The Buhner.com Annual Yankee Offseason Outlook, Part 1

I’m Chillin’

I wrote this over at another board:

In that sene­rio, the Yan­kees lose:
Sheffield
Craig Wil­son
Cory Lidle
Octavio Dotel
Ron Vil­lone
Tanyon Sturze
Bernie Williams
Miguel Cairo
Aaron Small

Out­side of that, the Yanks have poten­tially one arbi­tra­tion case (Aaron Guiel, who prob­a­bly would get non­tendered if he’s eligible).

So the 25 man ros­ter would ten­ta­tively look like this (leav­ing off Sheffield and assum­ing the option on Wright gets picked up and Pavano doesn’t drive into a tree suf­fer a set­back in rehab):

CATCHERS
Jorge Posada

INFIELDERS
Andy Phillips
Jason Giambi
Robin­son Cano
Alex Rodriguez
Derek Jeter

OUTFIELDERS
Melky Cabr­era
Johnny Damon
Bobby Abreu
Hideki Matsui

STARTERS
Randy John­son
Chien-Ming Wang
Mike Mussina
Carl Pavano
Jaret Wright

RELIEVERS
Mar­i­ano Rivera
Scott Proc­tor
Kyle Farnsworth
Mike Myers

With six slots to fill, the Yan­kees need a backup catcher and at least two more bullpen guys (maybe three or even four if Pavano and Wright are in the rota­tion). From there you have one to three more filler slots for posi­tion play­ers — Torre loves his backup mid­dle infield­ers, so one in there, a righthanded hit­ter who can play out­field, and maybe a full­time first base­man who is good defen­sively so that Giambi can stay at DH? Oth­er­wise you have Giambi on first and a rotat­ing out­field with Cabrara giv­ing Damon/Matsui/Abreu a rest.

Of course, with Pavano pen­cilled in the ros­ter and in the rota­tion, there’s no guar­an­tee there, so start­ing pitch­ing will have to get looked at whether they go the Mat­suzaka route or not. What’s Sean Casey going to go for on the mar­ket? Casey seems like the kind of player the Yan­kee club­house could use.

So the Yan­kees pitch­ing at this point looks like this:

• Starters: Chien-Ming Wang, Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson
• Reliev­ers: Mar­i­ano Rivera, Scott Proc­tor, Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Myers

• Jeff Karstens, Brian Bruney, Chris Brit­ton, Hum­berto Sanchez, Dar­rell Ras­ner, T.J. Beam, Jose Veras, J. Brent Cox, Carl Pavano, Tyler Clip­pard, Philip Hughes

44 at the end of) and Mike Mussina no spring chicken