The Yankees Go All In for 2009 With a Patented Steinbrenner Spending Spree

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Today, we examine the team Brian Cashman put together, one that included several critical and expensive decisions, highlighted by the nearly half a billion dollars spent to sign free agents CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher. Let’s get to it.

Outside of the Steinbrenner family, no one was more pissed off about what happened in 2008 than general manager Brian Cashman because, after all, he was the man responsible for constructing the roster that failed to make the postseason.

However, there was some doubt about whether Cashman was going to get the chance to rectify that and get the Yankees back to the World Series for the first time since 2003 because his contract had expired.

Rumors were floating around that missing the postseason might spell the end for the then 41-year-old Cashman and that he was considering taking the vacant GM job in Seattle. But the sons of the ailing George Steinbrenner who were now making the decisions, Hal and Hank, came to their senses and decided staying the course was prudent.

And so the first domino in the 2009 season fell when they gave Cashman - who at that time deserved it - a new three-year contract which kept him in the drivers’ seat where he’d been since 1998.

“I’ve got a job to finish here, that’s the bottom line,” Cashman said at a press conference to announce his return. “I consider coming off a season where we didn’t reach the playoffs for the first time since 1993 as a personal challenge. I’ve never been one to run from a challenge and I look forward to having the chance to go after this thing again.”

Cashman had grown irritated in recent years by his treatment in the media who often suggested that those three straight World Series titles he presided over from 1998-2000 were achieved largely on the work of others who had laid the foundation for success before Cashman took over as GM.

The media tended to focus on what had happened since 2003: Losing that year’s World Series to the friggin’ Marlins; the collapse against the Red Sox that followed in 2004; and then three straight first-round exits before missing the postseason altogether in 2008.

“Sometimes I don’t like what I see in the papers,” he said. “I don’t like that some people forget that I’ve been here since 1986, that I was here when this franchise was no good and that I was part of the rebuilding process as an assistant GM for six years. I was an assistant farm director when we got all the core that’s here today.”

All of which was true, and while Yankee fans demanded nothing short of World Series rings, the fact that Cashman’s Yankees - bankrolled by the Steinbrenner portfolio - had been a perennial playoff participant and championship contender had to count for something.

But Cashman also recognized that what’s past was past, the failure of 2008 was unacceptable, and driven by that failure, he was motivated to make amends and that appealed to Hal and Hank.

“If I left, I wasn’t going to like the story that was going to be written because it wasn’t going to be an accurate depiction of my time here,” he said. “I’ve given my heart and soul to this franchise and they’ve given their heart and soul back to me. At the end of the day there’s a story I want to have written here and I want to make sure it’s written in a certain way. The only way to do that is to suck it up and win and that’s what I want to do for this franchise.”

In Yankees Universe, that meant attacking problems head on, and doing it with money, lots of money. “We are going to leave no stone unturned, I can promise you that,” Hal said.

Everyone knew where Cashman’s re-tooling had to start: Addressing the rotation, and that was going to be quite an undertaking because everyone knew Mike Mussina was going to retire, and most expected that Andy Pettitte was going to do the same. They were New York’s best starters in 2008.

There were two pitchers the Yankees coveted - lefty CC Sabathia and righty A.J. Burnett - and the question became, how much would it take for them to both take a drive down that two-way street? In Sabathia’s case, it wound up being $161 million spread across seven years, and in Burnett’s case, $82.5 million across five years.

Sabathia was far and away the top free agent pitcher, but his procurement was no guarantee. He had spent the first 7 ½ years of his career in the American League with Cleveland, but he was sent to Milwaukee at the 2008 trade deadline and helped the Brewers earn a National League wild-card berth.

Come to find out, he actually liked hitting for himself (he batted .235 in the 17 games he appeared in for the Brewers), plus he didn’t mind the tradeoff of pitching to pitchers in the NL instead of designated hitters in the AL.

Well, $161 million convinced him to settle for batting solely during interleague games and as it turned out, his prowess in that short stint with the Brewers was fool’s gold. He batted 35 times during his 11-year tenure with the Yankees and his average was .061.

Ultimately, Mussina did retire, but Pettitte changed his mind and re-signed with the Yankees so that set up a rotation of Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, hopefully a recovered Chien-Ming Wang, and possibly Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes battling for the fifth spot.

On the offensive side, the top free agent was first baseman Mark Teixeira, and it just so happened that the Yankees had a glaring hole following the departure of free agent Jason Giambi. Many thought Teixeira was going to sign with his hometown Baltimore Orioles, but the Yankees squashed that possibility with the might of an eight-year, $180 million deal.

Swisher was signed to replace Bobby Abreu in right field, and that allowed Johnny Damon to move to left, young Melky Cabrera to take over full-time in center, and 35-year-old Hideki Matsui could spent the bulk of his days as the DH.

Cashman had backed up his promise to build a first-class roster and by the time spring training rolled around, the Yankees were looking like the team to beat in the American League. It was all systems go, but then up stepped Alex Rodriguez to throw cold water onto the burning fire of excitement.

A Feb. 7, 2009, Sports Illustrated story reported that A-Rod’s name was among 104 major leaguers on a government-sealed list who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 which were not illegal at the time. Two days after the story rocked MLB, A-Rod admitted he used steroids during his three-year stint with the Texas Rangers, but never before, nor since, which was obviously bullshit.

Also around this time, Joe Torre’s book entitled The Yankee Years, written with SI’s Tom Verducci, contained some revealing thoughts about A-Rod. “Alex monopolized all the attention,” Torre said referring to A-Rod’s arrival in 2004. “We never really had anybody who craved the attention. I think when Alex came over he certainly changed just the feel of the club.”

Verducci also insinuated, while not directly attributing to Torre, that players and Yankee employees referred to A-Rod as A-Fraud.

However, while his name was sullied, there was no repercussion for his steroid use or his reputation in the clubhouse, and as part of his plan to get ready for his sixth year in pinstripes, he was going to play for the Dominican Republic in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Instead, an MRI revealed a cyst on his hip which required surgery, and that knocked him out of action until early May.

Still, the Yankees were built to win and whatever confidence had been siphoned in 2008 was fully re-injected heading into 2009.

“I think there’s a lot of optimism about our team,” Derek Jeter said. “But it’s a long season. I think the last few years we’ve sort of dug ourselves a little bit of a hole and hopefully this year we can get off to a quick start.”

As you will see in the coming weeks, that did not happen.

NEXT SATURDAY: Opening Day at Camden Yards in Baltimore did not go well as newcomers CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira flopped in their first game wearing the interlocking NY.