Resistance

I am reminded of the experiment Commander David Scott performed on the moon during the Apollo 15 landing. Scott took a hammer in one hand and a feather in the other and dropped them at the same time. Both items hit the ground simultaneously. It proved that gravity does effect objects equally. On Earth the feather falls much more slowly than the feather due to air resistance.

It occurred to me that forms of "resistance" can also effect baseball teams in their path to reaching the goal of the playoffs. This resistance can come in the form of distractions, injuries, and the like. If you have two equally talented teams then it reasons that the team with the least resistance is more likely to make it to October baseball.

It can be argued that the Yankees and Red Sox are fairly equally talented. I started wondering which team faces more potential resistance going into the season.

Areas of potential resistance for the Yankees:

- Andy Pettitte has had his offseason completely discombobulated and his mental state has to be questionable. There is no way he's as mentally focused as he should be going into camp. And Pettitte is arguably the team ace.
- Jorge Posada had one of his best years in his career at age 36. Hitting better than 50 points above your previous best could raise eyebrows in this day and age of HGH / steroids. Couple that with Posada's defense of Roger Clemens over Andy Pettitte and I think we've identified another area of potential resistance.
- Jason Giambi is in the final year of his contract and expects to see a lot of time at 1st base this year. Being in a contract year is pressure enough but Giambi will be under the microscope with every error he makes at 1st base. Giambi has handled the pressure before but the resistance here may come from the pitching staff who may not see the benefit to having the aging slugger in the line up at the expense of defense.
- Chien-Ming Wang lost his arbitration case against the Yankees and that's never the harbinger of good feelings.
- Mike Mussina is at the end of his career and no matter how good the upcoming rookie pitchers are sometimes nudging a one-time team ace aside and out of a rotation spot can be bumpy. Combine that with the normal acclimation issues young players have along with the resistance coming from Pettitte and Wang's issues and you have a potential tinderbox.
- Joe Girardi settling in as skipper of the Yankees also brings some potential problems. Everything he does will be compared to the way Joe Torre did things. Girardi might not have the patience or the calm Torre has and he may make resistance worse.

Areas of potential resistance for the Red Sox:

- Curt Schilling's shoulder is already an issue but him not being around may actually lessen resistance as his rotation spot is probably taken up by the number one pitching prospect in baseball in Clay Buchholtz.
- Coco Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury battling for the starting job in center has the potential to create some resistance. However, if Coco loses the spot there is no reason to believe that he'll make himself a big distraction and I'd guess that Theo would be willing to accommodate a trade.

All in all it seems like there will be a much lower chance of issues outside the lines becoming a drag on the performance of the Yankees than the Red Sox.