by Jim Gerard
◆ Mariano Rivera, while still great, is no longer Superman. While God may have been guiding his arm in the past, the Lord now looks like he’s putting his smart money behind guys like Brad Lidge and Francisco Rodriguez. Off-season plans: Visit to snake-handling faith healer to restore velocity on cut fastball. Result: Faith healer more effective than Mel Stottlemyre.
◆ Jorge Posada. Each passed ball is worth, let’s say, $200,000. Starting to approach age when catchers fall apart like IKEA furniture.
◆ Javier Vásquez. A $9-million bust with worse mechanics than the Edsel. Excuse: Not used to pitching in public. Rumor is that some of the Yankee brain trust wants to relocate him.
◆ José Contreras. The Yanks thought that back-channel negotiations to release his family (they threatened to jam Cuban airwaves with replays of John Sterling’s “The-uh-uh Yankees win!”) would straighten out the enigmatic Contreras, but familiarity breeds an ERA of 6. Nicknamed by Fidel Castro “El Titan de Bronze,” he crumpled like aluminum foil when facing a bunch of Boston “cowboys” with ugly goatees. Yanks saved $12 million by blasting “the Cuban Missile” to Chicago for ...
◆ Esteban Loaiza. The Yanks anted up approximately $2 million for two months’ work. He was hit so hard that he needed a Kevlar uniform, and he left the Yankee Stadium pitchers’ mound in such bad shape, Jeb Bush was seen touring it.
◆ John Olerud. More stationary than the Washington Monument and plays with just as much emotion. Rumor is he made his last 100 plate appearances while dead. Well, he only cost them the waiver price of $25,000, which is about right for a guy who, like an overprotected child, still wears his batting helmet in the field.
◆ Six million for Steve Karsay, who spent most of the last two years trying to recover from a torn labrum. He was said to have “left five miles per hour on the operating table” (promptly filched by El Duque), and returned to toss a few ceremonial innings in meaningless September games in preparation for next year’s Old-Timers Day.
◆ You could call Travis Lee a “million-dollar hitter,” because that’s how much the Yankees paid him for each of the two hits he notched (in 19 at-bats) before injuring his shoulder and missing almost the entire season.
What’s most astonishing about the Yanks’ profligate 2004 payroll is that for $184 million, they fielded a below-average pitching staff, middle relief worthy of Freddy Krueger, and a bench that’s baseball’s version of Cocoon. Teams like the Pirates can cobble together a 1—6 bullpen off the scrap heap of failed prospects, Rule V claimants, and minor-league free agents, but the Yankees—as if trying to channel the 1969 alumni squad—can do no better than Donovan Osborn, Bret Prinz, and Tanyon Sturtze.
Yanks Lead
Big-League Paymasters
The Yanks led the majors in payroll, as they have for most of the last 20 years, as the following list demonstrates:1985: $15-40M (1st in majors)
1986: $17.25M (1st in majors)
1987: $18.57M (1st in majors)
1988: $21.52M (1st in majors)
1989: $18.48M (4th in majors)
1990: $20.59M (7th in majors)
1991: $31-94M (7th in majors)
1992: $34-90M (8th in majors)
1993: $46.59M (3rd in majors)
1994: $47.51M (1st in majors)
1995: $58-17M (1st in majors)
1996: $61.51M (1st in majors)
1997: $73.39M (1st in majors)
1998: $73.96M (2nd in majors)
1999: $91.99M (1st in majors)
2000: $113.37M (1st in majors)
2001: $109.79M (1st in majors)a
2002: $125.93M (1st in majors)a
2003: $164M (1st in majors)a
Source: The late Doug Pappas’s Business of Baseball pages
NOTES
1 Interview with the author, October 12,2004.
2 Interview with the author, October 7,2004.
3 Darren Rovell, interview, October 12,2004.
4 All payroll figures taken from ESPN.com.
Chapter Two
ALL-TIME WORST YANKEE TRADES
We all know about the Curse of the Bambino and all of the other magical acquisitions that boosted the team’s fortunes. However, the Bombers have made their share of personnel blunders. And while most of the really egregious deals were engineered by Bad George, the team has a history of transactional boners, starting even before they worked their Ruthian mojo on the Red Sox. Here are the all-time worst Yankee moves: 1. Yanks put pitcher Hippo Vaughn on waivers, 1912.1 Technically not a trade, but a blundering move that cost the team roughly 150 wins. In 1910, Jim “Hippo” Vaughn, a flame-throwing young southpaw, was recalled from the minors by the New York Americans (the team’s official name right before it was changed to the Yankees in 1913, thus making its players baseball’s version of the Quarry-men). As writer Steven Goldman of Baseball Prospectus tells it, Vaughn, who acquired his nickname as much for his lumbering running style as his girth, won 13 games with a 1.83 ERA. He got off to a slow start the following year, and when manager Harry Wolverton demoted him to Providence of the International League, Vaughn—in a display of independence rare for players of that plantation era—refused to report unless he was given a stipend. New York waived him. Manager Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators thought Vaughn still had his stuff and plucked him off the waiver wire. Although Vaughn went on to pair with Walter Johnson and boost the Senators’ fortunes, a couple of years later, Griffith, too, let him go. He went on to become the greatest left-handed pitcher in Chicago Cubs history, going 124-77 from 1914 to 1919, starting a World Series game (against Babe Ruth of the Red Sox), and dueling Reds pitcher Fred Toney in a nine-inning double no-hitter in 1917.
2. Yanks trade pitcher Stan Bahnsen to the Chicago White Sox for third baseman Rich McKinney, 1971. Bahnsen won 21 games for the White Sox in 1972, while McKinney failed to win the Yankees’ third-base job (he was beaten out by Mexican League refugee Celerino Sanchez). He hit .215 in 37 games, and he tied an AL record with four errors at third in one game. Over his short career—341 games—McKinney hit .225 with 20 homers and 100 RBI. Bahnsen pitched another nine years and finished his career with a 146-149 record and a 3.61 ERA, pitching mostly for weak teams.In 1972, the Yanks had a rotation of Mel Stottlemyre, the Swapmeet Twins Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson, Steve Kline, and Rob Gardner. They finished 79-76, in fourth place, 6½ games behind Detroit. Richard Lally, author of Bombers, an oral history of the Yankees, calls Bahnsen-for-McKinney “a deal that probably cost the Yanks the 1972 Eastern Division title.”2
3. Yanks trade outfielder/DH Oscar Gamble and minor-league pitchers LaMarr Hoyt and Bob Polinsky plus approximately $200,000 to the Chicago White Sox for shortstop Bucky Dent, 1977. Let’s face it: George’s Yankees eat their young. Hoyt, a farmhand at the time of the trade, was no exception.He was buried in the minors at the time of the trade, but within two years—as soon as he joined the Chicago rotation in 1982—he excelled. He won his first nine decisions to tie a White Sox record and finished 19-15, leading the league in wins and walking only 48 batters in 239.2 innings. He was even better in 1983. He won 24 games, going 15-2 after the All-Star break, led the White Sox to the AL West title, and won the Cy Young award in a landslide. Hoyt walked just 31 batters that year, just three more than Cy Young’s record low of 28 in 1904. In the ALCS opener against Baltimore, he tossed a five-hitter for Chicago’s only win.
As if to stick it to his former team, in 1985 Hoyt fired a one-hitter against the Yankees in Comiskey Park, allowing only a scratch single to Don Mattingly. So what if he later developed a drug problem, was suspended from baseball for a year, and went to prison twice? He would’ve made an ideal member of the late ’80s “rap sheet” Yanks.
Gamble, who the Yanks had obtained in late 1975 for pitcher Pat Dobson in December 1975, hit 17 homers and knocked in 57 runs in only 340 at-bats to help boost the team to its first pennant in 12 years. But the slugging right-fielder had a personal issue that the buttoned-down organization couldn’t cou
ntenance: an Afro that resembled a mutant Chia pet (after all, it was the Superfly era). The ’fro added more than four inches to his height, sometimes popped his batting helmet off, and, for all we know, may have lengthened his strike zone.
It sure didn’t affect his hitting: In 1978 with Chicago, Gamble had his best season: He hit .297 with career highs of 31 homers, 83 RBIs, 75 runs scored, and 22 doubles in only 408 at-bats, and the White Sox contended, improving to 90-72 from 64-97. The Yanks eventually realized their mistake and reacquired him in August 1979 in a deal that also sent Mickey Rivers to the Rangers.
As for Dent, he acquired the middle name “Fuckin’” from Red Sox fans after his 1978 playoff homer. And although he is revered in Yankeeland, the man he replaced at shortstop, Fred Stanley, was just as good defensively and would have at least equaled, if not surpassed, Dent’s run production: Their OPS (on-base-plus-slugging) averages are nearly identical, even though Stanley only played part-time (he may have improved as a regular).
In summation, the Yankees traded a guy who hit more than 30 homers the following season plus a future Cy Young Award winner for a player they didn’t need. In Lally’s analysis, “Hoyt was not a great pitcher; he really didn’t deserve that Cy Young. But he was solid, and in his last good season went 16-8 for the 1985 Padres. If the Yanks had him that year, they’d have won another division title.”3
4. In a move that went virtually unnoticed, the Yanks trade 22-year-old outfield prospect and future MVP Willie McGee to the St. Louis Cardinals for sore-armed lefty Bob Sykes, 1981. The Bombers felt that they had an outfield surplus and could afford to deal the switch-hitting McGee. The next year, the Cards called up McGee, who batted .296 while swiping 24 bases and coming in third in Rookie of the Year voting, as the Cardinals defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series. McGee had supersonic legs—Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog said that he was the fastest runner he’d ever seen, even faster than Mickey Mantle—a great ability to make contact, and all-encompassing range (he won three Gold Gloves). The slap-hitting McGee joined Vince Coleman and Ozzie Smith as a major catalyst for the jackrabbit Cardinal teams of the ’80s, who would win two more pennants after 1982. McGee won the batting title in 1985 with a .353 average, the highest in history for a switch-hitter, while stealing 56 bases and scoring 114 runs. In 1987, he banged home 105 runs. In 1990, McGee won his second National League batting title despite playing the last six weeks of the season for Oakland. He retired in 1999 with a lifetime .295 average.As for Sykes? He was a below-average part-time starter and long reliever even while healthy, but after the Yanks acquired him, the arm problems that had plagued him throughout his five-year career grew worse. He never pitched an inning for the Yanks, or for any other major-league team. After one season in the minors, it was bye-bye baseball, hello Aflac. Showing either a rare degree of magnanimity or a desperate need for vicarious fame, Sykes later said, “Personally, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, it will be an honor for the rest of my life to be known in baseball as the player traded for Willie McGee.”
What was ironic about the deal was that at the precise moment he traded the swift-footed McGee, Steinbrenner had decided that he wanted to construct a speed-oriented, National League—style team. But instead of keeping the speedster who could actually play, they let him go and signed no-talents such as free agent Dave Collins, who could run everywhere but to first base.
Clearly, George has a luxury box on the karmic wheel. Before the 2004 season, he overruled his baseball people and signed an over-the-hill Kenny Lofton, who possessed little of his original speed or anything else. It was a case of TWI—Trading While Intoxicated, in this case by the Marlin’s Juan Pierre and his disruption of the Yanks’ defense in the 2003 Series. Look for animatronic George to sign a one-legged José Reyes around 2116.
5. In a six-degrees-of-Yankee-separation linkage, Collins, pitcher Mike Morgan, and minor leaguer Fred McGriff are packed off to the Blue Jays for pitcher Dale Murray and minor leaguer Tom Dodd, in late 1982. This trade in a nutshell: The Yanks gave away 493 home runs and a borderline Hall of Famer for about 120 innings of sub-par relief.
6. In yet another stupid trade of prospects for aging veterans, the Yankees deal pitchers Brian Fisher, Doug Drabek, and Logan Easley to the Pirates for pitchers Rick Rhoden, Cecilio Guante, and Pat Clements, in 1986. The right-handed Drabek had a decent rookie season in 1985, after which the Yanks decided to continue the baseball version of Live Aid, dispatching him to the rebuilding Pirates. Under pitching coach Ray Miller, Drabek expanded his repertoire from a fastball and a slider to include a changeup and a lethal curveball. After combining for 29 wins the next two years, Drabek went 22-6 with a 2.76 ERA to win the NL Cy Young award in 1990. He pitched brilliantly—although with tough luck—in Pittsburgh’s three straight playoff appearances from 1991 to 1993, and over his six years with the Pirates he went 92-62.Meanwhile, the Bucs must’ve rolled back the odometer on the reliable Rhoden’s arm, for after a solid first season in New York, during which he went 16-10, he had only 1½ years of mediocre ball left.
The Drabek deal also illuminates another weakness of the reign of King George: a chronic inability to develop pitchers. There was Ron Guidry in the 1970s, Dave Righetti in the 1980s, and Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera in the 1990s. That’s it: four pitchers in 30 years. This is in spite—or because—of a merry-go-round of pitching coaches, the sole prerequisite for which seemed to be a last name of Connors. They’ve drafted busts (including Brian Taylor, a #1 overall draft choice who, before he could even join the Yanks’ system, destroyed his shoulder—and his career—in a barroom fight), traded promising prospects, and have been completely unable to coax kinetic performances out of potential talent. An increasing amount of criticism is finding current pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, who first burned out brilliant talents Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, and Sid Fernández while with the 1980s Mets. Not only has Stott been unable to shape what little young talent comes through the pipeline, but top-of-the-line pitchers such as Javier Vásquez seem to lose their effectiveness under his watch. Call him the anti-Leo Mazzone.
7. Yanks trade Jay Buhner and two minor-league nonentities to the Seattle Mariners for Ken Phelps, mid-season, 1988, in the only baseball trade ever immortalized on a sitcom. In an episode of Seinfeld, Larry David’s Steinbrenner tells Frank Costanza—played by Jerry Stiller—that his son is missing and presumed dead.COSTANZA: What in the hell did you trade Jay Buhner for? He had thirty home runs, over a hundred RBIs last year. He’s got a rocket for an arm. You don’t know what the hell you’re doin’!
STEINBRENNER: Well, Buhner was a good prospect, no question about it. But my baseball people love Ken Phelps’s bat. They kept saying “Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps.”
The Yanks acquired a 34-year-old DH (who admittedly was having a good year) in exchange for a 24-year-old outfielder with Paul Bunyanesque power and a rocket arm, who they were convinced—after only 81 big-league at-bats—had holes in his swing the size of the Grand Canyon. George told manager Lou Piniella that Phelps would seal the pennant for the Yankees, who were sitting atop a tight Eastern Division field. Inevitably, Phelps hit .224 with only 17 home runs in 122 games for the Yankees before being dealt to Oakland the next year. The Bombers, meanwhile, finished fifth.
Within three years, Buhner had become Seattle’s right fielder, belting 27 homers, while Phelps was out of baseball and en route to the Old DH Home. As Jay Jaffe assessed it on his blog, Futility Infielder, “In trading for a ballplayer past his already-squandered prime, they passed up a chance at the next Ken Phelps, the kind of player you really don’t need to give up anything of significance to acquire.” The Yanks of that era operated like a mass exporter of home runs (see Fred McGriff): Over his 15-year career, Buhner hit 310 home runs and slugged .494 with a .359 on-base average. His home-run percentage of 6.18 per 100 at-bats places him 22nd all-time. He hit 20 home runs or more for seven straight years, including the string of three 40+ seasons from 1995 to 199
7. He hit a key home run in Game 2 of the 2000 ALDS against the White Sox, and his final blast—a valedictory “Fuck you” to the organization that had banished him—came in the 2001 ALCS against the Yankees.
In addition to his on-field value, “Bone” Buhner also served as a Veeckian promotional tool for the M’s. In honor of their balding right-fielder (“the style is hereditary,” Buhner explained) the club sponsored the first “Jay Buhner Haircut Night” in 1994. Four hundred and twenty-six “Twisted Buhner Fans”—including two women—got free admission for agreeing to have their heads shaved. This later became an annual event, renamed “Buhner Buzz-Cut Night,” in which thousands of fans sacrificed their hair, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan AMERICA THE BUHNERFUL.4
The Buhner-for-Phelps deal not only hurt the Yanks in the long term; it was also a poor short-term option. According to Lally, “They could have gotten Mike Boddicker for Buhner in 1988, which might have brought them another division title.”
NOTES
1 Steven Goldman, Baseball Prospectus, 2004.
2 Interview with the author, September 2004.
3 Ibid.
4 From www.baseballlibrary.com.
Chapter Three
THE FANS