February 11, 2007 When we last saw the Yankees together four months ago, chaos reigned. Everything fell apart so quickly against the Tigers in the ALDS that it must have felt like a roller coaster going downhill fast.
This week, the memory of that nightmare finally starts fading.
Yankees pitchers and catchers officially report to Tampa Tuesday, marking the start of the team's season. Everything begins fresh, and there might not be any other team in baseball that's more thankful for that.
Then again, this won't be their typical spring training camp, at least not the kind that their fans have grown used to lately.
For starters, there will be no recently acquired first-time Yankee superstar dominating the headlines.
The Yankees tried that with Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Hideki Matsui, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson and Johnny Damon -- and how many World Series rings did that method deliver?
So with their roster aging and loaded with long-term, guaranteed contracts, general manager Brian Cashman went about his offseason to-do list a little differently, doing far more subtracting than he did adding. He traded Gary Sheffield, Johnson and Jaret Wright, all for youth.
And while major league teams collectively spent more money this offseason than ever before, the Yankees stayed relatively silent, at least compared to their old self.
They acquired a known quantity in Andy Pettitte and added Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa through the posting process to avoid the luxury tax.
"The Yankees not only have emerged from the offseason as one of the elite teams in the major leagues, but also a vastly improved farm system that will allow them to sustain their championship success," Indians general manager Mark Shapiro said in an e-mail message.
But the price the Yankees will pay in the short term for their added pool of young talent is a major-league rotation that has its share of question marks.
By trading Johnson back to the Diamondbacks last month, which was sparked by the lefthander's preference to play closer to home, the Yankees are left with Igawa as their fourth starter and Carl Pavano as their fifth.
Cashman freely admits there are questions. Igawa never has thrown a pitch in the majors and Pavano hasn't pitched in a major-league game since June 2005 because of an embarrassing list of injuries.
And although the Yankees created goodwill among fans by bringing back Pettitte, team officials have not forgotten about his troublesome left elbow, which was a big reason why they let him leave after the 2003 World Series in the first place.
Yankees brass undoubtedly will spend a good portion of spring training taking stock of their pitching staff, determining how much they can trust Igawa and Pavano and keeping an eye on Pettitte's elbow.
If they must turn to someone else, highly touted pitching prospect Phil Hughes won't be hard to find. He'll be in camp for the second straight year, and although the team expects him to start the season with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, they haven't ruled him out as part of the roster to start the season. "He's not very far off," Mussina said recently.
Hughes, 20, headlines an impressive crop of young pitchers in camp, including Humberto Sanchez (acquired in the Sheffield trade), Ross Ohlendorf (acquired in the Johnson trade) and righthander Tyler Clippard.
"For the first time since I've been in camp, we're going to have an opportunity to look at six or seven mystery guys that we don't know who they are, or at least we haven't seen them yet at the major-league level," Rodriguez said last week. "Maybe we can strike lightning in a bottle, kind of like Detroit did last year with Verlander and Zumaya."
Of course, the Yankees aren't blinded by youth.
They made it clear to 44-year-old Roger Clemens that he's welcome back whenever he wishes, and Pettitte's return to pinstripes can only help their cause.
But The Rocket's decision isn't expected until after spring training, so the Yankees aren't concerned about it right now. Their thoughts are completely focused on the spring, a welcome reprieve from last fall.
