Taking Fewer Risks, Yankees Making the Most of $200M
Baseball

By TIM MARCHMAN
December 20, 2006


One good way to test a plan's quality is to think about how heavily it relies on many things going right. It's hardly impossible, for instance, to imagine the Chicago Cubs boasting an excellent rotation this coming year. If oft-injured Mark Prior regains his health, inconsistent young starter Rich Hill makes the leap from promising prospect to quality major leaguer, free agent signing Ted Lilly proves the rare lefty able to pitch in Wrigley Field, and fellow newcomer Jason Marquis bounces back from a season when he had the worst ERA in the National League, the team will be in great shape. Of course, all those things won't happen, and the fact that thinking about the Cubs' rotation leads instantly to these conditionals is a good demonstration of why their master plan to have a good rotation isn't really very impressive.

With the Yankees, the conditionals work in the opposite direction. You can imagine every pitcher in the team's prospective rotation doing a bit worse than they're expected to, and the team still has a fine staff. It's an improvement on such Cubs-like schemes as positing that Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright will be healthy and effective.

That the Yankees find themselves in this position is a testament to how much more soundly they've been run since general manager Brian Cashman won a power struggle with various other factions of the Yankees bureaucracy last year. The Kremlinology involved in determining how much credit Cashman deserves, is less interesting than the simple fact that it is so. Compare the circuses of past seasons to this year's simple, efficient operation. The team has traded likely future Hall of Famer Gary Sheffield and filled out a rotation that consisted, as of the end of the World Series, of just Chien-Ming Wang and Randy Johnson, and hardly anyone has, relatively speaking, noticed or cared.

It's the filling out of the rotation that's been most impressive. Assuming that the deal to bring Japanese left-hander Kei Igawa to the Bronx goes through (there are some final-stage negotiations still going on, and the pitcher needs to pass a physical),the team will have committed $85 million to secure Igawa, Andy Pettitte, and Mike Mussina to new contracts. When Gil Meche is being paid $55 million to be awful for the Kansas City Royals for five years, it seems criminal for the Yankees to get away with this sort of thing.

Consider this: Last year, the Yankees' starters pitched 933.2 innings with an ERA of 4.54, as the impressive work of Wang and Mussina was counterbalanced by Johnson's meltdown and the usual parade of fifth-starter scrubs — not the most impressive performance in history, but good enough for 97 wins. That should be considered a conservative downside for this year's staff.

Just as a back of the envelope sketch, assume the following. Wang takes a step back and watches his ERA rise to 4.25, half a run above his career mark, and pitches 190 innings. Both Mussina and Pettitte pitch about as well and about as much, Mussina a bit less and Pettitte a bit more, as their recent brilliant campaigns prove to have been flukish performances. Johnson is just as bad as last year and misses a quarter of the season with various injuries. Meanwhile, Igawa, a durable pitcher who's thrown 200 innings in four of the last five seasons despite the short Japanese schedule, throws 175 innings with a 4.50 ERA — a bit higher than a straight statistical analysis would suggest is likely — while Stadium concession stands sell lots of T-shirts featuring his "Iron Nerve" slogan.

Add that all up and the Yankees have 900 innings of 4.40 ERA ball. Note the assumptions made here — that Wang's sinker will lose a bit of its effectiveness, that Mussina will not pitch as well as he did last year, that Pettitte will more resemble the durable innings-eater last seen in the Bronx than he will the fitfully brilliant ace he was in Houston, that Johnson will not recover a bit, and that Igawa will essentially be a Ted Lilly-type. None are unreasonable propositions, but just as the Cubs would be foolish to expect all of what they need to go right to do so, there's no reason to expect the Yankees will catch no breaks.

Maybe Wang will continue to baffle everyone who says that being an ace-caliber starter without striking anyone out is impossible. Maybe Johnson will have one last glorious run left in him. Maybe Phillip Hughes will come up from the farm fully formed like one of the Detroit Tigers' bounty of young starters. Maybe none of this will happen, and the Yanks will just soldier on this year, getting pitching about as good as they did last year, and they'll win 95 again. There's no way to know for sure, of course. What we do know is that for once the team isn't counting on any kind of miracle from anyone. It's the kind of plan $200 million should buy every year.