Thursday, June 08, 2006

Random Yankeeness

I'm back from Tokyo, and ready to rock and roll. Did you miss me?

George Herman "Buddha" Ruth guarded the Temple COH well and worked his magic on the visiting Red Sox. I'm almost afraid to replace him at the top of the blog with this post, but he's still there watching. Did you hear that Papi? Manny? Who do you think gave Melky the extra burst he needed to steal that game tying homer? Yup. The Lotus of Swat.

It seems the Yankees have a good plan these days for the draft. I don't know jack about any of the guys they picked to be honest, but why not pick a billion pitchers (especially college pitchers) and hope that just one of them works out? We're going to buy whichever big name is on the market, and try to fill in a slot in the rotation or two with homegrown talent. That's what we always do, and it works. If we can get two or three of our draftees to be worthy of a starting spot with the Big Boys, we hit '777' and should be on top for another decade at least. It sounds like 1st Round Sandwich pick Joba Chamberlain is a well regarded player....

Jeter's thumb and wrist seem like they're getting better and I think we were lucky to get the rain out when we did. It gave him a chance to rest another day and play in a larger number of games down the road. Last year we won the division by a hair with a tied record. If Jeter plays in one extra game thanks to that rainout, and gets a game winning hit, we can thank the weather.

Rumors continue to fly about the Yankees' pursuit of a big name outfielder. Personally, I don't see the need unless we suddenly start to slide. We score plenty with Damon, Jeter, Giambi, A-Rod, Posada, and Cano. The young guys are clubbing the ball around the park and have injected some life into a dreary squad of veterans. Keep it going. The names I hear are nice to think about from a fantasy perspective, but not really in reality. Ken Griffey, Jr. would probably cost too much and end up on the DL with our other guys. Soriano is a personal favorite (I still have a #12 home jersey because of him) and I'd even think about trying to grab Livan Hernandez in a package, but what would they ask for? Cano and Wang. Cano and Phillips? I don't really think we need him or Livan enough to give away our young guys. As much as I worship the ground Soriano walks on, he'll have to come back as a FA if he wants to wear the pinstripes again.....and play the outfield.......and hit down in the order. Does any of that make sense financially or logistically or statistically? Stick with what's working now.

A couple of other random notes. Mike, over at In George We Trust, has finally had it with Blogger and is revamping his blog at a new location. It's almost fully operational, and can be found at Baby Bombers, or at the link found in the right hand column.

I run a wise-ass NBA blog with my buddy over at East versus West, and generally write profanity laced diatribes about the NBA and the Knicks. I've been on a campaign to start a Matt Millenesque chant at Knick games "Sell the Team". Sell the Team", and it seems that someone has picked up the same banner and is running with it. You probably know the story already, but build some momentum behind this movement. Dolan and Isiah are the worst things to happen to the Knicks since their inception and need to be run out of town on a rail. You can make it happen. Power to the people!

See you tomorrow. Go Yanks!

1 comment:

RollingWave said...

Welcome back ;)

I'm wondering about the outfield situation. it depends on a few things, if EVERYONE on the lineup keep producing at their current season level for the rest of the season... then we don't have enough offense.

However, since Bernie's been heating up lately as well as Andy Phillips , the question becomes much more interesting, are we going to gamble that these two guys can keep doing it for the rest of the season at .800 +OPS rates? or is Bernie going to stick to his current .700 ish rate pulled down by the bad April..?

Can Melky retain his current high 300 to low 400 OBP? can the rest of the guys stay healthy?

if most of these can stand firm, then the Yankees don't need a trade, but that's a lot of speculations...

Although who can we get as a short term solution that can prove to be a significantly improvement AND not cost serious prospects? hard to say.