Now owning... Number 2%... Derek...Jeter...Number 2%

Craig Calcaterra over at Hardball Talk posted an interesting link today, citing to Kevin Kernan over at the NY Post:

The Yankees need to find a way to make Derek Jeter a Yankee for Life. There's really only one way. At some point the Steinbrenner family would have to take him into the ownership group.

Jeter, of course, is in the final year of his 10-year, $189 million contract. The Yankees and Jeter will come together on a new deal at some point, but Jeter needs to be a Yankee for Life and there is a way to make him one. The Yankees need to work out a deal with Jeter where they allow him to become part of Yankees ownership after his playing days are complete. Players cannot be part of ownership, so this would have to be a separate deal.

Craig questions the need for this:

First thought: why do the the Yankees need to find a way to make Jeter a Yankee for life? He's important, sure, but I think the Yankees are more important to him than he is to them. The team has done just fine without making Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, or Reggie Jackson an owners, so I tend to think they'll survive just fine if they were to hold the line at "special assistant to the general manager" or "spring training instructor" when it comes to Derek Jeter's future role with the team.

First of all, I think Craig is missing that times have changed just a little bit since Babe, JoeD, Yogi, Mickey and even Reggie played. Back in "the day", players' salaries were a tiny fraction of what they are today and, even though franchise values were also a tiny fraction of what they are today, I don't think you'd find a period of time where one players contract has a total value comparable to the value of an entire franchise (see ARod - 10 years $277 million; Florida Marlins - $277 million).

Second, today's players understand that they are a business unto themselves, and do look to other business ventures beyond their playing days. A player or former player owning a piece of the franchise with which he is most identified is not unprecedented. Magic Johnson bought a small percentage of the LA Lakers in 1994 (which he had to sell when he made his comeback in 1996). And Mario Lemieux bought the
Pittsburgh Penguins in 1999 to keep them out of bankruptcy.

If the Yankees franchise has a $1.5 billion value as reported in Forbes, then a two percent ownership interest would be worth $30 million. Not huge by today's standards, and this could likely be worked into a new contract. And this would be a symbolic percentage for The Captain, #2.

As a short aside, I remember going to a Yankee game in 1993 or 1994 and seeing an advertisement in Yankee Magazine for the sale of a 3% limited partnership interest for $2 million. (My memory isn't that precise - it might have been 2% for $3 million...) I remember talking with my father-in-law about how cool it would be to buy that and get to sit in the owners' box, meet the players, and someday get a World Series ring. At the time it seemed like a pipe dream, but to this day I wish we had figured out a way to pull it off.

Yankees get Chan Ho'd

So the Yankees signed Chan Ho Park as roster filler yesterday. Hey, its not my $1.2 million they're spending, so good on them.

I've been playing fantasy baseball since 1996, and I think the three pitchers I've had the most fun with have been Jose Lima, Ramon Martinez and Chan Ho. By fun, I mean mocking the teams in my league who somehow ended up having any of these three on their active roster. With Park, it became so bad that whenever someone's pitcher had a disaster start, we would say they got "Chan Ho'd".

So now the pitcher who somehow managed to put together a decent two-thirds of a season out of the bullpen in the non-DH league, on a team that got to face the Nationals, Marlins, Braves and decimated Mets more than anyone else now moves to the AL East and gets the Red Sox, Rays, and rejuvenated Orioles on a regular basis. Hey - at least he'll see the Blue Jays every now and then.

Color me a hater - or at least a skeptic - but I do not see this ending well.

High Can O' Corn

OK, my first original thought laid out here...

Maybe intentionally, maybe not, but I think the Yankees may have tapped into a new efficiency model: using their greater financial resources to compile a pitching staff that permits them to use their best pitchers to throw the greatest number of innings. It sounds so simple, but it never seems to happen.

The average AL team totaled 1,441 innings pitched in 2009. The Yankees expected 2010 starting rotation - Sabathia, Burnett, Vazquez, Pettitte and Chamberlain - threw 1,008 combined in 2009. Rivera, Hughes and Aceves totaled 236 more. If you assume a slight innings increase from Joba, you are looking at somewhere between 1,250-1,300 IP in 2010 from the Yankees' top 8 pitchers (usual caveats, disclaimers and provisos apply). This leaves only 150-200 innings for the rest of the bullpen, which can be filled by only two or three pitchers from the Marte, Gaudin, Mitre, Robertson group.

So the Yankees fill more innings from their top 8 pitchers - in fact, as many as 90%. This in and of itself constitutes a competitive advantage. In 2009, the Yankees' top-8 gave them only 1,085 innings out of 1,450, or 74.9%, leaving 365 innings for the likes of Wang, Veras, Albaladejo and Tomko. Squeezing an extra 150-200 innings from your frontline guys rather than your roster filler sure seems like a great way to ease any potential burden on the offense.

The ancillary benefit to this is that they could realistically have only an 11-man pitching staff, instead of the 12 or 13-man staff that has become the norm. This could give them more roster flexibility than other teams, which is another competitive advantage, allowing them to carry, say a third catcher (letting Montero caddy for a while?) or add another platoon outfielder.

Can't Winn for Losing

Joel Sherman tweets that the Yankees have signed Randy Winn pending a physical. No terms yet, but it better be for no more than $2 million. Color me underwhelmed.

Ostensibly, he's signed to be the righty half of an outfield platoon (although Winn is a switch hitter) - could be for Gardner, could be for Granderson. Although the 35-year-old former (Devil) Ray, Mariner and Giant had decent seasons in 2007 and 2008, he completely fell off a cliff in 2009. But, for the right price he's worth taking a flyer on for 200 ABs out of the nine-spot - decent glove, decent baserunner, passable offense.

What the hell is ANSKY?

Welcome to my baseball blog! I intend to use this both as a brain dump and as a place to link to fun/interesting/provocative articles I see elsewhere online. I hope to include general baseball topics, but expect to see a Yankees slant to things, as I am a lifetime Yankee fan, now transplanted to South Florida.

In case you're wondering about the origin of the blog name, just watch this: