A funny thing happend on Phil Hughes’ road to stardom.

Phil Hughes: Here he comes again... again. (AP)

In his second-ever start, Hughes flirted with a no-hitter, and then he got hurt. Injuries returned again in 2008, limiting him to just 34 innings that season. In 2009, Hughes moved to the bullpen to make room for Chien Ming Wang in the rotation. Wang would injure his shoulder on Independence Day that year and ultimately not pitch another inning for the Yankees; Hughes woud excel as the team’s eighth-inning setup man, helping the team, but at the price of his own development. In 2010, at the still-young age of 24, Hughes pitched well enough in the first half of the season to earn himself a bid to the All-Star game; whether because of fatigue or another reason, the second half of the season was not nearly as successful by most statistical measures (if it was successful at all). Those struggles continued in an exaggerated form in early 2011,  landing Hughes on the 60-day DL yet again. He returned in July and was still below league average, despite how much he seemed to have improved from April.

Going into the 2012 season, the pitcher many once thought might be the centerpiece in a trade for Johan Santana has surpassed 100 major league innings in a season just once (in 2010), and has spent a total of 319 days—almost a fifth of the five years since his major league debut—on the disabled list. It might seem cruel to call a pitcher who will turn 26 in June a failed prospect (if there is such a thing), but since Hughes started so early one has to measure in terms of seasons, rather than age. There’s no rule that says a player has to peak by his fourth season in the majors, but one would expect any player to have shown improvement, something Hughes—very likely do to the substantial time missed—has not done in quantities that would inspire confidence.

With the logjam currently provided by having seven starters for five rotation spots, it would thus seem logical that barring a stellar spring training, Hughes would not be the first choice for that last rotation spot. At the very least, Hughes offers the Yankees a certain flexibility they don’t have with A.J. Burnett or Freddy Garcia: Hughes has has had success pitching out of the bullpen, and he is not far removed from that experience, either.

There’s just one problem with that scenario: assuming Mariano Rivera, David Robertson, Rafael Soriano all pitch well and stay healthy, not to mention the possibility of a resurgent Joba Chamberlain at some point during the season, Hughes would end up quite far down on the bullpen depth chart, in roughly the same role Luis Ayala had last season. It would take a catastrophic injury or a mid-season retirement to boot Rivera from the closer’s role; Robertson more than earned  his eighth-inning spot (which he inherited after injuries to Chamberlain and Soriano) and Soriano is due $11 million in 2012. Even Corey Wade pitched well enough to have earned his place at the table. Assuming the starting pitchers throw the baseball vaguely in the direction of home plate on any sort of consistent basis, the current set up would allow Hughes the sixth inning as the highest-leverage situation available. Without getting into discussions about leverage and why the number of an inning is not necessarily a harbinger of how important that inning is to that particular game, the fact remains that in such an alignment Hughes would rarely be pitching anything other than mop-up innings.

Then again, there is a reason Joe Girardi’s Yankees have been known for the stellar work of their bullpens. By their very nature, bullpens are the most volatile component of any baseball team, and their composition changes frequently, often in-season, utilizing both prospects and cheaply-had journeymen. Mariano Rivera is deified by fans not just because he was that good at his peak, but because his peak has lasted the better part of two decades. History and logic both suggest that there is no way all four at the top of the Yankees’ current bullpen hierarchy make it through the season healthy and while pitching effectively.

Soriano, who has a lengthy injury history of his own (including elbow and shoulder problems) might be considered the greatest injury risk, but Robertson might very well be due to regress as well. Robertson’s numbers overall for 2011 were outstanding; his numbers in high-leverage situations are such that one has to wonder just how much longer that success rate can be kept. No tightrope walker, no matter how good, can walk the high wire forever. Robertson’s walk and strikeout rates in 2011 are well within his career norms; the sudden decrease in ERA might very well be attributed to the substantial decrease in both hits and home runs per nine.  Given the steady peripherals, it would seem that luck (or a very good defense) was at much at play in 2011 as anything else, and no one is lucky forever (and especially not with an aging infield, which, while maybe not the Detroit Tigers, is certainly no Evers-Tinkers-Chance).

In an ideal world, with every reliever healthy and pitching to his potential, and assuming Hughes doesn’t all of a sudden find “it”, the Yankees might seek to recoup some value for Hughes on the trade market (he is, after all, still relatively cheap and it might be tempting for some teams to think that a change of scene might unearth his untapped talent), but major league baseball is not played in an ideal world. bullpens almost never make it through a season unscathed, so should the Yankees decide to place Hughes in the bullpen and not the rotation, it is more than likely he will get his chance. Again.

I’m pleased to welcome the latest contributor to the Pinstriped Bible, Rebecca Glass. Rebecca has written about baseball for ESPN and You Can’t Predict Baseball and will soon be joining me at Baseball Prospectus as well. In the short time I have known Rebecca, she has not only become a good friend, but I have been impressed by her erudition, sense of humor, and fanatical devotion to all things Montero. Alas, that last went unrewarded, and given that she not only wields words but swords, I would advise the Yankees not to disappoint her again. You can follow her at @rebeccapbp, but remember, be nice or *snikt!*—Steve

Hiroki Kuroda: A veteran starter, and a good one, he won't be going to the bullpen. (AP)

Teenage girls are supposed to decorate their rooms with posters of guys their fathers wouldn’t be caught dead to have them date, but I took a slightly different approach. Instead of Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt (okay, so there were a few of those, too), I decorated my walls and closet doors with clippings from Sports Illustrated, New York Times, ESPN The Magazine and the hometown paper, The Record.  If it had a member of the Yankees, Devils or Jets on it, it was good enough to go up, and thus my walls became so adorned.

One posting, in particular, I remember: a season-preview, with George Steinbrenner surrounded by members of the pitching rotation he assembled, and the headline: YOU CAN’T HAVE TOO MUCH PITCHING (Just ask George).

A couple of thoughts come to mind now, thinking about that particular cover:

1) The pitching hero of the postseason that year for the Yankees was not a starter, but instead Mariano Rivera, with his three shutout innings in Game 7 of the ALCS against the Red Sox;

2) When you have a full 40-man roster, unless you’ve got Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander and Tim Lincecum as your rotation (and Dave Duncan as your pitching coach), you can certainly find yourself having too many pitchers.

Such is the situation the Yankees now have, both in theory (how do you cut a presumed seven-man rotation down to five?) and in fact (the 40-man roster is full, and Hiroki Kuroda doesn’t yet have a spot on it). The most obvious solution is to drop an excess pitcher; Kevin Whelan, who did not impress in the majors last season and turned 28 a few weeks ago, would seem an obvious candidate.

Spare bullpen pitchers are not as hard to find as one might imagine, so cutting Whelan or similar is a low-risk proposition, but the problem of seven pitchers vying for five rotation spots (CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes, Freddy Garcia, Michael Pineda, and Kuroda) is less easily solved. Barring catastrophic injury, one can assume Sabathia’s spot in the rotation is safe, and, as long as last season’s forearm injury has healed, the same goes for Nova. The Yankees didn’t trade Jesus Montero to put Pineda, one of the most promising young starters in the game, in middle relief, and the veteran Kuroda has been a very effective career starter. That means Burnett, Hughes, and Garcia are vying for one spot.

This is not quite the Joba Chamberlain/Hughes rotation battles of seasons past. Those were clashes of youth; Hughes can’t be called a prospect anymore, while Garcia and Burnett are veteran journeymen. If the Yankees chose to send one of the three to bullpen, Hughes would probably be the most likely candidate. He did, after all, pitch most of the 2009 season from the bullpen and was crucial to the team’s World Series run, so he would not be an entirely unknown quantity in that role, as volatile as relief pitchers may be. Garcia and Burnett have never pitched out of the pen; between them they total 70 years of age and seven games in relief.

If the Yankees do flip Hughes to the bullpen, they would, assuming no trade has been consummated by the end of spring training, still be left with Burnett and Garcia vying for the fifth-starter role and the uncomfortable question of what to do with the one left on the outside. The Yankees’ reluctance to drop a struggling Burnett from the rotation last season meant they ended up using a six-man rotation for much of the second half;  given Bartolo Colon’s second-half struggles, the Yankees lucked into a strategy that worked for a time. Over a full season, it becomes a different story—especially since it’s hard to argue that Sabathia’s or Pineda’s workloads should be reduced so that neither Burnett nor Garcia bear the ignominy of not being good enough to make the starting rotation.

There is, of course, an elephant in the room, a big one, decked out in jewels and with the King of Siam enthroned on it. Said elephant is Burnett’s massive contract. If Burnett and Garcia received similar-enough pay, the decision wouldn’t be quite so hard—Garcia hasn’t been brilliant, but unlike Burnett, hasn’t been so bad as to have writers and fans calling for his removal from the rotation. If Garcia outperforms Burnett in Spring Training, which would not surprise too many, the Yankees are still left with the problem that it’s a lot easier to unload a $4 million contract than an $33 million one (with limited no-trade protection to boot). It would be a heck of a lot easier to find another team willing to trade for Garcia than one willing to trade for Burnett.

Precedent does exist for trading underperforming players with bloated contracts, and the sheer fact that Burnett has managed to stay healthy over the past three seasons (an irony that should not be lost given his history) means that he has some value, although it’s unlikely the Yankees would be able to get much in return, and not without eating a substantial portion of the contract. For a team trying to rein in spending like a Eurozone economy, simply swallowing the remainder does not sound like a policy they would pursue, although it’s a moot point–the money is gone either way, so the choice isn’t between spending the $33 million remaining on the contract or not, it’s a choice between spending it and letting Burnett drag the Yankees away from the postseason or letting another team be the recipient of that gift.

It is almost an impossibility that the Yankees will be able to go through the entirety of the 2012 season with just five pitchers in their starting rotation. Pitchers get hit, get hurt, and, like all other humans, occasionally have personal emergencies that take them away from the team. If it turns out that last year’s success has no bearing on Garcia’s ability to pitch this year; if Nova’s forearm injury at the end of last season is a harbinger of a worse elbow problem (or he simply regresses); if Sabathia hurts his shoulder—if any of these things happen, then what the Yankees do with a spare part becomes a moot point. Sure, Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betances might be waiting in the wings (along with the lower-ceilinged, but still promising Adam Warren and David Phelps), but being a prospect alone does not guarantee success—of the Chamberlain/Hughes/Ian Kennedy Big Three of just five years ago, one needed Tommy John surgery, another struggled as much as (if not more) than Burnett at one point in 2011, and the third, while successful, is no longer with the team. Depth is a wonderful thing to have, but it disappears the moment it needs to be used.

It’s an odd situation in which the best-case scenario is that the Yankees would eat $33 million of a pitcher who was their number two starter in the World Series in 2009, has stayed healthy, and has pitched at least 185 innings in each of his seasons as a Yankee. This scenario assumes that the Yankees could get something of significance in return for their money; while an open roster spot is not without value, it cannot give you a quality start every five days. Best-case scenarios, though, rarely occur, and the Yankees, at some point will need a sixth (or seventh) starter. The Yankees are left with a situation in which there is no good answer where Burnett is concerned—even if he outperforms Garcia and Hughes in Spring Training, the sample size would still be too small when compared to the previous two seasons to inspire too much confidence—even as some would say, there is no such thing as too much pitching.

Who wants to see a great player struggle? During this offseason, there has been much speculation as to when Mariano Rivera will choose to retire, something he dropped hints about last season. My only preference is that whenever he does it, it’s too soon rather than too late. I don’t want to see Rivera fail.

I am too young to remember Willie Mays playing for the Mets in 1972 and 1973, but when I was growing up, that last go-round for the Say Hey Kid had become a symbol of something sad, the pain that came with watching a formerly great defender struggle to cut off balls he used to catch before they rolled past him to the wall, to strike out at the pitches he used to hit. His fans didn’t want to see him that way.

My own experience with this phenomenon came in the early 1990s, when I watched Don Mattingly change all too soon from the MVP of 1985 to the sore-backed singles hitter who batted .256/.308/.335 in 1990. In his case the problem wasn’t age, but injury. The result was the same—we were forced to watch something we just didn’t want to see.

Jorge Posada officially announced his retirement today. One of the first Pinstriped Bible crusades, right at the beginning of this feature’s existence, was that Posada had to displace Joe Girardi, and the sooner the better. The 1998 season had demonstrated what a valuable hitter Posada was. Girardi’s lack of offensive value had been established for almost ten years. In 1999, the imbalance between the two was perhaps even more extreme, even though Posada had a poor year by his standards. He hit only .245/.341/.401, but Girardi was far worse at .239/.271/.354, and made a point of hitting into just about every double play possible. The Yankees finally figured that Posada’s “apprenticeship” was ready to end at 28, and in 2000 he had the first of his really big seasons.

Now we’re on the other end of the string, and it’s clear that Posada had reached the end of his utility. I know that you can look at his production versus right-handers (.269/.348/.466)  in isolation and say that Posada had something remaining in the tank, but what you’re looking at, given his lack of glove, speed, or right-handed swing is a left-handed DH and pinch-hitter with good-not-great numbers which were (A) compiled in a very streaky way, and (B) were no guarantee to repeat at age 40. The Yankees can approximate that and get more flexibility into the roster spot. It was, at least insofar as the Yankees went, time.

That Posada elected not to try to stretch his career for another year makes for a nice symmetry on his baseball card and a sentimental feeling in terms of fans, team, and player, but more importantly, his career can end on the note of his .429 average in the 2011 postseason rather than what would have been almost certainly the inevitable result of his transfer to a new address—too few at-bats to get going, followed by a midseason release when the roster spot was required for an extra pitcher or a player who could actually contribute in more than one dimension. That would have been a Willie Mays ’73 moment even more than last season threatened to be. Better to stop here.

In the last 72 hours we’ve seen the Red Sox deaccession Marco Scutaro for little return and, imminently (or so the great oracle Twitter tells us) signing Cody Ross. The Sox will apparently go with a mélange of Mike Aviles, Nick Punto, and Jose Iglesias at shortstop. That assumes there is not a shoe yet to drop in a trade for a mysterious all-around shortstop that, let’s face it, probably isn’t avaialbe. Major League shortstops hit .263/.317/.380 last season. Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Reyes are spoken for, and unless Boston is going to undo a long-ago trade and bring a disgruntled Hanley Ramirez back from Florida—that seems unlikely for about 56 reasons, from the obvious, like, “Hanley is a miserable defender” to the obscure, such as “mayonnaise goes poorly with peanut butter,” where you’re not sure exactly why it would play into the odds of such a trade happening, you just know that it’s true and that it likely does.

Teams have won with a mix at shortstop, just as they have won with a mix at every other position. You will sometimes hear baseball talking heads say that it’s so important to have a regular at position X because X is the captain of the defense or the lynchpin of the something or other, but the truth is there are no hard and fast rules. The 1956 Yankees, to pick one championship team at random, had five shortstops. The 1998 Yankees split the starts at catcher almost evenly between Jorge Posada (85) and Joe Girardi (76). There is nothing inherently disqualifying about Boston’s combination of theoretical offense (Aviles) and actual defense (the other two guys), assuming that Bobby Valentine deploys them advantageously and doesn’t overlook the former’s defensive limitations or the latter’s lack of hitting.

Ross and Ryan Sweeney would make for an interesting platoon if Sweeney actually hit right-handers well enough to play an outfield corner. He’s a career .296/.352/.402 hitter against righties, while averaging .233/.306/.289 against his fellow southpaws. Both might play in the early days as Carl Crawford is questionable to start the season on time, but on the whole this is a timeshare that will struggle to live up to the .267/.337/.431 that AL right fielders hit in 2011 unless everything goes just right. (They will easily surpass the .233/.299/.353 Sox right fielders hit last year, but that isn’t the point. “Better than bad” still isn’t good.) This seems more dubious to me than the decision to go with a shortstop-by-committee, as right field is a place where one would have a greater expectation of offense.

Clearly there are more moves yet to come—it has been rumored that the Sox have been clearing money for Roy Oswalt—but it has been a strange offseason for the Yankees’ rivals to the north after a stranger finish to the 2011 campaign. I have argued on and off this winter, mostly on the SiriusXM radio show, that the Sox should not automatically be counted on to recover from their disastrous finish and be a contender in 2012. I still think that’s the case. They won’t be bad, but for them to win the 95 or more games that the AL East crown requires will mean they had the health they lacked last year from pitchers who may not be capable of that, not to mention a successful conversion of Daniel Bard to the rotation and no regression or subpar seasons on the part of, well, anyone.

None of these things seem certain, or even likely, with or without Roy Oswalt. You can’t ever dismiss the Red Sox, but the main threats to the Yankees’ return to the postseason may come from other directions.

Last season, the average designated hitter batted .266/.341/.430 with 20 home runs. That figure is dragged down by absurdly low production at the position from three-fourths of the AL West. A more appropriate reflection of what the Yankees might want to look for from the position can be found in what they received last year. Despite Jorge Posada’s career-ending battle with the position, almost everyone else who received time there contributed something, such that the Yankees got .251/.336/.450 with a league-leading 30 home runs.

Note 1: Johnny Damon hit .261/.326/.418 with 16 home runs.

Note 2: Carlos Pena hit .255/.388/.504 with 21 home runs against right-handed pitching.

Note 3: Andruw Jones hit .286/.384/.540 with eight home runs against left-handed pitching.

Note 4: Jorge Vazquez, a right-handed hitter, averaged .262/.323/.498 against right-handed pitching at Triple-A, with a strikeout in 35 percent of his at-bats. As a point of comparison, Mark Reynolds of the Orioles, the guy who has struck out between 196 and 223 times the last four years, struck out in 37 percent of his at-bats against right-handed pitching last season.

Still, I suppose you can’t leave any stone unturned lest the quarry think you’re bluffing.

This trade came down while I was co-hosting BP’s Friday night radio show on SiriusXM, and as we chatted about the deal, I could only look on helplessly as Twitter filled up with invective directed against the trade by Yankees fans. I understand the disappointment at losing Jesus Montero, but if you look at the deal objectively, it is impossible to argue it’s a bad one for New York. Stacked together, the top of the Yankees’ rotation is 13-foot-2, weighs 550 pounds, and struck out 403 batters last year. Whatever else you think of the deal, remember that. It is a fact.

In adding the 6’7”, 260 pound Michael Pineda, 23 in four days, to slot in behind CC Sabathia, the Yankees have achieved an aggregation of pitching mass likely unequaled in the history of baseball. More importantly, they acquired one of the best young pitching talents in baseball, a right-hander who a year ago was listed as the #16 prospect (and #7 pitching prospect) in all of baseball. Since that ranking, Pineda pitched a full season in the big leagues, posting a 3.74 ERA, striking out 173 batters (9.1 per nine) while walking only 55 (2.9 per nine), and limited batters to 133 hits in 171 innings. He represented the Mariners at the All-Star Game and finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year balloting.

Pineda’s fastball sits around 95 and goes higher, and he has a swing-and-miss slider to go with it. There is also a changeup, but it’s notional and—well, you know all of this stuff if you’ve been on line at all today. Here are the negatives you’re going to hear about:

• He dominated right-handed hitters, but the lack of a good change means that lefties hit, well, still not well, but better.
• His ERA was 2.92 in pitcher-friendly Safeco, 4.40 on the road.
• His first-half ERA was 3.03, his second-half ERA was 5.12.
• He has fly-ball tendencies, which is a problem in Yankee Stadium.
• Batters hit .261 on balls in play, and such things don’t last.
• They could have gotten Cliff Lee or Felix Hernandez for him.
• He could get hurt.
• He cost the Yankees Jesus Montero, a very fine young hitter.

To these things, I reply, in reverse order:

• Montero may hit very well, but he doesn’t have a position, and that is always going to put pressure on him to hit extremely well. Getting a fully developed pitcher who has ace-level stuff for a bat-only player is a no-brainer.
• Yes, he could. Pitchers do that. However, you still need pitchers, especially good young ones.
• No. If they could have, they would have. Given that Montero’s lack of position made him a difficult fit for most or all teams, not just the Yankees, it was always going to take a lot more to get a Cy Young winner.
• Such things do not last. However, Pineda may develop other compensations. He is a second-year pitcher who was not a finished product last year. The Mariners absorbed his on-the-job training. The Yankees reap the benefit, at least in theory.
• The fly balls will go out at a higher rate in New York. However, with enough strikeouts, it won’t matter.
• Glass half full: he got tired, having never pitched so many innings before. Glass half empty: the league figured him out and he couldn’t adjust. Either way, a year of experience should help mitigate the problem.
• Again, we have to see what a year of added experience does for Pineda. What he was last year, he may not be in the future, but the stuff and command remains.
• Yeah, well, you can’t have everything, but this does bear watching given Yankee Stadium’s proclivities.

I know we’ve been told for a few years now that Montero was going to be a huge impact hitter in the majors, and he may yet be that, but the Yankees had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t a catcher for them, or anything at all. At the winter meetings, Joe Girardi was asked who the starting catcher was. A: Russell Martin. Is Montero the reserve catcher? A: No, that’s Francisco Cervelli. Well, is he even the reserve first baseman? A: If Mark Teixeira got hurt, Nick Swisher would play there. Now, nothing says that Montero might not be spectacularly valuable in that role, as Edgar Martinez was. But I use Martinez’s name pointedly—he was one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time. You have to be that good to have value without a glove, or else a team could find a player who might hit only three-quarters as well but also provides a benefit in terms of fielding, baserunning, and roster flexibility.

I should note the Yankees also gave up Hector Noesi, a likely middle-reliever/back-end starter, but received teenager Jose Campos, a right-handed pitcher who has good stuff and excellent command. He’s a million years away from the majors, but he’s a real prospect.

Meanwhile, the starting rotation had been a scary place. Sabathia, Ivan Nova—a candidate for regression, A.J. Burnett—a candidate for never being good again, Phil Hughes—who knows?, and Freddy Garcia—coming off his first good year in six. That assemblage hardly inspired fear. Now, with the addition of Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda, signed to a one-year deal tonight, the Yankees have, among other things, a rotation in which every starter’s name ends in the letter “A” if Garcia is in it, but the bigger point is that Garcia doesn’t have to be in it, or Hughes doesn’t, or even, and perhaps especially, Burnett doesn’t. They have depth and they have choices.

You know me: I would like to see the Yankees go with youth whenever possible, and in dealing Montero they lose the one ready hitter they had at the upper levels. However, Pineda is a kid also, of a better quality than any of last year’s Triple-A stalwarts and battletested. He is more of a sure thing at this moment than is either of the Killer Bs. As for Kuroda, at 37 he’s hardly a kid, but he does have impeccable command, and on a one-year basis the risk is minimal and no one is getting blocked on a permanent basis. I’d be more disappointed were he taking the rotation spot of a 22-year-old, but he isn’t—it wasn’t him it would have been Garcia or even Hughes, going on 26 and no longer a kid but another of dozens of mid-twenties ex-prospects looking to get established in the big leagues.

In all, Brian Cashman and the Yankees did well for themselves on Friday night. As I said at the outset, I saw a good deal of hostility towards this deal in the early going, but keep one thing in mind: Montero may or may not prove to be something special, but the Yankees now have two hulking strikeout pitchers at the top of their rotation. There is nothing speculative about that statement, and therein lies the genius of the deal.

Bernie Williams: Not as good as Kirby Puckett? (AP)

I was watching the Hall of Fame announcement show on the MLB Network on Monday–congratulations to a very deserving Barry Larkin–and something Peter Gammons said as an aside in a discussion of Bernie Williams’ suitability for the Hall of Fame stuck with me: “He wasn’t as good as Kirby Puckett,” the Great Gammo almost muttered, as they cut to a commercial break.

I haven’t been able to put that comment out of my mind, because I’m not certain why Gammons is so sure. Both were excellent hitters with very different skills who nonetheless arrived at similar results. Puckett was short and stout, Williams long and lithe. Puckett reaped a huge benefit from his Metrodome home park, hitting .344/.388/.521 at home, .291/.331/.430 on the road. Williams was about the same hitter everywhere. Both were Gold Glove center fielders who won several of the defensive awards with their bats. Both won a single batting title. Puckett led the AL in hits four times; Williams walked too much to compete in that department.

Career-wise, Williams looks a little worse overall, but that’s because his peak isn’t quite so high and his career is a little longer. Due to glaucoma, Puckett’s career came to an abrupt end, depriving him of a decline phase, whereas Williams got to play until he was no longer useful. If you consider both through their age-35 seasons, it’s a virtual tie: Williams had hit .301/.388/.488 in 1804 games, while Puckett hit .318/.360/.477 in 1783 games. When you adjust for time and place, there isn’t a lot of difference–at which point, I would argue, you have to look at Puckett’s home-road splits.

...Or is it the other way around? (AP)

Normally, I don’t think it’s fair to hold an extreme home field platoon split against a player. Not every hitter who played at the Polo Grounds became like Mel Ott. Fenway Park doesn’t turn just anyone into Jim Rice. Being able to take advantage of your home park is, I think, a skill. However, if you’re comparing two players of roughly equal ability, and one hit everywhere and the other was no fun on the road, it seems fair game to point that out.

Then there is the postseason. Puckett played in two postseasons, won two World Series, and was excellent throughout, hitting .309/.361/.536 in 24 games. Williams played in 25 postseason series and hit .275/.371/.480 in 121 games. He did not hit well in five of his six World Series, but did hit 22 home runs in postseason play. Puckett was clearly better, but Williams played the equivalent of a full season in October, Puckett the equivalent of one month. It’s impossible to say what he would have done given the same amount of playing time.

This may not mean anything, but in looking for a novel way to compare the two players in terms of peak value, I took the top 200 seasons by center fielders as rated by wins above replacement (WARP) since 1950 and sorted them into individual piles for each player. I wanted to know which center fielders had claimed the highest percentage of the seasons on the list. In the end, about half of them were supplied by just 17 players:

I don’t know if that says that Williams was better than Puckett, but it’s just another point that suggests that Gammons was too quick to dismiss ol’ #51.

I had a request on Twitter to say a few words about Andy Carey, the former Yankees third baseman (1952-1960) who passed away in mid-December at the age of 80. Carey played on four Yankees pennant winners, including the 1956 and 1958 championship teams. Carey has always been a hard player for me to get a fix on. He came to a couple of the Old Timers events that I’ve covered since beginning the Pinstriped Bible, but he seemed debilitated and I didn’t get to speak to him. He doesn’t seem to have been a particularly quotable guy and didn’t leave behind much in the way of colorful anecdotes. He played in Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956 and made some key plays. In 1958 he had three two-homer games, including a 5-for-5 at Fenway Park.

As a hitter, he was inconsistent. After a couple of cups of coffee, he arrived as a regular, or as regular as Casey Stengel’s players got, in 1954 and hit .302/.373/.423 in 122 games. That was good production for third base at the time—you had Al Rosen in the AL, Eddie Matthews in the NL, and a few other guys, but the position wasn’t deep—especially from a 22-year-old. That’s a nice base for growth, but the next season Carey was down to .257/.313/.378, albeit with a league-leading 11 triples (he tied with Mickey Mantle). He had another good part-time season in 1958, hitting .286/.363/.486, but for the rest of his career he was a league-average hitter at best.

Some of that was due to Yankee Stadium being as hard as it was on right-handed hitters back then. There were also some injuries, a debilitating case of mononucleosis, and some conflicts with Stengel—Stengel liked his players to play multiple positions, but Carey wasn’t interested in being one of the Professor’s interchangeable parts. Finally, in May 1960, with Carey behind glove wizard Clete Boyer on the depth chart, the Yankees dealt him straight up to their favorite trading partner, the Kansas City A’s, for a former Yankee, outfielder Bob Cerv, who was also heading towards the end of his major league career.

Carey spent three more seasons as a roster ping-pong ball, bouncing from the A’s to the White Sox to the Dodgers (there was also an abortive trade to the Phillies) before going on to a career in business.  He had a good career, and given his presence on some great teams, a remarkable one. I do like this one story, from Dom Forker’s oral history, Sweet Seasons:

I was invited to the Yankees’ spring training camp in 1952… I went out to my position, and I drew a line between third and shortstop. Phil Rizzuto said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m drawing the line. Anything on your side of the line is yours. Rizzuto had been there for eleven years, and he couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t ego on my part. I had worked hard to get there. I was just sending a message to the regulars that I intended to stay.

I’ll have more to say later, but for now, may it suffice to say that he was one of the most important least-appreciated Yankees of all time; his glovework was never pretty, but his bat helped the Yankees conceal many a sin at other positions. Here is what I wrote about him for the Baseball Prospectus annual between the 2008 and 2009 seasons:

Take a glass still hot from its time in the dishwasher, fill it with ice water, and watch it shatter. The Yankees cracked under a similar strain in 2008, going from the heat of Posada’s best season to the frigidity of Molina’s replacement-level production. Posada’s throwing shoulder troubled him from the outset, and though the Yankees tried to keep him in the lineup by giving him time at first and DH, they were eventually forced to bow to the inevitable. Posada couldn’t throw and couldn’t load his swing with any power, and he was miserable playing out of position. Surgery to repair labrum and capsule damage was performed in late July. Posada is expected to be ready for spring training, but what lingering effects the injury will have, now and in the three years remaining on his contract, are unknown. Posada will probably never get much respect from Hall of Fame voters, but those that failed to notice he was the Yankees’ secret weapon all these years should heed what happened when this career .299 EqA hitter was removed from the lineup.

I’m sure you recall what I was referring to–the Yankees went 89-73 and finished out of the playoffs for the only time in recent memory. Posada had reached the end of his usefulness given that he could no longer catch, but whatever his flaws it may be some time before the Yankees have an all-around catcher as valuable as he was again (and yes, I’ve heard of this Montero fellow, but it doesn’t seem as if he’ll get the chance).

The Yankees won’t be signing Hiroyuki Nakajima, but that’s probably not a big deal anyway. I spoke with Ichiro Kubota at Japan’s Slugger magazine to get a scouting report on the infielder. What I heard wasn’t all that exciting. “Like Jeter, he has a good inside-out swing,” Kubota said, “but I doubt he can do the same thing in MLB. It is possible for him to hit .280 in MLB but don’t expect him to hit 15 or more home runs.”

Well, okay, that’s fine—we only expect a utility infielder to hit so much, and maybe for all of that Nakajima would be above average for the role (were he to accept it). However, we do expect them to field. What’s the report there? “Many observers feel that his defense is not very good to say the least. In 2010, his UZR of  -19.4 was the worst among the regular shortstop in NPB” Oh, swell. How about versatility?  “His arm is not strong that would be a problem in 3B.”

Maybe Nakajima wouldn’t be such a great signing after all, then. One question provoked by this is, “Why start?” Another is, does the decision not to meet his price open the door for Eric Chavez’s return. Given Alex Rodriguez’s increasing fragility, it does seem necessary for the Yankees to have a real reserve third baseman, by which I mean not just someone who can adequately stand at third base, but a true quality player who could take up a month of playing time without hurting the team.

It doesn’t seem like Chavez is that guy anymore. From 2010 to 2011 he hit .251/.302/.347 with three home runs in 271 at-bats. Perhaps he can still field the position, but there just isn’t a whole lot of there there. There isn’t much left on the free agent market either. Ex-Yankee Wilson Betemit is still floating about, and the guy can still hit, batting .290/.359/.479 over the last two seasons (675 PAs). He will not field the position well, will drive you crazy with his strikeouts, and it seems as if he has to play fairly regularly to find value. Still, if you’re really concerned about getting real offense at the position when/as/if A-Rod takes his sabbatical, maybe that’s a way to go. Otherwise, it’s a trade, and it certainly seems as if an upgrade on Chavez is something worth trading for.

With the Red Sox trading Josh Reddick and two other prospects to Oakland for closer Andrew Bailey and outfielder Ryan Sweeney, the reassembly of AL East 2011 is almost complete. Jon Papelbon fled to the Phillies, so the Red Sox needed another strong arm for their late-game activities, particularly with Daniel Bard theoretically headed to the rotation. Sweeney is not a traditional corner outfield bat, but he’s a good fielder, but Sox right fielders hit just .233/.299/.353 last season, so they don’t have to get much from Sweeney to consider it an upgrade—though “upgrade” is a far cry from “championship-level contribution.”

Still, all the Sox have to do is re-sign David Ortiz and they will have recreated the shape of their 2011 team, much as the Yankees are bringing back their 2011 team. Unless you’re pining hard for a Jorge Posada encore, there won’t be any reason to miss any of your division-title favorites. We’re not going to see improved contenders in 2012, just sequels. You can argue that a full season of Jesus Montero at designated hitter will be an improvement over what Posada and pals did last year, and you would be right, but we don’t know for certain if that is happening and probably won’t until 50 or so meaningless spring-training plate appearances have gone by.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have picked up ex-Sox reliever Hideki Okajima, 36, who spent the entirety of 2011 at Triple-A Pawtucket. He could be the fabled second lefty the Yankees have been looking for and perhaps the replacement for free agent Luis Ayala in the bullpen. Losing Ayala is not a bad thing—in writing comments for the forthcoming Baseball Prospectus 2012 recently, I realized that Ayala’s 2.09 ERA was not at all indicative of how well he actually pitched.

Okajima had three very effective seasons setting  up for the Red Sox beginning in 2007. Since then, batters have been less reluctant to fall for his combination of deception and declining stuff—he never threw hard, at least, not in the US of A, but he’s now down to about 87 mph on average. Over the course of his Major League career, he’s held left handers to .218/.277/.323 rates, which is very nice, and right handers to .253/.323/.397, which is not so bad that you have to automatically pull him from the game if the opposing manager has sandwiched a righty between two lefty hitters. It just isn’t clear that he’s that guy anymore. Clearly the Red Sox did not think so.

Perhaps there are more changes coming, perhaps not. I’m not sure that 2011 was a season that you would want to revisit like some classic film you buy on DVD and watch again and again. Some combination of the economy and a lack of sure things at the right price in the offseason market have pushed these normally aggressive clubs into a conservative approach this winter. Improvement doesn’t necessarily require an outside acquisition in every case, but the internal options aren’t reassuring.

Does your willing suspension of disbelief allow for a second season in which a rotation of CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova, A.J. Burnett, Phil Hughes, and Freddy Garcia are enough to survive to the postseason, let alone win a World Series? I’m not sure that mine does, nor am I certain that Dellin Betances and Manny Banuelos will ride to the rescue in a timely fashion, as their control issues may not resolve so neatly as to allow for instant success in the majors.

Similarly, Adam Warren, David Phelps, D.J, Mitchell and the other “older” members of the Scranton gang aren’t automatic difference-makers but are four-five types at best. A four-five pitcher might be better than Burnett has been on most days, but perhaps not that much better. In any case, it would have been good for them to get a few looks in 2011, but depending on your point of view, the situation either didn’t present itself or the Yankees failed to exploit those occasions when it did. They remain untried, so how their less-than-ace stuff will play remains a complete mystery.

So, we are back for another episode of “Girardi’s Island.”—“With Granderson… Nick Swisher,too…”—except we hope that unlike in that series, this installment of the story has a different ending than the last.