Free Agent Dumpster Diving Pays Off for YankeesBy David Golebiewski
The New York Yankees are synonymous with financial largesse. Nine-figure long-termcontracts. A total team payroll that trumps the gross domestic product of some small countries. A$1.5 billion baseball cathedral in the Bronx. Solid-gold bats, gloves and caps (OK, not really, butyou get the point).But, for all the advantages that the
club’s
unlimited coffers afford them, a vital reason why theYankees ran away with the AL East in 2011 was that they got some fantastic bargains whiledumpster-diving in the low end of the free agent market.It was hardly by design. New York was left scrambling to fill roster spots as spring trainingrapidly approached. The starting rotation behind CC Sabathia was in flux, as the Yankees lost theCliff Lee sweepstakes to the Phillies,
didn’t pull off a trade for a top
-tier arm and watched AndyPettitte bid the Bronx adieu for a second time by retiring. The outfield featured quality startersbut little depth, and the team needed someone to crouch behind the plate with a creaky, 40-year-old Jorge Posada no longer able to do so.That desperation led the Yankees to dial up some former stars with dubious career prospects andmedical files bizarre enough to fill an entire season of
House
. Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia,Andruw Jones and Russell Martin combined for 11 All-Star appearances and about $230 millionin career earnings entering the year, but all four were squarely in the Blue Light Special sectionof free agency.New York hit big on each seemingly busted veteran. Well-paid players in the prime of theircareers no doubt propelled the Yankees toward the playoffs, but this quartet pushed them overthe top, providing the difference between October baseball (however brief it was) and a bitterthird-place finish behind the Rays and Red Sox.
Bartolo Colon
It's often said that starting pitchers need three solid offerings to keep hitters off balance andnavigate lineups multiple times. Bartolo Colon spent the better part of a decade debunking thatbaseball axiom. The bulky right-hander peppered batters with one low-90s fastball after another,besting the 200 inning mark seven times in eight years from 1998 to 2005 while ranking ninthamong starters in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), a stat that compares a player's value to thatof a readily-available waiver-wire or minor league player.But then Colon fell apart physically, and his fastball abandoned him. Following a 222.2 inningregular season, Colon left Game of the 2005 ALDS against the Yankees with a shoulder injury.He didn't get much offseason rest, rushing back to pitch for the Dominican Republic in theinaugural World Baseball Classic in the spring. That's when the injury avalanche began.
Colon suffered rotator cuff, elbow, back, oblique and knee ailments from 2006 to 2009, throwing just 257 combined innings for the Angels, Red Sox and White Sox. His Fielding IndependentPitching (FIP), an ERA estimator that judges hurlers on strikeouts, walks and home runsallowed, was 4.86. And that fastball? Colon still threw it about 80 percent of the time, but it satin the 89-90 MPH range instead of 92-93. Colon then didn't pitch at all in 2010 due to a rotatorcuff problem.As a bad-bodied, brittle pitcher in his late thirties, Colon looked cooked. He took the mound forthe Aguilas Cibaenas in the Dominican Republic Winter League, though, under the tutelage of manager and Yankees bench coach Tony Pena. Colon showed his old velocity, and New York came calling with a one-year, $900,000 minor league contract.At 38, Colon turned in a season reminiscent of his ...salad(?) days in Cleveland andL.A./Anaheim. He used his fastball (averaging 91.7 MPH) about 83 percent of the time, thesecond-highest rate among starters. That heater-centric approach led to 7.4 strikeouts per nineinnings, 2.2 walks and 1.15 home runs per nine in 164.1 innings pitched, good for a 3.83 FIP.Colon ranked second among Bombers starters with 2.9 WAR. And aside from a strainedhamstring that sidelined him in June, he stayed healthy.Colon's season didn't lack controversy, though. News reports emerged that in April of 2010,Colon had a procedure in which doctors extracted fat and bone marrow stem cells and injectedthem into his elbow and shoulder. Major League Baseball looked into the matter, though nothingemerged about their findings as of October.It's easy (and overly simplistic) that say that Colon got some unfair advantage from the treatmentand that it made him into a different pitcher. But he didn't morph into some Strasburgian cyborgwith superhuman powers; Colon merely resembled the guy he was from the late '90s to the earlyaughts.
Freddy Garcia
Freddy Garcia's epitaph appeared written in New York -- Buffalo, New York, that is. LikeColon, The Chief was once one of the game's true workhorses, topping 200 innings seven timesin eight years from 1999 to 2006 and prompting the Phillies to swap Gio Gonzalez and GavinFloyd to the White Sox for his services before the 2007 season. Those innings took their toll,however. Garcia began the season on the DL with a biceps injury, made 11 brutal starts andunderwent surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and labrum in August. He inked a minor leaguedeal with the Tigers a year later and made a few middling September starts, rarely getting out of the mid-to-high-80s with his fastball before shoulder stiffness shelved him again.The Mets took a flyer on Garcia heading into 2009, and that's when The Rock look-alike's careerhit rock bottom. He showed Wakefield-esque zip on his fastball in spring training and wasreleased in April after coughing up 10 runs in 11 innings at Triple-A Buffalo. Garcia looked
washed up at 32 years old, his surgically-repaired shoulder having robbed him of the low-to-mid-90s heat he once showcased with the Mariners.Thankfully, the White Sox gave him one last chance in June. Garcia adapted to his lower-octanearsenal, going to his breaking and off-speed stuff nearly 60 percent of the time while posting a3.35 FIP. Chicago exercised a $1 million club option on him for the 2010 season, and he all butscrapped his 87-88 MPH fastball, throwing it just 30 percent. Garcia logged logged 157 inningswhile striking out 5.1 batters per nine innings, walking 2.6 per nine and allowing 1.3 HR/9. Sure,his 4.77 FIP wasn't great, but it sure beat getting lit up in the International League.New York, frantically trying to fill the back end of its rotation as the calendar flipped toFebruary, gave Garcia a one-year, $1.5 million minor league deal with $3.6 million in possibleincentives. It looked like a terrible match of pitcher and ball park on paper. A finesse, fly ballpitcher making home starts at a stadium that increased homers by 34 percent during its first twoyears in existence? Good luck with that.Despite those concerns, Garcia didn't get rocked and managed to stay healthy, save for cuttinghis index finger in an August kitchen mishap (Jeremy Affeldt, Brett Cecil, Garcia...pitchers makebad chefs). He whiffed 5.9 per nine and walked 2.8 in 146.2 frames, giving up just a homer pernine innings in pinstripes. Garcia caught some breaks with runners on base, as his 77 percentstrand rate was 4-5 percentage points above his career average, but he was a quality back-endstarter whether you judge by ERA (3.62) or FIP (4.12).Even with roughly $3 million in bonus money earned, Garcia proved to be a great value bytotaling 2.2 WAR. He did that despite averaging 87.2 MPH with his fastball (thrown 36 percentof the time), besting just Wakefield, Livan Hernandez, R.A. Dickey, Shaun Marcum andBronson Arroyo among right-handed starters.If Garcia went to an Independent League tryout, he might not get signed. Yet he remains aserviceable starter by flummoxing hitters with slow sliders, curves, changeups and splitters.Velocity isn't everything, and reports of Garcia's demise turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
Andruw Jones
When Yankees fans first caught a glimpse of Andruw Jones, he was a beaming teenager fromCuracao circling the bases for the Braves in Game One of the 1996 World Series. Jones joltedpitches from Pettitte and Brian Boehringer deep into the Bronx night, replacing Mickey Mantleas the youngest player to go yard in the Fall Classic. Though New York ultimately prevailed insix games, Jones finished the series 10-for-20 and showcased the power and fielding prowessthat would lead to over 400 career home runs and 10 consecutive Gold Glove awards.The 34-year-
old version of Jones fitted for pinstripes wasn’t nearly as svelte,
fleet of foot orcelebrated. After departing Atlanta for the Dodgers following the 2007 season, Jones became a
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