The Futility Infielder

Visitors who come to this space expecting me to write about the Yankees may have noticed that I've had precious little to say about the pinstriped team lately. Part of it has been my absorption in several Baseball Prospectus-related projects, including taking up the Dodger beat for my Prospectus Triple Play -- a task that's done a lot to refocus me on my true favorite team. Part of it has been to turn my attention to projects that don't involve one specific team, like DIPS.

But another part of it is that I'm sick of this $200 million team before they've even played a game. Let me count the ways:

• I'm sick of thinking about how they could have saved themselves millions of dollars and averted a lot of risk by simply picking up Jon Lieber's $8 million option and calling it a day. The Lieber decision set off a whole winter of reactionary signings and dominoed into the team's inability to compete for the services of Carlos Beltran. For want of a nail...

• I'm sick of pondering in which backwater they're going to bury Kevin Brown's body, and what percentage of his $15 million salary the Yanks will be paying. I'm sick of the inevitable articles that some hacks will write every time the Yankees hit town: "How rich are these Yankees compared to our beloved Midwestern City Scrappers? Why, they're paying more for Kevin Brown to pitch for the North Ogdenville Greasetrappers than the Scrappers are paying for three-fifths of their rotation, and that writeoff could cover the first two years of the well-deserved long-term deal our ace..."

• I'm sick of noticing that I'm just about the only analyst who supported the Jaret Wright signing. BP's Joe Sheehan has already assumed the crash position by comparing him to Willie Blair circa '98, which is pretty uncharitable, and the words "Ed Whitson" have been muttered elsewhere. Yes, the contract is based on one good season, and yes, his durability could be an issue, but this is a pitcher who posted the second-lowest DIPS ERA of any free-agent starter and looks to have taken a major step forward.

• I'm sick of reminding myself that the Yankees did everything by the DIPS book last winter in getting Javier Vazquez and Kevin Brown, and that didn't work out so hot.

• I'm sick of hearing about Randy Johnson telling the cameraman to talk to the hand on his first day as a Yankee. If that's the worst thing that happens to him here, he'll be fine.

• I'm sick of the failure to find a lefthanded stopper for the bullpen, and sorry to see Mike Stanton, who served so nobly in the past, miscast in a role that he won't able to carry. This one's going to end in tears.

• I'm sick of being told how much better off the Yankees were with Tino Martinez than they are with Jason Giambi, and that they should have never let beloved Tino leave because gosh darn it, he's a team guy, and this team doesn't have the team guy thing like the Yanks did when Buster Olney's heroes roamed the House That Ruth Built, and that now that Tino's back he's going to show these new Yankees how to win and zzzzz....

• I'm sick of reading about Jason Giambi's health and his intake of everything from fluids to solid food to distilled spirits to antibiotics to steroids to humble pie. I really would like to get through the entire season without contemplating the big galoot's alimentry canal, ok? I'm not particularly optimistic about his chances to regain his lost superstardom, but looking at this bereft offense, I'll take the .249/.386/.472 (26.5 VORP) PECOTA has him pegged for and assume he'll get more than the 307 at-bats it projects.

• I'm sick of watching Bernie Williams' sad decline in centerfield and the team's refusal to do anything substantial about it. Williams is 32 runs below average defensively over the past three years according to BP's metrics, and by slugging a combined .424 over the past two seasons, can no longer make up for it with his bat.

• I'm sick of Tony Womack and his career .319 OBP. Hell, I was sick of Tony Womack before he got here, simply because I grew up having to watch a million speedy second basemen with no concept of how to take a walk drag down offenses all the time. I was lucky in that I had a deluxe model of the era in Davey Lopes, who could walk, hit for some power, and steal bases with a deadly efficiency. I've got a pretty good idea that Lopes, in his age 60 season, could still put up a .350 OBP and go 20/25 on the basepaths. I'm sick of the fact that the Yanks signed Womack when they could have had a comparable player who's five years younger for half the price in Miguel Cairo.

• I'm sick of learning about the Yankees signing has-beens like Doug Glanville and Rey Sanchez and never-weres like Damian Rolls to compete for jobs at the fringe of their 25-man roster. I'm sick of contemplating a bench that with Glanville (34 years old, 2004 OBP of .244), Sanchez (37, .281), Ruben Sierra (39, .296), John Flaherty (37, .286), and Bubba Crosby (28, .196) is both incredibly old and lacking a single player who put up a .300 OBP last year. Glanville last broke the New Mendoza Line in 2000, Flaherty in 1999. The team's thinking here is a direct affront to everything we've learned about winning baseball over the last quarter century.

• I'm sick of ranting about the Yankees' player development woes. A couple days ago I quipped via the BP internal mailing list, "That's an impressive new take on the concept of 'farm system' the Yanks have going -- find the freshest corpse available, exhume it, and fit it for pinstripes." Steve Goldman, bless his heart, liked the line so much he quoted me in the day's Pinstriped Blog.

• I'm sick of Yankee fans pleading to see rookie Robinson Cano get a shot at the second base job. Kids, he's just not good enough; PECOTA has him forecast for .255/.298/.389 (7.0 VORP) and below average defensively. I'm sick of the fact that this might be the best the decrepit Yankee farm system can do right now, except for the fact that staring him in the face they've also got a more-than-ready Andy Phillips, who while he'll be 28, projects to hit .263/.326/.456 (10.4 VORP) and can play all three corner infield positions. In a better world, Phillips would break camp with the Yankees while one of those septuagenarians is appropriately reburied.

• I'm sick of envisioning new ways for Curt Schilling to die; the latest has me dreaming of watching him choke to death on the bloody sock while Alex Rodriguez bashes his skull into a gooey muck with his man-purse (and I'm sick of hunting for a link to that sissy-slap/purse image after it's been shown to me a dozen times this winter).

• I'm sick of the fact that after holding the line on exorbitant ticket prices over the past few years and setting team records for attendance, the Yanks have passed on their contractual ineptitude to their customers, bumping up the prices of their tickets so much that I'm paying 20% more per game in my partial season-ticket plan than I did last year. The refund I was due for my postseason ticket desposit simply disappeared into the new charge, and I didn't even get the satisfaction of a Yankee World Series appearance.

• I'm especially sick of the lack of vision and imagination being shown by the front office. At a time when the hallowed franchise is four years removed from its last World Championship, they appear to be accelerating in the opposite direction at alarming speed. I'm not going to pin this all on the increasingly marginalized Brian Cashman; it seems pretty clear that the shots are being called from higher up. Any day now I expect Randy Levine to call a press conference just to tell us that the team is completely out of ideas. As in...

Yankee Spokesperson: "On behalf of the New York Yankees, I have the obligation to announce that our storehouse of brainpower has been exhausted by all of this dynasty-keeping we're expected to do. Ladies and gentlemen, we're completely out of ideas [digs finger in ear, looks around the room solemnly, then examines finger pulled from ear] Yep. That's it, we're tapped. You can all go home now. Questions?"

And finally, I'm sick of temperatures in the single digits and low teens, and the increasingly graying snow still piled on New York City's curbs. I want to see players bathed in sunlight as they run around on green grass wearing their batting-practice jerseys and tossing the ball lackadaisically. I want the next three weeks before Pitchers and Catchers to pass overnight so we can get on with a baseball season that will inevitably take more twists and turns than we can possibly predict. Bring it on.