George Steinbrenner is ruining the Yankees, again. The Boss haspublicly called out his General Manager Brian Cashman, giving him
notice that his job is on the line.

"He’s on a big hook,"
Steinbrenner told The Associated Press in a rare interview from this
Tampa office. "He wanted sole authority. He got it. Now he’s got to
deliver."

The problem is that Steinbrenner has a different
definition of "delivering" than does the rest of baseball. The
Steinbrenner Doctrine, which is to win a championship every year or
consider the season a complete failure. No one who lacks super natural
abilities can "deliver" in this fashion. It’s impossible. And it is
certainly not Cashman’s fault that his entire pitching rotation has
been decimated by injuries this year. Cashman has no control over
Giambi’s 2 HRs and 8 RBIs in his last 27 games. Who would have thought
that Bobby Abreu, with a career .300 avg. and 100+ walks a season,
would be batting a paltry .235 with 23 walks. His on base percentage
has been over .400 ever year since 1998, with the exception of 2001
when it was .393. This year his OBP is .316. Robinson Cano has been a
major disappointment. None of that is Cashman’s fault.

Since
taking ultimate control (or at least as ultimate as is possible in the
Yankees organization), Cashman has been attempting to reinstate and
execute the Yankee philosophy of the early ’90s that saw the likes of
Andy Pettite, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Derek
Jeter all come up through the farm system. Cashman has focused on
stockpiling the minors with draftpicks, which means sidestepping the
high priced free agents that cost draft picks and prospects. While I
think that Jason Giambi has been much better for the Yankees than do
many Yankee faithful, I think it is safe to say that Derek Jeter has
worked out much better for them than Giambi has.

Cashman is
walking a tightrope, performing a balancing act that few could achieve.
He is trying to develop a farm system full of Jeters and Pettittes
(Phil Hughes anyone?) while still trying to work within the
Steinbrenner Doctrine. He signed Pettitte and Mussina to two year
contracts. He traded for Bobby Abreu whose contract is up at the end of
this season. He was able to sign Roger Clemens over the Red Sox, who
have a far better shot at winning the World Series at this point than
do their arch rivals. Cashman has tried to keep the Yankees competitive
now while ensuring they continue to win in the future.

The one
thing that Cashman has done wrong is that he never found a way to
attain those supernatural powers that are required to appease The Boss,
as well as an inability to find baseball players with supernatural
powers who can win a championship every year for the rest of eternity
(or at least the next ten years until Steinbrenner retires/dies).
Unfortunately for Cashman, The Boss lives in a bubble in Tampa Bay and
is the only one who cannot see the absolute lunacy of his demands and
does not appreciate the strategy that Cashman is attempting to execute.
If the Yankees fail to make the playoffs this year and a new GM is
brought in, all of Cashman’s efforts at developing the farm system will
go to waste, as the new guy will be forced to trade allthose prospects
away in order to stock the team with perennial all stars, so that team
can then lose to the next upstart Marlins type team.

The beauty
of baseball is that the "best" team doesn’t always win, so it is
fundamentally impossible to put together an unbeatable dream team. The
Marlins never should have beat the Yankees, neither should have the
Diamondbacks. The Cardinals shouldn’t have even made the playoffs last
year. Steinbrenner should stay true to his word and just stay the ****
out of the way. He is going to ruin the most storied franchise in
sports history, which would be bad for everyone in baseball (with the
exception of the Bo Sox). So George, I say this to you, "Sit down, shut
up, and know your role."

With our first blog in our new location, we wanted to discuss the comments made this past weekend by Chipper Jones regarding interleague rivalries.

TheAtlanta slugger’s issue is not with interleague play. He likes playing
in ballparks he has not seen before and facing teams the Braves would
not face unless they met in the World Series. His problem is with
interleague rivalry series. The current format pits certain teams
against each other every year, creating a distinct rivalry that crosses
the normal NL/AL division. For example, the Mets and Yankees, the
Angels and Dodgers, the Giants and Athletics, the Nationals and Orioles
all play 6 games against each other ever season. The Braves face the Red Sox as their interleague rival, and Jones has a problem with that.
"I don’t think there’s any question it’s not fair, but I don’t think
major league baseball is concerned with fair. If you play the top teams
in the American League and everybody else doesn’t, it’s pretty unfair,"
said Jones.

The Braves and Mets have to face the Red Sox and
Yankees, respectively. In distinct contrast, the Phillies, Nationals
and Marlins face the Blue Jays, Orioles, and Devil Rays, respectively.
The obvious argument there is that the Red Sox and Yankees are top tier
teams, while the rest of the AL East is often mediocre. Playing six
guaranteed games against such a tough opponent in a division that is
almost assuredly going to be decided by a few games could mean the
difference between winning the division and not making the playoffs.

And he is right, Major League Baseball does not care. The interest, and all that goes along with it, generated
by a NY Subway Series far outweighs the disparity of schedules.
Similarly, I could almost guarantee you that the higher ups whom reside
at Turner Field would rather play the Red Sox every year, as opposed to
playing them every few years and playing the Devil Rays or Orioles
instead. The Red Sox fill stadiums. The Phillies and Bo-Sox have played
a couple late preseason games in Philly the past couple years, which
all get sold out. And that is just preseason. The Yankees-Mets series
is nationally televised material. Nobody in Kansas City is interested
in watching the Yankees and the Marlins. Then again, nobody in Miami
cares about the Marlins anyway, but that is another discussion for
another day.

Jon:
I
agree with Major League Baseball. I have mixed feelings about
interleague play, which I will discuss below, but I believe that if
they are going to do it, then they should make it really interesting.
And I have to admit, I am intrigued by the NY rivalry. I am even
interested in the LA series and the Chi-Town series, as well as the Bay
Area series and even the Missouri series (St. Louis and Kansas City). I
love regional rivalries. There is just something really fun about
pitting fans of similar areas and backgrounds against each other.
Granted, not all of the rivalries are put together regionally. The
Phillies and Blue Jays are obviously not from the same region, unless
you count the northeast area of the North American continent a similar
sports region. However, these two teams have a history, having faced
each other in the ’93 World Series. The Braves and Red Sox would not
seem to make sense at first glance, but the Braves played in Boston
1871-1913.

Interleague rivalries put a distinct twist to these
series because the two teams are matched together for specific reasons.
Nobody would otherwise give any extra thought to the Royals and
Cardinals, as they are two very unremarkable (at least this year)
teams. But both of these teams are from Missouri and compete in what is
referred to as the I-70 Series. The Astros and Rangers battle it out in
the Lone Star Shootout. The Nationals and Orioles compete for bragging
rights in the Battle of the Beltway. Honestly, who the **** would care
about a Nationals-Orioles series without the rivalry generated by being
within an hour of each other? No one cared if the Expos and Orioles
played each other that’s for sure.

That brings us to the broader
question of should we have interleague play at all? There are many pros
and cons to the issue. It gives players and fans a chance to see teams
they would otherwise not see. It creates these great rivalries and
match ups that we just discussed. It allows players and fans to see how
the other league works and how each league is different. However, it
somewhat cheapens the World Series. The baseball championship series
used to be the ultimate battle of not just two great teams, but of the
two distinct leagues. It was a battle of different strategies. And not
that it isn’t anymore, but the World Series is no longer the first time
the two leagues compete. The World Series, and to a somewhat lesser
extent the All-Star Game, loses some of its mystique.

I have
mixed feelings about interleague play. I agree with both sides of the
arguments. The baseball purist in me has great disdain for interleague
play, but the modernist in me wants to see the game evolve and sees a
lot of potential for the game to evolve and ways to attract new fans. I
guess this leaves me neutral on the subject. Joe Paradise, however, is
not.

Joe Paradise:
I
hate interleague play. Unlike other sports, baseball is an amalgamation
of two distinct and competing leagues with two distinct histories. This
creates a World Series mystique since the two competing teams generally
have never faced each other before. This is cheapened by interleague
play. How special is the Subway Series or the Freeway Series if it
happens once per year?

The other problem with interleague play
is that it knocks the 162 game schedule down to only 144 games or so of
intraleague play. This leaves less games for intraleague, interdivision
rivalries such as New York-Oakland, a rivalry that is the result of
numerous ALDS and ALCS matchups. These intraleague rivalries are as old
as time, and, unlike geographic rivalries, are meant to play out on a
regular basis until at least one of the two teams is no longer
competitive. These are temporary rivalries born not from the atlas, but
on the field. Their duration is fleeting, so we may as well enjoy as
many games as possible during their short tenure.