{"id":3471,"date":"2011-04-04T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T13:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2011-04-05T14:46:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T19:46:46","slug":"why-the-yankees-will-miss-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3471","title":{"rendered":"Why the Yankees Will Miss the Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently we received a comment from a reader regarding our predictions, and I think the topic he brought up is probably worth its own piece.\u00a0 The reader felt like I unfairly predicted that the Yankees would finish the year third in the AL East behind Boston and Tampa, who I predicted would both finish 2011 in the playoffs.\u00a0 Before I continue, I would like to mention that I think the AL East will be a very tight division, particularly in the battle for second place.\u00a0 The Yankees are one of the best offensive teams in baseball, and they certainly deserve a great deal of respect for that, but everything else they do is far from representative of a playoff-caliber team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Yankees lineup by the middle of the season will likely look something like this:<\/p>\n

1. Brett Gardner<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Nick Swisher<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

3. Mark Teixeira<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

4. Alex Rodriguez<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

5. Robinson Cano<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

6. Curtis Granderson<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

7. Jorge Posada<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

8. Derek Jeter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

9. Catcher<\/p>\n

Swisher\u2019s ability to get on base and the dire need the Yankees will have to score runs will force his climb in the batting order, and Jeter\u2019s decline as an offensive player will force his move downward.\u00a0 The Yankees inability to get hitters out will make every run they put up on the offensive end far more valuable, and getting Jeter extra AB\u2019s will prevent them from doing so.\u00a0 Swisher has posted consecutive seasons with an OBP over .350, and Jeter posted a very soft .333 OBP in 2010.\u00a0 His isolated power was a truly anemic 100, and he probably would not crack the Big League squad out of Spring Training if his name were something other than \u201cDerek Jeter<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d He is not fit to play shortstop or any other position on the infield, and his contract is a joke.<\/p>\n

This piece, however, is not meant to focus on Jeter\u2019s inadequacy.\u00a0 He is certainly not alone or even the most offending culprit.\u00a0 That title belongs to A.J. Burnett<\/a><\/strong>, who has watched his strikeout numbers decline very sharply in the last two seasons as his never stellar control refuses to improve.\u00a0 Phil Hughes<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 fastball has dropped off about 5 mph over the last three seasons, and he was barely reaching 90 mph during the spring.\u00a0 At his age that either means he is hurt or has no interest in offseason conditioning.\u00a0 There is no point in discussing the rest of their rotation because the No. 4 and No. 5 spots will be shuffled extensively all year.\u00a0 Ivan Nova<\/a><\/strong> does not strike enough guys out to be anything better than serviceable, and Bartolo Colon<\/a><\/strong> and Freddy Garcia<\/a><\/strong> are interesting band-aids, but they certainly don\u2019t address the Yanks\u2019 lack of quality arms.<\/p>\n

The Yankee defense is bad.\u00a0 Really bad; it\u2019s also old and not likely to be improving a noticeable amount.\u00a0 No one in the infield made a positive contribution to the win column in 2010.\u00a0 Even Cano was a below-average fielder last season despite his shining reputation.\u00a0 The Yankees are a gorilla ball team in 2011 and will need at least two starting pitchers with track records to convince me that they will finish above either Tampa or Boston.<\/p>\n

Boston is incredible.\u00a0 Their offense and defense are better than the Yankees, and a rotation consisting of Jon Lester<\/a><\/strong>, Clay Buchholz<\/a><\/strong>, Josh Beckett<\/a><\/strong>, John Lackey<\/a><\/strong>, and Daisuke Matsuzaka<\/a><\/strong> is both more defined and more capable than what the Yankees will use this year.\u00a0 Tampa\u2019s rotation of David Price<\/a><\/strong>, James Shields<\/a><\/strong>, Jeff Niemann<\/a><\/strong>, Wade Davis<\/a><\/strong>, and Jeremy Hellickson<\/a><\/strong> is probably the best one in the East.\u00a0 It certainly has the most upside considering that none of their starters are in their thirties yet.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While the bullpen in Tampa is not as promising as it was last year, it is still the bullpen and is easily the most correctable aspect of any Big League organization.<\/p>\n

The Yankees have a handful of generation-defining players in C.C., Gay-Rod, and Cano.\u00a0 They have some players with bright futures like Gardner and Nova.\u00a0 They have good veteran presence in Jeter, Mo, Posada, Granderson, and Swisher.\u00a0 They seem to have good chemistry in the clubhouse as well, which never hurts, so I think that one more run is possible with this group.\u00a0 They simply have done nothing to correct a sharply declining defense and pitching staff.\u00a0 If anything, both of these aspects of the team declined further during the winter with the resigning of Jeter and failure to convince Pettitte and\/or Cliff Lee<\/a><\/strong> that pitching for the Yankees was really all that cool.\u00a0 Tampa is young and all of their key players are still either well within their prime years or in their growth phases.\u00a0 They lost good players during the offseason, but they didn\u2019t lose Longoria, Price, or Shields.\u00a0 The Red Sox off-season was historically good.<\/p>\n

I think it is possible that all three of the teams mentioned could reach 90 wins, but the lack of pitching and defense in New York is going to be too much for their aging offense to offset.\u00a0 Additionally, an improved Orioles team and promising Blue Jays team might make the division even tougher.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently we received a comment from a reader regarding our predictions, and I think the topic he brought up is probably worth its own piece.\u00a0 The reader felt like I unfairly predicted that the Yankees would finish the year third in the AL East behind Boston and Tampa, who I predicted would both finish 2011 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,1300,6,11,13,10,14],"tags":[2061,150,2063,558,1928,2064,828,2065,616,618,931,2062,146,354,1710,198,1359,59,499,71,2060,69,278,549,148],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3478,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/3478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}