Why is Cliff Lee the only good pitcher left on the Phillies? Boooo. Next year.
F the Yankees. And you live in Colorado. Don't you have a team there?
1) Nobody (except the NYY homers in this thread) with a hint of intelligence will take a NYY championship seriously until baseball has a salary cap.
2) It took them 6 games to beat a team that spent 85.7% less money to win, /golfclap.
3) We need to hear more about this "Core 4" crap i.e. Posada/Jeter/Pettite/Rivera who didn't even make the playoffs last year until signing THE best all around 1B in the MLB, Mark Texeira to a contract worth more than the GDP of entire countries like Trinidad and Tobago. In addition, they went out and bought their #1 starter to a similar mega deal, and bought their #2 starter (both pitchers = combined $243 million dollar deal last year). They have the best third baseman/all around baseball player, the best closer, and arguably the best shortstop in baseball. Any title they "earn" has to be taken with a huge grain of salt since they field an All Star fantasy team every night.
4) The Yankees have 2 admitted steroid abusers: A-Rod (yes, still the same size as 2001-2003) and Pettitte (won 2 World Series games). Hard to take a team seriously that embraces cheaters, especially signing Pettitte to a 1year/$10 million contract. And before the idiots come out and say "everyone in baseball does them!", that's something we cannot prove nor disprove. All we know is these 2 guys were caught and admitted it.
One hot summers day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. Just the things to quench my thirst, quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: I am sure they are sour.
I know sp33demon is a bosox fan (right?), but his points are spot-on, especially #3.
Yeah I like Boston but am apathetic now since they buy out the best players in baseball to compete with NY. Hard to get excited for teams like that who usurp 1 division spot and 1 wild card spot almost every single year and other great young teams like Texas/Tampa get left out.
Philly is my #2 team because it's home to me, and of course they were 2008 World Champs with almost all home grown talent (Howard, Werth, Utley, Victorino, Hamels, Madson, Chooch, J-Roll) who don't overpay their players like NY (take Jayson Werth for example - signed for 850K in 2006) but is still willing to pay enough to stay competitive (10mil/year for Ibanez). If there was a salary cap, Philly would probably still have a fav of mine Bobby Abreu (poached by NY of course). Imagine this year's Phils with Abreu? Of course, it would have relegated Werth to left but the Phils wouldn't have had to sign Ibanez with Pat the Bat leaving since Philly couldn't afford him.
The Yankees have lost in the playoffs to lower paid teams more than they have won. (this is true for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th highest paid teams as well) Yet people still cling to the stupid copout that money buys penants.
Caps in other leages serve one purpose: Let the owners keep more money.
So you have this sport that tends to equalize teams. That helps blur the dominance of the Yankees. If the New England Patriots were allowed to spend $50 million more on players than any other team, they would go 15-1 or 16-0 every single year. And people would not stand for it. But in baseball, a great and dominant team might only win 95 out of 160, and it doesn't seem so bad.
The second thing is that, at the end of the year, the best teams are thrown together in a succession of short series that are fun to watch but are not designed to pick the best teams. Quite the opposite: A short series in baseball is designed to shelter weaknesses and expose strengths. Yuni Betancourt can out-hit A-Rod in a five-game series. Livan Hernandez can out-pitch Tim Lincecum in a one-game match-up. Baseball doesn't hide this -- they slam it down your throat. October baseball! Anything's possible! And so on.
And in that way the expanded playoffs have been genius for baseball -- not only because they are milking television for every dime, but because the short series have been baseball's one defense against the ludicrous unfairness of the New York Yankees. Hey, if the game is rigged, rig the game. The Yankees spend a lot more money than any other team. As a direct result, they had the best record in the American League in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2009. They made the playoffs every single year but one this decade (and going back to 1995). They are the best team with the best players every year -- that sort of big money virtually guarantees it.
So, you create a system in which the best team doesn't always win. In fact, you create a system in which the best team often doesn't win. For years the Yankees didn't win. They lost to Florida. They lost to Anaheim. They blew a 3-0 series lead against Boston. They lost to Anaheim again and Detroit and Cleveland -- and how could you say that baseball is unfair? Look, the Yankees can't win the World Series! See? Sure they spend $50 million more than any other team and $100 million more than most. But they haven't won the World Series! Doesn't that make you feel better?
And this has been the Wizard of Oz slight-of-hand game that MLB has been playing for a long time... Ignore the man behind the curtain who makes more money off of baseball than anyone else and can buy just about any player he wants. Ignore the absurdity of it all. Just remember: The Yankees haven't won in a while! Just remember: Anything is possible.
There's something else that people say: They talk about how money doesn't guarantee wins. And they point out that other teams (the Mets, the Cubs, the Astros, etc.) spend a lot of money and don't win. I think this actually makes for an interesting argument if you want to talk about the inequities of baseball... big markets, small markets, all that.
But the Yankees are a whole different argument. They are their own argument. The Yankees are not a big-market team. They DWARF big-market teams. They are quantitatively different from every other team in baseball and every other team in American sports. They don't just spend more money than every other team. They spend A LOT more money than every other team. The Boston Red Sox spend $50 million more than the Kansas City Royals? Who cares? The Yankees spend $80 million more than the Boston Red Sox.
The Yankees have a pat hand.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...ki/11/05/yankees.payroll/1.html#ixzz0W6JnHAQZ
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Actually it's more of a copout to say that money doesn't matter.
Read this article:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...11/05/yankees.payroll/index.html?eref=writers
Baseball rigged it so that the best team often doesn't win in the playoffs. Also the dominance of the yankees is more obscured than it is for dominant teams of other sports.
Except that Philly "poached" Cliff Lee by trading him away from a team that knew it couldn't afford to re-sign him. There is no chivalry in sports.
That article is basically full of opinions. When they lose it not because they spend a lot, but when they win (even though its once in 10 years) its because they do? umm ok. When other teams win its a "ruse"? wtf really? He might as well say the Yankees lose most years ON PURPOSE to keep things the way they are. Fuckin retarded.
Sorry, the argument still blows, and articles like that one are written so losers like you will read them and feel a little better. There is a market for yankee hate, and your article sells to that market.
Learn to read: he's saying baseball rigged the game so that the best team doesn't always win in order to provide an excuse to the yankees payroll, but that still doesn't mean the yankees don't have a leg up on every other team by a long shot.
That article is basically full of opinions. When they lose it not because they spend a lot, but when they win (even though its once in 10 years) its because they do? umm ok. When other teams win its a "ruse"? wtf really? He might as well say the Yankees lose most years ON PURPOSE to keep things the way they are. Fuckin retarded.
Sorry, the argument still blows, and articles like that one are written so losers like you will read them and feel a little better. There is a market for yankee hate, and your article sells to that market.
The Yankees have lost in the playoffs to lower paid teams more than they have won. (this is true for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th highest paid teams as well) Yet people still cling to the stupid copout that money buys penants.
Caps in other leages serve one purpose: Let the owners keep more money.
It seems like the argument flew over your head. To sum it up for you using empirical evidence (just read Moneyball): The biggest spenders are much more likely to make the playoffs. NY is the perfect example: they only missed the playoffs twice the past 15 years. No, this won't guarantee you the title but statistically if you make the playoffs ninety percent of the time you will eventually hit big.
MLB counters with: anything can happen! Odds are increased for other teams to statistically win in a short series, but if NY is there every year they will eventually statistically hit. The SI article is saying that MLB is trying to hide the fact that NY is in the playoffs almost every year (13 of past 15 - 86.78% and won 5 of 13 (38.46% - over 1/3 of them) due to a broken profit sharing/salary cap system.
Your Homerism prevents you from grasping this point.