***yankees official offseason thread*****

[CharlieDontSurf]

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I'll will wager( eventhough I am a diehard Yankee fan)

if our starting 5 is Andy/Joba/Hughes/Kennedy/Moose next year
we dont make the playoffs

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I'll take it.

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K..I'd say there is little chance that that is our starting 5 to start the season but we'll do $100.

[Rubeskies]

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I'll will wager( eventhough I am a diehard Yankee fan)

if our starting 5 is Andy/Joba/Hughes/Kennedy/Moose next year
we dont make the playoffs

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I'll take it.

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K..I'd say there is little chance that that is our starting 5 to start the season but we'll do $100.

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haha yeah, that won't happen. But just in case, one hundo it is.

[sylar]

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Where'd you hear that his ceiling was anywhere near Mussina or Maddux? That's a fairly ridiculous thing to say. People draft players like Royce Ring in the first round because they think there's less gamble in them producing on a big league level, it happens all the time in virtually every draft.

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from http://mvn.com/milb-yankees/2007/06/...3-ian-kennedy/

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It’s very rare that a right handed pitcher pitcher takes the Mussina/Maddux finesse style and make it work with a lot of success - but it does happen every once in awhile. Kennedy possesses all the skills necessary to make such a style work.

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while kennedy is certainly less of risk, and lower of a ceiling than say Joba Chamberlain, it is tough to imagine that the Yankees would spend a first-round pick on someone who is slated to at most be a back-of-the-rotation guy. the yankees can buy that kind of talent on the FA market. perhaps if you think that they will trade him away, but that's just about the opposite of what cashman has been preaching and practicing for the last 3 years. draft high risk, high ceiling prospects and protect them all the way to the majors.

anyways, i don't really want to get into a semantic discussion of scouting reports. we'll see soon enough (next year) what kennedy (as well as chamberlain and a few others) make of themselves. sorry if this comes across as argumentative.

[DesertCat]

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So what years did you play with Girardi? I never heard of Girardi having a temper or being volatile. Please tell us all the source of your inside information.

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So you think Girardi's slamming one of his Marlin pitchers against the dugout during a confrontation, and his telling his owner to STFU in public, aren't evidences of a little red ass?

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No one predicted the Marlins would do anywhere near as good as they did last year. Of course there was some hidden talent, but the consensus remains that Girardi did a very good job at managing the young team.


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No one thought the Marlins had any talent, but it turns out they did, so it must be due to Girardi's managing? The best manager might be worth five extra wins, so you think the Marlins only win 73 games without him? Pythagorean thought they should have won 80 games (two more) with a league average manager. Even worse, they had a 105 OPS+ and a 99 ERA+. How does a team with above average hitting and league average pitching not have a winning record? How do they finish four games under .500?

Managers of the Year are selected by baseball writers who predominantly don't have a clue whether the manager's decisions helped or hurt the team. They pick managers from teams that surprised them. The real surprise is that Girardi was a lousy manager who hurt his team in 2006, but as I will demonstrate, also set back their future by years.

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Stop making up crap to support your arguments. If you have sources, provide them.


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Among his notable offenses, he ignored team policy and brought 22-year-old stud pitcher Josh Johnson back into a game after a long rain delay, after which Johnson blew out his elbow.

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Anibel Sanchez pitched 200 innings between the minors and the majors in 2006, the previous year he had pitched a career high 136 innings.

Scott Olsen pitched 187 innings, when his career high was 136 innings.

Josh Johnson had pitched 141 innings the previous year, when he blew his arm out he was on pace for about 175 innings. The real problem is that he had 15 starts over 100 pitches and 5 over 110 pitches. Anibel Sanchez had 8 games over 100 pitches, one over 110 in half a season. Scott Olsen had 10 games over 100 pitches, four over 110!

The Marlins would have been a even better team this year except for one minor change which wasn't the loss off Red Ass Girardi. It was the collapse of their pitchers. Of the three 22 year olds mentioned here, one was injured, the other two who suffered dramatic performance declines. And 24 year old Dontrelle Willis (career ERA+ over 110 before Girardi) declined to an ERA+ of 83 after Girardi put him through 223 innings, 29 games with over 100 pitches, 17 games over 110 pitches, and 6 games of 120 pitches or more!!!

Starting to feel all warm and fuzzy about handing over all that young pitching talent to Joey Pitbull? Forget about the Joba rules, the Marlins gave Girardi similar rules and he blatantly ignored them! Wonder why he had personality conflicts?

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I don't know how the new management structure will end up working itself out.

And clearly you don't either.

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The fact they parted ways with Torre in such a weasely way, and had a Steinbrenner announce they won't interview Valentine, while they will interview Girardi, tells you Cashman is making the decisions right now.

[onlinebeginner]

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That starting five rotation... with AROD POSADA AND MARIANO coming back should make the playoffs just fine... plus they obviously can snag a #4 starter at anypoint from a small market team.... if they weren't DESTROYED by injuries early in the year they would have won the division

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And we think we won't be fubarded by injuries next year becuse Damon, Hideki, Giambi, Pettite, Moose, Mo are all going on the HGH?

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That starting five rotation... with AROD POSADA AND MARIANO coming back should make the playoffs just fine... plus they obviously can snag a #4 starter at anypoint from a small market team.... if they weren't DESTROYED by injuries early in the year they would have won the division

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And we think we won't be fubarded by injuries next year becuse Damon, Hideki, Giambi, Pettite, Moose, Mo are all going on the HGH?

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they couldn't possibly be more injured than last year... moose isn't even one of their top 5 SP so who cares

they had rookie pitchers start something absurd like 20 of their first 40 games (and these were not their stud prospect rookies... basically jus replacement level players) that's a joke... they'd probably be 70% to make the playoffs with that rotation as long as they resign ROD... and given there ability to add a player if needed mid season, they're prolly 80%

[TMTTR]

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So you think Girardi's slamming one of his Marlin pitchers against the dugout during a confrontation, and his telling his owner to STFU in public, aren't evidences of a little red ass?

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Nonresponsive... I was responding to your claim that he was a "red ass" as a Yankee -- you wrote:
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Girardi was a huge red-ass when he played with the Yanks, hopefully they remember how volatile he can be.

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And you failed to show he was a "red-ass" or volatile as a player (or coach) with the Yankees. AND you even overstate your nonresponsive answer. This is the story of Girardi and the pitcher:

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Girardi was watching his starting pitcher, Scott Olsen, pick an argument with the plate umpire for shorting him one warm-up toss. Obviously distracted, Olsen promptly gave up a home run. When Olsen reached the dugout after the inning, Girardi grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into the tunnel.

"He didn't want me to worry about stuff like that anymore," Olsen said. "Coincidence or not, we've been playing well ever since."

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No slamming against the wall (although there is another story about Olsen being slammed against the wall by another player).

I will have to look for the story where Josh Johnson and his doctor basically said that Girardi leaving him in that game had nothing to do with his arm injury... and need for Tommy John Surgery... but all the blame thrown at Girardi eminates from Marlin's owner Jeffrey Loria -- not doctors or trainers or baseball professionals. It is unfortunate that Marchman has accepted the Loria story, but he likes to be controversial.

Which brings us back to the top. On that night in August 2006, Loria was yelling at the umpire from his seats behind home plate when Girardi told him that he wasn't helping and asked him to stop. Maybe that was a mistake -- ok, in retrospect it was definitely a mistake as Loria blew up at Girardi and nearly fired him that night. Girardi then tried to downplay the incident so that it would not effect the team. Loria never let it rest.

I won't go thru the hocus pocus of statistics, but here they fail to account for the management-induced distractions. In the last three weeks of the 2006 season, with the knowledge that Girardi was going to be booted, the Marlins collapsed... I believe they went 4-13 or something like that to finish the season and skew their record. (not to mention the fact that they started 11-31 when the team was basically dismantled after Girardi was hired and he had a roster of 20 or so rookies). Indeed, you have it backwards -- Loria is the confirmed "red-ass" and Girardi was the man caught in the bad situation at a terrible time. He was hired to manage one team and then did his best to be successful with a very different team with no experience. As Girardi has said, he went through a lot that season and learned a lot...

[TMTTR]

I forgot to address this:

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The fact they parted ways with Torre in such a weasely way, and had a Steinbrenner announce they won't interview Valentine, while they will interview Girardi, tells you Cashman is making the decisions right now.

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My response: Huh? Cashman has admired Valentine in the past.... and Torre was given the offer he deserved. I know there is much support for your characterization of Torre's rejection of the Yankee offer as an "insult," but if you were a Yankee fan that followed every game of the season, you would cringe at Torre's in-game decision making.

Torre became the face of the Yankees and there was no way this was turning out well unless it was on Torre's terms.

I am not against Valentine in principle, but he comes with enormous baggage in New York.

[MuresanForMVP]

Virtually all soft-tossing finesse pitchers are at one time compared to Maddux. Saying someone's pitching style is comparable to Maddux is not even close to saying that his ceiling is that of Maddux. There are very few true #1 pitchers in the entire MLB. There are more # 2's, Kennedy is definitely not in that category. Most likely, the best case scenario for him is as a #3 guy. But you gotta understand, a good #3 pitcher is nothing to turn your nose up at, and pretty much all teams would draft a potential #3 who has a chance at being a #2 in the first round if they were advanced out of college.

[Rubeskies]

Exactly. With Wang, Andy, Joba, Hughes, and Kennedy, Kennedy is the #5.

If Kennedy is a potential #2 or #3 starter (2 on Pirates, 3 on the Yankees) pitching in the fifth starter spot, that is freakin awesome.

Just think about that trouble the Yankees have had the past few years trying to find a 3-5 starter that will even PITCH let alone be decent.

[Triumph36]

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Virtually all soft-tossing finesse pitchers are at one time compared to Maddux. Saying someone's pitching style is comparable to Maddux is not even close to saying that his ceiling is that of Maddux. There are very few true #1 pitchers in the entire MLB. There are more # 2's, Kennedy is definitely not in that category. Most likely, the best case scenario for him is as a #3 guy. But you gotta understand, a good #3 pitcher is nothing to turn your nose up at, and pretty much all teams would draft a potential #3 who has a chance at being a #2 in the first round if they were advanced out of college.

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By the same token, none of them are given a ceiling like Maddux because Maddux is an anomaly. So of course he's projected to be a #3.

Anyway, this is a lot of BS since Kennedy is unlikely to be the #1 on the Yankees regardless of what happens.