$200 Million Doesn't Buy You A Spare Tire

Watching the Yanks lose their 5th game in a 6-game road trip so far, one had to be struck by the sight of a 44-year-old starter (Clemens, of course) coming into a game to pitch relief. It was the first time for the Rocket out of the pen in a regular season game since his rookie year in 1984, and it didn't quite work out, and he gave up a hit and a run in what turned out to be a 7-2 loss and a series loss to the previously moribund Giants. The team is now 36-37.

Yes, it's extremely defensible strategy to bring in Clemens on his off-day to pitch an inning. It nearly worked, they didn't have him out there for long enough to risk anything, and it's not like they care too much about his future after this year. They've done the same thing with Pettite on several occasions, and the day after a 13-inning marathon, you needed every possible arm. Just a relief the dear boy was around, really -- and you wonder, on some level, whether this was exactly why he negotiated being away from the team on off days in the first place.

But as the team falls back to 11.5 games out of first and 6.5 games out of the wild-card... it just has the feel, if not the reality, of desperation.

Older teams are prone to big streaks in either direction. When they're right and rolling, everyone is playing to career norms, and veteran players are veterans for a reason -- they are above average. Anyone in the majors who has managed to get 1000 innings or 5000 at bats is, by definition, a good player -- there are too many other guys around to take the job if you aren't, and independent of a big contract, patience is limited.

But when they're hurt or failing, the same math goes the other way... because the team is less likely to have a good back-up position. And that, truly, is the main failing of the Yankees in the latter days of the Torre era (and I call this the Torre era more than the Cashman era, because it's frankly hard to tell how much of this team is Cashman, as opposed to Big Stein's lackeys, as opposed to the farm system that started the run in the first place).

It's truly amazing that a team with a $200 million payroll had no better option at first base than Doug Mientkiewicz. When that career .760 OPS hitter and 11-year veteran was felled by injury (in what should be a relief, in that his .671 20007 OPS is matched by many middle infielders)... and his vaunted fielding prowess at the diamond's least important defensive position isn't all that important, unless you think that Jeter and A-Rod are the worst throwers at their position in MLB, which your eyes tell you isn't the case...

Well, it's even more amazing that the team's best fallback option is the 33-year-old Miguel Cairo. Perhaps the most amazing part of this whole series of moves is listening to YES broadcasters talk about what a surprise Cairo's defense has been. As if a team with a $200mm payroll should be content with a .595 OPS at first base just to get a glove in the lineup. A small note to the Yankee faithful -- the .320 OPS difference between the Boston first baseman (mostly Youkilis) and yours has to taste good, especially because you're paying a lot more for your numbers.

The troubles at first base even have the team rolling the dice with playing Jorge Posada there, despite the fact that he's an injury risk waiting to happen... and that when Jorge is there, the team has to play his back-up, the breathtakingly inept 29-year-old Wil Nieves (OPS of .260 this year, and .361 for his career, which is to say, less than several National League *pitchers*). Nieves, however, brings a lot of defense to the table -- the Giants only stole five bases off him and Mike Mussina yesterday. They had 32 in their first 73 games, and weren't starting Dave Roberts, so five in a game was just bound to happen.

Here's who the Yankees *should* have waiting in the minors to play first in the event of an injury: Jack Cust. The Oakland lefty and career minor-leaguer always could hit; he just can't field. Or Scott Hatteberg, who was available for a song two years ago (the song in question was "On A Horse With No Name"), and probably still available from the Reds for the price of a minor pitching prospect.

At this point, you'd be happy with a Travis-ty Lee or a JT "12 Inches Of" Snow. Does anyone have Tino Martinez's cell phone number -- landline service to the senior center is spotty. Maybe Paulie O'Neill can gripe his way through a few nostalgia at-bats, just so the Yankee faithful can cream themselves over his intangibles?

The Yankee farm system is very good for developing high ceiling prospects that allow them to go after big contract veterans. It is much, much less good at finding the kind of true AAA player that an older team with injury risks needs. That can only be attributed to a lack of discipline or effort, or a need to show some cost savings somewhere after filling the garage with toys.

Because when you look at a Roger Clemens or an Andy Pettite pitching out of the bullpen on their off day, you are not seeing a veteran giving his team some crucial outs in the middle of a long run up Red Sox Mountain.

What you are seeing, instead, is the baseball equivalent of a late-model performance sports car, with serious reliability issues and a dodgy, at best, insurance policy, hauling rocks to a job site. At some point, it's going to break down, and your utter lack of a contingency plan is going to get you stuck in the middle of nowhere -- or, 11.5 games out of first, 6.5 games out of the wildcard, and a pulled A-Rod groin away from utter irrelevancy.

Now that I've buried them, they will run off six in a run and make Red Sox Nation hide in the bathroom for a weekend. But any team where the bench is so bad that .600 OPS is common... or the bullpen is getting supplemental innings from top-line starters... is no threat. Even if they do have the MVP and a half-dozen Hall of Famers. It's a long season, and teams have 25 players for a reason.