Taking The Eighth, Or How To Be A .500 Team On The Cheap

Last night, as I was teaching the Shooter Eldest the rudiments of poker (important, in that you don't need a college degree to deal cards for a living), I've got the Yankees at Twins game on. The game is tied in the 8th. With one out and no one on, Jeter hits a ball off the baggie in right. Playing it perfectly, right fielder Michael Cuddyer takes the ball off the wall on the bounce, then throws a strike to second and gets the out in a bang-bang play. You can say he had home field advantage, or you can say he's a young player coming into his own; both are reasonably correct. Bobby Abreu then works a long count but bounces out on 3-2 to second, and the Twins have a 1-2-3 inning against the top of the Yankee lineup, just when they needed it.

In the bottom of the inning, the Yankees call on... nope, not Joba Chamberlain, because he's bound for rotational glory. No, instead they are reduced (and that's the last word any Yankee fan wants to use, in connection with this guy) to the magic that is Kyle Farnsworth. His hard straight stuff starts off with Cuddyer, who opens the inning by nailing a ball to the baggie in right, just about where Jeter's ball was. Abreu misjudges the bounce, Cuddyer stops at second, and several runs later, the Twins have split the series.

Now, is it particularly fair to determine the difference between this Yankee team and previous as the presence of the slow disappointment that is Abreu, or the contract failure that keeps on giving that is Farnsworth? Not particularly, since there were plenty of other reasons for the team to lose this game. But I do know this: when you can't get outs in the eighth inning, you are not only far from a playoff threat, you're also a long way from a team that can put together simple season winning streaks.

Name me a successful team, in this era of baseball, that got away with real shakiness from the set-up men. (I couldn't think of any, which isn't to say that there are now. Maybe the Phillies, not that I'd hold them up as a huge success.)

Now, take a look at the surprising, above .500 record of my Oakland Athletics... and the 80+ innings of sub 3 collective ERA from Mssrs. Devine, Casilla, Embree, Brown, and Foulke -- and all of those guys, combined, cost less than Farnsworth, naturally.

The A's are four games over .500 with guys that you can't name playing in the field. The Yanks are one game under with household names, one of whom (A-Rod, naturally) will make more this year than all of the A's combined.

Good, pre-arbitration kids giving you good middle relief innings. Defense from young legs and arms. Home field advantages that don't arbitrarily reward offense or defense, but do reward experience at playing in the venue. It's the cheap way to win ballgames. And as long as MLB+ teams insist on paying for guys on the downside of their career, particularly in the As Far As We Know Post-Roid Era, it'll stay that way.