Game 97: Sun, Rain, and Waiting on 600

Yep, I'm blogging on a Wednesday about Sunday's game, but the rain delay really took the energy out of me Sunday night, and the pictures were just too good not to post. Seventy-plus hours after Game 97, the Yanks have added a win and a loss, and Swish and Granderson have added home runs, but Alex is still idling at 599 homers as the Yanks continue on a road trip that will take them from Cleveland to the Trop en route to their return to Yankee Stadium just after the trade deadline. The deadline looms large because, even though the Yanks have the best record in the majors, they don't look like the a complete enough team to stand pat on the trade market.

Back to Sunday's game. Mostly, I'll let the pictures do the talking here:



Phil Hughes, Sunday's starter, is either praying or communing with the rosin bag before throwing his first pitch. Either way, I hope he's asking the powers-that-be that he not turn out like Joba did.



Opposing Phil would be the Kansas City Royals, the miserable ruins of a once-proud franchise. Here's KC's catcher, the twice-washed-up Jason Kendall. He batted second in the lineup. Batting third? Wilson Betemit. Yes, that Wilson Betemit!



The bright point in the Royal's lineup was Scott Podsednik, another player who's had a few major league lives before winding up in KC. He had a career day, matching his high marks with two homers and 4 RBI. He would also make a spectacular catch in the eighth inning, which sadly I didn't catch on virtual film. Here, he's on base after his first-inning single, wearing some sort of sliding mitten on his left hand.



Royals pitchers focused on throwing inside all day. Here's newly-acquired Royal Sean O'Sullivan getting up close and personal with Derek Jeter in the first inning.



Of course, the big draw of the game was Alex Rodriguez's ongoing quest for his 600th career home run. Before each A-Rod at bat, we had the following scene of the ump trading in his regular set of balls for special marked balls, which could be used to verify the authenticity of homer number 600 should Alex manage to launch it in that at-bat.

During the game, Brother Jeff asked if the 600 milestone still meant anything. The answer is yes and no. It used to be that 600 homers meant you were closing in on Willie Mays--undisputed, authentic immortal, with only undisputed authentic immortals ahead of him. These days, it means you're closing in on Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr. No disrespect to those two, but that air is not so rarified as it once was. Same thing with 500--it used to mean inner-circle Hall of Famers, now it's joining a club that has kinda-greats like Eddie Murray, Gary Sheffield, Rafael Palmeiro, Jim Thome. Sure, some of that has to do with steroids, but a bit of it is just the normal dilution that happens to once-"unreachable" sporting achievements.

On the other hand, as we saw a few years back, even with Palmeiro and Thome et al, 500 still matters. On Sunday, 600 mattered: people were obviously there hoping to see history. Every time Alex came to bat, you could see flashes popping, even though the early innings were played in bright sunlight.



Down 2-0 in the third, the Yanks ripped out a four-run outburst, started by a Curtis Granderson homer and RBI doubles by Jeter and Rodriguez. The weirdest play of the inning was this little squibber off the bat of Mark Teixeira.



It was a weak little grounder, but the Teixeira shift and Jeter heading home from third combined to make this an RBI single. Of course, it didn't hurt that the Royals' infield was basically three utility guys (Chris Getz at third, Mike Aviles at second, and Betemit at first) and Yuniesky Betancourt. (Want to make a Royals fan angry? Bring up Yuniesky Betancourt.) All the infielders had a bit of Bad News Bears in them on Sunday--bad throws, bad catches, butterfingers moments.



But even with the lead, Phil Hughes didn't put much pressure on the Royals. He didn't walk anybody, but he did allow a second home run, a blast from ex-pitcher Rick Ankiel that looked like it might have damaged the third deck. Sure, the first homer he allowed was a cheap foul pole job to Podsednik, but all game long, it didn't look like Hughes had his good swing-and-miss stuff.

Luckily, Granderson responded to Ankiel's homer with a second dinger of his own. In the fifth, with the score 5-3 Yanks, Rodriguez came to the plate again, with the Captain on first and two outs. What followed was a pretty good demonstration of what pressing looks like. The ball was going everywhere but fair.



There were foul balls off the ankle guard...



...there was some falling down...



...there was an awkwardly rinky-dink foul nearly straight up that luckily went out of play. All while the crowd was waiting with bated breath to see history happen. On the 2-2 count, Jeter got bored and stole second. All this ended with a weak grounder to Betancourt.

By this time, clouds had been gathering all game long, and now the sky was steel gray.

Hughes got one batter into the sixth, and suddenly the wind kicked up, and the groundscrew leapt to roll out the tarp.

Luckily, the big rainstorm came on umbrella day at Yankee Stadium. J&R got big bang for their promotional dollar. There were no umbrellas for the grounds crew though, who had their hands full.



Sadly, during the rain delay, the Yankee Stadium screen's entertainment: (c) Failed miserably. Don't blame Swish, whose cooking segment was pretty decent, but it was sandwiched between obnoxious informercials for Yankee Stadium's various food stands and a freakin' documentary about Yankees fantasy camp. No one wants to watch scrubs with too much money play rec-league baseball--as Brother Jeff said, it's like watching watching someone's vacation photos, just you don't know them, and could give even less of a damn than you usually would. Did I mention, that as this was happening, Andre Dawson was at Cooperstown, being inducted to the Hall of Fame? Think a bunch of baseball fans would rather watch that, or a 48-year-old stock broker trying to turn two? Or any of the half-million documentaries in the YES network library? Three days later, I'm still steamed about this.



Two-plus hours later, the tarp came off. Only a small fraction of the crowd was still in the house, but those who stayed had one thought in mind: 600!





Before Rodriguez could get to the plate again, Brett Gardner worked some of his slappy opposite field magic to plate Robinson Cano in the sixth. Gardner, along with Cano and Swisher, has been key in picking up the slack left in the lineup by the Jeter, Teixeira, and Rodriguez's subpar performances. This season he's hit almost exactly what he hit in the minors; which was pretty much what he had to do to justify a regular place in the lineup.

The Yanks added what looked like an insurance run in the seventh, when Rodriguez hit a hard grounder to Aviles that spun the second baseman like a top, scoring Swisher. Sadly, the insurance would be necessary because the hollowed out shell of Joba Chamberlain came into the game in the 8th inning, and gave up a couple of runs on a long homer by Scott Podsednik. To give this some context, Podsednik's hit a homer about once every 100 plate appearances for his career. This is not a power hitter, but he raked Joba for a no-doubter into the right field stands. Aside from that, and walking the number nine hitter to set up that two-run shot, two of the three outs Chamberlain recorded were hard-hit.

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Just when it looked like the Yankees would have to summon Mariano Rivera to close things out, the Royals bullpen spit the bit. Improbably, reliever Blake Wood, with a healthy assist from his thirdbaseman and manager, brought A-Rod to the plate for one more shot at the milestone. With the bases loaded and one out, Rodriguez was swinging easier than he had in his previous at bats. The faithful who were still in the stands could taste milestone coming...



...but it was not to be. In a huge anticlimax, Woods came up and in to Rodriguez hitting him on the hand. Alex was down on the ground for a while, and the remaining crowd let Woods and the Royals feel the hate. Ultimately, the Yanks put up a five-spot, though, meaning that instead of Enter Sandman, we got Chan Ho Park.



Or as I like to call him, Exhibit B in why the Yanks can't stand pat coming to the trade deadline. Park only managed to give back one run of the lead--and he had a helping hand from Jorge Posada's face mask and Rule 7.05(d)--but the righthander showed no velocity and just plain refused to throw strikes. Dave Robertson can only throw so many of the non-Mariano innings, and unlike the situations with the Yankees DH spot, there just don't seem to be any reliable internal options to make up for the way Joba and Park have stunk this season.

Anyway, so that was the game. Here's hoping that Alex can get the monkey off his back against grounballista Fausto Carmona tonight.

Game 80: Blue Jays at Yanks

Wow. It's been a while since we've spoken (a quarter-season, to be precise) and there's a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately, this is not the time for a wide-ranging discussion of all things Bronx Bombers (that'll be later in the week). This is the time for...photoblog:

It's not Fourth of July without baseball, the Yankees, and Freddy.

The pitching matchup for George Steinbrenner's 80th birthday was geared more toward the future--Phil Hughes for the Yanks and Brandon Morrow for the Blue Jay could spend a lot of their time crossing swords in the AL East between now and the Boss's 90th birthday. They're both power pitchers who established themselves in the bullpen before taking regular rotation slots. Morrow's a harder thrower (getting up to 97 on the stadium gun) than Phil, but also more prone to wildness (5.3 BB/9 for his career).

Phil the Phenom, coiled to attack. Has he been Joba'd?

Sadly for the Yanks, Phil's been in a bit of a phunk since the Yankees skipped him in the rotation a couple of weeks ago, the latest manifestation of their continuing experiment in limiting wear-and-tear on young arms. In his first start after the layoff he looked like he was throwing batting practice to the Mariners, allowing a career-high 10 hits in less than seven innings. Today he started strong, striking out the game's first two batters, but later he was Big Fly Hughes, allowing Lyle Overbay a cannon blast to dead center in the third, an excuse-me popup off the right field foul pole to Dwayne Wise, and another scorcher to star underperformer Adam Lind. Hughes' struggles were particularly galling since he was facing a true Sunday lineup: backups starting at second, catcher (Jose Molina for John Buck), and center (Wise for Vernon Wells).

Teixeira achieving full extension for his 5th inning double.

Wise's three-run homer was in the top of the fifth, and it really took the wind out of the crowd, erasing what had been a 3-1 lead. It looked like the Yanks were storming back in the bottom of the frame. Nick Swisher, fresh off his "Vote for Swish" pitch on the Jumbotron, singled to lead off the inning, then Mark Teixeira unleashed a massively promising drive to center...and, I'll let the pictures tell the story.

"Vote for Swish!" heading home! A-Rod says slide!

Sliding didn't work out so well. JoMo stonewalls Swish!

Yankee fans can give great dissertations on Jose Molina's failings, but an inability to block the plate has never been among them. If you click on the above picture, you'll see that the entirety of the plate is safely underneath Molina's ample backside--so long as he holds on to the ball, Swish is dead meat. Now, that was a bummer, but we still have a man on third, just one out, and the cleanup hitter at bat. Feelin' good, right?

Then the whole thing happens again. A-Rod hits a fly to Wise in mid-center. Teixeira heads home to score on the sac fly. Dead at the plate, again. Two hits, only one batter makes an out, no runs. Devastating.

At this point, Dwayne Wise--a guy who's only known because he made a gorgeous play to save Mark Buehrle's no-no last year--has dominated the game. His dinky little foul-pole homer was the leading margin; with Molina's help, his sharp throwing killed the Yankee rally in the fifth. Then, with the score 5-3 Jays in the sixth, here comes Wise again. Two outs, the team's slowest runner on first, and Brett Gardner hits a fly to fairly deep center, but it hangs up and Wise is under it. Should be an easy play. Then he loses it in the bright July 4 sun, something you can't do with Gardner running the bases. Tie game.

Now, as far as I can recall, I've never seen a Yankee hit an inside-the-park homer in person. Despite what the official scorer said, I still haven't seen one. Most inside the park homers involve some sort of blunder on the part of the fielder, but this fly ball hit Wise on the glove. As Brother Joe said on Twitter (mas o menos): if that's not an error, then there is no such thing as an error.

Brett Gardner trots home on his game tying...big mistake by the other team's fielder?

In the seventh, the Yanks took the lead, with Jeter scoring on another Teixeira double. Again, the inning meets a premature end because of a baserunner kill at the plate. (And again, it's Swisher. This is not how you get us to Vote for Swish!) Wise wasn't involved in that play at the plate, but that doesn't mean he was done...

Usually, the opposing team sees this, it's time to make sure you have dinner reservations.

Ninth inning, Enter Sandman, and the folks who've been melting in bright sunshine start heading toward the exits and the shade. The Jays got a couple of ground singles wrapped around a Jose Molina whiff, but it looked like Rivera had gotten out of it when he got Fred Lewis to ground one to Ramiro Peña for what looked like the game-ending double play. Rather than flipping to Cano for the 6-4-3, Peña took a page out of the Jeter playbook, going to the bag so that he could make the throw to first. Interesting idea, but it looked like Peña had a hard time finding the bag, so instead of the game-ending DP, he was only able to record the force.

Even though Peña had scored and knocked in a run earlier, Brother J, my wingman at the game, was livid. Channeling Boss Steinbrenner on his birthday, he wanted Peña immediately pulled off the field and put on a bus to Scranton before the inning was over. Either way, that made it Wise time again, and the center fielder blooped a single to center to get his fourth RBI.

The way the Yanks have been rolling lately, extra innings was bad, bad news. Under very similar circumstances, Dave Roberts and Chan Ho Park collaborated to blow Friday night's game against the Jays, and the bullpen overall has not been one of the team's strong suits (they're ninth in the AL in WXRL). Roberts, pitching the tenth, immediately looked Chan Ho-riffic, putting the first two batters he faced on base. Luckily, he was bailed out by some heads-up defense by Alex Rodriguez, who turned Edwin Encarnacion's sac bunt into a 5-4-3 double play.

In the tenth, it looked like Joe Girardi might have super geniused himself out of a win. Lefty Dave Purcey walked Robinson Cano to lead off the inning, and Francisco Cervelli, who replaced Jorge Posada due to injury, was at the plate. I'm not a Cervelli believer--I like him, but not as much as everyone did when he had a .390 batting average in mid-May--but having him bunt, against the lefty with Granderson and Gardner coming up...I have my qualms. Granderson's brutal against lefties (.514 OPS), Gardner's much better (.742 OPS) but still not wonderful. Splendid chance to see a runner stranded in scoring position. Luckily for Girardi, after Curtis made his out, Gardner was able to work a walk against the lefty, which brought up newly-reactivated Marcus Thames, who, as we all can remember, loves pie as much as he hates fielding. Marcus sent us home happy.

Marcus Thames says "Mmmm, pie!"

Game 39: Red Sox at Yankees

Oh. That hurts.

I met up with Jay Jaffe (of Futility Infielder and Baseball Prospectus fame), Ben Kabak (of River Avenue Blues and Second Avenue Sagas) and Emma Span (contributor to Bronx Banter and acclaimed author of 90% of the Game is Half Mental) over at the Dram Shop in Brooklyn to watch tonight’s game. The Yankees led 2-0 by the time I arrived, and shortly after I got my first scotch, Juan Miranda went yard with a solo shot. At that point, I remarked “Who’d have thought that in May, in a Red Sox game, we’d have Cervelli, Thames, Miranda and Winn in the lineup, and it wouldn’t be panic time.”

I blame the scotch. I spoke too damn soon.

Of course, the lower half of the lineup wasn’t to blame. They’d driven in three runs, and contributed two hits and two walks coming into the top of the eighth. CC Sabathia passed a 5-1 lead to Joba Chamberlain, which should have been enough. Sadly, keyed by a poor Alex Rodriguez throw that dragged Mark Teixeira off the bag, Joba coughed up the lead in the eighth. Another big error--this time by Marcus Thames, playing right field--doomed Mariano Rivera in the ninth, although the Sandman contributed by being less-than-dominant for a second straight appearance. And then it was back to that lower half of the lineup, with a shot to tie the game, in the bottom of the ninth against Papeldouche (hat tip to Mr. Jaffe).

That didn’t work out so well. With the score 7-6 and the tying run on second, Cervelli bunted, Thames walked, Miranda hit a hard grounder back to the freakishly small-mouthed Papelbon, and Randy WInn--really? there’s no pinch hitter for Randy Winn?--whiffed. Game over.

On the surface, this loss was about how the Yanks suffered immediately from the decision to send Greg Golson down. You can’t hide Marcus Thames on the field, which is pretty much what you have to do to have Tex and Miranda and Thames in the lineup all at the same time. Maybe if Girardi had had Golson on the roster, someone whose glove is not decorative is playing right field, and the gork that handcuffed Thames gets caught. But the real problem right now is a bullpen with no reliable parts, from the best closer ever on down. Still, it’s just a split, and it’s only three games behind the Rays, and it’s only May. Just an opportunity lost.

Still, with Curtis Granderson and Nick Johnson on the DL, and Javy Vazquez sporting an ERA north of eight, this isn’t a good moment for Brian Cashman’s offseason machinations.

2010, Game 14: Yankees at A's (postgame)

I guess Phil Hughes doesn't really need that changeup, right?

This time--unlike CC's effort in Tampa a few weeks ago--I steadfastly refused to communicate with anyone about the no-hitter in progress. No email to the Baseball Prospectus mailing list, no Twitter, not even text messages to my brothers (on that last one, it helped that the Yanks were in Oakland--the first time I felt like sending out a warning, it was already 11:30 PM on the east coast). When Oakland finally broke through with a hit, I didn't feel as bad as I did during CC's bid--mainly, because I couldn't shout curses at the TV with la Chiquita, her mom, and my sons all fast asleep elsewhere in the apartment, but also because of the way Hughes's no-no ended. Onetime franchise player Eric Chavez hit a hard grounder back to the mound, which hit the heel of Hughes's glove and then his chest. The final result was all a matter of instinct. If Hughes looks down after the ball hits him, he would have had a pretty easy play at first. Feeling the ball kick off his glove, Hughes looked up, and had no chance of making a play. It was a bad break, but understandable; Phil the Phenom shook it off and struck out the next batter before issuing a walk and leaving the game.

Watching from 3,000 or so miles away, I saw no evidence of the Phil Hughes changeup--and neither did Pitch FX. A couple of pitches had an atypical downward motion, but the gun readings were too high to call them changes. It's early, but this just might be a myth that we don't see again until March 2011. Then again, if Hughes pitches like he did in Oakland--pounding the strike zone with his fastball, getting batters to fish for the curve, using the cutter to keep them honest, keeping his pitch count low enough to get into the eighth inning--then it'll hardly matter at all.

2010, Game 9: Rangers at Yankees (postgame)

That was nice. I mean, Hughes wasn't as efficient as you'd want him to be--108 pitches didn't even get him a single out in the sixth--and the five walks were a downer, though it looked like the home plate ump was squeezing the strike zone a bit. Otherwise, his fastball had good life in the 92-94 MPH range that's his norm as a starter. The curve was gorgeous, the cutter effective.

But where was the changeup? Wasn't that all the hype coming out of Spring Training, Phil Hughes's new changeup? Al Leiter said he saw a couple of them; Pitch FX only identified one: the fourth pitch to Bobby Abreu in the third inning, a pitch well out of the strike zone.

The Spring Training changeup is often a phantasm. You always hear the stories out of the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues of this or that guy who's been working on his change, and just you wait until this devastating new pitch is unleashed on the world in games that count! But when March turns into April, that's exactly what fans wind up doing: waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Maybe the new miracle pitch makes an isolated appearance during the first two weeks of the season, then is quietly shelved. Sometimes, it doesn't even get that much play.

Now, it takes cojones to incorporate the changeup in your repertoire mid-career. A misfired breaking pitch can be embarrassing, but a poorly-located changeup can make you look like an idiot, speeding up the opponent's bat and making a slap-hitting backup catcher look like Babe Ruth. You can understand why so many pitchers flirt with the pitch, and why many of those flirtations turn out to just be Spring flings.

I hope that Hughes's changeup is for real. With or without it, he's the key person in the Yankee starting rotation--the person from whom we're most likely to see upside. Pettitte and Burnett are long shots to improve on their 2009 performances, and might have a hard time matching them. CC could improve, but he was operating at a pretty high level to begin with. The number four starter...well, we'll talk about him in a second. There's a lot resting on Hughes's shoulders--if nothing else, he's the living indication of what, if anything, Dave Eiland and Co. learned from the Joba fiasco last year. Here's hoping the start against the Angels was something to build on.

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So, eight games in, the Yanks have three losses, two attributable to Javy Vazquez. The first loss, in which Vazquez pitched three nice innings before giving up eight runs in Tampa, was greeted with panic; yesterday's loss, a more mundane four runs in five and a third innings against the Angels, inspired boos. Not the best way to re-introduce yourself to the fans after that whole 2004 season experience, where Javy went from coveted object of desire, to joyous acquisition, to All-Star, to not entirely trusted, and from there to ALCS Game 7 batting practice pitcher, and victim of a "let's forget this ever happened" trade, when he was passed along to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Randy Johnson.

[ASIDE: Off the top of my head, I can think of two other times that the Yankees immediately cut ties with an acquisition after one season, as if admitting that the whole thing had been a terrible mistake best forgotten. Dave Collins spent a fitful 1982 season with the club, after the Yankees had signed him to a three-year contract to play first base--even though he was an outfielder who'd only played ten games at first in his entire career. It was a bad, bad idea, based on an idiotic concept--that the Yankees should become a NL-style speed-and-average outfit. Collins was basically replaced Reggie Jackson on the roster--small shoes to fill, right?--and that turned out about as well as you'd think it would. After the season, the Yanks compounded their mistake by sending the two years remaining on Collins's contract, along with Mike Morgan and Fred Friggin' McGriff, to the Toronto Blue Jays for Dale Murray. Then, in 1988, Jack Clark was a Yankee for roughly ten months. Again, Clark was coming in without a position--he was a first baseman and so was Don Mattingly--but at least this time the Yankees were celebrating the end of collusion, and Clark was coming off a season where he led the NL in OBP and slugging percentage. He didn't have a horrible season, but he wasn't a good fit, either. Shortly after the World Series, the Yanks dealt Clark to the Padres, where he made Tony Gwynn's life miserable, and received a bunch of guys I dare anyone to name without looking it up. That's the company Javier Vazquez is in.]

It's early. Really early. No one should panic when a veteran pitcher has back-to-back bad starts, unless he's injured. But there's the Javy Vazquez history--that slide from arguably the ace of the staff to being kicked out of the starting rotation in the ALCS and you have to wonder. Vazquez was always regarded as a cerebral pitcher--when the Yanks first acquired him, he was considered Greg Maddux's heir--and you have to wonder if those failures are still in his head. That sounds like mainstream media drama-building, since he performed well enough once he was out of Dodge, and you have to hope that there's a mundane explanation, like he's still building arm strength. After all, last year, in his best season since he left Montreal, Vazquez's started his preparations early to pitch in the World Baseball Classic. So maybe once he gets some more innings under his belt, he'll improve.

Right now, however, the only reasonable thing to do is put him on the mound every fifth day, and hope that eventually he gives us reason not to boo.

Opening Day Photoblog: First Pitch

Bernie Williams prepares to unleash a one-hopper to the plate. Not sure what Matsui's doing in the background, though the Angels were warming up in the outfield throughout the ring ceremony, something which seemed the tiniest bit bush.

Opening Day Photoblog: Hideki-San

The best moment of the day was the team mobbing Hideki Matsui after he came out of the Angels dugout to get his ring. I'm pretty sure that's Jorge Posada quickly ducking out of the scrum with an "It's been real, H, but I've got a game to catch." Either that, or he took a loan from Matsui's video library last fall, and doesn't want Hideki bothering him about it now.

Opening Day Photoblog: Got Rings?

CC, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter stepping up to collect their World Series rings. Jeter naturally has to mug Yogi Berra when he gets to the table.

Opening Day Photoblog: Flags Fly Forever

The newest championship pennant atop the frieze. With all the ceremony the Yankees like to bring to things, Brother J and I thought that raising the flag on Opening Day was going to be a thing. No such luck--we entered the Stadium well before game time to find that both this and the big championship flag had been raised ahead of time.

Opening Day Photoblog: This Used to Be My Playground

The sight that greets people entering new Yankee Stadium is just plain ghoulish: what's left of the old Yankee Stadium (Yankee Stadium II, in Baseball-Reference.com parlance) looking like the victim of a scud attack. Much of last season, high scaffolds obscured our view of what the sports salvage & demolitions crew was doing to the Cathedral, but now it's out in the open for anyone to see. The new Stadium is nice and all, but this is just cruel. Why aren't they finished yet? Does Steiner still have more meat to pick off the Stadium's skeleton, or something?

Opening It Up

Heading to the Stadium soon for a little Home Opener action. For me personally, 2010 at the Stadium begins much like 2009 ended--my last game in the Boogie Down Bronx was the deciding game of the ALCS, against the Angels, and now we open the place back up, and it’s the Angels again! Now the Los Angelenos de Anaheimo are carrying our old buddy, Hideki Matsui, who’ll receive his World Series ring and get great big ovation (from me and my brother, at the very least) today. Despite having received a huge bargain on good old Godzilla, the Angels are hurting a little bit from the loss of Chone Figgins and John Lackey to free agency.

Just a week into the season, the Yankees have given us a lot to think about. There was Curtis Granderson getting his revenge against Little Big Mouth Papelbon in the finale of Yanks/Red Sox. There was Javy Vazquez causing all sorts of panic getting shelled by the Devil Rays. There was CC carrying a no-no into the eighth inning against the Rays the following day...lots of good stuff. Still, the season doesn’t really feel official until the team gets home. I hope everyone’s taken a vacation day for this.

Anyway, below we have a few shots from last year’s opener--a couple of pre-game photos and the Captain’s first new Yankee Stadium at bat. Let’s go Yankees!

2010, Game 2: Yanks at Boston (Pregame)

Not sure I’ll be able to stay awake until the end of the game (my sleep cycle is out of control, again), so I’ll do a pregame edition, with a short follow-up tomorrow morning.

Three questions coming into Game 2 of the 2010 season:

1. Jorge and AJ -- The question is whether this is a dance that will repeat over and over again for the duration of Burnett’s contract in the Bronx. Will we endlessly repeat this cycle where the starting catcher and putative #2 starter promise to make a commitment to each other, only to break up after the first non-quality start? I’ve always been wary of the personal catcher phenomenon--I mean, you can’t help it if an in-his-prime Steve Carlton wants to throw to Tim McCarver, but it’s harder to justify when a non-demigod wants you to compromise the lineup just to make him feel more comfortable on the mound. Then again, I’m sure Burnett was watching the leaden way Posada worked Sunday’s game and thinking, “Couldn’t I just throw to that nice Venezuelan kid instead? Why isn’t that OK?”

2. How long will it take Joe Girardi to figure out this bullpen? -- Bullpen management isn’t exactly Girardi’s strong suit, a feeling that was reinforced when the skipper went all pitching change happy in last year’s playoffs. Right now, he has two pitchers with real defined roles: Mariano Rivera is Mariano Rivera, and (until he gets injured and/or Boone Logan is brought up from the minors) Damaso Marte is The Lefty. The vast undifferentiated mass of righthanders in the pen, however, look to be a problem. Not sure if Girardi turned to Dave Robertson in the sixth on Sunday because he’s the sixth inning guy, or because he thought the team needed a strikeout with a runner on third. Not sure why Girardi turned to Chan Ho Park at all, other than curiosity. And not sure under what circumstances, if any, Girardi would have called Al Aceves’s number. Hopefully, Girardi will remember that Sergio Mitre is supposed to be the long relief/emergency starter/garbage time guy, but there’s no way to be sure. Remember that for a short while last season, he was quite taken with Brett Tomko as a late inning reliever.

3. How will the lefty lineup work? -- The 2009 Yankees had a nice record against lefties, largely on the strength of the three players who are now gone from their lineup: Johnny Damon was able to hang in there against southpaws, Melky Cabrera had surprisingly even performance from both sides of the plate, and Hideki Matsui was downright fantastic when opponents tried to exploit the platoon advantage (.282/.354/.618 vs LHP). The main players who replaced them are all lefthanded, and there are some issues. Nick Johnson has actually been a bit better against lefties than righties, but over his career Curtis Granderson loses 281 points of OPS against lefties, and despite 65 good PA against them last year, there are questions about Brett Gardner’s ability to be a full-time player. The solution would be one or more platoons with the fourth and fifth outfielders on the roster, Marcus Thames and Randy Winn. Problems here are that even though Thames is a power guy with a rep for mashing lefties, he’s got OBP problems and is an “outfielder” with quotes around it; meanwhile Winn’s a good corner outfield glove, but no one really knows if his bat any life left in it at all. Both guys had a lousy time in Spring Training, so there’s really no telling. Tonight we’re going to see a configuration that has Gardner and Winn on the bench, and Thames and Granderson hitting 8-9 in the lineup. I have a feeling we’ll see a number of lineup permutations against lefties before everything is said and done.

As I guess question 1 makes clear, I’m less than optimistic about tonight’s Burnett/Lester matchup. Then again, Burnett is so unpredictable that he’ll probably go out and throw a 2-hitter. Or give up 8 runs in the second inning. Not sure which of these two.

2010, Game 1: Yanks at Boston

Boston 9, Yankees 7. Just a few thoughts:

• This game was like one of those hazing rituals where you and another guy trade punches to the gut until someone says when (or vomits blood, whichever comes first). Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
• The Jeter/Gardner double steal was one of those moments that either breaks the opposing team’s back or just pisses them off. Personally, with the score at 5-1 I thought I heard some crunching noises when it happened, but it turns out that the Sox wiped the egg off their face and came back fighting. Hat tip to them for that. Didn’t help that the Yanks’ pitching turned to jelly, but you’ve got to be able to capitalize on those opportunities, and the Beantowners did.

• Joba Chamberlain is depressing right now, because he went from being really special to pretty damn generic in record time. He was a huge fan favorite less than two weeks into his Yankee career, but 3 1/2 years later, he’s just a righty reliever with a straight low-to-mid 90s heater, and a slider that’s still nice but nowhere near as sharp as it used to be. I know it’s just April 5, but my expectations on Joba have started drifting from “they’re grooming a potential superstar” to “I hope they can salvage a useful major leaguer from this mess.”

• The only comfort I find in the Joba situation is that he’s still using his gentler, cleaner mechanics the Yanks devised when he transitioned to the starting rotation. So there’s a little hope that the guy with the ungodly stuff we saw in 2007 is still in there, somewhere--that it’s not like his arm’s been damaged or something. I feel this statement requires a twitter hashtag like #thesearethethingsitellmyselftogetthroughtheday.

• It now seems obvious that the goatee was what made Chan Ho Park a decent reliever. He should be able eligible for some sort of exemption on the facial hair policy.

Regardless of the results of Game One, I’m really happy that baseball’s back.

Sympathy for Bob Gutkowski

or, Why Business Is Hard

As you may have read, a judge dismissed former Madison Square Garden exec Bob Gutkowski's suit alleging that the Yankees owed him money for his alleged role as "the architect of the YES Network." The YES Network, and the local media revenue it brings in, being the economic engine that drives the Yankees' financial empire, you'd think that whoever...architected? that engine would be swimming in giant vats of money, Scrooge McDuck-style. But Gutkowski wound up getting none of that filthy lucre--he just got a handful of consulting contracts from the new network, and, he says, a lot of promises that he'd get to build and/or run the network someday. And he got to do neither of those things. For this he sued, and now lost.

Because the law suit was dismissed, rather than going to trial, we have no basis to determine if Gutkowski's claims are true, or if they're more along the lines of those annoying "Windows 7 was my idea" commercials:



(By the way, this parody of those commercials was pretty funny, and only slightly NSFW.)


Anyway, after the YES Network case was dismissed, Gutkowski's attorney's comment to the New York Times was, “What’s interesting about the opinion is that the claims were dismissed on several legal technicalities, not because Steinbrenner didn’t take Gutkowski’s work product and make millions of dollars off it.” Most of those "legal technicalities" amounted to the fact that Gutkowski and Steinbrenner never had a contract, which is quite a troubling technicality when you're suing for breach of contract. The other technicality was that, even though Gutkowski allegedly first pitched the concept of a Yankees network in 1996, and the YES Network came online in 2002, Gutkowski waited until 2009 to sue, so his suit was late.

But beyond the legalities, should we feel bad for Bob Gutkowski? If what he claims is true, George Steinbrenner, a very, very, rich man, got much richer off his ideas and work, and didn't pay him what he was due. The fact that he's much less wealthy than Steinbrenner immediately makes him an object of sympathy, since the relationship was unequal. On the other hand, his claims also sound a bit like the outrage of a girl who's shocked--shocked!--that her date is trying to get to second base during the limo ride after the prom.

(Not a reference to personal events, by the way. It didn't help that my prom date had a boyfriend, and that a food allergy rendered me mute for most of the evening. Long story.)

This is how business works. Coming up with good ideas is not the hard part. This week's announcement of the iPad has experts coming out of the woodwork, all claiming that they could do Steve Jobs's job better than he did, by giving the device a better name, different features, whatever. The big difference, to them, is that Steve Jobs has Apple's considerable resources at his disposal, while they don't. How unlucky for Apple that that hack Jobs is still at the wheel!

Seriously, the hard part isn't getting the brilliant ideas, it's getting paid for them. People with brilliant ideas usually have to hook up with people with resources to make their idea a reality. From the point of view of the person with resources--if you've ever owned or created anything of value, you've probably experienced this--the world is full of people with bright ideas who want to share their ideas with you. Usually, their pitch amounts to some variation of "give me part/half/all of your money/assets/intellectual property, and with my knowhow and contacts, I'll make us a fortune!" These offers come with a differing levels of legitimacy--ranging from emails from a Nigerian prince to a phone call from Bill Gates's garage, circa 1976--and as the party risking more than their time and effort, the person with resources has to be very careful who they listen to. The flipside is also true. People with resources will often string people with ideas along with a lot of handshakes and "that sounds promising"s and vague promises, and if the idea people haven't taken steps to protect themselves, they'll find someone else executing (and, if it's good, profiting from) their idea.

That last scenario is what Bob Gutkowski's claims look like: he had a bright idea, an idea which, to work, required a resource he didn't have and couldn't buy (the Yankees). So he went to the Yankees' owner with his bright idea for a Yankees network, and in return he got a bucket of false promises and betrayals. Simple, right?

The part that makes it complicated is what, according to Gutkowski's complaint, happened in 1998. At that point, he formed a company to help the Yankees create their network, and they gave a presentation in which they laid out their whole strategy. They presented the Yankees with a contract, saying that to get started with their plan, it would take $25,000 a month, for a minimum of six months. The story Gutkowski tells is that Steinbrenner didn't sign, but directed them to go ahead with the plan anyway. He then paid only one month's worth of the contract, and nothing else.

So obviously, they took him to court over the $125,000 the Yankees owed, right? Apparently, no. Instead, Gutkowski signed a short-term consulting agreement with the Yankees, based, he says, on smooth talking and promises from the Boss himself. OK, so that sounds reasonable, kinda, but still: 125 grand!

Maybe that just wasn't enough money to go to war over, but surely things must've changed in 2002. That's when the Yankees started the YES Network, without Gutkowski's participation. According to him, they stole his idea! But did he sue? No, he signed another short-term consulting contract, and then another one in 2004. Why would someone hire on to work for a guy who stole his ideas, not once but multiple times? Again, the answer offered is that the Boss and his lackeys persuaded Gutkowski with false promises that never actually included concrete discussion of salary figures or percentages of ownership in the YES Network Gutkowski would get. In the complaint, it sounds like George Steinbrenner is the most persuasive person ever born, with near-magical powers of mesmerism to make Gutkowski keep playing Charlie Brown to his Lucy van Pelt.

(A quasi-theological corollary to this: if the Boss had magical persuasion powers, why wouldn't he have used them to talk the Red Sox out of winning the 2004 ALCS?)

Back to Gutkowski, given his admitted actions, it just doesn't make sense that he really thought that anyone had anything other than a moral obligation to do right by him. And sadly, in the worlds of business and law, moral obligations ain't worth much, probably much less than he netted from the consulting contracts he kept signing.

(Huge hat tip to Ben Kabak, whose post over at River Avenue Blues inspired this rant.)

Winter Meetings Notes

Lots have happened since last we spoke. Indeed, it seems that if you don't show up at your Blogger office for more than a month, they set your page to show a random someone's Twitter feed. I got a guy from Connecticut. The page's Twitter feed will return if/when it's fixed--until then, if you want to follow me in 140-character doses, you can just go directly to www.twitter.com/derekbaseball .

Ain't It Grand?

The big baseball news, for the Yankees at least, was yesterday's three-way trade with the Tigers and Diamondbacks, which is reportedly done, pending physicals. The Yanks gave up Austin Jackson and Phil Coke to the Detroit, and Ian Kennedy to Arizona. In return, they got center fielder Curtis Granderson, and his sweetheart contract (3 more years, at under $28MM).

It's a hard deal to not like. Granderson's spent the last two years coming down from his career season in 2007, but he still shows decent patience (72 BB in 710 PA) and good pop in his bat (.204 isolated power). Depending on whose metrics you believe, he's either a good or very good center fielder. Either way, by pushing the Melky/Brett Gardner duo to left, he'll improve an outfield that featured Johnny Damon's diminished range and noodle arm. He puts the Yankees in a position where they could sign either Damon or Hideki Matsui--but not both--for the DH slot, or they could go another way entirely. With Granderson, they also have the option of sitting out the Jason Bay and Matt Holliday free agent auctions, if they prefer. It's a real Brian Cashman move.

Meanwhile, the package they gave up for Granderson is extremely fair for a former elite player who's had some of the shine taken off him by declining production (he's a bit like Nick Swisher that way). As Boston.com's Pete Abraham (dang, does it feel weird to say that) pointed out, Austin Jackson may be a nice prospect, but his best case scenario is to someday give a team pretty much what Granderson will give you in the here and now. Phil Coke was a fringe prospect two years ago, prior to his meteoric rise (why do we say that? meteors don't rise, they fall) to the majors. Despite his ascension to top lefty on the best team in baseball, Coke was limited by his gopherball issues (12 homers in 62 2/3 IP, counting the postseason). He had value, but let's not get carried away. And Ian Kennedy? I'm still convinced he's a major league pitcher, and the NL West will be a good place for him. But he was never going to establish himself with the Yankees. He just didn't have the kind of upside that would justify the frustrations the Yankees had with him, even before he lost much of last season to injury. Good luck to him.

Moves and Maneuvers

The lower-case news of the Yankees' Winter Meeting are a maintenance of the status quo--Andy Pettitte getting a one-year deal, worth just under $12 million--and Brian Bruney being cast down among the sodomites on the Washington Nationals roster. Pettitte showed last season there's stuff left in the tank--heck, he was stronger in the second half than the first. It's a good idea to have him back, and if the price is not making him sweat a bunch of incentives, that's just "Thank you for another World Championship." The general rule is that there's no such thing as a bad one-year deal, particularly when you have the Yankees' resources.

As for Bruney, in Game One of the World Series he reminded everyone of the old adage, "don't put anyone on the World Series roster you wouldn't want to use in a World Series game" (the Jeff Weaver Rule, as I like to call it). When Bruney came to the Yanks, he was a rare example of the team trying to acquire and develop low-cost talent, and to some extent, it worked. The Yankees turned a player with no value into a guy who's worth the first pick in the Rule 5 draft, and at times during his Yankee tenure he was worth more than that. Sadly, it turned out the conditioning issues that soured the D'Backs on Bruney in the first place weren't his only problems--you never knew what was jogging in from the bullpen when Bruney pitched. Sometimes, he'd be a beast in a high-leverage situation, blowing fastballs past the heart of the Red Sox order. Other times, he'd nibble, lose the strike zone, and generally pour gasoline on the fire. Like Kennedy--who basically stole a save opportunity from Bruney in the season's final days--you just got the feeling that Bruney was more trouble to the Yanks than he was worth. He joins the Nationals, where his personality quirks will seem mild by comparison to his fellow inmates.

Gammo's Gone (from Bristol)

The other Winter Meetings news from yesterday was first surprising, then not. In short order, it was announced that Jack Curry had accepted a buyout from the New York Times, and then that Peter Gammons was leaving ESPN, as of the end of the meetings. The Gammons story was open-ended and sudden, so it wasn't certain if he was leaving the Worldwide Leader for another opportunity, or just leaving. A short time later, surprise turned into, "Oh, that makes sense," when the MLB Network announced that Gammons would be joining their team.

The ESPN story on this was titled "Gammons Ends Hall of Fame Run with ESPN." The title is technically correct, as Gammons got the coveted Spink Award in 2005, while a member of the ESPN family. But to me, it felt a little like saying, in 1996, that Wade Boggs had "finished his Hall of Fame run with the Yankees." Gammons was a Hall of Famer before he first joined the Bristol crew in 1989.

He changed the game with his Sunday columns for the Boston Globe, which was basically a weekly report on the state of the game, with a mild-to-heavy Red Sox tilt. I remember going to the newsstand with Joe Sheehan in high school, to pick up Baseball America, which ran the column in an abbreviated form, a couple of weeks after it ran in the Globe. We'd get together with friends to play Strat-o-Matic baseball and the issue of BA would slowly make its way around the room, everyone opening the paper to Gammons's column--sometimes it was the only thing in BA worth reading, almost always it was the only thing in BA we would talk about. When I went to college in Boston, it was a shock to open up the Sunday Globe and find a baseball column that was almost twice as long as what would later appear in BA. I actually tore that page out of the paper (the column took up an entire page!) and mailed it to Brother Joe in California.

This was a big deal in the pre-Internet days. You didn't have every sports section in America at your fingertips 24/7 back then, so a guy who once a week could tell you about what was happening everywhere in baseball was an invaluable resource--and Gammons was the first and best at it. If Gammons had quit baseball in 1988, he still would have been one of the best baseball writers of his generation. Still, he continued to blaze trails with ESPN, particularly when his writing went exclusive to ESPN.com. He was--I think--the first major sportswriter to abandon print to work exclusively online. Between him and Rob Neyer there was a stretch when ESPN's baseball page was the online destination that you had to check every day, multiple times a day.

For me my appetite for Gammons's writing slacked off a bit when he went behind ESPN's pay wall. The tremendous quantity and quality of sports writing available online in the middle of this decade made one writer--even a great one--falling by the wayside less stunning than it would have been in the late 80s or early 90s. Competitors, like Ken Rosenthal, started outhustling him on the phones, breaking more news, real or rumored. In general, people became less tolerant of the Gammons-style reporting of rumors, now that the Internet's full of them.

Even if he's lost a bit off his fastball, Gammons is like Andy Pettitte--he can still bring it well enough that he's welcome on my team. Here's wishing him the best of luck on the MLB Network (and, to a much lesser extent, on Red Sox-owned NESN).

Hurricane Cliff Strikes the Bronx

For those of you left homeless and/or hopeless by the devastation Hurricane Cliff caused last night, it's probably no consolation that the sun is shining today. No consolation that yes, the Series will go on, at least for a few days more. No consolation that there's still a chance to even up the Series, no consolation that last night might be the last time we see Brian Bruney in 2009.

All you can think about is the horror. The sight of the Yankees never really being in the game, all on account of a pitcher they used to kick around pretty regularly for most of his career. Suddenly, last year he went from fringy finesse lefty to combine harvester of doom (as a professor of mine used to say), and last night he was so locked in that everything--crowd, drizzle, batters, batted balls--was just a nuisance.

As I said on Twitter, it was a lousy feeling. It made me recall the last time I felt so bad about Game 1 of the World Series--back in 1996. Like this time, we were facing an NL team touted for its starting staff. Like last night, there was a player who looked like we wouldn't be able to get him out all series--that year Andruw Jones, this year Chase Utley--hitting a pair of dingers. And, I worry that, like the 1996 World Series, it may get worse before it gets better. AJ Burnett is going for the Yanks tonight, and unless the boys manage to show Pedro Martinez who his daddy is early and often, it'll be a night where I'm chowing down on antacids like they're tic tacs.

Still, the 1996 World Series turned out OK for Yankee fans. Keep the faith, and let's go Yankees.

****

Aside from Cliff Lee turning into an unstoppable creature from legend, the worst development last night was the continued downward spiral of Phil Hughes, whose postseason has been a completely different creature from his regular season in the pen. Hughes walked both batters he faced and barked at the umpire, even though he didn't come close to the plate with the majority of his offerings. Part of the problem, as Brother Joe notes today at Baseball Prospectus, is that Girardi changed the way he used Hughes, and it's not a fashion that complements Phil's style. Another issue is that Hughes looks like his mechanics are coming apart and his confidence is shot. They say George Steinbrenner was in the house last night, but I can't believe that's so. The George I grew up with would have gone to the clubhouse and fired Dave Eiland immediately after the game, if not earlier.

Not saying it would have been the right thing to do. Just saying that's what would've happened.

Last Minute World Series Preview*

* weather permitting...

I was there on Sunday, the beneficiary of a friend feeling under the weather, when the Yanks clinched American League pennant #40. It was made all the tastier because of the measure of payback the Yanks got against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in California of the West Coast of the United States, who'd sent the Yanks to some early October golfing in 2002 and 2005. Andy Pettitte, who's pretty much been Good Andy full-time since mid-July (he's 8-3 with 12 quality starts in his last 17 games) was on the money once again. A Yankee rally in the fourth gave him the lead, and in the eighth, everyone was surprised to hear the opening notes of Enter Sandman as Girardi took no chances on the last six outs. There was some excitement that inning, because a gork and a Vlad Guerrero single shaved the lead down to one against Rivera. However, Angels deadline pickup Scott Kazmir literally threw that momentum away in the bottom of the inning, when he couldn't throw a strike to the plate or to the first baseman. Boogie down time in the Bronx.

But pennant number 40 means that now it's time to worry about what could be championship number 27--and it's going to be a grind. The Phils won 93 games to the Yanks' 103, playing in a weaker league and arguably weaker division, but that's all out the window right now. The Phils remind me a bit of the 2002 Yankees, a team that was built on big peak performances which were meant to cover for some soft spots in the lineup. However, the starting rotation matches or betters anything the Yankees have put out there since 1998. (Even though the Yanks and Phils were neck-and-neck in SNVAR this season, the mid-season acquisitions of Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez, and the mid-season degradation of Joba Chamberlain, pushes the Pennsylvanians over the top.) The Yankees' bullpen is an off-setting advantage, so I see this as close to a 50/50 series as possible. The keys to this series:

Starting Pitcher: CC Sabathia and Cole Hamels -- These two aren't likely to hook up in any one game of this series, but each shoulders a great responsibility for his team's success. CC should start three games if this World Series goes the full seven, something we haven't seen since Curt Schilling against the Yanks in 2001. Again, this is what he got the big money from the Yanks for. Meanwhile, Hamels was the ace of last season's World Champions, and a big part of the Phils' rotation superiority is the idea that he can snap back to that form, which he showed intermittently this season. In three postseason starts, however, Hamels was nothing special, and seemed to push everyone's frustration threshold--he got pulled in the fifth inning of the NLCS clincher against the Dodgers. Good Cole versus Bad Cole is a big swing for the Phils.

Right Field: Jayson Werth and Nick Swisher -- With the Yanks possibly starting lefties in five of seven games, Werth is going to have to pick up whatever slack the power lefties in the Phils' lineup (Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Raul Ibanez) leave behind. In his first season as a full-timer, Werth was the righty counterpart to Howard, punishing lefties to the tune of a homer every 13.4 plate appearances. Meanwhile, in the Yankees' more balanced lineup, a functional Swisher is the difference between the Yankee lineup being a relentless on base machine that drives pitchers up the wall, or not.

Relief Pitcher: Mariano Rivera and Brad Lidge -- We've seen already in this postseason that Joe Girardi is going to lean on Mariano Rivera like there is no tomorrow--it's one of the few things Joe's done in the playoffs we approve of. The question is whether the Sandman, a month shy of his 40th birthday, can continue to answer the call if Girardi loses faith in Phil Hughes and needs him for extended appearances night after night. Meanwhile, Lidge's issues are well-documented (7.21 ERA this year!) but Charlie Manuel has staked a lot on trying to get him back on track. The Yanks have made a lot of their hay against bullpens this year, so it's unlikely that Lidge will go untested.

If I have to make a call, it's Yanks in six, but I think that overstates how close this series is, and is going to be. Happy baseball, everyone!

Joe Girardi: Super Genius

Game 1, which I attended, was a pure delight--chilly and a bit wet, but damn near perfect. Game 2 was a test of endurance for all involved. With a healthy assist from Alex Rodriguez, and despite the fact that Joe Girardi managed himself into a Chad Gaudin-or-bust situation at the end of the game, things turned out well. Then there was Game 3, where Joba Chamberlain, Girardi, and the Yanks in general managed to spoil a Mariano Rivera performance for the ages. And it only got weirder from there.

To some extent, Yankee fans are going a little hard on Girardi. At worst, he can only claim partial credit for the many machinations that turned Joba Chamberlain from the Yanks' most promising young starter since Andy Pettitte* into...whatever the heck he is right now. The Master Plan of converting Joba from pen to starting rotation, now in its second year, was a top-down organizational decision. Since August, at the very least, it's had a whiff of fiasco to it, and in common-sense terms, it seems like something doomed to failure from the start: start his season in the starting rotation, then just when he seems to have gotten a rhythm going, make his rest between starts long and random, then put him on a strict five-day schedule, but shorten his appearances so that in September--when perhaps a starter should be building his endurance for the playoffs--he's making 3- and 4-inning starts. Then, in the last week of the season, put him in the bullpen as a short reliever. Finally, act surprised when Joba, who hasn't been consistent since all the experimentation started more than two months ago, craps the bed in a playoff game.

So, the whole organization gets to take a bow for Joba's debacle in the seventh inning of Game 3. The whole lineup--the 7-8-9 batters in particular--screwed the pooch, limiting the offense to just the runs that the Captain, A-Rod, Johnny Damon, and Jorge Posada could produce on solo homers. But Girardi gets sole credit for the Tony-LaRussa-on-crack way he's been overmanaging since the regular season ended. The game was lost in the bottom of the 11th inning--an inning which in which Dave Robertson took over for Rivera, got two outs, and was inexplicably replaced with Alfredo Aceves, who allowed a single to Howie Kendrick and a double to Jeff Mathis to blow the game.**

As Pete Abraham put it, it looks like Girardi's being paid by the pitching change, given the nutty and senseless way he's been playing matchups even in games that have no set end point. The Yanks have had three extra inning games (out of six total) in the postseason, and Girardi's managed to use seven relievers in each of those games. Of those 21 relief appearances, almost two-thirds (13) have featured a pitcher throwing less than a full inning.

The big problem is, this isn't the way that Girardi managed during the season. By my calculations, Joe's relievers had the eighth-highest ratio of innings pitched to games appeared (1.12 IP/G), which is an indication that you're not micromanaging and playing matchups. For the sake of comparison, Tony LaRussa's Cardinals relievers got the second-fewest innings pitched per game (0.91) after the Rays (0.90).

Now, it's true that you manage the playoffs differently from the regular season. Joe Torre was a master of this in his years with the Yanks--his bullpen became much, much smaller in October, and his usage of Mariano Rivera much more flexible. Girardi's kept the flexible and intelligent use of Rivera from the Joe Torre era, but turned the rest of his bench and bullpen usage into a showcase for his managerial "genius." After being a fairly laissez-faire tactical manager all season long (he found a good thing with Brett Gardner as a baserunning weapon, but otherwise he managed a fairly standard AL game), Girardi's decided to get showy. Given the deepest bench the Yankees have taken into the postseason since the 70s, Girardi's opted for a roster that gives him a non-hitting third catcher and a second pinch-runner/outfielder, rather than carrying Eric Hinske or Ramiro Pena. After using just one lefthander (Phil Coke) in the bullpen most of the year, he's now carrying two. And he seems to be choking under the weight of all these options.

You see, while it's true that you manage a bit differently in the playoffs, it's not really the time to completely re-make yourself as a manager, either. Joe Girardi won 103 games this season, managing with a much lighter touch than he's shown through five playoff wins. He was far from the perfect manager for those 103 wins, but he should trust the managing style that got him here.

****

The odd coda to all this is Mariano Rivera. He came into the game in the 10th inning, after Phil Hughes allowed a leadoff double to Angels catcher Jeff Mathis. He soon found himself in a first-and-third, no out situation, when he tried and failed to get the lead runner on a sac bunt. With the top of the Angels lineup due up, Rivera did some of the best pitching of his career, holding the Angels scoreless with the winning run 90 feet away. The fine job Rivera did in the tenth was largely forgotten after Aceves came in to lose the game the following inning. But then it was back in everyone's thoughts again...because some douchetards thought he was throwing a spitter.

Not the opposing team, mind you, or the umps, or anyone in attendance at the game. Some guys, who apparently think the name of Los Angeles of Anaheim's franchise is the "Angles," recorded and posted on YouTube a moment, apparently between pitches, where Rivera, while holding a baseball, spits. From the angle of the camera, it looks like he spits toward the baseball, but the camera cuts away so you can't see where the stream of spittle goes.

Now, when I saw this, I thought it was a joke. Folks like getting Yankee fans' goats, and crave the bit of attention that you can get by having Red Sox fans with time on their hands propagate the video around the Internet, and Yankee fans waste their time denouncing it. The joke stopped being funny when MLB had to issue a statement refuting the charges. Still some bloggers kept on acting like this was for real. Never mind that no one uses spit to load up the ball anymore. Never mind that if someone did, they wouldn't do it by spitting on the ball from nearly an arm's length away, in the open, with live cameras rolling, in front of the Angels team and some 45,000 of their fans. Never mind that some folks have made up things (like where the second base ump was or wasn't looking when the fateful loogy was spewed) to fit this idiotic claim.

Then again, just never mind. We have our dumbest subplot of the 2009 ALCS. And here I thought it would have something to do with the Rally Monkey.

****
ENDNOTES

* Yeah, I know that Chien Ming Wang was after Andy Pettitte, and was pretty darn good before he got hurt. But he wasn't heralded as a top prospect, a top of the rotation guy. I'm actually not sure that Pettitte had that kind of hype, either. I think maybe Al Leiter matches the Joba situation a little better--a guy with explosive stuff who looked like a real world beater. But thinking of that comparison makes me really depressed.

** Even if Al Aceves had gotten Kendrick out, Girardi would still have burned Robertson on 11 pitches, in a game which could've easily gone 16 innings. You'd have to think that Robertson facing Kendrick with two outs and the bases empty was certain death in order for that to make sense!