Sports fans generally don’t have any perspective because of the day-by-day nature of baseball. Their memories are bad, they get caught up in the moment, they become high and crash instantly, make snap judgments, and a truck load of other negative traits. I’ll be honest with you- since the Angels crushed the Yankees in the 2002 post-season, I changed my views and just try and enjoy the games, although sometimes I fall for the skewed opinion every now and then.

Anyway, why would New York Yankees fans be complaining about anything, since the 2010 Yankees are virtually guaranteed a post-season appearance, and have the best record in baseball? Why must New York fans always moan about something and expect to be 162-0? It’s human nature, huh? I wish Yankees fans would realize how better off the team is than other teams in baseball. Here is a brief list of what the message board mutants, stats-heads, and radio callers are crying about:

1. Francisco Cervelli. Since Cervelli’s hot start in which everyone jumped on the bandwagon and anointed him Jorge Posada’s successor, he hasn’t been hitting. I even had a DailySkew Baseball mutant commenter make fun of me for predicting this last year. Heck, I like Cervelli a lot, but with his extended playing time, he has regressed to his mean, which is a league average backup catcher. Unfortunately, Yankees Nation wants his head. They had forgotten how well he works with the pitchers, is good defensively, and still has a few clutch hits under his sleeve. Yankees Nation wants Brian Cashman to call up untested Jesus Montero, the #1 Yankees prospect, who hasn’t learned how to catch yet or work a pitching staff.
2. A.J. Burnett. Look, A.J. is a headcase, folks. Get used to it, because he’s untradeable.
3. Joe Girardi’s platoon lineups. Every fan wants Curtis Granderson benched against lefties for every game. They want to see Marcus Thames play more (just not batting 3rd). They don’t want to see Berkman batting either way. Fun fact: Joe Girardi’s lineups have been better than Joe Torre’s lineups. They have been pretty much perfect when Nick Swisher bats 2nd.
4. Just last week, Derek Jeter was done as a professional hitter. Steven Goldman even blogged about it. Now, he’s the Derek of old again. Do you hear the crickets chirping now?
5. The trades sucked. Lance Berkman, Austin Kearns, Kerry Wood: yawn. Berkman was booed at around 20 at bats for the Yanks. So typical of fans.
6. Joba Chamberlain sucks. Or does he? He’s been better these last couple of weeks. Of course “better” still means allowing baserunners and pitching in blowouts. Anyway, he lost his job to Dave Robertson, but bringing up Joba to any Yankees fan is a sore subject.
7. Joe Girardi resting players really gets under fans’ skin. They HATE when he gives guys days off. Never mind that Joe Girardi actually knows when his players are getting tired, and is privy to personal information that we don’t have.
8. There is a grumbling that Brett Gardner’s slump may result in the Yankees signing Carl Crawford in 2011.
9. Another gripe with Joe Girardi that fans have is that he has a fixed catching rotation with Jorge Posada and Cervelli catching their own set of respective pitchers.

I’m sorry, but the only time Girardi gets me angry is when he starts going crazy with bullpen changes in the 7th and 8th innings. All of the above complaints about Joe are really stretching it. Girardi is an Enneagram Personality Type 1, and they tend to get on people’s nerves because they believe they are “right”.

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By the way, as a side note: I heard Mike Francesa say that Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon are not having “good years” with their other teams,and therefore they would not have performed well with the 2010 Yankees. This fallacy is another myth that fans fall into all the time. It is very likely that if Damon and Godzilla remained with the Yankees in 2010, they would have similar stats as their 2009 seasons, i.e. excellent production numbers.

The fact that Damon and Matsui have different numbers can easily be attributed to the most basic tenant of baseball: the whole game revolves around the pitcher-hitter matchup. If you pluck any player and put him on a different team, his stats will automatically change because he has a new schedule with different matchups. When you throw in park factors and psychology/morale (both players did not want to leave NY) of course there will be a change in stats. I am certain that Matsui and Damon would be performing better in 2010 if they had remained in NY.

2010 Hideki Matsui > Nick Johnson + Lance Berkman if Godzilla had remained in pinstrips.

2010 Johnny Damon > 2010 Curtis Granderson. The irony with Damon vs Granderson is that using my above theory, Curtis would actually be having a better year for himself if he had remained in Detroit in 2010.

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