A New Era of Yankees Mediocrity

Because today is the fourth of July, and because I am of a certain age, and for reasons that do not require much more explaining than this, I've spent some time this morning watching YouTube videos of the 2001 World Series.  Major League Baseball has recently made wonderful strides in releasing free, online versions of complete game feeds from important playoff games (even opening their vault for TV feeds of perfect games that happened during the regular season, on their anniversaries).  In general, when I watch these old games, I enjoy this more for the nostalgia of how the games were broadcast than the nostalgia for the specific games, to be honest.  If baseball broadcasts were movies, ten years ago they would have been simplistic, narrative-focused dramas about the players and the moment, and at present they would be product-placement-infused scream-fests directed by Michael Bay and designed for fans with Michael Bay-like attention spans.  These days, of all sports, only golf is broadcast in a way that assumes its fans have intelligence and respect for the game.

But, I digress.

I started watching the 2001 World Series this morning because (1) I wanted to remember a little bit of how it felt to be eighteen years old and watching baseball and (2) I wanted to remember a time before Joe Buck was terrible and Tim McCarver lost his mind.  (In that order.  Maybe.)  After watching about five minutes of the FOX broadcast from October 31, 2001, though, it became clear to me that I'd continue to watch for another, completely different purpose.  Before Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez completed his warm-up tosses, Buck and McCarver reminded the viewers that the Yankees were a very old team, they weren't hitting, and they were bound to look completely different the next season.

All of these things were ultimately true, as the Yankees' inability to consistently hit cost them the 2001 World Series (heroic home runs aside, the 2001 Series should have never gone even six games, let alone seven).  Of course, a reasonable argument could have been made that this Yankees team should have never made the World Series in the first place, because they were a very old team that had struggled throughout the playoffs.  Their best starting pitcher that season, Roger Clemens, was 39.  Paul O'Neill was 38 and about to retire.  Other starters (Chuck Knoblauch, David Justice, Scott Brosius) were younger, but limited by ineffectiveness and at the tail end of their careers.  The 2001 Yankees were relying, ultimately, on a single middle infielder in his prime (that would be Derek Jeter), solid starting pitching, a good bullpen, and - hopefully - enough offense to scratch out a few runs and win a close game.

At the start of Game 4, the Yankees' offense was hitting .144 through the first three games of the Fall Classic.  Partly because they'd just faced Arizona's ridiculous one-two punch of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in two of those games, of course, but also because their offense consisted of Jeter, a hot-at-the-plate Jorge Posada, and very little else.

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We know what happened after the 2001 World Series, as well - O'Neill retired, Justice left, and the Yankees' corner outfield positions the next season consisted of some combination of Rondell White, Raul Mondesi, Shane Spencer, and the immortal John Vander Wal.  Tino Martinez left, and was replaced by the somehow-still-active-as-of-this-writing Jason Giambi.  Brosius retired and was replaced by Robin Ventura (who, to be fair, overachieved as a Yankee).  The team looked completely different in 2002, and descended into what I consider to be an eight-season prison sentence of nothingness.

I count the 2002-2008 span as "nothingness" not only because of the lack of a world championship for the Yankees (though I am sure it has something to do with it) but because of how uninteresting - if not outright loathsome to their own fans - these Yankees teams were.  Remember Kevin Brown?  Randy Johnson?  "Hot" Carl Pavano?  Tony Clark?  Ruben Sierra?  Remember when Armando Benitez was a Yankee?  (That actually happened.)

Intellectually, I get why the Yankees acquired each of the above players - they were chasing a championship because they felt their fans needed one.  And Yankees fans are, generally speaking, a fickle bunch (see picture below).  But on an emotional level, I couldn't *stand* the Yankees teams which employed the above players, Aaron Boone's 2003 ALCS heroics aside.  I always wanted the Yankees to win, sure, but I always wanted them to win with players I could actually cheer for, and it wasn't the case that those two things would align again until the 2009 season.

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This leads me to this season's Yankees team, which I've found more intriguing than any team since 2001 (which is a remarkable personal feat: in 2001 I'd just barely discovered dating, in 2013 I'm happily married, and everyone knows that guys get less interested in baseball as women get more interested in them).  If you're not a Yankees fan, or if you've been living under a rock somewhere, this year's team has been overachieving no matter how you look at it.  At the time of this writing, they are six games over .500, at 45-39, though only two of the nine players in their most common starting lineup (Robinson Cano and center fielder Brett Gardner) are hitting above league average, and though their best starting pitcher (CC Sabathia) has been underachieving.

Primarily, this team's struggles are very much like the struggles of the 2001 Yankees - they're old, fighting injuries, and are not producing enough on offense.  Of course, the 2001 Yankees won 95 games, and this season's iteration is on pace to win only about 88 to 90.  That may still be enough to get them back into the playoffs, though, given that MLB has expanded their playoff structure since 2001, and also because you can reasonably assume a stronger second half from this Yankees team (if you assume that Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson, etc., are able to return and serve as upgrades over the AAA call-ups who are currently manning these positions).

If I had to guess, I still do not think the Yankees make the playoffs this year.  But if they do somehow squeak in, I'd ask anyone who is going to Vegas to put a ten-spot at their favorite sports book on the Yankees taking the whole thing, because teams that squeak in have an odd capacity to win World Series (see the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals).  And if odds on something like this ever existed, I'd ask them to put a twenty spot on the 2014 Yankees looking completely different than this team.  Pettitte, Rivera, and Kuroda will be gone.  Granderson and Cano are likely to sign elsewhere.  Jeter, who has a ton of pride, may retire rather than play out his (cheap) 2014 player option.  Alex Rodriguez, like cockroaches and Twinkies, will survive everything and play out his ridiculous contract, for all I know.  This will make the Yankees unlikeable again, for another eight seasons, perhaps.

So hate on these Yankees' lack of ability all you want - you wouldn't be lying to yourself.  But keep in mind it can, and probably will, be much worse in the future.  We are in for a decade of mediocrity, it seems.