Jelly Beans and Melky Ways

The Yanks are on a roll. Everything seems to be clicking right now, and Chien Ming Wang kept the line moving back to Randy Johnson with a quality start against Texas. The string of quality starts that we've enjoyed have coincided with a nice settling in of our offense, even without Gary Sheffield. Joe Torre picked up his 1,000th win as Yankee manager. A-Rod quieted the boo birds in Arlington. Matsui seems to have his mojo back. Yeah babeeee.

Hold on.

I said, "everything seems to be clicking." Maybe I left a couple of things out. I left out the horrendous string of failures contributed by Tanyon Sturtze that are leaving a trail of snail slime behind our pinstriped fun parade. No Maas has chronicled Joe Torre's "man crush" on Tanyon for quite a while now, with some gut bustingly funny photo mock ups. If only it were so amusing in reality. I didn't see the last game of the Rangers' series, but by all accounts Torre blew his stack when Sturtze started his regular choke-a-thon in the late innings. Could this be a turning point in his love affair with the literally and figuratively bloodied reliever? We can only hope so.

It begs the question, what of Colter Bean. I almost wrote a piece entitled "Free Colter Bean" the other day, but it seems someone has dedicated an entire web page to the crusade. While Sturtze has been slipping further into the abyss in the Majors, Colter Bean has been absolutely dominating AAA. When I say "dominating", I mean seriously showing guys up. If you don't believe me, check his stats for this year's Clippers club. 2 and 0, 0.46 ERA in 19.2 innings pitched, 1 run, 9 walks, 24 strikeouts.

This is Colter's 4th year in Columbus. He's appeared in a whopping 243 innings in 180 games for the Clippers in 3+ seasons, and has been called up to the Yankees once, in 2005. He appeared in 1 game, pitched 2 innings, and was a bit shaky. Back to Ohio for Colter. Meanwhile, in those 180 games, Bean is 19 and 12 with a 2.53 ERA, and 284 K's. His WHIP is 1.174 during that run of minor league service and, at 29, NEEDS to be in the Majors, either with the Yankees or in some kind of trade for a veteran Major League player.

It's almost to insane to contemplate that we're stuck watching Tanyon Sturtze repeatedly pitch like Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, while Colter wastes his most productive years playing the Norfolk Tides.

On one positive note for a lucky member of the Columbus Clippers, it seems that either Melky Cabrera or Kevin Thompson will be called up to take the spot of the battered Gary Sheffield. Additionally, it's said that Torre is going to play the young fellah in the field everyday. I'm hoping for Melky, 'cause I think the future is now for him. (Sorry Bernie). He's currently at .376 with 4 homers and 24 RBIs in 30 games. His OPS is hovering around 1.000 and his OBP is well over .400 on the year. He was outstanding in 43 Spring Training at bats, and I'm betting his jitters in the Bronx last season will be gone this time around.