Yu Darvish: Yankees Only Sensible Bidder for Japanese Superstar
December 15, 2011 · Michael Dixon · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
The New York Yankees need a second arm. CC Sabathia is great, but you need two quality arms to win a playoff series. It was abundantly clear in the playoffs last season that the Yankees didn’t have that arm.
That’s where Yu Darvish enters the picture.
The Yankees have a budget that allows for them to take a risk on a player like Yu Darvish. No other team does. Not the Red Sox, not the Angels—not even the Mets when they’re not in turmoil. There are small-market teams, mid-market teams, big-market teams and then there’s the Yankees.
When the Giants signed Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand to big contracts in consecutive offseasons, they effectively hamstrung themselves from signing big-name players. That doesn’t happen to the Yankees.
As Marc Carig of the Newark Star-Ledger pointed out, there have been times when the Yankees appeared “tapped out,” only to have them pay tremendous sums of money on a player. Carig also said that they are interested in Darvish. They need to prove it and fork that money on the Japanese superstar.
They are too reliant on Sabathia to literally win all of his postseason starts. Matched up against the other team’s ace (like Justin Verlander), that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to think that a team playing in New York will not suffer through an occasional rainout in October, which happened last year.
When that happened in 2011, the Yankees were forced to turn to a rookie in Game 5. That can’t happen. They need a second arm.
Darvish is not bust-proof. That’s why no other team should even think about taking this risk. They can’t afford to have another Zito or Daisuke Matsuzaka (unmitigated busts), or Johan Santana (good but constantly hurt). The Yankees can afford to have that kind of hit on the books and be fine.
Ultimately, this boils down to one thing. There are 29 teams in the league that can’t afford to take the risk on Darvish. There is one team that can’t afford to do anything else.
The free-agent market lacks quality arms right now. Darvish is the only sensible move for them to make. If baseball’s top franchise has any designs on winning another World Series anytime soon, they need to go out and bring in another arm.
It’s too hard to just out-slug opponents in the playoffs. The Yankees bats are too old and the rest of the American League is too good. Another quality arm to go with their offense would make New York relevant in the American League playoffs again. Darvish is the only player with the kind of potential to be that guy.
It’s a gamble. But if the Yankees don’t take it, they aren’t going to go anywhere.
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