Nov 14th 2008 9:00AM by Josh Alper (author feed)

There’s only one word that fits as a tagline for the 2008 New York Yankees: Failure. Failure to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993, failure to inject youth into an aging lineup and rotation and failure to make anything meaningful out of the highest payroll in all of baseball. Harsh, perhaps, for a team that won 89 games in one of the toughest divisions in recent memory, but the Yankees don’t get graded on a curve.

There were some individual successes. Mike Mussina won 20 games for the first time in his career. Mariano Rivera padded a legacy that will land him in Cooperstown exactly five years after he stops entering to “Enter Sandman,” and Alex Rodriguez, despite more tabloid headlines and awful statistics in the clutch, had a year that would be a career best for many players.

But the disappointments were more pronounced. Neither Phil Hughes nor Ian Kennedy made Brian Cashman look smart for refusing to trade them for Johan Santana. Melky Cabrera regressed so far that he ended up in Triple-A and Robinson Cano looked more like a future plumber than a future star. That’s created huge holes in center and the rotation, and called into question how well the Yankees are developing a wave of players that can carry them when the remaining stalwarts fade into the sunset.Continue Reading