"it remains to be seen whether Yankees ownership is committed to developing talent in the same way"
Are you kidding me? The Yankees were developing talent and great talent long before the BoSox. Maybe you have forgotten the names of Bernie Williams, Jeter, Rivera, Pettite, Posada, and lately Cano and Wang. All those guys came through the Yankees minors and the first 5 were intregal parts of the World Championships in the 90's. Sure the Yankees traded away minor league prospects at the trading deadline those years to get guys like Cone or Paul O'neil but I don't recall too many prospects the Yankees have traded away that have turned into talents like Hanley. We traded away Soriano to get A-Rod and Ted Lilly to get Jeff Weaver but even Lilly was years away from producing consistently at the time. What other top prospects have teh Yankees really traded away? Dioner Navarro? Ruben Rivera? Nick Johnson? JT Snow?The Yankees are still near the top in developing talent and talking the marginal prospects up only to trade them away. They have held on to the ones that will become real superstars and paid them to keep them in the organization.
I never said renteria, drew, or lugo were bad players...even gagne had his day. All i meant to say was he Sox had a great SS in Orlando Cabrera but he wasn't as flashy as renteria, so instead of keeping a guy that had proven he could perform both offensively and defensively they went after the "fad" player. when he didn't work they went after the next "fad" in Lugo. the JD drew signing was just throwing money at someone who could get put on the DL getting the morning paper.
The Sox have a good core of young players in pedroia, papelbon, ellsbury, Delcarmen, and maybe even Lester and Clay. But to make it seem like you've been developing talent the last 10 years is totally silly. The WS team of 2004 was 'bought' and put together more then any of the Yankees Championship teams. Before this latest crop of young talent the last group in the majors was Greenwell, Ellis Burks, Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn.
|
