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HRs and RBIs are not the stats to use here. You have no measure for batting average or, more importantantly, OBP or slugging percentage. It would be better to use win shares or some of the linear weights stats.

Even still 30 HRs out of a Betemit/Phillips platoon seems high. 15-25 HR would be a much closer guess to what any decent projection system would say.

And why do you assume that it should be easy to get a goood hitting first baseman? We haven't had a decent hitting non-Giambi first baseman since 2001.

Baseball Reference has Pete Palmer's batting wins on the site (the number of wins a player added relative to the league average hitter). Last year, A-Rod had 6.8 batting wins. He won't do that again in 2008, so you can be very conservative about next year and say that he will have, for him, an average Yankee season of 5 batting wins next year.

In his career, Betemit's highest batting win number is 0.1; Phillips highest is -0.2. Betemit will probably improve next year. So, let's say that he gets 0.5 batting wins and that the 3B position next year for the Yankees provides 0.5 batting wins overall.

That leaves 4.5 batting wins to make up at 1B. Last year, Prince Fielder had 4.6 batting wins. So, if the Yankees, can get someone who hits for them in 2008 like Prince Fielder hit in 2007, then they won't be hurt by ARod's departure. That should be no problem ;)

Basically, if the Yankees do let ARod go, the prudent decision would be to use next year as a re-building year.

Why can't we keep Minky?

Nah I think Steve is right here. I don't think the offensive production would be a huge dropoff even with Betemit at 3B and Duncan at 1B the entire year.

If the Yankees are to go back to the way they won things in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000, they have to worry more about pitching than hitting. It's just that simple. Alex Rodriguez isn't sporting any bling and frankly, I'm not sure he's ever going to. Another postseason in the Bronx, another miserable failure by A-Rod.

BUT next season the Yankees will have Kennedy, Chamberlien, Hughes, Wang and maybe Pettitte in the rotation with Mussina being a backup starter for injury.

After 2008, both Johan Santana and Mark Teixeira are free agents.

Wouldn't it be more wise to sign Santana and give the Yankees a potential rotation of:

Johan Santana, Joba Chamberlein, Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes and Chien-Ming Wang along with Teixeira playing 1B to provide some offense that the Yankees lost with A-Rod leaving and get back to winning with pitching?

As a Yankees fan, I simply don't understand the need for A-Rod. Boston isn't going to sign him. There is no way Theo Epstein is going to cave and give Boras a 12-year deal while Boston rots and it because another San Francisco deal where the entire show is whether or not a player can break a record for the latter part of the contract. Frankly the Yankees don't need him either. Sign Johan Santana away from Minnesota and put him with the youngsters and what team is going to beat New York in the regular season or the postseason?

It ain't happening. Besides, you never want more than 10%-15% of your payroll so the Yankees at minimum would push payroll up to $200 million in keeping with A-Rod all the while expecting him to do great things when it counts.

He's not going to. Let him go rot with the Cubs or Angels or Dodgers. Let's get back to what got us those 4-rings in the late-90s and what teams actually win with: PITCHING!

"Alex Rodriguez isn't sporting any bling and frankly, I'm not sure he's ever going to. Another postseason in the Bronx, another miserable failure by A-Rod."
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I thought you were a baseball savant. That statement right there just doesn't make sense to me. If you're attributing the 2004-2007 postseason results to A-Rod's "miserable failures" then you seem to be willing to exonerate poor starting pitching, poor relief pitching, and no contributions from guys like Giambi, Matsui, and others. From what I remember of last week, Jeter and Posada didn't do that great either. How can you blame an entire team's collective loss on one individual?

I agree the Yanks won from 1996-2000 due to exceptional depth and quality in their pitching staff. But having A-Rod on the team doesn't preclude them from still having a dominant pitching staff. And since you're convinced (as I am) that Hughes, Chamberlain, Kennedy, and Wang represent a brighter future for Yankee pitching then I don't see what A-Rod's return to New York has to do with that...since those guys are already ours and at way below market value.

Although I'm not opposed to the idea of Johan Santana I still think the Yanks should think long and hard before committing $20M/season to a starting pitcher if they're not even willing to consider $30M/season for an everyday player who was instrumental in the team making the playoffs in 2005 and 2007. Plus, it's not like the Yanks -- or other teams, for that matter -- have had a lot of luck with big-ticket free agent pitchers.

Sabathia could be a FA after 08 too.

What's this love with AP? I'd much prefer a Shelley/Betemit platoon at 1b. that combo could realistically hit 30 HR (no way with AP) and go .270/.370/.500 combined. if Arod leaves, maybe Lowell comes back? or put Betemit at 3b, and have a Shelley/Giambi/DMint platoon at 1b. either way the team is better with Arod of course.

~~~And why do you assume that it should be easy to get a goood hitting first baseman? We haven't had a decent hitting non-Giambi first baseman since 2001. ~~~

Well, you're right there - but, maybe that's the GM's fault? {wink}

You do have a good point on the stats outside of HR and RBI. I focused on them because everyone is so quick to point to them - with "How can you let A-Rod go? Where else are you going to get 50 HRs and 150 RBI?"

The big thing to me would be the OBP drop - as A-Rod makes a lot less outs than Phillips/Betemit would at third.

The key there, to me, is to have Betemit/Phillips bat 9th like Scott B. did in 1998. That takes away 1 to 2 PA per game - compared to A-Rod batting 4th. With less PA, that's less outs added. It could help offset the drop in OBP.

To say that Sabathia & Santana will be FA & sign here, those are pretty big assumptions to make.

Well, you're right there - but, maybe that's the GM's fault? {wink}

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Not to bring the GM stuff up again, but a terrible decision by the GM or someone hasn't been discussed recently here. That is the decision to not give Carlos Pena a chance in 2006 and to let him go last season for nothing.

I was also thinking about how difficult it is to replace Hall of Fame level offensive production. Basically either you have to have another Hall of Fame type to replace the departed or a very strong organization to make up for the loss. The Yankees essentially replaced Ruth with DiMaggio(Gehrig's loss was overshadowed by the war.). DiMaggio was replaced by Mantle.

On the other hand, look what happened to the Yankees after Mantle slipped, after Reggie left, after Winfield left, and after Rickey Henderson left.

The Yankees don't have the positional depth to replace A-Rod without a big hit to their offense. Their young pitchers may be able to offset it for the team to some extent, but they are young pitchers (and, as you've said before, good young pitchers don't always come on the scene ready to make great contributions.

Not to bring the GM stuff up again, but a terrible decision by the GM or someone hasn't been discussed recently here. That is the decision to not give Carlos Pena a chance in 2006 and to let him go last season for nothing.
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To be fair, the Red Sox let him go last year for nothing too.

~~~To be fair, the Red Sox let him go last year for nothing too.~~~

Yeah, but they didn't have the gaping hole at 1B that the Yankees had. Remember the crazy Gary Sheffield experiment?

How about the Tigers?

Do they have a hole at first? How come they let Pena go as well, before the Yanks? Isn't Dombrowski, like Theo, supposed to be some kind of genius?

The reason why the Yanks let Pena go is simple: nobody saw this season coming, and there was no real reason to.

Oh, almost forgot; at the time the Yanks let Pena go, they had Jason Giambi and Andy Phillips at 1st base. Giambi was still playing half-time at first base, and his line at the moment Pena was released was .254/.414/.592/34/93. Phillips was not hitting nearly so well, but there was no real evidence Pena would do better, as Pena's line at Columbus was .260/.370/.454/19/66 in 381 AB. The Yanks had signed him to a deal whereby if they didn't call him up by a certain date, he could ask to be let out of his contract.

He wasn't, he did, and the Yanks did. End of story.

Evan 3457,

I remain unconvinced. I went back and looked at the lineups from last year and, in 12 out of the 15 games before Pena was released, the Yankees played ENRIQUE WILSON!! at 1B. (Phillips must have been hurt at the end of July.) That is just an idiotic lack of imagination on the part of the Yankees.

Sure, Pena's numbers at Columbus don't look so great(or terrible), but that's a matter of performance analysis. You and I can do that, but the Yankees have the additional resources provided by scouts. No scouts could tell that his swing couldsomeday produce the kind of season that he had this year.

my mistake -- that was Craig Wilson. Still, I think that trying out Pena would have been better than making that trade for Craig Wilson.

There is no way to measure the extent that Arod improves the numbers of the hitters around him in the order. Surely, Abreu's resurgence (as much as I like him,) had everything to do with hitting in front of an Arod who was on fire the entire year. It allowed Bobby to be all the more selective, driving up the pitch counts for opposing starters. So while I appreciate the statistical analysis, Arod's full impact cannot be fully gaged in this way. Put Arod in at cleanup and he improves the numbers of each member of the lineup, particularly those of the 2, 3, and 5 hitters.

You need either great depth in the lineup (i.e. this year's Indians, last year's Tiger's) or one or two devesting hitters in the lineup (i.e. Ortiz/Ramirez or V. Guerrero) to give a no-so-deep lineup a boost by inflating pitch counts and getting pitchers to show less-than-elite hitters more hittable strikes.

Without Arod, the Yankees lack both depth in the lineup and a knock-out offensive force. Their offense would suffer greatly as a result. 2008 becomes a rebuilding year and the playoff streak ends at 12 (which in the long run may not be such a terrible thing.) Arod at $30mil/year now is a bargain. 10 years from now it is not (unless he is chasing Bonds, which is a big "if")

huh? the Yankee lack depth in their lineup? that's a new one.

lets compare the Yankee lineup OPS+ this year to a lineup that defines the "one man lineup" the Giants.. no that's too easy, lets just compare it to the so called great depth lineup, the Indians...

2B: Cano 120 , Barfield 54 (lol) A.Cabrera 101
CF: Melky 89 , Damon, 97, Sizmore 122
SS: Jeter 121, Peralta 100
C: Posada 154, V-Mart 127 Shoppach 101
3B: A-rod 177, Blake 101
LF: Matsui 123, Michael /Lofton both 87
RF: Abreu 114, Nixon 78 Gutierrez 103
1B/DH: Mink 107 Giambi 108. Hafner 118 Garko 117

Soo... the Yankees beat the crap out of the Indians in 2B / SS / C / 3B /LF / RF and lose a lot in CF , 1B... so... the Yankees win in 7 outta 9 spots, even minus A-rod they still have the better top hitter ... that must conclude that the Indians have more depth!