Why the Yankees failed

So the Yankees have made an early exit out of the MLB playoffs yet again, but this year according to multiple news sources, Steinbrenner may fire one of the very best managers in baseball. No doubt this is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The Yankees have not won a world series in 2000, and have not been in the world series since '01 for one reason...Pitching.

This year the Yankee pitching staff finished 12th in MLB. Compared to the other AL teams in the playoffs, they were by far the worst pitching team and only the St. Louis Cardinals had a higher team ERA than the Yankees.

Torre is not the one who makes the trades, and the Yankees have traded away young talent to get monster bats in the lineup. Simply put, the Yankees keep adding aging pitchers, rather than young ones, and have failed to cultivate any young arms out of their system.

Take a team like the Angels, as a comparison. They lost their Cy Young winner, Bartolo Colon for almost the entire year, yet stayed in contention until the final week of the season. How did they do this? Not by outscoring their opponents but by bringing up young arms who not only pitched adequately, but rather buoyed a pitching staff that could have fallen apart. Jared Weaver, Joe Saunders, and Ervin Santana along with Farm product John Lackey have become a formidable young staff, with tremendous upside. The Angels were able to go into their farm system and fill in for not one but two starters. Yes Colon got injured, but Jeff Weaver, Jared's brother was waived by the Angels after posting an era over 6.

All the other teams in the AL know that they cannot spend like the Yankees and have tried to figure out how to beat them and many have done it. The only team that tried to beat the Yankees at their own game was the Red Sox and they missed the playoffs this year. When the beat the Yankees in 04, their pitching got better after being down 0-3 and the Yankees did not score more than 4 runs in any of the final four games.

The formula for beating the Yankees is out there in a playoff series. Great pitching almost always beats great hitting. Lets hope the Yankees don't figure this out and keep putting together those monster lineups and neglecting their pitching staff and bull pen.