A Closer Look at the Death of the '08 Yankees

Words by SN's David Arnott, who splits his time between sports blogging here (and here and here), and dealing with angry SN.com members providing great customer service with a smile.

The 2008 New York Yankees are dead. With 25 games left to play, they are 12 games behind the division leading Tampa Bay Rays and 7 games behind the wild card leading Boston Red Sox. Should the Red Sox cruise down the home stretch at the same .584 pace they've held thus far, the Yankees would have to go 21-4 the rest of the way just to catch them.

While the starting pitching has been a convenient scapegoat, the Yankees' hitters were the real culprits for this season's epic fail. Melky Cabrera has inexplicably regressed into vintage Darren Lewis. Jorge Posada finally succumbed to injury, and his at bats were, unfortunately, soaked up by Jose Molina, also known as the least talented Molina brother. Even Derek Jeter took part in the collective suck. He's picked it up in the second half, but Jeter's on pace to have his worst full season at the plate. It's not just bad luck, either, since we can see that he's not hitting line drives and his fly balls aren't leaving the yard anymore.

Let's talk a little more specifically about that pitching. The starters weren't that bad. Really. Mike Mussina somehow pulled off another effective season, Andy Pettitte came through with a thoroughly average year, and if you add Chien-Ming Wang's starts to Joba Chamberlain's, in sum that's an All Star quality ace. But while the top three starters held up their end of the bargain, the back end filler was far worse than anyone could have expected. GM Brian Cashman has made a habit of filling in the back end of the rotation with barrel bottom retreads and never-will-bes. This season, he planned on changing it up and having top prospect Philip Hughes and future innings-eater Ian Kennedy fill out the fourth and fifth spots, but when they crashed and burned, he had to go fishing for the likes of Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson. They are who they are, but the damage was already done.

It wasn't all lemon juice and horseradish for the Yankeess. Alex Rodriguez kept on keeping on. Bobby Abreu once again staved off old age. Johnny Damon may have had his career year at the plate, mitigating the loss of Hideki Matsui. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that State Trooper Giambi rebounded nicely from a lost season in 2007. In the end, however, the Yankees are 11th in the majors in runs scored, which just isn't good enough if the pitching and defense is 16th best at preventing runs.

This might not be the end of the Yankees' current run of excellence. Mussina and Pettitte are likely on the decline, and it's possible the Yanks will let them hit free agency, but a rotation of Wang, Chamberlain, Hughes, Kennedy, and whomever rises to the top of the waiver wire dumpster will probably be better than this season's disappointment. And that's before considering any free agent acquisitions. Where New York could make the greatest improvements is on offense, by finding hitters to match the total performance of Giambi at first base and the motley crew of DHs (not as hard as it might seem on first glance), and simply by getting league average performances from the center field and catcher positions, whether that's from incumbents Cabrera and Posada, or other options.

Ultimately, the arms race between New York and Boston over the past fifteen years has led to some pretty nasty unintended consequences for the Bombers. In order to compete with the two big spenders, the other three organizations in the AL East stepped up: Tampa Bay finally ditched Chuck LaMar and put together a crack baseball operations staff. The Blue Jays have slowly gotten better under J.P. Ricciardi to the point that they are legitimate threats to contend any given year now, and I'm sure that free agents are noticing that they take in Canadian dollars. And while the Orioles aren't in the picture just yet, they've ditched the all-free-agent approach and found young franchise cornerstones in Nick Markakis and Jeremy Guthrie.

The last Yankees dynasty is long dead, this season is dead, and the current generation of stars are in or approaching their death throes. The next Yankees championship will be cast from a totally different mold than the current squad.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.