The Yankees Are Fucked... At Least For Now

Today, Andy Pettite announced his retirement from baseball. Pettite is best remembered for spending almost his entire career with the New York Yankees, winning 5 championships with them, and being an admitted steroid user. Granted, he claims that his steroid usage was to help him recover from an injury, but the fact remains that he juiced and admits it. Pettite is one of the last members of the Roid Ragers from my childhood, among Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, and Barry Bonds. Seeing him go is both a welcome sight and also an ever-closing chapter from my childhood.

What makes the Yankees fucked is despite Pettite's age, he was still one of the Yankees' premier pitchers until the end. With his retirement, the Yankees now only have C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to rely upon as starting pitchers, probably the two worst starting pitchers of all of last year's playoff teams. The Yankees were unable to sign Cliff Lee and with A.J. Burnett's increasingly worse performance, the Yankees will have to rely more than ever on their sluggers.... Except they're starting to get old too. Their only reliable home run hitters at this point are Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, but their numbers dropped last season. Probably the most obvious sign that the Yankees have admitted defeat is their current plan for DH is Jorge Posada, their best catcher, and someone not known for hitting homers consistently.

The reason I ended this post with "For Now" is because... c'mon it's the Yankees! They can just buy whoever the hell they want and bring everything back to status quo. Of course, they could just decide to screw all that and follow the business model that the Giants did (which more teams, most notably the Phillies are copying), just load up the staff with elite pitchers to the point that the skill of the batters doesn't matter.

Not like it matters anyway, the Giants have a strong capability of repeating as World Series champions since Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner are all returning next season. And last I checked, none of the Phillies' pitchers have been able to defeat the Giants more than once.