Yanks’ Season Unraveled One Injury at a Time

By TYLER KEPNER
Published: September 27, 2008

BOSTON — When a stiff shoulder knocked Joba Chamberlain from his start in Texas on Aug. 4, the Yankees were finished for 2008. They had made such careful plans for Chamberlain, invested so much hope, and at that moment none of it mattered. Chamberlain was just another injury casualty in a doomed season.

The Yankees were two and a half games out of a playoff spot when Chamberlain went down. They went 16-20 in their next 36 games, a stretch that lasted into the final homestand at Yankee Stadium. Losing Chien-Ming Wang to a foot injury in June was brutal. Losing Chamberlain was fatal. Neither made another start.

“We had one ace go down, and we produced another No. 1,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “Then he went down, too.”

It would be too simplistic to say injuries alone ruined the Yankees’ season. Years of corrosive institutional problems also forecast the end of their 13-year playoff run. But health was the biggest factor. The Yankees were not a bad team this season. But they were never whole.

The Tampa Bay Rays, surprise champions of the American League East, were the only team in the majors with five pitchers who each made 25 starts. The Yankees, who will finish third, had two pitchers make 25 starts. They were the only team in the majors that did not have three pitchers throw at least 115 innings.

They patched their rotation, and they might have gotten away with it if the offense had produced as it did in 2007. But that never happened. Injuries to Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui — and regressions by Robinson Canó, Melky Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter — were too much to overcome.

In 2007, the Yankees scored 191 more runs than their opponents. This season, through Friday, they had outscored opponents by just 59 runs.

“Have they worked, have they grinded, have they done everything that they did last year? Yes, absolutely,” the hitting coach Kevin Long said. “But if you break it down much deeper than that, you can see why it didn’t transform into six runs a game. It just wasn’t going to happen. It was just something that, after opening day, never really transpired.”

When Wang went down, the Cleveland Indians were aggressively peddling an answer: C. C. Sabathia. The Yankees could have used Phil Hughes to front a package for him, but Cashman passed.

He did so partly because he believed the Yankees had enough offense to get by, but mostly because he believed it was foolish to trade elite prospects for a pitcher with no indication of wanting to sign a long-term contract with an East Coast team.

It was roughly the same logic Cashman applied last winter to the trade talks for Johan Santana, then with the Minnesota Twins. But those talks might have ended differently — and changed the course of the Yankees’ future — if not for a brief and devastating period of dysfunction in the team’s decision-making.

The start of the 2007 off-season played out largely beyond Cashman’s control. After Rodriguez fizzled in the playoffs for the fourth year in a row, then opted out of his contract, Cashman started preparing for life without him.

In the short term, it would have been impossible to replace Rodriguez. But in the long run, there was an upside in not saddling the Yankees with a contract that would pay Rodriguez more than $20 million a season for the declining years of his career.

It was just those kinds of deals that started to infect the Yankees after they lost the 2001 World Series. That was when George Steinbrenner, their principal owner, demanded more control over baseball operations, sending the team on a four-year spending spree that started to wane when he yielded authority to Cashman after the 2005 season.

But last winter, when Steinbrenner put his sons, Hank and Hal, atop the hierarchy, the wild spending returned, over Cashman’s head. Hank Steinbrenner engineered the deals for Rodriguez (10 years, roughly $300 million), Posada (four years, $52.4 million) and Mariano Rivera (three years, $45 million).

As he kept spending, Hank Steinbrenner kept talking. He publicly campaigned for a deal for Santana, even though he had told Andy Pettitte he could take all the time he needed to decide on a $16 million option.

If the Yankees had held Pettitte to his original deadline — and if they had stood firm when Rodriguez came back to them — their thinking on the Santana deal might have been different. Cashman might have sacrificed Hughes and other prospects to get Santana, then signed Santana to a long-term contract.

But after the payouts to Rodriguez, Posada, Rivera and Pettitte (which totaled about $73 million for 2008), it seemed unwise to further bloat the payroll. The Yankees forged ahead with Pettitte and trusted Hughes and Ian Kennedy to hold spots at the back of the rotation. Pettitte faded badly in the second half, and Hughes and Kennedy did not win a game all season.

Cashman offered no apologies about putting faith in Hughes and Kennedy, offering the Twins as a parallel.

“They’re contending, and they have five young guys in their rotation,” Cashman said. “In New York, they talk about, ‘You can’t contend with two young guys,’ but in Minnesota you can with five? It just comes down to getting the job done, simple as that.”

Hughes, 22, and Kennedy, 23, are still young enough to inspire hope, though neither will be guaranteed a spot next spring. They will probably compete for a job with Alfredo Aceves.

As the Yankees enter another off-season, their first priority is to re-sign Cashman, who is well liked by the Steinbrenner brothers. Hal Steinbrenner has worked closely with Cashman and Manager Joe Girardi, and Cashman said, “I have a tremendous relationship with the Steinbrenner family.”

Hank Steinbrenner has publicly promised to be aggressive in pursuing free agents this winter, and the crop will be thick. The Yankees will explore Sabathia, although they are pessimistic about his desire to play for them.

They also face decisions on Pettitte and the rejuvenated Mike Mussina, and will look into the 18-game winner A. J. Burnett. A second tier of starters with past success in the American League — including Derek Lowe — may also be appealing. Pitchers without A.L. experience need not apply.

“It’s the toughest division in the league, and that’s why when teams go after pitching,” outfielder Johnny Damon said, “they can’t just throw a National League guy into the American League East. It’s a grind every single day, and that’s what G.M.’s are figuring out.”

The Yankees learned that lesson again this season with reliever LaTroy Hawkins, who was signed for $3.75 million but had a 5.71 earned run average. Traded to Houston in July, Hawkins dominated the National League.

Expect the Yankees to ignore all free-agent relievers this winter, confident in the setup corps Cashman has assembled through castoffs (Brian Bruney, Dan Giese, Edwar Ramírez, José Veras) and prospects (Phil Coke, Mark Melancon, Dave Robertson, Humberto Sánchez).

The pitching talent gives the Yankees choices, but the crop of position players in the minors is thin. A study by ESPN.com showed that only one position player drafted by the Yankees from 1997 to 2005 — the departed Andy Phillips — has amassed even 200 at-bats in the majors.

Restocking the farm system takes time, and the Yankees are excited about the Class AA center fielder Austin Jackson and the Class A catchers Jesús Montero and Austin Romine.

Yet there have also been crucial mistakes when evaluating position players in the draft. In 2004, the Yankees took pitcher Brett Smith with the 42nd pick. Later in the second round, Boston took Dustin Pedroia. A year later, the Yankees had the 17th pick and took shortstop C. J. Henry. Six picks later, the Red Sox grabbed Jacoby Ellsbury.

The lack of major-league-ready position players puts the Yankees in a tricky spot as they devise a new lineup. Two of their most productive hitters this season were Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi, but they are free agents who are past their primes. It would be unlike Cashman to retain them with multiyear deals.

The Yankees could let Cabrera and Brett Gardner, two strong defenders, compete for the center-field job. But they must prove they can hit. The team could also see if the Dodgers would trade center fielder Matt Kemp for Canó, who has bothered many in the organization for producing so little after being rewarded with a long-term contract. Canó could be replaced at second base by a free agent like Orlando Hudson.

The free-agent first baseman Mark Teixeira is a Gold Glove fielder and a disciplined switch-hitter with power who will be only 29 when the new Yankee Stadium opens. With more than $75 million in expiring contracts, the Yankees could probably afford him.

If Teixeira replaced Giambi at first, Xavier Nady could take over for Abreu in right field, with Damon in left, Matsui at designated hitter and Gardner, Cabrera or Kemp in center.

Whoever makes the decisions — Cashman, a new general manager, or the Steinbrenners — the Yankees of 2009 will not be the same. As disappointing as it was to miss the playoffs, the Yankees understand that simply making it was not their goal in the first place.

“Our season is ending here at the end of September, but the last few years we’ve been going through this about five days after that,” Cashman said. “We’re trying to get through the entire month of October and be the last team standing, and obviously there’s a lot of work to be done. We’ll keep trying to figure it out.”

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/sports/baseball/28wrap.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=sports