January 28, 2005
Sick Jay
Jay Jaffe lets loose on the Yankees at Futility Infielder. I'm in agreement on so many things it's difficult to pick one out, but this one's my favorite:
I'm sick of being told how much better off the Yankees were with Tino Martinez than they are with Jason Giambi, and that they should have never let beloved Tino leave because gosh darn it, he's a team guy, and this team doesn't have the team guy thing like the Yanks did when Buster Olney's heroes roamed the House That Ruth Built, and that now that Tino's back he's going to show these new Yankees how to win and zzzzz....
And don't miss his take on the Yankees concept of a farm system. You'll really dig it. :-)
Posted by David Pinto at
11:40 AM
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Yeah, the Yankee's farm system certainly is in a grave situation.
My favorite:
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I'm especially sick of the lack of vision and imagination being shown by the front office. At a time when the hallowed franchise is four years removed from its last World Championship, they appear to be accelerating in the opposite direction at alarming speed. I'm not going to pin this all on the increasingly marginalized Brian Cashman; it seems pretty clear that the shots are being called from higher up. Any day now I expect Randy Levine to call a press conference just to tell us that the team is completely out of ideas. As in...
Yankee Spokesperson: "On behalf of the New York Yankees, I have the obligation to announce that our storehouse of brainpower has been exhausted by all of this dynasty-keeping we're expected to do. Ladies and gentlemen, we're completely out of ideas [digs finger in ear, looks around the room solemnly, then examines finger pulled from ear] Yep. That's it, we're tapped. You can all go home now. Questions?"
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That bullet point illustrates exactly why I *abhor* Brian Cashman. Part of it is a reaction to the fact that everyone always describes him with the following line: "Oh I he's a pretty good GM, even taking into account the absolute gobloads of money he has to work with." The other part is that every mainstream and conventional sportswriter, and hence every "normal" fan, gives him far more credit than he deserves, and yet they absolutely trash Billy Beane for not only recognizing that the horse was being run into the ground, but being willing to get off the damn thing and trade it in before the thing died and left him with nothing to sell but Dollar Wednesday Hot Dogs.
Wow, that was a long sentence.
Inq., those "normal fans" you speak of are just un-
informed. As Futility noted, Cashman has been mar-
ginalized by George over the past few years. Cash-man did take blame for hiring Vasquez & possibly
Kevin Brown--a nightmare. Randy Levine handles
many GM functions, including the RJ deal. Scouting
& farm system personnel that did so well in the 90's
have been frozen out by George. Cashman may be
much of what you believe, but a lot has been re-
moved from his plate.
I have no problems with the Yankees getting Vasquez. Even with a mediocre second half, he's still a good young pitcher (yes, I do approve of the RJ trade). The Brown deal was stupid, he's much older (gawd, now I'm writing that about people younger than me) and has a history of breaking down. Vaz was an intelligent gamble, Brown wasn't.
