6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Tigers Take Mountain By Strategy: Tigers 8, Yankees 3

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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Tigers Take Mountain By Strategy: Tigers 8, Yankees 3

I hate chair throwers, e.g., Steve Ballmer, or with the A's, Billy Beane, upon learning his underlings had drafted Bonderman, according to Moneyball. After today's excellent outing, Jeremy Bonderman will get the opportunity to make the team that drafted him regret shipping him to Detroit. Or not. Whatever, the good news is another first-round exit for the Yankees, whose $200 million payroll sinks quietly — well, quietly save for a ninth-inning homer by Jorge Posada — into the Atlantic for another year. Boo. Hoo.

The Kittycats advance, and so yay for clean living and all that, but with Bonderman carrying a no-hitter through five (or so, and I'm too lazy to look it up), the talk now is of Joe Torre getting fired, and, well, I'm shocked that the owner who couldn't decide which of Bob Lemon, Gene Michael, Billy Martin, Dick Howser, or Clyde King he wanted in the manager's chair over the six-year period from 1977-1983 hadn't fired Torre already. Exiting the 70's, the Yanks became a team at sea. As Steven Goldman recently suggested, their problem begins with no homegrown starting pitching:

The Yankees need to develop dynamic young pitching. They are not ever, EVER, going to buy enough of it on the free agent market to make up a championship caliber staff. That's not news. If you were around to watch the Yankees from say 1982 through their 1989 collapse, you've lived through this scenario before, the desperate chasing after veteran pitchers in an effort to acquire what the farm system could not produce. Some of those moves were good, some were tragically bad, but none of them were enough. In no particular order: Phil Neikro, Eddie Lee Whitson, Bill Gullickson, Steve Trout, John Montefusco, Shane Rawley, Marty Bystrom, Rick Reuschel, Doyle Alexander, Tim Leary, and on and on. It doesn't work. You have to be very lucky to succeed with someone else's 30 year old. Worse, every time you're wrong you've added another immovable Carl Pavano or Jaret Wright contract to your roster. Even when you're right, you're always just a few years from having to replace that player.

I hate to say this about the progeny of an Angels legend, but Jeret Wright might just end up in that pile, even though he's not nearly as expensive as some of their other mistakes; but Friday's starter, Randy Johnson, definitely falls into that category. He's now postseason-fragile and earning top dollar. The Tigers deserve the champaigne they're drinking.

Eight more, Kittycats.

Recap

// posted by Rob @ 12:37 AM link // 4 comments