If you had told an ardent Yankees fan after the 2000 season that during the next several years his team would add Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, and Randy Johnson, among others, and still not win a World Series, he would have taken you for a bitter Mets fan and laughed at you. Since this is of course what has happened, someone, or at least something, must bear the blame. At various times during the last six years, the retirement of Paul O’Neill, the amount of money the team spends on player salaries, the proven choker Jeff Weaver, and alleged choker Alex Rodriguez have all been fingered as causing the Yankees’ championship slump, but lately there’s been a new villain, a cabal of Florida-based Yankees executives who are said to have the powers of Rasputin. All the bad decisions were the fault of this sinister clique, whose powers were broken when general manager Brian Cashman wrested power away from them two winters ago. With young Cashman now in firm control of the club, the theory goes, a return to glory is nigh.

The problem with these competing theories of blame is that there’s little blame to assign. In the last six years the Yankees have won six division titles and two pennants, which isn’t bad. Baseball isn’t football or basketball, where given sufficient cleverness and cash it’s possible to build a team certain to win the championship. It’s far too difficult for that. The latest theory, though, does have some truth to it. This winter, while his rivals were signing merely good players to nine-figure contracts, Cashman was prudent and restrained. He shipped off Sheffield, Johnson, Jaret Wright, and other symbols of past excess for prospects. The only star he brought on was Andy Pettitte, who as a homegrown Yankee doesn’t even really count.

The Yankees now begin to resemble a real baseball team, rather than a random collection of former All Stars glued together with whichever minor league journeymen happen to be conveniently at hand.

Whether the cause is Cashman’s consolidation of power or Mars is having passed out of the house of Saturn, the Yankees should be, by far, the best team in baseball this year. The Red Sox are probably equally talented, but because they have more injury prone and merely adequate players, they’re less likely to play up to their talent than the Yankees. No other team is really close. Save Doug Mientkiewicz, each Yankees regular, from Derek Jeter to thirdyear man Robinson Cano, is one of the two or three best in the league at his position. The pitching staff isn’t as good, but it’s more than fine. I don’t think anyone will feel compelled to assign blame anywhere for this team.

MANAGER

Joe Torre will one day be elected to the Hall of Fame for his great career as a player and manager, and he’ll deserve the honor. This should probably be his last year with the Yankees, though. He has the respect of the fans, the press, Yankees players, and Yankees executives, and that’s always outweighed his questionable handling of strategy and tactics, but the scales are shifting. Last fall, Sports Illustrated ran an article in which Yankees, both named and unnamed, threw then-struggling Alex Rodriguez under the bus, openly questioning his manhood. This unprecedented hit job couldn’t have been written without the tacit approval of the manager, who followed it up a month later by dropping Rodriguez into the no. 8 spot in the last game of the playoffs.

Just as Casey Stengel played the harmless buffoon to mask his shrewd, ruthless calculations, Torre has played the genial uncle to mask his own mercilessness. This has, mostly, worked, and past targets of his wrath, like Weaver, deserved it. Humiliating Rodriguez, though, was the wrong thing to do, partly because Rodriguez can’t be accused of anything but trying too hard, but more crucially because it’s the wrong sort of motivational tactic. An insecure man doesn’t need to be publicly crushed; he needs to be fawned over. Stengel and the Torre who won four rings would have sucked their teeth, rolled their eyes, and stroked Rodriguez behind his ears in the interests of winning. This new Torre miscalculated, a bad move when it’s a question of getting the best possible play out of one of the greatest players of all time, who happens to be a weirdo. The point isn’t that Torre bullied Rodriguez and is therefore a bad man, it’s that he bullied Rodriguez and therefore showed he’s losing the touch that allows him to get the most out of his collection of egotistical drama queens. Without that touch, no man can manage the modern Yankees.

STAFF

Yankees fans are understandably fixated on Phil Hughes. It’s one thing for the best pitching prospect in baseball to be nearly ready for a rotation job, another when the man holding the job he’s almost ready for is Carl Pavano. Firpo Marberry once had 14 teeth pulled to cure a sore arm so he could pitch in a tryout; Pavano begged out of spring training games with a bruised buttcheek. Still, more important than the Hughes/Pavano issue is the question of how good Kei Igawa will be. The Japanese veteran is certainly durable, having pitched 200 innings in four of the past five years despite the short Japanese schedule having limited him to 29 games or less in all but one of those seasons. We’ll have to see whether his sketchy control and variety of junk pitches will leave Yankees fans feeling good about him throwing a lot of innings.

As for the bullpen, while there are few famous names in it, it should be good. The excellent results the Yankees squeezed out of the anonymous likes of Brian Bruney and Scott Proctor last year may have been flukes, but between rookie pitching coach Ron Guidry and bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan, himself a great pitching coach of long standing, there is a lot of baseball brain power out in the pen, and that brain power has been given some good arms to handle. Keep an eye on strikeout artist Luis Vizcaino, who could well end the season as the team’s key setup man.

BENCH

The best you can really say for this year’s bench is that it’s a good thing the team has eight excellent regulars. The best reserve is Melky Cabrera; on a team with three exceptionally durable All Star outfielders, he’s not of quite as much use as he might be. The rest of the lot is pretty dire, with only heroic former Met Todd Pratt, the backup catcher, standing out as being of any real use. Reserve infielder Miguel Cairo seems to have attained the same level of job security that Luis Sojo once enjoyed, without offering anything like the entertainment value of watching the ancient Sojo play a stunningly deft shortstop with his chins rolling around above his collar. Presumably better reserves can be scared up during the season if necessary; the Yankees are after all pretty well off.

tmarchman@nysun.com

Chien-Ming Wang
[2007 PROJECTION: 10-7/4.31 ERA/155 IP]

Here is a conundrum. Chien-Ming Wang tied for the American League lead in wins last year and finished second in Cy Young voting. He also struck out fewer batters per 9 than any other pitcher in baseball. You can have a long argument about this, but essentially there’s a simple question here — is he a freak, or a fluke? I lean toward freak, and think of him the same way I would a knuckleballer. If you have a great floater, or a 96-mph sinker with the movement Wang gets, you don’t really need to strike people out; you will, though, be more subject to the whims of fate. Bad infield 2006 Stats grass, hungover infielders, muscle cramps in your hands, and so on, will affect you more than the next guy. The fates have worked for Wang so far in his short, charmed career. He’ll miss the open of the season with a strained hamstring, but it isn’t a serious injury.

Mike Mussina
[2007 PROJECTION: 12-8/4.31 ERA/190 IP]

You could make a case for the Red Sox having a better rotation than the Yankees. It’s certainly potentially better, as Daisuke Matsuzaka, Curt Schilling, and Josh Beckett are each capable of winning a Cy Young, but also potentially worse, as each is associated with serious risks. Mike Mussina, on the other hand, is the perfect Yankee pitcher. He doesn’t have the potential for truly spectacular performance that the Boston pitchers do but there’s also little chance that his worst he’ll do much less than throw 180 or so average innings, which for this team is more than enough. Consistently going for the sure thing is a good idea when you’re rich like the Yankees, and that they do so is why they always win the division.

Andy Pettitte
[2007 PROJECTION: 12-8/ 4.17 ERA/190 IP]

When the Yankees let Andy Pettitte go after the 2003 season, I figured it for a good idea, as there was good reason to think his arm was shot. Pettitte did miss half the 2004 season, but then he came back in 2005 with a year out of Lefty Grove’s prime and followed up with a vintage Pettitte campaign last year, and having averaged 218 innings the last two years he should be considered a good bet to do as much in the Bronx. As in his last run with the Yankees, Pettitte’s virtues of dependability, consistency, and durability will probably be easy to overlook, but this sort of player is the backbone of great teams, and in retrospect the Yanks should never have let him get away. It will be great to see the return of that big, easy 14-13214.1 238 windup and some of the most shameless ball-greasing in the game. (Why do you think he tugs his jersey so much?)

Mariano Rivera
[2007 PROJECTION: 31 SV/2.74 ERA/ 70 IP]

I find it wonderful that I live in an era where the two players who make me understand what it must have been like to watch Willie Mays or Josh Gibson play are a really fat guy who was released by the Twins for., among other reasons, being unwilling to work on his opposite-field stroke and a man who throws one pitch and exudes the enthusiasm of a Sarbanes-Oxley monitor. What are you going to say about Mariano Rivera? He is the perfect pitcher. I boldly forecast that he will have the same year in 2007 he’s had every year for a decade.

Kyle Farnsworth
[2007 PROJECTION: 68 K/3.75 ERA/65 IP]

Nominal setup man Kyle Farnsworth’s existence as a Yankee points to the team’s one potentially serious flaw — a lack of late inning relief. I think they’ll be fine, but when Farnsworth is your 8th inning man, you have to be a bit worried. Few have ever gotten so little out of so much. With his monstrous heater, tight-breaking curve, and huge, gangly frame, which makes the ball look as if it’s exploding out of a pile of scrap machinery, Farnsworth should be as good as anyone in the game, and yet he just gets by. I hope for his sake that he at least displays his skills as a judoka this year; his pummeling of Reds pitcher Paul Wilson a few years ago was hilarious, proof that not all ballplayers are sissy slapfighters.

Johnny Damon
[2007 PROJECTION: .289/.362/.458 100 R]

Johnny Damon’s first year in the Bronx was a great success, as he enjoyed probably his best season with the bat and reminded Yankees fans, accustomed to Bernie Williams, of the benefits of competent center field defense. Note that Damon, who has amassed 1,958 hits and 154 home runs, is building a decent case for a plaque in Cooperstown. When he reaches 2,500 hits and 200 home runs, likely at age 35, he’ll become just the fourth center fielder to reach both of those round numbers while stealing 300 bases — the other three being Willie Mays, Vada Pinson, and Steve Finley. I don’t respect Hall of Fame cases built around arbitrary numbers, and Damon is the least of these four players, but if he ages well (and there’s no reason to think he won’t), voters will cotton to his career totals and charisma. Be nice to him if you want a Yankees cap on that plaque, people.

Derek Jeter
[2007 PROJECTION: .322/.390/.452 24 SB]

Everyone is aware of Derek Jeter’s merits — he was the best player in the league last year, he’d deserve election to the Hall of Fame if he retired tomorrow, etc. Perhaps more interesting, people have also realized that his image is somewhat of a fraud. The Yankees kneecapped Alex Rodriguez in Sports Illustrated last year, and the Captain’s refusal to say a word in support of his teammate showed his public persona is that of a smarmy, preening egoist. I’m not saying that’s what Jeter is, but that’s what the legend of Jeter has always presented him as — a distant, icy player, obsessed only with winning. There’s never been anything warm or appealing about this image at all, any more than there was ever anything really appealing about Michael Jordan’s similar image, and it’s odd that it’s taken so long for people to realize this.

Bobby Abreu
[2007 PROJECTION: .277/.389/.447 71 RBI]

Bobby Abreu has his faults. He’s an average fielder at best, and he’s lost a bit of power the last few years; that so, he’s now an excellent hitter, rather than one of the best in baseball. These are the kinds of faults a team can accept, especially given his strengths; even on a team full of exceptionally disciplined hitters, Abreu is a standout. He’s led baseball in pitches seen per plate appearance each of the last three years, and he was third in baseball each of the two years before that. It can be maddening to watch him occasionally sniff at a ball an eighth of an inch off the plate in a crucial at-bat, but over the long season this kind of approach destroys opposing starters, running up their pitch counts and leading to the welcome sight of a scrub reliever coming into the game with two on and one out in the 5th inning. pitches and focusing more on location. As he goes, so goes the staff.

Alex Rodriguez
[2007 PROJECTION: .288/.385/.531 115 RBI]

Alex Rodriguez is the most interesting player in the game. He still would be clearly the best player in the league, rather than arguably the best, if he hadn’t moved off shortstop in deference to an inferior player. He’s still so insecure that he’s publicly spoken about seeing a therapist, something that itself takes enormous confidence. The player who will likely become the game’s first 800 home run man was, before he moved to third, a good enough defender that he could have held a job even if he couldn’t hit at all. He has a reputation for choking in front of the Bronx fans despite having hit as no other right-handed hitter ever has in Yankee Stadium in his 2005 MVP season. Why people find Derek Jeter’s vapid platitudes and Page Six appearances more praiseworthy than Rodriguez’s interesting contradictions and complete inability to act like a robot, I’ll never understand.

Jason Giambi
[2007 PROJECTION: .252/.413/.518 29 HR]

Not counting his injury-marred 2004 and his steroid embarrassments, Jason Giambi has been as good as the Yankees could reasonably have hoped he would be when they signed him in 2001. He’s in fact been comparable to Manny Ramirez over that time, lost year aside. His glovework has become so bad that he’ll supposedly serve solely as the designated hitter this year, but we’ve heard such claims before. For whatever reason there’s a longstanding and enormous difference in Giambi’s hitting in games in which he plays the field and games in which he doesn’t; he hits like Tony Clark as a DH and Frank Thomas as a first baseman. Unless hypnosis or some similar therapy can solve the problem, I’m quite sure we’ll see him regularly impersonating a pillar by June.

Hideki Matsui
[2007 PROJECTION: .288/.376/.474 82 RBI]

You had to feel for Hideki Matsui when he broke his wrist last year. The injury broke his consecutive games streak at 1,768, close enough to Cal Ripken Jr.’s 2,632 that I had some tentative thoughts about how baseball would institutionally handle a record set partly in Japan and partly in America. (“Not well” was my conclusion.) Happily, he seemed to suffer no real harm from the injury, as he badly harmed the baseball upon his late season return and betrayed no fear or hesitance at the plate. Slow as he is, Matsui is an athletic player, and he should age well. I

expect him to hit exactly as he always has for the next few years, and I find it wonderful and fitting that he continues to statistically resemble Paul O’Neill more closely than he does any other player.

Jorge Posada
[2007 PROJECTION: .259/.365/.443 71 RBI]

Everyone agrees that Jorge Posada doesn’t get his due, including the writers who are presumably withholding his dues from him. I think it’s because there’s no one thing to point to as evidence of Posada’s greatness. He’s a hell of a hitter for a catcher, but not an outright great hitter. He’s good behind the plate, but to this day he moves like a converted infielder back there, and he’s not great against the running game. He’s a tough guy, but not a legend in his own time like Boston catcher Jason Varitek. As a homegrown player who’s caught for most of the Joe Torre 2006 Stats

era, you’d think he’d have a reputation as the heart and soul of the team. For all that, he will, like Matsui, almost certainly have the same season he always has.

Robinson Cano
[2007 PROJECTION: .308/.345/.472 86 RBI]

How good is Robinson Cano? It’s a loaded question. Certainly any 24-year-old coming off a season in which he hit .342 is to be prized. He’s still probably overrated, for two reasons. The first is his position. We tend to mentally group second basemen with shortstops as middle infielders, and thus give just a bit less credit to keystone men who can hit than we would a shortstop. This really overrates second basemen; it’s far, far easier to find one who can hit than it is to find a shortstop who can do so. The second is his batting average. Cano has hit .316 in 1,004 major league at bats, and smacked 41 doubles in 112 games last year; there’s no doubt he can hit the ball. Because he walks so rarely, though, he’ll have a poor on-base average even if he hits .300 this year. This doesn’t mean he isn’t highly valuable; it does mean that unless he broadens his game or proves to be as good a hitter for average as Albert Pujols, he’s not going to be the superstar many expect him to be.

Doug Mientkiewicz
[2007 PROJECTION: .251/.328/.382 6 HR

Melky Cabrera is, to pick an arbitrary number, one of the dozen best outfield prospects in baseball. At 21, he was an average major league hitter, and he can handle center field; players who can do that often grow into MVP-class players. Doug Mientkiewicz didn’t hit better than Cabrera did last year, he’s more than a decade older, and last time we saw him in New York — two years ago — we saw that however good he once was with the glove, he’s now an unexceptionally decent first baseman. Is there any particular reason anyone can think of why the Yankees wouldn’t be best off to bench Mientkiewicz, install Jason Giambi at first, and rotate Cabrera and the three veteran outfielders through the designated hitter slot? Of course there isn’t, and that’s why that’s what they’ll probably end up doing.