NY Yankees News, Information & Community

Yogi’s legacy extends far beyond the baseball field

September 23, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

The Yankees and the baseball world lost one of their all-time greats Tuesday evening. Yogi Berra, inner circle Hall of Famer and ten-time World Series champion, passed away at the age of 90. Like all of us, Berra got a little bit older each year, yet it always felt like he would live forever. And he will in all of us. It’s hard to imagine living a more full and more loved life than he did.

“To those who didn’t know Yogi personally, he was one of the greatest baseball players and Yankees of all time,” wrote Derek Jeter at the Players Tribune. “To those lucky ones who did, he was an even better person. To me he was a dear friend and mentor. He will always be remembered for his success on the field, but I believe his finest quality was how he treated everyone with sincerity and kindness. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.”

On the field, Yogi was arguably the best catcher in baseball history and is at the very least on the super short list of candidates. Eighteen All-Star Games, ten World Series titles, three MVPs, behind the plate for Don Larsen’s perfect game in the World Series … Berra did it all during his career. They don’t make players like him anymore. Durable catchers who produced year after year after year.

And yet, if you asked Yogi, I’m guessing he’d say he was most proud of his accomplishments off the field. For starters, he was a war hero, enlisting in the Navy and fighting in World War II from 1944-45. Berra was on the ground during the Normandy Invasion on D-Day and fought in several other battles as well. At the time, Yogi was simply known as Seaman 1st class Berra.

After his playing career was over, Berra set up a fund at Columbia that has given away scholarships for over a half-century now. The Museum and Learning Center that bears his name in New Jersey provides education programs to thousands each year. Berra was also an ambassador for Athlete Ally, which promotes LGBT rights in sports. All tremendous causes.

Then there are the Yogisms. Everyone has their favorite. I’m partial to “love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too,” but there are countless others. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” “90% of the game is half mental.” “It’s deja vu all over again.” “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” On and on they go.

The Yogisms are much more than mangled bits of the English language. They bring a smile to our face whenever we hear them. That was Yogi. He made everyone smile in his own special way. Everyone loved him and he loved everyone. Berra was a tremendous player and that will never be forgotten. He was an even better man as well. Rest in peace, Yogi. You were truly one of a kind.

Yogi Berra Passes Away at 90

September 23, 2015 by Joe Pawlikowski Leave a Comment

yogi

Yogi Berra passed away last night. He was 90. Chances are you’ve seen the news already. Consider this our memorial to Yogi, whose body may have perished but who will remain immortal through his words and acts as a baseball player and human being.

“Yogi Berra’s legacy transcends baseball,” said Hal Steinbrenner in a statement. “Though slight in stature, he was a giant in the most significant of ways through his service to his country, compassion for others and genuine enthusiasm for the game he loved. He has always been a role model and hero that America could look up to.

“While his baseball wit and wisdom brought out the best in generations of Yankees, his imprint in society stretches far beyond the walls of Yankee Stadium. He simply had a way of reaching and relating to people that was unmatched. That’s what made him such a national treasure.

“On behalf of my family and the entire Yankees organization, we extend our deepest condolences to Yogi’s family, friends and loved ones.”

RIP Yogi.

Bird’s extra innings blast gives Yankees 6-4 win over Blue Jays

September 22, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

Admit it, you thought they were going to lose once Tuesday’s game went to extra innings. The Blue Jays have a great offense and the Yankees had used up all their reliable relievers, so it’s understandable. Things didn’t look too good. Instead, the Yankees eked out a 6-4 win over the Blue Jays in ten innings in the middle game of the three-game set. What a huge and fun and hugely fun win.

Go-Ahead Blast, Part I
Let’s start in the eighth inning. The Yankees and Blue Jays were tied 2-2 after the first seven innings, so this was a battle of the bullpens. In the late innings, that’s almost always advantage Yankees. New York had just blown a golden opportunity in the seventh inning — they had two singles and two walks in the inning, but Jose Bautista threw Dustin Ackley out trying to go first-to-third — when Alex Rodriguez struck out with the bases loaded. Bah.

Liam Hendriks, who fanned A-Rod on three pitches to end the seventh, stayed in the game to start the eighth. Brian McCann popped up to third, then Carlos Beltran laid into a center cut fastball for a big go-ahead solo home run. Beltran hit a three-run go-ahead homer against the Blue Jays in Toronto about a month ago and this homer was almost a carbon copy, at least in terms of the look off the bat. That sweet swing and a drive to right-center. Just perfect. The Yankees had themselves a 3-2 lead.

Dellin & Miller
One run lead in the eighth inning? Release the Dellin. Joe Girardi went to Dellin Betances against the bottom of the order in the eighth inning, and boy, did it get messy. Kevin Pillar started the inning with a single, then moved up on Munenori Kawsaki’s sac bunt. Betances struck out Ben Revere for the second out, but, as has been the case quite often of late, Dellin lost the plate.

Back-to-back walks to Josh Donaldson and Bautista followed. Donaldson walked on four pitches, Bautista on five. It’s not like Betances was getting squeezed either. In fact, McCann deserves a ton of credit for scooping some breaking balls in the dirt to prevent a run-scoring wild pitch. The bases were loaded, and of course Dellin went to a 2-0 count on Edwin Encarnacion. A called strike fastball followed, then Encarnacion swung through a fastball to even the count. The 2-2 pitch? A breaking ball Encarnacion missed by two damn feet for strike three:

Betances has been making things mighty interesting of late, but, to his credit, he’s been getting out of his self-created jams more often than not. He did it again Tuesday against a great hitter in Encarnacion.

Unfortunately, that one-run lead didn’t stand up. Andrew Miller blew his second save of the season in the ninth inning courtesy of Dioner Navarro’s solo home run to left field. Very rude by the former Yankees farmhand. The game was tied at three apiece.

The Blue Jays didn’t stop there either. Pillar doubled with two outs, Girardi had Miller intentionally walk Matt Hague (!) to get the left-on-left matchup with Miller against Revere, but Toronto skipper John Gibbons sent Russell Martin to the plate instead. Not Girardi’s finest moment. For starters, having your elite closer intentional walk a career Quad-A guy like Hague was weird. Secondly, did he not see Martin coming? It was obvious Revere wasn’t going to hit there.

Anyway, Miller eventually walked Martin to load the bases, which was bad, because it brought Donaldson to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. As the Rogers Centre faithful chanted “M-V-P! M-V-P!,” Miller overpowered Donaldson with fastballs for the swinging strikeout. In the eighth and ninth innings, Betances and Miller faced 13 batters. Seven reached base. Yikes.

Go-Ahead Blast, Part II
To extra innings they went. Mark Lowe started the tenth inning and McCann started the go-ahead rally with a bunt to beat the shift. The infielders were pulled over to the right side, McCann laid down a bad bunt, but Donaldson had to throw on the run, and it got by Justin Smoak at first base. The throw beat McCann. It just wasn’t handled. That dinky little bunt started the rally.

Pinch-runner Rico Noel replaced McCann and didn’t get a chance to steal second because pinch-hitter Slade Heathcott — he hit for Brendan Ryan, who came in as a defensive replacement for Ackley — reached base on catcher’s interference. His swing hit Navarro’s glove. The Yankees suddenly had runners at first and second with no outs. Lowe got ahead of Bird quickly with an 0-2 count, but Bird laid off some pitches out of the zone to even things up 2-2, then managed to … well, look:

That pitch is down and away and Bird somehow still hooked it out to right field for a go-ahead three-run homer. That’s impressive. The entire at-bat, not just the homer. Bird fell behind, laid off some good two-strike pitches, then did some serious damage on a pitch many hitters would have rolled over to the right side. Bird now has eight homers this month (!) and ten as a big leaguer. Six of the ten have either tied the game or given the Yankees the lead. He’s been incredible.

Even with the three-run lead, Girardi didn’t mess around. He sent Miller back out for a second inning. Miller allowed a solo homer to Encarnacion to cut the lead to 6-4 — it was the first time he allowed two homers in one appearance as a reliever in his career — but otherwise nailed down the win. He did have to throw 42 pitches, so I doubt Miller will be available Wednesday, but who cares? They had to do whatever they had to do to win this game.

Severino’s Third Chance
The Blue Jays have been very hard on Luis Severino in his brief big league career. They’re responsible for his two worst starts — three runs in six innings (not too bad) and then six runs in 2.1 innings (disaster) — though the third time was, as they say, a charm. Severino held Toronto to two runs on three walks, two singles, and one solo homer in six innings Tuesday night, striking out three.

Severino’s outing started great — he threw six pitches in the first inning and nine in the second. Pretty awesome. The Blue Jays scored their first run on Pillar’s third inning solo homer, then a walk (Donaldson), a wild pitch, and a single (Smoak) created the second run in the fourth. Smoak’s game-tying single was a two-out back-breaker, though he was thrown out at second on the play to end the inning. Small victories.

Two-out walks in the fifth and sixth innings didn’t come back to hurt Severino, who stranded both runners. He threw 89 pitches in his six innings but had to battle a bit — the Blue Jays had a man on base in every inning but the fourth — so Girardi went to the bullpen after allowing his neophyte right-hander to face the middle of the lineup a third time. Very nice outing for Severino against a tough lineup that has given him problems.

Leftovers
The Yankees were burned not once, but twice when Girardi opted to not pinch-run in the late innings. Ackley ran for himself after his one out walk in the seventh, then got thrown out at third by Bautista. Remember, Ackley’s a guy who gets lifted for a defensive replacement. Why not pinch-run? Then, after Chris Young walked leading off the ninth, he stayed in the game and was thrown out at the plate by Bautista on Jacoby Ellsbury’s would-be sac fly. It was a tremendous throw. One Noel maybe beats. Alas.

The Yankees had 12 hits and they came from only six different players: Ellsbury (two doubles), Gardner (infield single), McCann (two singles), Bird (double, homer), and Didi Gregorius (double, two singles). Ellsbury, Gardner, A-Rod, Ackley, and Young drew walks. Chase Headley was the only starter who failed to reach base. He’s been in some kinda slump this month. Seventeen base-runners in ten innings is pretty great. So is 3-for-9 (.333) with runners in scoring position.

Before Betances and Miller, Justin Wilson retired the side in the seventh inning on seven pitches. The bottom of the order was due up in the eighth, and I was thinking maybe Wilson should have gone back out so Betances could be saved for the righties in the middle of the lineup. That didn’t matter — Dellin walked a bunch of dudes and ended up facing the middle of the lineup in the eighth anyway.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Here are the box score, video highlights, updated standings, and postseason odds. As you can see in the sidebar, the magic number to clinch a postseason spot is down to seven. Make sure you check out our Bullpen Workload and Announced Standings pages. Here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
The Yankees and Blue Jays wrap up their season series Wednesday night. It’ll be Ivan Nova, not the injured Masahiro Tanaka, against Marcus Stroman. The Yankees are 2.5 games back in the AL East (two in the loss column), so while that game is not a literal must-win, it’s a “really need to win this one if they want to have a shot at the division title” game.

Game 150: Third Time’s a Charm?

September 22, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

Since being called up after the trade deadline, Luis Severino has pitched about as well as the Yankees could have hoped. The 21-year-old never threw even 90 innings at one minor league level and has a 3.12 ERA (4.18 FIP) in eight starts and 43.1 innings. He’s been pretty good and the Yankees have needed him to be good. Michael Pineda (forearm), Masahiro Tanaka (hamstring), CC Sabathia (knee), and Nathan Eovaldi (elbow) have all gotten hurt in recent weeks. Severino has helped picked up the slack.

That said, Severino’s worst two starts as a big leaguer have come against tonight’s opponent, the Blue Jays. He allowed three runs in six innings in Toronto on August 16th — yes, Carlos Beltran made a crucial error, but Severino also put some pitches on a tee to great hitters — and then got creamed for six runs in 2.1 innings on September 11th. So that’s nine runs in 8.1 innings against the Blue Jays and seven runs (six earned) in 35 innings against everyone else. Severino faces Toronto for the third time tonight. Hopefully this time he comes out on top. Here is the Blue Jays’ lineup and here is the Yankees’ lineup:

CF Jacoby Ellsbury
LF Brett Gardner
DH Alex Rodriguez
C Brian McCann
RF Carlos Beltran
1B Greg Bird
3B Chase Headley
2B Dustin Ackley
SS Didi Gregorius
RHP Luis Severino

Another nice day in Toronto. Sunny and cool with no rain in forecast or clouds in the sky. Good night for a game. Tonight’s game will begin a bit after 7pm ET and you can watch on YES locally and ESPN nationally. Enjoy the game.

Sherman: Yankees called about Donaldson last offseason

September 22, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

This is not surprising at all. According to Joel Sherman, Brian Cashman called Athletics GM Billy Beane about third baseman Josh Donaldson early in the offseason, but was told he would not be traded. It’s been reported over the last few months that other teams were told the same thing. Donaldson wasn’t available … and then suddenly he was.

Sherman says Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos called about Donaldson and basically wouldn’t take no for answer. He kept upping his offer until the A’s said yes. “Alex is and was certainly relentless. That is his personality. But we didn’t trade Josh to make Alex go away,” said A’s assistant GM David Forst.

Furthermore, Sherman says the Athletics did not shop Donaldson around after getting an offer they liked from Toronto. That seems … unwise. Don’t you have to try to get max value for a player of that caliber? The four-player package sent to Oakland in the trade — Brett Lawrie, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin, and prospect Franklin Barreto — looked light at the time and ridiculous now.

The Yankees needed a third baseman this past offseason and opted to re-sign Chase Headley, who’s had a poor year mostly because he suddenly forgot how to throw to first base. Alex Rodriguez can’t play the field anymore and the only other free agent third baseman on the market was Pablo Sandoval, who has been a total disaster with the Red Sox.

Of course, the Yankees could have kept Martin Prado at third base, but a) that means no Nathan Eovaldi, and b) Prado hasn’t been anything special this year either. Donaldson would have been an incredible pickup this winter. You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s hard to believe the A’s traded him for what they did. My guess is if they opened it up to the highest bidder, the Yankees would have priced out. So it goes.

Sabathia is the right man at the right time for the Yankees

September 22, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

There were times earlier this season when you couldn’t help but wonder how CC Sabathia would ever get another out. He struggled not only in the first half of this season, but dating back to the start of the 2013 season. All those innings and an arthritic landing knee were starting to catch up to Sabathia in his mid-30s. Father Time, as they say, is undefeated.

Sabathia’s knee gave out last month, and you knew it was bad when he removed himself from the game without even lobbying to stay in or attempting a test pitch. This is a guy who pitched the Yankees to a division title with a bone spur in his elbow in 2012. He suffered a Grade II hamstring strain in September 2013 and finished the start. I can’t imagine how much knee pain he’s dealt with over the years. Sabathia’s performance has declined. His toughness? Never. He’s a warrior.

The knee injury was potentially season-ending — both Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman admitted as much after the big lefty went for tests — but Sabathia never though about it that way. “No matter what, I was coming back. For sure,” he said to reporters following Sunday’s win over the Mets. As poorly as he’d pitched earlier this season, the Yankees needed Sabathia back too. Nathan Eovaldi landed on the DL and Ivan Nova pitched his way out of the rotation. They needed someone to help. Anyone.

That someone, as it turns out, is Sabathia. Since returning from the DL, Sabathia has allowed two earned runs in 17.1 innings across three starts, holding opponents to a .190/.292/.254 batting line. Three starts is three starts, we know better than to make too much out of that, but those three starts count. They’re in the bank. They helped the Yankees win games and improve their spot in the standings. Those three starts have had a real, tangible benefit.

The arthritic knee is severe enough that Sabathia admitted he will one day need knee replacement surgery — “Eventually, but that’s the price you pay,” he said to Barry Bloom — and right now he’s managing the condition with a new, clunkier knee brace. Before he was wearing more of a sleeve during his starts. Now it’s an actual brace that prevents (or limits, at least) bone-on-bone contact each time he throws a pitch.

“I think I needed the rest,” said Sabathia to Chad Jennings following Sunday’s game when asked about the knee injury and the new brace. “Obviously the brace has been helping. Just a few adjustments we made in the rehab, and I’ve been feeling pretty good, so hopefully I can keep that up … I don’t have to worry about every pitch. Or this pitch, if I’m trying to go in, if that’s going to hurt. I can just go out and throw my game and not have to worry about it.”

Sabathia pitched well in the handful of starts prior to his knee injury — he actually has a 2.56 ERA (3.69 FIP) in his last seven starts and 38.2 innings — though he admitted he stopped trying to protect the knee and decided to air it out before getting hurt. It worked for a while, his fastball velocity jumped a tick …

… but eventually the knee acted up. I don’t know if Sabathia is airing it out with the new knee brace now — if he is, it isn’t showing up in his velocity, just look at the graph — but I’ve always felt location was his biggest issue the last few years, not raw velocity. Oh sure, there’s a big difference between 93-95 and 88-91, but whenever Sabathia got burned, it was because he missed his spot and left a pitch out over the plate.

With a 93-95 mph fastball, you can get away with some of those mistakes over the plate. That’s the advantage of velocity. More margin for error. That isn’t the case with 88-91 mph though, and Sabathia was paying for it dearly whenever he made a mistake. Since coming off the DL, those mistakes have been more infrequent. Here are Sabathia’s pitch locations in his last three starts (via Baseball Savant):

The fastballs are bunched on the edges of the strike zone with much fewer in the middle of the zone. (Interestingly, it appears Sabathia uses his four-seamer to the gloveside and sinker to the armside.) At this stage of his career, that’s where Sabathia needs to live. On the edges of the zone. New knee brace or not, he really doesn’t have the raw velocity to pitch over the plate anymore.

If the new knee brace is allowing Sabathia to pitch pain-free (or even with reduced pain) and better maintain his mechanics, his recent performance might actually be sustainable and not a blip. (Alec Dopp wrote more about this yesterday.) He’s probably not a true talent sub-3.00 ERA guy — he wasn’t that in his prime, after all — but he could be better than what he was earlier this season. Even league average Sabathia would be huge at this point. That would be a major upgrade over what he’d been doing since the start of 2013.

Regardless of whether the new knee brace has led to tangible improvement or this is all just a dumb luck hot streak, Sabathia has stepped up of late and is now helping the Yankees get to the postseason. He’s the right man to help the rotation too. Sabathia’s a Grade-A competitor who cares so deeply about his teammates — “I think if anybody knows me, it hurts me more to let the team down than for myself,” he said to Wally Matthews — and has been through the late-season wars before. He knows what it takes to be ace, to bear the responsibility of being The Man. CC is the right man to give the staff a lift.

“I’ve always said that he’s important to us,” said Girardi to Jennings. “Because he’s been through this, and he’s a competitor. I’ve said, I didn’t think we were going to get him back, when he left that game. I really didn’t. But he did, and he’s important to us.”

Dustin Ackley is the short-term solution at second base for the Yankees

September 22, 2015 by Mike Leave a Comment

Life after Robinson Cano has not been too pretty for the Yankees. Their second baseman have hit a combined .219/.273/.364 (74 wRC+) since the start of last season, and their -1.3 fWAR during that time is dead last among the 30 clubs. The Yankees went from the best second baseman in baseball to the collective worst. It’s been a shock to the system.

That wasn’t entirely unexpected though. Cano is the best second baseman in baseball — or he was his last few years in New York, at the very least — and that made him irreplaceable. A drop off at second base was expected, though I didn’t think it would be this much of a drop off. Stephen Drew has held down the position most of the season and, even though he’s been better in recent months, he still has a .201/.271/.381 (76 wRC+) batting line on the season. Bad.

Lately though, Drew has been losing playing time to trade deadline pickup Dustin Ackley, who has forced Joe Girardi’s hand. Ackley got a rare start at first base against the Blue Jays in the second game of their September 12th doubleheader, and while the Yankees didn’t win, Ackley went 1-for-4 with a walk. He started again the next day because he had good career numbers against R.A. Dickey, and went 2-for-2 with a homer. Ackley drove in three of the team’s four runs.

It was going to take a game like to get Ackley more playing time. He landed on the DL almost immediately following the trade, and, after returning when rosters expanded, he received one plate appearance from September 1st through 8th. “I’m going with the guys that have gotten us here,” said Girardi to Chad Jennings when asked about the second base job. Girardi was talking about Rob Refsnyder, but he might as well have been talking about Ackley. Drew (and Brendan Ryan) was his man.

But again, Ackley forced the issue. He had a pinch-hit single with two outs in the ninth against the Rays on September 14th, which sparked the Yankees’ four-run rally (the Slade Heathcott homer game). Ackley came off the bench the next day and singled in his pinch-hitting appearance. His first start at second base — it was only his second start at second since 2013 — came the next day, and while he went 0-for-2, he did rebound with a pinch-hit double against the Mets Friday. Ackley started at second again Saturday and tripled to dead center. He started at second again Sunday and hit a big three-run homer to break the game open.

Ackley got the start again last night, though this time the lefty David Price was on the mound. That was unexpected. (He went 1-for-3.) Ackley has gotten the last three second base starts against right-handed pitchers and the last start against a left-hander as well. He’s keeping himself in the lineup with his performance. Add in all the pinch-hits and this guy is 9-for-30 (.450) with four extra-base hits in his last nine games. How could Girardi take him out of the lineup right now?

When the Yankees acquired Ackley, I figured the move was geared more towards next season — as I’ve said, I think the team believes Ackley could be a candidate for a Brock Holt-esque role — and was likely to have little impact down the stretch. It was easy to understand why the Yankees made the move though. Ackley replaced Garrett Jones after all, plus he’s still only 27 and has talent. The guy wasn’t the second overall pick in the country by accident. Considering what they gave up (extra pieces in Ramon Flores and Jose Ramirez), it made sense.

And right now it makes sense to keep Ackley in the lineup as the starting second baseman, even if only against righties. Drew has been better in the second half overall but has gone cold of late — he’s currently in a 2-for-27 (.074) skid — and these games are simply too important to wait around hoping he has another three or four-game hot streak. There’s not that much time left in the season. The Yankees should stick with what’s working. Starting Ackley against Price last night was indication Girardi will do just that.

“I like the way he’s swung the bat,” said Girardi to Dan Martin over the weekend. “We expected he would be able to help us out at different positions. Since he had played a number of positions in Seattle, we could move him around and that he would play well in our ballpark. He’s pinch hit, played against a knuckleballer and played against a guy who throws 100 [Noah Syndergaard on Saturday]. That’s why we went and got him.”

Ackley makes the most sense for the second base job at this moment, and we should leave it at that. We have an entire offseason to worry about where he fits in next season — starting second baseman? supersub? seldom used utility man? — and I’m sure that will be a much discussed topic. The priority right now is winning games and qualifying for the postseason. Right now, Ackley give the Yankees a better chance to do that than Drew. He’s the short-term solution at the position.

“He has been swinging a great bat and we continue to give him opportunities,’’ said Girardi to George King. “He has gotten a lot of big hits for us and will continue to get opportunities.’’