Fan Confidence Poll: April 29th, 2013

April 29, 2013 by Mike Axisa 50 Comments

Record Last Week: 5-2 (24 RS, 24 RA)
Season Record: 15-9 (112 RS, 97 RA, 14-10 pythag. record), 2.5 games back in AL East
Opponents This Week: vs. Astros (three games, Mon. to Weds.), Thurs. OFF, vs. Athletics (three games, Fri. to Sun.)

Top stories from last week:

The week opened with three games against the Rays in Tampa, and the Yankees dropped the opener because they couldn’t hit Matt Moore. Ichiro Suzuki got the big hit in Tuesday’s win, but they couldn’t do anything offensively in the series finale loss.
The division rival Blue Jays then came to the Bronx for a four-game weekend set. Robinson Cano gave the Yankees a win with a go-ahead homer in the series opener, then they came back for another win on Friday. Travis Hafner carried the Yankees to their third straight win on Saturday before Lyle Overbay helped the team complete the rare four-game series sweep yesterday.
Injury News: Frankie Cervelli (hand) will miss at least six weeks after suffering a fracture on a foul tip. Michael Pineda (shoulder) pitched in a simulated game and reportedly hit the low-90s. Ivan Nova (triceps) was placed on the 15-day DL with inflammation. Curtis Granderson (forearm) has started taking full swings. Mark Teixeira (wrist) is still limited to dry swings. Kevin Youkilis (back) returned to the lineup for one game but has since been sidelined with more stiffness. He will go for an MRI today. Triple-A outfielder Thomas Neal (hamstring) was placed on the DL. Minor league righty Nick Goody (elbow) had Tommy John surgery.
Left-hander Vidal Nuno was called up from Triple-A to replace Nova while Austin Romine took Cervelli’s spot. Derek Jeter was placed on the 60-day DL to clear a 40-man roster spot for Nuno.
There were further indications the Yankees may scrap the plan to get under the $189M luxury tax threshold in 2014 and beyond. The team did not offer Jose Valverde a contract this offseason.
MLB is reportedly investigating Cano for some loose connections to Biogenesis. Top outfield prospect Mason Williams was arrested on a misdemeanor DUI charge.
Eduardo Nunez is expected to fall just short of the Super Two cutoff after the season.

Please take a second to answer the poll below and give us an idea of how confident you are in the team. You can view the interactive Fan Confidence Graph anytime via the nav bar above, or by clicking here. Thanks in advance for voting.

{democracy:302}

Jim Is Bored

Still a 7, but feeling a little worse thanks to Cervelli. Hopefully Lettuce takes full advantage of his opportunity.
Eddard

We’ve been at a 9 since the start of the season and the only question now is whether to bump it up to a 10. While everyone else has been at 5s and 6s we’ve held steady at a 9 because we see the potential of this ballclub. There’s nothing that’s wrong with the Yankees that can’t be solved with what’s right with the Yankees, and I’ll believe in them until the last dog dies.

They’re 6 games above .500, that’s 6 games above the standard we set for them at the start of the season. They’re at home for another 6 games, 3 against the hapless Astros and 3 against the not so Amazin As. I thought they could win 7/10 on the home stand and I’m going to bump that up a tick to 8/10 and bump my confidence rating up from 9 to 10. 4 starters deep, 7-8-9 innings locked up and an offense that has a different hero each night. That’s not a team that is just trying to tread water, that’s a team that has a great chance to win the division and go to the postseason.
- Jim Is Bored
  
  The real question here is how many dogs are there, how old are they, what breed are they, and what are their names? And can I have one?
  - Robinson Tilapia
    
    Now I’m going to have “Who Let the Dogs Out” in my head all day. THANKS.
    
    Jim is in Trouble.
  - jjyank
    
    Something tells me that you don’t want a dog from Eddard World.
    - Jim Is Bored
      
      I’m surprised he slipped out of character and used “I’ll”.
      
      Eddard World is showing cracks.
      - Robinson Tilapia
        
        Also, all the dogs are named “Nuney,” “Nuneykins,” “Nuneypuss,” and other variants.
      - The Real Me
        
        I’m wondering how many of those (currently) 8 votes at “10” are from the Eddards.
      - MannyGeee
        
        All the dogs in Eddard World are big, left handed, overly hairy, and answer to ‘Monster’…
trr

Happy as hell with our recent play, will stay at a “6” for the time being – I know some of our guys are playing a little over their heads and there will be a corection. Still, if our pitching holds (great job by the bullpen recently) one can’t help but feel cautiously optimistic (at the least!)
jjyank

Seven for me. I’m feeling pretty good about how the team is playing despite all the injuries. Plus, locking up a four game sweep of the defending Offseason World Champions was a sweet moral victory as well.

Not to mention the next three games are against the Astros. What the Red Sox are doing mildly surprises me, but I’m not really looking at the standings yet. The Yanks have a .625 winning percentage and I’m damn proud of that after everything that’s happened in the last 2 months.
Robinson Tilapia

Dare I say “8?”

Immediate short-term is up to an 8.
2013 overall is at a 7.
2014 and beyond remains at a 7.

I guess that falls between 7 and 7.5, but, at my discretion, I choose to round up rather down since we just swept the offseason champions.

Somehow, this offense is gelling and getting the job done. It’s kinda nice to see guys on your own team overperform rather than watching guys on other teams do so. Hopefully, this spreads to Romine. Would love to see an extra outfielder swapped out for someone who can provide some sort of flexibility in the infield, even if it’s a corners-only guy (and that’s being generous) like Adams. Pitching’s been great. CC and Kuroda are battletanks out there, getting the job done even when they’re not out there with their best stuff. Pettitte, if healthy, seems like he could pitch forever. Hughes is Hughes and pray for the #5 slot. The ass-end of the bullpen will figure itself out soon enough. I hope for the best with guys returning from injuries.

Good times. I was worried about not developing a connection to some of these guys, but this has been an extremely likable team thus far, especially if you’re the type of fan who likes a nice underdog. In other words, yes, my mother-in-law loves this team.
- Jim Is Bored
  
  The really annoying thing is now that they’re winning, everyone is saying “Haha you think a 220 million dollar payroll is an underdog?” All the old narratives are returning.
  
  Which means business as usual in the Bronx, and A-freakin-men to that.
  - Robinson Tilapia
    
    Binder references seem to be up. I mean, I haven’t done a study on that or anything, but they seem up.
    
    Someone should really do a study on that. I wonder who.
    - trr
      
      Can it be a drinking game? you know, take a shot everytime Girardi takes a lokk at it?
      - Robinson Tilapia
        
        No. Binder jokes are fingernails on a blackboard to me. Joe Maddon is a genius only when he’s right.
  - Eddard
    
    They are the underdogs. Nobody was giving them a chance this season. Red Sox too. The Yankees and Red Sox were supposed to compete for last place was what the prognosticators were saying. Just goes to show you they don’t know shit. And “winning the offseason” doesn’t mean shit either. The Jays and Angels are horrendous.
    - Robinson Tilapia
      
      Oh, I agree with you 100% on that. This feels as much like an “underdog” Yankee team as any I’ve seen in a long time.
    - Jim Is Bored
      
      Surprisingly I agree with you too.
      
      I’m just telling you what everyone else is saying now, and as usual, it’s worth less than what you’ll find on the bottom of my sneakers.
      - Robinson Tilapia
        
        Jim is Bored, and His Sneakers are Smelly
Robinson Tilapia

Also, in honor of Romine, we will be planting several types of lettuce in our small, but worthy, Brooklyn garden this afternoon.
- jjyank
  
  Make sure you use enough ~~steroids~~ fertilizer.
  - Robinson Tilapia
    
    Compost FTW.
  - The Real Me
    
    Steroids, fertilizer … same thing, right? They both make you grow at a rate that’s not normal. Stick with the natural stuff. Compost it is.
    - jjyank
      
      As far as I know, Selig and his goons don’t test for fertilizer though :P
      - MannyGeee
        
        TIL Biogenesis should have used a Blue Seal Feeds as a front.
        
        “Wow, Alex… I had no idea you were this much into gardening! All that bending down to tend to your plants must have been the cause for the hip issues too.”
Bavarian Yankee

still a 6.

The ML team is doing pretty well but we’ll have to see if they can keep that up. Too many injuries though, everybody has to stay healthy now.

Prospects are mostly “meh” so far. Not great but not bad either. At least they’re staying on the field. Refsnyder and Murphy are the ones that improved their stock the most imo, aside of DePaula of course. Sanchez has been pretty solid too, I hope he’ll be in AA in June/July.
- Robinson Tilapia
  
  Slade obviously concerns me, but it’s both too early to tell and also not always about adversity occurring. It’s about how they overcome it.
  
  One of the knocks I’ve heard over the years on Phil Hughes is that he never truly had to face a challenge on the field until he hit the majors. I’m more interested in how Slade gets through this, even if he winds up back in High-A for a while. So Keith Law winds up writing badly about him a few times – If he’s in the majors in the next two seasons or so, it won’t matter.
  
  I’m encouraged by Ramirez (all DOTF-based, of course) as well.
JRod

Went up from an 8 to a 9. This was an epic week of victories, but the signal moment, oddly enough, was having Nova & Gazoo go down. It’s too bad, especially since Cervelli was on such a tear. But then they were able to go down on the farm and reach out for replacements of the quality of Romine and Nuno, like, lying around between the eggs and the buttermilk. How sweet is that? And I thought, this is it, the simple brilliance of Cashman’s ostensible strategy. They’ve stocked the team with tough veterans, lunchbucket guys with residual value. And they’ve done it on the cheap, if not in raw $, cheap in the sense that they’re on short term contracts. This in turn, has allowed them to preserve the largesse and bounty of the farm, and maintain maximum optionality for next year. When Grandy comes back in a few weeks, and Tex a few weeks after that, this offense should be downright scary.
- Robinson Tilapia
  
  …if they come back ready to play and don’t have a plethora of timing adjustments, etc. to make.
  
  Agreed on the rest of this. Cashman has been fantastic at working at the margins of free agency for several years now.
  
  A healthy Hafner may be the best he’s ever done. We really need a better counterpart to him, soon, in order to resist the urge to play him absolutely every day.
  - JRod
    
    Yeah, they should be able to grab a RHB, any RHB to upgrade over Francisco. By mid-season, the RH DH slot should be overloaded as they’ll need to slot in ARod, Youk, even Jeter & Tex for 1/2 days off occasionally.
Frank

I’m still at 5-6. Pitching is still a concern moving forward. It’s a long season. Yanks have been playing well as of late, but it’s way too early. Let’s see where they are in 2 months.
- Greg Story
  
  5-6? Well, at least that’s still taller than Pedroia.
Vern Sneaker

Love that we’re winning and it’s a fun team to watch, but I don’t see what’s changed recently except some wins against relatively weak teams, a couple of more injuries (sure hope Youk’s MRI reads okay), and Jeter’s situation worsening. The competition’s going to stiffen soon.
- Jim Is Bored
  
  It’s not going to stiffen for the next week.
  - Robinson Tilapia
    
    Jim Needs Viagra.
    - Jim Is Bored
      
      Nicely done
TomH

Such optimism! Wish I could share it.
Youkilis +
Cervelli +
Nova +
ARod +
Granderson +
Teixeira +
Jeter +
Pineda +
still-problematical minor league prospects on the nearly-ready-to-go list. +
all the stuff I’m forgetting.
_________________________
#4

The Jays will not play like this all year (and after all, these 4 games were really close and the sweeping might have gone another way without much trouble). Remember the year the Sox kicked the Yankees into an April gutter only to have the Yanks get the last laugh in September.

I’ll feel a lot better when it’s clear that the injuries of Granderson and Tex and Alex aren’t interfering with their hitting.
- Robinson Tilapia
  
  Optimism is much more fun, Tom.
  - Jim Is Bored
    
    I think at this point we’ve established that TomH is not here for fun.
    - YanksFan
      
      Are we really sure he’s a NYY fan? I don’t read game threads but I don’t remember him saying anything positive ibn the other threads, ever. Toronto may turn it around, but this is the second thread that he has no doubts about that. However, all he expresses are doubts about the Yanks.
      
      Please know TomH that there were doubts about numerous Jay players coming into the season, as was mentioned all weekend by jj and Jim, among others. Like them, I’m getting sick of the double standards of the posters.
      - TomH
        
        Are we really sure he’s a NYY fan?
        
        (1) Who is “we”?
        (2) Is saying upbeat things a sign of being a Yankees fan? Where is that written down?
        (3) I am now celebrating 61 years as a Yankee fan. I saw on tv Billy the Kid’s game-saving diving infield catch. I heard on the radio Mel Allen calling Mantle’s cycle game against the White Sox. I remember when the R. Sox were not on the radar and all of us worried only about Cleveland and Chicago. I recall the 18-game winning streak and the 9-game losing streak that came in the same year (quick: no googling: WHICH YEAR? “Declare, if you know all this.“). etc.
        
        Lesson me nothing re Yankee fan proprieties. I bear 60 years of scars.
        
        YanksFan
        
        I totally get having fair analysis. How about being fair to the team with the postive once in a while. It’s all negative for the NYY and positive for the Jays. That’s fair?
        
        You preached 1965 all winter – that’s past pessimism. It gets sick reading your posts with nothing nice to say. I didn’t live during those seasons but that was a different time in baseball. I believe the minor leagues were being cut drstically, intergration was not something that the team did. Each of those undermined the organization. You don’t see that now.
        
        I became a fan in 1978(8/9 years old). I grew up with the George that most fans hated. I always liked him because he cared about winning. His problem was that he acted like a fan and would make trades for a name player and fire his manager. This is a different time with Cash being here 15+ years. How about giving them the benefit of the doubt once in a while?
        
        Mike said that Houston was the youngest team at 27+ yeas old. You keep on talking about the old, ancient Yanks. There is an age difference of 3.7 years between oldest and youngest. That’s not the worst thing in the world. Than factor in that the older Yanks actually have talent whihc the young Stros do not. Let’s do this team by team. Do you know that Toronto is the second oldest team in the league? I don’t think you do.
        
        TomH
        
        “Nothing nice to say”? Why you’re just a big baby.
MannyGeee

While the past week was a blast, and this week will also be a blast (we assume)… these injuries are starting to bum me out. So here I sit again at my baseline 7. This number will move up when our boys start being not hurt and they all play like the fill ins have.

Also, start fucking hitting Nunie
lightSABR

So, I checked out ESPN’s power rankings today, curious where they’d place the Yankees after a solid week like that.

Answer: 12. Barely above league-average. We have a better record than 8 of the 11 teams ranked above us, and our run differential is almost right in line with our record, so it’s not like it’s all luck, either (cough, 2012 Orioles, cough). Don’t know what those guys are smoking.
King of Fruitless Hypotheticals

THIS…

left-hander Vidal Nuno was called up from Triple-A to replace Nova while Austin Romine took Cervelli’s spot.

…is what you miss when you live completely out of market. Sigh…
JLC 776

Very happy with the team’s unexpected success, but pessimistic about how sustainable it is. Long-term hopes (2014 and on) are still very bearish.

Up to a 5 now.
mac

Up to 6 after being at 5 since last December. This team has greatly exceeded my expectations so far but I was much less worried about this year than I am the future.

My boost in confidence is due to the rumblings that $189 or bust may be jettisoned (even if its just a ploy to boost advance ticket sales), some of the prospects doing well and the incontrovertable fact that you can put a diseased goat in pinstripes and he’ll hit .300/.420/600 for a month until the regulars come off the dl.

Don’t care if he is lucky or good, kudos to Cash for bringing in Wells/Overbay/Pronk, etc.
Mickey Scheister

I’m at a 6. The ML play has been great as of late but I’m still worried about the line-up againist lefties and CC. He’s not the same guy we saw last year, forget the stats for a second, I’ve seen every one of his starts and he’s still a remarkable pitcher but something just doesn’t seem right. The farm seems to have taken a step backwards, which dropped me from a 7 to a 6 this week. I wonder how many people vote 2-5’s if we lose two againist Houston, while I’d remain the same. Ethier this team is playing over its head or Cashman is a genius, I think it’s somewhere between the two. I should have voted a 10 when Nuno made the team, I hope he gets a spot start soon, while he’s still in some kind of rhythm.