New York Yankees Turn Back the Clock
Who remembers the good ole days? The days when the New York Yankees had very poor pitching for a team that expected to win the World Series every year, yet still managed to flirt with 100 wins? The mid-2000′s. The days when the New York Yankees were trotting out the likes of Randy Johnson, Aaron Small, Kevin Brown, Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez (the first time), Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, Jose Contreras, Orlando Hernandez, Esteban Loaiza, Ted Lilly, Chien-Ming Wang, Jaret Wright, Shawn Chacon, several rookies and several other vets that deserve to be named here. Some of these guys were decent, some of them got traded or released after a short stretch and some of them just flat out sucked. How the New York Yankees made it to the postseason every year until 2008 may seem like a mystery, but the answer is crystal clear. The New York Yankees simply bludgeoned the opposition. They still do in 2011, but despite popular opinion the New York Yankees actually have more pitching than they did “back in the day” and have a much more dynamic ball club. The win against the Baltimore Orioles today provided a small dose of New York Yankees nostalgia though.
The first key is the 11-10 final score. The Yankees thrived in slug fests. It was kind of like when a basketball team wants to bait its opponent into playing really up tempo. The Yankees could out slug anybody on a regular basis. Everyone except for the Boston Red Sox who pretty much built their team exactly like the Yankees for a few years. Those were some ugly marathons. Anyway, the next ingredient is the washed up veteran getting rocked. Today’s victim was Freddy Garcia. The good thing here is that Garcia is the Yanks’ No. 5 starter instead of a No. 2, 3 or 4. Those were the guys getting rocked back in the day. Finally, you watch the highlights and you just see the Yankees blasting off – four home runs if I counted correctly. Two from Jesus Montero. Congratulations to the kid by the way. Those were his first two career homeruns and they were blasted into the right field seats. Mark Teixeira also hit a game-tying homer in the 1st inning and Robinson Cano hit a sweet grand slam deep into the right-center field bleachers. It was a home run derby.
Back in the Joe Torre era, the key for the Yankees was to deliver adequate starting pitching, survive the middle relief and then get the ball to whatever overworked set-up man was throwing the ball well at the time and then eventually to Mr. Mariano Rivera. I didn’t get to watch the game today (middle finger to whoever is responsible for having every single Oriole game blacked out on MLB.tv) but I imagine there was a similar feeling in today’s win. I’m really glad that the New York Yankees have moved past the days of just trying to out-homer everybody. They could be fun to watch, but they could be painful at the same time. It’s fine if they want to give us a little nibble of the old days from time to time, but all-in-all, I like the direction we’re heading in now and I’m sure the organization is happy to stay the course.
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