Oh Wallace! You kissed me and stopped me from shakin’!

Wallace Mattews pens a nasty-gram to Jason Giambi with the headline “Giambi took a lot more than he ever gave.” I guess that makes him the anti-Mandy:

Technically, the signing of Mike Mussina to a six-year, $88.5-million deal after the 2000 Series may have been the first shot, but with the Giambi signing, The Boss – drunk on four shots of championship Kool-Aid – was off and running.

Since then, the Yankees have spent $1,466,012,054 on players. That’s one billion, four hundred sixty-six million, twelve thousand and fifty-four dollars. In return, they’ve won this many world championships: zero.

And one thing every one of those teams had in common was the presence of Giambi.

The presence of Derek Jeter too. And Wallace Matthews in the press box, now that I think about it. What’s your point?


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Mark R
14 years ago

Overpaying for good players is a strategy that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. In this particular case, a cascade of bad free agent signings kept a reasonably good one from paying off. Also, bad luck. Wallace Mathews is a journalist!

I’ll bet if the Yanks had moved all of their starters to the bullpen, they’d have won 20 championships since signing Giambi!

Jason @ IIATMS
14 years ago

Eddie Rabbitt and now Barry Manilow?  oy

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

It’s easy listening day here at ShysterBall.

Jake
14 years ago

“either you’re obsessed with a woman named Mindy … or a man named Andy!”

Grant
14 years ago

All those teams had Mo! And Posada! And only one of them had Scott Brosius!

Sportswriters are morons. Did JC Bradbury or someone else do any math on whether Giambi was worth his contract? I’d be interested to see. I suspect he was overpaid, perhaps significantly. But of course as we all know the Yankees don’t exist in a vacuum…

you know what? I’m tired of it. Just tired of all the same arguments. Ugh.

Vin
14 years ago

Wallace Matthews is not a journalist. He, and most of his ilk, are the written equivalent of Mike Francesa. Is that a sportswriter? Maybe, though it’s a bad one. Is that a journalist? Hell no.

Mark R
14 years ago

From looking at Fangraphs WAR data, Giambi was underpaid for the first couple Yankee years and overpaid thereafter. It always makes sense to overpay for star-level production (keep that value in one roster spot), so I think it was a smart signing. Even with the injuries. Even in retrospect.

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

Everyone knows that east of LaGuardia live a whole bunch of know-nothing Met fans.

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

What’s his point indeed. Do NY fans really believe that if money is spent to give Yankee fans an exciting, star-studded team each season, that participates in the pennant race and gives them a game to watch and talk and argue about every day, it’s wasted? A season that doesn’t end in a World Series win is wasted? Really? Gee, its amazing the fans in other cities follow baseball at all!

I’m a Red Sox fan, and the summers of ‘67, ‘75, ‘77, ‘88, ‘90, ‘95, ‘99, ‘03, and, yes, ‘78,and ‘86 were among the best times of my life. So they didn’t end the way I liked. So what. My life probably won’t either, and I won’t consider that a “waste.”