You should have swung at that, Grandy. See guys? He sucks.

Now that we’re a good ways into the season, the excitement of baseball has faded away into the grind that is rooting for the team that you love. It’s hard to watch guys play a sport where, for hitters, they will only be successful 30% of the time and for pitchers, they’ll usually give up a couple of runs and get in and out of trouble. After the second or so week of the season, this ceases to be entertaining and it’s time to start complaining about everything.

Now, a successful team like the Yankees always has a lot going wrong with it. The pitching might be bad, the bullpen might be bad, the hitting might be bad, and to top it off, the front office might be running the entire organization (most notably player development) into the ground. What’s more important than making sure you’re pointing out to everyone how bad the team is when you’re pointing out what. There are times when pointing out the flaws within the team makes you a good fan and times when it just makes you seem obnoxious and whiny. Timing, as they say, is everything. In this two-part series, I’ll cover what to complain about when you don’t know what to choose amidst the catastrophe that is a 39-29 record with a +89 run differential and a 3.56 team ERA.

The Lineup

The greatest thing about the lineup is that it changes a couple of times a week, and there’s almost always something wrong with it, even on good days. Complaining about the lineup works on any game day, and since lineups come out early, you can get a good head start on the whining. Anyone but Gardner leading off? It should obviously be Brett Gardner. Gardner leading off? Obviously he’s going to get caught stealing. Derek Jeter leading off is a great fallback but is obviously not applicable when he’s injured. Lineups also are also the first place you’ll see where the A-list players are getting a day off, and this is totally not okay. The only options should be a) Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Russell Martin never get a day off and never get injured or b) they are replaced with players who are as good as them. Anything else is worth talking about how bad the lineup is today. I’ll cover the B-listers in more detail below.

B-List Players

Eduardo Nunez, Ramiro Pena, Chris Dickerson, Andruw Jones, and Francisco Cervelli essentially make up the Yankees bench and get their fair share of starts. The problem is, none of these players are as good as who they’re replacing. If any of these players are in the starting lineup, sound the alarm, alert your friends, and start whining. If there’s more than one of them? Well, you could could complain for days and everyone would just keep on agreeing with you. It’s simply not acceptable that these very young (or in Jones’ case, slightly older) players perform at a lesser level than their A-list counterparts, many of which have collected awards for their offense and/or defense. Ramiro Pena, why are you not as good as Alex Rodriguez? Sheesh, he totally sucks. Eduardo Nunez, why do you not possess the skill and grace of Robinson Cano or the fielding, uh, prowess, of Derek Jeter? Come on guys. Seriously? And the last one….

Francisco Cervelli

The man gets a category all of his own. He can’t hit, he can’t catch, he can’t throw, he’s too enthusiastic, he’s annoying, he’s overplayed. Did I miss anything? Frankie is the ultimate great fallback punching bag for when everything seems to be going right. Even when he goes 2-for-3, he still makes two errors in the field, like he’s allowing the fans to have a place to focus all their rage. I think it’s really quite noble of him, to be honest. I don’t understand why we’re not blaming him for Montero playing every day in AAA and Martin’s back spasms, to be honest. I mean, we’re already getting on him for being in the lineup. So what’s one or two more things that he has absolutely no control over? He was probably getting everyone to lose to Doug Davis from the bench, even. At least he’s a better dresser than most of the Yankees.

Slumps

Both the fans and the players know that every player is expected to perform at his career numbers or better at all times. If there’s even the slightest hint of a slump – say, ten PAs or so – it’s time to start making people aware how bad this player is. And the worse the slump gets, the more vocal you can to become. Screaming your head off about Jorge Posada in late May? Totally acceptable. However, you have to be careful to quit complaining the moment they break out of the slump. Jorge Posada is now great. It might be a good time to start complaining about Russell Martin (before he can heat up) or Nick Swisher’s left side, where he is still struggling. Andruw Jones, despite his relatively few appearances, is also a great target for this complaining, though it’s only good to do this when he’s actually striking out playing.

Not Hitting Against Crappy Pitchers

Phil Humber. Carlos Carrasco. Doug Davis. Last year, it was Bryan Bullington and Josh Tomlin. I feel like I speak for everyone when I say it’s annoying that the whole lineup all decides at once to stop hitting against a particular pitcher, especially when it’s a bad one. These kind of decisions are made with absolutely no respect to the fans. Seriously, guys, if you’re not going to hit, can you at least decide not to hit against someone who is throwing well this year (like Alexi Ogando?). You had a perfect opportunity to go down without a peep and instead you whacked everything and decided to do nothing against Doug Davis. It’s obvious that the Yankees decide what games to hit in and what games to be put down in, and complaining about that choice is perfect when those quiet games are being played.

Not Hitting

When you have a lineup that contains names like Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Robinson Cano, you should score a billion runs every day. Never mind that getting on base 30% of the time is considered successful. That is stupid. Everyone should always get hits and runs. All the time. This is another great fallback complaint when Cervelli isn’t playing, because someone will probably go 0-for-4. If you’re lucky, there will be a few 0-fers that make for easy targets due to mass strikeouts or weak ground balls.

Tune in tomorrow for part two, featuring pitching and and the front office. I know you can barely hold your breath in excitement. One additional note: Ryan Dempster isn’t really that bad, so no complaining about not hitting against him. Complaining about not hitting in general is, of course, totally acceptable.

Interleague play has been in baseball for 15 years now, but no Yankees’ pitcher has ever hit a homerun in an NL park. I didn’t remember one, and B-Ref’s Play Index confirms it. That’s kinda disappointing. In terms of OPS+, the best hitting Yankees’ pitcher in the interleague play era is Kevin Brown (min. two plate appearances), who had a double and a strikeout in his two plate appearances back in the day. That adds up to a 290 OPS+. Javy Vazquez leads the way with a 121 OPS+ among guys with ten or more plate appearances thanks to a double, two walks, and three sac bunts in ten trips to the plate. The Yankees don’t pay their pitchers to hit anyway, no team does.

With the team headed to Chicago and then Cincinnati over the next few days, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that one of the Yankees’ starting pitchers will in fact hit a homerun at some point on the trip. Which one? I’m not that brave, but I am feeling it this year. Let’s stick some odds on the fellas…

Friday @ Cubs: Freddy Garcia

Sweaty Freddy has never hit a homerun in his career and has just a .190/.212/.222 career line in 80 plate appearances. He hasn’t had a hit since 2007 (in part due to injuries), and his two career extra base hits were a double in 2007 and a double in 2002. Wrigley Field is just about neutral when it comes to right-handed batters, so that doesn’t help his cause either. Garcia will have the platoon advantage against lefty Doug Davis, a ground ball guy (~45% over the last few years) that has surrendered 1.1 homers for every nine innings pitched over the last three years. Doesn’t look good for Freddy. Chances: 0.5%

Saturday @ Cubs: A.J. Burnett

All those years with the Marlins produced a .134/.180/.180 batting line in exactly 300 plate appearances, though A.J. has three career homers. One came off Rick Ankiel, another off Robert Person, and the third off Kevin Correia. The problem is that Burnett has just one hit (a single) in 17 plate appearances since coming over the AL. He will be at a platoon disadvantage against righty Ryan Dempster, who gave up eight homers in his first five starts this year but just five in ten starts since. Not liking his chances, but I do like them better than Garcia’s. Chances: 5%

Sunday @ Cubs: CC Sabathia

Now we’re talking. Sabathia is a .258/.265/.381 career hitter with three homers in 101 plate appearances, and two of those homers came with the Brewers in 2008. He also picked up a hit with the Yankees in both 2009 and 2010, though both were singles. Wrigley Field is very favorable for left-handed batters and CC will have the platoon advantage against Randy Wells. Wells has been an extreme fly ball guy this year (just 35.1% grounders) and has given up three homers in 18 IP since coming off the disabled list a few weeks ago. Chances: 29%

Monday @ Reds: Ivan Nova

Nova has never come to the plate in a professional game, majors or minors, and opposing starter Johnny Cueto has gotten better and better at limiting homers as his career has progressed. It’s also a right-on-right matchup, which never helps. That said, Nova’s young and presumably strong, plus the Great American Ballpark is absurdly favorable towards right-handed batters, so I could see him surprising us and running into one. Chances: 15%

Tuesday @ Reds: Brian Gordon

This is where it gets interesting. Gordon spent the first ten years of his career as an outfielder and is a career .275/.321/.460 career hitter in 4,161 minor league plate appearances. He hit no fewer than ten homers in any season from 2000 through 2006, including a 22 homer year in 2004. He averaged 15.1 homers per year during that stretch. Clearly, he has some power. The GAB also favors lefties, but Gordon will be at a platoon disadvantage against southpaw Travis Wood. Wood is an extreme fly ball guy though (just 31.5% grounders in his career), so if he doesn’t Gordon doesn’t hit one out himself, there’s a chance the Yankees’ offense will knock the Reds’ starter out of the game early and give their starter some swings against a right-handed long man. I like the odds. Chances: 50%

Wednesday @ Reds: Garcia again

The opposing starter is Mike Leake, a ground ball heavy right-hander (48.4% career). Sorry Freddy, it’s probably not going to happen. Odds: 0.5%.

While the Yankees’ winning ways have returned a little bit, I can’t be the only one who’s still worried about their production. Even when the Yankees win, there’s places where improvement could be had. A weak outing by a starter, a fat 0-fer in the middle of lineup, a barely-avoided bullpen meltdown – it’s these kind of things that the Yankees have to knock out of their system to become the champions we all know they are. A World Series team has no weakness, never loses, and always gets strong production out of the lineup 1-9.

I think it’s safe to say that the Yankees have probably pushed as far as can without external help. It’s silly to expect recoveries out of Posada and Jeter, and equally ridiculous to believe that Ivan Nova will actually start striking people out on his own. Likewise, it’s perfectly reasonable to suspect that Bartolo Colon will keep his ERA nice and reasonable and that Curtis Granderson will hit approximately seven gazillion homers, mostly off lefties. But what they’re doing now, even if it stays the same, needs to be helped out. This is where you and I come in, noble fans.

The best way for a fan to help their team of choice is to appease the baseball gods for games to come. I’m not talking about actual god (Mariano Rivera, blessed lord of the cutter, ruler of the bullpen, etc), but rather those magical beings up in the sky who give Cliff Lee doubles and have Jay Bruce fly out with Wilson Valdez pitching in the nineteenth inning. When annoyed that a pitching duel turned out to be anything but – look at Halladay v. Lincecum in the 2010 NLCS after one thew a no-hitter and one whiffed 14 – your wrath should be pointed at the baseball gods. My sources are trying to track down why the baseball gods love Edgar Renteria (2-time WS MVP) so much, but no dice yet.

It’s time to sacrifice one of our dear Yankees to the baseball gods above. Trust me, I know it’s not easy to bring this topic up, but there’s nothing else we can do. The Yankees have reached the limit of improvement that can be gained through normal options such as talking to Kevin Long, taking extra BP, and learning extra pitches. Supernatural options are the only options left. The question becomes – and this is the most important question – who?

When picking your sacrifice to the baseball gods, you need to toe some very careful lines. On one hand, sacrificing your stumbling, scuffling and occasionally-benched DH is like laughing at them, like throwing them your trash. Here, we don’t need this! Maybe you can do something with it. The baseball gods are not the waiver wire, and they demand respect. On the other hand, you don’t want to be sacrificing your star prospects or monstrously powerful cleanup hitters. After the sacrifice happens, after all, you still need some power in your lineup. A sacrifice will improve the way the baseball gods look at your team, but they’re not going to have Eduardo Nunez slug 30 homers. Then, there’s the matter of team history: a rule five pick or a half-season rental really has no attachment to the team, whereas a pointlessly long and overpriced contract is a burden on both the team and the gods.After a long and rigorous selection period, I’ve narrowed down exactly who should be sacrificed:

Pitching

In many ways, this is a totally obvious answer and required very little thought on my part. There is only one pitcher on the Yankees staff that is good (but not too good), could be replaceable (but not easily), and has the mystique and aura of the team all bundled up inside of him:  Joba Chamberlain.

(AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Joba’s strong numbers from this year make him a worthy candidate, and his Yankee history makes him as sentimentally valuable as any family heirloom. No one else on the current 25-man has been hailed as both the next Mariano Rivera and the next potential number one starter, all while suffering a role-changing injury. On top of that, Joba’s farm heritage and extensive history of being ripped by the New York media about everything to his performance to his weight make him a quintessentially Yankee sacrifice. In basically every way, Joba is the perfect sacrifice to make sure Bartolo Colon’s arm doesn’t fall off andhave Nova learn a strikeout pitch in a vision. Also, the baseball gods love a good fistpump.

Other alternatives: Phil Hughes (pending injury), Ivan Nova (pending effectiveness)

Hitting

This one was tougher, but I made the decision and decided the best option was Brett Gardner.

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

While Gardner may not seem the best option at first, a longer look at his numbers and history prove he’s the right choice. He got off to a terrible slump, he’s managed to pull himself together over the past couple of weeks and has created a slash line acceptable for a sacrifice (.262/.350/.404). Like Joba, Gardner is a product of the Yankees farm system and was part of the magical 2009 World Series team, despite his less-than-stellar numbers in the postseason. Gardner makes a prime target because he doesn’t hit home runs, and sacrificing him is an implicit agreement to forgo smallball and acknowledge that homers are the only way anyone will score this season. Additionally, Gardner wears high socks, and there’s nothing the baseball gods love more than a ballplayer in high socks.

Other alternatives: Nick Swisher (pending ability to hit the ball), Mark Teixeira (too many homers)

It’s tough when a baseball team has reached this point in its life, but with the obvious solutions looming in front of both the team and the fans, there’s nothing any of us can do but follow through. Knowing that both these players will most likely go to baseball heaven is, of course, one of the few positives. In baseball heaven, Joba truly is the number one starter we all know he can be, and Gardner never gets caught stealing.

(note: Emma Span of baseball prospectus helped formulate this idea.)

Maybe.

There was so much discussion on yesterday’s post about what not to wear that I felt it was absolutely necessary to do a sequel. I wasn’t clear where I should have been, and people brought up some questions that I wanted to answer and arguments that I felt needed to be refuted. After all, there is nothing more important than dressing well for the game, short of winning.

Hats

First of all, I don’t care how old you are, how young you are, if you’re purple, black, green, gray, or white. I don’t care if you’re a girl, a guy, or you identify as some other gender. I don’t care if you’re from New Jersey, New York, Alaska, the moon, California, or France. Not taking the sticker off your cap looks dumb. If I saw Derek Jeter wearing the sticker on his cap, I would first stare with huge eyes, then turn to the person next to me and go, “Oh my god, Derek Jeter looks like a total moron with the sticker on his cap.”  No stickers on caps. For anyone. Ever.*

I realized afterwards that all the caps I posted were $35+ and up. You might have tight finances and still want a proper Yankees hat, so I’ll propose another option. Now, granted, I haven’t been to New York City in about four years now (this sucks), so maybe this assumption is wrong, but aren’t there those shifty stands run by people that sell bootleg Yankees caps for $5 or $10? Did I just make this up? Do they only sell hideously ugly oil spill caps? Did I just superimpose Oakland on New York (I’m so sorry)? Those caps tend to be black and white or navy and white. Cheap and fashionable, the perfect combination!

A few additional notes on hats:

• The 2010 Memorial Day hats are a solid maybe. Go for it. The Yankees one is nice, but I’d be careful picking a team indiscriminately. Much like the quality of baseball, some of them are not as good.
• Rally caps are okay in extra innings only.
• You can wear your hat sideways if you are seven years old or younger. It’s cute. If you’re 35? Not cute.
• Wearing your hat backwards is a maybe leaning towards no.
• Adjustable caps due to ponytails are totally acceptable.

Jerseys

Again, there are financial ways to get a good jersey. There are plenty of fake jerseys you can buy from China for $20. A simple googling displays plenty of jerseys that are close to the authentic jerseys. Here’s some. They’ve got lots of numbers, home and away, and all for the low, low price of $21 plus shipping. Combine that with your street-bought cap, and you’re correctly dressed for the game for $30, give or take shipping and tax. Even someone living on a shoestring budget should be able to scrape that up, right? And if not, I don’t know if I’d advise going to too many baseball games.

There’s a lot of discussion on whether the named jerseys for the Yankees are okay or not. Well, I’ve decided that they’re acceptable stadium wear, but not advisable. Like above money-related issues, you might want to divide up your finances. Say you’ve got $200, but you want both a Rivera and a Posada jersey. If you’re looking to get both authentics, you’re out of luck. However, if you can tolerate the names, you’re in business! The Jeter replica jersey will cost you a cool c-note, where the nameless authentic is almost double. Can’t blame a guy for not wanting to drop an extra hundred bucks to lose fabric.

Alternately, if you do not want a fake jersey and can’t afford an authentic/replica, I would suggest a player-customized shirt, sometimes known as a shirsey. Even if you pick these up from MLB.com and they cost only $25 or so. You can also get them customized for an additional $10, give or take. The great thing about these shirts is you can wear them everywhere. Jerseys aren’t really good everyday wear, but you can’t lose with a t-shirt. Looking for an affordable piece of clothing you can wear in and out of the ballpark? Look no further.

I had a couple of specific questions that I’d like to answer before I wrap up Fashion Weekend on River Ave. Blues:

• Rodriguez jerseys are stability jerseys. The guy’s not going anywhere, and he’ll be good for a while, probably.
• I had a tough time deciding on Cano.  While I do truly believe he is going to be a great player for a long time, he’s still in the trendy jersey category.

I hope you all had as much fun with this like I did.

(*Mariano Rivera can wear the sticker on his cap if he wants, because he’s freaking Mariano Rivera.)

Official cap of the Gulf oil spill.

I can’t be the only one who likes to look at all the terrible things people wear at the ballpark, right? There should be a law banning bad baseball clothes. Luckily, I’m a girl, so I’m perfectly prepared to make a proper list of fan appropriate attire, and a baseball fan, so I can judge other fans all I want. I could go on for a while with this, but I’ll only cover general stuff and the two most important things.

General Notes

• You should only be wearing baseball attire of a team in your current ballpark. The lone exception to this is if you are sporting merchandise of a closely affiliated rival. If you’re wearing Red Sox gear at a Yankees/Twins game, I know who you’re rooting for. If you’re wearing Diamondbacks gear, you just look stupid.
• You should only be wearing the baseball attire of one (1) team that is playing in the ballpark. Anyone who wears both Yankees and Red Sox attire to a Yankees/Sox game should be shot.  The point of wearing team colors is to show your affiliation to a team. Wearing both sides is like admitting you have no rooting interest. Why are you at the ballpark if you don’t want someone to win? Corporate event?
• Wearing gear of an affiliated minor league team to the major league ballpark (and vice versa) is very cool. Oh, you watch the Trenton Thunder? You must be wise.
• Don’t wear pink. There are lots of social settings for pink. The ballpark is not one of them.
• You can tell the SABR geeks from everyone else with their oversized calculators. Avoid at all costs.

Jerseys

The jersey is the ideal shirt for any baseball fan. There are going to be a lot of jersey-wearing folk at any game you go to. Obviously, the people wearing the jerseys are the best fans, so if you have any important questions about the team, they’re the ones to ask. Here are some important rules to follow:

The name/number on the back:

• Historical players and current players are both okay.
• The jersey should have the proper name of the player in question. Nicknames are not okay. “Sandman” is for the speakers, not your back.
  • Obscure nicknames will be funny to the four people who recognize them, but I would personally advise against it if you don’t want people giving really strange looks to your back.
  • “Captain Groundballs” and all other witty nicknames are only funny on the internet, not embroidered.
  • Name shortening is not okay.
  • Stealing other players’ nicknames is not okay, even if they apply. A friend of mine once saw a 2 Yankees jersey that had “the Franchise” on it. Take that guy outside and shoot him.
  • Your jersey player shows what kind of person you are:
    • Player working on long, storied career (Jeter, Rivera, Posada): I don’t want to screw up what jersey I have, because I only have one.
    • Player just signed to big contract (Sabathia, Burnett, Teixeira): I like buying jerseys of players that are successful. I probably have a few.
    • Player recently departed (Pettitte, Mussina, Matsui): I have been a fan since before this year.
    • Successful player, but not quite storied (Granderson, Swisher, Hughes): I am trendy, and I’m going to tell people I had this jersey before the player in question got big.
    • Any historically great player (Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio): I have more jersey security and less originality than you could ever have.
    • Pavano jersey: So, what’s a home run, again?

A few additional notes:

• Do not tuck in your jersey unless you are actually going to play baseball.
• If you’re going to wear a jersey you found on the internet for $20, at least try to find one that looks close to what your team actually wears.
• Don’t wear a Pavano jersey.

Baseball Caps

Hats are big. Hats are where most fans go astray, too. The great thing about a hat is that it’s acceptable in virtually every social setting that’s remotely casual, so you can take your visible fan affiliation everywhere you go. While there are lots of different hats (and many you shouldn’t wear), I’m going to focus entirely on baseball caps. I’ve separated this category into some easy Do’s and Don’ts:

Do

• Wear the hat most like the players of your team. Official caps are simple and classic. If it’s good enough for the ballplayers to be wearing it, you should be wearing it too.
• The older the cap is, the better. Wear makes hats look better, not worse.
• Got a cap with an old logo the team doesn’t use any more? Wear it. You’re obviously the best fan.
• Wear team colors. Again, no pink. The only other acceptable color scheme for a hat is black-on-black. Simple and classic, folks.

Don’t

• Wear over-complicated designs. The more stuff going on on your hat, the less sense someone is going to make of it.
• Leave the sticker on your hat. I don’t know when this became cool, but if you take the tag off your clothes, why wouldn’t you take it off your hat?
• Wear holiday-baseball hats. There are no holidays (but there is a Holliday) in baseball besides the All-Star Break.
• Are you a hipster? No? No plaid. Is there a team that wears plaid? No.
• No pink.

In example form: No. No. No. No. Maybe. Maybe. Yes.

Equipped with this knowledge, you can sally forth as the best-dressed baseball fan around. Even if you don’t actually know what you’re watching, you can certainly look like a long-term fan of whatever team you’re going to just by sticking to some easy rules. And after all, going to a ballgame is all about how you look. Right?

The Yankees were rained out tonight, and I don’t think anyone is the mood for in-depth analysis and what not at this hour of the night/early in the morning, so instead I give you this: The 25 Most Terribly Awesome ESPN Head Shots. That one of Henry Blanco is called the “your wife just filed for divorce and wants half your sh!t.” Fitting, ain’t it?

It’s not exactly the most politically correct or safe for work link, so click at your own risk. All 25 are equally hilarious though, just in case you need a laugh on this Yankees baseball-less night.

(h/t BtB)