He might, but either way, Girardi is in the discussion.
He should be, even though I don't really care for him as a manager.
Also, did anyone else see how happy Jeter got last night after Posada's hit? I think the only time we see him that excited is when they win the World Series.
I don't get this line of thinking. He should be in discussion for manager of the year, yet you don't care for him as a manager?
Dude has done a good job this year, if nothing else for having the bullpen in a good spot going into the playoffs.
He might, but either way, Girardi is in the discussion.
He should be, even though I don't really care for him as a manager.
Also, did anyone else see how happy Jeter got last night after Posada's hit? I think the only time we see him that excited is when they win the World Series.
I don't get this line of thinking. He should be in discussion for manager of the year, yet you don't care for him as a manager?
Dude has done a good job this year, if nothing else for having the bullpen in a good spot going into the playoffs.
Do we have to go through this again?
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Not just that, but decisions he's made that have cost the Yankees games.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Not just that, but decisions he's made that have cost the Yankees games.
The yankees have won 89 games (with a pitching staff that included Rasner and Ponson), 103 games and the world series, 95 games and within 2 games of the world series and 95 and counting. Every manager fucks up, but I don't see how you can really complain. Does he over manage at times? Sure, but he also gets it done.
Xavier can speak to how the players feel about him better than anyone but I get the sense they are behind him more this year than they have been.
Everyone in the school lobby is looking at me because I can't stop laughing from this picture.
Haha - nice.
It didn't take long to find a good one on google images. Actually they all are.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
The Yankees had no choice but to pursue higher ground. They were falling behind their biggest competitors, the Boston Red Sox, in the information arms race.
“(The Red Sox) were having a great deal of success with players of lesser ability,” Cashman says. “I studied what they were doing to some degree, adjusted accordingly, brought the Yankees up to speed, brought us into the 21st century.”
John Henry, whose ownership group purchased the group in December 2001, wanted to apply principles from his success in the investment world to sports — and objective analysis was part of his mandate.
Henry offered Beane a record contract for a GM — five years, $12.5 million. When Beane said no, Henry turned to a Beane admirer, Theo Epstein, who had graduated from Yale and was then 28.
“Even before the book came out, even before Theo actually had the job in Boston, we had been friends,” Beane says. “He believed in some of the metrics available.
“Then, when John Henry bought the Red Sox, you had an owner that had a belief system in objective analysis. When he buys one of the biggest franchises in the game and hires a guy like Theo, that was a big accelerator.
“You could see it coming. There was an underlying current going on with some of the teams, and first and foremost with the Red Sox.”
Beane recalls that other trends were developing at the time. Bright young minds such as Andrew Friedman, Chris Antonetti and Jon Daniels entered the game; all eventually would become GMs. Baseball Prospectus emerged as a go-to website for the statistically minded, and other, like-minded sites launched as well, increasing the level of discourse.
“For me, it started in San Diego, working for a small-market team,” says Epstein, who spent five seasons in the Padres’ baseball operations department before joining the Red Sox as an assistant GM in March 2002.
“I spent the vast majority of time focused on players who were undervalued for some reason or another, trying to build value through small acquisitions, through looking at players through a slightly different lens than the marketplace.
“When I got to the Red Sox, our roster at the time had plenty of star power, but the second half of our roster was not strong. It was a nice opportunity to apply those principles in roster construction to a big-market club.”
Three undervalued players — first baseman Kevin Millar, third baseman Bill Mueller and designated hitter David Ortiz — were among Epstein’s initial acquisitions. The 2003 Red Sox came within five outs of reaching the World Series. The ’04 Sox won the Series, ending The Curse of the Bambino once and for all.
The ’07 Sox featured three prominent Epstein draft picks – second baseman Dustin Pedroia, center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury and closer Jonathan Papelbon – and won the Series again.
“The 2003-04 teams that Theo assembled had a Bill James-type textbook offense,” Henry says, referring to the influential sabemetrician who is now a senior advisor with the Red Sox.
“The 2007 team had young players drafted with certain principles now widely employed. But our success has been in being very aggressive on all fronts including scouting and player development – all while continually drafting near the bottom.”
The Yankees, a perennial post-season qualifier, also held low draft positions. When Cashman secured more power before the 2006 season, one of his goals was to improve the team’s farm system. At the time, the feeling among many rival executives was that the Red Sox were about to blow right past the Yankees.
Cashman, in his quest to play catch-up, hired Joe Kerrigan, the Red Sox’s former pitching coach and manager who had been replaced at the outset of the Henry regime.
“How they approached their pitching program was of interest to me,” Cashman says. “I was throwing out much more (pitching) talent than the Red Sox had and they were having more success. It goes to execution, game plans, stuff like that.”
Cashman’s shift toward statistical analysis caused friction with then-manager Joe Torre, who said in his book, “The Yankee Years,” that he told the GM to remember the human element, and “never forget that there’s a heartbeat in this game.”
Joe Girardi replaced Torre before the 2008 season. The Yankees won the World Series in ’09. And today, they are among the most aggressive teams on the statistical side, with more than 20 people working on analytics, according to Cashman. The A’s, by contrast, employ one such person — “and he has a host of other duties,” Beane says.
Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers, who worked a special assignment scout for the Yankees last season, says he was impressed that Cashman leans on not only a group of analysts led by Michael Fishman, a Yale graduate who is the team’s director of quantitative analysis, but also on top baseball people such as Billy Eppler, the team’s pro scouting director, and Gene Michael, a special adviser who is a former player, manager and GM.
“Cash does it the right way,” Towers says. “The way he works the room in meetings, it works. If he wants the analytical view, he asks (the analysts) a question and they provide the information. They usually only speak when asked.
“With the Yankees, it’s not, ‘these guys and us.’ They’re all kind of one.”
Which raises an obvious question, particularly at a time when baseball is seeking to enhance competitive balance in its latest collective-bargaining negotiations.
If high-revenue teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox are now as savvy as the A’s once were in exploiting market inefficiencies, what does that leave for the little guys?
“Some of the large-market clubs have learned to exploit their resources across every level of the baseball operation — technology, analytics, everything,” the Indians’ Shapiro says.
“We are seeing the tip of the iceberg right now. I would hypothesize that if you flash forward to the next five, six or seven years, you’ll see the (further) dominance of the big-market teams that are run well.
“That doesn’t preclude small-market teams from winning. But they’re going to go in and out, go through cycles of winning, then violently remaking their rosters.”
nice to hear instead of the bland stuff you usually hear.
Reading 2004
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016 Fenway 2, 2018 MSG 2022 St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023 MSG 2024, MSG 2024 Philadelphia 2024
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
I just can't believe Freddy fucking Garcia is a staple of that rotation. Forget Colon, at least that dude went all stem-cell so he has an excuse. But Freddy? Ridiculous.
I just can't believe Freddy fucking Garcia is a staple of that rotation. Forget Colon, at least that dude went all stem-cell so he has an excuse. But Freddy? Ridiculous.
Garcia is throwing junk and it somehow worked this year, control is insane. ERA is in the mid 3's. I said the same as you coming in. Can't believe what he has given them this year.
And only a couple games behind your boys for the best record in the game in a tougher division.
A tougher division? Boston looks like ass.
Oh, and home-field is already determined. Happened in July.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but we've running out the B squad since Saturday.
Seriously. We'll see what happens to your team playing out the string.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
All I'm saying is that they are 3 games behind your boys with Garcia and colon as 2 of their main pitchers
All I'm saying is it's after a 5 game losing streak running a bunch of scrubs out there. Garcia & Colon were both excellent for a few months, although I think they're both gassed.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
All I'm saying is that they are 3 games behind your boys with Garcia and colon as 2 of their main pitchers
Well, when you play in a park that makes The Bank look like a joke then that's reasonable. AND, the Phils were playing at .660/.670 clip before this skid. To me the season ended when they clinched the division. If there was a such thing as pre-post-season games, then these are them.
All I know is anything can happen in the playoffs, so that's all up in the air. Other than that, we'll be favored in every game/series, so I'm cool with you guys even overtaking best record. Would take a little heat off us anyway. Then you guys can have the title of another team with the best record that doesn't win the WS.
All I'm saying is that they are 3 games behind your boys with Garcia and colon as 2 of their main pitchers
Well, when you play in a park that makes The Bank look like a joke then that's reasonable. AND, the Phils were playing at .660/.670 clip before this skid. To me the season ended when they clinched the division. If there was a such thing as pre-post-season games, then these are them.
All I know is anything can happen in the playoffs, so that's all up in the air. Other than that, we'll be favored in every game/series, so I'm cool with you guys even overtaking best record. Would take a little heat off us anyway. Then you guys can have the title of another team with the best record that doesn't win the WS.
Nice.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
All I'm saying is that they are 3 games behind your boys with Garcia and colon as 2 of their main pitchers
All I'm saying is it's after a 5 game losing streak running a bunch of scrubs out there. Garcia & Colon were both excellent for a few months, although I think they're both gassed.
The Phillies could win 95 games with a double a lineup.
All I'm saying is that they are 3 games behind your boys with Garcia and colon as 2 of their main pitchers
Well, when you play in a park that makes The Bank look like a joke then that's reasonable. AND, the Phils were playing at .660/.670 clip before this skid. To me the season ended when they clinched the division. If there was a such thing as pre-post-season games, then these are them.
All I know is anything can happen in the playoffs, so that's all up in the air. Other than that, we'll be favored in every game/series, so I'm cool with you guys even overtaking best record. Would take a little heat off us anyway. Then you guys can have the title of another team with the best record that doesn't win the WS.
In all honesty, I dont think the Yankees will win the world series this year. I could see it happening but I am not anticipating it like 2009. I am plesentaly suprised at how good they have been and it's been a fun season. With 5 world series under my belt and a $200 million payroll every year, I am fine taking a year or two off. Am quite confident I will see plenty more. Phillies are clearly the favorites and I would love to see them get knocked off.
Yankee stadium hasn't played nearly as bad as it did the first year either.
Comments
I don't get this line of thinking. He should be in discussion for manager of the year, yet you don't care for him as a manager?
Dude has done a good job this year, if nothing else for having the bullpen in a good spot going into the playoffs.
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Mattingly?
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
The yankees have won 89 games (with a pitching staff that included Rasner and Ponson), 103 games and the world series, 95 games and within 2 games of the world series and 95 and counting. Every manager fucks up, but I don't see how you can really complain. Does he over manage at times? Sure, but he also gets it done.
Xavier can speak to how the players feel about him better than anyone but I get the sense they are behind him more this year than they have been.
Haha - nice.
It didn't take long to find a good one on google images. Actually they all are.
WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22;
Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
The Yankees had no choice but to pursue higher ground. They were falling behind their biggest competitors, the Boston Red Sox, in the information arms race.
“(The Red Sox) were having a great deal of success with players of lesser ability,” Cashman says. “I studied what they were doing to some degree, adjusted accordingly, brought the Yankees up to speed, brought us into the 21st century.”
John Henry, whose ownership group purchased the group in December 2001, wanted to apply principles from his success in the investment world to sports — and objective analysis was part of his mandate.
Henry offered Beane a record contract for a GM — five years, $12.5 million. When Beane said no, Henry turned to a Beane admirer, Theo Epstein, who had graduated from Yale and was then 28.
“Even before the book came out, even before Theo actually had the job in Boston, we had been friends,” Beane says. “He believed in some of the metrics available.
“Then, when John Henry bought the Red Sox, you had an owner that had a belief system in objective analysis. When he buys one of the biggest franchises in the game and hires a guy like Theo, that was a big accelerator.
“You could see it coming. There was an underlying current going on with some of the teams, and first and foremost with the Red Sox.”
Beane recalls that other trends were developing at the time. Bright young minds such as Andrew Friedman, Chris Antonetti and Jon Daniels entered the game; all eventually would become GMs. Baseball Prospectus emerged as a go-to website for the statistically minded, and other, like-minded sites launched as well, increasing the level of discourse.
“For me, it started in San Diego, working for a small-market team,” says Epstein, who spent five seasons in the Padres’ baseball operations department before joining the Red Sox as an assistant GM in March 2002.
“I spent the vast majority of time focused on players who were undervalued for some reason or another, trying to build value through small acquisitions, through looking at players through a slightly different lens than the marketplace.
“When I got to the Red Sox, our roster at the time had plenty of star power, but the second half of our roster was not strong. It was a nice opportunity to apply those principles in roster construction to a big-market club.”
Three undervalued players — first baseman Kevin Millar, third baseman Bill Mueller and designated hitter David Ortiz — were among Epstein’s initial acquisitions. The 2003 Red Sox came within five outs of reaching the World Series. The ’04 Sox won the Series, ending The Curse of the Bambino once and for all.
The ’07 Sox featured three prominent Epstein draft picks – second baseman Dustin Pedroia, center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury and closer Jonathan Papelbon – and won the Series again.
“The 2003-04 teams that Theo assembled had a Bill James-type textbook offense,” Henry says, referring to the influential sabemetrician who is now a senior advisor with the Red Sox.
“The 2007 team had young players drafted with certain principles now widely employed. But our success has been in being very aggressive on all fronts including scouting and player development – all while continually drafting near the bottom.”
The Yankees, a perennial post-season qualifier, also held low draft positions. When Cashman secured more power before the 2006 season, one of his goals was to improve the team’s farm system. At the time, the feeling among many rival executives was that the Red Sox were about to blow right past the Yankees.
Cashman, in his quest to play catch-up, hired Joe Kerrigan, the Red Sox’s former pitching coach and manager who had been replaced at the outset of the Henry regime.
“How they approached their pitching program was of interest to me,” Cashman says. “I was throwing out much more (pitching) talent than the Red Sox had and they were having more success. It goes to execution, game plans, stuff like that.”
Cashman’s shift toward statistical analysis caused friction with then-manager Joe Torre, who said in his book, “The Yankee Years,” that he told the GM to remember the human element, and “never forget that there’s a heartbeat in this game.”
Joe Girardi replaced Torre before the 2008 season. The Yankees won the World Series in ’09. And today, they are among the most aggressive teams on the statistical side, with more than 20 people working on analytics, according to Cashman. The A’s, by contrast, employ one such person — “and he has a host of other duties,” Beane says.
Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers, who worked a special assignment scout for the Yankees last season, says he was impressed that Cashman leans on not only a group of analysts led by Michael Fishman, a Yale graduate who is the team’s director of quantitative analysis, but also on top baseball people such as Billy Eppler, the team’s pro scouting director, and Gene Michael, a special adviser who is a former player, manager and GM.
“Cash does it the right way,” Towers says. “The way he works the room in meetings, it works. If he wants the analytical view, he asks (the analysts) a question and they provide the information. They usually only speak when asked.
“With the Yankees, it’s not, ‘these guys and us.’ They’re all kind of one.”
Which raises an obvious question, particularly at a time when baseball is seeking to enhance competitive balance in its latest collective-bargaining negotiations.
If high-revenue teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox are now as savvy as the A’s once were in exploiting market inefficiencies, what does that leave for the little guys?
“Some of the large-market clubs have learned to exploit their resources across every level of the baseball operation — technology, analytics, everything,” the Indians’ Shapiro says.
“We are seeing the tip of the iceberg right now. I would hypothesize that if you flash forward to the next five, six or seven years, you’ll see the (further) dominance of the big-market teams that are run well.
“That doesn’t preclude small-market teams from winning. But they’re going to go in and out, go through cycles of winning, then violently remaking their rosters.”
nice to hear instead of the bland stuff you usually hear.
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016
Fenway 2, 2018
MSG 2022
St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023
MSG 2024, MSG 2024
Philadelphia 2024
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."
That is ridiculous.
First 2 could work out.
WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22;
Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
I just can't believe Freddy fucking Garcia is a staple of that rotation. Forget Colon, at least that dude went all stem-cell so he has an excuse. But Freddy? Ridiculous.
Garcia is throwing junk and it somehow worked this year, control is insane. ERA is in the mid 3's. I said the same as you coming in. Can't believe what he has given them this year.
A tougher division? Boston looks like ass.
Oh, and home-field is already determined. Happened in July.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but we've running out the B squad since Saturday.
Seriously. We'll see what happens to your team playing out the string.
WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22;
Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
All I'm saying is it's after a 5 game losing streak running a bunch of scrubs out there. Garcia & Colon were both excellent for a few months, although I think they're both gassed.
WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22;
Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
Well, when you play in a park that makes The Bank look like a joke then that's reasonable. AND, the Phils were playing at .660/.670 clip before this skid. To me the season ended when they clinched the division. If there was a such thing as pre-post-season games, then these are them.
All I know is anything can happen in the playoffs, so that's all up in the air. Other than that, we'll be favored in every game/series, so I'm cool with you guys even overtaking best record. Would take a little heat off us anyway. Then you guys can have the title of another team with the best record that doesn't win the WS.
Nice.
WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22;
Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; WF Center 9/7/24; WF Center 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
The Phillies could win 95 games with a double a lineup.
Gotta get tickets but we'll be going.
In all honesty, I dont think the Yankees will win the world series this year. I could see it happening but I am not anticipating it like 2009. I am plesentaly suprised at how good they have been and it's been a fun season. With 5 world series under my belt and a $200 million payroll every year, I am fine taking a year or two off. Am quite confident I will see plenty more. Phillies are clearly the favorites and I would love to see them get knocked off.
Yankee stadium hasn't played nearly as bad as it did the first year either.
Spoken like everything I can't stand about Yankees fans. Remind me to kick you in the balls when I see you.