The Man from Laramie said:
cobalt_27 said:
David Yudkin said:
The Man from Laramie said:
This thread ignores the fact that they've seemingly improved both their offense and pitching while taking on LESS payroll than in 2008. Sure, their defense might be worse, but it wasn't so good last year either.I think the Yankees start 2009 an improved team, even with these problems.
Certainly is debatable if their offense IN TOTAL is improved, and with weaker defense, the improved pitching could give up more runs with weaker defense.
I'll take an improved offense and an improved pitching staff any day, if it comes at the expense of a somewhat diminished OF defense (which is already mitigated somewhat by Teixeira at 1B over our previous 1B defense).
Making the argument that the Yankees are not a better team going into 2009 than they were in 2008 is a stretch. Taking injuries into account alone...this is how nomaas.org sums it up:
8 - Injuries, Injuries, InjuriesEvery baseball team must learn to deal with injuries, but the Yankees were hit hard this year at a number of positions where they couldn't afford their players to miss time. Nobody expected Jorge Posada to repeat his MVP-quality hitting from 2007, but an injury to his shoulder limited him to 168 at bats, with his numbers being filled in by Jose Molina (OPS+ 51), Chad Moeller (OPS+ 69), and Pudge Rodriguez (OPS+ 51). The ace of our staff, Chien-Ming Wang, was lost for the season while running the bases, which opened up bunch of innings for Sidney Ponson, Darrell Rasner, and yes, Kei Igawa. A-Rod, Jeter, Matsui, Damon, Joba, Hughes, and Kennedy all lost time to injury.
Wang and Posada being on the field a full 162 (or at least a good chunk of them) almost single handedly will account for losing Giambi and Abreu.
Any team should be expected to do better if everyone were healthy. The Sox could ceratinly say the same thing with inujuries to Schilling, Beckett, Ortiz, Drew, Lowell, Lugo, etc. As I alluded to earlier in one of these threads, the Yanks lost roughly 200 RBI with Abreau and Giambi leaving. Their catchers combined last year drove in 50+. Getting Posada back should get them another 35 runs.Their outfield even with Abreau was a bit of a question mark. Now for the 3 OF spots and DH they will have to pick from Damon, Matsui, Nady, Swisher, Cabrera, and Gardner (unless of course they make a move for someone else.) If we say that 2 OF slots and DH remain the same, I don't think that last OF spot would get the same production as Abreau gave them, and I'm guessing no Abreau will probably cost them 25 runs.By my math, that would mean that Texeira would need 90 runs to make things even (85 RBI from Posada, 75 from the RF spot = 160. Abreau, Giambi, and catchers last year = 250). Give Tex 110-120 RBI and runs wise the Yanks will probably be 20-30 runs better offensively.As also noted previously, Mussina and Pettitte accounted for 34 wins. Wang, Pavano, Bruney and Giese (their total combined number of starts were pretty equal to what Wang would normally get) totalled 14 wins. So IMO, last year Mussina, Pettitte, and Wang's spot in the rotation accounted for 48 wins.Clearly all we can do is guess what will happen in 09. If we assign Wang 19 wins (what he had the two previous seasons), Sabathia 16 wins (his average the past 3 seasons), and Burnett 13 wins (his average the last 3 seasons), that adds up to . . . 48 wins. Certainly all of this guys could do better playing on the Yankees and all, but the point was that it's not a slam dunk that these guys will win leaps and bounds more games than the 08 model of the Yankees.Certainly if the pitchers behind Wang/CC/AJ in the roration pitch better there are more wins to be had, and that's likely where the Yanks will have to do their gaining in the win column.