The Pizza Resistance (My Old Blog)
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Roger Clemens and the End of the Yankees
So Roger Clemens is a Yankee again. Just another case of the rich getting richer. By that, I mean that Roger is richer, not the Yankees.
The Rocket certainly will help their rotation, which has been a train wreck. But does he make them a better team? Does he up the odds that they win that elusive World Series? (What is it, eight years now? An eternity!)
It says here: nuh-uh.
This kind of thing should be bad for team chemistry. A guy just saunters in at mid-season and hops to the top of the rotation? For the third season in a row? I don’t care if you're the best right-handed since Walter Johnson, that ought to muck things up in the clubhouse. (Hey, did you see that run support he got in Houston last year?)
Of course, none of the Yankees seem to think so. And that is the real problem. This will not muck up the chemistry because there is no chemistry. The Yankees of the mid-to-late 1990s were a team. The Yankees since the turn of the millennium have been a collection of All-Stars. You may win a lot of games that way, but you don’t win championships very often. Clemens joining them should be a problem, one that might be overcome, but a problem nonetheless. That it apparently isn’t a problem, that’s a sign things are much worse than an aging and injury plagued starting rotation.
The Rocket certainly will help their rotation, which has been a train wreck. But does he make them a better team? Does he up the odds that they win that elusive World Series? (What is it, eight years now? An eternity!)
It says here: nuh-uh.
This kind of thing should be bad for team chemistry. A guy just saunters in at mid-season and hops to the top of the rotation? For the third season in a row? I don’t care if you're the best right-handed since Walter Johnson, that ought to muck things up in the clubhouse. (Hey, did you see that run support he got in Houston last year?)
Of course, none of the Yankees seem to think so. And that is the real problem. This will not muck up the chemistry because there is no chemistry. The Yankees of the mid-to-late 1990s were a team. The Yankees since the turn of the millennium have been a collection of All-Stars. You may win a lot of games that way, but you don’t win championships very often. Clemens joining them should be a problem, one that might be overcome, but a problem nonetheless. That it apparently isn’t a problem, that’s a sign things are much worse than an aging and injury plagued starting rotation.
Labels: Roger Clemens, team chemistry, Yankees
