Over the off-season Brian Cashman tried to acquire one Clifftopher Lee, who spurned the Yankees offer and went to Philadelphia. At that point Cashman went into non-panic mode and set out on a plan to build the Yankees with low risk, high reward players. Signing players with succesful pasts but who have struggled recently has always been part of the succesful Yankee championship formula. Its why we had Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry on our team in the dynasty years. Recently we haven't had as much success with signings like Nick Johnson last season or Jason Lane and Morgan Ensberg a couple years back. But this time it was different. You see the reason Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry were such good pick ups, is that at one point in their careers they were perennial All-Star, MVP and CY Young candidates. There was a higher possibility of catching lightning in a bottle, and even if they just flashed former examples of their excellence, it was worth the chance taken on them.
And that leads to the signings of Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, Eric Chavez and Andruw Jones. Its still early, and I don't think there's any one out there who believes these players will remain healthy all season. But the early returns have been promising, and given the contracts we've given these players, will it really matter if they don't all pan out? But the difference between these and other signings is that all of these players were in their own time great players. For 6 consecutive seasons, Freddy Garcia was a 200-inning workhorse for Seattle and the White Sox who led the league in innings and ERA in 2001. Bartolo Colon was the 2005 Cy Young award winner. Eric Chavez is a 6-time gold glover who was a regular 20-30 homerun guy in those years. And Andruw Jones we remember as the 10-time gold glove centerfielder for the Braves all those years he was on the other side of our dynasty advance.
So the point is, Cashman increased our chances of catching lightning in a bottle with these sorts of signings, and anyone who can catch lightning has to be either a genius, or Thor, and I'm just not willing to conclude the latter just yet until I see the movie.
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2 comments:
I like to think that Cashman's talent for signing useful and relatively inexpensive players like the guys you listed (and don't forget Russell Martin, just 1 year/$4 million and off to a terrific start) makes up for the insanely big contracts the Yankees give out each year.
I did forget Russell Martin,and how could I? He's arguably the best of the pack!
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