Hot Stove Coal: Retreads Are Never the Answer

I'm sorry that my blogging has been so sporadic. I started a new day job and its duties have had me neglecting my blogging duties. And I was going to be okay with that until I heard this clip of Mike Francesca blowing up at a caller and then saw Michael Kay sitting in full Rangers gear at Madison Square Garden last night. If there was ever a signal that I needed to get back into the blogging game it would be seeing the two New York sports talk blowhards back in my life.

Colon shouldn't be more than a stop-gap for the Yanks(LoHud)

I also wanted to talk about the 2011 Yankees--a rag-tag bunch of characters if I ever saw one. Sure there's the Core Three and A-Rod and CC. But as Spring has gone on, I've seen Yankee fans get excited by the likes of Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, and Mark Prior. It's as American as apple pie to root for comeback stories. We love the guy who rises out of the ashes for one more shot at glory. It's why we go to the theaters to see so many Rocky movies. It's why we the best sports stories always seems to be ones of redemption.

The problem is that we try too hard at times to make something out of nothing, especially when it has to do with baseball retreads (AKA has-beens, washed up, and finished). Sure, there's the odd guy who can have a huge rebound and find his way back to his glory days. But with steroid testing in place, those guys seem to be one in a million. I'm not talking about guys who just needed a change of venue to realize their true potential like David Ortiz, Paul O'Neill, Tim Wakefield or Shane Victorino. And I'm not talking about guys who had a down year or an injury and found a way back the next year. I'm talking about guys whose careers were shot only to find success again. It's just not happening as much as people think.

To prove my point, the Yankees have to look no further than Boston where the Red Sox draw optimisim each Spring from their fans on the retreads they try to revive the careers of. Yankee fans bemoan that their General Manager is no Theo Epstein only to find out that there was a reason these guys were available for so cheap. How much did we hear about Jeremy Hermida, Rocco Baldelli, Brad Penny, John Smoltz, Paul Byrd, Eric Gagne and Wade Miller and how much did they produce? Did you remember that the Red Sox had Bartolo Colon in 2008 or that Freddy Garcia was on the Mets Spring roster before being released? David Wells and David Cone both wore the Red Sox jerseys at some point towards the end of their careers.

This is not to pick on the Red Sox, it's just to point out that there's usually a reason why these guys are leftovers. Bartolo Colon didn't sit out the entire year last year because he had a reality TV show--he sat out because everyone thought he was done. The key is to be able to identify that and have a backup plan available just in case. Brad Penny and John Smoltz were gone before the Red Sox season was over and they had new pitchers in their place. You need to be able to realize when you've worn out the engine, cut bait and move on. Or you need to be willing to let the pitcher only pitch half a season and save his bullets a la Pedro Martinez on the 2009 Phillies.

And that's exactly what the Yankees need to do with the retreads on their roster--pitch them until the tires fall off (in Colon's case, I think that spare tire is there to stay). I agree with Pinstriped Bible's Steven Goldman and New York Post's Joel Sherman when they say that the only way to really think of Garcia and Colon are as stopgaps. If you can get 25 starts between them of replacement level baseball, it bridges the gap until a Manny Banuelos is ready or a Francisco Liriano becomes available for trade. You don't want to rush a Killer B to the Majors or overpay for a guy you can get for 20% less in 3 months. Colon dominating a few minor leaguers or Major Leaguers trying to shake off the rust is not the same as him going into Fenway and keeping the Red Sox lineup at bay.

No team's season should be killed by a few starts from a retread (the Yankees had Chien-Ming Wang implode in 2009 and still won it all) but you have to be willing to cut bait quickly and move on. In 2008 when the Yankees were relying on the likes of Sidney Ponson and the revival of Hideo Nomo they lost out on the playoffs. If there was ever a lesson to be learned from 2008, it's that you get what you can get from the retreads and then you find someone to take their place. Because if the Yankees are thinking they can win a World Series with A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia pitching 3 out of every 5 days for the year, they are greatly misguided.