Via Ken Rosenthal, Brian Cashman said that CC Sabathia will start Game Three of the ALDS on Monday night. The team has ruled him out for Game Two tomorrow after he threw 27 pitches in the game and 48 pitches in warm-ups before the rain last night. Justin Verlander will start Monday for the Tigers, meaning each team will only get one full start from their ace. For shame.
Pitching plans after the rain out
Friday night’s rain out against the Red Sox threw a bit of a wrench into the Yankees pitching plans, but nothing major. Let’s recap what Joe Girardi said both before and after the postponement was announced…
- Freddy Garcia was supposed to start tonight, and he’ll simply be pushed back to Saturday. That means A.J. Burnett and Ivan Nova will start during Sunday’s doubleheader, but your guess on the order is as good as mine.
- Phil Hughes played catch today and will throw a bullpen session tomorrow. If all goes well, he and his inflamed back will start one of the final three games of the season in Tampa. I’m guessing it would be Tuesday, so they could see how he feels on Wednesday and Thursday before having to make a final decision about the ALDS roster.
- CC Sabathia will throw a simulated game before Sunday’s doubleheader, his final tune-up before Game One of the ALDS next Friday.
Sabathia will not start again during regular season
Via Jack Curry, CC Sabathia will not make another start during the regular season. The Yankees ace left-hander is likely to throw a simulated game on Sunday, which will line him up for Game One of the ALDS next Friday. I guess this means Hector Noesi will make another start, and I approve of that. Sabathia won’t get a second consecutive 20-win season, but so be it. The playoffs are far more important.
News & Notes: Burnett, Rotation, A-Rod
The preliminary schedule for the 2012 season was released earlier today, but let’s take a step back to discuss some stuff affecting the Yankees right here, right now…
Burnett’s New-Old Mechanics
Lost in last night’s win and A.J. Burnett’s eleven strikeouts is that it looked like he was injured at one point. Burnett was visibly bothered by something in the third inning, when he loaded the bases and allowed the tying run. He was moving his arm around and appeared to be wincing after each pitch, but he stayed in the game after a visit from the trainer. He finished strong, striking out seven of the last dozen men he faced.
After the game, Burnett said there was no injury, he was just uncomfortable with his mechanics. That’s why he reverted back to his old motion mid-game. “I kind of went back to my old delivery in the middle of the game, but kept the things we worked on with that,” said A.J. “I was a little uncomfortable trying to get loose and trying to get the ball out like that, so [Larry Rothschild] was like, ‘Whatever it takes.’ I was more aggressive, and I think the work we put in allowed my hands to stay in the right spot when I went back. It was confidence. Confidence and pitching with conviction.”
Rotation Plans
Within this notebook, George King mentions that the Yankees have flipped Bartolo Colon and CC Sabathia in the rotation. Sabathia will now start on Friday in Toronto, Colon on Saturday. As I wrote two days ago, there’s basically no easy way for the Yankees to line Sabathia up for September 30th, the date of Game One of the ALDS.
Looking at what’s left of the schedule, the Yankees could have CC start one of the doubleheader games on the 21st (normal rest), then throw an abbreviated start (or something like that) on the 25th (three days rest). That would line him up for Game One. They could also have him throw that abbreviated start on three days rest on the 20th, then start him on the 25th (normal rest) and in Game One (normal rest). I’d much prefer the latter. Something has to be done though, unless they plan on running someone else out there to open a five-game series.
A-Rod Could Return Friday
Alex Rodriguez’s sprained left thumb started giving him trouble again a few days ago, and the team originally said he would need three or four days on the shelf. Yesterday was day number four, but Joe Girardi said before last night’s game that a Friday return “is reasonable for Alex.” The idea is that with Thursday’s off day coming up, they’d give him a few extra days just to be safe since this injury is clearly nagging. A-Rod will do some kind of hitting work before tonight’s game just to test the digit, either batting practice or something else.
Sabathia named Yankees nominee for Roberto Clemente Award
The Yankees announced this afternoon that CC Sabathia is the team’s nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, which is given annually to the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team.” Derek Jeter won the award back in 2009, and you can participate in the voting right here.
Yesterday we learned that David Robertson was a finalist for the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, so it’s good to see the various Yankees get recognized for their work in the community.
Lining up Sabathia
All season long, there have been questions about the pitching staff. It didn’t matter how well Bartolo Colon or Freddy Garcia or Ivan Nova pitched, they were going to be judged on a start-by-start basis. All three have exceeded expectations, no doubt, but they’re still being treated as question marks. One thing has never been in question though, and that’s who would start Game One of the ALDS. That would be CC Sabathia, regardless of how well everyone else pitched. There’s a slight problem though, Sabathia doesn’t line up to start that game, and it’s not even close.
Because of the continued use of the six-man rotation, Sabathia has either two or three starts left. If the Yankees keep the rotation the way it is right now, CC would have to start Game One on just two days rest, which obviously won’t happen. If they move him back a day, he’d have to start Game One on seven days rest. Move him up a day, it would be three days rest. Here, look at the schedule, it just doesn’t work without getting creative. There’s not much schedule left, so the Yankees can’t keep delaying this rotation decision like they have for the last month or so. Sabathia needs to get lined up for September 30th, the date of Game One, and it needs to happen soon. My solution: a simulated game on Thursday.
Sabathia last pitched on Saturday, so Thursday would be his turn with normal rest. The Yankees have to get him back on a regular five-day schedule at some point, the sooner the better. They’re off on Thursday, traveling from Seattle to Toronto, which is why it would have to be a simulated game. Sabathia gets his work in that day, the lines up to start on the 20th (Rays) and then on the 25th (Red Sox) before that Game One comes up. In an absolute disaster scenario in which the Rays catch New York and the two teams are tied for a playoff spot, they Yankees would have the option of pushing CC back to the 26th to have him face Tampa. I doubt it comes to that, though. They’ll be able to use that simulated game to have Sabathia pitch on normal rest for basically three full turns through the rotation, giving him (hopefully) enough time to get back into the routine before the postseason. This would be ideal given where we are right now.
Obviously the long and late night flight from Seattle to Toronto sucks (thanks for the getaway day on Wednesday, Mariners! [/sarcasm]), but the Yankees could simply send Sabathia to Toronto before the rest of the team. Have him fly out on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, then show up to the park on Thursday afternoon ready to unload 100 pitches. Greg Golson, Chris Dickerson, Brandon Laird … all the September call-ups that might be rusting away on the bench can step in the box for some extra at-bats, and Jesus Montero could catch in order to develop some of that all-important familiarity with the staff ace. Even if he splits the catching duties with Austin Romine, it works.
Are the Yankees going to do this? Most likely not. They absolutely have to do something though, and they should probably do it pretty soon. Figuring out who starts Games Two and Three is enough of a concern right now, they don’t need to make things even more difficult by having Sabathia start Game One on some inordinate amount of rest. The idea of essentially skipping CC sounds crazy, but the team has built up enough of a cushion on the wildcard that they could get away with it. A few wins in Seattle would make the simulated game plan even more palatable.
Give the man what he wants
In recent comments which I’ve been unable to locate, CC Sabathia mentioned a desire to win the division, which means home field advantage. Contrasting the 2009 campaign with the 2010 campaign, Sabathia mentioned a certain fondness for starting the postseason at home, noting that he felt more comfortable. There’s been plenty of research done demonstrating that home field advantage doesn’t yield a sizeable benefit for the team. There’s not a whole lot that can be said to dispute these facts, and you’re likely to have the opinion thrown at you in earnest over the coming weeks. It will likely get old.
At Baseball Prospectus recently, R.J. Anderson took a different approach. He noted that winning the Wild Card likely results in more games played at home for the Wild Card team in the League Championship Series and World Series. Anderson’s argument is particularly compelling, in that he doesn’t dispense with the logic of wanting home field advantage, he simply notes that you may have more of it by winning the Wild Card. And yet, there’s still a part of me that would like to set this aside and root for Sabathia to get what he wants.
There has to be something to be gained by listening to players. Sure, a lot of times they get things wrong. You wouldn’t to make personnel moves strictly on the basis of clubhouse opinion. But leaving aside the issue that home field advantage typically yields no sizeable benefit for the team, I wonder if there’s really anything all that bad about rooting for the players to get what they want anyway. If CC Sabathia likes to play with his kids, eat dinner in front of his surely gigantic TV, sleep in his own bed and drive in his own car to the Stadium for Game 1 of the ALDS, then I’d like for him to have that luxury. If he thinks it yields a psychological benefit, I can’t see telling him it doesn’t.
Most people operate under similar rigueurs of habit, even if they don’t admit it. Most people have very circumscribed patterns of behavior, rituals and routines that they hold to tightly every day. If something gets thrown off-kilter, they can get flustered and feel disorganized. My early morning routine and walk to my train is nearly identical every day of the week, and it’s likely that way for most people. It’s why experts recommend you lay out your clothes and have your pencils and water and snack ready the night before a big standardized test: you don’t want any unexpected variable messing with your head. You’ll need all the focus you can get and you don’t want to burn energy, mental or physical, on dumb stuff. Maybe it’s the same for the $161 million dollar ace.
This is dangerous territory, because the argument about home field advantage and hoping the team gets what it wants isn’t really that much different from believing a player who tells you he needs to change his gum every half inning to play better. At the end of the day, this is really about endorsing something that yields at best a psychological benefit to the players. You can even call it an endorsement of superstition. It can’t be quantified.
I’m comfortable with that. As long as it doesn’t come at the expense of known, quantifiable factors like resting key players sufficiently, then I’ll be rooting for the Yankees to get that home field advantage, and for CC to be able to eat Captain Crunch on his couch before Game 1 of the ALDS this year. Come on, you don’t think he really quit the Captain, do you?
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- …
- 88
- Next Page »