Yesterday, I did a quick Top 10 for the 2009 fantasy baseball season. At #9 and #10 was Carlos Quentin and Ian kinsler. Those spots could have been easily occupied by Ryan Braun and Josh Hamilton. Or by a starting pitcher.

My question is which one. Do you take a veteran ace like Johan Santana? Or a new veteran ace like C.C. Sabathia? Or an fresh ace like Tim Lincecum.

Here are the three pitchers relevent fantasy stats.

Has anyone noticed how well Los Angeles Dodgers' rookie LHP Clayton Kershaw has pitched lately?  Over his past three starts, he has thrown 19 innings of one-run ball.  That is more than enough to grab him and hope his four walks in last night's game have become the aberration.  There is not enough time left in the season to hope for representative sample sizes.

ESPN Fantasy-predicted 22-game winner, Johan Santana, had his sixth win blown by the Mets' bullpen yesterday afternoon.  With a 2.85 ERA on the season, one would hope he'd have more than 9 wins.  After all, Brandon Webb of the Diamondbacks has 16 Wins to go with his 2.93 ERA.

Am I the only one more concerned about his drop his Ks more than his inability to see his bullpen wrap-up a Win?  Or should I be more concerned about the Mets' bullpen?

Lastings Milledge hit his 10th and 11th HRs of the season.  Based on his Spring Training talk of 30 SBs, one would have expected more from him by this point.  Those two HRs get his totals into the "interesting' category.  He leads the Nationals in that category and has 14 SBs to go with them.

So far, he has played in just 93 of the Nationals 115 games to date.  With 47 games left, he could end-up being a surrpisingly good fantasy player with a 15+/15+ HR/SB season.  Given his age and a projection over 162-games in 2009, I won't be surprised to see him projected to be a 20/20 player in 2009.  That will be enough to get him selected in the 9th-11th rounds of fantasy drafts.

It is the bottom of the third in the Yankees/Twins game, and Carlos Gomez is at the plate.  Yankees starter Andy Pettitte throws him ball one.  My immediate thought was, "Why are you throwing him balls?  Don't you know he is a free swinger who has a crappy OBP?"

Gomez fouls off the next pitch with a big hack and shoots a bullet by first baseman Jason Giambi on the next one.  Both swings looked strong.  Maybe that is why Pettitte threw him a ball.  He swings hard at strikes.  With his horrible OBP, you make him do the same but at a ball.  Unfortunately, he didn't swing at the ball.

Gomez is on first, and I'm anxious to see one of the games' fastest runners face-off against one of the game's best pick-off artists.  Gomez takes his lead and looks ready.  Pettitte throws over, but it is behind Gomez and Giambi can't get it.  The errant throw rolls into the bullpen area and Gomez races to third.

The E1 doesn't measure Gomez' effect on the game, but it was there for my lying eyes.  The next batter, 2B Alexi Casilla, singles home Gomez.  At first, he is dancing like he is baiting Pettitte, he of the great pick-off move.  That takes guts for a player of Casilla's caliber.

Joe Mauer hits one back to the box that Pettitte knocks down.  Without seeing why,  he looks to second but throws to first for the out.  Replays show Casilla would have stole second off Pettitte.  His jump was huge.

Then I begin to think Gomez may be rubbing off on Casilla, and maybe that accounted for his current behavior at first and the fact he has been very productive in 2008.  If true, then Gomez is more of an asset than anyone has given him credit for so far.  Who would have thought his energy was infectious?

By the time the 2008 season ends, I wonder how many pundits would be willing to trade Carlos Gomez straight-up for Johan Santana.  I know I am way ahead of the pack in my appreciation of Gomez' skill set, but he looks like he is getting better every game.  Johan Santana looks like he is no longer the pitcher who deserved a $139MM contract extension.

Editors' note:  I wrote this for the crew an MN Game Day , an aggregator of Twins blogs,  for distribution at this past weekend's Yankees/Twins series.  If you're going to tonight's series finale, look for the vendors in the red vests outside the Metrodome for the program.

The New York Yankees 2008 season began with the hopes of a triumvirate of young pitchers who would allow the Yankees to stay away from the $10 million  per season free agent pitching market for several seasons.  21-year-old Phil Hughes, 23-year-old Ian Kennedy and 22-year-old Joba Chamberlain were going to lead the way into the next decade as a rapidly aging team morphs into a younger, more hungry version like it had been in the mid-to-late 1990s.

This was the rationale behind the specter that currently haunts a Yankees team that enters this four-game series with the Minnesota Twins.  What is the specter?  The refusal of Yankees’ General Manager Brian Cashman to part with two of  triumvirate, along with center fielder Melky Cabrera and a 4th prospect rumored to be AAA right-hander Jeff Marquez, for former Twins’ ace Johan Santana this past winter.

With Johan Santana pitching every 5th day on the other side of New York City, the Yankees and their fans cannot help but see Santana’s six wins and 3.41 ERA as they look at their own pitching staff and wonder what could ..no should have been.  There is no hiding the complete failure of Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, who both find themselves on the disabled list with respective ERAs of 9.00 and 7.41 in a combined 59 2/3s innings over 12 starts.  The pair has only 39 strikeouts against 38 walks.  There is no way to blind hindsight.  The Yankees would have been better with Johan Santana at this point in the season.

Even if the organization did not garner the gushing praises of the national baseball media for its fiscal restraint and long-term vision, the Yankees were still set-up to mash their way through any rough patches the young pitching encountered.  Who wouldn’t expect as much after bidding against themselves to give Alex Rodriguez $300 plus million just weeks after he opted for free agency during Game Four of the World Series and after the team spent a couple of months swearing they would not do so if he did opt out?

Then the team gave their 36-year-old free agent catcher Jorge Posada a four-year $52 million contract to remain behind the plate.  The idea of giving a catcher that much money in the expected twilight of his career certainly crossed the organization’s mind.  After all, baseball has been over run by Ivy League educated men and women who came of age in the Moneyball/cost-benefit analysis environment of today’s game.

Unfortunately, the market place conspired against the Yankees to force their hand.  If there isn’t a supply of quality catchers but there is demand for a good one, then a team in need of a good catcher gets stuck either paying whatever the market will bear or goes with the likes of Jose Molina and Chad Moellar.  The Yankees would be forced into paying whatever it takes to get one.  By publicly courting Posada,, their cross-town rival Mets again forced the Yankees into a situation that hindsight  shows to have been unwise as Posada has missed most of the 2008 season, and the 1st of four at $13.1MM, with a damaged throwing shoulder.

Finally, the Yankees made a financial move that is all the rage amongst their less wealthy brethren.  They signed arbitration-eligible second baseman Robinson Cano for four seasons at $30 million with two additional club options that would buy out Cano’s first two years of free agency. Although those two club options would commit the Yankees to paying just $14 and $15 million each, not many of their brethren would be so cavalier for a 2B whose skills are purely hitting-based i.e. he has little usable speed (10 stolen bases in twenty attempts over three seasons) and walk rates that only look good if one applies the adage “Lies, damned lies and statistics.”  Cano’s total walks grew from 2006 to 2007 by 117%!  A closer look shows he drew just 18 in 2006 and then took 39 in 2007 – with 135 more at-bats.

With those three comfortably in the fold along with $13 million dollar corner outfielders Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, a $16MM Bobby Abreu, $19 million dollar SS Derek Jeter and $21 million 1B/DH Jason Giambi, the Yankees brass, and most of the baseball intelligentsia, believed this team would still hit.  After all, they had done so previously and had the baseball skills that would allow it – talking walks and hitting home runs.

Just like the young pitching, the hitting also disappointed.  At the end of May, the Yankees team ranked 7th amongst the fourteen American League teams in on-base percentage and 10th in walks taken.  That combination cannot allow their 5th highest HR total to get the team higher than the middle of the pack in scoring runs.  Combined with a middle of the road showing in pitching, and the Yankees have become a middle of the road baseball team.

There are rays of hope.  The biggest is Joba Chamberlain who is slated to make his first start of the 2008 season on Tuesday.  If he can provide the above-average innings everyone in New York expects, then the Yankees will have stabilized their rotation.  Assuming the older bats in the team’s line-up heat up with the temperature, the Yankees may be able to salvage what has been a disappointing 2008.

With just three days left in the month of May, though, the 2008 baseball season has taught the New York Yankees organization and its fans the bitter lesson learned by one of God’s most humble creatures lo’ those many years ago:

 
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Jon Lester threw a no-hiter versus the Kansas City Royals last night.  The only thing I could think about was how well the Boston Red Sox did by not trading for Johan Santana and how much worse the Yankees look for not doing so.  Lester was one of the key pieces demanded by Minnesota as was CF Jacoby Ellsbury.

Lester is now 3-2 with a 3.41 ERA in 66 innings.  Jacoby Ellsbury has a .377 OBP with 18 SBs.  The Yankees have Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy who have a 8.70 ERA in 50.2 combined innings,  Jeff Marquez has a 6.16 ERA in 9 AAA starts and Melky Cabrera has a .317 OBP.  Meanwhile, Santana is 5-2 with a 3.30 ERA in 60 innings for the Mets and exactly what the Yankees need.

This certainly makes it appear that the Red Sox front office was a lot smarter than the Yankees front office by holding on to its prospects while the Yankees look foolish for doing the same.  Will this be the same burr-in-the-saddle for Hank Steinbrenner that it would have been for his father?

If so, then do not expect GM Brian Cashman to make it through the season.  Why let Cashman trade prospects for major league help?  Didn't he just demonstrate he could not properly evaluate them when he failed to deal Hughes, Kennedy and Marquez for Santana?