No sympathy: A-Rod and the Yankees are paying stupid tax

Squawker Jon and I heard ESPN's PED investigative reporter T.J. Quinn speak this weekend when we attended New York's SABR Day festivities. Quinn talked about performance-enhancing drugs and baseball and said that the MLB PED test wasn't really a drug test; it was an IQ test. You know, how people like Manny Ramirez get caught while others get away with it.

I couldn't help but think of Quinn's trenchant comment when hearing about the allegations that Alex Rodriguez allegedly did PEDs -- again -- and that a Miami clinic reportedly saved information about him and other players. According to the Miami New Times, from 2009 to 2012 Alex, under the code name of Cacique, allegedly received a variety of PEDs supplied by an antiaging clinic. 2009 would be right after his PED admission, and 2012 would be the worst season of his career. (Did he ask for a refund on the latter?) What a dumbass.

So yeah, to expand on Quinn's point, if there were an IQ test here somewhere, A-Rod failed. Bigtime. How stupid do you have to be to do this again after being exposed as a PED user? Pretty dumb.

Stupid tax is in effect

But you know who was also pretty stupid? The Yankees for re-signing him to the dumbest contract in MLB history. And they have only themselves to blame.

Radio host and financial guru Dave Ramsey has an expression for senseless spending. He calls it a "stupid tax." So in essence, both the Yanks and A-Rod are paying a stupid tax. A-Rod for doing PEDs again and costing himself millions in bad reputation, and the Yankees for signing this ridiculous deal.

There's all sorts of talk that the Yankees are trying to void the contract. Good luck with that. Here are some of the many reasons why this will never happen:

* It is pretty much impossible to void an MLB contract for any reason. And nobody has ever successfully gotten a contract voided for PEDs.

* That's because the players' agreement with MLB does not allow for anything other than a 50-game suspension for first-time PED use (A-Rod's admitted use of steroids came in before this agreement, so this would still be a 50-game suspension.)

* The team didn't try to void his contract in 2009, when they knew he did PEDs. They also were unsuccessful in their attempt to have Jason Giambi's contract voided, even though Giambi had health issues reportedly related to his PED use.

* The Yankees can't claim to be shocked, shocked about PED use given that 10 members of the 2000 Yankees were named in the Mitchell Report, with 16 Yankees in all in the report.

* Even after the Mitchell Report, Cashman has repeatedly signed either players who tested positive for PEDs or were named in the report (Jerry Hairston Jr., Sergio Mitre to name two) or those who were strongly suspected of PED use (Andruw Jones, Bartolo Colon, and a whole slew of those so- called low-risk, high reward signings.) It's hard to say

* The Yanks re-signed Andy Pettitte FOUR times after his admitted PED usage. Shocking, I know, that a team that signed him and Jason Giambi would have no idea that A-Rod ever juiced.

Anyhow, it's stupid tax time. And forget all this nonsense about how the Yankees will get A-Rod's contract paid for by insurance. As if the insurance company will just willingly fork over $114 million just to save the Yankees from paying their stupid tax. Spare me. Nobody else is that stupid.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

For Mets, R.A. now stands for "Rebuilding ahead"

When I had the opportunity to interview R.A. Dickey last month, he told me that people were still suspicious of knuckleballers:
   The problem is, people still have this bias against the pitch. They think it's a gimmick, they think it's a trick pitch, illegitimate, whatever adjective you want to try and put there you can. It takes a little while to get people past that.

The lingering suspicion of knuckleballers, combined with Dickey's age, has given the Mets cover in sending Dickey packing instead of agreeing to his very reasonable contract demands.  A 74-win team has gotten rid of the man who earned 20 of those wins. If more people really believed that Dickey could duplicate his great 2012, there would be a lot more outcry over this trade. Teams don't usually trade the reigning Cy Young winner.

And Dickey had become far more than just a great pitcher, but a local folk hero. As I've written before, Dickey's popularity could have led to his becoming a longterm representative of the franchise a la David Wright. Instead, Dickey is not only gone, but had to face anonymous sniping on the way out, aided and abetted by Post writer Ken Davidoff's attacks on the knuckleballer. It only serves as a reminder that much of whatever class the Mets have has left with Dickey.

I hope Dickey proves all the doubters wrong. With Jose Reyes also joining the Blue Jays, I now have a new team to root for in the AL East.

That said, with the current state of the Mets' franchise, trading Dickey for the haul of prospects the Mets got could be the right move long-term. Citi Field could even become a more interesting place if the team appears to be building for the future instead of treading water and denying they are in rebuilding mode.

You never know what will happen when you start stockpiling young players.  Four years ago, Omar Minaya traded a bunch of players for J.J. Putz and Sean Green, both of whom are long gone from the Mets. One of the players the Mets gave up in that deal, lefthanded pitcher Jason Vargas, was traded today even up for righthanded power hitter Kendrys Morales.

Youk? Yuck. Why the Yankees signing Kevin Youkilis is a terrible idea

Hey, kids. Brian Cashman made history Tuesday! Thanks to his idiotic signing of Kevin Youkilis, the Yankees will be paying more for the third baseman spot in 2013 than any other team has ever paid for any other position in history! That's right, folks. The Yanks will be spending a mind-boggling $40 million year for third base next year, more than the Miami Marlins will be spending for their entire franchise's payroll.

And what are the Yanks getting for their money? As I put it yesterday on Facebook:

Youk is a Yank? Yuck. Yet another dumb move by Brian Cashman in replacing an aging, expensive, injury-riddled third baseman with a bad hip, with another aging, expensive, injury-riddled third baseman with a bad hip. Not to mention that whole Red Sox thing. Good grief.

Only the Yanks would get "younger" (Youk will be 34 in March) with a player who misses 40 to 60 games a year, and who has been on the DL pretty much every year of his career. Only the Yankees would replace an overpaid, frequently-injured third baseman with an even more brittle version. And give him $12 million (!) to do so.

Not to mention that Youkilis is a jerk, and even his fellow Red Sox players long ago grew tired of his hissy fits after every strikeout. (And before you bring up Paul O'Neill, he acted like a baby, too, but he helped the Yankees get four rings. Youk won't be getting his own Yankeeography any time soon.)

Yesterday, I heard over and over from Yankee fans trying to justify the trade about how this was the best Brian Cashman could do. What nonsense. I would have been happy with a rookie or role player who can play decent defense and can stay healthy. But the Yanks are more interested in big names for ratings on the YES Network than with having some nobody (the horror!) field the position. Of course, having somebody who could, you know, actually be a relevant player in 2013, not 2004, never figures into Cashman's equation. (Hey, Manny Ramirez is still out there; maybe Cash can sign him, too!)

And by the way, Cashman has been GM since 1998, and got that vaunted "complete control" of the franchise since 2005. Who has the team's player development system produced since then? Arguably the three best players -- Jesus Montero, Ian Kennedy, and Austin Jackson -- are all playing elsewhere, traded for less than their value. The Killer Bs are nowhere. And there isn't just an MLB-ready backup at third in the Yankees farm system; there doesn't appear to be an MLB-ready anything.

You know who also got complete control as a GM in 2005? Andrew Friedman of the Tampa Bay Rays, who became their GM that year. And yet, with a payroll less than a third of the Yanks, and their best players leaving for free agency, Friedman is able to field a competitive team each year. (And no, it isn't just having had the good draft picks -- look at Kansas City!) In the old days, George Steinbrenner would have poached Friedman from the Rays a long time ago, instead of having a schlub like Cashman as GM for life.

Anyhow, don't fool yourself that Kevin Youkilis has somehow seen the light and will be a great Yankee hero. This is about the Yankees being foolish enough to pay a has-been like him $12 million for 2013. Nothing else. Meanwhile, Brian (Fredo) Cashman will preen somewhere about what a great GM he is, putting this golden oldies team on the field. Good grief. I haven't had somebody join the team that I had such a visceral reaction to since Javy Vazquez Part Deux. This is worse.

Guess what, folks? You can't count on the Yankees making the playoffs with this ancient crew just because they have in the past. Every single team in the AL East got better in the winter this year, except for the Yankees, who got worse (Rafael Soriano not being on this team will come back to bite them.)  There's a reason my Sox fan friends are laughing over Youkilis being a Yankee -- they know what he is now. And the one-time .300+ hitter is not an All-Star third baseman anymore. He's slightly more relevant than Derek Lowe, but that's about it. Good grief.

Mets make Wright move; Yanks let Martin go to Pirates

One New York team gave a star player a $122 million extension while the other New York team allowed its starting catcher to sign with Pittsburgh as they seek to cut payroll for 2014. And the first team is the Mets and the second team is the Yankees. It's Backwards Day!

The Mets had no choice but to lock up David Wright. Even the dollar store Tampa Bay Rays just gave a big contract to their star third baseman Evan Longoria. 

But Tampa Bay still has a good chance of eventually trading 2012 AL Cy Young winner David Price. And the Mets still have a chance of trading 2012 NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey. If the Mets are really starting to make the transition back to big-market team, they'll keep Dickey.

As for trading Jon Niese, it depends on what they can get for him. I don't buy the "Mets have a surplus of starting pitching" theory. And Niese is not yet the kind of pitcher who can fetch a big return. But there is that little matter of not having an outfield.

At least there no longer seems to be any talk of trading Ike Davis.

I'm going to enjoy this Backwards Day while I can, because it is no indication of a long-term trend. Even if the Yankees do slash payroll to reach their 2014 goal of $189 million, that's still double the Mets 2012 payroll. The Yankees will end up with some sort of name catcher, while the Mets will proclaim faith in Josh (.584 OPS in 2012) Thole.   

But as we head into the Winter Meetings, at least there's some good news from the Mets for a change.

Deja vu all over again: Brian Cashman more concerned with self-aggrandizing stunt than his day job

For the third year in a row, Brian Cashman is wasting time in the postseason by doing his dopey rappeling stunt instead of concentrating on working as GM of the New York Yankees. And this year, he's doing this stunt with Bobby Valentine, of all people. Good grief.

In 2010, Cashman was apparently more concerned with getting his mug on the news dressed as an elf than he was at getting Cliff Lee signed. Cashman also did the stunt in 2011. And this year, Russell Martin left for Pittsburgh last night on a two-year, $17 million offer, reportedly without the Yankees even making him an offer of their own. 

And before you start screaming at me again about how Cashman's stunt is for charity, why doesn't he just write a check from his $3 million a year salary and be done with it? Is it really necessary for him to rappel down a building each year, let alone now do it with Bobby V? Not to mention all the time and psychic energy this entails. Not only is this stunt dangerous, but it takes up way too much of his time and attention. Sorry, I'm like George Steinbrenner would have been on this. Stick to your day job, dude.

So who's going to catch for the Yankees next year? Is Austin Romine, who has back issues, going to get the job? (Because, you know, nothing helps back problems like being a catcher!) Or is Francisco Cervelli, who Cashman banished to the minors for most of last year, going to get the spot? Or are the Yankees going to decide to increase the jerk quotient for the team by signing A.J.Pierzynski for a year?

Granted, Russell Martin was not my first choice for Yankee catcher of the future (although as a person, he was one of my very favorites over the last few years.) But my choice, Jesus Montero, got traded to the Seattle Mariners for a bag of not-so-magic beans. Oh, by the way, Cashman recently said this about Michael Pineda, aka Carl Pavano with a DUI: 

We certainly have high hopes for him, but in terms of planning and counting on him, it’s in everybody’s interest not to do that right now and just put together as deep and strong a staff as possible and be pleasantly surprised and appreciative if we can welcome him back to the fold at some point. 

So this is what you gave up the player you compared to Albert Pujols for, Bri? Somebody who you can welcome "back to the fold at some point"? And yet again, present company excluded, nobody in the media questions Brian's judgement for making this trade in the first place. Nor do they wonder why, given that Curt Schilling, among others, was able to return from this same surgery in 10 months, why a surgery that was done in April 2012 should basically keep Pineda out for the rest of 2013 as well.

Anyhow, if not re-signing Martin is a matter of getting the Yanks down to that $189 million for 2014, it seems an odd place to penny pinch. Because if spending $8.5 million on a catcher next year is going to break the bank, then this team is going to be a real mess.

What do you think? Tell us about it. 

Subway Squawkers interview with R.A. Dickey, Mets Cy Young Award winner

I was very excited to have the opportunity to speak with 2012 NL Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey earlier today. Dickey is one of the stars of "Knuckleball!," which is now available through video on demand. The DVD is available for pre-order at knuckleballmovie.com. Squawker Lisa and I were able to see the movie last spring at the Tribeca Film Festival and we highly recommend it, particularly if you are a Met fan or a Red Sox fan, since Tim Wakefield is also featured. But overall, it's a compelling story for baseball fans in general.  

Subway Squawkers: First of all, congratulations!

R.A. Dickey: Thank you.

Subway Squawkers: In the age of Moneyball, do you think there is going to be more of an effort to develop knuckleballers as another way for teams to get an edge?

R.A. Dickey:  Well, I think at the very least, it's as logical as trying to teach a hitter to switch-hit – that happens all the time. If you can teach a guy who would otherwise be released, who has good makeup and good arm strength, how to throw a knuckleball, you may have stumbled on something that could really be a benefit to your organization.

The problem is, people still have this bias against the pitch. They think it's a gimmick, they think it's a trick pitch, illegitimate, whatever adjective you want to try and put there you can. It takes a little while to get people past that.

Subway Squawkers: I do the blog with a Yankee fan and we've seen many pitchers have trouble pitching in New York. You’ve had such success here. Tim Wakefield was very successful in Boston. Do you think it's harder to pitch in New York, or is there something about being a knuckleballer that might have made it easier?

R.A. Dickey: As a knuckleballer, you pay attention to climate from time to time, and the Northeast has always been a good place to pitch from a climate standpoint. The humidity's nice, and the field - I love pitching at Citi Field.

And also, I have interests that lie outside the game of baseball, and New York is a great platform to try and invest in some of the things that might transcend the game. And I’m thankful that that's been a place where I can kind of be myself. It’s a real cathartic place for me because I can get away from the field and do some things that I really feel like have a lasting effect. So it’s a good place for me.

Subway Squawkers: Trying to think of a good Kilimanjaro analogy – it was such a struggle for you to get to the top of your profession. Do you think it will be a struggle to stay at the top?

R.A. Dickey: Why, sure! I don't think there’s anything about me that says the hard part is not getting to the top, it’s staying there.  I’m gonna tell you, it is hard getting to the top. (laughs) It’s not easy.  The only thing I can do is try to be responsible for the moments that I've given, regardless of what I've done in the past or what I hope to do in the future.  I have to really be invested in the moment. That’s what works for me.

Next year, I'm not going to try to be a Cy Young award winner, I'm just going to try to be me. And hopefully, at the end of the year, it will be a similar stat line. You just try to do the best you can.  

Subway Squawkers: After you left Texas, when you were signing with other teams, were they signing you strictly as a knuckleballer or did anybody suggest you go back to being a more conventional pitcher or maybe do both?

R.A. Dickey: No, I was 100% knuckleball. That’s what I was known as. From the moment that I announced that's what I’m going to become in 2005, that’s what teams knew me as.

Subway Squawkers: My cowriter on the blog has read your book and I’m looking forward to reading it. We were wondering, are you going to do an updated version of it or are you going to do a sequel  since so much has happened since the book came out? 

R.A. Dickey: I’m in the process right now of writing an epilogue, a close to 4,000-word epilogue, kind of chronicling the 2012 season, including Kilimanjaro and the Cy Young experience.  

Subway Squawkers: There’s been a lot of talk about the other knuckleballers, and I know you called Phil Niekro back as soon as you won the Cy Young and I’m wondering are there other people in baseball, like say, Buck Showalter, that have also been important in getting you to this point? 

R.A. Dickey: There’s a lot of people I want to celebrate this with who impacted me. I am not a self-made man (laughs). I've had a lot of people who really care about me and I'm glad to be able to share this with them. This is an award meant to be shared.  It's not an individual award for me. It's one that people should celebrate because they had something to do with it. Phil Niekro, Charlie Hough, Tim Wakefield, Buck Showalter, Orel Hershiser. The list is as long as Santa's naughty and nice list. It's long.

Subway Squawkers: You mention that you enjoy pitching at Citi Field. The Mets are traditionally a team that has been built around pitching, so that much be exciting that you're now part of this great pitching tradition the team has had, dating back to Tom Seaver.  

R.A. Dickey: You know, to be considered with Doc Gooden, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, the New York Mets pedigree of pitchers, the stable is deep, to be able to say I’m considered among those is a real honor.

Subway Squawkers: Well, I certainly hope you'll be back with the Mets next year. We look forward to rooting for you.

R.A. Dickey: Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Mets Must Keep Cy Young Winner R.A. Dickey

The last time a Met pitcher won the Cy Young Award, the team won the World Series the following year. 27 years later, I'll settle for a reason to come to the ballpark every fifth day.

R.A. Dickey is a great story. Now he's had a great season. Conventional wisdom says that the Mets need to sign David Wright to a long-term contract because he's the face of the franchise and can be a long-term ambassador for the team. But Dickey could also be a great representative of the Mets - a unique everyman who triumphed over great odds.

The odds were against my going to a Met game last September once another season was down the drain. But thanks to Dickey going for his 20th win, the Mets actually had a meaningful game in September, and I was part of a large and enthusiastic crowd.

Teams trying to contend don't trade Cy Young winners. In recent years, Kansas City traded Zach Greinke, Cleveland traded Cliff Lee and CC Sabathia and Minnesota traded Johan Santana. How's that working out for them? 

2012's other Cy Young winner, David Price, probably just punched his ticket out of Tampa Bay because his price (no pun intended) just got too expensive. The Rays have had a lot of success in recent years, but it hasn't translated into a large fan base. Who wants to root for a team that keeps shipping out their best players?

A couple of years ago, Toronto traded away former Cy Young winner Roy Halladay, who promptly won a second Cy Young with the Phillies. But Toronto got back top prospects Travis D'Arnaud and Kyle Drabek. Isn't there a scenario in which the Mets could trade Dickey for top prospects and improve the team's chance of contending down the road?

Theoretically, yes, but most prospects are ultimately just prospects. Everyone's excited over how the Mets landed Zack Wheeler for Carlos Beltran, but Wheeler still hasn't pitched an inning in the majors. He's no sure thing.

And Beltran, always underrated with the Mets, has been a perennial star when healthy. Halladay is putting together a Hall of Fame career. Will other teams be willing to part with top prospects for a 37-year-old who finally found success with a knuckleball?

As Squawker Lisa knows all too well, finding good pitchers who can pitch well in New York is hard enough. The best thing for the fans is to keep Dickey around. It's probably the best thing for the Mets'  hopes to put together a good team as well.

*

Lisa and I saw "Knuckleball" last spring at the Tribeca Film Festival and we both highly recommend it. The film is now available on DVD through www.knuckleballmovie.com.

More on the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Staten Island and the Rockaways

Squawking about the state of the Yankees is the last thing on my mind this days. Squawking about the state of New York City and surrounding regions after Hurricane Sandy is what I am most focused on. Here is the latest from Staten Island:

I was heartened to see that Mayor Bloomberg finally cancelled the New York City Marathon (and TheWeek.com cited this blog and the argument I made about the congestion issues of having it now.) But it still sound like he doesn't understand why people were so outraged over it. The New York Times said:

"Persuading the mayor to change his mind was difficult. Aides and friends said Bloomberg was not one to wallow, and he saw value in urging residents to move past the storm.

“It goes back to his earliest days in office,” said one person familiar with the mayor’s thinking. “He is an engineer, not a political science student.”

These aren't people wallowing in some imagined slight. It is hard to expect people living without food, water, electricity, heat or places to live to be moving on, when they don't even have the basics.

And Bloomberg doesn't sound like an engineer to me. I have worked with and for engineers, and none of them had as little concern for humanity as he does. Frankly, Bloomie just sounds like a jerk.

* * *

On another note, I was privileged to go out to the Rockaways this weekend with others to help a few friends and relatives of friends with cleaning up their homes. They weren't even in the hardest-hit area there, but it was still pretty terrible.  Imagine 13 feet of water rushing into your home, ruining your basement, your first floor, and very well causing permanent structural damage to your house. Imagine having your possessions ruined, and having to throw them out, with no chance of salvaging them. Imagine having your photo albums waterlogged.  And the people closer to the beach got not just water, but sand pouring into their homes.

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of when people say "I know how you feel" unless they actually do. But I do know a little of what it's like to lose nearly everything. Nearly 15 years ago, my apartment burned down, and I lost two cats and most of my possessions, with the exception of clothing that smelled like smoke. So while I am not going to say I know exactly how these families feel, I can at least relate to having your home violated and things you valued destroyed in the blink of an eye.

Back then, I also received much help from friends, family and co-workers when it came to going through my ruined things, trying to salvage what was left, and moving.  So I was trying to "pay it forward" a little.

We felt good Saturday that we were able to help two Rockaway families -- one with packing, the other with getting rid of things. But it made me tremendously sad to see the damage firsthand that this storm caused. Every house we drove by had valued possessions ruined and sitting curbside for sanitation workers to take the items away. The trauma that this storm caused -- from deaths and injuries to ruined homes and cars to kids having to go to different schools -- is almost too much to bear.

On the way there and back, we drove through Brooklyn picking up and dropping off friends to help. On the way there, we drove by 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge, where the marathoners would have run by. That street was clogged on Saturday with desperate people in cars and on foot just trying to get gas. Imagine what would have happened if those folks had not been able to get gas on Sunday, in favor of the marathon!

And on the way home Saturday evening, we saw the marathon starting point, on Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. It still had tons of porta-potties there. This, even though Mary Wittenberg, head of the New York Road Runners Club had promised to help give/loan such items to the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

After waiting on line for two hours to get gasoline on Sunday morning, and succeeding, I tried to go back there to Fort Wadsworth to see if there was food and water still there for the marathon, and to take pictures, but the security denied me access. Too bad.

But I did see a great sight on the way home after that -- hundreds of would-be marathoners streaming from the Staten Island Ferry to help Staten Islanders. They had more of the spirit of humanity than Mike Bloomberg ever will.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Denial is not just a river in Egypt -- It's the state of the Yankees

History's greatest unexplained mysteries include Easter Island, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and why the Yankees got swept in the ALCS. At least that's what Yankees president Randy Levine seems to be claiming. He told the New York Times that "there was a total collapse in the A.L.C.S. that was very surprising. Why did that happen? Nobody will ever know." Really? We will never be able to figure this out, no matter how many sabermaticians and baseball historians pore over the numbers? Ridiculous.

Brian Cashman also treated this debacle as some sort of great mystery. He told Ian O'Connor on ESPN Radio that "I'm not sure if I can ever give you a tangible, realistic, honest, this-is-what-I-know from (what) CSI New York has provided. ... I just don't know." Are you kidding me? It's not that complicated, Brian!

Cashman also said this:

"It was kind of like a Yankee flu went through five of our guys in the lineup. ... I do think there is a mental component that really crept in on us, and all of a sudden & you hear our players talking about passing the baton. Well, I wonder if the baton that was passed was one of pressure and tightness and it started going throughout our entire lineup, that, 'Oh jeez, he didn't get it done; I've got to get it done.' And they started getting us out of our game.

Gee, you'd almost think that Joe Girardi's indefensible panic in the playoffs, where his only answer to any dilemma seemed to involve somehow benching/humiliating a player, whether it be Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher, or Curtis Granderson, may have had a ripple effect. And that instead of projecting calm, Girardi projected instability and lack of trust in the players who got him to October in the first place by putting up a spring training-style lineup in a postseason game. Nah, that's too out there, right? Who would ever think that a manager showing such lack of faith in his players would have such consequences?

It is interesting that Cashman used the term "Yankee flu." Because there is a term called "blue flu," which describes when police officers, who are not allowed to go on strike, call in sick en masse to express their displeasure with their contract and work situation. Is Cashman suggesting that the Yankee bats deliberately went on strike?

Of course, Cashman still refuses to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the team he assembled as far as having a season-long inability to hit with runners in scoring position, as well as generally only winning when they hit homers. Mix in some angry boos from the hometown crowd, and add a little missing leadership on the team thanks to Derek Jeter getting hurt in Game 1 of the ALCS, throw in the lack of faith Girardi and Cashman showed in their team, which led to tightness and panic, and it shouldn't really be a big mystery as to why the Yankees lost.

I do have to ask this: have Cashman or Girardi ever read a modern management book? Ever given some thought about how to motivate people? For that matter, reading a classic book like Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" would have served them better than what they did. Because their actions in the postseason seem to show not just lack of baseball skills (sorry, Joe, Derek Lowe is not a good option when the game is on the line!), but a lack of people skills. At this point, I wouldn't trust either of them to plan a one-car funeral, let alone run a baseball team.

Unfortunately, they work for the Steinbrenner kids, who are just as unaware of good management as they are. So they will all pretend that this was just some big mystery as to why the Yankees lost in the postseason. Heaven forbid anybody actually be held accountable for this disaster.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Shocker: Mike Lupica makes more sense on the Yankees than the Steinbrenner sons do

Sports columnist Mike Lupica may be the newspaper equivalent of a slugger whose best days were in the 1970s, but every once in a while, he can still hit a mistake pitch out of the ballpark. The New York Daily News writer had a great column this Sunday about what I've been saying and thinking recently about the Yankees front office -- that the Yankees' rhetoric about how the season is a failure without a World Series title no longer matches reality.

Lupica writes:

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.

Lupica is right to point out that the Steinbrenners are now more concerned about "profit and loss" than playoff losses. Quite frankly, fans are more upset over the ALCS than Hal Steinbrenner or Brian Cashman is. While Hal acknowledged in a statement that the Yanks "fell short of our singular and constant goal, which is a World Series Championship," and called it a "bitter end" and a "disappointment," nobody is going to lose their jobs over this. George Steinbrenner may have gone too far when it came to firing people, but the Steinbrenner kids are way too passive on the opposite end of the spectrum, guaranteeing Cashman and Joe Girardi's jobs after the postseason even began. 

By the way, a "disappointment" is when Starbucks ran of Pumpkin Spice Latte mix. The Yankees are a disaster. They didn't play hard and just come up short in the ALCS -- they were annihilated, embarrassed, and humiliated.  But Hal doesn't seem really upset over it. If he were upset, he would get rid of at least one of the architects of this disaster.

Anyhow, Lupica didn't stop there. The columnist calls the Yankees the "New York Braves" (ouch!) but notes that the Braves got further into the postseason than the current Yankees did when Atlanta was dominant (ouch again!) Lupica also notes that the Yankees "consistently fall short of what they say their mission statement is, but nothing really changes in the organization." Yep. So we will have another year of Joe Girardi panicking, and Brian Cashman getting ripped off in trades, and Kevin Long no longer being up to the job. Oh, joy.

As Lupica says:

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.

By the way, I loved Hank's complaining to the Associated Press about too much blame being put on A-Rod, saying that it wasn't fair "to accuse him of everything but the Kennedy assassination." Um, Hank, your crew did that all by themselves! Hank also had this to say about his feelings about the ALCS debacle: 

"It was something to not be very pleased about," Steinbrenner said. "Everybody is kind of a bewildered and a little angry, too. But that's natural."

Even hothead Hank is way too passive in his comments.

How weird are things in Yankeeland these days? Even Lupica, who has been a longtime A-Rod hater since he was on the Mariners, thinks that Alex should have played in the postseason. He has this to say about Hal's comments:

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.

Lupica ends his piece by noting that while "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." Ain't that the truth!

What do you think? Tell us about it!