Posted by John Brattain on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 4:23 pm

I love classic cars–besides the styling, my favourite thing are those old big block engines where size matters and you’re judged on your cubic inches; there’s just something about seeing eight old oil can sized pistons to set the ol’ heart a-flutter.

After I retire I want to modify a smaller, economy style car by somehow managing to squeeze as big an engine block as I can, tricking it out to get maximum low end torque out of the beast and somehow succeeding to hide the “little car that could” (kick your butt)’s secret behind a dead-smooth idle with no hint of a lope.

But I digress–kinda.

Anyway, imagine for a moment you wanted to build the ultimate engine and money is no object. You do all kinds of research because you want all the biggest, baddest parts–top of the line for your creation: engine block, camshafts, pistons, alternator, manifolds, exhaust system etc. You find that different manufacturers (Ford, Toyota, BMW etc.) have developed the best of the best of these parts and when your shopping is done you have nothing but state-of-the-art, high end performance/output parts.

Now put the engine together.

If you’ve ever worked on an engine you know of what I speak. You’ll be doing a lot of work getting it assembled.

There used to be an old gag where a guy bought a new fangled carburetor guaranteed to reduce gas consumption 50%, spark plugs that would cut it down 10%, a high-tech air filter good for another 20%, synthetic oil that would kick in 15%, and a gas filter that would cut consumption 10% then proceeded to install them one afternoon–after he was done it was time to take it for a spin and he drove his car 15 miles and the gas tank overflowed.

We learn two lessons from these: one optimum performance does not rely on simply having a collection of the biggest, baddest parts simply thrown together regardless of whether or not they fit and just because you throw a bunch of stats together doesn’t mean that you add them up and come up with the correct total unless you understand what the numbers truly mean.

To me, this is my ongoing navel-gazing regarding the whole old school/new school battles over understanding baseball.

Every year, a given team will add a superstar player or two and it’s easy to assume that they can factor those totals (whether traditional/sabermetric/adjusted) onto the current roster and assume the team has added X number of wins.

A baseball team is not a collection of individuals acting in isolation–it’s a unit, a single entity, an engine if you will and for maximum performance a degree of thought has to be put into the individual parts and whether they can act as a single entity. A given part may not be a high end state-of-the-art piece of machinery but if it’s the correct part for the engine–one that improves its performance then that’s the piece the engine needs.

Just because you assemble a lineup of guys that average 100 runs scored per season doesn’t mean that a team is guaranteed to score 900 runs.

I’m not writing this to bash sabermetrics since I feel quite strongly that the sabermetric movement has been a major plus for baseball. To continue the analogy from a different perspective–if an engine needs a part, it would asinine to suggest (as an example) that a piece from a 1987 Crown Victoria is the correct piece just because 15 years ago the person making the suggestion bought a used Crown Vic and it was the best car they ever owned.

In short–the old school philosophy based on hunches, a previous good experience with no context is as disastrous as simply looking at players as numbers, throwing them together and adding the numbers together to see if it’s a winning combination and going from there.

An engine just doesn’t need parts–it needs fluids: oil, transmission fluid, antifreeze, power steering fluid etc.

If the players constitute the “parts” then perhaps the fluids represent the intangibles: chemistry, teamwork, leadership, hustle, grit–the never say die attitude–a team cannot function absent these things and the quality of them can be the determining factor between comparable engines/teams.

My point?

I’ve taken a lot of heat for my prediction that the Yankees are an 85 win team this year–many have pointed out the talent on hand and the additions made and all but guaranteed me a 95+ win club based on the numbers.

I know these things already.

However, I wasn’t dissing the Yankees–to me they’re a team in transition; they’re an old club–yes, they’ve added a couple of talented pitchers but then again in recent seasons they brought aboard other talented pitchers: Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, Carl Pavano (the man was talented–it just ended at the Adam‘s apple), Jose Contreras, Jeff Weaver (don’t laugh–Weaver was 25 when he joined the team and had a 3.97 ERA over his previous 551 IP), Jon Lieber (4.10 ERA in 686.2 IP from 1999-2001) etc. but for whatever reason the Yankees didn’t get what they expected from them. The numbers were certainly there but when added to the engine, their (the pitchers) performance suffered–it was a poor fit for these men.

Hence, I am not automatically assuming that C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett will translate into Sabathia’s NL numbers or A.J.’s 2008 performance in 2009 with the Yankees. Yes, Mark Teixeira is a significant upgrade to Jason Giambi but Alex Rodriguez was an off-the-charts step up from Aaron Boone and what happened there?

The Bronx Bombers are still finding their way in the new information age; according to Joe Torre, Brian Cashman once suggested to him to bat Doug Mientkiewicz and Jason Giambi 1-2 in the batting order because of their high OBP.

Seriously.

They’re climbing a steep learning curve and are a bit behind–they’ll get there but there’s work still to be done.

Since Andy Pettitte was drafted, how many starting pitchers did the Yankees develop and retain that have tossed two seasons of 200 IP? How many have they drafted?

Almost 400.

Let’s face it–that is a staggering level of ineptitude…only Chien-Ming Wang (I’ll count 199.2 IP as good enough to qualify) since 1991.

This means that the organization has had to import their starting pitching–players developed by other clubs with differing philosophies; it worked when teams had trouble retaining their own talent but in Selig’s Brave New World fewer and fewer ace-quality pitchers hit the marketplace (or become available in trade) and have had to settle on guys that could perform in some environments but not necessarily in the Bronx.

The big change in the Yankees’ fortunes really came about between 2003-2004 when they lost Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and David Wells (the latter two being southpaws–duh) and went to an all right handed rotation (a bad fit in Yankee Stadium) and nobody in 2004 tossed 200 innings while the departed trio had all topped that mark the previous year.

Again, the importance of the right parts as opposed to the shiniest ones was demonstrated.

The Yankees added two right handed pitchers for 2009 but how many of the candidates for the rotation are consistent 200 inning starters and can be reasonably counted on to assume that kind of workload?

Sabathia is a good candidate, Pettitte might have one more 200 inning season in him, Wang might–but that’s far from a sure thing, Burnett has never had back-to-back 200+ inning seasons and the organization will not try to get that many out of Joba Chamberlain, Ian Kennedy or Phil Hughes.

Will Sabathia and Burnett be Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens 2.0 or the second coming of Javier Vazquez and Carl Pavano? We won’t know and can’t assume the former (or the latter to be fair).

As to the offense, aside from age issues, they’re hoping Nick Swisher will replace Bobby Abreu’s production and barring a miracle that’ll be a step back plus A-Rod will be out for awhile.

Sure, there’s talent there but the 1965 Yanks looked good on a paper as well and were coming off four straight pennants.

The Yankees will be fine but I think they are in transition–a lot of players came off the books and next year Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Andy Pettitte will likely be gone as well.

Hence, I see an 85 win team and fair minds can disagree.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about–the last time they won it all they were an 87-win team in the regular season.

Oh well, such are the hazards of prognostication.

P.S. For those who accuse me of being biased against the Yankees there’s a wonderful tool called “Google”–I think you’ll find about a 10:1 ratio of positive to negative articles when the club is a column topic for yours truly and there’s no way I could find work in the New York media with those kinds of numbers.

Best Regards

John