River Avenue Blues

City Parks Official: Replacing the parks is hard work

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While some groups have criticized the Yankees and the City of New York for deceiving the Bronx community on issues relating to the new Yankee Stadium and replacement park land, officials from the Parks Department are signing a different tune. In a City Council hearing yesterday, Liam Kavanaugh, the department’s first deputy commissioner, said that the replacement parks are behind schedule because the department was not prepared for the difficult nature of the work.

Timothy Williams reported the story for The Times:

A parks department official, called before the City Council to explain why an effort to replace recreation space lost to construction of the new Yankee Stadium has been plagued by delays and cost overruns, said on Tuesday that the department’s inexperience with such complex projects was partly to blame…

[Kavanaugh] said the agency had had trouble carrying out its plan to place some of the replacement parks in unusual locations, including one atop a stadium parking garage. “It is not something we are fully familiar with,” he said…

When Councilman Alan Gerson asked why the agency had not done a more thorough analysis of replacement park sites to determine what they contained before starting construction, Mr. Kavanagh said that in many cases, the department had lacked access to do proper studies. Mr. Gerson said, “All the reasons you cited are reasons why we should do full-fledged estimates before funding is in place.’’

Currently, various aspects of the park replacement project are delayed as much as two years, and due to rising construction costs, the budget is now at nearly $175 million, up $80 million from initial estimates. City officials and park activists are not pleased to hear this news, and the Parks Department bore the brunt of this debacle. That they could be unprepared for this construction effort is a bit mind-boggling.

While the Parks Department will eventually build the replacement parks, the land figures are still less than what was lost to the new Yankee Stadium. At least, however, there’s another agency in the city nearly as inept as as the MTA.

MLB to address maple bat problem

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So far, it seems, the Yankees have been relatively isolated from the maple bat problem. While Johnny Damon in particular goes through bats like they’re bananas, we have yet to see anyone in the stands or on the field injured as has been happening throughout baseball. Now, MLB and the Players Union are going to attempt to do something about the maple bat problem, and Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan runs down Tuesday’s meeting of Safety and Health Advisory Committee. (Alyson Footer has a good write-up too.) MLB is being slow to act, and I just hope nothing too serious has to happen before the game is ready to make some changes.

Yanks make the Pirates look good

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Tonight’s embarrassing 12-5 loss at the hands of the Pittsburgh Pirates took a turn for the worse approximately eight pitches into the game. Tom Gorzelanny had started the game off with a strike but then issued four straight balls to Melky Cabrera. Derek Jeter saw two more balls go by, and then, as any good hitter would do, he took a pitch until he saw a strike and then unleashed a bullet into right field on the next pitch.

If only.

Rather, Jeter swung at a 2-0 pitch and hit into an inning-changing double play. This would come to represent, for the Yankees at least, the drive of the game, but Jeter wouldn’t be taking home a prize from Chevy for it.

Nearly three hours later, when the game mercifully ended, the Yankees found themselves at the wrong end of a 12-5 drubbing by a team that hadn’t seen its offense explode as it did for weeks. This was truly one of the lower points in the season, and as Joe Girardi said during the post-game interviews, “The whole game bothered me. We stunk is the bottom line. We stunk.”

While the pitching was terrible — and we’ll get to that in a second — the more infuriating part of this game was the Yankee offense. The Yanks’ bottom third — Robinson Cano, Justin Christian and the pitcher’s spot — went a combined 5 for 10 with two walks. Had the top of the lineup not gone 0 for 16 prior to a 9th-inning outburst by Jeter and Bobby Abreu, the Yanks could have slugged it out with the Pirates. But it was not to be.

On the mound, the story of the night was Darrell Rasner. The righty lasted just 5 innings, giving up 7 earned runs on 10 hits. He didn’t issue a walk, but does it really matter? For the month of June, Rasner finds himself 1-4 with a 7.00 ERA. He’s allowed 39 hits in 27 hits and isn’t confusing anyone anymore. After a stellar May — 3-1, 1.80 ERA — Rasner is crashing back to reality rather quickly.

Right now, the Yankees don’t have options behind Rasner. Either Sidney Ponson or Jeff Karstens will get the ball on Friday, and if either of them pitch well enough, they may get a chance to make a few spot starts in Rasner’s place. Alan Horne and Al Aceves aren’t quite yet ready to jump from AAA to the Bronx; Ian Kennedy is still a few weeks away; Phil Hughes and Carl Pavano — don’t laugh — could be ready at around the same time but not until August.

So what’s a team to do? (Other than dump LaTroy Hawkins, that is.)

For now, the Yankees will have to ride it out. It would help if the top of the lineup would produce against the Pirates though. But, hey, in a 12-5 game, there’s enough blame for everyone.

Brett freaking Gardner … that is all

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Triple-A Scranton (4-2 loss to Columbus)
Brett Gardner: 1 for 3, 1 R, 2 BB, 2 K – on base (ready for this?) 17 times in his last 5 games
Cody Ransom: 2 for 5, 1 R, 1 K
Shelley: 1 for 4, 1 2B, 1 RBI, 1 K
Juan Miranda: 1 for 3, 1 2B, 1 RBI, 1 K – breaks up a 5 game multi-hit streak
Jason Lane: 2 for 3, 1 2B, 1 BB – picked off second
Eric Duncan: 1 for 4, 1 E (fielding)
Nick Green & JD Closser: both 2 for 4 – Green K’ed & committed a throwing error
Alan Horne: 6 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 2 K, 1 HB, 10-6 GB/FB – 61 of 105 pitches were strikes (58.1%)
JB Cox: 1 IP, zeroes, 1 K, 1-1 GB/FB
Heath Phillips: 1 IP, zeroes
Scott Strickland: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K – 12 baserunners & 14 K in his last 14 IP

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Game 77: Leading off by not getting on base

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Johnny Damon is out. His foot is bothering him. Hideki Matsui is out. As anyone who watched the game on Sunday could see, his knee was bothering him.

So what has Joe Girardi done? Why, he’s installed the Yankee regular with the second lowest OBP to lead off. Brilliant!

With Damon out, the much-maligned Melky draws the one hole tonight. He and his .310 OBP will bat in front of Derek Jeter and his career-low .336 OBP. Robinson Cano is batting third. Just kidding.

Filling in for the two injured outfielders is none other than…..not Brett Gardner! Because the Yankees are facing a whole bunch of lefties over the next few days, Justin Christian, 28, got the call up. He’s hitting .309/.360/.455 with 18 stolen bases. If he produces over the next few days, the pressure will really be on Melky to turn it up a notch. Billy Traber has been exiled to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

The Yanks face the Pirates at 7:05 p.m. tonight in Pittsburgh. The NL Central doormats are 36-40 with a -44 run differential. This is the first trip to Pittsburgh for the Yanks since the 1960 World Series. Darrell Rasner is on the mound; hopefully, he won’t have to run the bases either.

And just an FYI: This weekday night game is actually on Channel 9 tonight and not the YES Network.

Cabrera CF
Jeter SS
Abreu RF
Rodriguez 3B
Giambi 1B
Posada C
Cano 2B
Christian LF
Rasner P

Futures Game, USA Baseball musings

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I don’t know about you, but the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game have become a complete bore for me. The players aren’t really into it, the HR Derby can be like watching paint dry, and A-Rod wears those goofy white cleats. Maybe it would be different if I was actually able to attend the game, but at the current prices that seems highly unlikely. All-Star Weekend is not a total loss for me though, because for prospect junkies it gets no better than the Celebrity Softball Game Futures Game. Where else can you see Clayton Kershaw relieve Clay Buchholz, or Evan Longoria hit behind The Justin Upton, or Jose Tabata nearly decapitate Phil Hughes? Nowhere.

This year’s Futures Game comes with a little twist: the 2008 Olympic trials team will form the USA squad. Now, the roster that participates in the Futures Game won’t necessarily be the team that heads to Beijing in August, but rather it’ll be a group of players that are being considered for the Olympic squad. Davey Johnson, the man at the helm of the Olympic team, will manage the USA squad during the Futures Game, while Tino Martinez will take charge of the World Team.

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