Open Thread: ‘Cuse coming to the Bronx
By
(AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)
The Syracuse Orange (7-5 overall, 4-3 in conference play) have accepted a bid to play in this month’s Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium according to the team, though their opponent still hasn’t been confirmed. Based on my quick Google search, it appears that Kansas State is the favorite for the other bid. The game is scheduled for Monday, December 20th.
“We are thrilled to have Syracuse representing the Big East Conference in the inaugural New Era Pinstripe Bowl,” said Hal Steinbrenner. “We expect the historic backdrop of Yankee Stadium and the many attractions of New York City to create a one-of-a-kind bowl event for the athletes participating and … Syracuse fans that will have the opportunity to watch their team play in person.”
I know a few of our regulars are Syracuse alums, so any of you going to head out to the game? Based on what I heard, last month’s matchup between Army and Notre Dame was a rather cool experience.
Anywho, here’s tonight’s open thread. The Texans are at the Eagles and you can watch if you have the NFL Network, otherwise you’re stuck with the Rangers at the Islanders. It seems like all of the local teams have had the week off. Eh, whatever. Oh, and Lebron is going back to Cleveland tonight (8pm ET, TNT). I hear that’s kind of a big deal. Talk about whatever you want, so have at it.
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The Tyler Austin Watch
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/20.....ith-torre/
sent this in, dunno if the RAB guys are gonna post it, but it’s got some cute stories… AND SOME ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT INSANE OPINIONS.
Highlights!!!
I can honestly say now that I wish Torre had stayed.
As a Yankees fan, Torre always presented optimism when he was the manager. After hard losses or during stretches where the Yankees just didn’t look like the Yankees, he would deflect the team’s real problems and tell the media, and more importantly the fans, that everything was going to be all right, and you believed him. For someone that has never met the man, I think it’s easy to trust Joe Torre and his decisions. With his calm demeanor and approach and his soothing voice just sipping away on Bigelow Tea, it’s almost impossible to not trust that he is going to lead you the right way.
*
when you think of the combination of Torre as general manager and the idea that he was one of only a handful of people in the world that could talk George out of things, it’s hard not to think that maybe the Yankees would have won even more times with Joe in the front office than they did with him as manager. And when you think of some of the terrible free-agent signings and trades that took place while Joe was managing, maybe they would have been prevented if he had the upper hand and a prominent role in the front office.
*
I would like to think that the present day Yankees have the same drive that the Yankees of the late 90s had, but I don’t think it exists, and I don’t know if it will again.
*
on Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS:
If I were Torre I would have scrapped Brown and Vazquez, and started Mariano and worked my way backwards through the game by piecing together the game out by out and inning by inning.
*
But the Yankees had a 3-2 lead after five innings and you could feel like a 2-0 series lead coming. Then Mike Mussina turned into Mike Mussina.
…
One of the Yankees I trusted the least from 2001-08 was Mike Mussina. That may come as a surprise to some because I am pretty sure most people liked Mike Mussina and his knuckle curve and his crossword puzzles, but the Moose just wasn’t a favorite of mine. I know that he had some big games for the Yankees in playoffs (like his relief appearance in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS), but he was 5-7 in the postseason for the Yankees, and I always felt like he would pitch just good enough to lose, and this game was a clear example.
It was hard to trust any other starter for the years that Mussina was on the team, so I understand why Torre always stuck with him a little longer than he should have, the same way that Joe Girardi always stays with A.J. Burnett one hitter too long.
O________O
This tops the article I posted last night. Kudos to the author for being an even bigger ignorant dumbass?
I would like to think that the present day Yankees have the same drive that the Yankees of the late 90s had, but I don’t think it exists, and I don’t know if it will again.
What exactly does this mean? Honestly, I’d love to see an article describing exactly what the 90s teams did to show drive that the current teams to not. Is the problem that the current team smiles too much? It seems that popular opinion dictates that if you’re smiling or having fun, you’re not driven.
Personally, I equate drive to never giving up, and if there’s one thing the Yankee teams of the last few years have shown, it’s that they are never out of a game.
Drive is in the same stats book as grit and killer instinct.
And scrappiness. Don’t forget scrappiness.
Most crazy things I see are 50% bad, or even 75% bad. This is pure, concentrated, 100% batshit insanity. Not an agreeable thing in there.
I kind of want to kill myself now that I’ve read that. Faith in humanity continues to wane.
There was a cute story about Andy in the article
another thing I enjoyed was apparently Bernie was Torre’s favorite. I know managers are gonna have favorites, and I love Bernie to itty-bitty bits, but do you have to talk about how you had favorites? Am I just being a tight-ass here?
I agree with you on that, it just seems kind of wrong for him to say that, kind of like it would seem wrong for a parent to say who their favorite kid is. Obviously not the same situation, but there’s just something so unnecessary about pointing out who the favorites were/are.
*Put on a tinfoil hat
JOE MAUER’S HAVING MICHEAL JORDAN’S BABY
ROBBY CANO, PHIL HUGHES, AND CC SABATHIA SHOULD BE TRADED FOR CHONE FIGGINS.
(More batshit crazy comments brought to you by the crazy guy who wrote that stuff Bexarama has shown us)
I dunno, I can see starting Mariano. Wildly unorthodox, but they really had no other options.
Yeah, I can almost get the idea of a bullpen game considering who they had available to start, but in a Game 7 I’d rather save him for the middle of the game or at least the middle of the lineup.
Getting into crazypants territory — bring in Mo over Javy?
If you’re willing to leave him in/he can stay in for like 2 (maybe 2+, even, he did it in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS), it was not a terrible idea to bring in Mo right there, no.
Torre was probably hoping Javy would be like Moose in, again, Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Didn’t exactly work out that way though :/
Having someone this dumb be a big Torre fan just cements the idea in my mind that the Yankees made the right decision in letting Joe go.
Woot! I go to syracuse and I can’t wait to go to Yankee Stadium to watch them
me too
I’m a ‘Cuse alumna and wish desperatley I could go-but it’s probably not a good idea to ask off from my first week of work.
Speaking of, it’s my last night I’ll be sleeping in NYC =(
the islanders are the greatest blue & orange NY sports team of all time
Heh, at least you guys got John Tavares.
i’m a devils fan, but yeah
Heh, at least
you guys got John TavaresKovalchuk is a beast this season.Sorry, had to.
Don’t remind me.
the islanders are the greatest blue & orange NY sports team of all time
What the f#$% are “The Islanders”?
They won 4 straight stanley cups in the 80′s. Pretty much the only positive thing you can say about them.
What the f#$% is “The Stanley Cup”?
Ask someone who’s Canadian they’ll tell you all about it.
What the f#$% is “Canadia”?
The 51st state.
Puerto Rico?
Puerto Rico is the 52nd state.
America Junior.
I swear TSJC, I’m gonna convince you to like the NHL.
I’ll fill in here…
What the fuck is the “NHL”?
I like the NHL.
The NHL stands for “The National Hoes League”, right?
Mitch Williams reasoning as to why Hoffman is underrated and is technically the best closer of all time: Saves!
Let’s completely discount Mo’s legendary postseason accomplishments and scary consistency and declare Hoffman better because he has more saves! That makes perfect sense!
(insert dismissive wanking motion)
And K-Rod is better than Mariano because K-Rod got more saves in 2008 than Mariano ever got in a single season.
I think, if he stays healthy, K-Rod will retire as the all-time saves champion. And he still won’t be worthy to lick Mo’s feet.
Mo>K-Rod. Although K-Rod has a higher strike out rate.
Saves after age 28 season:
Hoffman: 98
Rivera: 84
K-rod: 268
Given all three pitchers’ respective pitch arsenal and dependence on velocity, though, I’d say KRod has a much higher chance of not still being a good pitcher at age 40 like Hoffman and Rivera were.
I’m not so sure. He doesn’t rely on velocity so much (according to Fangraphs, his best pitch is consistently his slider or change–it was the slider until 2008 when he completely stopped throwing them and abruptly switched to the changeup. That seems more like a change in classification than anything else, the point is his offspeed is his best pitch), and his fastball has sat 91-93 for the last four years. He’s also still just 28.
Good points, but that 268 K is less than half (and almost closer to only a third) of what he eventual Mariano total will be. How many more years of effectiveness do you think KRod actually has? 10?
10 years at 35 saves per is only 350, that + 268 = 618. That might still be less than Mo’s total, and 10 more years of 35 saves per for KRod seems aggressive in my opinion. That’s probably his best case scenario.
Saves are hard to predict though–it really all depends on the state of the Mets (or wherever he ends up after the Mets). If he randomly ends up closing for a team that is involved in a ton of close games, he doesn’t even have to be particularly good to rack up the saves.
True.
The fact that his K/BB ratio has consistently deteriorated, in the NL no less, is enough to convince me that he’ll be nothing more than dog food in a few years.
Don’t worry, Mo will soon zoom past Hoffman’s record probably sometime next September or the following April in 2012. Then, the fools, er, experts can crown Rivera the greatest officially.
Poor Hoffman- In my opinion, eveyone judges the guy in such black and white terms. His legacy is either as a failure because of his lack of success in most of his biggest appearences. And then others feel he’s legitmately on par, or even better, than Mariano. The truth lies somewhere in between and hopefully people can comprehend that when he eventually gets in H.o.F.
If you’re a closer though, aren’t you *supposed* to be judged on the big appearances?
Your job description basically means high leverage pitching…
Watching the Heat-Cavs game right now, and I cant decide whether I should sympathize with Cleveland over this whole ordeal, or just be annoyed at how they have booed at an epic level every time Lebron touches the ball. This is just insane.
why shouldn’t they boo LeBron?
Shit, I wouldn’t even boo him, I’d laugh at him. He plays for a rudderless .500 team that doesn’t even look like a lock for home court advantage in the first round anymore.
It’s really early, but volunteering to replicate the Allan Houston/Latrell Sprewell “Two ballhandling wing players for a one-ball game with no inside presence” Knicks teams of yore for the next half-decade looks like a massive miscalculation on Bron-Bron’s part.
Lebron should’ve went to the Knicks. He and the Heat would have been better off and it would have made things more interesting in the Eastern Conference.
If LeBron was resolute about leaving Cleveland, and asked me for a non-partial ranking of which of the other 29 teams he should have gone to, I’d have put Miami at #25. The only four worse options than the one he picked would have been the Lakers, Celtics, Timberwolves, and Bobcats.
I honestly don’t know.
I mean, on one hand, he left his hometown team where he had this tremendous fan base.
On the other hand, he took less money to leave, didn’t he? I mean, that’s like, he clearly didn’t think he could win in Cleveland, right?
Personally, I’m with Michael Jordan on this. They asked MJ if he ever thought about calling Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to team up, and he said he’d rather beat them on his own than join them. I think he’s right about that. I wish Lebron stayed in Cleveland, but this has been pretty harsh. I mean, even Johnny Damon got some cheers when he returned to Boston as a Yankee.
The problem is less how he left and more how he went about it. That special on ESPN was the most arrogant, self-serving, and obnoxious way he could have gone about leaving Cleveland. He ripped out the hearts of an entire fan base on national television and then spit in their faces. And then he comes out with that ludicrous Nike commercial where he seemingly tries to paint himself as a victim? He deserves the booing.
I’ll be the first to admit, ‘the Decision’ was a terrible idea. Not the way to do it. It’s bad enough you have to leave, don’t make a TV Special to rub it in. Uber arrogance.
On the other hand, it’s hard for me not to consider this too much. Obviously, he’s made a bad choice (not bad because he left Cleveland, bad because the Heat are awful) and he’s going to have to live with it in Miami. If the Red Sox can cheer on Pedro, Johnny D, and even Manny, the Cavs should be more classy than this.
The Boston players weren’t homegrown, weren’t born locally, and didn’t completely shit on the team on national television on their way out the door.
If I was a Cleveland fan, I’d be booing him mercilessly.
I mean, even Johnny Damon got some cheers when he returned to Boston as a Yankee
Certainly not at the two Yankee games at Fenway I went to during Damon’s tenure.
You could hear some cheers when I watched it on TV. Obviously, they probably toned it down a great deal after that first game and first at-bats, but this has been awful so far.
I can’t find it but there was a sign that very clearly said “TRADER” during Johnny Damon’s first game back at Fenway. Not “traitor.”
I remember that, hahaha.
Here it is:
http://cache.boston.com/images.....trader.jpg
Yes, the Harvard contingent of Red Sox Nation.
Maybe he was talking about Theo… nah they don’t understand puns like that
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs.....der-jenks/
Bobby Jenks, anyone?
I’m in.
Yeah, I’m just looking at his Pitch FX page. Stuff is fine, maybe threw a few too many sliders that didn’t slide. Could be a great change of scenery candidate.
BTW-No draft pick compensation, and could be more attractive than some of the Type-A guys.
I’d do it, but is he gonna want to come here when he knows he won’t be closing? And he’ll probably be pretty expensive.
Good question, no idea if he’d accept a set up role or not.
National League Non-Tenders
By Tim Dierkes [December 2 at 8:07pm CST]
This post will list all the National League players non-tendered today, but the best place to track all 200+ arbitration eligible players is our new non-tender tracker.
* Brewers: Todd Coffey, Joe Inglett
* Marlins: Jose Veras
* Astros: Sammy Gervacio
* Braves: Matt Diaz
* Diamondbacks: Blaine Boyer, Ryan Church, Augie Ojeda
* Padres: Tony Gwynn, Scott Hairston
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/.....nders.html
Here’s the AL
* Athletics: Jack Cust, Travis Buck, Edwin Encarnacion
* Yankees: Alfredo Aceves, Dustin Moseley
* Rays: Lance Cormier
* Orioles: Matt Albers
* White Sox: Bobby Jenks, Erick Threets
* Tigers: Zach Miner
* Red Sox: Hideki Okajima
* Mariners: Jose Lopez
OOOOH, JOSE VERAS!!!!
The Yanks should sign Augie Ojeda. The Yankee franchise just hasn’t had many guys named “Augie” over the years, and it’s time to rectify that.
Don’t you remember Jonathan Augiebadejo?
Augiemando Benitez?
Oscar Augiezocar?
Augie James Burnett?
Augiel Berroa?
Brian Baugieringher?
Wade Bauggies?
Augie Stankiewicz?
If your name is “Augie Stankiewicz” you probably should be working at Katz’s or Barney Greengrass.
BTW-Happy Chanakah to all from one of the goyem.
So tell your friend Veronica,
It’s time to celebrate hanukkah
I hope I get a harmonica,
On this lovely, lovely hanukkah
So drink your gin-and-tonic-ah,
And smoke your mara-juani-kah,
If you really, really wanna-kah,
Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Hanukkah!
Greatest Jewish Yankee?
Ron Blomberg
David Cone of course!
Chad Curtis.
Can we expect an obligitorybobby jenks post in the near future?
Sources said Wednesday that the Yankees felt emboldened by the new contract signed by Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who inked a seven-year, $134 million extension that will keep him in Colorado for the next 10 years. Including the three years that Tulowitzki had remaining on his current contract, he will earn an average of $15.7 million per season, giving the Yankees the belief that the $15 million per year they had offered Jeter was more than fair.
But Tulowitzki will earn an average of $19.1 million during the new portion of his contract, topping the $18.9 million annual average salary that Jeter earned during his recently completed 10-year, $189 million deal.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blo.....z170nrxUy6
Nice job by Mark clearing that up. Everyone’s acting like the Tulo contract averages 16 per and Derek is delusional, turns out the Yanks are matching it.
Better 4th OF candidate Scott Hairston or Matt Diaz?
Yes.
I like your answer. You’ve got spunk. I like people with spunk.
Larry did a nice job breaking it down, Diaz is a better hitter.
Hairston’s a better and more versatile fielder. The Yanks may like the fact he can play the infield and outfield.
http://www.yankeeist.com/2010/.....nders.html
Might help if I linked it
My article for tomorrow touches on both of them.
Someone give me an e-hug right now. Please?
/e-hug
(e-hugs)
You okay, buddy?
Gracias, amigas.
I’m alright; just a little stressed. Was out of the house from 6:30 AM-9:00 PM with no break between internship and work, now working on one of the bajillion assignments I have due either Monday or Tuesday. It’s been like this pretty much all semester.
That sucks. Hope it eases up a bit so you can have some down time. Feel better, Matt.
Yeah, the semester is over soon, so that’s a relief.
Ugh, that sucks. What Kit said, basically. Hope things get better/calm down a little soon.
If you’re Brian Cashman, do you trade Montero for Greinke? Assuming you only have to throw in a Nova-type and mediocre prospects along with him?
I don’t think I would, but it’s tempting.
Only if we get Hosmer and Meyers in return.
/Yankee Gammons’d
But it all depends on Lee. And even if they miss out I’d rather try for someone that wouldn’t cost Jesus. But that’s just me.
Yeah, I’d think it would make more sense to go after one of the big outfielders at that point and try to swap one of Grandy/Swish/Gardner for a starter… IF we don’t get Lee, that is.
No. I do everything I can to make a non-Montero inclusive deal.
“We are thrilled to have Syracuse representing the Big East Conference in the inaugural New Era Pinstripe Bowl,” said Hal Steinbrenner. “We expect the historic backdrop of Yankee Stadium and the many attractions of New York City to create a one-of-a-kind bowl event for the athletes participating…..”
The historic backdrop of a two year old stadium??
I miss the Bronx Courthouse
It has hosted a World Series victory. That makes it more historic than Citi Field.
I find it hilarious how Bron has 38 points through 3.
Am I the only one who thinks Qatar is an odd choice for the World Cup?
No
Almost everyone thinks it’s odd and many are outraged*.
*outraged in the same way they become huge soccer fans for 2 weeks every 4 years then don’t give a shit about it.
I still don’t care about soccer during those 2 weeks. I just like to day drink.
US would have been cool but I’m all for having gigantic world events in places I’d never expect like South Africa and Rio.
Rio is one of the places I want to visit when I get older. I really want to experience Carnaval. It’s the world’s biggest party, who wouldn’t wanna be there?
Agreed. Rio looks effing awesome. Every year during New Years when they show the celebrations of different cities I always thought Rio looked the biggest and craziest. Plus, Brazilian women? RAWRRRRR
I think I would pass out from the sheer amazingness of the festivities and the women as soon as I got there.
Looks like Mo will re-up for 2/30
Deal. Where do I sign?
I wonder who offered Mo three years and greater than 15M.
Posted this in the open thread since this was buried, but:
Alright people, need some help. Finally broke down and made a twitter account to follow some news and whatever, need suggestions who to follow. Got the obvious (Mike, Joe, Ben, Yankees, KLaw, other nonbaseball interest). Suggestions? TIA
The Heyman stuff pushed me, we’ll see if it lasts lol
Just go look at who I’m following and then pick who you want to follow. It’s easier than waiting for people to list them here.
Sounds good, thanks. Good with technology but completely new to Twitter
Sign Russell Martin. Sign Russell Martin.
Yes…Frankie sucks ASS. Better have Frankie insurance.