I know, he's a Red Sox player, but its relevant. Jonathan Lester pitched a no hitter last night against the Royals. That's the second in two years for the Red Sox as Bucholz threw one last season.
At some point you have to concede that the Red Sox own this decade. The 90's were the Yankees. 4 championships, 2 perfect games, a 114 win season, we definetely dominated. I still say screw the Red Sox's decade and lets win one now. Maybe the Yankees will agree, but they're playing like they have no hope. Tonight they need to turn that around.
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Its kind of weird not being worried about your teams chances to win the division. I think it all turned around when the new ownership took over, and werent doing things like trading for Mike Lansing and Dante Bichette, or having Troy O'Leary as your 5 hole hitter in the ALCS. I guess you guys can take solice that we are still 20 championships behind the yankees.
The Yankees built smart in the 90's. I think of that 1998 team that won the 114 games. They didn't have the best players at each position, and they certainly weren't blazing a trail stat wise. The team leader in homeruns had 28. RBI's was 123. The team lead in ERA was 3.13 by El Duque, and he only pitched in 21 games. 2 starters were over 4 in ERA. We had some good bullpen pieces, but we also had some bad ones. And still they own 114 games. Lately, we've had the best statistical players available, and we've been struggling all throughout the season.
See, its misleading, those teams, because they actually were pretty solid stat wise.
Tino Martinez had 44 HR in 1997, the 1998 Yankees had all nine starters and one reserve (Shane Spencer) in double-digits in HR. They hit 207 HR that year, which was fourth in the league. In 2000 they were 6th in the league. They were not a huge power team, but they hit their share of HR. 2, 1, 1, 2, 5. Those are the AL ranks of the Yankees' teams in OBP, 1996 to 2000. That's what those teams were always based on, offensively. They walked a lot and grinded out at-bats and wore people down, and finally, 1, 2, 4, 3, 4. Those were their yearly league ranks in K's by their pitchers. Their starters were very good, 1-5, all of those years, in striking out people and not walking people. Their relievers were good, except Mariano, who was impenetrably brilliant. Really the only difference between the two teams, is that, the teams from 01 and beyond have not had the solid starting pitching. Also they had some bad luck in 01 and 04.
Pitching has def been the biggest weakness since 2000. Especially beginning in 2003 and going forward. Mike Mussina's been consistant in that time, but he's also been injured a lot. Kevin Brown, Jose Contreras, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Javier Vazquez, and Randy Johnson have not quite panned out as we would have hoped.
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