Sometimes, you just get smacked around. That’s what happened to both CC Sabathia and Justin Verlander today. Verlander, upon whom Detroit is depending for a bounceback season, allowed four runs, two earned, in his two innings of work, walking four along the way. None of the hits were for extra bases, though — in fact, the Yankees didn’t have a single XBH the entire game. Girardi pulled Sabathia after 1.2 innings, in which he allowed five earned runs on six hits, a walk, and a Gary Sheffield home run. Worst of all, he didn’t strike out a single Tiger.
After the game, PeteAbe and the beat crew spoke to CC, who said he’s fine. Of course he’s going to say that. What do you expect immediately after the game? “My shoulder was barking the entire time.” Even if it was, CC certainly wouldn’t mention anything right after the game. He’d get it checked out before anyone said anything to the press. Not that I think there’s a problem. Just saying that if there were, the press wouldn’t have found out so soon without CC showing some obvious signals on the mound.
Pete Caldera notes that two of the singles off Sabathia were bloops, a good sign for sure. Also, it appears his slider/cutter wasn’t working. As we learned earlier this month, it takes him a while to find the groove on his cutter. It’s good that he was out there working on it, results be damned. We’ll see how his handle of the pitch progresses in his next start.
Following Sabathia, Aceves allowed two runs in 3.1 innings of work, allowing three hits and a walk while striking out one. The killer were his two home runs, both to Gerald Laird. You can bet Aceves will remember that if the two face off during the season. Brian Bruney pitched a perfect sixth, striking out two. Veras followed with an identical frame, and Mark Melancon pitched a scoreless, one-hit ninth. The zero walks from the last three guys is encouraging, though that can probably be attributed to Detroit’s scrubs filling the lineup. They’re not going to walk their way onto the roster.
As mentioned previously, the Yanks scored four runs on zero extra base hits, and didn’t manage any runs off the Tigers bullpen. Johnny Damon and Mark Teixeira each collected a pair of singles and a walk, Posada walked twice, Cody Ransom picked up another base hit (.346 BA so far this spring), and Kevin Cash knocked an RBI single. Nick Swisher left six men on base, about which he quipped:
“Give me some of those burritos. I need to feed that village of people I left on base.”
Not an inspiring day at the plate by any means, but the Yanks still mustered four runs in two innings off Verlander with singles and walks. The only stories of the day, really, were CC’s poor performance and Melky going hitless yet again (though he did walk once). Everything’s turning up Gardner these days.
Update: I’ve just been informed that Team Netherlands is playing on ESPN2 right now, so feel free to use this as a game thread for that. The regularly-scheduled open thread will hit at it’s normal 7 p.m. slot tonight.
Just 5 days 'til pitchers and catchers report.
Ransom needs to save some hits for April.
Lets hope thats what Swisher is doing.
Swisher is still OBPing in the .400s this ST I believe, so he’s doing all right.
He still needs to make some contact and get his timing down.
Lets make him a #3 hitter!!
Swish: 25 PA’s, 2 hits, 7 BB, 3 K, 4 RBI = .111/.346/.111
Nady: 19 PA’s, 4 hits, 0 BB, 3 K, 2 RBI, 1 double, 1 triple, 1 HR = .211/.250/.526
Who would you give the RF job to, based on that early sample?
They don’t happen to have ST UZR data available, do they? I know the small sample would probably make it ridiculous anyway.
Haven’t seen any, and yeah, it would also be a flawed sample.
Let’s just concede that Swisher’s probably playing a better OF than Nady. Asssuming that, who would you give the job to?
Swisher, without question. We all know he has about equal pop in his bat to Nady, so his lack of XBH doesn’t concern me much at this point. When I heard a Mark Teixeira interview explaining how he has two swings to work on, that made me realize that all switch hitters have two swings to work on, so I think that’s part of the reason he hasn’t been swinging the bat that great.
XXXXXXXXXXXX-Man
Mustang digs the longball.
He is an outfielder.
It’s to early for this.
OF COURSE IT’S TOO EARLY FOR THIS. That’s why we’re doing it, we’re sado-masochistic.
http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2.....echat.html
LMAO
man i miss FJM
And you know if the numbers were turn around Swish would already have the job on RAB.
LOl
Not necessarily.
I’m impressed by Nady’s slugging… but I’m just as impressed by Swisher’s OBP. Outside of those three XBH, Nady’s looked pedestrian. Outside of those 7 walks, Swisher’s looked pedestrian. Both players have one big flashing-light amazing performance surrounded by mediocrity.
I’m calling it a tie, right now.
Come on Tommie and I love RAB you know that, but if the numbers were turn you know there would be at least one thread on how Nady had a career last year and how his early spring numbers prove it. How Swisher should have the job along with 3-D Stats to prove it.
I was also joking somewhat.
I want Swisher out there. Im just annoyed with him not finding anything to hit in ST so far.
I was telling my friend today that I think Justin Verlander is as important to the Tigers as Johan Santana is to the Mets – that in no way means he’s better than Santana (obviously), just that his team is going to lean on him just as hard. If I was a Tigers fan, I’d be freakin’ nervous right about now.
An equally important question is whether Rick Porcello makes the team. Porcello is probably the Tigers’s second best pitcher in the camp already. Cut Willis loose.
Its tough to cut a guy you owe still owe :::gulp::: $22M.
Kei Igawa says hello. Ugh.
We only owe Igawa 12M.
(Yeah, that’s right… I just said “only”.)
Its the posting fee that killed us. Is that $26M to the Hanshin Tigers something we had to pay upfront?
Yes, the posting fee is paid up-front to the player’s Japanese team for the opportunity to negotiate with the player, it has nothing to do with the contract.
Yes. The posting fee is paid at once, up front, to the Tigers and is not calculated in future salary obligations.
That 26M is gone. If we
find someone dumb enoughare regrettably forced to surrender the AAA pitcher of the year to someone else in a trade to strengthen our bench, that team is only on the hook for 4M each for ’09, ’10, and ’11.I got it: Three way trade. We get Teahen, the Tigers get Igawa, and the Royals get Dontrelle Willis.
BAM!
Yeah, all we need to do is pick up everyone’s salary and we could pull that off!
Puerto Rico has Best Buy advertisements on their sleeves (which is pretty awesome, btw). Some “small-market” team in MLB has got to try that, right?
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome your 2012 Florida Irish Spring Soap Bars!
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome your 2012 Florida
Irish Spring Soap BarsAqua Velva Aftershaves!And they have T-Mobile stickers on their batting helmets. Pudge is up right now and he looks like the awning of a store on the Fulton Mall.
Hmmm, I wonder how long Mr. Swisher plans to leave those burritos in his microwave…
Dude! NICK SWISHER CLEARLY READS RAB!
I just figured it out. Brace yourselves… Nick Swisher is DonnieBaseballHallOfFame.
[ head explodes ]
What happened to that guy, anyway? Banned?
No idea… maybe he gave up.
I’ve seen several run-ins between him and RAB … I think he finally did get banned. Last I saw, like a month or so ago, he was posting as Donald Duck.
To reiterate, not banned.
Yeah, DBHOF can be grating sometimes (can’t we all… especially me), but he didn’t really cross unforgivable lines. He didn’t do anything banworthy, for the most part, he just vehemently disagreed (disagreebly).
He wasn’t dropping ethnic slurs left and right like Sean Connery…
… which reminds me, screw you, Joe, you think you’re so smart what with your greasy hair and your dago mustache.
TSJC, you’re definitely the worst enemy of all those incapable of proper grammar and syntax, I will give you that.
Definitely not banned.
Whoops, sorry for the above post and my incorrect speculation then. Feel free to delete.
Ryan, you are SO gonna get banned now…
Ha. At least Beltran swung that time.
(That was too easy, my bad.)
[...] Great Sabathia Crisis lasted all of one start, because the big fella was straight nasty tonight. Four innings, one hit, one walk, seven [...]