Archive for Mark Teixeira
News roundup: Jim Leyritz, Mark Teixeira, Mo, sports media
Posted by: | CommentsA few news items of note on an afternoon before a long weekend:
- Another sad story comes our way concerning Jim Leyritz. The former Yankee and former MLB.com personality has been arrested on charges of domestic abuse. Leyritz’s ex-wife Karrie called the police after Jim, according to the Sun-Sentinel report, “dragged her out of bed, struck her twice and pushed her on the floor.” The Miami Herald has a different take on the situation. Leyritz’s lawyer denies the assault, and police say the former Mrs. Leyritz changed her story a few hours after initially reporting it to the police. Leyritz goes on trial Sept. 14 for his 2007 DUI arrest following an accident that left another driver dead.
- At 11:59 p.m. this evening All Star Game balloting ends, and as of earlier this week, Mark Teixeira found himself just 40,000 votes behind Kevin Youkilis for the AL’s first base slot. Head on over to MLB.com to vote. Yankee fans can vote for Teixeira 25 times per e-mail address, and while you’re at it, vote for Ian Kinsler too. He’s holding onto a very slim lead over Dustin Pedroia.
- Joe Posnanski has profiled Mariano Rivera. Do you need to know anything more about it? Just read the article.
- From around the Yankee Blogosphere: Rebecca looks at some top MLBers who had success at AA. The Jesus Montero buzz is building. Fack Youk revisits Dave Righetti’s Independence Day no hitter and wonders what could have been if the Yanks hadn’t moved Righetti to the pen. Sound familiar?
- Finally, for the sports journalism junkies among us, Harvard’ Nieman Journalism Lab just wrapped up a four-part series on the shifting media power in sports. With more teams forming regional sports networks, more leagues creating their own TV networks complete with allegedly unbiased news coverage and more blogs gaining readers every day as newspapers see their circulation numbers decline, the world of sports journalism is undergoing something of a paradigm shift. In the series at NJL, Justin Rice focuses mostly on baseball to explore how sports coverage has responded to and embraced the Internet and where sports media is going.
Quick hits: Joe Girardi, Teixeira’s All Star chances
Posted by: | CommentsBy Joe: No topic divides a fanbase quite like the debate over the franchise’s current manager. It takes some serious string of winning, a la Joe Torre in the late 90s, for a manager to get near universal approval. Joe Girardi has not come close to achieving that. Fans take issue with him for some reason or another; some legitimate, some a bit less than. Gary Armida, formerly of the excellent FullCountPitch.com and now writing for NY Baseball Digest, takes a look at the situation. He’s not a fan, so he’s a bit more detached. The conclusion is mostly positive, though Armida is not hesitant to point out the skipper’s flaws. His best line: “It’s time to let go of the Torre era and realize that there is a manager in place who has grown from mistakes and isn’t afraid to try new things.” As with most things Armida, I suggest a full read.
By Ben: With just 54 hours and 30 minutes left until All Star voting closes, Mark Teixeira and Kevin Youkilis are locked in a close battle. While last week Teixeira had the lead, this week, the Red Sox’s first baseman — who actually manned third for the past week — has a slim 40,000-vote lead. To get Teixeira to St. Louis, Yankee fans will have to vote their requisite 25 times a day between now and Thursday night. Voting is here. Vote also for Ian Kinsler too. He leads Dustin Pedroia by 7000 votes. Unseating an undeserved Josh Hamilton would be a-OK with me too.
Yanks’ protest denied; Teixeira leads in All Star voting
Posted by: | CommentsJust a few quick notes before the game thread: MLB has denied the Yanks’ protest of Sunday’s game. Joe Girardi filed a formal complaint with the league on Sunday after the Marlins messed up a double switch. The denial is unsurprising; I can’t pinpoint the exact date, but it’s been around two decades since the Commissioner upheld a protest.
In other news, Mark Teixeira leads AL first basemen in the All Star voting. After finding himsef 1300 votes behind Kevin Youkilis last week, the Yanks’ slugger now has a 35,632-vote cushion. While Joe Mauer has himself a comfortable lead, Jason Varitek is second, and 1,108,054 fans think Varitek is an All Star. Remember: This time it counts!
Quick Hits: Teixeira, Nady, Mel Hall
Posted by: | CommentsUpdated 1:54 p.m. with Mel Hall news: We’ve got a few short items for a mid-morning wrap-up. Let’s jump in.
Youkilis jumps out to slim All Star Game lead over Teixeira
Starting with bad news, we find out that Kevin Youkilis holds a 1,314-vote lead over Mark Teixeira for the All Star Game. While Youkilis is definitely worthy of the start — perhaps more so than Teixeira by a slim margin — the Yankee fan in me doesn’t want to see some Red Sox player starting for the AL at first base. So Yankee fans, let’s get on that. Vote here for Teixeira. Vote early. Vote often. This injustice will not stand.
Nady making rehab progress
From exhibition games to injuries, we turn our attention to the rehabbing Yankee outfielder Xavier Nady. According to NJ.com’s Colin Stephenson, Nady has ramped up his throwing program. He threw from around 100 feet prior to last night’s game and will do so again today. After this afternoon’s session, the Yankees will determine whether Nady will stick with the team or return to Tampa to finish his rehab. There is still no timetable for his return.
In a way, Nady presents an interesting case for the Yankees. The team is committed to bringing him back only when he can be a viable on-field contributor. With Hideki Matsui limited to DH duties, the team doesn’t need another no-field player impacting their roster flexibility.
The only question about Nady’s return concerns the roster move. Who goes down when Nady comes up? Most likely, Angel Berroa will be the odd man out. He has amassed a whopping five plate appearances over the team’s last 31 games and doesn’t do much in the field. He’s pure dead weight and should have been jettisoned a while ago. That leaves the Yankees a little outfield-heavy on the bench, but I’m OK with that.
Mel Hall convicted on charges of sex abuse
In March 1989, Dave Winfield went down with a back injury, and the Yankees had an outfield void to fill. They attempted to do so by acquiring an overrated Mel Hall. While the team attempted to spin the move as a positive, Hall was an underwhelming contributor who managed to stick around for four years. He hit .273/.303/.437 for the Yanks from 1989-1992 and was out of the Big Leagues and in Japan until attempting an American comeback with the Giants in 1996.
Two years ago, he was arrested on allegations of sexual abuse, and his trial took off this week when his accuser took the stand. The Associated Press has the details, and they are disturbing. If convicted, Hall could face a life in jail.
Update: It seems that Hall was found guilty as well. The jury took 90 minutes to convict him, and sentencing will continue today and tomorrow.
Rounding second and heading for home
Posted by: | CommentsWe talk often about quantifying what happens on the field. In order to better understand a player’s value, advanced baseball metrics have moved from the closed doors of teams’ Front Offices to the forefront of the Internet. While, as Alan Schwarz’s The Numbers Game showed, statistical evaluation in baseball is nearly as old as the game itself, only recently has it moved into the realm of everyday fandom.
Yet, for all the talk of numbers, sometimes things happen that aren’t explained by statistical contributions. Sometimes, the game unfolds in new and unexpected ways. That’s what happened last night.
Luis Castillo’s dropping the pop up last night was unexpected. It doesn’t really happen. In fact, the Yanks hadn’t walked off on an error in six seasons. Yet, the even more unexpected part was Mark Teixeira. On a lazy pop up that should have ended the game, Mark Teixeira scored all the way from first base.
After the game, his teammates praised him. “What stands out is Mark Teixeira’s hustle. That wins the game for us. That’s why he’s my MVP right now. He’s doing everything,” Alex Rodriguez said. A-Rod, of course, had it easy. All he had to do was stand on first base to avoid getting tagged out before Teixeira scored. He did.
Meanwhile, we laugh at overused baseball cliches of grit and hustle. A player can have as much grit and hustle as anyway, but a .320 on-base percentage is still a .320 on-base percentage. What Teixeira did last night though transcends that element of the game. Many players — from scrubs to superstars — would just trot around the bases waiting for the inevitable to happen. Teixeira ran all-out from first to home on a ball that barely made it into right field.
That’s a move that separates the cream of the crop from everyone else. Teixeira gets a run scored. The Yanks get a badly-need win. And I’ll just sit back and admire how Teixeira offers up a complete package, the likes of which the Yanks haven’t seen at first base in a long time. That is $180 million well invested, and you can bet that John Henry, idiotic comments aside, was thinking it just as I was as Teixeira slid home with the Yanks’ 9th run of the night.
Curry: What if Teixeira had landed in Boston?
Posted by: | CommentsIn a couple of hours, the Red Sox and Yankees will again square off in Fenway Park. While the Yanks are 0-6 against Boston this season, the two teams are tied for first atop the AL East, and the pennant race promises to be a good one this summer.
Despite the Red Sox’s on-field triumphs over the Yanks this season, New York walked away from the off-season the big winner when they seemingly stole Mark Teixeira out from under Boston’s Christmas tree. Six months later, Teixeira is one of the main reasons why the Yanks are fighting for first place. He’s hitting .284/.391/.615 with 18 HR and 51 RBI. “We definitely wouldn’t be where we are right now without him,” Johnny Damon said to The Times’ Jack Curry today.
In a good “What If?” piece, Curry explores what Teixeira means to the Yanks and would could have been had the Red Sox signed their top target. He writes:
The Red Sox positioned their off-season around signing Teixeira, a player who would have fit snugly into their desire for shrewd, patient hitters who play stellar defense. If the Red Sox were assigned the task of building the perfect player, they would have constructed someone who hit, fielded, walked and talked like Teixeira.
The Red Sox were the favorites to sign Teixeira, but they bolted from a meeting with him and Scott Boras, his agent, in December because Boras said their offer was not competitive enough. Johnny Damon of the Yankees never spoke to Teixeira during the negotiations because he assumed it “was a done deal” with Boston. But it was not. The Red Sox soon learned Boras was not bluffing.
Eleven days after the aborted meeting, the Yankees, who had focused on signing pitchers C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, swooped in and signed Teixeira to an eight-year, $180 million deal. The Red Sox lost a superb first baseman over a gap of about $10 million. Even worse, they lost him to the hated Yankees.
A-Rod, in talking to Curry summed it up. “Wow is as much as I can say,” the Yanks’ third baseman said. “I was thinking about that this week. He’s a switch-hitter, he’s young and he’s got world-class makeup. You can write a whole chapter on the difference.”
While neither Red Sox GM Theo Epstein nor Boston owner John Henry would comment for the story, the AL East would look a lot different had the Red Sox landed their prey. It’s a good thing for us they did not.
Teixeira takes a slim lead in ASG voting
Posted by: | CommentsWith the All Star Game a little more than a month away, Mark Teixeira has taken a slim lead in the voting over Red Sox’s first baseman Kevin Youkilis. In the latest numbers released today, Teixeira and his hot streak have powered the Yanks’ slugger to a 1209-vote lead over the AL’s leading on-base man. In reality, either would be an acceptable All Star choice, but do we really want to see Youkilis starting with Teixeira on the bench?
In other voting news, Derek Jeter is the clear fan favorite at short, but Evan Longoria has emerged as the Junior Circuit’s leading vote-getter. Joe Mauer has a seemingly insurmountable lead behind the plate, but still 582,715 fans believe Jason Varitek is worthy of an All Star spot. What are they thinking?
Teixeira not seeing more fastballs
Posted by: | CommentsThose who still suffer through ESPN’s Baseball Tonight saw a piece two nights ago on Mark Teixeira’s amazing May. On the month, he is hitting .327/.395/.752 with 12 HR and 29 RBI, and he’s been on a tear since A-Rod has returned. During the Baseball Tonight segment on Teixeira, Rick Sutcliffe claimed that the Yanks’ first baseman had been the recipient of more fastballs since A-Rod’s return. Since pitchers wouldn’t want to pitch around Teixeira to get to A-Rod, he concluded that the fastballs must be the reason for Teixeira’s hot month. Statistician Magician, a new baseball site, went to the pitch f/x data and determined that actually Teixeira has seen fewer fastballs since A-Rod came back. So much for both that theory and ESPN’s research department.




