Cairo Está En La Casa
Posted by Steve L. on January 6th, 2007 · Comments (5)
The Yankees signed Miguel Cairo to a one-year, $750,000, contract.
The last two seasons Miggy hit the way you can expect him to perform. The year he had in 2004 was a fluke. Here’s an interesting compare of Cairo’s lifetime statistics to that of another player:
That pretty much sums up Cairo’s stick – a tad better than Luis Sojo, barely. But, Cairo can steal you a bag if you need it. That’s a plus. Here’s the leaders, in terms of SB success rate, for guys with 30+ SB over the last three seasons:
As you can see, when it comes to being a good base-stealer, Cairo is top ten material. And, sometimes, something as simple as a stolen base at the right time can really help a team.
I thought for sure that Cairo would have joined the Cardinals, to back up the World’s Grittiest Infield: Kennedy-Eckstein Part II. The amount of Grit on that team would be too much to handle, though, and Selig had to step in and break up the would-be Grit Monopoly.
The last few days have decreased my grade of this off-season from A- to C+. Sure, we’re talking about half of a first baseman platoon and a backup infielder, but I have no faith in Torre using them effectively. Miguel Cairo will somehow get 300 AB this season, I can feel it. There will be a point, sometime in June or later, when the bottom 3 of the lineup will be
Miguel Cairo
Raul Chavez
Doug Mienkivicz
That isn’t the lineup of a championship caliber team, and that’s why this signing saddens me.
OMG. If Torre bats those three at the same time, like that, it will turn a 9-inning game into a 6-inning game – because that’s like spotting the other team 9 outs.
mehmattski,
A- to C+ in 3 days? I suppose that means you’d prefer Johnson stayed and Cairo and Mientkiewicz weren’t signed since those are the only recent transactions other than signing Ben Kozlowski to a minor deal.
Who would you sign for backup infielder and what would you do (if anything) at 1B/DH to bring the rating back to your A-? Do you prefer Johnson stay based on what was received in return?
I don’t care one way or the other about any of those deals but you seem to have a strong distaste for all of them to make such a large decrease over the last 3 days compared to the entire offseason.
Cairo and ManCaveItch (MCI)* are poor signings. Hopefully the both of them will be gone by the end of ST.
*stolen from Bronx Banter
Yeah, it’s the two signings that bother me the most. The Randy Johnson trade was necessary, but if you look around the league for a team with a surplus of young, promising catchers and a backlog at first base, the Diamondbacks are a good choice. To have not come out of the RJ trade with Conor Jackson or one of the guys behind him is disappointing to me, but not nearly as much as the two subsequent signings.
I would have loved to see a young kid get the chance to make the team as a utility infielder, and some combination of Eric Duncan and Andy Phillips can cover all but shortstop… and we have some guy over at 3B who has played a bit of that before. Miguel Cairo is a known substance, and as evidenced in this post, a POOR known substance. Like the Kevin Thompson v Bernie Williams argument last year, I still side with the theory that at least a young promising guy can surprise you, while an aging known quantity is not likely to surprise.
Maybe C+ is a little harsh… maybe Raf is right and Cairo won’t even make the team, beat out by the apparently slick fielding Alberto Gonzalez. But this team is a Posada or Jeter muscle tear away from being forced into a league average lineup, and I think that’s unacceptable. Maybe, as a lot of Yankees fans are expressing, having all these right handed pitchers in the bullpen, AAA, and AA can only mean that Cashman is cooking up another deal.
Still, there’s no denying that adding two replacement level players to a contending team only makes the team worse. There’s still three months till the season starts, we shall see.