The playoffs are just heating up and the off-season talk has already begun in New York.  It seems some memo was passed around to every sports reporter in New York to write an article about what needs to be done to “fix” these New York Yankees.   So it was no surprise when I saw the title of Jon Heyman’s article yesterday, “Meet the 2006 Yankees.”  I was surprised, however, at how someone who’s getting paid to cover baseball, knows so little about it.

The article starts off just fine – Mr. Heyman suggests the first order of business should be re-signing Brian Cashman – but immediately after he starts making suggestions that would have caused even Bill Veeck to raise an eyebrow.

His first such suggestion is for the Yankees to make a deal with the Red Sox – Gary Sheffield for Manny Ramirez.  Mr. Heyman does recognize at least one problem with this deal: money.  Manny has 3 years, $57 million left on his deal while Sheff has only 1 year, $13 million left on his; however, he still fails to see the biggest problem with that.  He mentions that Sheff would need to get an extension to make him happy; what he doesn’t mention is that the Yankees, who are trying to cut payroll by about $10 million this year, would be adding $6 million to their payroll this year, and $19 million over the 2 seasons after that as well.

Granted Manny Ramirez is a better hitter than Gary Sheffield, and the difference is likely to increase at least slightly in 2006 as well since Manny will be 34 while Sheff will be 37.  But is his bat so much better that it would be worth $6 million more dollars next season (we won’t even look at paying him $38 million the 2 seasons after)?

To decide just how much better Manny Ramirez is than Gary Sheffield, I’ll be using two stats from Baseball Prospectus: EqA and EqR.

For those of you not familiar with these two stats, here’s a brief explanation of each one.

EqA, or Equivalent Average, is an attempt to measure the total offensive output of a player, adjust it for the home park of that player, and set to a scale that mirrors batting average.  This means that an EqA of .260 is always league average and that a .300 EqA occurs just as often as does a .300 BAV.

EqR, or Equivalent Runs, takes the EqA of a player and how many PA they’ve had to determine the number of runs they’ve created.

If you want more information, I suggest taking a trip to Baseball Prospectus after you’re done with this article.

In 154 games, Gary Sheffield had an EqA of .302 and created 106 EqR.

In 152 games, Manny Ramirez had an EqA of .317 and created 112 EqR.

As you can see, in 2 fewer games, Manny Ramirez created 6 more runs than Gary Sheffield.  Using the generally accepted theory that 10 runs is the equivalent of a win, we see that Manny Ramirez added just over ½ a win to his team compared to Gary Sheffield.  Paying anything over $2 million for 1 win is a bad idea; paying $6 million for ½ a win is like throwing money over a balcony.

Mr. Heyman then goes on to state, “If the Yankees don't do anything else this winter, they must shore up that crummy defense, deepen that thin bullpen and re-emphasize character (the Ramirez-Sheffield trade goes to the third objective).”

Mr. Heyman wants better character and defense on the Yankees.  Mr. Heyman wants to trade for Manny Ramirez.  Is anybody else seeing a contradiction here?  Manny Ramirez is the worst defensive LF in the game.  His ZR among qualified LF is last, and almost 100 points lower than the next worse, Hideki Matsui.  Gary Sheffield is no Andruw Jones out in the OF either – ranking the 3rd worst in the majors among qualified RF – but he’s still closer to the best RF in the game than Manny is to the 2nd to worst LF.

I could list 1,000 reasons to want Manny Ramirez on my favorite team.  Good character is not one of them.  Sure he seems like a nice enough guy, and there’s something about his goofy personality that I just can’t help but like, but if you want better character, you don’t trade for him.  Does anybody really think a “Manny being Manny” moment would fly here?  Does anybody think that George Steinbrenner, the New York media, and Yankees fans would stand for it when Manny doesn’t run to 1st base, decides not to chase down a flyball, or decides he’s a cornerback in the middle of a baseball game?  Manny Ramirez is a character, but he does not have good character, at least not as far as baseball is concerned.

Mr. Heyman’s next big trade proposal is Robinson Cano for Torii Hunter: a 22-year old 2B with an OPS+ of 102 for a 29-year old CF with a 107 OPS+ last year but a 100 OPS+ for his career.  Jon Heyman’s reasoning for trading the younger, cheaper, and more-likely-to-improve Robinson Cano for the decidedly average Torii Hunter: “he's a certifiable space cadet in the field.”

Cano made his fair share of errors this year, I’ll admit that.  But he’s a rookie.  Rookies make mistakes, then they learn from them.  This kind of knee-jerk reaction is what the Yankees need to avoid if they want another Dynasty.  In his first full season, 2-time Gold Glove winner Luis Castillo had a FPCT .001 better than Cano.  Bill Mazeroski, 8-time Gold Glove winner Bill Mazeroski’s had a FPCT .003 better than Cano in his first full season.  It took Hall of Famer, and 5-time Gold Glove winner, Joe Morgan until his 3rd full season in the majors to post a FPCT better than Cano’s, and still, the difference was slight.  Making errors in the beginning of your career does not doom you to a career of making mistakes.  Robinson Cano can and will get better.

Torii Hunter, on the other hand, is 29-years old, is making $8 million a year, and has seen his range drop off significantly since just a couple years ago.  The latter is not likely to change either, with Hunter missing over 60 games this season due to a broken ankle.  This is the player that’s going to anchor our OF defense?

To replace Cano at 2B, Mr. Heyman suggests signing Braves’ SS Rafael Furcal and moving him to 2B.  I’ll ignore the fact that Heyman wants the Yankees to acquire yet another shortstop superior on defense to Jeter only to have him play a different position, and focus instead on Furcal’s value and what he’s likely to cost.  Furcal is a very good player, he’s a great defender and is league average on offense, which is pretty good for a SS.  He’s also the only good SS available in what already is a weak FA class.  To sign Furcal the Yankees would have to offer around $10 million a year for 4 or so years.  There’s no way Furcal is really worth that much, especially not to the Yankees.

I’ll agree with Heyman’s next suggestion, signing B.J. Ryan to be Mo’s setup guy.  If he’s willing to do it, he would provide us with a 1-2 punch in the bullpen rivaled only by the Angels duo of K-Rod and Scot Shields.  Plus, he could be our closer of the future for when the unthinkable happens, and Mariano Rivera retires.

If the Yankees can’t acquire Torii Hunter for Robinson Cano, Mr. Heyman suggests they offer Johnny Damon 4 years and $40 million.  $10 million a year for a 32-year old CF who in the span of one year walked over 20 fewer times and saw his SLG% drop almost 40 points.  Damon may have improved his batting average in 2005, but the chances of him repeating the feat are very small.  Should we be spending $10 million a year on a barely above-average hitter who’s best defensive days are, like Torii Hunter’s, far behind him?

As if his article wasn’t bad enough already, Heyman decided that the key to fixing the Yankees was…acquiring yet another member of the 2005 Boston Red Sox, John Olerud.  This, Heyman concludes, will improve the Yankees’ IF defense by moving Giambi to DH, while getting more offense than what we got from Tino.  Mr. Heyman ignores the fact that Giambi’s OPS as a 1B was over 350 points higher than when he DHes, and has been significantly higher his whole career.  He also ignores that Olerud is 37 years old, hadn’t slugged over .400 since 2002 before his season with the Red Sox, and was still a below average offensive 1B.  Yeah, that sounds exactly like the type of player we need to get rid of  get for our team.

We’re also supposed to trade groundball machine Chien-Ming Wang for extreme flyballer Barry Zito.  That should be a good fit for our mediocre OF defense (even if we acquire either CF Heyman suggests) and Yankee Stadium, which has generally been a slight HR-friendly park.  Who cares that Zito is older than Wang, already makes $5 million more than him (this will increase before 2006, too), and is less likely to improve in 2006.  We need him to be in our rotation, gosh darn it!

In the rest of the article I agree with Jon Heyman, although the amount he think we should offer Matsui, about $40 million for 4 years, seems at least $5 million to high and 1 year to long.  Trading Carl Pavano for anything of value would be nice, even if you have to eat quite a bit of his contract to do so.  Bringing back Cashman is certainly a good first step; keeping Torre, despite his many shortcomings, is probably the right idea…for now; and hiring someone like Leo Mazzone would be an unbelievable boost.  But hey, we could replace Mel with an automatic ass-slapping machine and I bet the effect would be the same.

Hopefully in the upcoming months we’ll actually see some intelligent articles getting written about the Yankees’ off-season.  Probably not, though.

Marvin the Marvelous Mormon can be reached at mormon@nomaas.org