2009: A Retrospective

We have thus far steered clear of anything reflecting on the year or decade as 2009 has drawn to a close, but we finally cracked on December 31st. Perhaps it's out of some sort of preemptive nostalgia but from where we sit right now, 2009 seems like a pretty special year in a lot of respects. I think that we owe it at least one post.

Here's a look back at the year that was through the eyes of this blog:

When the year began, we were worried about Derek Jeter's poor 2008 but he rebounded in ways that no one was predicting.

We bid adieu to the Giambino.

We questioned the clutchiferousness of CC Sabathia, but he happily proved us wrong when it mattered most.

A-Rod was A-Fraud then A-Roid. He admitted some stuff, made some faces, and then admitted some more. He was injured and returned (with a bang). He copped a feel. He went from choke artist to clutchmaster. He and Kate Hudson came and went. An entire post could be written just about his year - and it already was.

Andy Pettitte returned and returned again.

The Yankees played pool.

The New Stadium opened to mixed reviews, but we eventually came to embrace it. Literally.

After a long offseason the Yankees got off to a slow start and some of the more fragile among the fan base lost their minds.

Nick Swisher pitched.

We saw the worst of it in person. Frustrations mounted but rock bottom wasn't that far down. Two games later they returned home, went on a 9 game winning streak and reclaimed first place in the AL East shortly only to give it back to the Sawx. It took a while, but the Yankees put them to bed too.

There were baked goods.

Damaso Marte went missing.

Melky hit for the cycle.

We were introduced to Slade Heathcott.

The Yanks kicked ass and took names in the second half of '09, going 51-22 after the All-Star Break. No team was safe from the fury.

Derek Jeter climbed "the Yankees' Mount Olympus".

The regular season was almost gone. And then it was.

The Twins tried. The Angels attempted. The Phillies failed too.

#27

We bid farewell to Hideki Matsui and said hello to Curtis Granderson.

Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson brought things full circle.

On a personal note, 2009 was an eventful one for me as well:

Dave did not look at it. But Doris did.

We got "extremely" drunk in Boston and New Jersey.

We hit up the Big East Tournament and met some interesting friends.

I had some second thoughts and made some first impressions. I got fired and time turned elastic. I enjoyed myself. For a moment, I was a legend. Then I moved upstate.

Matt and I heard some joyful noise.

We lost some heros, innovators and great Yankees this year. We parted ways with a radio host, a singer and a beat writer (but those guys aren't dead). Gone are the likes of Melky Cabrera, Austin Jackson, Ian Kennedy, Hideki Matsui and most likely Johnny Damon. Here now are some old familiar faces and some we don't yet know very well.

The New Stadium isn't so new anymore and we aren't getting any younger ourselves, but there is plenty to look forward to in 2010.

Happy New Year.

World Series Game 1: The Best Is Yet To Come

It's been a great season for the Yankees to this point. They opened the New Stadium which, despite being met with some outspoken opposition at first, has treated them awfully well.In the first 29 games (without A-Rod) they went 14-15, but has gone 97-46 since then, including the postseaon. It's been almost 7 full months loaded with affirmative answers to questions people had about the team coming in.

There were resurgences of Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter's defense. The smooth transitions for Nick Swisher, A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia. A-Rod's recovery from offseason hip surgery and avoidance of bad press. Brett Gardner's development into a useful Major League player. Johnny Damon's power surge. Mariano Rivera's continued dominance. The sustained health of the team. Some small but important acquisitions during the season. All the walkoffs and pies in the face. The AL East title and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. Wins over Anaheim in Minnesota thus far in the postseason.

As fans of the Pinstripes, we've been treated to pretty much all we could ask for to this point. But we're not done yet. The Yankees will face the best and most complete team they've been this postseason and the series will start with the best possible pitching match-up featuring, coincidentally, the previous two AL Cy Young winners and former teammates on the Cleveland Indians.

After coming to the Phillies at the trade deadline, Cliff Lee went 8-4 with 3 complete games, a 3.39 ERA and struck out 74 batters while walking only 10. He only made three poor starts, but those were pretty awful, accounting for 19 of his 30 earned runs with the Phillies. In his other 9 outings, he was 8-1 with a 1.50 ERA.

You might say I'm cherry picking those numbers, but Lee's been even better than that this postseason. In his three starts (two in the NLDS), he's pitched 24 1/3 innings, given up 14 hits, 2 ER (0.74 ERA), and is sporting a strikeout to walk ratio of 20:3. The only weakness in his game over that time is that he's got most of his outs in air (39) as opposed to on the ground (26) or by strikeout (20). As we know, once balls get up in the air at Yankee Stadium they can find the seats in a hurry.

The pitcher with the second best resume this postseason will be taking the hill for the Yankees. After getting past the Twins with 6 2/3 innings of one run ball, CC Sabathia picked up the ALCS MVP for his work against the Angels. Sabathia was great in Game 1, going 8 innings and allowing one run, but was just as good or better on short rest in Game 4. His only mistake came on a home run to Kendry Morales and he needed only 101 pitches to rip through those 8 frames.

Like Lee, Sabathia has only walked three batters this postseason. Postseason games are notorious for their interminable durations but with these two guys on the mound, this one could be over relatively quickly.

As good as the Yankees have been this year, there is reason to believe that the best is yet to come. Along with most of you, I'm guessing, I feel like the Yankees are going to win this thing. It's not us just being biased homers, people who cover baseball for a living overwhelmingly agree. Those predictions don't mean a thing, but they do reflect who the best team is coming into this series.

We don't like to break him out very often, but we would have been remiss not to go with Frank Sinatra to start the World Series. The last time we called on Ol' Blue Eyes, this is what happened in the next 4 games. Past performances don't guarantee future results, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Let's go Yanks.

Out of the tree of life, I just picked me a plum,
You came along and everything started to hum,
Still it's a real good bet, the best is yet to come.

The best is yet to come, and baby won't it be fine.
You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine.

2008 vs. 2009: It's a WAR

Last night, the always brilliant Beyond the Boxscore, in light of the announcement of the Comeback Player of the Year award, took a look at who (among the top 10 vote-getters) had the biggest swings in Wins Above Replacement. I'll refrain from saying "who deserved the award" because I think Comeback Player of the Year is one that should be somewhat subjective and context-heavy because players can "comeback" from a variety of things and that should probably be taken into consideration. That and no one really cares that much about who gets the award anyway.

Chris Carpenter won in the National League and looking at WAR backed that up along with the top four finishes in the voting.

However, the numbers did not match the voting in the American League. Aaron Hill was given the award, but he was actually had the 4th biggest comeback in WAR behind Juan Rivera, Victor Martinez and our own Jorge Posada who had the largest. However, Jorge finished 4th in the voting behind Martinez and Michael Cuddyer probably because he missed time to injury and was relatively productive in his time with the club.

It seems like this year, there have been a ton of Yankees who have improved on last year's campaign, not to mention the three marquee free agents and Nick Swisher who weren't on the team last year. Below, you can find two charts displaying the differences in WAR from 2008 to 2009. BtB measures the dip between the last good year they had and 2009 but I'm only looking at the last two years. (All data via FanGraphs)

First, the position players:

Some interesting stuff here...

• Pretty cosmic shift in run production there, 15.6 wins. The Yanks won 89 games last year and 103 this year. You do the math.
  
  
• I didn't use the more complicated method that BtB did, but those measurements show that Posada wasn't even the most improved player on the Yankees in relation to last year.
  
  
• Jeter made some major strides defensively but his OPS also ended up exactly 100 points higher than in 2008.
  
  
• Obviously, Teixeira represents a vast improvement over the 'stache, taking absolutely no one by surprise.
  
  
• Even with the great year Bobby Abreu is having out in L.A., he's only been worth 2.7 WAR. Still a great pick-up by the Angels for the money ($5M) but the Yanks have been better off with Swish, even though his defense isn't exactly sparkling either.
  
  
• Who would have guessed that Johnny Damon was more valuable in 2008? Hands, please. He's been better with the bat but his fielding has declined by almost 10 runs.
  
  
• If you extrapolate A-Rod's production to a full season he comes awfully close to replicating his 2008 value.

And the pitchers:

• How about the fact that this slice of the 2008 staff was actually worth more in 2008 than in 2009? Not a complete measurement but it's obvious which side of the ball had the most impact in taking the team from third in the AL East to first in all of baseball.
  
  
• I chose Sabathia to replace Mussina since they were the best pitcher in each year. I paired Burnett with Darrel Rasner, Sidney Ponson and Carl Pavano since those combined had about the same number of innings and they would have needed to find similar scrubs to fill in had Burnett not been acquired.
  
  
• Phil Hughes proves that point that if you can be a great reliever, you're more valuable than a bad starter, but I think we already knew that.
  
  
• Before looking, I thought Andy Pettitte would have been more valuable this year than last, but apparently not. I'm honestly not sure what's causing the variance there.
  
  
• Mo saved 39 games last year and blew only 1, while this year he converted 44 and blew 2. His W/L record last year was 6-5 and this year it was 3-3. Wins and saves are bad stats but we are talking about Wins Above Replacement here.
  
  
• Joba derived a good amount of value pitching out of the bullpen last year, which accounts for a lot of the difference.
  
• Our poor Wang got beaten pretty severely this year. He alone makes up for the difference between '08 and '09.

Fack Youk 2009 MLB Predictions

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Opening Day!

Below are the 2009 MLB Predictions from the Fack Youk team.


Brendan

AL East: Sox
AL Central: Tigers
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Rays

ALDS: Sox over Tigers in 4
ALDS: Angels over Rays in 5
ALCS: Sox over Angels in 7

NL East: Mets
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Reds

NLDS: Mets over Reds in 3
NLDS: Cubs over Dodgers in 5
NLCS: Mets over Cubs in 6

World Series: Sox over Mets in 6

AL MVP: Miguel Cabrera
AL Cy Young: Roy Halladay

NL MVP: David Wright
NL Cy Young: Yovanni Galladro


Jay

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Indians
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Red Sox

ALDS: Yankees over Indians in 5
ALDS: Angels over Red Sox in 4
ALCS: Yankees over Angels in 6


NL East: Mets
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Braves

NLDS: Cubs over Mets in 5
NLDS: Braves over Dodgers in 5
NLCS: Cubs over Braves in 6

World Series: Yankees over Cubs in 6

AL MVP: Mark Teixeira
AL Cy Young: Roy Halladay

NL MVP: Hanley Ramirez
NL Cy Young: Santana


Joe

AL East: Sox
AL Central: Twins
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Yankees

ALDS: Sox over Twins in 4
ALDS: Yankees over Angels in 5
ALCS: Yankees over Sox in 6


NL East: Mets
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Phillies

NLDS: Mets over Cardinals in 5
NLDS: Phillies over Dodgers in 5
NLCS: Phillies over Mets in 7

World Series: Yankees over Phillies in 6

AL MVP: Mark Teixeira
AL Cy Young: Jon Lester

NL MVP: Manny Ramirez
NL Cy Young: Brandon Webb

John

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Tigers
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Sox

ALDS: Yankees over Tigers in 4
ALDS: Sox over Angels in 5
ALCS: Yankees over Sox in 6

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Cubs

NLDS: Cards over Braves in 5
NLDS: Cubs over Dodgers in 5
NLCS: Cubs over Cards in 7

World Series: Yankees over Cubs in 4

AL MVP: Derek Jeter
AL Cy Young: Chien-Ming Wang

NL MVP: Albert Pujols
NL Cy Young: Johan Santana

Number of Red Sox to come out of the closet: 26


Matt

AL East: Yanks
AL Central: Twins
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Sox

ALDS: Yanks over Twins in 5
ALDS: Sox over Angels in 5
ALCS: Yankees over Sox in 5

NL East: Mets
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Diamondbacks
NL Wild Card: Phillies

NLDS: Mets over D'backs in 5
NLDS: Phillies over Cubs in 5
NLCS: Mets over Phillies in 7

World Series: Yankees over Mets in 6

AL MVP: Longoria
AL Cy Young: Sabathia

NL MVP: Manny
NL Cy Young: Santana


Will

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Indians
AL West: Angels
Wild Card: Rays

ALDS: Yankees over Indians in 5
ALDS: Angels over Rays in 4

ALCS: Yankees over Angels in 6


NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Mets

NLDS: Cubs over Mets in 4
NLDS: Dodgers over Braves in 5
NLCS: Dodgers over Cubs in 6

World Series: Yankees over Dodgers in 5

AL MVP: Mark Teixeira (Homer Alert)
AL Cy Young: C.C. Sabathia (Homer Alert)

NL MVP: Ryan Howard
NL Cy Young: Johan Santana