Archive for June, 2009
Game 70 Spillover Thread
Posted by: | CommentsHanson’s asking for it, but they’re not giving it to him.
Game 70: Party like it’s 1999. Or even 1996, either one works.
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been a long time since the Yankees have visited Atlanta: 1,402 regular season games, in fact. Chien-Ming Wang was just a 20-yr old kid pitching for the Staten Island Yankees the last time these two teams met south of the Mason-Dixon line, but now he’s on the mound for the big boys. Wang completed five innings for the first time all season in his last start, and the team will certainly look for him to build on that and pitch into the (gasp!) sixth inning this time around.
Not only will the Yanks have to deal with the uncertainty of a CMW start tonight, they’ll also have to deal with Atlanta’s rather unique closer situation as well. The Braves, you see, have two closers in righty Rafael Soriano and lefty Mike Gonzalez. Depending on the matchups, Bobby Cox will summon either pitcher from the bullpen in either the 8th or 9th innings. Gonzalez leads the club with eight saves, but he’ll be on to face Johnny Damon, Robbie Cano or any of the Yankees’ other lefties whenever they’re due up at the end of the game. Soriano is second on the club with six saves and will face the tough righty swingers whenever Gonzalez isn’t doing his thing. Two relievers, neither one married to a specific inning or the save stat, yet somehow the world hasn’t ended. Amazing.
Here’s tonight’s lineup. They’ll have their hands full with Tommy Hanson, arguably the best righthanded pitching prospect on the planet coming into the year. Something tells me we won’t see Wang take the bat off his shoulders, except for maybe a bunt situation.
Jeter, SS
Swisher, RF
Teixeira, 1B
A-Rod, 3B
Cano, 2B
Posada, C
Melky, LF
Gardner, CF
Wang, SP
Yanks’ protest denied; Teixeira leads in All Star voting
Posted by: | CommentsJust a few quick notes before the game thread: MLB has denied the Yanks’ protest of Sunday’s game. Joe Girardi filed a formal complaint with the league on Sunday after the Marlins messed up a double switch. The denial is unsurprising; I can’t pinpoint the exact date, but it’s been around two decades since the Commissioner upheld a protest.
In other news, Mark Teixeira leads AL first basemen in the All Star voting. After finding himsef 1300 votes behind Kevin Youkilis last week, the Yanks’ slugger now has a 35,632-vote cushion. While Joe Mauer has himself a comfortable lead, Jason Varitek is second, and 1,108,054 fans think Varitek is an All Star. Remember: This time it counts!
Reading Joe Girardi’s tea leaves
Posted by: | CommentsOver the weekend, a crack appeared in the Yanks’ Front Office façade. It wasn’t an outburst from Hank or a strongly-worded press release from Howard Rubenstein. No one was fired, and no one was put on notice.
The crack was the rather public spat over the Alex Rodriguez situation. It involved some anonymous “he said/he said” articles, and a whole bunch of backtracking by Yankee officials. While everyone seems to be on the same page right now, I believe Joe Girardi’s job security may have suffered because of it.
The story took off when Girardi originally penciled A-Rod into the lineup on Friday but announced shortly before the game started that Alex would be getting two days off instead. Some papers reported it as a benching due to his poor play while most news outlets recognized that a player coming off a serious labrum procedure shouldn’t be playing 38 games in a row. It was a rest, but from where did the demand for rest come from?
Over the last few days, the story has continued to swirl. Linda Robertson reported rather skeptically that the decision to rest A-Rod was mutual, but she also noted that some have alleged a behind-closed-doors fight between A-Rod and Girardi. The Big Lead’s Miami sources echo Robertson’s piece. “Why didn’t you sit me against the Nationals?” A-Rod is rumored to have asked.
In the New York papers, Brian Cashman has denied ordering a benching, and Girardi says he didn’t want to do it. Rather, A-Rod sat to rest his fatigued lower body. There is no doubt that the team is better off with a well-rested A-Rod, but that’s almost beside the point.
Meanwhile, the CC Sabathia saga adds a new dimension to this sordid story of injury management. In expressing his belief that he would start this weekend against the Mets, Sabathia fielded a question concerning the cause of his injury. What led to this soreness, reporters wanted to know. “It could be the 120 pitches this year,” Sabathia said.
By blaming the pitch count totals, Sabathia is indirectly implicating Joe Girardi. The big lefty has thrown 119 pitches or more three times this season, most recently on June 11 when he went 123 pitches. Last year, he threw four starts of 120 pitches or more. All of them came after July 2. Is Sabathia saying that Girardi has not managed his arm well enough? Reading between the lines, I certainly think so.
Meanwhile, in The Record today, Bob Klapisch calls the next stretch of games a “critical phase of [Girardi's] managerial career.” While Klapisch cites using Mariano Rivera in the 8th against the Mets — a move I will always support — he also questions whether Girardi is under a microscope for the way he drives his players.
Maybe this second-guessing in the media is a big nothing, but maybe the Yankees’ Front Office is putting some of these stories out there. Are they questioning Girardi? Is he on the hot seat — or at least in the on-deck circle for the hot seat? He doesn’t deserve this treatment, but someone in the Front Office doesn’t seem too happy with Girardi. If this year doesn’t end in Yankee-defined success, I wonder what his managerial future will be.
Quick Hits: Offense, Protest, Matsui
Posted by: | CommentsA couple of Yanks-related links that I couldn’t quite work into a full post:
- Steve S — you all might know him better as The Artist — writes about the Hideki Matsui situation over at The Yankees Universe. Hideki is putting up good numbers, but is taking up the DH spot, which the Yanks could use for other purposes (i.e., getting vets a half-game off).
- R.J. Anderson, writing for FanGraphs, notes that the Yankees have surplus offense in AAA. Unfortunately, one of those guys could use some more polish, and the rest are questionable to produce at the big league level. Still, it’s nice to have options, who are performing well, in the case of further injury.
- Tyler Kepner talks to former umpire Jim Evans regarding Sunday’s protest. Evans runs through the situation, and thinks that the umps made the right call. The way he explains it, the Yanks won’t get another shot at the last two innings of the game.
Braves series preview with Talking Chop
Posted by: | CommentsThe fine folks at Talking Chop were kind enough to engage in a Q&A with us leading into the Yanks-Braves series this week. What follows is our exchange. You can check out Talking Chop’s questions and our answers here.
1) Is the Nate McLouth acquisition enough, or the Braves have to swing a move for another outfielder? Any chance Jordan Schafer makes a return appearance later on?
The McLouth trade was a great start, and a surprising one in which we didn’t give up anything that we needed from our minor league system for at least the next two years. But no, it doesn’t seem to be enough. The question we keep asking ourselves is, “do we wait for the guys currently on the team to start hitting, or do we jettison some of them for more of a sure thing.” Just about everyone in Atlanta has had enough of Jeff Francoeur, and just about any mediocre replacement player would be better than him. I don’t think Frenchy is in an Atlanta uniform next season, one way or another.
Another problem with adding another bat, is that we can’t really add that much more salary. This is why the McLouth deal was a good move (he’s signed affordably), and this is also why we will probably see Schafer again (he’s currently out with a hand injury that he actually suffered pretty early in the season),
2) What’s the general feel for Kelly Johnson? His OPS is down over 100 points from last year and 150 points from 2007. Is he just suffering from some bad luck (.250 BABIP way down from the past two years)? It seems like his Iso-D and Iso-P are right in line with 08 and 07…
Like I said in the previous answer, he’s one of the guys we keep waiting on to start hitting. If Omar Infante were not on the DL right now, there’s little doubt that Johnson would not be starting, and that might happen when Omar returns next month. So Kelly’s got a few weeks to put it together, but he seems to have gotten the Jeff Francoeur disease. I’m not sure advanced stats can measure what’s wrong with KJ, it’s more about watching him every day and seeing him pop up or ground out when last year he would have hit a line drive somewhere. Kelly’s a guy who, once he figures it out (if he does), can go on an absolute tear and carry the team for a week or two (and again, we’re still waiting on that to happen).
3) As the Braves blog of record, what is your recommended course of action regarding Jeff Francoeur?
DFA.
But seriously, I offered the Red Sox blogger last week to trade him Francoeur for a pair of Monster seats. I guess I should offer you guys the same deal, Francoeur for a pair of reasonably priced Yankees tickets (do reasonably priced Yankees tickets exist?).
But seriously, seriously, the Braves are trying everything they can to trade him and the sooner the better. In the end, I think we’ll end up releasing him this off-season, and every team knows that so they’re not going to give us anything for him.
4) A.J. Burnett at five years, $80 million, or Derek Lowe at four years, $60 million?
With the injury problems we’ve had the last few years in our starting rotation, I’ll take Lowe and his streak of 7-straight years making 32 starts over Burnett and his streak of only performing well in contract years.
5) To follow up one of your questions, what do you think a fair price, from the Braves’ standpoint, would be for Xavier Nady?
How about Jeff Francoeur? I kid, I kid. If Nady proves he’s healthy and can hit, I would say a guy like Jo-Jo Reyes straight-up or Brandon Jones straight-up — sort of a B prospect who’s major league ready or almost there. Nady’s a free agent at the end of the year, so he’d be purely a rental, and I wouldn’t think you’d get too much for him, unless a team was just desperate.
Baseball, explored infographically
Posted by: | Comments
Over the weekend, we witnessed a mini-viral baseball phenomenon. Late on Friday night, David Pinto at Baseball Musings tossed up a post with a link to a site called Flip Flop Fly Ball. The site, run by a baseball fan/graphic designer, features some fascinating infographics about America’s Pastime. The one on the right, for example, is a quiz of any fan’s baseball field acumen. It’s nigh impossible.
As I poked around the site on Saturday, I dropped a link to it on Twitter via both the River Ave. Blues account and my personal feed. It was re-Tweeted all over the place, and one RAB reader wanted to know if prints of the graphics were available.
I inhaled the site. The combination of interesting graphics and baseball made for a good amount of high-quality wasted time over the weekend. Take a look, for example, at the height of the Green Monster as compared to some well-known landmarks, the directional orientation of home plate at every stadium and the amount of travel the Royals have to do this season. The rest are equally as entertaining.
After looking at a few graphics and poking around the site, I realized that Craig Robinson, the man behind Flip Flop Fly Ball was a Yankee fan and a River Ave. Blues reader. In fact, he sent us the ticket prices infographic a few months ago. I e-mailed Craig yesterday, and he answered a few questions about himself and the infographics. The interview follows. Be sure to visit the site as well.
What inspired you to develop the infographics at Flip Flop Fly Ball?
The main reason is that I’m relatively new to the game (I’ve never known a World Series-winning Yankees team), and I was finding it difficult to retain so much information about the Yankees and the sport in general. For whatever reason, I found it easier to remember team relocations and stuff if I made charts and graphs. It spiraled out of that.
I saw you recently added an amusing new one on the felonious side of stolen bases. How often do you plan to produce new sports infographics? From where do you derive ideas for the new graphics?
Hopefully, I’ll be doing a new one every week. That may not be the case in the next month or so, unfortunately, as my wife and I just split up and, without a green card, I’ll be leaving the country soon. Ideas tend to pop up just from little things I see watching games. Just seeing Chief Wahoo; one day it just seemed an obvious question: How many native Americans live in the Cleveland area?
As a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, I loved the one entitled Really Fantasy Baseball in which the Wu Tang Clan, behind a complete game by RZA, tops the E Street Band for Eastern Division champions. What’s your personal favorite? Which ones were the most fun to make?
I’d agree that the Wu vs. E Street one is definitely one of my favourites. Mostly because I enjoyed spending a day working out how each half-inning was played out. The Cleveland Indians one is probably my favourite, though; it just seems to sum up the ridiculousness of their name quite nicely.
Tell me a little about your background. I understand from your website that you are a UK native who spent some time in Bellingham, Washington but you are a Yankee fan. How did you find your way to both baseball and the Yanks?
Yeh, I was born in the UK, lived most of the last decade in Berlin, Germany. Until last weekend, I lived in Bellingham and went to see Mariners games. I’m returning to Berlin shortly, but hopefully, I’ll be breaking the piggy bank to try to get a ticket to see my first game at the new Yankee Stadium, ironically, against the Mariners. I’d always been primarily a soccer fan, but I was on a business trip, and one of the people I was working with was an NY-based lifelong Yankees fan. His colleague was a Mets fan. When I expressed an interest in going to see a baseball game, I left it up to them to fight it out whether I’d be going to the Bronx or Shea. The Yankees fan was on it right away, and I went to a fairly pedestrian defeat at the hands of the Twins, but, I know it’s a cliche, I fell in love straight away. The sport just seems so perfectly beautiful. The next day, I watched a Yankeeography of Mickey Mantle on YES in my hotel room, and, well, the rest is a history of very late nights watching live streaming games on MLB.com, and more recently, having people in Washington continually reminding me that the “Yankees suck!”
Can you preview any upcoming FFFB infographics? And at the request of some readers, do you plan to offer prints of the infographics for sale?
Once I get my life sorted out again, I’d love to do some prints. I’m working on a few new ones at the moment. Once this current round of Interleague play is done with, I’ve got one about how each league’s teams fared in the history of Interleague play; a Venn diagram about the origins of team nicknames; a history of Japanese teams in a style like the history of the NL and AL teams; and a more research-intensive one, looking at how much of each team’s opening day roster were homegrown/traded/free agents.
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I’m looking forward to the new graphics. In the meantime, the current ones provide enough of a distraction. A big RAB thanks to Craig as he gets everything straightened out.
If the Yanks could shed one contract, who would it be?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I first read Joel Sherman’s column from yesterday, I kind of laughed. The idea is pretty simple: Allow each team a one-time chance to release one player from a contract. This is akin to what the NBA did in 2005, dubbed the Allan Houston Rule. The team is free from the contract for luxury tax purposes, but still has to pay the remainder to the player. This would theoretically clear up some dollars so teams could wheel and deal a bit more this year at the trade deadline. As it stands, most teams seem unable to add payroll.
At least Sherman admits his flaw early on, in that the Yankees are the only team above the luxury tax threshold. His proposition is to have MLB “use all of those dollars from the Internet, merchandising and the new network to absorb one contract from every team.” Again, this is a fantasy-land proposal. There is no way that MLB would hand Colorado the remainder of Todd Helton’s contract, and they certainly wouldn’t fork over the money left on deals like Barry Zito, Vernon Wells, Oliver Perez, and Alex Rodriguez. So in terms of realism, you can file this under: Not Gonna Happen (unless someone has compromising pictures of Selig).
Since it’s an off-day, though, I figured we could have some fun. Let’s suspend reality for a moment and pretend that MLB institutes this policy. Each team can release one player, and MLB will absorb the cost (maybe just for one year, maybe the whole term of the contract — it matters little). The exception, of course, is the Yankees. Since they’re the only team above the luxury tax threshold, they’re still responsible for paying the money owed to the player they release. They’d still save the luxury tax, but they’d still have to pay the player — and pay him to play for another team, in all likelihood.
The easy answer, it would seem, is Alex Rodriguez. Even A-Rod‘s biggest supporters admit that his contract is atrocious. It runs through his age-42 season, and pays him an exorbitant sum for a yet unknown level of production. To release him would ease the Yanks’ payment into the luxury tax pool, which would then enable them to find other players to replace him.
Two problems immediately come to mind: 1) This would significantly hurt the 2009 team, and 2) They’d have to pay A-Rod over $200 million to play for another team. That team could likely get A-Rod on decent terms, since the Yankees still owe him all that money. So he plays cheap for an opponent. That’s not very attractive. Nor is the prospect of paying him tens of millions of dollars in his decline years.
What would you do, given this scenario? Release A-Rod, immediate consequences be damned, in order to save $20 or so million in luxury tax payments? Release Matsui in order to knock down this year’s payment by a little? Or stand pat? After all, it’s only a few million (because the savings only come on the luxury tax), and players are valuable.
Discuss away. I’d personally stand pat. If you’re going to pay A-Rod anyway, you might as well get what you can out of him.
Romine powers Tampa to a W
Posted by: | CommentsTriple-A Scranton
Game 1 (7-1 loss to Indianapolis in 7 innings) makeup of one of their many recent rain outs
Kevin Russo: 0 for 2
Austin Jackson: 1 for 3, 1 K – he’s a perfect 12-for-12 on SB attempts
Cody Ransom, Juan Miranda, John Rodriguez & Colin Curtis: all 0 for 3 – Ransom & J-Rod each K’ed twice, Curtis once … Ransom committed a fielding error
Shelley Duncan: 1 for 2, 1 2B, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 E (throwing)
Justin Leone: 0 for 1, 1 R, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 E (throwing)
Casey Fossum: 5 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 5-6 GB/FB – 61 of 83 pitches were strikes (73.5%)
Anthony Claggett: 2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 1-3 GB/FB – 23 of 35 pitches were strikes (65.7%)
Open Thread: An RAB PSA
Posted by: | CommentsWe don’t like having to do this, but every so often it’s necessary. With the team struggling mightily and losing games in every way imaginable, it’s natural to feel pissed off and frustrated. Trust me, the three of us get just as worked up as you. However, one thing we absolutely will not allow at our site is personal attacks. Not now, not ever. It’s the second item on our Commenting Guidelines, and frankly we’re not asking the world of you guys. Please be respectful of your fellow fans and treat them how you would want to be treated.
Remember, people of all ages and backgrounds visit RAB. For all you know you could be cursing out a 13-yr old kid. We encourage discussion and informed debate here, but blatantly calling people names and putting them down is not acceptable. Attack ideas, not people. Ben, Joe and I have put more time and effort into this site than you can imagine, and we want to maintain what we’ve already created: the best community of Yankee fans on the interwebs.
So, one last time, please just be respectful of each other. It’s okay to disagree, but you can think of better ways to express yourself than cursing at someone or calling them names. Thank you for understanding.
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On another note, we’ve noticed an increasing number of off-topic comments. We’re fairly heavy-handed in eliminating those because we don’t want a situation similar to the one Matthew Cerrone faced on MetsBlog.com recently to crop up here. For more on that situation, read Cerrone’s entry from May.
To that end, we now have a “Submit a Tip” box in the left-hand sidebar. It’s right below the RAB Info box. You should use it to send us links to news you believe we would find post-worthy or musings or rants. All messages go to the three of us. So please don’t just drop in news about the Red Sox, the Mets or something completely unrelated to the topic. Send it to us or save it for the open threads.
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Finally, as always, you can keep up with RAB via other means as well. We have a Twitter feed that we tend to update sporadically throughout the day and during most games. Check that out if you’re already on Twitter.
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Feel free to use this as your open thread for the night. The Mets are playing the Cardinals, but I’ll be watching Texas taking on LSU in Game One of the College World Serie Finals over on ESPN. I guess you can watch House and Lie To Me, but dude, it’s the CWS! Anyway, anything goes here, just be cool.
Just 21 days 'til pitchers and catchers report.
