Back to basics

I write this on what is (very realistically) the last day of the Yankees 2010 season, and so you and I will be enjoying* where this article goes as I scrutinize the 2010 Yankees who apparently are lacking...something. Let's go:

As the leaves change colors and we here in the Northeast U.S. start to hunker down for what will undoubtedly be the cruelest. Winter. Ever. (Note: sarcasm should have screamed out like a terrific, cutting-edge-but-ultimately-a-phase 3-D movie) I am finally at a tipping point of NEEDING to write. I'm going to assess that 1% of this need stems from the apparent demise of the New York Yankees, and while that does not ultimately amount to much in the larger scope of the world in which we live, it angers me to the point that my writing hiatus is to be ended here. Without delay, here are 5 things the Yankees are guilty of, things which they need to turnaround ASAP if they are to be successful in the near future:

1. Refusing to change your outlook at the plate:
The 2010 Yankees have, in this postseason, totally relied on their reputations saving them, a la the big home run. What they are learning, however, is that pitchers in LONG SERIES are going to do their homework better than they would over the course of a 162-game season. No one bunts on this team. None. I understand that they are a home run-hitting team, and that they are built on their ability to hit the long ball. But when pitching staffs change THEIR stuff to cancel out the pitches that a Cano or a Teixeira or a Rodriguez would take deep...you HAVE TO, as an offensive ball club, re-evaluate how YOU are going to approach your half of an inning. The Yankees leave SO many men on base. Of course, over the course of a full regular season, they will have 3 guys with 100+ RBI, with another 2-3 guys flirting with that mark. In a compacted 5 or 7-game series, however, a change of pace is needed. If the Yankees bunt in ANY situation in which they had a leadoff man get on base (particularly Game 4, which had me actually turn off the game, knowing...KNOWING...that the Yankees were ACTIVELY waiting for the Rangers to bring out their bullpen. Would a Home run have brought the crowd back into it? Sure. Would a drag bunt that moved runners to second and third with one out get the crowd excited? Based on the lackluster hitting and absence of fundamentals, I say yes.
Had I been IN Yankee Stadium II last night and had I been witness to a complete lack of basic baseball fundamentals (sacrificing, advancing runners, stealing bases) through 3 games, Gardner's hit is followed by a first-or-second pitch steal of second, and a bunt from Jeter. You had VERY little reason to assume that Jeter, who throught three games was batting .259 (which is LOWER than the near-unanimously-determined-to-be .270 he hit in the regular season this year), would crank out two extra-base hits in this game. If that's the case, why not have Jeter bunt? He's not going to hit that dinger that you want. He's one of 3, MAYBE 4 Yankees who could hustle out an infield hit on a properly-placed bunt (Gardner and Granderson are the others. A-Rod gets an "N/A" for this as he has never bunted). But that's just me.

2) Inability to steal bases:
Yankees with 20+ Stolen bases: 1 (Brett Gardner with 47)
Yankees with 10+ SB: 2 (Jeter, Curtis Granderson)
Rangers with 20+ SB: 1 (Elvis Andrus with 32)
Rangers with 10+ SB: 4! (Kinsler, Borbon (NON-STARTER), Murphy, Cruz (MISSED 50+ GAMES))

After Gardner, there is a DRASTIC lack of stolen bases in this Yankees lineup. Let's not kid ourselves: the Yankees his .267 this year, which is NOT indicative of a prolific offense in a small sample, such as a 7-game series. For the Rangers, they have more than half of a lineup that can steal a base, essentially at will against the Yankees. The Yankees catching woes are not the focus right now. Their inability to push that envelope is the matter at this point. WHEN you are on base, your goal is to_____________? Give up? The answer is "to ADVANCE". And the Yankees are telling people that they are too good to want to advance their runners in the off chance that anyone in that lineup- who again COLLETIVELY hit .267- does not take a ball and hit it into the seats. Including Gardner. He has one stolen base, taken AS JETER TAKES STRIKE 2! You're sure you don't want to send him immediately? Really? Your season hangs on your ability to squeeze out runs when you NEED them...and believe me, down 2-1 in a best-of-7...you're in a NEED to win situation. And they don't. Jeter last night SHOWED YOU that WHEN he gets hits, he can still physically leg out an extra base. Jeter hitting a triple last night was probbaly the least probable hitting scenario for that team (other than maybe Posada hitting a triple) last night, and they do...nothing.

3) Leadership:
To clear this up beforehand, I'm not worried about criticism from Yankee fans. Where's the leadership? Those who railed against Joe Torre before his departure did so because he was stone-faced in the dugout and while not getting in the faces of veterans may have helped the morale of the clubhouse, it did nothing to light a fire under the ass of any of the young guys that the Yankees were bringing up. Joe Girardi does the same thing. He has spent the last two months plus in what can only be described as a fog. There does not seem to be any sense of urgency, even KNOWING that his club has 2 MAYBE 3 arms ready for the playoffs (Pettitte has worked out quite well, obviously, but we had no way of knowing that with his September starts). Even knowing that the leaders in the clubhouse are not being vocal and this year are NOT leading by example, which seems to have been the Yankee way for as long as I can remember. I'm sure the frustration mounted a bit between the following players:

Jorge Posada- Posada had a down year in EVERY statistical category between 2009 and 2010 except...At bats. He had EXACTLY the same number of at bats in 2010 as in '09. Numbers below.
Year Hits 2B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
2009 109 25 22 81 .285 .363 .522 .885
2010 95 23 18 57 .248 .357 .454 .811

Derek Jeter- An even more drastic drop-off for Jeter, with the exception of RBI (+1 from 2009) and doubles (+3 from 2009, negated by 44% drop in HR production), AND we have to take into account that this is over 29 MORE at bats. Yeesh. Numbers below.
Year Hits 2B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
2009 212 27 18 66 .334 .406 .465 .871
2010 179 30 10 67 .270 .340 .370 .710
Granted, many people called Jeter's 2009 campaign his best ever, or at least in the last decade. However, with more reps and more opportunities to tweak whatever started off on the wrong foot, Jeter- as a VERY talented player- has the ability to make up for whatever speed was missing off of his swing or whatever the prognosis may have been. And despite a strong finish to the season, still managed to hit for the lowest average of his entire career...by 21 points.

Mark Teixeira- Injuries have slowed Teixeira this season to what I consider to be a disappointment. Despite reaching the 30-HR and 100-RBI plateau for the 7th consecutive year. I expect a bounceback year from Tex next season, assuming his injuries heal. My bet is he returns closer to his 2009 numbers if healthy, a year in which he was MVP runner-up. Numbers below.
Year Hits 2B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
2009 178 43 39 122 .292 .383 .565 .948
2010 154 36 33 108 .256 .365 .481 .846

Alex Rodriguez- What's interesting is that A-Rod's lofty HR and RBI total are in line with his 2008 and 2009 totals considering the amount of games he has played and the injuries he has had in that time. Obviously, he's off from his career bests in 1998 and 2001-02, but he is still capable- in this lineup- to produce the sort of power numbers the Yankees expect of him. The numbers don't corroborate with the point I'm trying to prove about 2010 being an all-around down year, and like any good journalist, I will therefore leave them out. You CAN, however, find them here.

The conclusion of this particular long-winded point is that while the Yankees have the players who have been there before and done that before, there is little that the "elite" Yankees did this year to prove to newcomers that this is the way things are to be done in order to achieve what is (both unrealistically and admirably lofty) the only goal in New York: winning the World Series. While you may not agree that this has anything to do with leadership- and I will grant that providing statistical evidence which illuminates a lack of production at the plate does not instantly conjur up the term "leadership"- if you DO watch and follow and/or support the Yankees, you know that there are few, if any, players on that team who fire up their teammates. Leading by example has been the Yankee way over the course of this past decade, from Jeter running out every ground ball (and GIDP in 2010) to A-Rod taking Cano and Melky Cabrera under his wing to Joba pumping his fist like he just reached the best orgasm of his (or, based on the screaming, anyone's) life...the Yankees lead by a graceful example...until this season. Cano came into his own and took a seat at the table. Gardner played above the projected ceiling for him this season. Swisher carried the load for a good portion of the season. Pettitte was stellar in the first half of the season. Heck, even AJ Burnett had a strong April to set the proper pace while the rest of the team struggled. Sabathia won 21 games. Phil Hughes was lights-out in the first half of the season. The bottom line here is that there were enough pieces of the puzzle that fit this season to make it this far. The problem is that the names at the top of the list of Yankee faces and names weren't the ones you might expect to do so at the beginning of the year.

4. Letting players play hurt:
Teixeira's probably the best example here, though A-Rod's injuries may or may not be lingering. My problem here is that the Yankees imported players to take the place of injured starters, and yet the Yankees did not feel the need to properly rest their ailing stars. Girardi needs to take the bull by the horns here and bench these guys if they are not 100%. A broken toe means a lot to a guy who plays 160+ games in a season, as does a hip that underwent off-season surgery. It's not like the Yankees would be tossing out Cody Ransom again this season. That's the benefit of being the Yankees, Joe: when you have an all-star at (just about) every position, you can afford to not have 2 of them in for a part of the season. While I'm not a huge Lance Berkman fan, he was brought here AS AN EVERYDAY player! He wasn't riding the pine in Houston. He was playing. He was healthy. He can afford to take the place of an injured infielder while they nurse their injuries, whether it's a broken toe or a bruised and sore finger WHICH, I might add, is going to have an impact on the way that player swings a bat. In any event, as the manager, you have to make that decision and stick with it...particularly when you've been in the driver's seat for much of the regular season.

5. Bullpen:
This wasn't as much of an issue against Minnesota as the Yankee starters went deeper into games with more dominant pitching, but the benefit of your bullpen is that the opposing team has less time to figure out the tendencies of your pitchers, particularly those who face 3 batters or less. However, in a best-of-7 series, the Rangers in this case seem to have figured out what the Yanks are tossing. What's worse, the relievers are not making adjustments game to game. This is most prevalent in the case of one Joba Chamberlain. Joba throws his stuff in exactly the same manner no matter who he's facing. Unfortunately, he isn't Mariano Rivera. He needs to adjust for individual hitters. Yeesh. They have been PUTRID. Unfortunately, while there's always more than enough talk about the "Yankee mystique", the bullpen has nullified any rally that may have ensued after game one of this series.


Game five is starting as I type this, and so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Needless to say, the odds are stacked against the Yankees. Here's hoping these issues are dealt with after a champagne bath. Go Yanks!

* You may not have enjoyed it. Kudos to reading through until the end, though.