Yankees: Winning a World Series can be a real killer these days

The Yankees came within one out, and a bloop single of winning four consecutive World Series from 1998-2001. But don’t expect to see anything like that ever again in baseball.

The Yankees, when you view it from today’s perspective, pulled off one of the greatest feats ever with what is now referred to as “The Run” from 1998-2001 when they were stopped only when a bleeding heart single off Mariano Rivera costing them a fourth consecutive Championship. Take a deep breath. You’ll never see anything like it again, from the Yankees or anyone else.

Winning anything in baseball is hard these days. A team can play almost 180 games over the course of a season before they can claim the prize. Keeping a lineup on the field for any length of time without injuries forcing replacements is almost impossible. And you’d better have a boatload of pitchers to back up your starting staff.

Ask the Mets about the high cost of winning

Consider, for instance, because it’s becoming ever so clear, that the New York Mets not only lost a World Series a couple of years ago, but they lost their entire starting rotation due to the wear and tear on these fragile arms that couldn’t handle, or maybe weren’t ready for the stress of a long baseball season.

Nowadays, It’s beginning to look like it takes one year to win a World Series and then most or even all of a full season to recover from it.

And much like an earthquake, the tremors following the event are often worse than the event itself.

Jon Lester, the ace of the Chicago Cubs staff, three 202 innings during the regular season in 2016. He then added another 35 innings during the Playoffs and World Series to that total. He picked up his championship ring a few weeks ago. As did Jake Arrieta, who logged nearly as many innings.

On the rebound from last season, Lester is 2-2 with a 3.57 un-Lester like ERA, while Arrieta is 5-3 with an ERA approaching five (4.80).  Corey Kluber, the ace of the Cleveland Indians staff, threw more innings than either of these pitchers last season. His fate this season? He’s 3-2 with a 5.06 ERA and is currently on the disabled list.

And what of their respective teams, the Cubs, and the Indians? The Indians just managed to climb four games above the .500 mark this weekend with a good showing against the Houston Astros, managing to get a sniff of first place in the AL Central Division.

The Cubs? They’re three games removed from last place in the NL Central with a pedestrian 22-20  record in third place behind the Cardinals and the surprising Milwaukee Brewers.

The Yankees may become the dinosaurs of baseball

It’s beginning to look like it takes one year to win a World Series and then most or even all of a full season to recover from it. And maybe the joke about the San Francisco Giants odd-year even-year thing isn’t a joke at all. It’s reality these days.

None of this is a coincidence. Instead, it’s a trend that is taking hold of baseball and slowly, but surely, eroding the game to where the Yankees, in retrospect, are the freaks of baseball.

How did the Yankees manage to do it? Because, from year to year, the almost kryptonite-like Core Four went out there game after game, season after season, with no major injury hiccups and seemingly getting better with age.

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The Yankees may be the dinosaurs of baseball before all is said and done. And maybe that’s exactly what Major League Baseball (MLB) wants. They don’t want dynasties, and three-peats like the Yankees accomplished. Instead, they want this thing called parity, which reminds more of Robin Hood or Chinese Communism where the wealth is spread evenly among the flock.

There’s probably some element of truth to that, but there has to be more to it. Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, and more recently John Smoltz and Greg Maddux wouldn’t even break a sweat throwing 200 innings.

Major league pitchers can throw 95-100, but they can’t even get through six innings without a call to the bullpen, even on days when they are totally on their game. What’s up with that?

Pettitte and Wells, where are the bulldogs now?

No, really. To me, it’s perplexing. They talk about these guys working tirelessly in year-round conditioning programs, with some even using (free) state of the art facilities constructed for that purpose by their agents. Maddux and Smoltz never had that. They never needed it.

Perhaps, it comes down to the teams themselves and the degree of control they exert on their employees. Because maybe Corey Kluber should have been held back by the Indians for the entire month of April after last year’s exhausting season. And the Cubs should have done the same with Lester and Arrieta, telling them not to report to Spring Training until April 1.

Because both teams, otherwise, are powerhouses in their divisions. And whatever is lost now will be gained later when the real pennant race begins after the All-Star Game. Again, it beats the hell out of me, but something ain’t quite right here.

During the Yankees run, both Andy Pettitte and David Wells logged 200+ innings for four consecutive years, including the playoffs and World Series.

So one of two things has to be true. Either the Yankees run is more spectacular that anyone even realizes now until the historians get a full grip on it, or the pitchers of today are more feeble than the pitchers of yesteryear, and the idea of even a “two-peat” goes out the window forever.

The Cubs, more so than the Indians, seem to be suffering from a case of the aftershock from a World Series Title.  And the idea that they have to play 162 games just to get into playoffs gives the appearance that it’s almost insulting for a team that was predicted to be the next dynasty in baseball, after the Yankees.

The Yankees, though, were never anointed in all of those years. Instead, they had to out there and grind their way to the top, each and every season.

The Yankees Twenty-Five Most Memorable Home Runs

In the Yankees storied history, twenty-five of their home runs stand out as moments in time never to be forgotten and always treasured by baseball fans.

Which give us an opportunity (now) to see if the Chicago Cubs, and to a lesser extent, the Indians are made of the same stuff like the New York Yankees during those magical years not so long ago. Show me, and then I’ll believe.