What the media is missing in the Rafael Soriano story

Squawker Jon told me this morning that he can't ever remember the GM of the Yankees -- or for that matter, any other team -- introducing a new acquisition by talking about how he "didn't recommend the deal" and didn't want the player on the team. But that's pretty much what happened at yesterday's introductory press conference for Rafael Soriano. Way to roll out the welcome mat, Bri!

And while the media is giving Cashman credit for sticking to his guns, I don't think there was anything the least bit admirable in what he did. In fact, most organizations would call his public comments about how he didn't think Soriano was worth the money insubordination.

Sure, the Yanks are overpaying for Soriano, but given their current bullpen options, they really had no choice. (Although commenter at the Yankeeist site notes that Cash could have picked up the $10 million option on the Kerry Wood deal instead, back in November.)  But Cashman insisted that he was correct yesterday, saying that the contract was too much money for a closer, and that the team had enough current options in the bullpen. Please.

Remember, folks, he was willing to give up $10 million -- and a first-round draft pick -- for a one-year deal with Carl Pavano, the worst free-agent signing in franchise history. And he balks at the cost of Soriano? C'mon now.

And I'm not buying all the recent spin that Soriano is a bad person. There were a lot of positive stories last season about how manager Joe Maddon would pour Soriano, a fellow wine buff, a glass of wine after the game to honor each save. But after Bill Madden wrote this week how that the two didn't get along, suddenly Soriano is being portrayed as a chronic miscreant. Besides, Cashman was willing to bring back Pavano, who was universally despised, into the clubhouse. But Soriano is too much?

Anyhow, there's been a lot of speculation about what this all means for Cashman's contract status. Frankly, I'm glad that the organization has finally appeared to have had enough of the way their GM sleepwalked through the offseason. As my Twitter friend -- and bigtime author -- Jerome Preisler put it in a recent column:

In early December, Cashman rappelled down the 22-floor Landmark Building in Stamford, Connecticut as “celebrity guest elf”, accompanying a costumed Santa Claus for the city’s holiday season Heights and Lights event. At the time, neither Derek Jeter nor Mariano Rivera had been re-signed as Yankees, Cliff Lee was off somewhere in his protracted deliberations, and Yankees fans were locked in a state of angst about all of the above. Although Cashman’s extracurricular stunt most likely wasn’t a distraction from the business of putting together a team, it was hardly a sensitive acknowledgement of the Yankee fan base’s profound unease. In the political realm, nobody likes seeing their elected official vacationing in Hawaii or Martha’s Vineyard during times of national crisis. In Yankeeland, it’s probably less than advisable to engage in a precarious lark wearing a green-and-red elf suit when your paying customers are looking at Sergio Mitre as their team’s fourth or fifth starter.

And friend Sully of Sully Baseball is a Red Sox fan, but he makes some very fair points about the situation (he also gave me a shoutout in this blog entry. Thanks!):

Imagine me saying this to a Yankee fan right after their team lost the 2010 ALCS:

You aren't going to get Cliff Lee...
nor Carl Crawford...
nor Zack Grienke...
you will bring back Derek Jeter but he will feel alienated...
you will bring back Mariano Rivera but only after HE called the Red Sox...
Andy Pettitte isn't signed...
the one big pick up is Rafael Soriano who has had 2 elbow surgeries in the last 5 seasons and is a fly ball pitcher in a home run park...
BUT the good news is they might bring back Carl Pavano.

You might start making a noose.

I wouldn't go as far as the noose analogy, but I do think it's time to take away the keys from Cashman. One other point -- not only did all this happen, but it happened at the very same time the Red Sox were reloading their team with Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, and a better bullpen. What a nightmare!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Why did Brian Cashman pursue Carl Pavano -- and insult Andy Pettitte?

I've been saying all winter that for some strange reason, Brian Cashman seems to have shown very little interest in wanting Andy Pettitte back. His comments have been very tepid in talking about one of the greatest pitchers the Yankees have ever had. And the fact that Cash recently compared Pettitte to Brett Favre, the day before praising Carl Pavano (!) seems to be a real passive-aggressive message to the Texas hurler.

Compare and contrast:

Cashman on Pavano: "I had several discussions (with his agent). I still believe Pav can pitch here. He has proven he can pitch in some difficult situations. The thing is, he's healthy. I don't think he was afraid to come back here, either."

Cashman on Pettitte: "I told him don’t ‘Brett Favre’ us. You got to be all in and fully dedicated to play. Do I need him? I need him, but I don’t want him to play if his heart’s not in it.”

Yes, because nothing shows how much you need Andy Pettitte than comparing him to Brett Favre. How insulting, especially given that Pettitte is known for living his life as a Christian family man, while Favre is known for allegedly sending pictures of his genitals to girls half his age. Way to go, Brian!

Besides, the comparison is not even accurate -- Favre actually retired and unretired a gazillion times. Pettitte has never done that. And as much as I despise Favre, nobody can accuse him of not being "all in" when he did play. Suggesting such a scenario with Pettitte is also insulting.

Squawker Jon notes Cashman even using a friendly nickname - "Pav" - for Pavano. As far as I'm concerned, Pavano already has two perfectly good nicknames -- American Idle and the Crash Test Dummy!

Anyhow, I thought Derek Jeter was wrong to think that the Yankees mistreated him this offseason -- they clearly made him their priority. Pettitte, on the other hand, has a right to feel slighted. And it's not the first time this has happened -- remember the halfhearted offer they made to him after the 2003 season? Or the way they halved his salary a few years ago? I'm sure Pettitte remembers that, too.

My old boss posted here the other day that he thought Pettitte might play for the Astros again. Given the inept way Cashman has pursued him, I wouldn't be surprised.

As for Pavano, Cashman wants us all to forget that it was he who made Carl get a second, a third, and a fourth opinion on whether he needed Tommy John surgery. And this was *after* Pavano had gone to see Dr. James Andrews. Now he acts like Pavano was just misunderstood or something. Puh-lease.


And remember, Pettitte played hurt in the playoffs this year to help his team. Not that his Cashman cares about that. Maybe if Andy had been laid up for months with bruised buttocks or something, his GM would have more respect for him.

At any rate, it's sad that Randy Levine, of all people, showed more passion in just one statement on Pettitte than Cashman has all winter. The Yankee president said this a few weeks back:

"Andy's a great Yankee and a great person and I know he'll give it thought and follow his heart and we'll respect his decision. But we're out there, all of us, hoping every day that he comes back," Levine added. "I think he knows we need him. I think he knows how much we respect him and what a great leader he is."

Is it too much to expect the Yankee GM to say something similar about one of the most beloved players on the team? Apparently so.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Rob Neyer calls Carl Pavano and Brian Cashman "heroes"

If I didn't know better, I would think ESPN's Rob Neyer's article entitled "Yankees and Pavano just too many heroes" was a parody. But unfortunately, it appears to be for real. In the piece, Neyer calls Brian Cashman a hero for trying to re-sign Carl Pavano, and Pavano a hero for still playng baseball. Yes, really.

Neyer writes:

If I were 8 years old and my heroes were baseball executives rather than baseball players, I would have a Brian Cashman Fathead on my bedroom wall. Cashman was heroic in defending Pavano during his time with the Yankees, and he's heroic for considering bringing Pavano aboard once again. Many general managers, and perhaps most of them, would not have done either thing.

Oh, please. Neyer still sounds like he's still eight years old here, given how naive he sounds. Put down your pom-poms, Rob.

There's absolutely nothing "heroic" about a GM who so apparently so wants to prove that Pavano wasn't the worst free agent the Yankees ever signed that he's willing to sign him again. That's not heroism; that's literally the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We saw this last year, when Cashman tried to convince us that bringing back Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson would be good moves. And how did those work out, exactly? Not so well. Don't see anything the least bit heroic in Cashman not learning from his mistakes.

Neyer continues in this ridiculous vein:

There's something heroic about Pavano, too, isn't there? Pavano was a Yankee for four years, and pitched the grand total of 146 innings. You might have excused him for getting discouraged, even giving up. Maybe he did give up once or twice, and maybe he wasn't as tough as he might have been. Those fans and writers and radio hosts and even teammates probably thought so.

But he didn't give up, ultimately. He finally did get healthy, and just finished pitching 420 innings in two years. In a playoff game against the Yankees in 2009, he pitched seven fine innings and struck out nine Yankees. Can't handle the pressure? Really?

Maybe it's just me, but I define heroes as people who risk their physical well-being for the sake of others. Like firemen who run into burning buildings. Or like my late father, who jumped out of airplanes during World War II (but as my father, fellow World War II veteran Bob Feller, and others of their ilk would say when called a hero, their own definition of heroes were the soldiers who didn't come back, not themselves.) Or the civil rights activists who literally risked their lives so that African-Americans could be treated equally in this country. You can also argue that those who sacrifice monetarily, or in some other way, for others, are heroes.

You can also make the case that a ballplayer who risks his own future health for his team is a hero. Like Derek Jeter bloodying his face flying into the stands. Or Curt Schilling playing on a torn-up ankle with tendons held together by sutures. The key word here is "sacrifice."

See where I'm going here? None of these people really have much in common with Carl Pavano. Cashman -- and for that matter, Neyer -- seem to forget that Pavano so abused his time on the disabled list, with the bruised buttocks, and every other ailment known to man, that he literally spent more time on the DL without surgery than any other player before or since. American Idle was like the little boy who cried wolf; when his doctor said he needed Tommy John surgery, Cashman demanded that Carl get a second, a third, and then a fourth opinion on whether the surgery was necessary before letting him go under the knife.

Unless you think essentially stealing nearly $40 million for the Yankees is the very definition of heroism (and if you're a Yankee-hater, maybe you do!), Carl Pavano is not a hero.

Yeah, Pavano pitched well against the Yankees in the 2009 playoffs (not so well in 2010, something Neyer neglects to mention.) And he's been an Iron Man for the last two years with Cleveland and Minnesota. That's all well and good, and shows that he can still pitch. But it doesn't make him a hero, either.

Neyer concludes his piece by opining:

Two years ago, Carl Pavano was supposedly a shining example of one thing. Today, he's a shining example of another. I was actually sort of hoping that he'd pitch for the Yankees again, just because it would have been a fantastic story. With two heroes.

And Neyer is a "shining example" of a writer with a very warped perception of what truly makes a "hero."

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Pursuing Carl Pavano: Has Brian Cashman lost his freaking mind?

What is wrong with Brian Cashman these days? He seems to have completely gone off the rails this offseason. I asked after the Cliff Lee fiasco what Cashman's Plan B was. Apparently it appears to be consist of trying to re-sign Carl Pavano, aka American Idle!

Cashman admitted to the press today that he has had "several discussions" with Pavano's agent about the possibility of the Crash Test Dummy bringing his bruised buttocks back to the Bronx! Peter Botte reports:

"I had several discussions (with his agent). I still believe Pav can pitch here. He has proven he can pitch in some difficult situations. The thing is, he's healthy. I don't think he was afraid to come back here, either.”

The only discussion Cashman ought to be having with Pavano's agent is to get the pitcher to return the $39.95 million he fleeced from the Yankees. Good grief.

And I don't care how deep the discussions went -- the fact that Cashman would be having them all is nothing short of outrageous. Yet some of the "In Cash We Trust" people are still trying to justify this move. When will it end?

I never blamed Cashman for signing Pavano -- he was the top free agent that year, and the Yanks actually offered him less money than Boston did -- but if he were to re-sign American Idle, I think Yankee ownership would be in their rights to fire him on the spot. Come to think of it, is Cash pulling a George Costanza here, trying to get fired? His offseason this year has been debacle after debacle, with his only "bright spot," if you will, being when he dressed as an elf to rappel down a building (something The Boss would never have allowed.) Is this all some master plan to get forced out?

So what the heck is Cashman thinking? Did he learn nothing from the Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson debacles?  He really seems to love his own unpopular decisions so much, he wants to keep on making them. What's up with that? Even considering taking a risk again on the worst free agent signing in team history is absolutely outrageous. Fans hate Pavano. His own teammates despise him. We saw from Vazquez Part Deux that bringing back somebody with such negative connotations does not work. And we saw from Johnson Part Deux that spending money on a proven injury risk is foolish.

You know what the "best" part of these misguided negotiations is? That Pavano is a Type A free agent -- you know, the very thing that Cash had vowed not to pursue after Cliff Lee signed with Philly. So, if the Yankees were to actually sign Pavano -- Jon Heyman reports that the Yanks offered him one year and $7 million -- not only would the Yanks be stuck with Pavano Part Deux, but they would also lose a first-round draft pick.

So, let me get this straight. In Cashman's world, Rafael Soriano, who led the league in saves last year, is not worth losing that draft pick for. But Carl Pavano is? I'm outraged!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Twin killing: Yankees go up 2-0 against Minnesota

I'm very happy the Yankees have won the first two games of the ALDS, and I'm particularly happy that Curtis Granderson and Lance Berkman were the big hitting heroes last night. (Not to mention that Andy Pettitte stepped up bigtime!) I heard that John Sterling said "Sir Lancelot Does It Again" about Berkman's homer!

But I did feel a little sorry for the Minnesota Twins yesterday, especially after hearing about all the steps they took to exorcise the demons after Game 1: Ron Gardenhire burned his uniform, Orlando Hudson's family did a prayer group, the players didn't eat that their usual waffle house, team leader (yes!) Carl Pavano suggested that they switch up the uniforms, etc., etc.

And while their fans did those idiotic "Yankees suck" chants, at least they are loyal, knowledgeable fans who show up to support their team, unlike what Tampa Bay has.

Yet the results were the same for the Twins, despite them yet again taking the lead first. Hopefully, the Yankees will put the nail in the Twins' coffin tomorrow (after 2004, I never stop worrying until the series is over, even if it's against Minnesota!) Never say never. Who would have thought that the Texas Rangers, who had won exactly one playoff game in three tries, would be up 2-0 against the Rays? Even DJ Kitty couldn't get the job done for Tampa so far!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Carl Pavano: Minnesota's own Che Guevara?

When I was in college at the University of Texas at Austin, the cool t-shirt to wear among a certain segment of the population was this Che Guevara one, where the revolutionary looks all iconic.

Nowadays in Minnesota, the hepcats are running around with this Carl Pavano shirt, an homage to the famous Che one, even though Carl can't help but look like the knucklehead that he is.

Instead of "Viva La Stache," the shirt should say: "Wanted for stealing $40 million from the Yankees." Not that I'm bitter or anything.

You know, maybe the two have something in common, after all, aside from famous mustaches:

* Guevara traveled to Bolivia, while Pavano spent tons of time in oblivion on the Yankee payroll.

* Che had "The Motorcycle Diaries." Carl could write the "Garbage Truck Diaries," the story about how he crashed his Porsche into a garbage truck, broke a few ribs, then lied to the Yankees about the whole thing.

At any rate, if Pavano manages to best the Yankees tonight (something I'm actually afraid of happening!), he really will be a cult icon!


What do you think? Tell us about it!
 

Carl Pavano: Clubhouse leader? Can you believe it?

My childhood friend Kelly tipped me off to this MLB.com story, "Pavano's leadership shines through for Twins." It turns out that, according to the article, the pitcher formerly known as "American Idle" is actually an elder statesman in Minnesota:

Pavano has proven to be a leader within the Twins clubhouse, using humor at times while also setting a tone for the pitching staff with his unstoppable work ethic. He's worked hard to help create team chemistry, organizing team cookouts and dinners -- even hosting a few at his own suburban Minneapolis home that sits on a lake.

The piece also features this eyebrow-raising quote from the crash test dummy:

"Getting an opportunity to be counted on again, that's what it's all about," Pavano said. "You like that accountability. You like when you take the mound and your team feels like it has a great chance to win that day. It's gratifying."

Well, Pavano wasn't anybody to count upon as a Yankee, that's for sure. Did you know he pitched more innings as a Twin this year than he did in his four seasons as a Yankee? And he has 17 wins this year, to the 9 he had as a Bomber over four years? Sheesh.

That's not the only positive Pavano article out there. Minnesota's Star-Tribune has a column with this title, "Pavano has shown success on big stage." Guess New York doesn't count as the big stage anymore!

I'm not going to root for a particular team for the Yankees to face in the postseason. The last time I did that was 2006, when the Detroit Tigers stumbled down the stretch, only to be worldbeaters against the Yankees. But if the Yankees do face the Twins, whether in the ALDS or ALCS, I just want them to destroy Pavano. Last year, they did beat him, but Pavano hung pretty tough for the first six innings. Yes, I'm still bitter.

What do you think? Tell us about it!