Last week I wrote about the five best off-season transactions the Yankees had pulled off over the last quarter century. Now it’s time to take a look at the five worst transactions during the same hot stove period. Oh, and sorry Seinfeld fans…the Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps trade took place in 1988, outside our time frame.
5. Andy Pettitte: The blame for this situation doesn’t reside solely with the Yankees, since we don’t know all of the player’s intentions, but the team never should have let Pettitte walk following the 2003 season. That said, Pettitte himself should have done whatever it took to stay in pinstripes. Had he done so, he very well might have avoided the flexor tendon injury he suffered while batting during the 2004 season with the Houston Astros. In all, Pettitte spent three years with the Astros before returning to the Yankees.
Pettitte is already beloved by the Yankees fans, but had he stayed a Yankee he could have had an even bigger impact on the team and his legacy. He would have had a chance to help avoid the 2004 ALCS collapse, which also means Kevin Brown may have never been a Yankee.
Pettitte, third on the team in career wins (219), would have been the all-time team leader ahead of Whitey Ford (236) and Red Ruffing (231). (He likely would have been tops in losses, too.) He would have passed the same duo in innings pitched and probably would have finished second all-time in games played, with only Mariano Rivera’s total innings well out of reach.
Pettitte’s final career start, a complete game shutout against his only other former team (Houston Astros), tied him with Ford for career starts.
While this is merely speculation, long careers with one team are such a rarity these days, and it would have been nice had Pettitte shared every season with Derek Jeter, Rivera, and Jorge Posada.
4. Kei Igawa: In golf there is an analogy about not trying to hit with the long drivers. More specifically, if your playing partner hits his drive 320 yards off the tee and you hit your drives 220 yards, do not try to hit a 320-yard drive. You will only hit a terrible shot and you won’t come close to your playing partner’s distance.
As an analogy to the game of baseball: If your rival makes a big splash with a free agent, don’t go hard after a player who you perceive as the next best thing, thinking that it is comparable. The Yankees made that mistake prior to the 2007 season.
Boston had won the bidding ($51.1 MM) for Japanese star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Yankees tried to counter the move by signing fellow Japanese player Kei Igawa ($26MM bid). There were two problems – Igawa was below the talent level of “Dice-K” and Igawa worked his pitches up in the strike zone. That’s a notoriously bad idea for an American League pitcher, whose intraleague opponents feed off that approach. Despite the warning signs, the Yankees signed Igawa to a five-year, $20MM contract.
Igawa’s Major League and Yankee Stadium debuts were an omen of things to come. On April 4, 2007, Igawa was gone after five innings, having surrendered seven runs in five innings against the Baltimore Orioles. Igawa got off the hook though, when the Yankees scored seven runs over the final two innings to win 10-7 on a walk-off grand slam by Alex Rodriguez. The month of April was a mixed bag; Igawa won twice, including a six-inning victory over the Red Sox in which he replaced Jeff Karstens in the 1st inning and didn’t allow a run. May came and went, and so did Igaw… to the minor leagues that is.
Seattle hammered the lefty for nine runs in four innings, the third time in six starts that Igawa had allowed more runs than innings pitched. The Yankees claimed they saw flaws in his mechanics and sent him to Tampa to work with coaches Nardi Contreras and Billy Connors. Igawa returned to the big leagues in June and was far from stellar in seven starts.
Igawa made only two more appearances in a Major League uniform. From 2007 thru 2011, Igawa appeared in 105 minor league games, and by all accounts he was a great teammate. The Yankees placed him on waivers in August, 2007 and he was claimed by the San Diego Padres, but the two teams couldn’t work out a deal. It appeared that General Manager Brian Cashman would rather keep him in the minors than deal him for next to nothing. After his contract was up, Igawa returned to Japan and pitched three seasons for the Orix Buffaloes.
3. Alex Rodriguez: It seems that most free agent contracts today include an opt-out clause after the second or third year of the deal. A-Rod had an opt-out clause in his contract, and he was quick to push the eject button after the 2007 season. That he did it prematurely during the World Series – an absolute no-no that A-Rod blamed on his agent, Scott Boras – said a lot about what was to come.
The Yankees re-signed their third baseman to a 10-year, $275MM deal, at one point even negotiating against themselves. The new deal cost the Yankees even more, since they would no longer receive the annual $21.3MM the Texas Rangers had kicked in as part of the original trade between the teams. That stipend would have been part of A-Rod’s salary in 2008-2010.
I’ve often heard that “The Yankees never would have won the (2009) World Series without A-Rod”, and while that may be true, we don’t know what might have happened had he no longer been on the team. While he amassed huge numbers in some seasons and won a couple of AL MVP awards, he also served many times as a distraction.
In 2009, he admitted to steroid use during the 2003 season, after his test results were leaked to the press. He then embarrassed himself in a “softball” interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons, by saying that he was young and naive at the time and really didn’t know what he was taking.
On the field, there were the three straight post-seasons (2005-2007) that he went a combined 7-55 (.127). There was the new, much larger embarrassment during the 2013 season when Major League Baseball accused A-Rod of being involved with Biogenesis, a Florida-based PED clinic in the guise of a health and nutrition business. Evidence against A-Rodwas never publicly released, so the Yankees fan base had mixed reactions. Many stood by A-Rod because their perception was that MLB and the Yankees ownership were treating him unfairly.
Rodriguez appealed the suspension handed out by MLB (He was allowed to continue playing since he appealed), and he went on the Mike Francesa show on WFAN radio to proclaim his innocence. He stated emphatically that he did not use any PEDs and felt that baseball, particularly Commissioner Bud Selig, and the Yankees wanted to see him out of the game. Lawsuits were filed or threatened as A-Rod refused to meet with the commissioner and his heir-apparent, Rob Manfred. Ultimately, A-Rod was suspended for the entire 2014 season and admitted his PED use. While he has hit a multitude of home runs, he has also cheated and lied a multitude of times. He gave the Taylor Hooton Foundation, which tries to educate kids against the use of PEDs, a black-eye after having served as one of their spokesmen.
Remarkably, A-Rod was treated the best he ever was by Yankees fans when he returned in 2015. He then went out and smacked 33 HRs and drove in 86 runs in the same season he turned 40. He seems sincere in attempting to clean up his image, however time will tell if he really is sincere or if he’s being A-Fraud.
2. Mike Lowell for Ed Yarnall, Todd Noel and Mark Johnson: With third baseman Scott Brosius coming off a World Series MVP Award and 99 regular season RBI, the Yankees decided to deal third base prospect Mike Lowell. The Floridian had been drafted in the 20th round of the 1995 MLB amateur draft, and saw eight games as a September call-up with the Yankees three years later.
After Brosius’ unexpected 1998 season, (which included great defense), the Yankees signed the 32-year old to a new four-year deal. Brosius helped to capture three more pennants and two World Series championships with the Bronx Bombers before he retired following the 2001 season.
Lowell hit better than .300 and had averaged 28 home runs and 95 RBI in the 1997 and 1998 seasons. He was solid defensively as well, and was poised to make the jump to the big leagues. That’s when the Yankees chose Brosius over the 24-year old Lowell. In retrospect, it’s hard to argue with three pennants and two World Series, but had the Yankees front office looked around and seen the squad aging before them, they might have opted to keep Lowell and let Brosius walk (or possibly worked on a position change for Lowell).
Instead, Lowell became a star for the Marlins. In 2002, he slugged .530, hit 32 round-trippers and drove home 105 runs. He was a three-time All-Star, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award winner, and a member of the 2003 team that topped the Yankees in the World Series. After a rough 2005 season in which he just eight home runs, Lowell was shipped to Boston as part of a seven-player deal.
The native of Puerto Rico was rejuvenated in a Red Sox uniform. He helped the team to their second World Series championship in three years, when he drove in 120 runs in 2007. He put together four solid seasons in Boston before injuries and age caught up to him in his final season in 2010.
As for the pitchers the Yankees received back for Lowell – Yarnall was the biggest prospect, but he appeared in just seven Major League games, all with the Yankees. Todd Noel never made it out of the minor leagues and Mark Johnson appeared in just nine MLB games as a member of the 2000 Detroit Tigers.
1. Carl Pavano: When it comes to “buying” a National League pitcher to pitch in the American League, let the buyer beware. Following the 2004 season, the then-named Florida Marlins had one such free agent pitcher in Carl Pavano. The 6’5″ right-hander was coming off a a campaign in which he went 18-8, 3.00 in 31 starts. He also tossed a career high 222.1 innings; great numbers for a player who was in the final year of his contract. Pavano also had a World Series ring from the Marlins defeat of the Yankees in the 2003 World Series. (Pavano dominated the Yankees in a Game 3 win.) It led to Pavano’s signature on a four-year, $39.95MM deal with the Yankees.
Signing Pavano to the contract was the highlight of his Yankees’ career. It all went downhill from there. While Pavano managed to escape serious injury in April, 2005, when the Orioles’ Melvin Mora slapped a pitch off the head of the righty, Pavano wasn’t so fortunate during the summer. After a poor outing against the Orioles in June, Pavano complained about soreness in his throwing shoulder. In August, the Yankees sent Pavano to noted specialist Dr. James Andrews, who determined the pitcher suffered from rotator cuff tendinits and soreness in the humerus bone, which runs from the shoulder to elbow and is definitely not funny.
Pavano’s first season in the Bronx ended after just 17 starts. Spring Training, 2006 didn’t start any better when Pavano was shut down due to a bad back. He finally returned on March 31, for his only start of the exhibition schedule, and fell while covering first base. He suffered a bruised behind – you can’t make this stuff up – on the play and also re-injured his back. Pavano was shut down until May at which time he left his rehab start with soreness. A week later, he underwent surgery to remove a bone chip from his right elbow. While rehabbing his arm in August, Pavano crashed his car and didn’t tell the Yankees.
During a late-August rehab start, Pavano was forced out early due to soreness in his chest. It turned out that he had suffered broken ribs in the car crash. The second year of the contract yielded nothing – Pavano didn’t make one Major League start. 2007 wasn’t much better; Pavano made two starts, complained about elbow pain and underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery.
Pavano returned to the Majors in August, 2008 to make seven starts. His final Yankees totals – four years (three seasons), 26 starts, 145.2 innings pitched, a 9-8 record with a 5.00 ERA. Nicknamed “American Idle”, Pavano then left as a free agent after the season and threw 199.1 innings (33 starts) for Cleveland and Minnesota in 2009.
