New York Yankees: In-Depth Analysis

It's now been two weeks since the All-Star break, and it's time to jump back into looking at actual teams with an In-Depth Analysis feature on the New York Yankees.  I'd been wanting to profile them since doing the Mets as my last team, and it seems especially appropriate now as they're the number 1 power-ranked team heading into the second half of the season (despite recently dropping 4 in a row to the red-hot-in-July Oakland Athletics).  They've also recently made a splash in the trade market - but in the final days approaching the July 31st trade deadline, I'll bet that will be the case for a lot of teams moving forward.

The Yankees are the winningest franchise in all of baseball, with a sickening 27 World Series titles to their name, more than twice that of the nearest competitor.  They've had some of the game's best players wear their Tiffany-designed logos on their caps over the years: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra, just to name a few.  And yet they've managed to find themselves hated by a large portion of baseball's serious fans - likely because their astronomical payroll flies in the face of every statement Commissioner Bud Selig has ever made about "parity" and because their tendency to win all the time leads to the propensity of annoying, entitled bandwagon fans to come out of the woodwork every playoff season.

But you've got to give the 2012 Yankees credit: even as most pundits wrote them off as an aging team with pitching uncertainty, they've managed to play (and spend) their way back to the top of the heap in recent months.  Below you'll find a graphic representing their current roster, but if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that it's different than the ones I've previously included in this feature.  That's because I've spent the last two weeks completely overhauling my database to reflect stats through the first half of 2012 rather than the already-completed 2011.  The points (and points/g), teams played for, positional eligibility (10 games at a position to qualify for hitters, 5 games for pitchers), and color-coding have all been updated as of the All-Star Break, while pre-season rankings and salaries remain the same.  Check it out!

Highest Paid Yankees

I'm sticking with the same format I used for most of my previous teams just so that I could have an excuse to list these unbelievable salaries.  The Yankees have a staggering 11 players getting paychecks of $10mm or more with three of those cashing in more than $20mm this year (Alex Rodriguez gets $29mm, CC Sabathia gets $23mm, and Mark Teixeira gets $22.5mm).  Ichiro, the newest Yankee having been acquired just yesterday, was getting $17mm in the last year of his deal with the Mariners, and I'm not sure how much the Yankees are on the hook for.  The next four highest salaries go to the middle infield (Jeter and Cano) and the relief corps (Rivera and Soriano, who's getting a chance to earn his closer's salary because Rivera is not able to earn his).  To say that no other team comes close to their level of expenditure would be an understatement.

Highest Scoring Yankees (2012.5)

Cano refused to shake #ASG MVP Melky Cabrera's hand as he rounded
the bases following his 3-run Home Run in the Midsummer Classic.

The two Yankees who have put together the best 2012's through the break also started the All Star game for the AL: 2B Robinson Cano (1,317) and CF Curtis Granderson (1,215).  Mark Teixeira (1,076) has shaken off a bad start to once again put him on pace to reach the coveted 2,000 point plateau. CC Sabathia (1,055), who had to cede his All Star spot due to injury, is the only Yankees pitcher to top 1,000 points.  Just to give you an idea of how potent this roster is, the Bronx Bombers had six other players with at least 900 points at the break.

Highest Scoring Yankees (2011)

The quartet of Yankees with 1,000 points at the break is the same quartet to break 2,000 points back in 2011 - however they were joined by Mariano Rivera whose freak knee injury during batting practice will preclude him from reaching that milestone this year.  This seems as good a time to point out as any that Mariano is one of 10 Yankees currently on the 60-Day DL - the only other team to approach that level of injury is the Padres with nine players out for at least two full months.

Newest Yankees

Let's go in chronological order through the Yankees off-season (and regular season) to see who they added and when.  The first player picked up after the World Series was (drumroll please) Jayson Nix, who has spent most of his time in pinstripes shoring up a LF left vacant by the injury to Brett Gardner.  (During the break, this position looked even less defined with Darnell McDonald and Dewayne Wise also contributing.  Both have since been dropped from the 40-man roster.)  The next biggest name to be acquired, although he hasn't yet pitched for the Yankees due to rotator cuff tendinitis, was Michael Pineda, in what would prove to be the first of two big trades with the Mariners.  Three days later followed the signing of Hiroki Kuroda to a 1-year deal, and the Yankees' pitching staff was deemed bolstered.

The team addressed the only uncertainty in their starting lineup when they signed Raul Ibanez as their full-time DH - although as the graphic shows he's actually been the Yankees' everyday left fielder.  Even before Pineda officially went on the DL, the Yanks lured Andy Pettitte out of retirement because you can never have too much pitching... but you can never have too few pitchers with fractured ankles, as Pettitte will gladly attest to.  Then just two days before Opening Day, the Yankees traded with the Giants for Chris Stewart to replace Francisco Cervelli as their backup catcher.

During the season, we've seen under-the-radar deals for low-profile relievers, only one of which is on the roster at the moment (Chad Qualls, an underrated 7th inning type brought in from the Phillies - Rapada and Eppley were signed to a minor league deal/claimed on waivers (respectively before the season began).  Then of course there was yesterday's deal for Ichiro, acquired for D.J. Mitchell (who had been on the 40-man roster) and Danny Farquhar (who had already been claimed on waivers three different times this season before being involved in this deal. Seems strange that the Mariners would give up up such a valuable piece of their team and culture for a trade chip who was let go by two other teams so far...).  Presumably Ichiro's arm will keep him in RF, shifting Swisher over to LF and Ibanez into a DH platoon with Andruw Jones.

Outlook

The Yankees have enough pop in their lineup and enough big names on the pitching staff to keep themselves pretty firmly in contention for the next couple of months.  I know how competitive the eastern divisions of baseball have been this year, but the Red Sox don't have a single consistent starting pitcher, the Rays' defense has fallen apart, and the Blue Jays have too many question marks on their roster.  Even if the Orioles' fairy tale season continues, they're going to be shooting for one of the Wild Card spots at best.  Their playoff hopes depend on what other (if any) acquisitions they make to strengthen their rotation or bullpen, but as it stands, this team has a good shot to go far.

Words. Cannot. Describe...

...the emotions swirling through my head right now, just over six hours since the credits rolled on The Dark Knight Rises, the thrilling conclusion of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. I managed to remain spoiler free through the entire lead-up to the film's release - I limited my exposure to hard-to-avoid billboards and posters (see right, also my phone background), and the only line from the trailer I happened to hear through shut eyes and covered-up ears was, "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne," which is the title of the first track in Hans Zimmer's striking soundtrack album.  Although, for my money, Michael Shannon does a much more convincing reading of that same line in Take Shelter...

I'm convinced that shielding myself from the trailers enhanced my enjoyment of the movie, particularly after saturating my brain with trailers for The Dark Knight in the months before that came out in 2008.  I mean, I watched the regular trailer, the trailer juxtaposed with scenes from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, even the trailer reenacted with LEGO.  I knew every beat from the trailer so well that when I eventually saw the movie, I was basically just waiting for those scenes to happen.  Like, instead of being absorbed by the brilliantly-planned and executed car chase, I was just thinking, Oh, here's where they're gonna flip that truck.  It kind of pulled me out of the experience, which I didn't want to happen with the finale.

Whether or not my little spoiler-free experiment contributed to my perceptions of the movie, I have to believe that it made a positive impact.  I left the theater last night thoroughly satisfied - with the portrayal of the characters, with the treatment of the Bat-mythology, and with the narrative structure in general, even though it did fall into the greedy trap of trying to squeeze too many plot points and/or amusing bits into the already-bloated running time.  In my mind it didn't measure up to The Dark Knight (how can you top a Batman movie that features The Joker?), but I could tell instantly that #TDKR is a movie I will be happy to see again many times in the future.

Needless to say, I've been kept busy with all the craziness leading up to this much-anticipated event in Batman's media history (you can check out my live-tweeting of both previous movies) - not to mention LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, another Bat-related pastime that's been keeping me pretty occupied.  Through all this, I've still been keeping up with baseball, although my interest has turned rather internal since the All-Star Game.  While a half-season's worth of stats does not provide a terribly large sample size, the halfway point of a season is a good milestone to pause and take a snapshot and see how each team is faring.  I've praised ESPN's fantasy point system so much that I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the fact that points are already calculated has helped make the half-season evaluation process infinitely more manageable.

Unfortunately, the baseball world did not pause for me while I was holed up in my cave putting together my reports.  But I'm pretty much done now and just about ready to launch back into the In-Depth Analyses I love so well.  But for now, go to your local theater (IMAX preferably) and check out The Dark Knight Rises as soon as possible... because I can only resist talking about all the spoilers for so long!

Pic of the Week 7/8/12: RIP ERNEST

He was a great actor and a great man, whose many accomplishments were never accepted by the good people of the Wikipedia community...

RIP Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

No, I Don't Want No Snubs

A Snub is a guy who can't get no love from.... the All-Star voting community.

It happens every year, and will continue to happen so long as fans continue to vote for their favorite players to represent their leagues in the midsummer classic.  Ever since Connie Mack and John McGraw squared off against each other in the very first All-Star game way back in 1933, I'm sure there were a fair amount of deserving players left off the team and some contributors not quite fit to be called All-Star - although there were probably a lot less of these back then when the roster comprised only 18 players (compared to the modern era's 34) and because the managers selected the entire lineup until 1946 when fan voting was introduced.

Fan voting was actually banned in 1957 following an incident of fans from Cincinnati stuffing the ballot boxes and electing 7 reds to the starting lineup.  The fans were once again allowed to decide the starters in 1970, and in the early part of the last decade - in the same rules-change that made the game decide which team got home field advantage in the World Series - the players and coaches were introduced to the process.  Their ballots decide the reserves (a mirror of the starting lineup with one player at each position) and the pitching staff (five starters, three relievers).  The managers then select their own players (in conjunction with the Commissioner's Office), insuring that at least one player from each team in the league is represented, further diluting the talent pool.

Everybody has their own opinions about who should play in the All-Star game; and apparently Giants, Rangers, and Yankees fans have more opinions than most, as evidenced by three members of each team on the starting squads, the majority of them (roughly 6 of the 9) elected over more qualified candidates.  I'm somewhat of a purist, so I try to cast my votes for the most deserving players in the league rather than my favorites.  I've given you all a rundown of my decision-making process, but now, thanks to real-time fantasy point calculation courtesy of ESPN.com, I have hard and fast evidence of the true (fantasy) value of the players selected to this year's All-Star teams - evidence which I present to you here:

Starter snubs are the easiest to judge because their picks are the only ones that are a direct result of fan voting.  The reserves don't always reflect the players/coaches ballot because if they happen to elect the same player as the fan ballot, the second-place vote-getter is chosen.  In my estimation, the most blatant fan snub is NL 3B David Wright - not because he scored the most points of anyone left off the team (OF snubs Carlos Gonzalez and Ryan Braun [who will incidentally start for the injured Matt Kemp] had more) but because the player for whom he was passed over has the least points of any All-Star starter (only Chipper Jones, a last-minute replacement for Kemp, has fewer).

Wright currently is tied for the NL lead in WAR (along with well-deserved All-Star Joey Votto), in addition to serving as a team leader on the surprise-contender Mets.  You'd think that such a high-profile player who plays in the country's largest media market would be able to drum up some more support.  I can understand a player on a losing team like Carlos Ruiz (who currently leads the NL in batting) not getting too much attention from the fans, but to also be left off the player ballot?  I shouldn't complain too much about that, though, because at the time I cast my votes I favored Yadier Molina, if only ever so slightly.

In the AL, Miguel Cabrera is a much more minor snub because Adrian Beltre has actually played a full season and played it quite well. I don't think I can object to Derek Jeter's election, even though Cabrera and Andrus have both played better, because Cap'n Jetes positively oozes star power.  The catcher situation mirrors the NL, with the lowest scoring catcher elected by the fans, the middle scorer elected by the players, and the highest scorer selected by the manager.

As far as snubs left off the roster completely, the list has to start with Edwin Encarnacion, whose breakout season as a DH-who-can-field has to be worth more than Adam Dunn's K-filled bounceback season.  Hunter Pence has had a better season than Jay Bruce, and Tony La Russa didn't even need to pick him to fill the Reds' quota since Aroldis Chapman was already elected by the players.  And in the classic ignorance of defense, Brett Lawrie will not be making an appearance, because 3.4 of his AL-leading 4.8 WAR came with the glove.

For pitcher snubs, the NL is 100% culpable, with such heavy hitters as Madison Bumgarner (seemingly the only Giant left off the All-Star team), Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke notably absent. Of the unexpected breakout talents, Lance Lynn and Chris Sale (AL) made it, but there's no sign of James McDonald or Chris Capuano, both of whom deserve some recognition for the expectations they've defied.  Many of the AL's best pitchers were denied as well, but as one out of five of them have a chance to join the team via the Final Vote stunt, I'll leave them for now.

So when you watch the All-Star game next Tuesday, while you're marveling at the players on the field, remember to keep a spot in your hearts open for those who were deserving but were not so lucky to have their names up in lights this year.  Your plight will probably not be remembered... but then again it's all just a big popularity contest.