Joba Chamberlin

Yes, that was the point I made earlier. They won from 1996 to 2000 largely with home grown talent. The thing is, you have to HAVE the home grown talent for that to happen. That is an awfully big if and it's a nearly impossible formula to rely on to win every year. It's why they end up buying free agents. Their championships in 1977 and 1978 were done through trades and free agency, by the way. So it isn't a matter of just home grown versus external means. It's a matter of being smart. A smart trade to steal a Graig Nettles of a Mickey Rivers is just as good as the smart trade you avoid making to hold onto an Andy Pettitte or a Bernie Williams.

Still, baseball now has come down to this: Pitching is what wins. And there is not enough pitching to go around. The result is that it is easier to find a good position players on the free agent market than it is to find a staff full of pitchers every year. If you try to win by buying your pitching, most years you are going to way overpay for guys not worth it and still lose (this is how you end up with a Carl Pavano as easily as you do a Roger Clemens--and why Clemens can dictate such ridiculous terms). So it is smart business to hold onto your good pitching prospects.

My point just now was that you still can't count on those prospects to turn into aces, though. If you get lucky and they do, you can end up sitting fat and happy like the Tigers with Bonderman, Verlander, Andrew Miller and a guy like Joel Zumaya as your future closer. This is what the Yankees are hoping for with those young pitchers they held fast to. But the names on that list were still largely unproven. And this is still the Yankees we are talking about. If they see an opportunity to buy bridge free agent pitching, rather than going sink or swim with three unproven pitchers in the rotation next year, my strong bet is that they will sign the free agents and have those young arms around to plug in when the injuries hit. That is how Wang ended up in the rotation, for example. If the free agents or trades are there (an if), it will allow them to see who is any good without having to put their full fortunes for the season on the unproven.

 

Spnited, You are missing my point. I am not talking numbers. I am talking about what is actually winning it for you. Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera were a core part of the teams that won the championships. They were there for the entire run. They weren't one-year solutions. The team was built around them. So were Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, David Cone and various other guys bought or traded for. It comes down to what I said in my post. It's a matter of being smart, not about where the players came from. I'd rather be smart about Derek Jeter, Bernie Wiliams, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera than have 22 home grown guys that should be career AAA players. I was talking the smartness with which they went about it, and the quality of those key home grown players. Not about the quantity. If you have 5 or 6 home grown players who are the key to your team's success, that sounds like a lot to me.