Now that Joe Torre has (in an absurd bit of media-fueled theater) been officially not fired, the Tigers and Kenny Rogers have done to the A’s (and in the latter case the Cardinals) what they did to the Yankees in the Division Series, and Yankee senior vice president of media relations Rick Cerrone has been fired as a low-impact mia culpa to Alex Rodriguez over Tom Verducci’s now infamous Sports Illustrated article, the Queens of Hearts and Chicken Littles have finally quieted to the point that we can look back at the 2006 New York Yankees without having to shout above the din. As I did last year, I’ll take a player-by-player look at the 2006 Yankees over the course of my next several posts, but before I do, let’s kick things off with a quick look at how the team performed as a whole:

The 2006 New York Yankees finished the season with the American League’s best record (97-65, a game better than the surging Twins) and tied with the eventual pennant-winning Tigers for the league’s best Pythagorean record (95-67, two games better than the Twins). The primary reason for this success was that the Yankees boasted the major league’s best offense. The Bronx Bombers led majors in runs scored (930 total, 5.74 per game) thanks to a balanced attack that saw them finish second in the American League in both home runs (to the defending champion White Sox), and stolen bases (to the Angels, whose 72 percent success rate paled next to the Bombers’ 80 percent), while drawing just one less walk than the second-best A’s (Boston lead the league). In a season in which the average American Leaguer hit just .275/.339/.437, the Yankees as a team posted a .285/.363/.461 line, their team on-base percentage of .363 outdistancing the Red Sox’s second-best mark by twelve points.

On the other side of the ball, the Yankees finished second in the league (to the Tigers) in defensive efficiency, a huge turn around from last year’s tenth-place performance and one that surely had a great deal to do with their completely revamped (unintended though it might have been) outfield. Such an efficient defense also helps put into context the league average performance of their pitching staff (4.73 runs allowed per game and a 4.41 team ERA, which works out to a team ERA+ of 99). In front of an average defense (or worse yet, the iron-gloved 2005 Yankees), that lukewarm pitching performance just might have turned the blood cold. But with the everyday players contributing at an elite level on both sides of the ball, the Yankee pitching didn’t need to be better than average during the regular season. When the bats were cooled by the majors’ best pitching staff in October, however, the team’s shortcomings on the mound were thrown into sharp relief, resulting in a quick first-round exit at the hands of the eventual pennant-winning Tigers.

Still, the 2006 Yankees were a good team that avoided prolonged slumps (their longest losing streak was four games and their worst month was a .538 June) and only got better as the season progressed (first half-winning percentage: .581, August: .600, September .621). Of course, they were also the oldest and most expensive team in the major leagues, but bubbling up below the surface are a couple of young hurlers who could improve the team in their three trouble areas: age, price, and pitching. I’ll take a look at what the future could (and perhaps should) hold for the home nine in the coming weeks, but for now, let’s look back at the 2006 club. I’ll start today with the outfielders, as major injuries to the team’s starting corner outfielders and middle-of-the-order sluggers were central to the progression of the Yankees’ 2006 season.

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The Yankees picked up Gary Sheffield’s $13 million option today, according to MLB.com. It looks as if they’ll agree to a two-year deal with Mike Mussina sometime this week.

Oh, and here, check out the Top Ten Yankee Prospects over at Top Prospect Alert.com. The top five? Some kid names Hughes, followed by Jose Tabata (OF), Tyler Clippard (P), Joba Chamberlain (P) and Ian Kennedy (P).

Here’s the latest on Mike Mussina and Gary Sheffield. According to Joel Sherman in today’s Post:

The Yankees intend to sign Mike Mussina to a two-year contract and trade Gary Sheffield, sooner rather than later on both moves, to initiate an offseason plan in which they will emphasize upgrading their rotation, bullpen, catching and – if possible – farm system.

Bill Madden and Anthony McCarron add in the News:

The Yankees apparently won’t wait until tomorrow’s deadline to pick up the contract option on Sheffield. According to club sources, the Yanks were planning to trigger the option last night and begin entertaining trade offers from six teams, including the team that knocked them out of the playoffs – the American League champion Detroit Tigers.

In addition to the Tigers, the Astros, Indians, Rangers, Padres and Orioles all have inquired about the slugger, who played in only 39 games last season because of a wrist injury. The Cubs may have interest, too, according to a source.

Meanwhile, Ed Price reports that there may be some shady business in the D. Matsuzaka business.

Tyler Kepner writes about Mike Mussina and Jaret Wright today in the Times:

Mussina, who turns 38 next month, has known that the Yankees will not pick up his $17 million option. But he wants to stay and the team wants him back. Arn Tellem, Mussina’s agent, said in an e-mail message that he has had positive talks with the Yankees, but he added that the sides had just started the process.

The Yankees would like to re-sign Mussina for two years, and they seem to understand it would take more than $10 million a year to sign him.

Wright would cost the Yanks $7 million next year but they can buy him out for $4 million.

Meanwhile, Mariano Rivera has some words of encouragement for Alex Rodriguez:

“They didn’t give the guy a break. New York, the town,” Rivera said of Alex Rodriguez. “He’s done a good job. If you ask me who has hit in the playoffs, I am going to say two or three guys. Alex is one guy, he is not the team. You can’t win with that on one guy. A team is 25 guys.”

…”It’s not up to me whether he is here or not or whether the Yankees want him here or not,” Rivera said. “He wanted to be a part of the team, part of a winning team. He’s done everything. He works so hard, it’s amazing.

“It’s not easy being himself sometimes,” Rivera said. “It’s tough on him.”
(Kristie Ackert, Daily News)

Hey, bro. It’s not easy being green. Such is life.

Derek Jeter haters have another reason to roll their eyes. The Yankee captain has won the Gold Glove award again. Congrats, DJ.

Let the Daisuke Matsuzaka Sweepstakes begin. According to Adam Rubin in The Daily News:

Before a crowd of 200 reporters in a ballroom at the Takanawa Prince Hotel, Seibu Lions president Hidekazu Ota confirmed the team’s intention to make Matsuzaka available via the posting system.

Once Matsuzaka is posted, major-league clubs will have four days to submit sealed bids. The Lions then have four days to accept the highest bid, which could reach $20 million – $7 million more than the Orix Blue Wave got in 2000 for posting Ichiro Suzuki. (Seibu is supposed to know only the amount, not the winning bidder.) Once the offer is accepted, the Lions will pocket that eight-figure payment, provided Matsuzaka and the major-league team come to terms on a contract within 30 days.

You’d have to think the Yankees will be involved.

Meanwhile, it’s official: Don Mattingly will replace Lee Maz as Joe Torre’s bench coach (triple A hitting coach Kevin Long will take over for Mattingly). This doesn’t necessarily mean that Mattingly will one day take over for Torre.

“You can’t just assume something will be given to you,” Mattingly said. “I need to earn everything I can get. And I don’t have to be in a hurry. I don’t need to put any kind of timetable on it, to put that kind of pressure on the situation. I need to learn.”

General manager Brian Cashman said he even made a point of telling Mattingly last week that this promotion doesn’t “guarantee” him the manager job – although obviously it’s a very encouraging sign.

“Brian made it pretty clear to me … he wasn’t guaranteeing anything for me,” he said. “He felt like I had the mind to be able to do more, to be able to manage someday, but obviously the New York Yankees is a huge job and there’s a lot that goes with it.

“Obviously,” he added, “this puts me in a better position because I get to do a lot more in the game and be involved in a lot of different areas that I couldn’t be before.”
(Jim Baumbach, Newsday)

Mattingly doesn’t strike me as the managerial type, but what do I know? I’ve said all along, ideally, you don’t want to be the guy who replaces Torre, you want to be the guy who replaces the guy who replaces Torre. But Mattingly is a Yankee legend so you never know.

While Gary Sheffield appears to be the first order of Hot Stove business for the Yankees, Bernie Williams filed for free agency yesterday. You wonder if there is a place on the 2007 Yankees for the best center fielder in team history not named DiMaggio or Mantle. (Meanwhile, Jets running back Curtis Martin, another “soft superstar,” will likely never play another game.)

The bidding for D. Matsuzaka will begin shortly.

Steve Lombardi has a link to a Phillip Hughes website.

Finally, The Times has more on the latest health scare for George Steinbrenner.

I’m not much for Halloween but I know some people who absolutely love it. An ex-girlfriend couldn’t wait for it to come around each year and she’d spend weeks preparing what she’d wear. To me, it’s like New Year’s Eve in that it is Amateur Night in NYC. But hey, I’m a snob, and to be truthful, Halloween has a lot of redeeming values that New Year’s Eve doesn’t, like all the great costumes.

I remember being terrified on Halloween as a teenager. If you didn’t go out, you were a wus. So I’d go out with a band of friends. We dreaded running into older kids, but we always did. At which point they’d pelt us with eggs, and shaving cream, and pound us with socks filled with flower (we heard rumors that some kids has socks filled with quarters but never actually saw them). Lots of nervous anticipation and lots of running. And for what?

Last night was unseasonably warm in New York. I saw clusters of little kids in their outfits–a fat kid wearing a Darth Vader costume, and his fat father wearing the helmet next to him. As I approached my apartment building I saw three skinny teenage boys walking quickly. They looked nervous. One was talking into his cell phone. “Nah, you better stay about from 231st street–they’re throwing eggs down there.” Man, I wouldn’t go back to being a teenager for all the tea in China.

Our pal Pete Abraham has a wonderful blog entry about how newspapers cover Hot Stove rumors.

In other news, another report on George Steinbrenner’s health.

The Yankees have until midnight on Sunday to make a decision on Gary Sheffield’s $13 million option for 2007. As Alex previously reported, Brian Cashman’s plan has been to pick up Sheffield’s option, but only after finding a team willing to trade for Sheffield and assume his entire salary. Sheffield caught wind of this plan last week and was predictably upset (if there’s one thing Gary won’t stand for it’s the lack of a long-term contract).

Sheffield’s public outburst, in which he said “there’s going to be a problem” if the Yankees pick up his option and then trade him, appeared to endanger Cashman’s plans. But, as the final paragraph of this extended version of the AP story above indicates, the possibility of obtaining Gary Sheffield at one year/$13 million in lieu of shelling out a Beltran-like nine figures over seven years for an over-30 Alfonso Soriano has generated a great deal of interest around the league. According to today’s Newsday, a trade is still the most likely scenario to result from Sunday’s deadline. That Newsday story cited an unnamed AL official as saying that Cashman is looking for “a package of prospects, bullpen help or a starting pitcher” in return for the surly 38-year-old right fielder who is coming off a soft tissue injury to the left wrist which generates a great deal of the power in his swing.

Here’s hoping it works out. The Yankees already have outfielders Bobby Abreu, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, Melky Cabrera, and the major league-ready Kevin Thompson and Kevin Reese under contract for 2007. What’s more, they will likely need that $13 million to help improve their starting pitching. They have no need for Sheffield, who in addition to his age, injury and attitude, proved to be an awful defensive first baseman (though his transition did occur under far from optimal conditions). Despite all of that, Sheffield remains a valuable asset. Cashman’s plan, if successful, will turn Sheffield’s redundant value into more beneficial assets for the ballclub, yet another sign that the Yankees’ decision making is headed in the right direction.

As for the other two option decisions the Yankees have to make, they’ll have until a week from Sunday (Nov. 12) to decide whether or not it’s worth an extra $3 million to keep Jaret Wright around (his buyout is a whopping $4 million). The deadline on Mike Mussina’s $17 million option is the following Wednesday (Nov. 15). I assume the Yanks will opt to buyout Mussina for $1.5 million. The only suspense there is whether or not they’ll work out a new, less expensive two-year deal with Moose by that deadline, or if they’ll wait and bid on him along with the other 29 teams as the offseason progresses. My guess is the former, given their failure to retain Jon Leiber under similar circumstances two years ago. That is, of course, if Moose is amenable to their offer.

Who are the cherce free agents this winter? A quick look via the Associated Press.

Jeez, well that wasn’t even close, now was it? The Tigers kicked the ball around for five games, couldn’t hit worth nuthin’, and got stomped by the Cardinals. It wasn’t a particularly exciting Serious. Actually, other than the Mets-Cards, the entire playoffs were boring.

My immediate thoughts go out to Brian Gunn, Larry Borowsky, Will Leitch, Dayn Perry and all the other great Cardinal fans I know out there. First championship for St. Louie since 1982–good for them. Who would have called it, right? And our boy Jeff Weaver pitched a whale of game last night–guess he fixed that lazy three-quarter arm angle problem that kept him a mediocre pitcher for so long. The only regret I have is not getting to see The Gambler out there in Game Six with his back to the wall. Oh well. A surprising champion in what was a most entertaining year in baseball. We don’t have to like it, but we’ll take it.

How many days ’til pitchers and catchers, again?

It looks like they’re going to get the game in tonight. The pitching match up is Jeff Suppan against Michael J. Fo . . . er Jeremy Bonderman.

Desperate to get his offense going down 2-1 in the Series, Jim Leyland has dropped ALCS MVP Placido Polanco to the seventh spot in the order, moved Carlos Guillen into the vacated third spot and Sean Casey into Guillen’s fifth spot. Curtis Granderson and Ivan Rodriguez, who, like Polanco, are 0 for the World Series, remain batting first and sixth, however. Good luck with that, Jimbo.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Players Association Executive Director Donald Fehr have been vilified for a laundry list of reasons over the last two decades, often for good reason. But when the first post-strike Basic Agreement expired in late 2002, the players and owners averted a work stoppage for the first time since 1970, reaching an agreement right at the August 31 deadline. Last night, Selig and Fehr appeared at Busch Stadium in St. Louis just before Game 3 of the World Series to announce that, with the 2002 agreement set to expire in December 19, they’ve not only avoided a work stoppage yet again, but they’ve beaten the deadline by nearly two months.

More impressively, despite last night’s game being something of a snoozer (a 5-0 Cardinals win behind a dominant outing from Chris Carpenter), the news of the new agreement appears to have been something of an afterthought to the mainstream media this morning. As well it should be. A dozen years after the World Series was cancelled as a result of what was then the longest work stoppage in professional sports history (thanks NHL!), order has finally been restored with the game on the field stealing the headlines from what, given the history* of labor strife in the sport, is actually a far more remarkable event. While it’s clear that timing of this announcement was in no way coincidental (Selig’s has had the specter of the 1994 World Series hanging over his head throughout his commissionership and is clearly still desperate to exorcise it), it remains apt. Though it is somewhat contradictory to do so, I think Selig and Fehr deserve to be celebrated for conducting this round of labor negotiations outside of the media spotlight, and for allowing the new agreement to be brushed aside by the media as a boring business story secondary to the game itself.

That said, a new labor agreement is big news, regardless of the temperature of the fire in which it was forged. The full agreement hasn’t been posted yet (though once it is, it will likely appear here), but here are a few highlights as cribbed from the official press release.

• The new agreement will last through the 2011 season, expiring on December 11, 2011. The five-year agreement is the longest in baseball’s labor history*.
• The deadlines for teams to resign departing free agents who have not been offered or have rejected salary arbitration have been eliminated, allowing all 30 teams to negotiate with free agents on equal terms.
• Free agent compensation has been rolled back. Teams will have to surrender compensatory draft picks for Type A free agents only, with Type A being redefined at the top 20 percent of the free agent pool (was the top 30 percent). Teams losing Type B free agents (correspondingly redefined as players from 21-40 percent–was 31-50) will be compensated with supplemental round picks only. There is no longer any compensation for teams losing Type C free agents.
• Players traded in the middle of multi-year contracts are no longer allowed to demand a trade from their new team. (Existing multi-year contracts are grandfathered, allowing a player already under a multi-year contract to demand a trade only if dealt during the term of his current contract.)
• All amateur draft picks (with the exception of college seniors) must be signed by August 15. Teams that are unable to sign first or second round picks by that deadline will get the identical pick the next year as compensation. Teams unable to sign third round picks will get supplemental round picks between the third and fourth rounds the following year.
• Minor leaguers are bound to their organizations for an extra year before becoming eligible for the Rule 5 draft.
• No teams will be contracted during the term of the agreement.

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I thought that we would all be spending a good deal of time during the Hot Stove season talking about Labor/ Management politcs. But it looks like that won’t happen. Go figure. Talk about an unexpected, but happy surprise.

Here are two Yankee items of interest in today’s Daily News:

1. Scott Boras says Alex Rodriguez will be a Yankee next year.

2. According to Bill Madden, the Yankees plan to pick-up Gary Sheffield’s option only to trade him.

Elsewhere, Jack Curry has a piece on Joe Girardi today in the Times; Mike Plugh has a knucklehead idea; SG takes a closer look at Mr. Matsuzaka, and finally, Steve Goldman and I chatted about Curt Flood recently, and our conversation is part of the latest installment of “The Pinstriped Bible.”

The World Serious moves to St. Louis tonight. If the Cards can’t win behind their ace, Chris Carpenter–who has been terrific at home this year–they am in deep doo doo. For you history buffs, I’ve got a write-up of the 1968 Serious between the Cards and Tigers over at SI.com.

Go Baseball.

So that ‘splains why the Gambler’s been on a roll. Lester Hayes ain’t got nuthin’ on you, babe.

Pine-tar or not, the new-and-improved (and very demonstrative) Kenny Rogers continues to roll. The man has not allowed a single run in three playoff starts. He must have sold his soul to the Devil. How else to explain how the formely timid Gambler has turned into the Raging Bull of baseball? You gotta laugh about it at this point. Wha’ happen, dude?

…Or battle of the once and future chumps, however you’d like to put it. After the Cards rolled over the Tigers in Game 1, it’s Jeff Weaver and Kenny Rogers in Game 2. It’s been my feeling all along that Rogers won’t win a pressure game this October. This isn’t exactly a 2-0 game, or a 2-2 game like the one Weaver started in the NLCS, but there is some heat on the Tigers to win tonight. Let’s see if the real Gambler finally shows.

If there are any Met fans you are trying to console today, you might want to point out the following quote:

“It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”

-A. Bartlett Giamatti

I feel you, bro, I can relate.