Never thought there was a real chance he'd be back. I figured any public mentioning of a possible deal with the Astros was just posturing out of the Pettitte camp. That said, if he's healthy, the Yankees have a pretty amazing looking rotation... Sabathia Burnett Wang Chamberlain Pettitte
You know what they say -- you can't buy a championship...except that the truth is you can. The Yankees are going to be very good this year. Their glaring hole of the last few years was pitching and they filled that up with a bang.
I wonder where that leaves Phil Hughes. The top 4 in that rotation are all there for at least the next few years - so that quites them quite the tradable commodity in Hughes too.
Odds are decent that one of Pettitte or Chamberlain spends time on the DL. Hughes does make good trade bait, but I'm guessing they'll keep him as insurance. Plus, if they do happen to win the WS this year, I'd bet that Pettitte retires.
I hope they sign Ben Sheets so then the BEST BASEBALL TEAM OF ALL TIME can get knocked out of the playoffs by the Angels. Again.
damn wish drayton woulda spent 5.5M on pettite, I know its $12 if he htis incentives but if we got 240 innings from pettite that would be worth $12M to be in the playoffs
Wandy and Geary both avoided arbitration, signing one-year deals. I haven't seen the numbers yet. Also, I hear the Cubs are going to reopen the Peavy talks once ownership is transferred. If they end up with a rotation of Peavy, Zambrano, Harden, Dempster and whoever else, the entire NL is in trouble, not just the Astros. That isn't even taking into consideration their offense, wich was among the league lead in several categories last season. I'm increasingly glad we didn't overspend to sign one top FA. It would have cost us a draft pick (something we can ill afford) and we would have still had too many other holes to fill. The more I think about it, Astros management has done well this offseason by staying conservative.
It's amazing that a team can spend $100 million+, like the Astros will in 2009, and yet have so many holes. That's a real problem when you have no young talent to fill spots cheaply, and thus are reliant on mediocre veterans to fill need positions like 3B, C, and 3 of 5 starting spots in the rotation. The 2 young guys they have, Pence and Bourne, weren't very good last season. And the margin for error isn't enough to have a high dollar mistake like Tejada who doesn't produce anything close to his salary level.
Everything here has been said numerous times but it's true. It's not that McLane is cheap. He isn't. The problem has been decision-making not lack of spending. If we had drafted and developed well on top of having an owner that is willing to spend over $100 million per season, we very well could have had more than just the one WS trip this past decade. Better decision-making might have also meant we had more offensive talent in 05. That may have put us over the hump considering we lost 4 games by a combined 7 runs.
Write it down, Brooks. I completely agree on every point. Well stated, indeed! The last couple years of Hunsicker and the Purpura Travesty simply killed this franchise. Recovery is 3-5 years.
The 2005 NLCS game 6 is on MLB Network right now. I can only hope that eventually we'll be that good again.
It was good to see Bags and Bidge again. I still don't know why Garner didn't bring in Lidge to close that game to get him a chance to sort things out before a more pressure packed situation (i.e. Game 2 of the WS where Podsednik hit the walk-off).
. 1 inning of a non-save situation likely wouldn't have sorted Lidge out. As has already been proven time and time again, Lidge's problems were a little bit more than just mental. His mechanics were horrible, his control was all over the place, and he had very little command of his slider... the fact that he was still able to get anybody out was likely more due to reputation and batters getting themselves out. While he was still with the Astros, once he finally got his mechanics back on track in 2007, he got hurt. After that, there wasn't much support to keep him here (even though he got his mechanics back). And once he got healthy, we all know what happened...
Granted, it wouldn't have "fixed" him, but the general thinking is that once something like that happens to a closer, you want to get him right back out there the next day to put it behind him. Who knows, a clean inning there might have given him a shot of confidence going into the WS. Momentum and confidence can be vital in the short term for ballplayers.
The more prudent thing was to realize that Lidge had already pitched a lot in the postseason and he could use an extra day off heading into the World Series.
And a non-clean inning there and suddenly we're in a Game 7 and a potential repeat of 2004. If you're putting him in, you can't yank him if he gives up a few hits - so you're setting yourself up for a potential disaster. He was overworked and needed time off anyway. It wasn't a save situation, so there was no need to bring in your closer. The fact that the next time he came in, he got a loss and gave up a HR to a guy who had zero for the year in 600 at bats, suggests that it wasn't simply a confidence problem.
