH, the team’s performance in left field dipped below average. Designated hitter was also buoyed by Damon, but even moreso by the outstanding work of Jason Giambi, who has since departed as a free agent, as well as seven strong starts from Alex Rodriguez (.333/.414/.625). Meanwhile, Bobby Abreu, who started all but ten games in right field and kept that position in the black, has also headed off to find perhaps his final fortune as a free agent, leaving right field in the hands of Xavier Nady, whose .268/.320/.474 line as a Yankee was a far more accurate representation of his abilities than the .330/.383/.535 he hit in Pittsburgh over the first four months of the season. Last year, the average right fielder hit .276/.347/.451. Nady’s career line is .280/.335/.458, and he’s a sub-par defender.

Here are the Yankees’ other in-house options in the outfield:

*on Opening Day 2009

The problem with this list is that the Yankees’ best outfielder (setting aside the career year Nady won’t repeat) is their oldest, while their youngest (from among those with major league experience) is their worst. As it stands now, the Yankees have a giant hole in center field, a rapidly aging DH coming off knee surgery who is no longer viable in the field (Matsui), an average-at-best right fielder, and a 35-year-old Johnny Damon in left with little on the way other than Austin Jackson, who just hit .246/.298/.377 in the hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League and has yet to play above Double-A.

(more…)

Yesterday I looked at the state of the Yankee rotation and of the organizational starting pitching depth as it stands right now. Today, I want to try to figure out which free agents best fit into the Yankees plans for 2009 and beyond and how.

To begin with, I want to rerun my chart of the returning 2008 starters, but I’m going to add one name to it. With Mike Mussina’s retirement confirmed (though not yet official), the Yankees are all but guaranteed to bring Andy Pettitte back on a one-year deal. Though Pettitte had a poor year in 2008, I support this move for two reasons. The first is that a one-year deal essentially serves as a stop-gap as the Yankees’ pitching prospects continue to mature. Joba Chamberlain is ready to start the 2009 season in the Yankee rotation, but though the Yankees have nine intriguing starting prospects in their system, none of the other eight is fully ready just yet. Even Phil Hughes would benefit from starting the season at Triple-A. A one-year deal for Pettitte gives Hughes (or Kennedy, or even George Kontos) time to refine his skills, then gets Pettitte out of the way for that pitcher to join the rotation in 2010.

Second, Pettitte’s poor 2008 season wasn’t all that poor and was weighed down by an ugly second half that Pettitte blamed on his failure to follow his usual offseason conditioning program due to a desire to stay out of sight in the wake of the Mitchell Report’s December 2007 release. Even still, Pettitte threw 204 innings, won 14 games, and posted an ERA just a tick below league average. After 22 starts, Pettitte was 12-7 with a 3.76 ERA. He then went 2-7 with a 6.23 the rest of the way. Over his entire career, Pettitte’s second-half ERA has been nearly a half run lower than his first-half mark. I’m willing to give Pettitte the benefit of the doubt given both his durability (four straight seasons of 200-plus innings) and the roster flexibility his one-year deal would provide following the 2009 season.

And so, our starting point for this discussion is this:

*on Opening Day 2009

Given the above list of “in-house” pitchers (pending Pettitte’s signing, of course), if the Yankees were to land CC Sabathia, which would be a no-brainer addition should Sabathia accept the team’s offer, the 2009 rotation would look like this:

I’d be content to stop there, with Aceves available to start the season in Hughes’ place and to compensate for Chamberlain’s 150-innings limit once Hughes (or Kennedy, etc.) arrives to take over the fifth spot. But what if Sabathia decides that returning to his home state and getting the opportunity to become one of the game’s best-hitting pitchers is more valuable to him than Yankee dollars? And is there a way for the Yankees to provide some more insurance in that fifth spot that might allow them to leave Hughes in Scranton for a larger portion of the season and hold Aceves in reserve in case of an injury to one of the top four?

There are roughly 50 major league starting pitchers on the free agent market right now, with only Ryan Dempster having signed, re-upping with the Cubs for $52 million over four years. I won’t bother you with all 50, as at least half of them are sub-Ponson level dreck (i.e. Horatio Ramirez and Jason Johnson, both of whom pitched primarily in relief last year), perpetually injured (Mark Prior, Matt Clement), or as in the case of future Hall of Famers Mussina and Greg Maddux, retired. Tom Glavine and John Smoltz will only pitch for the Braves if they return, and are also both 40-somethings coming off injury. Randy Johnson is another 40-something who, despite having a solid 2008 season, simply will not return to New York. Curt Schilling, yet another 40-something coming off injury and like Glavine and Smoltz a retirement candidate, has said he would not follow Johnny Damon’s lead by turning traitor on the Red Sox. Carving all of those pitchers out of the list and stopping before we get down to Ponson and his ilk, we get this list (all stats from 2008):

*as of Opening Day 2009

(more…)

Ryan Dempster signed a four-year, $52 million deal to remain a Cub, while rumor has it the Yankees plan to offer A.J. Burnett $80 million for five years (fortunately one Yankee official has already dismissed those figures as “nonsense”). I’ll take a closer look at the Yankees’ options for outside pitching help tomorrow. Today, I want to look at the Yankees in-house options and prospects in an attempt to give some perspective to the proceedings.

2008 Yankee Starting Pitchers

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