Also, I saw this on a message board:
It's all about CHEMISTRY! And Johnny was an integral part of that WINNING
CHEMISTRY that will be lacking come this season. Mark my words!
Dear this person,
I hope you search for this post online and find me writing about you, because you're a goddamn moron and you should really know it.
No love, me.
You know who had really good chemistry? My intramural volleyball team from second semester senior year back in college. Because it was my friends and I just kinda needing something to do to relieve our stress, we signed up to do this. We were awesome! We had the best chemistry ever! But we probably couldn't beat the Yankees at baseball. There's the whole "talent" thing. The Angels seemed to get along really well and have a lot of fun, and they were certainly motivated enough to win the whole thing for Adenhart, especially after they beat that Red Sox team that tortured them in recent years. But they couldn't beat the Yankees because the Yankees were just that damn good.
The 1996-2001 and 2009 Yankees got along great, sure, and it does my heart really good to see things like that Tex/A-Rod epic man-hug after A-Rod's walk-off home run in the 15-inning Yankees/Red Sox affair, but they did not hug each other to all those pennants and World Series wins (and of course, the 1977-1978 Yankees kind of hated each other, but funnily enough, a lot of that bullshit with Jackson, Munson, and Martin went away when they won the World Series. Weird how that happens!). The Yankees did not win in 2009 because Swisher and Damon were doing that dumb "rock out" thing. Heck, maybe this is the year Posada pulls the stick out of his ass and does that with Swisher. Nah, that'll never happen. (I love you, Georgie.) And no, random idiot I saw on Twitter, Alex Rodriguez does not hit as well as he does because of Melky Cabrera being on his team. I can't believe you would say something so stupid, but you did. Shame on you. A-Rod's numbers, pre-Yankees: .311/.387/.590/.977, 148 OPS+. Yeah, he did a pretty fucking good job of hitting before he ever met Melky. (Fun fact I learned while looking those stats up on Baseball Reference: A-Rod hasn't bunted since 1999. He sucks and doesn't know how to move the runners over!!!11!!!1!)
Also, in 2006, 2007, and 2008, Johnny was part of a LOSER CHEMISTRY. Joe Torre has a whole whiny section in his book about how much, in the offseason between 2006 and 2007, Damon had spent time with his family and was badly out of shape during spring training and the beginning of the season. I hated this entire section of the book because I felt it was so, so intrusive and unnecessary and Johnny Damon seems like a nice guy who didn't deserve Torre basically shitting on him, but there it is.
I am going to miss Johnny Damon. I'd rather have him than Randy Winn, that's for sure. But it's obvious he just wasn't in the budget (though they offered him 2 years/$14M, which he should have accepted) and I think Cashman and Hal just don't want to deal with Boras any more unless it's for a Teixeira-level talent. And the crazy/annoying thing is that a lot of these people who are like "noooo we can't get rid of Damon and Melky nooooo" would have gotten rid of A-Rod in a hot second before this year. Heck, they probably still would. Agahgljsalgjasg.
If you really care about chemistry, Granderson is widely regarded as one of the great clubhouse guys in baseball, Johnson is a former Yankee who's from their farm system and seems pretty chill, Winn is supposedly a good clubhouse guy too, and Vazquez is all excited to work with Pettitte because Andy wasn't there when Javy was previously.
PS. Put Gardner in CF, Cash.
