tell me when they picked up Cy Young winning pitches in their primes in the past 7 years.
i just proposed how the Yankees would do just that next season w/o having to pay the high cost of giving up their promising youth to do it... relax & take a deep breath... the games haven't even been played yet & you're already pronouncing the Red Sox WS champs next season... our offense is still 1 of the best in the game, & we have some very promising young pitchers & positional players in our farm system that will ensure the stability of this franchise for the next several years... & like i pointed out to you in my earlier post, the Yankees will surely be in the bidding to get a Mark Texeira or CC Sabathia in the offseason, or if the situation warrants, perhaps a trade is made at the Allstar break... i have a hard time imagining the Braves or Indians would ask for the same package of talent the Twins did... & even if they do, you have to figure that the team won't jump into any such acquisitions while giving up their farm system based on how they dealt w/this Johan trade.
isles is right on the money here, the entire philosophy has reverted back to how the Yankee dynastic run was built to begin with, building up w/home grown talent out of the farm system & making smart free agent signings & intelligent trades to fill holes w/veterans... that's how we won all those championships in the late 90's... yes, there were also some awesome trades that were made for veterans like Coney, Paulie, Tino, Nellie, Knobs & Justice that all played a huge role in our success during that stretch, but none of them involved prospects on the level of a Hughes, Tabata or Jackson, which are basically the type of prospects the Twins were demanding from us.
take a look at how the dynasty was built to begin with:
- we held onto our core top prospects like Bernie, Mo, Jeter, Jorge & Pettitte, & signed guys like Jimmy Key as a free agent to fill the hole in our starting rotation, & while he was never considered the most dominant pitcher in the game the way Johan is, served us extremely well during his years in NY & helped us win our 1st championship in 18 years.
- we signed an international ace in El Duque out of Cuba, who ended up being the best postseason starting pitcher we've seen in a long, long time & is wearing 3 rings on his finger from his time here
- we signed Boomer Wells as a free agent & he helped us win a title in '98 on one of the best teams ever in the history of baseball that year
- then traded Boomer & some other veteran pitchers for the Rocket, who then helped us win 2 more rings in '99 & '00.
- we signed Scott Brosius out of OAK almost as an afterthought & he played a huge role in helping us win 3 consecutive championships as well.
Not one of these moves i just mentioned mortgaged our future core & we were able to maintain a dynasty that lasted longer than any in recent memory... who says history can't repeat itself? it seems to me the Yankees are on the right track as far as determining which talent to hold onto & which to let go... that's been what's vaulted them to past success over the franchise's history, & that's what will help them achieve success in the years to come.
After 7 years & 40K+ posts, banned by martin for calling Nalod a 'moron'. Awesome.
2/6/2008 7:22 PM