SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
These Yankees are no longer fall guys but boys of summer, as making money becomes ultimate goal Mike Lupica,
YANKEE FANS really need to take a deep breath here, be a little more realistic about who their team is, has been for a long time. We hear constantly about the Yankee “brand.” Well, here is what the Yankee brand has become: Winning a lot of regular games, drawing a lot of people, making a lot of money. They are big winners, unprecedented winners, April through September. Just rarely in October. October was the old brand.
And they’re still working off an old script at the new Yankee Stadium. The comments from members of the Yankees’ high command after the team doesn’t make it to the World Series have become as predictable as their baseball team not making it to the World Series.
Once the bottom line for Steinbrenner the Elder was winning it all, or else. For his heirs, it seems the bottom line is more about profit and loss, and that sure doesn’t mean the kind of loss the Yankees just suffered at the hands of the Tigers.
You better believe the Yankees are the most successful regular-season team of all time, even more successful than the Atlanta Braves were when they kept making the playoffs in the 1990s. And the Braves, by the way, didn’t just make the playoffs, they made it to four World Series in that decade, even if they only managed to win one.
This is 2012. Starting in 2002, the Yankees have made it to the World Series twice over the past decade, have won one. The people in charge still make it sound as if the Yankees not making the Series is some kind of aberration. Actually it’s become the norm. In that decade we’re talking about, the Yankees have lost in the first round five times.
The modern Yankees are a rollicking good show, good home-run show, now that they’ve moved across 161st St. Beasts of the AL East. Brian Cashman, the general manager, says he is going looking for more home-run hitting monsters, even though we all saw what just happened in the postseason when good pitching kept the monsters the Yankees already have in the ballpark.
The Yankees had two unforgettable moments in this postseason: Raul Ibanez hit those two late-inning home runs against the Orioles in Game 3, then Ibanez and Ichiro hit those two ninth-inning home runs in Game 1 against the Tigers. Even the ninth-inning rally in Game 1 against the Orioles started with a home run from Russell Martin.
Understand: The Yankees clearly have a tremendous business plan. It’s just not exactly the one they’re selling about how every season is World Series or bust. They are a long-running TV series for YES (even though ratings were down this season), the money absolutely keeps rolling in. They are hairy monsters in the regular season. But what happens in the postseason keeps happening, no matter how surprised they act every time it does.
We keep hearing t hat they’re going to get the payroll down to $189 million by 2014 to avoid serious luxury-tax penalties, but that is a bit of a hustle, too. The next year they can go right back to outspending everybody (well, maybe not the Dodgers going forward) if they choose to. Understand: They have made a lot of smart decisions in that time to keep the pump primed, don’t worry. Cashman had one of his best years in 2012 with Ibanez, Ichiro and Hiroki Kuroda, and maybe it’s fitting that his best work turned out to be with guys whose ages are 40, 38, 37. The Yankees, year after year, are always a win-now team.
But when it comes to the World Series, they have become a win-then team.
Under Joe Torre they won four times in five seasons, made it to the World Series five times in six seasons, finally six times in eight. But starting in
2002, they have become the New York Braves.
Obviously there is no shame in that, the people in charge can point to other teams spending big money and not having nearly the regular-season success the Yankees have had. You think Mets fans wouldn’t trade places with Yankee fans? But the idea that the sky is falling because they just did what they usually do — fell hard before they got to the Series — is just plain dumb.
They consistently fall short of what they say their mission statement is, but nothing really changes in the organization. You know the only person who effectively got fired from the World-Series-or-bust Yankees lately? A.J. Burnett. They paid the Pirates to take Burnett off their hands. They might pay somebody else to take A.E. Rodriguez off their hands. That is the modern Yankee idea of holding somebody accountable.
For the record, here is part of Hal Steinbrenner’s response to his team’s performance against the Tigers, by the way:
“Make no mistake, this was a bitter end to our year, and we fully intend to examine our season in its totality, assess all of our strengths and weaknesses and take the necessary steps needed to maintain our sole focus of winning the World Series in 2013.”
But whatever Steinbrenner the Younger does say, you have to say he seems pretty happy with the way his team is being run, and managed. For now he doesn’t say a word about his manager benching A-Rod in favor of a guy, Eric Chavez, who couldn’t hit or field by the end. Doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that after a decade of record spending, the Yankees have won one World Series to show for all that spending.
Everybody talks about the Yankees making more big changes. Maybe getting another big player or two. But in the end, and with as much money as they spend, they are mostly about big coin that keeps coming in. That’s the real difference between the way they are run now and the way they were run when the old man was still in charge. That’s the real bottom line with the modern Yankees.
The people in charge say what they think George M. Steinbrenner would have wanted them to say. But with the old man, it was more than just talk.