June 26 - Yankee Fans and Ageism

I don't post much anymore, but I wrote this for a friends site - www.brooklynmetfan.com- so I thought I would post it here as well:

Is it just me or is the subject of “age” becoming a real sensitive issue with Yankee fans these days? Lest you haven’t noticed, and it’s pretty hard to fall into this category if you watch any baseball whatsoever, there is an unusually large wave of terrific young players coming of age this year. In Queens and Boston and Florida and Philadelphia and Detroit and Minnesota and Cleveland and Seattle and Los Angeles and even in Pittsburgh, – tomorrow’s stars are budding, and in a number of cases, blooming right before our collective eyes. And lets be frank – I’m not talking about a Pat Listach here and a Scott Williamson there. No, this new class is loaded with guys who have ceilings that reach to Cooperstown. These are guys who will not only dominate baseball for the next decade, but are already on the cusp of “greatness,” and I use that term without doing too much damage to Webster’s permissible definition. And the one thing these young bucks share in common – not a single one of them gets his fan mail sent to the Bronx.

Has it occurred to the typical Yankee fan that we are at the dawn of a new era that, along with most other good things in life, seemingly bypassed the South Bronx? In most cases, it has not since your typical Yankee fan wouldn’t know the difference between Nelson Liriano and Francisco Liriano without the benefit of a baseball encyclopedia and a fascinating anecdote delivered by Yankee great Al Leiter. Nonetheless, there are a handful of Yankee fans – some who may have an iron in the fantasy fire – who are now awakening to the fact that a youthful arms buildup has broken out in baseball and the pinstripes are on the wrong side of the emerging missile gap. And let me tell you, this recognition is not sitting well with some who reside within the evil empire. Sure, some will attempt to accentuate the positive by foolishly touting their own and others will stew quietly as talk turns to the revolution at hand. But rest assured, the informed Yankee fan gets a little uneasy when baseball’s youth movement is broached. These fans know that some of the Yankee shortcomings can be masked with largess, but these fans also know that Team Cash is on the wrong side of the development curve. You won’t get these fans to admit as much, but deep down it irks them that money alone may no longer guarantee regular season success.

Now some Yankee fans will surely quibble with my premise that the Yankees aren’t full participants in the league’s burgeoning youth movement. After all, Chien-Ming Wang is 26, Robby Cano is just 23 and Melky Cabrera is just 21. Each is young and each is contributing to a team that is competing for a division title. The prosecution will concede as much, but that is where the concessions end. Because unlike the defense, the prosecution in this case does not feel that any member of the aforementioned triumvirate is deserving of membership in the “Fredy Lynn Club,” named of course for the only man in my lifetime to have been awarded the MVP in his rookie season.

Lets take them one at a time and start with little Melky. Has Melky had his moments? Indeed he has. Does he project into anything more then a fourth outfielder? I’d say the answer is no. I will stipulate that its tough to say that with absolute certainty since he’s only 21, but at this time, Melky really doesn’t have a single plus tool and while he does put the ball in play, it is rarely with any sizzle. Yes, I realize he’ll grow, but seven extras in 150 at bats is a bit punk for a corner outfielder that hits .250 and doesn’t steal bases. Quite simply, Melky will never hit with the kind of power that the Yankees demand in a corner outfielder. Next!

Okay, picking on Melky was easy but what about Wang and Cano? Brian Cashman says these guys are untouchable and if Brian says so, these guys must be the real deal. Lets first consider Wang whose headline numbers read as follows: 8-3 with a 4.14 ERA and a WHIP around 1.3. Not bad for a twenty-six year old. Decent velocity. Decent sink. Some real good starts in the mix. What’s there not to like? Well, some may say I’m nitpicking, but where are the Ks? Just 36 whiffs in 104 innings? Wang, put your camera away and start dealing! One strikeout per every three innings is pretty meager for a guy who supposedly hits 95 on the gun. Also, Wang’s numbers completely fall off the table when he goes to the stretch. You think I’m kidding? How bout the fact that guys are hitting .333 off him with runners on base. Sure, Wang gets a lot of groundouts which is a positive, but at the end of the day, he allows too many balls to be put in play. His sink allows him to get away with some of this, but the fact that he can’t blow anyone out and tends to get hit when runners reach, cap his ceiling close to where he currently resides. Wang can get better, but the astute Yankee fan knows that the only time you would ever use Wang’s name in the same sentence as Scott Kazmir is when you say: “that Wang, he’s no Scott Kazmir!”

Finally we get to the jewel of the system. The golden boy who represents the Yankees new found commitment to youth. The man that “Brian the Brain” refused to trade away last year even though the pinstripes were locked in a tight race at the trade deadline. Of course I am talking about Robinson Cano, the slick hitting left-handed, left fielder who plays second base for the New York Yankees. How can I say anything negative about Roby Cano, the second year player who is hitting .325 with an OPS close to .800? It’s hard to argue against those numbers, but a little closer evaluation turns up some rather discouraging quirks in Cano’s game. For one, how does a guy hitting sixth or seventh in that lineup only have twenty-seven RBI? You really want the answer? Try these nightmares on for size. Cano is hitting just .227 with runners in scoring position and just .195 with runners in scoring position and two out. Hitting with the bases loaded is always a good spot to pile up RBI, but Robbie is just one for ten when coming up when the deck is stacked. Don’t get me wrong – I think Cano is a nice player. His hands are a bit questionable, but he can rake and probably deserves to hit higher in a lineup. But lets not kid ourselves. Robby Cano isn’t Jose Reyes and he isn’t Chase Utley. He’s a nice player but if he is the jewel of the system, its time for the system to mine somewhere else.

The moral to this story is this – the league is now being over-run by exciting young players who are already dominating. Reyes, Verlander, Liriano, Paplebon, Wright, Howard, Kazmir, Zumaya, Hernandez, Kemp, Bay. The balance of power is shifting, and will continue to shift to those teams that have scored big in development. Sure, the Yankees will still be able to paper over some of their weakness in this area by spending huge sums of cash. This winter, I’m sure Cashman, provided he still has a job, will swap out of Sheffield and into Carlos Lee. Then he’ll spin his magic and outbid everyone for Zito and Schmidt, preying that one or both will sign up to be the next Carol Pavano. Cashman can spend money like nobody else and I’m sure he will be out with hat in hand this winter. But what if he comes up empty. What if Zito decides to stay near his home in Southern California? What if Seattle blows Schmidt away? I’ll tell you what happens – the Yankees will go into 2007 one year older and one year closer to the end of the Mariano era.

Some Yankee fans recognize this and that is why they hate to discuss the new blood that is coming into the league. After all, the Yankees can’t poach “new” blood for six years and this just isn’t fair as far as Yankee fans are concerned. Hell, for all that luxury tax the Yankees pay, they should at least get first crack at the exciting kids – right? Wrong! The great equalizer in baseball is development, as the Yanks will soon find out. The way I see it, as more and more talent gets to the majors ready to dominate, the Yanks will suffer more and more since all this talent is beyond their reach. After all, you can’t steal talent that is bolted to the floor. The Yankee fan is just beginning to see that for the first time in a decade, the future is a just a bit cloudy and it could be fixing to rain. That is why the next time you hear some fan spout off about Mike Mussina’s great year, I suggest you bring up the fact that Joel Zumaya has been filthy. At the very least, the retort should buy you some peace and quiet.