It has become a universal truth in the professional sports world, but it still applies most of all to the Yankees:
They aren’t just a ballclub. They’re also a TV show.
With that in mind, with the heavy lifting now over this winter — as general manager Brian Cashman implied Wednesday — with the signing of Masahiro Tanaka, we must assess both their offseason performance through both a baseball prism and an entertainment prism. Not only their WAR, but their Q ratings.
The grades: They’re a far more compelling reality program than they were four months ago.
They’re a modestly better baseball team.
“I know that ownership stepped up and allowed us to add a lot of players to make our fans excited that 2014 will be different than 2013,” Cashman said during a telephone news conference. “How different, we’ll see on the field.”
You know the Yankees’ record-setting, $500-plus million binge this winter emanated from a dual-front crisis:
1) Their 85-77 record, worst since 1992;
2) their plummeting Yankee Stadium attendance (3,542,406 in 2012 to 3,279,589 last year, a drop of 262,817) and declining YES ratings (we don’t have the exact numbers, but trust us: They dropped a lot).
The Yankees weren’t just mediocre last year. They were boring and disliked, too. Their best player Robinson Cano faced silly vitriol from small-minded clientele who overvalued the concept of running hard to first base and undervalued the ability to play in 160 games every season.
Their most beloved player Mariano Rivera crafted a perfect farewell season … which of course saddened the many fans who didn’t want him to go.
Cano ran and took the money in Seattle, solidifying his Bronx unpopularity. On the minus side, Andy Pettitte joined Rivera in retirement, giving the Yankees one fewer icon. And Alex Rodriguez will sit out for a year barring a courtroom miracle, which deprives this saga of its best villain.
Nevertheless, this should be a more captivating and compelling product. Tanaka, who ended his sweepstakes by choosing the Yankees’ seven-year, $155 million offer, is an exciting enigma whose every start should be Must-See TV, at least at the outset.
Jacoby Ellsbury’s athleticism should play well on the senses, assuming he actually can stay on the field. Same goes for Carlos Beltran’s knack for clutch hitting and his health risks.
Brian McCann’s Stadium-friendly swing and fiery personality also bode well for his chances of becoming a lovable character. Maybe the Yankees can pay off an opposing player to style after a home run, just to bring out McCann’s combative side?
Now, no matter how interesting people find this new cast, they won’t tune into a non-competitive entity. This club will be building off a season from which it suffered massive bad luck with injuries and experienced rather good fortune in close games; the Yankees’ 30-16 record in one-run games allowed them to overcome their negative run differential of 650 runs scored and 671 allowed.
If you take the four big names the Yankees have imported and the four they’ve exported, you rank Cano a clear first. After that, it’s murky. Tanaka has the upside to be No. 2, yet he brings the extra layer of guesswork that accompanies all Japanese players. Even if the 25-year-old lives up to his frontline starter potential, you’d peg the Yankees with the third-best starting rotation in the American League East behind Tampa Bay and Boston.
Their outfield is indisputably better than last year, their bullpen indisputably worse and their infield depends on the returns of the recovering Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira.
Now that they’ve blown past their hopes of keeping their payroll under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold, they could step on the gas and sign a free agent such as Grant Balfour or Fernando Rodney to work with David Robertson in the closing role. That appears quite unlikely, though.
“Hopefully we’ve pushed ourselves into the level of conversation that we can now be included back with some of the better teams in the American League,” Cashman said.
Maybe, maybe not. They’re definitely once again one of the more interesting teams in the AL, though. In the Yankees’ universe, that counts for something.