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Rumblings and Grumblings
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
| Last time we looked, the Yankees' 2001 World Series parade hadn't started yet. Joe Torre hadn't started weeping with joy yet. And the only empty champagne bottles in the entire borough of the Bronx were sitting in a recycling bin on Jerome Avenue.
We want you to know these are good things, uplifting things. They are things that reassure us the 2001 season really isn't over before it starts.
OK, so the Yankees signed the best right-handed starting pitcher on the free-agent shelves, some guy named Mussina.
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Yankees 2001 payroll
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Player
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Salary
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Bernie Williams
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$12.357M
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Roger Clemens
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$10.3M
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Mike Mussina
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$10M
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Andy Pettitte
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$7M
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David Justice
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$7M
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Paul O'Neill
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$6.3M
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Chuck Knoblauch
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$6M
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Tino Martinez
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$6M
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Scott Brosius
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$5.25M
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Mike Stanton
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$2.45M
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O. Hernandez
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2.05M
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Allen Watson
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$1.7M
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Glenallen Hill
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$1.5M
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Joe Oliver
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$1.25M
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Alfonso Soriano
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$630K
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Adrian Hernandez
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$600,000
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Derek Jeter
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arbitration
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Mariano Rivera
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arbitration
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Jorge Posada
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arbitration
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Ramiro Mendoza
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arbitration
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Clay Bellinger
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unsigned
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Shane Spencer
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unsigned
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Total (so far)
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$80.38M
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OK, so they now have more legitimate aces in one locker room than the entire AL Central has in its whole division.
OK, so they look slightly more imposing on paper right now than the Yuma Bullfrogs.
Still, we want you to repeat after us: Mike Mussina doesn't guarantee the Yankees anything -- except possibly a larger payroll than General Motors.
Repeat that line as many times as you need to. It's called therapy. It's also called truth.
"Oh yeah. It will be tough to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs now," said a scout from one AL contender Thursday, after the Yankees had alleviated their oh-no-we're-down-to-three-aces crisis by signing Mussina. "But get them in a five-game playoff series and who knows what might happen?
"If Terrence Long just catches a fly ball in Oakland (Game 5 of the Division Series), the A's are probably in the World Series instead of them. So they'll make the playoffs. But this doesn't mean they automatically win the World Series."
Now you need to remind yourselves this is true. All of you. Bud Selig. Boss Steinbrenner. Hizzoner Rudy Guiliani. Everybody.
That's where we come in. We're here to present 10 Reasons The Yankees Still Have To Play Out The Season:
10. They're older than Milton Berle.
Check this roster. Roger Clemens turns 39 in August. Dwight Gooden is 36. Paul O'Neill will be 38. Glenallen Hill will be 37. David Justice will be 35. Luis Sojo will be 35. Mike Stanton turns 34 in June.
This team has more guys from the '60s than the Beatles. They've got to pull all their hamstrings simultaneously one of these days. Don't they?
9. El Duque is really older than Milton Berle.
We love Orlando Hernandez as much as anybody out there. But if he's 31, Pat Buchanan won the election.
So this scenario isn't out of the question: El Duque admits to real age, collects first Social Security check, buys big straw hat, retires to Hialeah. Yeah, that's the ticket.
8. It's impossible to four-peat.
Who the heck four-peats in this day and age? We don't care if their payroll is $110 million or $310 million. October is a mine field. And we know some folks in Atlanta you could consult on this.
Exactly one team has four-peated in this sport since the first year of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration (the '49-53 Yankees). And the other sports aren't exactly bursting at the seams with four-peaters, either.
Jordan's Bulls never did it. Bradshaw's Steelers never did it. No NFL team has ever done it. Only the Bill Russell Celtics did it in the NBA.
So the Yankees can't do it. Can't be done. Bet the Empire State Building on it.
7. Pitching isn't everything.
"I'll give you a reason to play it out," said one scout. "Maddux. Glavine. And Smoltz. You can't win with pitching alone."
And this is true. Three years ago, the Yankees' lineup scared you. This year, they were sixth in the AL in runs scored. They scored fewer runs than the Royals. They scored 100 fewer runs than the White Sox. If David Justice and Glenallen Hill hadn't shown up, they wouldn't have finished ahead of the Red Sox or Blue Jays.
Mike Mussina has four career hits. So he might need some help.
6. They're losing Jeff Nelson.
You could make a case that starting pitching isn't why the Yankees won this World Series at all. Relief pitching is why they won this World Series. Nelson, Stanton, Rivera. That was their secret, friends.
Not anymore. Jeff Nelson is on the verge of hiking off to Seattle for a better pay day. They assume they can replace him because they're the Yankees. They can replace anybody. But suppose they can't.
Here's their nightmare: They replace Nelson with, say, Jaime Navarro. (Same initials.) Right-handers hit .157 against Nelson. They hit .402 against Navarro. Disaster ensues. Yeah, that's the ticket.
6. Nobody left to trade.
The only reason the Yankees won last year is because they traded for all those reenforcements last June and July. That was the good news. The bad news was: To get those guys, they traded away all their youth except Steinbrenner's grandchildren.
So suppose they need to make just as many deals this year? Trouble.
"Our club feels they dealt away a big chunk of their system," says one AL executive. "As great a job as they do in development, after all those deals, their prospects now are nothing special."
So instead of trading for Justice and Denny Neagle this July, say they trade for Izzy Alcantara and Sean Bergman. Disaster ensues. Yeah, that's the ticket.
4. Steinbrenner loses interest
You think it's easy being impestuous team emperor for nearly 30 years? Nobody can do it forever. Even Boss Steinbrenner.
Suppose he gets bored with all this winning, winning, winning. Nobody to yell at. No faxes to send to the commissioner's office. No managers to fire.
So suppose he sells. To, say, WeRunTeams.com. Whose stock then plummets the next day, from $157 per share to $3 per share. Disaster ensues. Yeah, that's the ticket.
3. Chuck Knoblauch still can't throw straight.
When last we saw Chuck Knoblauch, his team was afraid to let him use a glove during the entire month of October. Not that it was his glove they were afraid of.
We're no longer allowed to make jokes about Keith Olbermann's mother, but you might have noticed Knoblauch hasn't quite licked his problem of throwing his way into one David Letterman monologue a week.
And suppose, when this season rolls around, he still hasn't licked it. Then one day, a throw gets away and hits Mussina on the knuckles, preventing Mussina from throwing his fabled knuckle-curve. Disaster ensues. Yeah, that's the ticket.
2. Lockout on the horizon.
With a year to go until another round of labor Armageddon, the perfect scenario for the owners' Why We Need A Salary Cap Or At Least Somebody To Kidnap Don Fehr labor strategy would be yet one more Yankees World Series parade.
So, of course, that can't possibly happen.
No owners' labor strategies ever work out. You could look it up. So we need to think logically here: What's the worst possible owners' labor nightmare?
Twins-Expos World Series. Both teams' payrolls combined are computed to be less than the salaries of Mussina and Clemens. Fehr says after Series trophy presentation to Carl Pohlad: "WHAT disparity problem?" Has to happen. Guaranteed.
1. Bad year for early projections.
After what we've been through for the last month, would you project this election to the Yankees based on the early Mussina exit polls? Not us, friends. Not us.
But we'll let you in on the offseason's hottest rumor: Katherine Harris is picking the Devil Rays. |
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