The Yankees went nine years without a championship? Blame Alex Rodriguez. The Angels and Cardinals both win the World Series? Must be because of David Eckstein. Some pitchers get better backing offenses than others? It's because pitchers "earn their run support."

In spring training, the combination of a clean slate and this massive confusion about what makes teams successful leads to a seemingly endless series of season-preview articles full of misguided optimism.

For example, when I opened up the Providence Journal on Tuesday, I was greeted by an article about New York Yankees starter A.J. Burnett, who earned $16.5 million in 2010 while going 10-15 with a 5.26 ERA.

Was it an analytical assessment of the mechanical problems that caused Burnett to slump last season, with details about how he was trying to improve? Well, look at the headline and you tell me:

YANKEES' BURNETT SHOWING SIGNS HE'S GOT HIS MIND RIGHT

In addition to asserting that Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Oswalt had thrown 262.2 innings during Monday's nine-inning exhibition game, the author completely forgets to mention any of Burnett's problems with the physical act of pitching. Instead, the problem was all in his head:

"A.J. Burnett says he is pitching with a clear head. Through two spring training starts, it appears to be working for him. (...)

The 34-year-old right-hander is coming off a rough season, on and off the field. He cut both hands smacking a clubhouse door out of frustration and came to work one day with a black eye, refusing to say anything other than it wasn’t baseball-related."

Now, I understand that Burnett had a rough go of it last season, and it was probably incredibly frustrating for him. He obviously had a lot on his mind, and even if injuring oneself by attacking the clubhouse isn't unprecedented for Yankees pitchers (see "Brown, Kevin"), I in no way wish to minimize his inner angst.

But is it really a worthwhile endeavor to have this discussion without even mentioning the numbers that explain an actual on-field reason for his struggles?

Burnett's best weapon has always been his curveball. According to FanGraphs' pitch valuations, his curve was worth 71.8 runs above average from 2005-9—the best in baseball.

In 2010, something simply went wrong with his Uncle Charlie; his best pitch dropped in value by nearly 20 runs—two full wins' worth—from 16.0 in 2009 to -3.9 last season. That's a huge difference.

As a result, Burnett simply wasn't fooling opposing hitters. His swinging-strike percentage dropped to 7.9 percent (his lowest since tracking began in 2002). For the first time in seven years, he missed the strike zone more than he hit it (45.3-percent Zone percentage), and batters made contact with his outside-the-zone pitches nearly two-thirds (63.7 percent) of the time they swung,

As a result, his strikeout rate dipped below 7.0 K/9 for the first time since 2001—down from 8.5 K/9 in 2009, and 9.6 K/9 in 2007. There's your problem.

Burnett's BABIP also rose—his .319 mark was the highest of his career—but given his ineffective curveball, part of the spike could be due to hitters simply getting better contact off of him.

However, the author of this piece isn't worried about that. Why, you ask?

“My mind is clear,” Burnett said. “I’m not thinking about this and that.”

There you have it, folks. An optimistic attitude has cured all of Burnett's ills.

The writer then cites his five innings of spring training work as evidence of Burnett's improvement. On the surface, his outings seem impressive—he's held opposing hitters to no runs and two hits in his two short outings—but the caveats here go beyond the basic warnings about small sample sizes and exhibition games.

In his five innings of work, Burnett has only two strikeouts—good for a 3.6 K/9 rate. Again, don't read too much into two outings in games that don't count, but that's not a very encouraging start for a guy who struggled to get whiffs last year.

Moreover, Burnett has been the beneficiary of a .143 BABIP. Talk to me about his 0.00 ERA once his hit rate regresses to above the Mendoza line.

But hey! It's OK, because his mind is clear.

I don't mean this as a criticism that applies only to Burnett or this article—it was just one example. My criticisms would apply for just about every feature story written this spring about an enthusiastic rookie or a kindly veteran looking to make a good impression on the team in the preseason.

If sabermetricians can be repeatedly accused of forgetting that the game is played on a field instead of on a computer, why is it acceptable for writers like this to completely ignore the physical aspect of the game?

It takes more than a good attitude to be a successful player, and a surplus confidence does not make up for a lack of talent. Of course, there is a league where having fun is the only thing that matters—it's called T-ball.

For more of Lewie's work, visit WahooBlues.com. Follow him on Twitter @LewsOnFirst or @WahooBlues.

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"Nobody's available," he said this week. "Nobody of value, anyway."

Bollocks.

It's possible, albeit unlikely, that there aren't any teams actively shopping their best starting pitchers. But I have a very hard time believing the Yankees couldn't bag a decent starter if they made a good offer.

Here's a list of 10 starting pitchers for whom the Yankees could try to swing a deal.

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But for all the attention the AL East gets, there's still a lot we don't know. Who will break out? Who will bust? Who will make the 25-man rosters? The uncertainties run far deeper than simply not knowing how the final standings will look next October.

In this slide show are the 20 biggest questions fans should be thinking about before Opening Day. So read on, and be sure to tell me what I got wrong!

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The fates of Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee have inspired countless articles and debates, but few writers spilled ink on his pending free agency because it seemed unfathomable that the Yankees captain would ever play anywhere but New York.

Now, with the two sides reportedly separated by as much as $100 million in contract negotiations, there is a very realistic possibility that Jeter could be suiting up somewhere else come 2011.

Of course, the Yankees aren't likely to let that happen; assuming Jeter relents at least a little bit from his unreasonable demands, they'll want to keep the face of their franchise in pinstripes. But now that Jeter leaving looks like a real possibility, we should take the time to wonder if New York really needs him.

In this slideshow are 10 reasons why the Bombers could survive if they let Jeter walk.

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Most of the criticism centered around the fact that I was a Red Sox fan writing an article about a Yankees player (and therefore anything negative I said was rooted in bias, not fact), or my use of Total Zone and Ultimate Zone Rating, statistics that assign a runs-saved value to a player’s defense, instead of traditional fielding percentage or the ol’ eyeball test. But to me, the fundamental gap was rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the way good defense is measured.

So forget the players, forget the teams, forget the statistics. Just imagine a hypothetical game in which one team’s shortstop is “Player A” and the other is “Player B.”

Over the course of the nine-inning game, each team’s hits go to roughly the same places on the diamond—five grounders are hit at or near the shortstop while three hard-hit balls are sent bouncing up the middle.

Player A cleanly fields all five of the balls hit to him—pick, throw, yerrrrrr out! But he doesn’t get to any of the hits that are out of the shortstop’s basic range. Maybe he’ll get close enough to dive for one of them, but he doesn’t have the ability to get to it in time.

Meanwhile, Player B makes four of the five routine plays but boots the last one and is charged with an error. However, due to his superior athleticism or speed or instincts or what have you, he saves three hits by getting to the balls that Player A couldn’t reach.

Who is the better fielder? Player A has a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage, while Player B’s error sinks his FLD percent to an amateurish .875. So Player A is clearly better, right?

A fan or a coach watching the game would probably come away with the same impression. The image of Player B bobbling the ball would be far more powerful and enduring than the memory of Player A not getting to the out-of-range plays. In fact, if Player B managed to stay on his feet while chasing down the ball at second base, observers remembering Player A’s dive would praise him for his fruitless athleticism.

But common sense tells us that the guy who made more plays was the more valuable defender. It’s a safe bet that Player B helped his team more in the field because he made two more plays than Player A.

Therefore, the Gold Glove award shouldn’t go to the guy who’s the best at routine plays or makes the fewest errors. It’s not about fulfilling the literal duties of one’s position, it’s about stopping the batter from reaching base safely to the best of one’s ability.

That established, let us turn now to some real-life players: Derek Jeter, who won the AL Gold Glove (supposedly) because of his .989 fielding percentage and six errors—best among AL shortstops—and Alexei Ramirez, who led that same group in Ultimate Zone Rating despite his 20 errors thanks to his phenomenal range.

In our hypothetical example, Player B made two extra plays for each ball he flubbed. In the real world, Ramirez made 14 more errors than Jeter, but he also accumulated 67 more putouts and 134 more assists—201 in total. That’s an extra play-to-extra error ratio of over 14:1.

For every extra ball Ramirez booted, he successfully scooped up 14 additional grounders. For every throw he missed, he reached 14 balls that Jeter couldn’t have gotten to. Does anyone want to argue that the good Ramirez did in stopping those 201 balls from falling for hits was outweighed by the 14 times he failed to do his duty?

Don’t try to rationalize that by saying Jeter had fewer opportunities to make plays—regardless of the pitching staffs, these things tend to even out over 162 games. Yes, Ramirez played 73 more innings in the field than Jeter, but if we prorate The Captain’s performance over A-Ram’s innings, he still falls short by a whopping 180 plays.

When a ball is hit right at him, there are few better fielders in the game than Derek Jeter, but using that to rationalize his Gold Glove selection would be like saying Jose Lopez should be MVP because he’s great at hitting fastballs. To focus primarily on fielding percentage and errors when evaluating defense is to exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of the game of baseball.

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This last handout is most topical the day after the announcement of the American League Gold Gloves. The gilded webbing is notorious for being based more on reputation and sheer name recognition than actual defensive skill—how else could Torii Hunter and Matt Kemp have been honored last year while Franklin Gutierrez and Nyjer Morgan’s mantles remained unadorned?

But I digress. Due to baseball’s sycophantic infatuation with everyone who suits up in pinstripes and (probably) a general apathy among the voters, three Yankees were named among the Junior Circuit’s top fielders—and none of them deserved them.

The first, Mark Teixeira, has parlayed one great defensive season, when he posted 15.3 UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating—a measure of how many runs a player saves with his fielding) in 2008 into a reputation as a master glovesman. Since then, he has been average at best; he posted just a 0.6 UZR in 2009, and that dropped to -2.9 last year.

Why that’s worthy of two consecutive Gold Gloves over, say, Oakland’s Daric Barton (12.1 UZR) is beyond me. Do you think Tex would have had a prayer if he was still with the Rangers?

The second, Robinson Cano, was almost as bad of a choice. His defense was worth -0.6 UZR, thanks to the worst range (-7.5 Range Runs) of any second baseman in the game. The Gold Glove would have fit the A’s' Mark Ellis or the Twins' Orlando Hudson much better.

But by far the most undeserving winner was the Captain himself. For the fifth time in his career, Derek Jeter was named the AL’s best defensive shortstop. And for the fifth time, he didn’t deserve it.

Jeter’s -4.7 UZR wasn’t anywhere near the top—in fact, it was third-worst among AL shortstops. That’s a full 15.5 runs—the equivalent of nearly two wins—behind the rightful Gold Glove winner, the White Sox' Alexei Ramirez.

Yes, Jeter’s .989 fielding percentage was the best of all Major League shortstops. But that number is misleading, as it reflects only the balls he got to, and the biggest flaw in Jeter’s game is his abysmal range. A brick wall will stop any ball that’s hit right to it, but it wouldn’t be an effective fielder because it couldn’t get to anything else (also because brick walls can’t throw).

Jeter committed only six errors, compared to Ramirez’s 20. But for every extra error Ramirez made, he also completed five more putouts and got 10 more assists. The plays Ramirez flubbed may have been more obvious than the mistakes Jeter made, but the fact of the matter is that Ramirez was a more effective defender.

Jeter’s -11.8 Range Runs ranked second-worst in the league. Keep in mind that he’s a shortstop, meaning his primary job is to cover a lot of ground. How can a fielder win a Gold Glove when he’s one of the worst in the business at getting to the ball?

You could try to argue that Jeter was unlucky in terms of balls hit near him. But even if you don’t accept that those things tend to even out over 162 games, this isn’t a new trend.

Only twice since tracking began in 2002 has Jeter posted a positive UZR; over that time, he’s been worth -42.5 runs on defense—and that’s being generous. Total Zone has him at -60 runs over that stretch and an absolutely awful -131 runs in his career.

This isn't just anti-Yankee bias—I think one snubbed Bomber, Brett Gardner, actually deserved a Gold Glove. I'm not complaining because they're Yankees. I'm complaining because they're inferior defenders.

Teixeira, Cano and Jeter didn’t deserve their honors, and if they were on any other team, they wouldn’t have had a chance. Any defense of these choices would make Jeter’s glove look good by comparison.

For more from Lewie, visit WahooBlues.com.

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So Bleacher Report's Featured Columnists decided to do it ourselves. Instead of just complaining about the awards as they are announced as we would normally do on our own, we teamed up to hold our own mock awards vote.

On Monday, we kicked off Week 2 of our four-week-long results series with our picks for AL Comeback Player of the Year, then we followed that up yesterday with their counterparts in the NL. Today, we look at the best relievers in the American League.

The top five vote-getters are featured here with commentary from people who chose them. The full list of votes is at the end.

So read on, see how we did and be sure to let us know what we got wrong!

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But you still won't be ready for October.

Each year, problems and uncertainties arise, and even the best teams are forced to face the unpleasant reality that things don't always go the way you plan them.

Here are 15 of the biggest questions facing playoff teams as they prepare to kick off the postseason tomorrow.

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But when the first round kicks off on Wednesday, don't pretend that you won't be watching.

The postseason is when heroes are made. It's when role players become household names, and stars aim to reach immortality. I know it sounds like a cheesy MLB Network commercial, but I defy any baseball fan to disagree.

In this slideshow are the 25 players who have had the best postseason careers in MLB history. Because this is about the career as a whole, I tried to make rankings relatively context-neutral, so a clutch hit or a walk-off homer didn't matter as much as they would have in, say, a "top postseason moments" article.

If someone you think deserves to be here didn't make the cut, that doesn't mean he wasn't considered—my original list had 75 names, meaning 50 nearly worthy players almost made it in.

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If the whole roster seems a little off, it must be residual jetlag from that last long road trip they were on. If it’s a certain player who’s mired in a slump, he probably hasn’t fully recovered from the paper cut he got three years ago. Here in Cleveland, we’ve been doing it for three years—it’s called “rebuilding.”

Sometimes the reasons are legitimate and they’re almost always benign; in most cases, there’s no reason to burst people’s bubbles (unless, of course, they root for your rival team).

But when a particularly idiotic excuse starts getting picked up and spewed out by the national media, someone has to put his foot down.

Indeed, cognitive dissonance has erupted over the last few days over the New York Yankees’ subpar play, and it must be put to an end.

Yankees fans were feeling restless Wednesday morning; the Bombers entered the day having dropped three and a row and six of their last 11 games—enough for the Rays to pass them in the AL East.

Coincidentally, Alex Rodriguez spent that span of games searching for his 600th career home run. To many fans and analysts, this meant that the Bombers were distracted by the pressure of their teammate’s attempt to make history—a notion that seemed to be confirmed when Rodriguez hit the long-awaited dinger in a 5-1 Yankees victory.

New Yorkers, I have news for you: this whole story is ridiculous.

For starters, the notion that this publicity stunt could bring down the whole team is ridiculous. I buy that it affected A-Rod—it was a huge moment in his career, and he certainly struggled at the plate (.178/.240/.222 slashline in the 12 games between Nos. 599 and 600).

But could it really have affected the rest of the team? This is a sport where even the best players fail 70 percent of the time, with hundreds of thousands of people watching. If you can’t handle a little pressure, you don’t belong in the big leagues—especially when you’re playing for possibly the most recognizable franchise on the planet.

Of course, there is a clubhouse chemistry factor, and bad feelings can spread quickly. There was depression in the Indians’ dugout, for example, after de facto captain Victor Martinez was traded to the Red Sox last year, and the Angels weren’t terribly motivated to do their best after Nick Adenhart was killed. Does anyone really want to try and compare the tragic loss of a teammate to the two-week delay it took for an egomaniacal multimillionaire to reach an arbitrary number of home runs?

A believer in this preposterous theory might suggest that, while the pressure might not have actually spread to his teammates, a fully focused A-Rod would have made the difference in some of New York’s recent losses; this idea is even more preposterous than the last.

Let’s assume for a minute that Rodriguez normally provides a full run of value every game (meaning he would be worth 16.2 Wins Above Replacement over a full season—by the far the best in MLB history).  There was only one game during that stretch in which the Yankees lost by a one-run margin. You could have added a better hitter than Babe Ruth to the Bombers’ lineups for the last two weeks and it couldn’t have been expected to change more than one game.

Shall we humor the even more absurd idea that Alex Rodriguez changes the score by an average of two runs every single night? Fine—only twice in the last two weeks have the Yankees lost by fewer than three runs.

But, as the guys from Baseball Tonight would tell you, you’re forgetting the piece d’resistance: if A-Rod’s quest for glory had nothing to do with the losing streak, why did they win when he hit No. 600?

This is the part where you laugh in your opponent’s face.

Putting aside the ridiculousness of declaring that the team has turned a corner after one game (even the worst teams win a couple times a week), anyone who spouts this rhetoric has, ironically, done what he (in all likelihood) accuses sabermetricians of doing: getting too caught up in minutia to see what’s actually happening in the game.

Did the New York Yankees really win that game because they were relieved to have the pressure lifted off their backs? Or was it because the two runs that scored just from A-Rod’s homer were one more than the Blue Jays got all night?

Fifteen of Rodriguez’ 17 homers this year have come in games New York has won; the Bombers are 14-2 when he goes yard (.875) and just 47-38 (.540) when he plays but keeps the ball in the park. Over his career, a full 65 percent of his long balls have coincided with his team winning.

Across the league this year, teams are averaging more than twice as many dingers a game when they win (1.3) than when they lose (0.6). That’s not because of the psychological boost a team gets from watching the ball sail over the fence; it’s because of the extremely controversial theory that scoring runs improves a team’s chances of victory.

I have no idea what the Yankees’ problem has been for the last couple weeks. Could be bad luck, could be delayed grief over the death of George Steinbrenner—heck, maybe it really is jetlag.

But if you really believe that the anticipation surrounding an arbitrary milestone that did not effect on A-Rod’s place on the all-time list and had zero impact on 96 percent of the 25-man roster is enough to send the team down the toilet, I have to ask: how can you possibly expect them to win in October?

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