Bleacher Creature Feature

#18: Halfway Home

1 July 2002

All in all, a most excellent first half, with good portents for the second half. The Yankees have already sustained injuries to two of their starting pitchers (Orlando Hernandez and Andy Pettitte) and their closer, survived slumps by several of their big hitters, and have the depth to cover any number of potential landmines.

I don't think there's a significant weakness on this team. There has been a great deal of pissing and moaning about the outfield situtation, which is absurd. The Yanks won 95 games last year with Chuck Knoblauch in left and a way-past-it Paul O'Neill in right. Nobody talked about filling the holes then, even though the team would've been better off putting straw dummies in the outfield, since they would've had better range and hit more than those two did last year. This year, Rondell White is at a disappointing .254/.312/.393 -- the latter figure being the most distressing -- but he is likely to improve, given his past performance, and that's still above replacement level. The Shane Spencer/John Vander Wal platoon that Joe Torre seems desperate to avoid yet unable to do so has actually performed well. Vander Wal's at an excellent .278/.344/.444, and Spencer is at .247/.338/.390. It would've been nice if Juan Rivera had had a chance to shine before he was injured, but he may still get that chance when his DL stint ends. If not, there's no need to do something overwhelmingly stupid, like trade away the team's future (Juan Rivera, Marcus Thames, Nick Johnson, Ted Lilly) for a pointless short-term solution like Cliff Floyd.

The Yankees already have an excellent team. They just need to avoid panicking in an attempt to make the team a paltry amount better in exchange for gutting the 2004 Yankees.

There are times when this Yankee team will frustrate everyday fans, especially when they fail to execute simple stuff, but when they're on, they're the best there is, and even when one or two of them falter, there are others to pick them up. A fundamental difference between, say, the Yankees and the Giants is that the Giants are suffering because Rich Aurilia and Jeff Kent are having subpar years, and Barry Bonds can't carry the team by himself. (Hell, even Babe Ruth was only a part of Murderer's Row...) The Yankees have survived prolonged slumps by Giambi, Bernie Williams, Posada, and White, and can do likewise for others. Not only do the Yankees have a horse-choking 127 home runs this year, but they're fairly evenly divided -- seven players have ten or more, with another (White) with nine. Six regulars have OBPs over .350, five have SLG over .450, and they throw four .300 hitters into the lineup every day.

They have the pitching depth to weather most any crisis. Their top five are among the best around, and Lilly has been a superlative backup -- most teams would kill to have him as a third starter right now, much less a sixth -- and their bullpen is full of a variety of weapons, particularly when all the starters are healthy.

Nick Johnson has been improving steadily all year, and I really think he's going to be a star on this team in a few years. Giambi has settled down and been the player they paid all the money for (.316/.434/.599, and that's with his crappy April), White is likely to improve, and I think Ventura has finally found a place where his natural abilities shine (Yankee Stadium is the first home field he's ever played in that favors left-handed hitters).

Eight-one down, eight-one to go.

Some other odds and sods:

It is sometimes unfair to say that a particular player is bad when, in fact, they have been misused. Therefore I am loath to call Enrique Wilson bad, but lordy, has Joe Torre been misusing him to a degree that is appalling, and it really needs to stop. Torre has a fondness for weak-ass slap hitters who can play good defense, a proclivity that has earned a lot of money and several rings for Luis Sojo and Clay Bellinger, and Wilson is his latest obsession. Wilson has three uses: backup infielder, late-inning defensive replacement, pinch runner. When used in those capacities, he's fine.

But he's not a viable candidate as a starter unless you're giving one person the day off and/or can afford to have an automatic out in the lineup. A game against a very good left-hander (Al Leiter) when you're in a dogfight for first place and are already starting your weak-hitting backup catcher (Alberto Castillo, since released) because it's a day game after a night game is not such a situation. You certainly don't compound the disaster by negating the player's biggest strength -- defense -- by putting him in right field, a position he's never played in his major-league career.

Torre apparently thought the switch-hitting Wilson was a better bet against Leiter than the left-handed Vander Wal or Karim Garcia (Shane Spencer sprained his wrist, and wasn't available). Nice in theory, but Wilson's line against lefties this year is .000/.043/.000 -- he's 0-22 with a walk. Vander Wal, by comparison, is .385/.385/.538 against lefties, and actually knows what he's doing in the tough right field of Yankee Stadium.

No wonder the Yankees lost...

I know of several folks who were less than impressed with Lilly's performance against the Mets, and cited it as evidence that he should be run out of town on a rail. And yet compare these two lines:

5.0 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 HR, 0 BB, 3 K, 92 PT
4.0 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 HR, 3 BB, 2 K, 94 PT

The first is only a marginal improvement on the second. The first is Mike Mussina's line from Friday's 11-5 win -- and the only reason he lasted five innings is because the team had the lead and he couldn't "earn" the win without those five innings pitched. However, Lilly, who, as usual, got no run support, was kicked after four, despite a similar performance.

We have now been present for both of Andy Pettitte's victories in 2002 -- 5 April against the Deviled Eggs, and now his gem against the Mets. It was obvious from the git-go -- when he started out the game by striking out Roger Cedeno and Roberto Alomar -- that Pettitte had his A-game on. He seemed a bit flustered after a rare balk call in the second inning, but he got over it when he picked Jeromy Burnitz off in true Pettitte fashion, and was never seriously threatened again.

Mo Vaughn was the only Met who had Pettitte's number -- he walked, doubled, and singled. The only other Mets to even reach base were John Valentin (who also walked), Jay Payton (who forced Vaughn at second twice), Burnitz (who forced Valentin at second, then got picked off), and Alomar (a dunk single in the ninth).

He was also the beneficiary of some amazing defense. ESPN happily showed Jeter's two great plays -- a patented Jeter run-into-the-hole-and-backhand-it-then-throw-the-ball-from-midair play, saved by a spectacular stretching grab by Johnson that I doubt the less nimble Giambi would've been able to pull off; and Jeter's over-the-shoulder catch of a Vance Wilson bloop -- but ignored the less spectacular but no less impressive running catch Vander Wal made on an Alomar line shot that we all thought was a double for sure.

The line doesn't show this, but Pettitte was the diametric opposite of Steve Trachsel. Pettitte's strikes were either called or flails at pitches in the dirt, and his balls were all close corner or low pitches (which is where Pettitte lives when he's on his game). Trachsel, on the other hand, had a love/hate relationship with the strike zone all night, constantly falling behind and serving up meatballs. Aside from Vaughn's double, none of the Mets hits were particularly solid; they were lucky to get the bat on the ball (Pettitte had an unusually high eight strikeouts), and not a single ball reached the warning track. The Yankees, on the other hand, were banging the ball all over the place -- even their outs were solidly hit.

Pettitte's last few starts did not inspire much happiness, though throwing him into the thin air of Colorado so soon after a DL stint was perhaps a bit mean. (It's a statement on the Yanks' "confidence" in Sterling Hitchcock that they brought Pettitte back to the majors without a minor-league rehab stint rather than risk starting Hitchcock in his rotation spot.)

Speaking of the whole team contributing, every starter got on base in some form or other Sunday night, and in just about every way possible (nobody hit a triple, but that was about it): eight walks, seven singles, two doubles, two home runs, and two sacrifice flies.

Of special note was the way the Yankees went after Armando Benitez. It would have been so easy at that point -- bottom of the eighth, six-run lead, the Mets' closer in -- to just dog it the rest of the way, to relax. Not this team: after Soriano smacked a double and Jeter reached on an error by Valentin, Giambi worked a walk after fouling off a couple of two-strike pitches to load them up, and Williams then fought back from an 0-2 count to get a nine-pitch walk to score the seventh run.

Finally, some fine taunts from the Bleacher Creatures against the Mets:

In response to a Diamond Vision stat saying that Vaughn recently hit his 300th career home run: "Mo hit his 300th pound last week."

In response to the Vaughn legging out a double: "Go, Cartman!"

Ditto: "I think I can, I think I can..."

The Shouter was subdued after getting a warning from the cops (there were many more cops than usual, and they were being more persnickety than usual, too), but another denizen took over the piss-on-the-opposing-right-fielder duties. His best: "Hey Jeromy! I got your sister up here! I'm shaving her back!"

No Milton or Tom this time 'round. By the way, just for the record, Tom has let the beard grow in. I know I said a while back that it looked like a ferret died on his face, but it's growing in fairly well. Further follicular reports as they come in....

NEXT: Odds and Sods

MAIN PAGE | LATEST UPDATES

Appearances | Bibliography | Biography | Bleacher Creature Feature | Blizzard Games fiction | Buffy the Vampire Slayer fiction | Commentary | Covers and other artwork | Dead Kitchen Radio and The Bronx Bongo | Doctor Who fiction | Dragon Precinct | Fanfiction | Farscape fiction | Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda fiction | Gloat page | Imaginings: An Anthology of Long Short Fiction | KRAD Fan Club | Links | Marvel novels | OtherWere | Pictures | Star Trek fiction | Stories and story & novel excerpts | Urban Nightmares | Young Hercules fiction