Big Farm, No Tools

Maybe not the sharpest tools in the shed, but definitely the most expensive.

A big-money contract is what sometime seems to become synonymous with Yankees players, and eventhough the player may not be the best player when they arrive in New York, they are expected to shine when they put on those Yankee pinstripes. It seems that the Yankees are more flash than substance, overly concerned with the immediate production of an aging player than the potential long term benefits of a young player coming into his prime.

While one could debate the pros and cons of prospects versus established players for an eternity, the simple fact of the matter is that this debate is now irrelevant when referring to the Yankees. The Yankees have virtually no developed farm system, and instead seem to be treating Major League Baseball as some sort of video game fantasy league, where if you don’t have the right pieces you need for a trade, you simply trade away one of your own players for those pieces, then sign a free agent to take his place. You need to look no further than the off-season rumors swirling around Jorge Posada, once a staple of the Yankees franchise, and the potential trade needed to acquire Randy Johnson. Though I will not debate that, especially for this Yankee team, Randy Johnson is far more valuable than Jorge Posada, the simple fact that they need to trade a man who is potentially the third or fourth best catcher in the league to acquire him speaks volumes about the state of the Yankee Farm System, especially since the Diamondbacks were willing to practically give Johnson away, assuming he waived his ludicrously elite no-trade clause.

The simple fact is, gone are the days of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettite. The Yankees Farm System has been stripped bare, and salted by the ownership of George Steinbrenner. When was the last time you saw a Yankee Minor Leaguer move onto success, with the Yankees, at least? George is so wrapped up with his auto-response mechanism to any Sox move that he is gambling away the future of the Yankees, especially with the dearth of free agent pitching on the current market.

You only need to look back to the 2003 season to find an example of the foolishness of the Yankee front office. The Red Sox, in an effort to boost their bullpen and starting pitching, October Essentials, acquired Jeff Suppan, Scott Sauerbeck, and Scott Williamson. The Yankees, however, opted to trade Brandon Claussin, arguably the first minor league pitcher the Yankees have had with “ace” potential for Aaron Boone. And while one swing of Aaron Boone’s bat may have given him a place among the then-ghosts of Yankee Stadium, the long-term benefit seems scarce. The Yankees went on to lose in the World Series to the Marlins, a team built on young pitching, and Aaron Boone went on to injure himself in a pick-up game of basketball.

When analyzing the current Yankees Farm System, you see very few, if any, majors-ready prospects, and even fewer majors-ready arms, usually the key figures in prospect trades. Many of the Yankees’ top prospects remain two or three years out of the majors, not an enticing prospect to teams such as the Diamondbacks or Expos, who are trying to bring along rookie and sophomore prospects to escape the turmoil of mediocrity as quickly as possible. As such, the Yankees will continue to strip their own lineup bare to find trading chips to offer these teams, and the Yankees will get progressively older, slower, and less athletic. Their salary will balloon to as high as $250 million in the next 4 years, as they will eat current players salaries (i.e. Javier Vazquez, Kevin Brown, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada) in exchange to move them for tradeable prospects.

Meanwhile, the Yankee fans will grow less and less attached to these aging veterans brought in to replace the others. How will Yankees fans grow attached to any player when the Yankees could experience 80% roster turnover every 3 years? Steinbrenner will sign players to short, expensive contracts, and when the long-term players start to sag in skills, he will simply eat their contract in an effort to repeat the cycle.

It’s quite sad, the condition that the Yankee System is in. If the Yankees had kept some prospects, you wonder what would have been. Would the Yankees have needed to trade for Aaron Boone if they had kept Mike Lowell for a year or two longer? Would the Yankees have lost the series to the Red Sox if they had young and athletic Willy Mo Pena chasing down those little flairs, instead of dumping him for Danny Neagle? Do any of you doubt that Ted Lily, who absolutely baffled the Red Sox earlier in the year, would have done better than Kevin Brown or Javier Vazquez in Game 7?

The Yankees Farm System will be completely irrelevant and utterly useless to the organization for the next few years. The only thing that will matter are the depths of George’s wallet and who he finds useful to trade on his major league roster, to replace with an expensive free agent. If I were a Yankees fan, I would not be happy with the current direction of my franchise, and I’d find myself wondering how long before Derek Jeter was traded to snag some extra middle relief and a decent shortstop. Only this time, I wouldn’t expect a “Thanks, Beautiful” ending.

-Matt Kordis
-Paolo DeVito