how to punch a hole in the yankee balloon

today, the yankees signed octavio dotel and, more importantly, johnny damon.

first, about dotel: it's only costing them $2 million this year, so relatively speaking, he's coming cheap. but he's also coming injured, just barely nine months off tommy john surgery. and, as everyone knows, it takes 18 months to fully come back. so the yanks will be paying $2 million for a subpar octavio dotel. i guess he's better than a supercharged scott proctor.

then they went and signed johnny damon to play centerfield.

that's a huge blow to their rival. that cannot be questioned.

and their lineup is now, possibly, the most feared lineup ever: damon, jeter, a-rod, sheffield, giambi, matsui, bernie, posada and cano. that would put a crap in my cleats.

then again, cano is the only one under thirty in the lineup. (jeter's 32 and a-rod is 30). so, if you consider that a ballplayer's prime is between the ages of 28-32, you can really expect only cano and a-rod to improve and jeter to stabilize and the rest to decrease. (damon is 32, but with all the pounding he's taken, he's gotta be an old 32). but, to be fair, let's say his production stablizes.

so that fearsome line-up just got younger (damon replacing sierra), but they're still older than dirt.

but here's the funny thing: the lineup wasn't the problem last year.

johnny damon has somewhat better range than bernie williams, but he's got the absolute worst outfield arm in the majors. so, amazingly, they replaced a weak-armed outfielder with an even weaker-armed outfielder.

sheffield and matsui are helpless out there, so they still have a terrible defensive outfield - so they haven't solved their problem at all.

a-rod is great at third, but jeter's been statistically proven to be mediocre (although my eyes say differently) and cano's no gold glove. and when you throw tin-gloved giambi at first - uh oh.

and they've all gotten older.

unless their pitching staff strikes everyone out, then they're looking at more problems. you see, carl pavano doesn't strike anyone out. neither does chacon, and his numbers belie a very lucky pitcher. wang's not a flamethrower either. and aaron small throws in the 80s.

randy johnson is turning 43, and his velocity is down.

so they basically have a pitching staff that needs to rely on the defense behind them.

are you at ease, yankee fans?

so they still have the best lineup in the majors that will do a lot with the 27 outs given to them in a game, but their defense will make their pitchers work even harder, giving their opponents more than 27 outs.

i wouldn't be digging it, if i were a yankee fan - especially since you got damon through his 37th year.

but that's just me. it ain't my money.