One more thread for good luck.
Game 42 Spillover Thread
The Yankees will bring the tying run to the plate in this game.
Game 42: Bring on the Champs
The Yanks are firing on all cylinders right now, but today they’ll face the best competition they’ve seen in two weeks. The defending World Champion Phillies march into the New Stadium having won six of their last seven, and currently sport the best record in the NL East. HOWEVA, four of those six wins came against the Nationals, so the Phightin’s haven’t exactly been facing quality competition either. Today will be a good test for both squads.
We’ve got a decent amount of roster news today, so let’s recap: Chien-Ming Wang has been activated from the DL, taking the place of Jon Albaladejo, who was optioned to Triple-A Scranton. Brian Bruney, who himself is just off the DL, had an MRI this morning and is unavailable tonight. Thankfully everything checked out okay, and he’s just day-to-day. Considering that Wang was originally scheduled to start for Triple-A Scranton today, I’m thinking we’ll see CMW come in after AJ Burnett’s day is done and just finish this one out.
The lineup:
Jeter, SS
Damon, LF
Teixeira, 1B
A-Rod, 3B
Matsui, DH
Swisher, RF
Cano, 2B
Melky, CF
Cash, C
And on the mound, Allen James Burnett.
2009 Draft: Callis on tough signs
Jim Callis of Baseball America discussed three players likely to fall in next month’s draft because of signability concerns. I profiled two of the players – CF Donovan Tate (Georgia HS) & RHP Jacob Turner (St. Louis HS) – earlier this year. Tate is a supreme athlete but is still learning to convert those physical gifts into baseball tools. He also has the added leverage of a football scholarship to UNC working for him. Turner has started to make good on some of the projection he offers, jumping from 89-91 earlier in the year to 95-97 down the stretch. The third player, California Texas HS LHP Matt Purke, wants a boatload of cash but offers an extremely live arm (92-94 mph heat with plenty of projection remaining) and is arguably the best lefty prospect in the draft. Any of the three would be a major, major steal for the Yanks at #29.
Bruney goes for MRI, Albie optioned
We got a tip to this effect this morning, but didn’t want to run with it until we got some sort of verification. That came from WFAN. They’re reporting that Brian Bruney will be unavailable tonight after undergoing an MRI on his elbow. Apparently it came back clean, but we’ll have more information when it becomes available.
Also, as expected, Jon Albaladejo has been optioned to AAA Scranton to make room for Chien-Ming Wang.
Finally, make sure to check out Rebecca’s post on Al Aceves, which was buried by this news post.
Guest Column: Aceves is the new Mendoza
The following is a guest post by Rebecca Glass. RAB regulars may know her better as Aunt Becca-Optimist Prime. While not chatting up a storm on RAB, Rebecca maintains her own site at This Purist Bleeds Pinstripes. Any readers interested in submitting guest posts can contact me via e-mail at ben at riveraveblues dot com.
During Thursday’s game, Ken Singleton asked Michael Kay if he remembered Ramiro Mendoza. Kay sputtered for a minute, wondering why Singleton would ask him such an obvious question before Singleton corrected himself and asked after Mario Mendoza.
While the exchange was innocuous, just the mention of the name “Ramiro Mendoza” while Alfredo Aceves was on the mound seemed, at the very least, apropos.
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The long man is traditionally the bullpen’s least important reliever: to be used in mop-up duty, low-leverage type situations when the starter’s appearance is cut short due to ineffectiveness or injury, and the manager needs an arm to abuse for an inning or five. Some long men are quite good. Some…well, some you end up with a 20-1 Twins win over the White Sox or that game where Texas scored 30 runs against Baltimore.
Typically, long men are the least acknowledged players on a team because when things are going well, they don’t appear. When a starter gives inning and the set-up men and closer do their jobs, the long man becomes redundant.
Still, the Yankees should know — perhaps more than any other team — that a good long man can make all the difference in the world. Even when things are going right.
The most underrated player of the Yankees during the “Dynasty Years” may very well have been their long man, Ramiro Mendoza. It wasn’t that Ramiro Mendoza was an exceptionally good pitcher–he had a career ERA of 4.30 and WHIP of 1.34 , but that Mendoza was more than a long man.
He didn’t just come in and mop up; he could spot start, throw short relief and do pretty much whatever the Yankees needed of him that day. The day after, he could then do something completely different and perform all of these roles to a standard of general competency.
Mendoza’s number will never be retired by the Yankees and only hard core fans beyond our generation will ever know his name. But I’m not entirely sure the Yankees win three straight, and four of six over all from 1996-2001, without him. (Ed. Note: In 1996, Mendoza made 11 spot starts and one relief appearance, but from 1997-2002, he was a pitching savior for the Yanks. Over six seasons, he won 50 games and had a 3.86 ERA and a 118 ERA+. You can’t buy that kind of versatility anymore.)
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So why bring this up? Because if you’ve been watching Yankees baseball at all with the devotion that would bring you to RAB, you’d know that Alfredo Aceves is kinda sorta doing everything that Ramiro Mendoza did.
And he’s doing it better.
Okay, so there’s a giant enormous argument to be made for “Holy small sample size, Batman.” I acknowledge that. And hey, if Sabathia, Burnett, Joba, Hughes, Pettitte, and/or Wang all do their collective jobs, the sample size is probably still going to remain pretty small and not rival Mendoza’s 100+ innings pitched in four of the nine seasons he pitched (and four of his six seasons during the great run in the Bronx).
Still, though, Aceves’ meteoric rise through the minors last season, from high A to the majors, is Joba-like, and while, at 26, Aceves isn’t projected to be a future ace, he did come through as a starter. Given how successful Aceves has been in the bullpen thus far, it’s perhaps hard to imagine that he was a starter so recently.
Yet, few pitchers, starter or reliever, could throw two innings one night and then three the next. It’s different than a closer, who might throw one inning three nights in a row, especially if they are ‘easy’ innings, which many of the elite closers do without breaking a sweat.
Aceves threw two critical innings in the game on Wednesday, when it was still 5-3, and then three innings last night. While those innings were low-leverage by the 6-0 score, they become higher leverage considering that the Yankees needed to fashion so many innings from the pen.
That kind of versatility, especially in light of the relative (lack of) talent of the short relievers with any sort of hair, is invaluable for the Yankees.
Just consider this: Aceves was recalled from SWB on May 5. On that day the Yankees were 13-13 and had lost three straight. Since then, they are 11-4, and have won nine straight. Aceves didn’t win most of those games, and the ones he won, he didn’t do so on his own. But we can’t say that he hasn’t helped.
The sample size is too small right now to be able to do a full comparison — perhaps at the end of this season we’ll have a better idea — but right now, Alfredo Aceves could very well be that ghost of Ramiro Mendoza we have wanted for a while.
Previewing the weekend with Crashburn Alley
Although the first weekend of Interleague Play was once reserved for geographic rivalries, this year will be different as the Yankees will host the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. Now, you might be asking, “Who are they? What should we know about them?” Stay tuned.
As sports fans in New York, we pretend not to know much about Philadelphia and their teams. There is, of course, a bitter rivalry between Eagles and Giants fans, between Northern Jersey residents and Philadelphians, between Santa Claus and batteries. We know that cheese steaks are delicious — provolone is the way to go — and Philadelphia could become a surrogate sixth borough if this whole high-speed rail thing happens. But what about the Phillies?
To prepare for the weekend, Bill Baer of Crashburn Alley e-mailed me about doing previews on each other’s sites. My Yankees preview went live on his site last night, and you can find it here. Below are Bill’s answers to my questions. Bring on the Phillies, I say. We can handle ’em.
1. I know that New York and Philadelphia sports fans have a rather uneasy relationship. There’s no love lost between fans of the Giants and fans of the Eagles. But considering the esteem in which Yankee fans generally hold the Mets, shouldn’t Yankee fans also root for the Phillies?