October 11, 2005

Yankees: Billion Dollar Busts


Sunday night's win by the New York Yankees seemed to only prolong the inevitable. In the end, any educated Yankee fan knew that this Yankee team was not meant to move beyond the first round. At 11:46 PM Monday night, the Yankees went off into the darkness with a whimper, not a bang.

So why did the Yankees lose? Mike Mussina? No. Bad umpiring? No--that's a crutch. Besides the obvious reasons that the Angels have always given the Yankees trouble, and theat they were inherently a better team, there were a few specific people/events that were DIRECTLY responsible for the Bronx Bombers' defeat:

1) Randy Johnson - The "Big Unit'" was a "Big Bust." This 7-foot tall tower of dour not only fell short of expectations, he performed no better than a high-school varsity relief pitcher. Utterly crumbling in game 3 was inexcusable, and his relief performance in game 5 was semi-shaky as well. Unfortunately, Yankee fans will have to learn to love the gangly loser for 2 more years. 2 more LONG years.

2) Not Showing Up for the Last Game of the Season - Having backed into the playoffs the night before, the Yankees went out and partied like AA rejects with bar crawl coupons in Manhattan. The next day, they laughingly took the field, joking their way through a mindless, lackluster dreadful performance in which they got absolutely manhandled by the Boston Red Sox. Sure, Curt Schilling pitched well, but he was hittable--if the Yankees were trying. They rolled over that day, pitched like women, hit like they had dinner reservations, and carried thermselves like a bunch of arrogant punks. Anyone who doesn't think home field advantage and/or playing Chicago instead of Anahiem WASN'T a big deal needs to have their head examined.

3) Alex Rodriguez - The gold-plated so-called 'MVP' failed miserably again under pressure in the post season, in more ways than one. At bat, he was nowhere to be found: sleepwalking at the plate, and made to look foolish time after time. For the truckloads of cash the Yankees spent on this shlub, one would think we could at least get a single every other game or so. But no: instead, the "best player in abseball" excelled at getting hit by pitches and grounding into double plays. And as if that weren't bad enough, he was SINGLE-HANDEDLY RESPONSIBLE for the Yankees losing Game 2 of the ALDS. Where was this "great fielding" we heard so much about? What good is it when you can't perform in the clutch? Get used to having "A-BUST" around for a few years, New York, because he's not going anywhere.

4) No Bullpen - Does anything else need to be said here? Aside from Mariano Rivera, the bullpen was comprised of varying sizes of rat feces. Not ONE reliever was worth the league minimum. Even the almighty Tom Gordon proved once again how poorly he performs under pressure. If it wasn't for Mariano Rivera, this team would have been in last place months ago, and we could have avoided all of this heartache.

5) Hideki Matsui - It pains this writer to say it, but the normally clutch Matsui played as if her were the walking dead this week. Where was his bat? Was he carrying a bat? Was he even at the plate when his turn in the lineup came up? Was he even IN THE LINEUP? You could have fooled us. Fortunately for him, he is an important cog in the wheel that is the Yankees, and he is too valuable to get rid of--this performance notwithstanding. However, if his failure this past week results in his getting slightly less money next year, then he surely deserves it.

Contrary to popular belief, there were actually Yankee players who showed up and did their best to keep the team within arm's length of advancing. In addition, there were easy targets that non-objective Yankee fans will attempt to lay blame upon, as well. Those targets were not responsible, however. Who can you NOT BLAME for this collapse?

1) Mike Mussina - I don't want to hear it. Mussina was 3 weeks removed from the DL, and if it wasn't for him, the Yankees would have been soundly swept by the Angels. His performance in game 1 was one for the ages, and one had to expect that his health would inevitably effect him in game 5. In addition, let's not forget that he really only gave up 3 runs--the other 2 were as a result of the "keystone cops" routine put on by Sheffield and Crosby in the outfield early in the game. Anyone who blames MUssina for losing this series is a shortsighted idiot.

3) Jason Giambi - The league's only honest player attempted to carry the Yankees on his back for 5 games. He was really the only one who got on base consistently, both by virtue of the walk and the base hit. Think about this, Yankee fans: A man on trieal for his life and carrying a cancerous tumor less than a year ago was basically the only one who showed up this ALDS to give you a fighting chance. Nice.

4) The Umpires - Were there bad calls? Indeed. Was Robinson Cano safe at first? Yes, we all know he was. But to blame umpires for losing important games such as these is a sign of defeat and desperation. A team such as the Yankees should not have put itself in a position in which the umpires played a deciding factor in the game's outcome--that's a fact. They didn't hit. They didn't pitch. They didn't field. They were bad. A thousand bad calls can't stop a team that actually plays well--the Yankees did not.

5) Derek Jeter - and Jorge Posada- How sick do you think Jeter and Posada are right now? Along with Giambi, the Captain and Jorge did what they could to keep the Yankees alive--Posada even single-handedly won game 4 on his own via his defense and baserunning. Jeter even hit his share of trademark post-season home runs, but it just wasn't enough. As two members of the "old guard" of Yankees, one has to wonder what these two men sit down and talk about after a loss like this... lamenting the addition of superstars who can't live up to the hype, wondering what might have been if the front office had paid for pitching years ago instead of hitting, and feeling nauseous when they think of how the Yankees have become the Braves of the 00's.

The facts are the facts, people. The Yankees were beaten by a better team, indeed. But they could have won if their multi-billion dollar players lived up to the paycheck a toll-booth attendant makes. Baseball is about hitting, fielding and pitching--and they Yankees couldn't do any of it right. On the other side of the field, the Angels put on a clinic on how to play fundamental baseball: moving runners along, hitting when runners were in scoring position, and keeping their team in every game with solid pitching. In many ways, they performed not unlike the Yankees of the late 90s.

Looking back on this season, one could make the case that the Yankees probably shouldn't have even made it this far: All of their starting pitchers were legitimately injured (Except for Johnson) for the majority of the season, and they had little or no bullpen to speak of. They made it into the post season on fumes, but collapsed shortly thereafter in the face of a better team. That being said, the objective Yankee fan should consider their achievement a fairly good one, even though it's clouded by the pangs of painful losses that might have legitmately been avoided.

Football season, anyone?