I was going to attempt this post in the vein of Jay-Z’s “99 problems and a bitch ain’t one”, but the thing is, the Yankees don’t actually have 99 problems.

Well, I’m sure they do, but I got stuck after 34–and that was with the majority of them being completely nonsensical.

So where does a manager who brought the Yankees a 100+-win season and their 27th World title in his second year with the team–and third, overall–rank in terms of issues the Yankees may deign to consider as the dawn of the 2010 season approaches?

Pretty far down. I can think of a lot others–both serious and not-so-serious–(these are only in the order they occur to me)

Oh. And for the record, since this seems to sail over some people’s head: If the following is all that plagues your franchise, you are in remarkably good shape.

For instance,

1) Nick Johnson, who history tells us will probably get hurt at some point, is supposed to be the fulltime DH.

What happens when Johnson goes down? Right now your fillers are Randy Winn and Jamie Hoffman; otherwise you’re talking Posada DHing and Cervelli catching, and if Cervelli goes down, you’re rushing Jesus Montero. Johnny Damon would be the perfect fit here, of course, but it looks like both sides blew that one.

2) Jeter’s 36, Mo’s 40, A-Rod’s 35, Posada’s…you know what? I’d rather not know.

For a team that prides itself on getting younger, many of the most important players–Jeter, Mo, A-Rod, Posada, Pettitte–are all on the wrong side of 35.

I’d hate to be considered agist, but the older you are after your mid-20s, the easier it is to wear-and-tear and get hurt, and the Yankees, as 2008 showed us, can ill-afford a slate of injuries. To keep them healthy, Girardi needs to rest them, but when he does rest them, he gets hammered Jim Caldwell-style for sitting his starters…

3) Our best prospect is a 20 year old kid who’s never played above AA.

Yeah, sure, trades are fun, but we’ve more or less gutted the upper levels of our farm system. Sure, Kelvin DeLeon and Slade Heathcott and Manny Banuelos may turn out to be studs, but they are a long, long way off.

2009 worked as well as it did because we had guys like Cervelli and Peña who, though not All-Stars, could still come up and do their fill, what was needed of them, and not be completely overmatched. It meant that hurt guys, like Posada and A-Rod, could take their time coming back, instead of risking re-aggravating their injury.

4) In the time it takes Joba to set between pitches, I managed to finish, print, revise, print, publish and ship my novel.

Speaking of which, there’s the whole Joba-vs-Phil debate, and then someone is bound to bring up the 8th inning thing again, and meanwhile you want to tear your hair out because you remember that good pitchers aren’t built in a day–even though the rest of the media seems to have forgotten this.

5) That (rhymes with duck)-ing moat.

And Kate Smith. And Cotton Eye’d Joe. And YMCA. And fans doing the wave. And everything that says “let’s be cheesy” instead of just letting fans enjoy the game that’s played on the field, like the main attraction it’s supposed to be.

6) The fact that if Granderson and Winn hit back to back, there exists a potential “Grandy and Randy go back-to-back, ain’t that dandy?” from Sterling.

‘Nuff said.

Yeah, there are a lot more problems, I’m sure, but the point is, all things considered, Joe Girardi isn’t really a worry.

Yes, if the Yankees miss the playoffs it will be 2-of-3 years that they missed, but let us not forget that in 2008 the team lost many of its best players due to injury for extended time and still managed to win 89 games–which would have made the playoffs in at least two other divisions.

Then, last year, Girardi and his team won over 100 games, far and away the best team in the league, and virtually steamrolled through the postseason.

Honestly, there are other New York coaches–Tortorella, Coughlin, whatever dude manages the Mets–that should find their seats a whole lot hotter…

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From here

The yellow shaded teams are the postseason teams.

Notice anything? No?

That’s exactly the point. The amount of innings your starters pitch is utterly no guarantee of postseason success.

Nor are bullpen innings.

Of course, there are two important considerations:

1) When Chien Ming Wang and Sergio Mitre make as many starts as they did for the Yankees in 2009, the bullpen’s gonna get its fair share of work;

2) Just because your starters pitch a lot of innings doesn’t mean they are good innings–or that your offense is any good, either.

Still, the over all randomness is something much in line with some of the really more intense stat developments (I’m trying to make my way through The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball and failing so miserably it’s funny), and less in line with conventional wisdom.

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Deadspin’s sister site Gawker is saying that Derek Jeter is rumored to be Sports Illustrated’s 2009 Sportsman of the Year.

The fun part about things like this is that, depending on the way you look at things, Jeter might not even be the sportsman of the year on his own team (me? I’m a fan of giving the award to the entire team, but that’s another story).

The Yankee Captain earned his fifth World Series ring in 2009 and broke the record for all time hits as a Yankee, though he’s still about two seasons away from hit number 3000.

We’ll see soon enough if the rumor is confirmed, but as it is, enjoy your Thanksgiving leftovers and enjoy the weekend.

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Well, baseball awards week is upon us.

In the spirit of award-giving, I’d like to offer the following awards to members of the Yankee team:

Best Cook: AJ Burnett and his pie á la towel dessert.

Most Eager Rocker: Mark Teixeira

Best Eyes: In an upset, Francisco Cervelli defeats long time winner Andy Pettitte.

Best Roll Call Response: Nick Swisher and the Swisher Salute™.

Best Reason to make Scrambled Eggs: Melky Cabrera’s line after hitting for the cycle–picked up by YES cameras and Spanish-speaking lipreaders nationwide.

Best Reason to Cut My Hair So I Don’t Rip It Out: Robinson Canó coming to bat with runners in scoring position and two out.

The Nails Krzyzewski Award for Grit: Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez

It’s All About the Karma Award: Eric Hinske, for his third consecutive World Series appearance.

Best Reason to Learn the Japanese Word for “Daddy”: Hideki Matsui. Game Six. ‘Nuff said.

Self-proclaimed Idiot with the Single Smartest Play in the World Series: Johnny Damon and the Double Steal of Doom.

Allergic to Pie Award: Derek Jeter. And you, get your mind out of there!

The Fiery Clubhouse Leader Award: Jorge Posada

The I-am-God Award: Mariano Rivera.

All awards are non-transferrable and non-redeemable for other hardware such as MVP, Cy Young, etc. Winners receive all the honors associated with such awards.

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[I'm working on something big. I have been since yesterday evening and I haven't the slightest idea when I'll be done. So if the posts these next couple of days are spotty, this is why. I think, though, should I finish in the manner I want--and it is doable once I figure out how--it will be well worth it.]

There are a lot of reasons you can say that the Yankees had a successful 2009.

They pitched well.

They hit the baseball.

They played solid fundamentals when other teams did not.

So on and so forth.

There is, however, in my mind one thing that stands out, one crucial difference between the success of 2009 and the failure of 2008 and it is thus: With a few exceptions, this was a team that managed to stay healthy all year.

That’s a pretty significant feet.

Let’s compare.

In 2008, the Yankees lost Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui for more or less the entire season, lost Chien Ming Wang halfway through, lost Johnny Damon for a few weeks, lost Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, lost Brian Bruney…on and on you can go, and I know I’m missing people. Even Andy Pettitte pitched the second half with an injured shoulder.

In 2009, the Yankees lost Xavier Nady for the season, Wang for the majority of the season with a brief June interlude, Alex Rodriguez for a month, Brett Gardner for a month, and their catchers for a couple of weeks.

The difference, however, is that in 2009, with the exception of Nady and Wang, all of the injured players made a full recovery. Rodriguez, Molina and Posada were all hurt early in the season, but returned early. Posada returned before Molina and Molina’s replacement, Francisco Cervelli, performed much better than many of us had hoped.

With the exception of Wang, the starting rotation stayed healthy–Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte and Joba made nearly all of their starts–without question more production than the ’08 Opening Day rotation of Mussina, Pettitte, Wang, Hughes and Kennedy.

If 2007 and 2008 were the years where everything went wrong, 2009 was the year where everything went right.

Now that the World Series has been one, I no longer need worry about mentioning the team’s good health becoming a jinx.

Unless, of course, someone decides to play an off-season pickup basketball game…

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At some point we knew.

Knew the Yankees were going to go all the way.  Knew that 2009 was our year.

I can’t remember the date, but I remember walking to the subway to go to a Yankee game, getting stopped by an older man who asked if I was a Yankee fan and how far the team was going.

“They’re going all the way,” I had said, but that was more happenstance, trying to say the right thing at the right time.

When did I know the Yankees had a special team this season, beyond just being a good, playoff-bound team and into a season I would be telling my kids (someday in the very distant future) about?  When did you know?

For me, ask much as I loved the walk-offs, as much fun as the walk-off wins made this season, as much as it was just like watching a group of kids having fun playing a game, the moment for me came in August, when the Yankees swept the Red Sox in four games.

Four games on otherwise ordinary August nights that, without question, felt like the middle of October.

For the first time, really, the Stadium got loud, and all four games the Yankees found various ways to win–slugfests, pitcher’s duels, the long ball–four games where everything went right for the Yankees and everything else went wrong for the Red Sox.

It’s not all that hard to be a good baseball team if you have good baseball players and good fundamentals, but among the x-factors that seperate good from great, among the things such as health and as clubhouse chemistry that may or may not be a factor, there’s also luck.

To have the luck the Yankees have had this season, though–and the luck they had in that sweep–that can’t be blind fate.  That’s luck created by the Yankees and for the Yankees.

That four game sweep?

That’s when I knew that the Yankees in 2009 were a team so good that they could create their own luck.

When you create your own luck, it’s hard to fail.

***

So what about you?  When did you know that this would be a special year?  Was it when the Yankees beat the Red Sox to clinch the AL East?  When Teixeira and the Yanks walked off against the Twins?  When David Robertson got out of that bases loaded, no one out jam?  When the final out was tossed from Canó to Teixeira?

At some point, you knew.

You had to.

This team was simply too good.

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(h/t Jonathan Mayo)

Topps and MiLB came out today with their awards for the top players in each of the minor leagues.

The full list can be found here.

For the Yankees, Shelley Duncan of the International League and Austin Romine of the Florida State League took home the honors.

Duncan, a Yankee fan favorite was .277/30/99; Romine was .276/13/72 in what is generally considered to be a pitcher’s league.

Jesus Montero did not make the list, but there are probably a couple of reasons why–his season was split in two leagues, A+ and AA, and he missed the final month with a rather grotesque finger injury.

Still, it’s nice when all aspects of the Yankee organization can do well, as seems to be the case here.

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(Idea h/t to Amanda Rykoff)

With apologies to the Blue Jays, Orioles, Indians, Royals, Twins, Rangers, Mariners, Athletics, Nationals, Mets, Braves, Cubs, Pirates, Brewers, Reds, Padres and Dodgers.

We have waited.

Since Luis Gonzalez blooped and since the demons of the Angels and since the great ALCS hangover and since the Collapse and since the Angels again and since the underachievers and since the midges and since the Final Season.

Since Spring Training ‘roids scandals, since an inauspicious start, since April rain, since 0-8, since having to start a .190 AA catcher (and the dreamy eyes of doom), since a Return, since the first walk off, since a dropped pop up, since the Boston Sweep Party, since it was cold, then warm, then cold again.

Since the start of October, since the excision of demons with one ninth-inning swing, since parting finally with the idle among us, since out-fundamentalling a team that couldn’t handle cold weather, since Halloween, since fall back weekend.

We have waited.

Now there is only one thing left us: One more win.

So close, and still we wait.

We wait as the college basketball season starts and football reaches the midpoint of the season.

We wait, leaving no discussion point unturned: Can Andy pitch on three days’ rest? Should Girardi be fired if Hairston starts for Swisher? Can Mariano pitch two? Even three? Will it rain? Is Utley still the MVP even if the Phillies lose?

We come up with playoff play lists and theorize as to how much someone would have to pay for us to part with game six tickets. We muse about the travesty of nightfall at 5.30 in the afternoon and laugh as beat writers post game threads 24 hours in advance (a mistake, they say…).

We wait.

In Spanish, the verb “esperar” means to wait.

It also means to hope.

We wait, and we hope.

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