This Yankees team has a very nice 96 vibe to it. The players seem all of a sudden relaxed. The team seems to be having fun. They are becoming exciting to watch again. I really think 2 things have happened. The Boss' sons are loosening up on some "rules" and Nick Swisher is the coolest dude in NY.
The 1996 team had a superb bullpen. Unless the 2009 Yankees fix their bullpen, they won't go anywhere.
Yep. You can put some 6th graders in that bullpin if they are going to have 5,6 or 7 run innings each game.
Too early to give out any labels. The 2004, 2005 and 2006 teams all had superior offenses but ultimately imploded due to pitching. Obviously this year's starters are more than adequate to contend for a championship, but that bullpen is downright pathetic.
I wouldn't say '96. I think this team is more along the lines of the early 2000's. We don't have the role-players we did in the mid-late 90s, which is okay. We also don't have the same quality in the bullpen, though I don't think we're as bad off as everyone is making us out. Yes, the pen has been dismal, but Edwar is gone and Bruney is back. Mo is better the past couple weeks after admitting to being fatigued and getting some rest. Tomko has been okay, and so has Coke. Aceves has been fine and Albaladejo has been better. Actually, the weak link in the pen is Veras, and at some point he'll have to be replaced. Whether that is what I'd like to see (Hughes goes to the pen for a while when Wang returns) or he's finally dumped when Marte is ready to return, eventually the team will have to let him go. Obviously there's no combination of Llyod, Nelson, Stanton, Rivera, Wetteland out there, but we're formidable even once our starters are out. (As long as the starter can go at least 6.) I definitely agree with GM regarding the team personality though. This is a loose team having fun now. That's been a complaint of mine for quite a few years now. Sure, there's the whole "business-like approach" to being a Yankee, but this isn't Wall Street. It's grown men playing a game most of us would play for free. They should be laughing and enjoying things when they're winning. Swisher has been a huge part of that, and I give Girardi credit for not only allowing it, but encouraging it.
That won't work against the good teams. Yeah, you can put up 5 an inning against Baltimore, but that's not going to be very common against Boston.
The Yankees bullpen is fairly young after Rivera. Give them a chance. Let them learn from their mistakes. They all have lively arms and just need experience. This is a concept foreign to Yankees fans. We are so impatient and expect everything to be fixed in the blink of an eye. The bullpen has not been good for a very long time and I like the fact that Cashman and Girardi are going with the young guys even though they will take their lumps on occasion. As for the team gelling, I see it as well and it's nice to see. Hope they keep it up. It will make for better baseball.
Pitcher - ERA Josh Beckett - 5.85 Daisuke Matsuzaka - 12.79 Jon Lester - 6.51 Brad Penny - 6.69 Tim Wakefield - 3.59 Yup. Should be real hard to score runs against the five aces. ETA: And it's hard to compare the teams across such different eras. The Yankees of 1996 played in a much weaker division, and the schedule wasn't unbalanced yet. I think I'd take Sabathia > Burnett > Wang > Joba > Pettitte over Key > Cone > Pettitte > Rogers > Gooden, all things being equal.
Aside from the fact that Matsuzaka has made 2 starts totaling 6 1/3 IP, I was talking more about the bullpen. Almost every Sox/Yankees game comes down to a battle of the bullpens, and the Sox have a gigantic edge there.
Yeah, but the Yankee bullpen you saw in April and so far in May is not the one you're going to see in June, July, and August. And you can only put two of those five games on the bullpen. (And one of those was on Mo, who isn't really a concern.) But this has been my point all along. The Yankees have so many pieces they can move in and out, that they shouldn't have an issue finding the ones that will work. Mo is fine. Bruney is back. That helps a lot. Coke is fine, although I bet he's glad Morneau left town. Aceves has looked really good. Marte was pitching injured, and should be better when he comes back. If they'd just replace Veras with Robertson or Melancon, it's not a bad pen at all. Besides, you'll notice what has happened during this win streak... the starters averaged over six innings/start. Hughes is the only one who didn't go at least six, and in those games, the bullpen was fine. A rested pen is a more effective pen. Wang's horrendous starts taxed the pen earlier the year, and it came at a time where you also saw a ridiculously long extra innings games (where they weren't carrying a long man for some reason), and Sabathia not pitching deep into games. Recently they've been doing it without their second best reliever and missing the guy who is supposed to be their third-best reliever, too. I'm confident the pen will settle into being a more than competent group of relievers as we move into the summer.
That may be, but it's still hypothetical, and they still won't be as good as the Red Sox bullpen. And on Friday when Matsuzaka returns and Masterson replaces Hunter Jones that Sox bullpen will be even better. Now that Lopez is gone, the Sox bullpen top to bottom is easily the deeper of the two, and one of the deepest in baseball. The difference in other areas isn't enough to make up for this IMO, especially head to head. Bullpen disparities are the easiest way to make a team a bad matchup for another.
Bullpen performances are variable enough that I would dispute the certainty of your first sentence. Remember what happened to Okajima as the season progressed? And the disparity of talent in the bullpens is not as much of a factor as the variance that you'd expect in a small sample size of head to head matchups. You're talking about maybe 60-70 innings total for each team in their head to head matchups over the course of a season, using multiple relievers, in varied game situations. Will the Sox have a better bullpen over 162 games if you expect the team players to have similar performances going forward? Of course. But I wouldn't be comfortable assuming that. I find it highly unlikely that it would happen, actually.
Um, he got slightly better? It is a HUGE factor in head to head matchups, especially between these two teams. Both work pitchers extremely well and starters tend not to last long. They also play a lot of close games. When the teams are both into the bullpen in the 6th or 7th inning and it's a 1 or 2 run game, the bullpens are going to decide those games. If one team has a significantly better bullpen, as the Sox do now, that team is going to win those games much more often. Again, you are dealing in hypotheticals. You are assuming the Sox relievers will decline and the Yankee relievers will improve. Until that happens though, it's nothing more than a hypothetical. How do you know that the Sox relievers won't improve and the Yankee relievers won't decline? I wouldn't bank on that either, but it's possible. Just looking quickly, Papelbon, Saito, and Delcarmen are all actually worse than career average in WHIP, K/9, and K/BB. That suggests that they could even improve. Okajima is right around his norms in all those. Ramirez has been better than his norms, but has posted a 1.93 ERA and 1.25 WHIP anywhere but Coors Field, so he shouldn't fall too far. Bard and Masterson could go either way, Bard more so, but overall there is little to suggest a huge drop in production from the Sox bullpen. The Yankees on the other hand are far more volatile. Bruney has been good, but he's been significantly better than his norms. Rivera is Rivera, and Marte should improve, but there are so many guys out there with almost no track record that it's kind of silly to expect real improvement this year. The reality is they could go either way.