Douggy's 2009 Yankees

Posted here for you all to see...

I believed that LAST offseason should have been quiet because of the quality of the free agent class THIS year. The economic situation in baseball played itself out so that a lot of players hit the market this year, and a lot of teams faced key personnel changes. A fairly active trading deadline helped push that process along as well, because many of the players moved change homes with the understanding from their new teams that they may well be rentals.

Passing on Santana last year allowed us to keep our young players and keep a good deal of salary off the books for what was a transition year in 2008. Now, this year, a TON of that salary comes off the books, and the Yankees can get back to spending big - but this time, intelligently - in building a team that will contend in 2009.

Here are my picks for the final roster, reflecting recent events since Nick Swisher has been acquired and Darrell Rasner is headed to Japan.

STARTING LINEUP
CF Johnny Damon
SS Derek Jeter
3B Alex Rodriguez
RF Manny Ramirez (3Y $75M, possibly go as high as 4Y 100M)
DH Hideki Matsui
C Jorge Posada
LF Xavier Nady
1B Nick Swisher
2B Robinson Cano

BENCH
C Jose Molina
1B Doug Mientkiewicz (1Y $1-2M)
IF Cody Ransom
OF Brett Gardner

ROTATION
SP CC Sabathia (6Y $140-150M)
SP Chien Ming Wang
SP Andy Pettitte
SP Joba Chamberlain
SP Phil Hughes (sign Freddy Garcia as insurance, 1Y)

BULLPEN
RP Brian Bruney
RP Chris Britton/Jon Albaladejo/Garcia
RP Edwar Ramirez
RP Phil Coke
RP Damaso Marte
SU Jose Veras
CL Mariano Rivera

It's time to break in Hughes, and Joba starts full time this year. If insurance is needed (particularly to keep Hughes and Joba under their innings limits), you could sign Garcia or bring Pavano back for a one year incentive laden deal...or go to the farm.

This puts the team on track to contend seriously and make a major push in 2009. After 2009, the lineup will need to be overhauled, so that sets the stage for Brett Gardner to take over in center, Austin Jackson to take over in left, and Nady to slide back to right with Manny becoming full time DH. Damon and Matsui expire after 2009, and it's quite possible Matsui will retire and Damon may not be brought back. If Damon is brought back, he could be the DH, Manny RF, and Nady LF. Jackson is athletic enough to play left or center, and if he's not ready, you still have Gardner. Lots of options as far as ways to go with that.

So there you have it, the ideal 2009 lineup.

As for Moose, it would be wrong to not mention anything in this post. He's been a great Yankee and it is a failure on the part of the organization, not on Moose himself, that he was never able to win a championship while he was here. If this is truly the end of his career, then we have been witness to one of the finest and most intelligent pitchers in baseball history, right up there with Greg Maddux. He has been a model of consistency, control, and class over the course of his career, and was a great Yankee. He will be missed on the field...best of luck to him in his life and career after baseball.

Quit Yer Bitchin' about the World Series TV Ratings

Another year, another World Series, and more clueless ass clowns complaining about how the ratings were low.

What do you expect?

What do you expect when games start after 8pm every night, as they have for the past decade? What do you expect when games are filled with pitching changes nowadays that drag the game on longer?

But more importantly, what do you expect with two "Small Market" (aka not Boston, Chicago, or New York) teams in the World Series, right?

Wrong.

Baseball is fucking up because it can't cover itself without bias. It promotes its "famous franchises" at the neglect of its Joe the Plumbers, er..."regular Joes."

It starts even before the season begins. Pitchers and catchers report, and all you hear about is the Yankees vs. the Red Sox. Maybe some other team somewhere has a prospect that gets a 2 second mention because of the internet phenomenon known as "fantasy baseball" (as in, not real baseball), but chances are the Top 10 "topics du mois" during March are 1) college basketball, 2) college basketball, 3) an NFL player getting arrested, 4) the Los Angeles Lakers and/or Kobe Bryant, 5) college basketball, 6) retirement home bingo, 7) Jason Varitek's World Series predictions, 8) a comparison of Hank Steinbrenner to his father, 9) Peter Gammons pleasuring his pee pee to the sight of Fenway Park now one year older (and almost as old as Gammons himself), and 10) college basketball.

Man, all those Kansas City Royals fans must be PUMPED for baseball season...

Chiefs season can't come soon enough...oh wait...

So what you end up with is a game that is alienating its fan base outside of major cities, and a vast majority of casual fans who actually only give a shit about 5 teams. 5 teams. Out of 30. The odds of one of those teams making it into the playoffs is, mathematically, about 1 in 3. Maybe slightly higher, because those teams tend to do well, which is why they get the biased coverage, so let's go with 40%. And of those 5 teams, the fans that like one most likely hate the rest, so you've got a highly polarized fan segment that will eat up every second if "their" team is in, but would rather watch reruns of "The Nanny" than sit through one of the 4 rival teams playing. And everyone else doesn't give a shit, because their team's not in it.

And the kids, well fuck 'em. They don't pay tickets to the game. No need to make anything accessible to them anymore. If their parents are rich enough to buy them baseline seats, well, then maybe we'll throw 'em a foul ball. But that's it. If they want to watch the World Series, they're going to learn to stay up like REAL MEN for those extra inning marathons well into the next morning...Homework and the higher sleep requirements for children be damned! Hey, what's that little guy...?...THERES NO CRYING IN BASEBALL.

And you wonder why baseball is increasingly becoming a bandwagon fan's game. A sport's championship is the best way to gauge true interest in the sport. Baseball may boast record ticket sales, but it is alienating the intelligent fans, and future generations. The kids who will grow up and go to baseball games are the sons of hecklers who only know how to cheer for a winning team. Or pretentious suits sitting in the expensive seats, ordering all kinds of expensive shit, getting mildly drunk college style to "remember when" and then leaving in the fifth inning to go hit on that secretary from the other department at a bar as pretentious as their "we sponsor ____ comment" after that home run in the third inning. These are not educated baseball fans who can appreciate a good game and make interesting conversation for 9 innings, thus their poor kids will never have a fighting chance. Hockey, despite being seen as a fringe sport, still gets plenty of fan interest for the Stanley Cup, even if a fan's "favorite team" ain't in it. Football = Super Bowl, 'nuff said. Baseball? Not so much. The media, with the help of MLB, hypes it's "favored 5" and when the last team goes, no one gives a shit. No one cared this year after Boston was knocked out; they were the last "bastion of hope" for the Casuals out there. Same thing in 2006...Tigers/St. Louis? 2005: Houston/White Sox? Hell, no one even remembers if the White Sox even CELEBRATED winning the damn thing (wait, they WON??). Even Ozzie Guillen couldn't call attention to that Series.

And it's not because of the sport, it's because of the way it's marketed. TV data shows that 55% of all television sets in the greater Philadelphia area were tuned to the World Series during one of the final games of the series, including 73% of TV's THAT WERE ON. Think about that. More than half of all television sets are watching the game. 3/4 of TV's that are on, are watching the game.

Lowest.
Rated.
Series.
Ever.

You don't need to be a genius to realize that this means no one outside Philly was watching.

Because of the dumbasses in charge of promoting the league, the teams, and the games, Rays/Phillies never had even so much as a fighting chance. Maybe if the teams got some coverage during the season, from start to finish, instead of Yankees/Mets/Red Sox/Cubs/Angels, they would have.

But with MLB and ESPN running things, we'll never know. See you next year in the Nielsen Rating cellar...