Pete Mackanin, the man who ended 2007 as the Reds’ interim manager, will join the Yankees as a scout. Mackanin has scouted with the Reds, Pirates and Expos in his career. That family tree of baseball hardly screams success, but Mackanin is well-regarded as a talent evaluator among his colleagues.
Hank takes the Torre route in Clemens statement
Sounding a lot like Joe Torre did last week, Hank Steinbrenner issued his own half-hearted views on Roger Clemens. “I thought the media commentary after the press conference was over was a little harsh,” Steinbrenner said on Monday night. “Too much rush to judgment in this country. As far as whether he’s telling the truth or not, I have no clue. But I’m not going to say, well, he’s lying, like everybody on TV did after he was done.” Steinbrenner also noted that PED use in baseball went far beyond the limited New York-centric scope of Mitchell Report. No big surprises here.
Cognitive dissonance surrounding Joba’s future role
We haven’t dropped in on our good buddy Joba Chamberlain in a while so let’s visit with the Yanks’ Number 1 prospect, according to Baseball America.
As is always the case these days with Joba, there’s a lot on the Internet about him. All of it is contradictory, and as an added bonus, none of it involves Hank Steinbrenner, Joe Girardi of Brian Cashman talking about Joba’s place in the rotation or bullpen next year. Instead, it comes from the Joba-Worshipping Yankee Universe.
In one corner, we have Joba the Starter. By way of Baseball Think Factory, we have Wax Heaven, a baseball card blog, taking a look at Joba Chamberlain. Mario Alejandro, the site’s author, runs a whole bunch of comps and finds that, yes, Joba Chamberlain should be a pretty damn good starter in 2008 and forever more. The conclusion:
Though Chamberlain’s GB% wasn’t very high, his K/9 ratio was so high that he effectively pitched better than every pitcher we have looked at thus far. I am fully aware that Chamberlain’s numbers are based off of a small sample size and his ERA will not stay at 0.38, but his K/9 ratio is very consistent with his minor league stats and his GB% is actually much lower than his minor league average. I expect that his K/9 ratio will remain above 10 and his GB% will likely reach 50% next year, meaning that he could easily outperform 95% of American League pitchers, including Johan Santana.
So how do Yankee fans respond to this glowing praise from an unbiased fan who doesn’t purport to have a mancrush on Joba like we do here at RAB? By turning to the other corner and mentioning Joba the Reliever of course. By way of My Baseball Bias comes this poll on YesNetwork.com. The poll asks, “Who should be Mariano Rivera’s primary set-up man?” While none of the choices are Ross Ohlendorf, visitors can opt for Kyle Farnsworth, LaTroy Hawkins or Joba Chamberlain. With 2646 votes counted, Joba has received 53 percent of them, Hawkins 31 percent and Farnsworth at 16.
Talk about bad third-place finishes.
This is, of course, no surprise. Everyone loved watching Joba come out of the pen last year and do his best Mariano Rivera circa 1996 impression. And the numbers are pretty damn impressive: 24 IP, 12 H, 6 BB, 34 K. It’s hard to argue with that. But it’s harder to sacrifice Joba’s place in the rotation and the potential to be the next Roger Clemens, sans Vitamin B12 shots, or Johan Santana.
Meanwhile, the YES Network poll highlights a topic Joe is planning on covering before Spring Training: the precarious state of the Yankee bullpen. With Hawkins and Farnsworth the designated heirs to the 8th inning right now, I’m stocking up on Pepto Bismal and calling my (non-existent) heart doctor. As I said, I’d like to see Ross Ohlendorf given that spot if he shows up and has a good spring training. He was willing to throw strikes in limited September duty, and his stuff is better than Hawkins’.
With Spring Training a few weeks away, we’ll be hearing a lot about Joba. But for now, it’s the same old, same old. Everyone thinks he should start except Yankee fans who were so seduced by his bullpen presence last year. Stick him in the rotation, I say. There’s your ace.
The obligatory Roger Clemens post
This one’s for you, steve. As we all know, Roger Clemens held a press conference this afternoon to discuss the Mitchell Report and his response to it. To put it bluntly, the press conference was a circus through and through. For the most part, Clemens and his lawyer rightly lashed out at the media for the piss poor coverage of Clemens’ response and their unreasonable demands for an immediate response from the Rocket. The conference ended with Rocket basically storming away from the dais.
Meanwhile, the other part — a replaying of the recorded phone conversation from Friday between Clemens and Brian McNamee — was fairly anticlimactic. While Clemens’ lawyer claims the ambiguous phone call in which McNamee never says he or Clemens is lying about their stances on Clemens’ injections — steroids or B12, respectively — the phone call wasn’t exactly a smoking gun that alleviated all doubt of guilt from the shoulders of Clemens.
Tellingly enough, Clemens did not really answer the question when someone asked him why he let McNamee inject him, and he said that McNamee provided his injections. So basically, we can see the defense he’s carving out for himself: He thought B12 just meant B12 while McNamee, taking a cue from accepted baseball insider lingo, thought that B12 meant steroids. So there you go. We’re right back where we started, and this pissing contest is just getting started.
Rudy’s New England baseball blunder, Part II
When last we saw Rudy Giuliani’s attempting to mix baseball and politics, he had managed to alienate Yankee fans by declaring his support for the Red Sox in the World Series. With the importance of New Hampshire in the presidential nomination cycle, Rudy needed to appeal to those New England voters any way he could.
Now, on the eve of the primary election in New Hampshire and with Rudy’s New Hampshire support all but gone (See Page 4 of that PDF), Rudy’s campaign is again suffering from baseball blunders. According to a story in the New York Post, Rudy’s campaign supporters in New Hampshire are wearing Yankee gear while trying to get Red Sox fans to vote for their candidate. Oops.
Kenneth Lovett of the Post had a great anonymous quote from someone in New Hampshire. “Some people really don’t think,” the source said. “You’re in the middle of Red Sox Nation wearing stuff from their enemy. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Can you image if people were running around The Bronx in Red Sox hats?”
While I have to take this anonymous Post story with a large grain of salt, I love this stuff. While some residents of New Hampshire and some residents of New York may both want Rudy in the White House, once baseball enters the picture, all bets are off.
Hat tip to Nick-YF at Yanksfan vs Soxfan.
BA’s Top Ten Yanks prospects hits the Internets
While Mike gave us the Baseball America top ten list of Yankees prospects two weeks ago, BA finally got around to posting it online. Most of the content – including scouting reports for all of the prospects – is behind the BA subscription wall, but you can check out the team’s best tools (Edwar’s change-up, Kennedy’s control, and Joba’s everything) and the idealized 2011 lineup of internal options and current Yankees. If Derek Jeter is still the Yanks’ starting short stop in 2011, something is wrong.
Understanding the Twins’ side of the Hughes-Ellsbury debate
While most Yankees and even most Red Sox fans would agree that Phil Hughes has a higher ceiling than Jacoby Ellsbury, the Twins haven’t been too quick to pull the trigger on any Johan Santana deals with Hughes as the centerpiece. In an excellent post, Twins blogger extraordinaire Aaron Gleeman analyzes why the Twins may prefer the Ellsbury package:
Ellsbury can’t compete with Hughes’ upside, but his downside might be more palatable and it’s probably safer to assume that he’ll at least have a good, long career.
Factor in the Twins’ outstanding organization-wide pitching depth and their gaping hole in center field, and it’s not difficult to see why they might value Hughes less and Ellsbury more than most other teams.
In the long run, Gleeman notes that Hughes is a much better trophy than Ellsbury, but the risk may be too much for the seemingly risk-averse Twins.
Hughes’ ceiling is that of a true ace who could literally replace Santana at the top of the rotation in time, but he’d add to what’s already an area of strength for the Twins and there’s more risk that he’ll flop completely whether because of injuries or performance…
They’d be smart to go after the one player who clearly gives them the best chance to come away from the Santana deal with a superstar. In other words, Phil Hughes.
Basically, Gleeman, an impartial observer to the Yanks’ and Red Sox’s shenanigans, would rather see Hughes in Minnesota, but he understands why the Twins seem drawn to an offer that we all believe is inferior to the one put forward by the Yanks. And that is just one of the many reasons why we would rather see Hughes stay in New York.