Thoughts on Minnesota and the Yankees
With New York’s 3-0 sweep of Minnesota in the American League Division Series, we see yet another failed attempt of the plucky, small-market Twins to take down the Evil Empire. This marks the fourth time since 2003 that the Twins have fallen to the Yankees in the ALDS, with three of those coming in the form of a sweep. This is leading to worries (or in some cases, gloating) about the seemingly impenetrable wall the Yankees are for the Twins when it comes to the playoffs. FanHouse’s Lisa Olson’s headline says it all – the Twins “wilt in New York again.” Tom Powers of the St. Paul Pioneer Press says that the Twins “need to add attitude.” Mark Viera of the New York Times discusses how this trend defies explanation and refers to a seeming “mental block” which faces the Twins in these situations.
To be clear, when we are talking about the Twins having lost four straight division series to the Yankees, we’re talking about the 2003 Twins losing to the 2003 Yankees, the 2004 Twins losing to the 2004 Yankees, and so on. Precious little holds these teams together as the years go on. Players leave, players enter. Management changes. The only true constant is the name of the team, and even in the cases of franchises like the Expos and the old Senators, that doesn’t even hold.
Even going year to year, we see some pretty significant changes. From 2003 to 2004, the Twins added Justin Morneau and made Michael Cuddyer a starter, replacing Luis Rivas and Doug Mientkiewicz. The Yankees only common starting pitcher in the 2003 and 2004 ALDS was Mike Mussina. Even with just the turnover from one season, we can see drastically different products taking the fields. Similarly, the 2009 Twins gave multiple playoff PAs to Brendan Harris, Matt Tolbert, Orlando Cabrera and Nick Punto. Those PAs went to J.J. Hardy, Danny Valencia, Jim Thome, and Orlando Hudson this season. The Yankees got a start out of Phil Hughes and three appearances out of Kerry Wood, neither of which would have even been considered possible in the 2009 playoffs.
This gap gets even larger when we skip ahead from 2004 to 2009. Of Twins position players, only Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer played on both sides of the gap in the postseason (Morneau also missed the ’09 ALDS), and only Jesse Crain and the injured Joe Nathan cross that gap as pitchers. The Yankees have a tad more continuity, with the “Core Four” of Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera playing in at least one part of each pair of series. Still, one can hardly claim that the 2010 Yankees and the 2004 Yankees are a very similar team, as nearly every position, rotation slot, and bullpen chair is filled with a new body.
For me, that’s what makes this whole idea of there being some mystical explanation for the struggles of the Minnesota-based American League franchise against the New York-based American League franchise in the playoffs so silly. Yes, both teams have remained in the same city and still are called by the same team names. But they don’t have the same players, neither of them plays in the same park, and the Twins don’t even wear the same uniforms anymore. The Twins still have Ron Gardenhire but have seen the keys to the front office pass from Terry Ryan to Bill Smith; the Yankees have gone from Joe Torre to Joe Girardi and have seen the team pass from George Steinbrenner to Hank and Hal. The Twins are no longer a small-market team, and the Yankees payroll now is merely roughly twice that of the Twins, whereas New York was paying three to four times as much for its on field product seven years ago.
Maybe there is a case, particularly given the type of attitude that surrounds the Twins, that change at the manager position is needed. Will McDonald of Royals Review presents this case, mainly behind the argument that Gardenhire is now the face behind the Twins postseason failure. He is one of the few constants across these series.
However, similarly to McDonald, I don’t think that Gardenhire is really the issue or even necessarily an issue for Minnesota. There are two other constants here besides Gardenhire. Firstly – and we experience this nearly every day during the playoffs – anything can happen in any individual game or any individual series. Secondly, the Yankees have just been a better team each time. I had myself convinced that maybe, just maybe, the Twins were nearly equal in talent this year, but there’s a reason that the Yankees finished with seven more third order wins than the Twins this year, and that was before the Yankees managed to jettison Javier Vazquez and A.J. Burnett from their rotation.
This whole question of why the Twins just can’t beat the Yankees just doesn’t seem to be something worth our time. We’re talking about four different teams who have lost to four different superior teams over the course of seven years. To me, at least, that doesn’t even seem like something that special. However, because we’re talking about a “small-market darling” against the franchise with the most resources, we seem to be finding ourselves asking for some sort of overarching, metaphysical reason. The real answer, I suspect, is nowhere near that complicated.
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1) Psychological reasons are not “metaphysical.”
2) It’s a little disingenuous to compare 2004 teams to 2010 teams, rather than, say, 2008 ones to 2010 ones.
I didn’t know that the Yankees were in the ’08 postseason…
There is another constant here that you didn’t comment on, and I’m surprised that it didn’t make its way into this piece. That is the philosophy of the front office in how it builds and acquires talent. And that very much comes into question with the Twin’s philosophy of finding pitchers who don’t walk players and pitch to contact. This is a definite organizational philosophy that they have followed.
And this is what myself and many others believe to be a big weakness with this club. That their pitchers aren’t capable of missing enough bats to hang with the big bad Yankees. Teams have beaten the Yankees in the playoffs, but they had power arms, whether that be the Schilling/Pedro Sox, or the Schilling/Johnson Diamondbacks or the Beckett and company Marlins.
Liriano is a fine pitcher, and has good K numbers, but the rest of the team is a bunch of guys that the Yankees feast over. If the Twins want to compete with the beasts of the East, they need pitchers capable of beating those teams. Which means they need to develop power arms, or if not get some soft tossers who can still rack up the K’s. The softies can beat the Royals and Indians of the world, but making the playoffs isn’t enough when your team just isn’t built pitching wise to take on loaded lineups like a healthy Boston or NY.
this was my initial reaction to dave cameron’s (i think) insistence that MIN was the best team in the league. curious as to what the numbers say re: the performance of their SP’s against the better offenses in the league.
Lot of pluses here for a not-so-well thought out thesis…
Following on the same level of analysis as your comment: If the Twinkies pitch to contact and have extremely low walk rates, wouldn’t the Yankees, with a 10.4% walk rate (2nd in the bigs), be a good match up for them, essentially nullifying much of their wOBA? And the Rays too?
The question you are driving at, but not exploring, is: Is the mantra “pitch to contact” more effective or less effective against different types of offensive teams? And by different types I mean, strong AVG/weak ISO (think KC), strong ISO/weak AVG (think Jays), average wOBA/weak K% (think Dbacks), weak AVG/strong OBA (think Rays) etc, etc. The Yanks, qualitatively, would be a strong/strong/strong/strong/strong… and maybe pitching to contact does struggle with that. But how do you know it struggles more than a high K/high BB strategy, which would inevitably, obviously, end up with many more runners on base against a patient team like the yanks.
I’m not sure of the answer, but I am sure that Twins losing to the Yankees 4 times a row has extremely little to do with it.
How is this still getting thumbed up? Locke said it right.
Because the discussion somehow got sidetracked by the payroll disparity between the two ballclubs.
And before I get ransacked… let it be known that I am not arguing anything one way or the other. —Just pointing out some shortcomings in the article that are indicative of a generally non-objective approach to the issues at hand.
I don’t place much stock in the “intangibles” argument – however, if the players themselves were to believe it, wouldn’t that make it real?
Only if it led to some form of defeatism, and I sincerely doubt a team would give up trying.
After giving up the lead in Game 1, that team very much was beaten. Not that they didn’t keep trying, but if we could have one of those win probability charts for team confidence, it would have skyrocketed for the Twins after going up 3-0, dropped significantly after falling behind 4-3, ramped back up upon tying it at 4-4, then falling through the floor after Teixiera’s HR.
In Game 2, the 1-0 lead didn’t allow for the same confidence because of the previous day’s events under similar conditions. When they gave up the lead, confidence was even lower because of the events of the day before.
By Game 3, the Twins confidence scale wouldn’t have started at 50/50 (maybe we win, maybe we lose), it would have started somewhere lower than that, and dropping with every inning.
I love the stats based stuff, I really do. But if there is a flaw with pure stats is that it removes the human condition that affects those stats. The Twins were saying all the right things and doing all the right things…but after that 3-0 lead in Game 1dissolved, a “confidence factor” needed to be applied to all of their statistics unless and until something happened to positively affect their confidence (and nothing did).
I posted “Ron Gardenhire’s Minnesota Twins” on the Forum – I’d very much like the opinions of this group, if you’d indulge me.
scottz
It’s not just the postseason, the Yanks have owned the Twins in the regular season for the last few years as well.
I think a big part of it is the Twins’ pitching “philosophy” – they don’t have 96 mph+ power pitchers who get 12 SO/9, they have control guys who throw a lot of strikes, don’t walk anybody, and average around 91/92 mph. The Brad Radkes and Scott Bakers of the world. I think that plays right into the Yankees’ game. Who is the only Twins pitcher over the last 8 years who had any success against the Yankees? – Johan Santana, who was a power arm and rock solid under pressure. The Twins need some strikeout pitchers who aren’t going to hang a breaking ball over the middle of the plate for Mark Teixiera to hit to Brooklyn.
Either that or field a good defensive team that can back those pitchers up. The Twins have been decidedly pedestrian at a skillset that everyone seemingly assumes they are awesome at.
The power of the Yankees offense comes as much or more from their walks as their power. Seems of all teams the Twins would be the best choice at negating that yankee walk advantage. So this arugment holds little strength with me.
delv – I totally see where you’re coming from. This is a subjective piece and I’m sure I missed more than a few things here.
I should also mention that when it comes to the intangibles argument, I have to go back to the sheer number of different players on this year’s teams compared to ’03 and ’04. Sure, Gardenhire’s still there, and maybe it’s his fault, but I find it hard to believe that all 40 or 50 or however many different players have come through this organization have the same problems with these intangibles.
I think the Twins front office sets its goal each year to compete to win the Central. And there in lies the problem.
It’s one thing to build a team designed to compete with the Royals, Indians, White Sox, and Tigers. It’s quite another to build a team designed to compete with the Red Sox and Rays, not to mention the Orioles and Blue Jays, who both would have been competitive in the Central or West.
The Yankees are just a much better team as far as I can tell.
I couldn’t understand how Dave Cameron actually believed the Twins were a better team than the Yankees before this series.
Look at the position players. The only two position players one can rationally choose from the Twins over the Yankees are Mauer and Thome (at DH). The rest are each inferior to their Yankee counterpart. If Morneau weren’t hurt it would be a different story, but he is. And either way, Posada and Teix are no slouches.
As for pitching, yes, the Twins have a better top 5 perhaps, but top 3? It’s fairly close.
Bullpen, I’ll take any bullpen anchored by Mo.
The Twins just don’t have any power arms… except for the best power arm in the AL. Great argument.
And an entire bullpen full of soft tossers.
How about you geniuses recognize the fact that the reason we’re in this situation is that the Yankees are once again buying a pennant and perhaps buying a championship title. This is, after all, what buying a championship looks like and it’s ugly. THe “competitive balance” is so skewed in pro baseball it’s not even close to being balanced. It makes the sport virtually unwatchable. And yet we still watch.
No one is making you watch.
I had a feeling at least ONE of you would show up and respond. Surely you understand that most of the world hates your team. Surely you understand and accept this.
Surely you understand that every team “buys” their level of success. Surely you realize that all the Yankees’ spending guarantees them is a seat at the postseason table (as most of the decade showed). Surely you realize that the Twins’ owners are worth billions of dollars, and could easily afford to run their team at a loss without even noticing it. Surely you realize that you’re acting like a whiny little bitch.
O-Cab: It’s precisely the act of buying their way into the final eight almost every year that’s so reprehensible. Comprende?
quit crying..every team has money, it just depends if they want to spend it or not. You know what keep keep letting the yanks “buy their way into the play offs” maybe it’ll teach teams like the marlins to actually spend money on players and building a team instead of being cheap and BS to their fans about their financial needs.
DT, you’re a fucking moron.
It has been that way in every sport. There are teams that compete, there are teams that don’t. The Yankees have had unparalleled success in MLB since the 20’s. That isn’t going to change.
Deal with it.
I will not deal with it, instead I’ll just ask you to go fuck yourself. Thanks.
What aggravates people is that the Yankees success, both historical and today, is largely due to a their financial advantages. Yes, the Twins ownership could spend like the Yankees, but his losses would be far greater and one can understand his desire to not lose a ton of money. I prefer for people and teams to be successful because they are intelligent and hard working and not due to a huge financial advantage. It doesn’t seem fair. In an open market, there would be two or three more teams in New York and their financial advantage would be neutralized. Since this is not the case, for the good of the league, MLB needs to do something to reduce this advantage. People don’t like leagues when they perceive them as unfair.
Cashman does alot of smart things, but most teams would be unable to absorb mistakes like Burnett and Vazquez and the lack of progress from Chamberlain.
The league cannot do anything to stop the Yankees. The Yankees are just as hard working and intelligent as the rest of the league. An organization doesn’t have the run the Yankees have had from 1993 (their first year of contention) to 2007 (the last year they made the playoffs) without having some sort of baseball intelligence. There is much more to it than throwing money around.
There used to be 3 teams in NYC, the Yankees were dominant then. The Dodgers were dominant as well, when they got their act together. The Giants, not so much, though it would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened had they stayed in NY, with Marichal, Cepeda, McCovey etc coming through the system.
Even with the NL all to themselves in NYC, the Mets haven’t approached the success the Dodgers have had.
As much as I didn’t like Steinbrenner, I have to give him credit for investing and reinvesting money into the team. Things like the Addidas contract, the MSG contract, the creation of the YES Network and a few other things that I cannot think of at the moment played a big part in making the Yankees the financial juggernaut they are today. A juggernaut that isn’t going to go away anytime soon.
Teams needed a draft to compete with the Yankees. They got it.
Teams needed new stadiums to compete with the Yankees. They got them.
Teams needed revenue sharing to compete with the Yankees. They got it.
What next?
:”””””'(
Greg make lack any eloquence but he is not totally wrong. Having a profit off $700 million dollars after building the largest and most expensive roster in baseball does give the yankees a huge advanatage over the Marlins, Pirates, Royals, Twins etc. If you took steinbrenner and the entire Yankee team right now as well as Yankee stadium and ripped it up and moved it to Miami. In 5 years it would likely be a team doing no better than Florida in the standings. Nonetheless, everyone on this site knows it takes far more than money to win consistantly. The Tampa Bay Rays are proving strongly that a franchise can win on a smallish budget in a smallish city. The Twins do it as well most of the time. But, money does matter. The Yankees kind of money really does matter allot, it is just not only major factor.
can someone seriously explain to me the love affair with the twins in popular culture these days? like, i like mauer and carl ‘the stache’ pavano as much as anyone, though i dont know about falling so madly in love with liriano like fangraphs has, but i legitimately dont understand it. unless everyone’s just from minneapolis…?
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. LOL. Replace Twins with Yankees in that statement and you’re on to something. Otherwise, no.
Interesting that in one sentence you claim that most of the world hates the Yankees, then in the next you seem to think that there’s a pop-culture love affair with them. Well, does the popular crowd love or hate the Yankees? Or are you just talking out of your ass?
ok, you’re an idiot, and not contributing anything constructive to any conversation, while blind yankee haters are also something i don’t understand, its got nothing to do with my comment
greg’s the idiot i’m referencing, not kevin
I knew I’d hook some whiny Yankee crybaby bitches.
Yes, most people hate you. There are enough of your stinking, obese, obnoxious bandwagon “fans” to go around, though, so that the number who hate you are only outnumbering the ones that like you by about 4 to 1. Wrap your little beans around that and get back to me.
Greg, you’re not hooking Yankee fans, you’re getting a completely justified beatdown from objective baseball fans who could care less about your small market inferiority complex. Wrong venue. Quit trolling.
Blackout, I didn’t know I couldn’t speak my mind here. Why don’t you go fuck yourself promptly. I’ll say whatever I want wherever I want and if you don’t like it you don’t have to read it. Next.
The tribesmen of Goliath could not understand why everyone got such a rise out of David either.
Gothum = Goliath
We only love them because they are always the team to face the Yanks in the ALDS so everyone in America outside of NY is rooting for them to win.
This is correct. However, they’re also always the team that’s losing to the Yanks in the ALDS, so we’re starting to hate them.
The heartbreaking thing for the Twins fans this year wasn’t so much losing to the Yankees, but getting completely dominated. The 2010 Twins in the regular season were a much more well-rounded, solid team than the 03-09 versions.
I didn’t think this year’s Twins were better than this year’s Yankees, but the talent gap was much smaller than in the past. It was entirely reasonable to believe the Twins had a good chance of beating an only-slighter-better team at home in a short series.
I believe the Twins lost because of a team-wide slump at the worst possible time. The reasons for that slump are open to debate, but “the Yankees are way, way better” is not a valid excuse this year.
maybe it seems silly, but seemed to me the twins played well, both around and in anticipation of morneau’s possible return and had a terrible feeling at the outset, precisely the time it was announced morneau would not be back… felt like the wind came out of the sails… be nice also to see some of the young pitchers who are a lot more capable and/or came off injury (Baker/Slowey)… when their season builds rather than is a fight back to their normal very goods.
I agree Morneau was a blow a small market team does not have the resources to recover from.
Really, as was said before, the reasoning is simple: The Yankees are simply the better team, and have been in all the previous series to this point. The noteworthy thing about this season is that many bought into the “Twins are a better team” premise this time around.
I agree with the statement that the Yankees were the better team in each series that they’ve played against the Twins, but the great thing about post-season baseball is that the better team doesn’t always win and games aren’t played on paper. If they were you could usually hand the trophy to the Yankees, because looking through the past decade, even when they’ve lost, you could argue that they were still the better team. If Minnesota had won this series does that automatically make them the better team? I don’t think so, in a short series anything can happen and the best team doesn’t always win.
As a Twins fan it was easy to buy into the ‘Twins are the better team’ argument, even if some of the reasons had nothing to do with the on-field product, new stadium, home field advantage and so forth. What good would it be to be a fan who doesn’t believe in your team? To look at a season or series so objectively that you ultimately can’t see your team winning would be depressing and erase any reason to even watch. Ironically it ends up being even more depressing when you finally do lose.
I try not to buy into the financial resources argument surrounding the Yankees; Tampa Bay, Minnesota, San Diego, many teams suggest that putting together a winning and successful team can be done even with a small market / payroll. What it does allow is poor contract decisions to go largely unnoticed and not sink the team. They aren’t forced into being as careful with their spending as other teams because they have the luxury of surplus payroll. Oddly analogous to CC / Felix Cy Young argument. Felix had no room for error in any of his starts, one or two runs and he was going to lose. CC could give up 3 or 4 runs in 9 innings and usually come out with a win. I guess a team like the Yankees has the financial resources to provide a reasonable room for error, however it does not buy a championship or guarantee wins by any means.
The ‘power arms’ argument seems pretty vacuous to me, as if the Yankees are unbeatable unless Verlander or Felix are on the bump. It’s a short series; a small sample size. It’s baseball.
Agreed, but aren’t the Twins’ chances of advancing better with the Phillies’ top three pitchers?
I feel like the Twins and Yankees general roster structures were the same the past few years, and that is one reason why the Twins don’t seem to match up well vs them. Minnesota usually has good depth across the board, which will help them get through the regular season, but they don’t have enough stars on the team to really stand out and make a difference when the playoffs come around. Morenau would have been a huge addition to the lineup, but their rotation still isn’t strong enough to go deep in the playoffs. I’m sure I will get blasted for this, but Liriano isn’t a true ace yet. While he pitched very good during the season, he’s not the kind of guy who you can rely on for 8 strong innings like a true ace, but this is the first season where he’s reached the potential that he shown when he first came into the league. Guys like Baker, Slowey, Pavano, and Blackburn aren’t top of the rotation guys, and would typically struggle against a loaded lineup like the Yanks.
I hate to use the term “true ace” and try to define it, but I think it’s reserved for guys who always put in their 200+ innings, get a decent amount of strikeouts, go deep into games, and have low enough ERA’s. Philly is lucky enough to have three of them, St Louis has two, and I don’t know any other teams who has more than one.
Then again, overanalyzing the playoffs is often a lost cause. Different teams seem to win with varying strategies and structures. Anything can happen in one series.
liriano fails a legitimate ace because of his stamina. yeah, he can go out and dominate for 6 innings, but… games are 9 innings. cc and felix, on the other hand, you can trust to go deep every time (that’s what she said), and that’s what makes them better.
how about the Giants for two aces?
San Fran.
That Yankees’ offense is just a juggernaut to grind through when everyone is playing and healthy. All of the NY players are used to the pressure and media attention that the playoffs bring, unlike a small market team like the Twins who go unnoticed for most of the year outside of Minnesota.
Funny how some consider the Yankees to be a team that buys a pennant. Jim Thome, home run leader of the twins and Pavano were purchased this year, weren’t they? Add in the factor that Cano, Hughes, Chamberlain, Nova, Gardner, Pettite, Jeter, Rivera and Posada are all from the farm system and the “buying a pennant,” comment truly doesn’t fly. It’s merely bitterness at work.
You realize the Yankees are *paying* for those guys, right? Do you know that when you add up just the salaries of the 8 guys you mentioned there, it amounts to more than $75M? I think it’s more than just bitterness.
The “homegrown yankees” argument is disingenuous at best and really fairly dishonest.
The yankees use their capital not only to make marquee purchases on the free agent market (sabathia, teixeria, A-rod, burnett, petitte) but also to extend their own players at a rate that other teams can’t compete with.
The reason that jeter, posada and rivera are still yankees isn’t about anything other than they are going to be best compensated by the yankees, that’s it, sorry it’s a business and not so much about being true yankees.
Frankly, the team that would probably be the best under the yankees philosophy would be the team that steinbrenner didn’t buy: I think the “homegrown indians” would probably be a pretty good team right now if they still had Sabathia, Lee, Martinez, Thome, Ramirez.
But yeah…good work on the “homegrown yankees” i’m sure it took a lot of work.
The Yankees have signed their players at market rates, markets that other teams have set.
I find it amusing that other teams will sign players to these contracts, then wind up dumping them on the Yankees because they don’t want to pay these salaries for whatever reason.
uhhh, what was the market rate for A.J. Burnett, exactly? The guy never had anything better than decent stuff and numbers. Kei Igawa? Matsui? Posada? And what other team would’ve given A-Rod those years?
Burnett opted out of a 5 years/$55M, after a season where he went 18-10, 4.07. With the Braves, Yankees, Jays, etc bidding for his services, it was unlikely that he was going to take a pay cut from the $13M+ (according to baseball reference) that he made in 2008.
Igawa was signed to a $46M (5/$20M of which went towards the luxury tax) deal. Derek Lowe, Jose Contreras, Randy Johnson, Vicente Padilla, Kelvim Escobar, all made as much as Igawa did in 2007.
Matsui signed 2 contracts with the Yankees, 3/$21M and 4/$52M. Salaries comparable to Pat Burrell, Magglio Ordonez, Johnny Damon.
Posada 4/$52 was right in line with Ivan Rodriguez’s and Jason Kendall’s contract ($13M when Posada became a FA).
No other team would have given Rodriguez that deal. Of course, no one else saw the Rangers signing Rodriguez to the contract that he opted out of.
While the yankees have extended some of their homegrown players to market level deals. (market level in the sense that rivera is the best paid closer, jeter is the best paid shortstop, posada was the best paid catcher…now #2, cano’s “team friendly” contract only makes him the 3rd best paid second baseman) you’re forgetting that the yankees didn’t have to choose which player they wanted to spend that money on.
Sure, mauer got his money from the twins, but that was after letting hunter walk and getting a substandard deal for santana because they couldn’t extend him.
These extensions are in addition to free agent purchases that include the best paid third baseman, the best paid starting pitcher, the most lucrative contract ever given to a first baseman, the best paid 5th starter and it’s the collective sense from both the fans and the front office that the rules don’t apply to them….exactly because the rules don’t apply to them.
The yankees have picked up a few veterans off teams looking for salary relief this year in the form of berkman and wood, we can talk about the rationale, but those were non contending teams (astros and indians) that even if the players were playing well, it would make plenty of sense to deal them for future assets.
Sure other people were bidding for the services of burnett, igawa, posada and matsui. They’re (generally, with igawa excepted) very good players…it’s why they played for the yankees. But while other teams were making one or two competitive offers to this group of players…the yankees were making the most competitive (apparently) offers to all of them.
the yankees competitive reserve is such that it doesn’t matter if pavano ever pitches, if igawa is wildly overhyped, if burnett turns out to be a glorified flamethrower, if you have to pay A-rod til he’s ancient and if posada is a butcher behind the plate.
I’m not trying to say that the yankees “bought” a playoff spot, if that were the case the mets, cubs and red sox would be enjoying this time of year much much more. The yankees are a well constructed and talented team, but it’s not an accident and it’s not a result of a fantastic farm system. It’s the result of an overwhelming market advantage and an economic system that the MLB has shown no inclination to adjust. I just would like to see yankees fans acknowledge why they are successful.
(also any argument that includes “team owners who have lots of money should be willing to spend at all costs for a winner” is automatically asinine…they yankees aren’t running a charity either…as far as I can tell there’s maybe 2-3 owners in sports (cuban) who legitimately spend without regard to profit…and the yankees do just fine as far as profits…and the twins too.)
If you want to say that the Yankees built their enterprise and deserve to have the luxury of using their revenue advantage to its fullest, I respect that position (as long as you wouldn’t oppose additional teams being added to the NY market) but it’s ridiculous to try to minimize how massive their financial advantage is. Their payroll is about two superstars higher than the second highest in baseball, and the Phillies are the only other postseason team that has a payroll closer to the Yankees than to the last place Pirates.
Spending doesn’t guarantee success (see: Mets, Cubs), but there’s no organizational advantage more significant than the ability to consistently spend a lot more money than the competition. You can debate whether there’s a fundamental problem with the Yankees having that advantage, but it’s absurd to pretend that it’s not a massive advantage.
Adding a 3rd team to the NYC market will not hurt the Yankees.
Even with the NL all to themselves in NYC, the Mets haven’t approached the on field success the Dodgers have had.
As much as I didn’t like Steinbrenner, I have to give him credit for investing and reinvesting money into the team. Things like the Addidas contract, the MSG contract, the creation of the YES Network and a few other things that I cannot think of at the moment played a big part in making the Yankees the financial juggernaut they are today. A juggernaut that isn’t going to go away anytime soon.
“The yankees have picked up a few veterans off teams looking for salary relief this year in the form of berkman and wood, we can talk about the rationale, but those were non contending teams (astros and indians) that even if the players were playing well, it would make plenty of sense to deal them for future assets.”
Off the top of my head, these are the salary driven trades other teams have made with the Yanks;
Rickey Henderson (OAK)
Xavier Hernandez (HOU)
Terry Mulholland (PHI)
Roger Clemens (TOR)
Jeff Weaver (DET)
Alex Rodriguez (TEX)
Kevin Brown (LAD)
Raul Mondesi (TOR)
Tino Martinez/Jeff Nelson (SEA)
John Wetteland (MON)
Cecil Fielder (DET)
Damaso Marte/Xavier Nady (PIT)
Chuck Knoblauch (MIN)
David Cone (TOR)
Bobby Abreu (PHI)
This has been going on for quite some time.
It takes some special brand of thinking to liken someone signing Thome for about a million bucks to anything the Yankees have done. I missed the time when the Twins signed CC, Burnett, and Tex all in the same off season.
The Yankees have developed some quality players, no doubt about it, but to suggest that they haven’t used their considerable resources to obtain high priced free agents and retain those great players (as a Giants fan I can’t imagine how they’ll keep Lincecum, Cain, Posey, Sanchez, and Bumgardner – but if all five were on the Yankees there wouldn’t be a doubt they could all be signed) is hilarious.
Again, I’ll reference the Giants. They signed Zito to a huge contract. It backfired and is an albatross at the moment. The Yankees signed Burnett (not to as big a contract but to a good sized one). He’s been a bust this year. Does that stop the Yankees from likely making a good run at Cliff Lee? Of course not.
The Yankees do a number of things right, and maybe them spending $200MM a year is ultimately good for baseball, but to think that all the extra money doesn’t help them compete is flat stupid. After all, if it didn’t help, why would the Yanks spend all that money?
You infer a good point — the Yanks can sign a dude to a $72 billion + his own private island / 14 year deal and even if he ends up spending 13 years on the DL with a strained left testicle, they’re the only team in baseball than can afford to bench him and still compete by filling the gap with literally whatever they want. Other teams don’t have that luxury. Not the Angels, not the BoSox and certainly nothing within pissing distance of the Midwest franchises.
To suggest that there’s no inherent advantage to such a position is pretty stupid.
wow. This discussion is one of the least intelligent and whiny discussions I’ve ever seen on fangraphs. I feel like I’m reading ESPN.com comments. I guess that’s what happens when you start to comment based on the emotion of your team losing, instead of using facts or common sense. Twins fans in general are seemingly a very competent bunch but the brand of stupidity a few of you are spewing on here is just astonishing.
you know that the reason the twins lost was because of the money in the pockets of the yankees hitters allowing to to get timely hits with RISP and the same money is making the pitching staff pitch well. The fact is the lack of money in mauer and thome’s pockets during this series hampered their hitting.
Since you have so much facts and common sense at your disposal I suspect you’re probably pretty fugly and dweebish…. Jonathan.
Fuck you bitch.
why are you so butthurt about this?
it must stem from knowing that the twins owners can afford to run out a much bigger payroll and refuse, and then see failure, while the yankees run it out and see success.
stay away from baseball next season, lest your jealousy continue to rear its ugly head
Nobody could watch the last couple series and come to any possible conclusion than this: MLB (and or TV) wanted the Yankees to win, and so they did. The close, crucial calls all go their way. To the point that a double that falls 1 foot inside the foul line (Mauer in 2009) in the middle of a crucial rally, with a left field umpire standing 15 feet away, is called a foul ball. To the point that with the Yankees tied in the late innings, Berkman is allowed to stand their and spit on strike three, because he knows he won’t be called out unless/until he’s in a situation that no longer matters.
For someone to deny this is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt you’re either working for MLB, a Yankee fan, Hunter Wendelstedt, or an idiot of the highest order.
LOL. Ok then.
I love Yankee fans like Ryan who are probably 15 years old and have “been fans” since about, oh, 2009. A diehard Yankee fan for sure. LOL. At least he gets angry about what he perceives as unflattering comments toward the Yankees. At least he cares, even though he doesn’t understand quite what’s going on. Keep it up Ryan, you’re entertaining.
So we’re back to this old chestnut…
he says things like a troll, but he’s not actually a troll. huh.
Statistics have supported this theory in the past. I apologize for not having them at hand. But, I have read in years past that the yankees get far more calls called there way in Yankee stadium than other teams do. All home teams have aslight advantage in calls, but the Yankees had by far the biggest call advantage and they were even up in the road which implies they have an advantage there as well. If I am remembering corrctly, there was no difference between regular season and playoffs though.
wut? i thought twins were bestest team?
Have the comments sections always been this unpleasant? Not even the obvious stuff in this thread, but in general?
No, not always. Unfortunately the greater Fangraphs exposure to the mainstream media becomes, the more blowhard tools make their way around.
What I wouldn’t give for moderated comment sections, as well as an end to anonymous commenting.
This is a joke, right? He was referring mostly to you and Greg. And the “anonymous commenting” comment was meant in irony, right “Not David?”
Seriously. I think Not David might not be the same person as NotDave. Not sure. But if it’s the same, you know it’s gotten really bad when NotDave is complaining!
But that’s just what happens when the Yankees winning a playoff series comes up. No matter how many times it happens, we have to rehash the same tired stories.
Look, we all know the Yankees have money. You’re not telling us anything new Greg or NotDave. I’m not saying you’re lying or it’s irrelevant. I’m just saying we all haven’t lived under a rock for the past century.
Sack up and get over it already. Accept that that’s the way it is. Your team has accepted it and is trying to work within the system to compete. Unless your team happens to be the Royals, who seem to believe that they make more money complaining than actually working to improve.
“Get over it.” That’s funny. I bet that’s what your boss tells you to do when you feel angry about having to mop up spilled soda at your workplace. “Get over it.” In that case, you really do have to get over it and clean up the soda. In baseball, fed up fans can just quit being fans. And many have in the post-strike, no-competition era. Get over it noseeum and clean up that soda at the McDonalds you no doubt work at.
Perfect, Greg. How about you quit being a baseball fan right now?
Step one would be to close your browser and never come back to Fangraphs. Thank you!
Not David NotDave
And no, the anonymous commenting comment wasn’t meant in irony, for some reason I have issues staying logged in on FG.
There should have been a set of less than and greater than symbols between the names in that comment.
Not David and NotDave certainly are not one in the same.
Kiss the ring, bitch
If someone had told me that the Yankees starting rotation would suddenly be just fine as soon as the playoffs started, then I’d never have thought the Twins had much of a chance. It’s almost like the Yankees tricked everyone into thinking their starters after Sabathia were all shaky.
You should’ve been able to surmise the Yankee rotation would be just fine when you saw the umpire rotation assigned to the series.
I know I was.
Yankees in the post season is good for baseball. Although many of us here would appreciate a Twins/Padres World Series, I’m thinking the average baseball fan with no skin in the game would not be all that interested. And whether the Yankees are loved or hated, both are good for ratings.
One of the major problems with the game today is lukewarm fans like you who think the Yankees being in the WS is good for the game. Then explain why Selig introduced revenue sharing and the luxury tax. Because the Yankees dominating across the board was good for the game? You are a dupe and that’s sad.
if any team had had the level of talent the yankees did over their period of dominance, which you could extend really all the way fro 93 to 07, they would have been just as dominant, it just so happens that it was the yankees who did
Jesus. Nothing much to say to comments like this. Totally ignorant of reality.
Not worth our time to figure out? Figuring out something this complicated, that the Twins’ FO needs to fix, that’s a true challenge. I don’t agree with your conclusion.
The comments here are brutal. What happened?
As for not being a factor, and comparing signing Thome for $1.5MM to what the Yankees have done the last few years is pretty comical. It is possible that an individual player and his salary is market rate, but it is not possible that the portfolio is market rate. Is money the only reason? Of course not. But, to ignore the advantage is odd.
How about the fact that much of the Twins’ regular season success is built around their depth of quality rather than top-end talent? Dave C. talked about this as the reason he thought they were the best team in MLB. But in a 5 game series you don’t win with depth, you win with stars. Especially once Morneau was out, the Twins top-end talent simply couldn’t match the Yankees.
Similar story for the Reds.
One cannot discount the absence of Morneau. The guy is a beast.
No mention of divisions? The Twins may have 94 wins but if the Yankees played in the Central they’d probably have 120.
Its because of the difference in divisional strength. Minnesota could have played the Yankees, the Rays, or even non-playoff teams like the Red Sox or even the Blue Jays and likely would have been bounced.
The AL East is just a beast of a division, and I can see a long run of AL Championships coming from within it.
I am probably a villan on this site for saying this and surely I am in an extreme minority, but I wont watch any post season game that includes the Yankees. They are the most boring team in the history of the game. I would tivo watch and rewatch a twins/padres series and i am not a twins or padres fan. I prefer low scoring games with breathtaking defense, few strikeouts and walks, clever baserunning, and strategy to games of strike out, strike out ,walk, home run. I would rather watch Tony Gwynn jr or Will Venable make a diving catch in the outfield than watch AROD hit a three run homer anyday.
I did not watch any part of the Phillies yankees series after watching well over a hundred baseball games that summer. I just did not care. And I wont care this season when its Phillies vs Yankees again. .
I might watch the giants though.
So you don’t like a lot of strikeouts but yet you prefer to watch teams like the Giants and Padres who lead the league in striking out batters. Also the Padres batters strikeout more than the boring teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies. The Giants actually walk more batters than the Yankees. You can’t say you hate strikeouts and then mention preferring teams that lead in strikeouts. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Also teams like the Red Sox, Yankees and Phillies walk a lot because of a thing called good plate discipline, I guess you’re against quality at bats.
If you want to watch breathtaking defense, you might want to watch Brett Gardner.
The Yanks’ outfield is one of the best outfield defenses in baseball:
-Gardner is number one in UZR/150 out of all major league left fielders, and he comes astonishingly close to doubling up the second best, Carl Crawford. That may be a SSS for true skill, but it’s enough to tell me he’s a stud out there.
-Granderson is number 5 in CF. Not too shabby.
-Swish is pretty much an average RF, maybe slightly below, but the other two more than make up for it.
Please, kiss a little more Brett Gardner ass. It must be very easy to take a walk when you’re 5 foot 4 like Gardner is. I hope that guy takes some spikes to the nads. Irritating little gnat
build a time machine and go back about 100 years, that’s not the way baseball is any more
The difference in talent level is more significant that the seasonlong statistics against different opponents/divisions allow.
Take the Twins and Yankess and compare them against common opponents in appropriate amounts.
The Twins don’t measure up, nor would anyone other than certain FG authors expect them to. We, as a website & forum, should know better. Strength of opponent is huge.
This site intentionally looked for reasons of how the metric-friendly Twins and Reds could compete with the old-school overspending NYY and PHL, and came up with some goofy reasons that to mining for data.
The rest of the world, however, even in our ignorance, knew that neither series would be competitive.
I personally love watching the Twins lose. The greater point is this: unless there is a salary cap this is simply unavoidable. The Yankees will continue to outspend everyone because they more resources and thus will consistently be in the playoffs. However, they’ve won 1 WS in the last 10 years so for all their spending do they really have that much to show for it? The Rays have set the blueprint: you outscout, outdevelop the high revenue teams (Yankees, Red Sox) and you will put yourself in a position to be competitive. The Yankees will always have the ability to overcome a costly free agent mistake (i.e. Pavano, Burnett) because they have the resources. Teams like the Rays, Reds, Rangers who have drafted well and developed home-grown talent and gotten them to the big leagues have the formula it is simply a matter of that talent fully developing and performing at the big league level.
Accumulating great young talent through the draft by being a crappy team for a long time is not the best formula for success.
The best example of team that has remain consistently competitive despite low revenue are the Marlins. Their owner is a lying and devious scumbag but the man knows how to run a franchise.
people make posts on here pretending that if they had the resources the yankees did, they wouldnt use them like they do, which is complete and utter horseshit. every single team, including, and probably especially the twins, wishes they could be like the yankees, and every fan does too, even if they wont admit it, because as a rockies fan for my whole life, as fun as it is to watch baseball in general, it’s even more fun to win, too.
“The only true constant is the name of the team …”
2010 – $85m vs $206m
2009 – $46m vs $195m
2004 – $46m vs $147m
2003 – $35m vs $121m
Yup. I don’t see any sort of pattern there. Anyone able to help a brother out and make sense of those numbers? They just seem so random.
I’ll help make sense of those numbers:
2010 – $85m (not enough) vs $206m (who knows?)
2009 – $46m (not enough) vs $195m (just right)
2004 – $46m (not enough) vs $147m (not enough)
2003 – $35m (not enough) vs $121m (not enough)
Without look at the numbers, I think a lot of the Twins’ issues with the Yankees have to deal with matchup-issues with the Yankees. The Metrodome, Yankee Stadium, and New Yankee Stadium all favor left-handed power hitters; thus both clubs feature lots of left-handed hitters. Examples for Minnesota include Jones, Mientkiewicz, Koskie, Pierzynski, Mauer, Span, Morneau, Kubel, and Thome.
The Yankees also have historically looked for left-handed pitchers to neutralize opposing hitters in their home park; guys like Pettitte and Sabathia fit that mold perfectly. The Twins’ performance against lefty starting pitchers has usually been pretty bad relative to their performance against righties this decade for this reason because they typically have a couple of lefty hitters in their lineup who struggle against left-handed pitching, and they don’t have good platoon partners for them on the bench. Jacque Jones, Jason Kubel, and Jim Thome are all great examples.
If the Twins played the Red Sox every year in the playoffs, they’d probably have had much different results despite the similar payroll differences between the clubs. It’s about the personnel. Sure, the payroll plays a difference and allows the Yankees to do things like platoon Berkman and Thames at DH, but I think the major factor is New York’s left-handed starting pitching.
The sad point is that the Pohlads are the richest owners in MLB as was reported at his death
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/54/75UU.html
Owner of pro baseball’s Minnesota Twins happy to watch team win on his 90th birthday but annoyed not to be watching it in new stadium. Still continues to lobby Minnesota pols for new venue. Got $1 billion selling the bank he bought in 1955 to Wells Fargo in 2001. Children now run family businesses day-to-day, including regional airline, Pepsi bottling plant, high-end asset management. Bought Twins in 1984, famous for overachieving in small market
Net Worth: $2.8 billion
78th richest man in the US
steinbrenner wasnt even on the list
Admittedly, the Yankees continually strive to sign the very best free agents year after year. The Yankee haters then of course come out in droves to criticize the Yankees for “buying” another pennant. I find that amusing. If these anti – Yankee people had the Steinbrenner family as owners of THEIR team, you can be sure those fans wouldn’t be at all critical of the idea of “purchasing a pennant.”
Is that really your reasoning? Really? Because you think others would find it OK, then it must be OK. Right? Come on, you can do better than that… maybe.
You Yankee fans need to just accept the reality that’s staring you in the face. Your team uses an unfair advantage and it ruins baseball.
The Yankees symbolize capitalism. A thriving enterprise that uses its resources to reinvest in its product and remain an industry leader. Do you they have advantages other franchises don’t? Certainly, that comes largely from playing in the largest market with the highest revenue potentials. Until there is a firm salary cap it simply will not change. To say it is unfair, I believe is a little hyperbolic. I certainly wish my team was as aggressive spending and fielding a competitive team as the Yankees, but that’s the way the current system is set up. I am not a Yankee fan but I don’t think any fan of another franchise should whine about them reinvesting their profits INTO their team to ensure they continue to win.
I always love the money argument. It’s like the Yankees are doing something wrong by paying their players a lot of money and the Twins are doing something right by making sure that, I don’t know, Brendan Harris or Matt Guerrier make a low wage relative to other teams and players.
The Yankees are constantly looking for ways to invest in their company to put a viable product on the field. Now, this year the Twins did a much better job by granting Mauer a contract extension and by going out and getting Hudson and Hardy but the Yankees have players that played better than Twins in the three-game series.
The Twins had many opportunities to take control of that series, just as they did last year. In game 1, they left a lot of runners on base at the end of the game. The same is true in game 3. What does this say? It suggests that the Yankees pitchers made important plays at the right time (because they had the pitchers to make the pitches at the right time). But, it also suggests that the Twins — in particular Young, Thome and Hardy — choked.