To be honest, I don't think he's going to help them all that much.
The Yanks are going to hang around either way. Truth is, if Mussina, Pettite and Wang all stay healthy, it's a solid frontline with or without Roger. Their pen still sucks hard, and Roger, now being a 5 or 6 inning kind of guy, is going to see a lot of leads blown.
Either way, the Yanks are going to hang around...I just think their pen sucks too much either way, but yeah, they're going to be there, as always, come fall.
I think he'll be a big help for the fact that he lets them deal with injuries. Yankees fans keeping throwing out "Wang, Mussina, Pettitte, Clemens, Hughes," which seems like a silly pipe dream. There's no way they're all going to be healthy at once. What Clemens does is allow them to better handle the times when one or more of the other are injured. It will be huge if this allows the Yankees to undo what they were forced to do with Hughes and leave him in the minors until July.
I agree with you though that they'd find a way w/o him. They always do. One or two of their AAAA guys would start pitching like a stud anyway.
And it should help the pen, as it allows them to put guys in the pen who would be instead starting (Igawa). Of course I say should and not will, because it doesn't matter how many options he has, Torre will ride farnsworth and proctor into the ground.
The 1/2 season thing just feels wrong. Its primadonna-ism at its utmost.
It was bad enough when Pedro used to cheat his way into reporting late to spring training each year 'cause of his dad's birthday. This is ridiculous. Whatever happened to being with your team through thick or thin?
Eh, that doesn't bother me a single bit. He sets his terms and tells teams they can take it or leave it. He's good enough that some teams will accept them.
Thankfully for Roger being a primadonna doesn't make him bad at baseball. If a team has to choose between a hall of famer who isn't with his team through thick or thin or a JAG who is the best teammate in the world, most will choose the former.
Of course, the fact i already hate him makes it easy for me to get past it. It's not like I have to root for him and rationalize his actions as to not feel dirty ("Randy Moss just cares about winning"). I know he's an self-obsessed, attention-whoring, ungrateful bastard so nothing he does really surprises me.
/Warning: side rant
When interviewed by YES yesterday he actually outright lied that he wasn't getting any special treatment, trying to play the part as one of the guys. A few hours later the contract terms are known, and he's getting all of the perks he got in Houston. The guy has the stones to lie straight to anyone's face even when it can be easily refuted. He's so full of himself that the truth is whatever he wants it to be, and doesn't think twice about lying.
And anyone doubts the guy is (or was) on HGH (or other untested for in the past) enhancers? If we use Barry Bonds as the example of the personality type that would use performance enhancers, isn't Roger a slam dunk user? How are they different except that Roger pitches and is white? I guess Roger is less confrontational with the press, but he's just as angry and the press is simply less confrontational with him.
Heck, considering Bonds doesn't have 5 kids named Barry he might be less of a narcissistic a-hole than Roger.
*edit* now that I think about it, maybe the twilight of Roger's career was circumvented through use of performance enhancers. It isn't often a guy suffers a decline in his 30s and gets great again. He had no reason to use them when he was the highest paid player in baseball while with Boston and on top of the world. Maybe he saw the handwriting on the wall and took the steps necessary to be as great as he thought he still was.
