Wednesday, July 28, 2004
By JON HEYMAN
NEWSDAY
Randy Johnson is no luxury now for the Yankees, he's a necessity.
If the playoffs start today, their ace is gopher-ball-prone Javier Vazquez, the No. 2 starter a tossup between Jon Lieber and Jose Contreras, who'd be great should Tampa Bay somehow sneak into the playoffs.
Until Tuesday night, Orlando Hernandez, who limped off with hamstring trouble, was the ace. El Duque finally showed his age. He's 100, incidentally.
The conventional wisdom has been that the Big Payroll acquiring the Big Unit is overkill. But the Yankees actually need Johnson to survive in October. If they don't get him, they have all the makings of a first-round playoff dropout.
A main activity of Yankees' front-office people remains reading tea leaves. They've been told by Diamondbacks folks not to bother involving a third team and can only speculate what that means for their chances.
Only wants Yankees
The current theory is Arizona will try to talk Johnson into going somewhere else -- namely a team that has major-league-ready prospects to deal -- and that if, as expected, Johnson rejects that deal, Arizona will reluctantly work something out with the Yankees.
Yankees people had to be heartened to hear more confirmation that Johnson and Barry Meister, the bad cop in Johnson's good-guy-bad-guy agenting routine (the other agent is Alan Nero), are working overtime to extricate him from baseball's worst team and move him to its best.
The Newark Star-Ledger reported Meister told D-backs GM Joe Garagiola Jr., "If you don't trade him to the Yankees, you're going to have one unhappy player."
To which, Garagiola responded, "And how would I tell the difference?"
Like his father, Garagiola Jr. has a winning sense of humor. But it's now clear the $23 million they'd save by jettisoning Johnson isn't the only incentive for the team that reported losing $60 million in 2003.
On a good day, Johnson's no fun.
On a 14-game losing streak, from which the D-backs just escaped, the Big Unit's got to be a royal pain in the you know what.
"I'd be surprised if he isn't pitching somewhere other than Arizona," an executive with another AL team said.
Johnson might gripe if and when he arrives. The Yankees' supposed all-world roster has gaps bigger than any pothole on the Grand Concourse. If Johnson is tiring of Randy Choate blowing games, he ought to get a whiff of Felix Heredia.
Kevin Brown apparently got the less nasty strain of parasite, but Brown still isn't exactly on the fast track back.
Mussina still waiting
And Mike Mussina is shut down until Thursday despite his elbow feeling "10 times better." In other words, his arm recently felt 10 times worse than something.
Not good. Yet Mussina was griping that the Yankees are being too cautious with him, which only shows that all he learned at Stanford were curveballs and crosswords.
This is no time to take a chance, and Johnson is close to a sure thing. He's the pitcher perfect for a postseason run, a Wells-Clemens combo of left-handed and clutch power pitching who would re-install intimidation into the rotation. Better still, he's dreaming only of pinstripes while he tries to push his way out.
Literally. He recently pushed Luis Gonzalez into a water cooler after Gonzalez dropped a fly ball, which showed he'd hit his breaking point. Johnson told Sports Illustrated, "This team is young. It's not built to win right now. Should I stick around the rest of this year and all of next year and go through this again?"
The deal would already have been done now if the Yankees had one bona fide major-league-ready prospect. But their system is empty.
Of course, the Yankees do have a few things going for them, most of them green. Though there was pessimism detected Tuesday in the Johnson camp, as one Yankee pointed out, "We always seem to get our man."
Other teams dropping out
Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and St. Louis looked into Johnson but none are viewed as contenders now.
The Angels are not likely to trade third-base prospect Dallas McPherson or catching prospect Jeff Mathis.
Even if they'd surrender first-base prospect Casey Kotchman, who's prone to injury, the Yankees -- said to be "open to anything" -- are desperate enough to do whatever Arizona asks, including taking unwanted contracts, like injured reliever Matt Mantei's.
Asked if anyone's "untouchable," a Yankees exec responded by howling. If they don't get Johnson, the laughter stops.
XJon Heyman covers the New York Yankees for Newsday.