Huge payroll. Slow start. Lowest OPS in the American League heading into play Thursday night.
Detroit Tigers? Nope.
Hit List Better watch out. The last place anyone wants to land is on The Henchman's Hit List. Follow along to see why. It's the New York Yankees, who arrive in Boston this weekend after splitting a series with the Rays and dropping a series to the Royals. Lost in all the shovelfuls of dirt being heaped on the Tigers during their 0-7 start were some foreboding signs in New York.
The Yankees have a perilous mix of players who are well past their prime, young pitchers who haven't reached theirs yet and two journeymen middle relievers racing each other to the waiver wire. This will add up to the unthinkable: no October baseball in the Bronx for the first time since the strike year of 1994.
This week's Hit List runs down the Top 10 reasons the Yanks' streak of consecutive playoff appearances will end at unlucky 13.
Jorge Posada
The Dorian Gray of big league catchers. Posada defied a century of baseball wisdom last season by having the best year of his career as a 36-year-old catcher in 2007. In so doing he cashed in on a four-year, $52.4M contract. And seemingly upon inking the deal, the lines in the portrait began a sudden and inevitable crumble. Posada started the season slowly with three singles in his first 17 at bats (.176) and is now battling a shoulder injury that is preventing him from catching. If Posada's injury lingers, he will join Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui on the growing list of high-priced Yankees whose primary value is at designated hitter.
Derek Jeter
You know you're getting old when a new generation of shortstops who wear No. 2 in your honor (Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez, Jhonny Peralta) start reaching the majors. Expectations for Jeter run so high few noticed that he actually exceeded them the last two years. After hitting .314 for the first 10 years of his career, the first-ballot Hall of Famer bumped that number up to .333 over the last two seasons combined. Jeter is 34 now and when he pulled his quad beating out a double-play ball earlier this week it was a grim reminder of a mortality he has rarely displayed in his amazing career. His slow start (.208/.240/.292) and leg injury are eerie harbingers in New York that Jeter's decline phase may have finally begun.
Jason Giambi
One of the saddest sights of the post-Steroid Era is watching those implicated try to prove that their careers were not built on juice alone. So far, Jason Giambi is doing a very bad job of that. Coming off a season in which he hit .236 with 14 home runs and missed 79 games, the 37-year-old has one hit in his first 14 at bats. A below-average first baseman, Giambi would be a logical DH, save for the fact that his career OPS drops off over 200 points when he's not playing in the field.
Johnny Damon
With Melky Cabrera establishing himself as a game-changing centerfielder with his glove and arm, Johnny Damon has been relegated to a LF/DH option. Those aren't slots in the lineup normally reserved for a guy coming off a .747 OPS season. The 34-year-old Damon is off to a slow start and slated to make $26M over the next two seasons. Even if he were to get his OPS back up to his career .786 mark — he's at .649 after two weeks — he'd still be a grossly overpaid liability as a corner outfielder who can't throw.
Andy Pettitte
There was a lot of hand wringing over how Andy Pettitte would respond this season in the wake of the wrenching testimony he was forced to provide against his friend Roger Clemens. A more relevant concern might have been just how much to expect from a 35-year-old with a bad back who allowed 476 hits in 429 innings the last two seasons. If his first start was any indication, the answer is not a lot. Pettitte got roughed up in a 6-3 loss to the Rays, allowing eight hits and two walks over five shaky innings.
Mike Mussina
Moose is 39 years old and coming off the worst season of his career. You don't have to be Bill James to figure out that's a bad combination. Mussina's K/BB ratio dipped to 2.6-to-1 last season, the first time it had been under 3:1 since 1994. After a bad first outing, Mussina bounced back in his last start against the Rays. But when Joba Chamberlain comes to take the ball from one of the Yankee starters this summer, there's a good chance it will be the end of Mussina's largely disappointing tenure (3-7 in his last 10 postseason decisions) in New York.
Ian Kennedy
The 23-year-old Kennedy is by no means a flamethrower in the Joba Chamberlain mold, but some of those mid-80s radar gun readings in his first start had to concern the Yankees' front office. Not only was his velocity down from a year ago, but he was all over the place, walking four in 2.1 brutal innings. Things didn't improve much in his soggy relief appearance on Wednesday as he went walk, double, base hit to the first three batters he faced, allowing two runs before getting an out. Right-handed soft-tossers who walk guys aren't long for the big leagues, much less the rotation of the highest-priced team in baseball.
Phil Hughes
For 6.1 spectacular innings of no-hit ball in Texas last May, the Yankees glimpsed the future and had to believe they were seeing the second coming of David Cone. But in Hughes' 14 other Major League starts he is 4-4 with a 4.90 ERA and a less than 2-to-1 K/BB ratio (58K, 31BB). The future may still be bright, but after the 21-year-old Hughes was roughed up for 10 baserunners in three innings in K.C. on Tuesday it just doesn't appear to be now.
Kyle Farnsworth, LaTroy Hawkins
There are two reasons guys end up middle relievers: not good enough to start and not good enough to close. Few embody those limitations more than Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins. In eight outings this season they have allowed 19 hits and four walks in 9.1 innings, while combining for a 9.64 ERA. The bridge to Mariano Rivera might be secure with Chamberlain, but the bridge to the bridge is looking pretty treacherous.
Joe Girardi
So much of managerial success is about timing. When Joe Torre arrived in New York, he had a rookie shortstop beginning a Hall of Fame career and a winning nucleus of Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera in their primes. Compare that to the situation Joe Girardi has inherited. Not only has Torre established the standard of making the playoffs every year with anything less than a title considered a failure, but now Jeter, 34; Posada, 36; Giambi, 37; Damon, 34; Rivera, 38; Pettitte, 35; and Mike Mussina, 39, are all in their decline phases. Girardi's first controversial decision backfired as he played weatherman in Kansas City and pulled Kennedy from his scheduled start for fear of losing him to a rain delay. The Yankees lost 4-0 as Farnsworth and Kennedy each got nicked for two runs in relief of emergency starter Brian Bruney, while Royals starter Zach Greinke dazzled in the raindrops for eight uninterrupted innings. This was the gig Girardi wanted. We'll see how long he has it if the Yankees miss the playoffs.
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Originally Posted by koolzach1
