With pitchers and catchers finally within our grasp, the Yankees and Mets are about to learn whether their modest off-seasons will mean trouble later this summer. The Red Sox are better, and so are the Phillies and Braves. Met fans in particular should be prepared for a more harrowing, albeit entertaining, pennant race.
In fact, you could argue that for all the sub-plots that'll accompany the Yankees and Mets to spring training -- Alex Rodriguez's contract, Pedro Martinez's health, Andy Pettitte's re-acclimation to the American League -- it's Willie Randolph and Joe Torre who face the greatest challenges in 2007.
Both men are being asked to take their teams deeper into October, despite the fact that neither roster is significantly better today than it was at the end of 2006.
That's not good news for Torre, who was fired for a 24-hour period after Game 4 of the AL Division Series, and goes into the season without job security. The thought of finding another manager is already in George Steinbrenner's head; a slow start in April or May could easily remind The Boss how chilly his relationship is with Torre, no matter how staunchly GM Brian Cashman defends his manager.
Randolph has a new safety net, a three-year $5.65 million contract, but he has to convince the Mets that losing Game 7 of the NL Championship Series to the Cardinals wasn't necessarily a setback, just a detour in what promises to be a long golden era at Shea.
It won't be an easy sell for Randolph, not after a 97-win season during which the Mets had finished crushing the East before the All-Star break. No one believes the Mets will have it that easy in '07; such dominance comes along once in a generation. The Mets will find themselves being pressured by the Phillies, who signed Freddy Garcia and already have one of the more dangerous offenses in the National League.
The Braves could be a problem for the Mets, too, having vastly upgraded their bullpen. Adding Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez, and teaming them up with closer Bob Wickman, almost entirely covers the blemishes that ruined Atlanta in 2006. And outside the East, the greatest winter makeover in recent history -- the $300 million the Cubs spent on Alfonso Soriano, Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis, Aramis Ramirez, Mark DeRosa and Lou Piniella -- all but guarantees the arrival of another NL power broker.
The Mets? They still don't have a No. 1 starter, and, yes, it does matter. Whether or not Martinez ever returns to the rotation, his days of dominating hitters are over. Randolph has no one he can count on to take the Mets into the seventh inning; lucky for him that GM Omar Minaya has restocked the bullpen. As well, the Mets' American League-type offense should act as a buffer against any shortcomings in the starting rotation: they scored 103 more runs than they allowed last year, the NL's greatest surplus.
But Minaya knows the National League has closed the talent gap on the Mets since Adam Wainwright's final curveball to Carlos Beltran. The Mets desperately wanted Barry Zito, and made a strong push for Daisuke Matsuzaka. That courtship ended badly, too. One major league executive said: "The Mets still look great on paper, but if you ask me if they're head and shoulders above everyone else, I would have to say no. It'll be a fight."
The Yankees are braced for the same reality. In fact, their hopes of holding off the Red Sox may hinge on where Roger Clemens decides to finish his career. Without the Rocket in pinstripes, it's conceivable the Sox will have the advantage in starting pitching for the first time in the Torre era.
So much depends on whether Pettitte's cut-fastball is still effective enough to neutralize the AL's bigger, stronger hitters. And the back of the rotation is full of questions, too: is Kei Igawa ready for the big leagues? Will Carl Pavano ever again throw a pitch for the Yankees?
If Clemens chooses Fenway over the Bronx, the Yankees will almost certainly be forced to summon Phil Hughes from Class AAA, if they even wait as long as July. The 20-year-old right-hander was so effective at Class AA in 2006, minor league director Mark Newman told the Daily News, "At the end of the year, he had no-hitter stuff two out of every three starts, it seemed."
Hughes was 10-3 with a 2.25 ERA in 21 starts, holding opponents to a .179 average at Trenton. Scouts are calling him the next John Smoltz with an unmistakable appetite and skill for strikeouts: Hughes blew away 138 hitters in 116 innings last year.
How can the Yankees resist the kid? Cashman has staked his reputation on protecting Hughes, but with the Bombers' championship drought going into its seventh year, Hughes' career path could be linked directly to Matsuzaka's.
The question of the spring can be narrowed to this: does the Japanese star really throw an unhittable pitch called the gyro ball?
According to urban legend, the gyro is delivered like a football, with the same spiral that makes the ball drop straight down like a splitter, only with much greater velocity.
"The gyro ball is scary. It is beyond imagination," Kazushi Tezuka, the baseball instructor who researched the pitch and wrote a book called, "The Truth about the Supernatural Pitch," told Sports Illustrated.
It won't take long for the Red Sox (and the Yankees) to figure out whether Matsuzaka can alter the balance of power in the East. If the gyro ball is more than just hype, the Bombers will be on the phone with Clemens' agents, promising him the empire.
