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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

What's in a Name?

On paper, the New York Yankees have assembled a ridiculous amount of (former) talent. If the Yankees had this team five years ago, they probably would have been the greatest team of all-time.

C Brian McCann
1B Mark Teixeira
2B Brian Roberts
3B Alex Rodriguez
SS Derek Jeter
LF Alfonso Soriano
CF Jacoby Ellsbury
RF Ichiro Suzuki
DH Carlos Beltran
BE Brett Gardner
BE Kelly Johnson
BE Vernon Wells
BE Brendan Ryan

Age and injuries have reduced this roster to what figures to be a .500 ish team. Everyone listed above is on the wrong side of 30, with several coming off major injuries. Minus McCann, the projected starting infield got into 153 games last year combined. Except for Ellsbury and McCann, none of these guys are the players they once were, though Soriano and Beltran were productive last year and Gardner somehow manages to be wildly underrated despite playing for the most famous baseball team in the world.  

SP CC Sabathia
SP Hiroki Kuroda
SP Ivan Nova
SP Michael Pineda

Pineda hasn't thrown a major league pitch since 2011, Sabathia is coming off the worst season of his career, and Kuroda is going to be 39. Nova made just 20 starts last year, and the year before that his ERA was over 5. David Phelps, the projected fifth starter (unless New York signs Matt Garza or Ubaldo Jimenez) has only 23 big league starts under his belt and had an ERA close to five last year. The bullpen should be better, but Dave Robertson is never going to be Mariano Rivera.

It's no wonder everyone's predicting gloom and doom for the Yankees in 2014.

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