Prospects Safe

Just as I knew was the case, and contrary to BS hack journalism that seems to be the prevailing trend in the current competitive climate, Brian Cashman isn't trading his prospects, whatever his job status may be. This from ESPN Radio:

"Still, with Steinbrenner's words still ringing in Cashman's head, the GM vowed not to trade any of the Yankees' top prospects, such as starter Phil Hughes.

"I'm not worried about saving my job," Cashman said. "I'm not worried about doing my job. In doing my job, you have to balance both [now and the future.] I don't think it is a tough call. You have to make the right call. I'm not being paid to save my job. I'm being paid to do a job."

Cashman said that Steinbrenner agrees with this stance on not trading prospects.

"At the same time, [Steinbrenner] doesn't want to give up those young guys either," Cashman said. "But that could always change, too.""

The last note is Cashman's ominous footnote that should be attached to any comment concerning The Boss, but really means very little and should be ignored. I'm sure that the tabloids will run some kind of story tomorrow about this and use the last part as the main catch.

"Steinbrenner May Conduct Fire Sale on Yankee Farmhands" (Bastards. Long live blogging!!!)

So Much For Roger

He must be regretting his decision to come back this season every waking moment. He has to be a part of a sad sack team of declining, overpriced guys on their way to Autumn golf, and he is stinking it up to boot. The money is good at least.

It's emblematic of this entire season that Hughes popped his hamstring and Roger came back to a dying club to contribute more ugliness. It's fitting that Johnny Damon's physical decline has become so swift, yet they won't DL him. Abreu is the guy that Philly loved to hate. Cano regressed to the mean that the experts predicted. Mussina is surlier than Randy Johnson ever was and it doesn't seem like he even cares. It's almost like an extraordinarily delayed reaction, in which the predictions about his adjustment to NY made all those years ago are coming true now. He'd rather be in Pennsylvania coaching Little League than dealing with the Bronx.

I'm going to give up on this team soon. I can feel it. It's already half in my head to give up and start thinking about next year. Once I make that move finally, I'll try to get more positive in my posts and focus on what really needs to happen to pick up the pieces and reshape this franchise. The first order of business will be thinking about a fire sale before the trading deadline. The Yankees always buy at the deadline (and they probably will again this year) but I think they should sell. They should sell Mussina to Philly. They should sell Abreu to the Cubs or the Padres or something. They should sell Damon to the wolves. Giambi? Probably unmovable. Anyway, that's for another day.

It's over.

That was the death knell of this season. Even if the Yankees miraculously pull out a playoff spot, why bother following this mess anymore. The Yankees are worse than bad, they are frustratingly irrelevant. Who even cares about what's happening with the Yankees in 2007 outside of New York? It's like the Bombers have suddenly become the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee Brewers have become the Yankees. Ironic isn't it?

The only reason to follow the Yankees the rest of this season is to see how many more ways they can find to lose ballgames. I think there are 6 million ways to die, and the Yankees will try them all out before the season is finished. Ugly.

There will be changes. I just hope that they are either made before anyone pulls the trigger on a desperation trade that hurts us long term. Sit pat. Ride out this hideous season. Let whatever happens, happen. Regroup with a new plan for 2008. Seriously, DO NOT MESS WITH THE FARM.

How bout them Brewers?!

McCarried Away

Anthony McCarron of the Daily News adds to the annals of hack writing today by drumming up the sale of newspapers via insinuation designed to stir the passions of Yankee fans everywhere. Here's a representative piece of the article for you to chew on:

"Other White Sox players who could be available include free-agent-to-be Mark Buerhle, Paul Konerko and Jose Contreras. Texas first baseman Mark Teixeira's name will come up in trade talk all summer. Milton Bradley is available after being designated for assignment by the A's last week, but a Yanks executive said the team wasn't interested in the hot-headed outfielder.

The Yankees had inquired about Reds first baseman Scott Hatteberg (.286 average, seven homers, 23 RBI) and were told earlier that the Reds didn't want to trade. That could change, however, because Cincinnati is in sixth place and Hatteberg is 37 and unlikely to return.

In trade talks that the Yanks have been involved in, teams are targeting their young pitchers, but the Yankees are reluctant to deal Phil Hughes. According to a report on SI.com, the White Sox and Yanks talked about Buerhle, who would presumably take Kei Igawa's place in the rotation, and Chicago brought up Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy, three prospects the Yankees are high on.

While Yanks GM Brian Cashman considers Williams one of his best friends among fellow GMs, they're not that close."

One of the most ridiculous things that McCarron does here is give his readers the impression that the Yankees have been in discussions with Chicago about bringing in Buerhle, Konerko, or Contreras with someone among Hughes, Joba, and Kennedy going back in return. He never draws the line directly, but you know what he's up to. Cashman has been boneheaded on a few occasions in the past. He is far from being that short sighted or stupid. Who among those three players is worth the money they are being paid or the type of prospects that are being bandied about in this conversation? Hughes is so far and away better than those three players combined, is paid nothing, and will be back sometime in August. Oh yeah, he's still just learning to shave and drink beer. Joba is currently the best pitching prospect in the organization and not all that far from the Bronx. He has university experience, is also cheap and young, and will eventually be better than both the pitchers named in the deal. Kennedy is also advanced and rising on the organizational charts. Everything I said about Hughes and Joba is true of Kennedy as well.

If you are going to trade Hughes, you'd better be getting Johan Santana in return. If you are trading Chamberlain it had better be something like Sabathia or Zambrano coming back. Kennedy is worth more to me in two years than Buehrle or Contreras in 2007, and 1st base is the least of our worries. If we don't have enough on this roster to make the playoffs, and it means the difference between keeping our treasured young arms, I say play golf Derek Jeter. Hang out on the beach Alex Rodriguez. Cashman is not that stupid.

Pavano

Not to usurp the cathartic post I wrote earlier today, but you really should see this as a Yankee fan. ESPN e-ticket story on Pavano....

Humiliation

I'm trying very hard not to overreact to the recent failures on the West Coast. My gut tells me that this is the most humiliating series of losses in recent Yankee history, but memories can be short when a team leaves these things in the past with a stretch of excellent play. The thing is, the Yankees have rarely been in a position in the standings where each June loss is as important as they have become now. The 5 losses in 6 games that we just endured to the Rockies and Giants saw the Yankees outscored by an average of 5-3. The pitching wasn't Johan Santana, but it wasn't Jose Lima either. It was the hitting.

The humiliation of the final loss in San Francisco comes from watching a $200 million team starting Melky Cabrera, Miguel Cairo, Kevin Thompson, and Wil Nieves. It comes from the desperation that saw Roger Clemens enter the late innings in relief, only to give up another run. Is this the kind of team that $200 million buys? The Yankees are experiencing the same 2007 that the Red Sox endured last season. One of the sport's highest priced teams playing like a 3rd place plodder. The frustration comes from not being able to put your finger on one major problem. It's endemic. The pitching has been mediocre most of the time. The hitting has fizzled far too often. The pen has been shit on enough occasions that you wonder if they will ever be able to get another out. The free agents signed to big money just a few years ago are now reaching that point in their careers when the big money that we spent to outbid everyone else is now being spent on past their prime, broken down, stiffs. Most of the players on the club have made inexcusably bad fielding errors at one point or another, and some more than others. (I'm talking to you Melky and Derek.) The manager looks asleep half the time, and clearly has outstayed his welcome in New York. Not that he's THAT bad, but he's been in the job too long.

I'll never give up on the season. There's a lot of baseball left, and we've seen what this group is capable of, but I think the 2008 Yankees need to look a lot different than this team. Even if, by some miracle, the Bombers win the Series this year, the signs are all there. You can't count on a team of aging players to stay consistent. They are just as talented as they were in their salad days, but they are old. They can't do it everyday anymore. Consistent are A-Rod, and Jeter, and Posada. The rest, not so much. The pitching is especially guilty of this, but you can hardly blame a pitcher for getting old.

Cashman gets a lot of blame for this, and may pay with his job eventually. The thing is, I looked at the deals he's made over the last couple of years, and the deals that Theo Epstein has made and it's hard to figure who has been better. Theo was the goat on the hot seat last season, but he looks like Boy Wonder again. Cashman was lauded as a genius for the young pitching he acquired for castoffs, but is now fighting for his job in the killing fields of June baseball. Epstein was killed for Beckett, while Hanley Ramirez turned into Miguel Tejada II and Anibel Sanchez threw a no hitter. Now Beckett is a Cy Young candidate and he is getting pats on the back. Matsuzaka was a costly move that has panned out more often than not, but didn't come without detractors. Lugo and Coco Crisp have joined J.D. Drew as dead weight in the Red Sox lineup, but the best record in baseball will help people to remain blind in their love for Theo.

Cashman signed Pavano, so he gets a big strike. He admits that the Pavano deal was one of the greatest learning experiences of his career, and I think we all know how much he regrets it. The Damon deal looked like the work of a genius as it robbed Boston of its heart and soul, while kicking the Yankees offense into nuclear overdrive last season. Now it's the anti-Beckett for Cash Money. A deal that looked great, which has turned into a huge dud. Unlike Theo, some of the other moves that Cashman has made haven't been so awful, but get a lot of scrutiny now that things have turned so bad for the team. Humberto Sanchez is out with Tommy John surgery while Sheffield is mashing for the 1st place Tigers. In the short term, that deal looks like a boneheaded move, but when Sheff is wearing out his welcome and on the verge of retirement, we might just see Sanchez a big part of the Yankees resurgence.

Likewise, people knocked Cashman for not getting enough for Randy Johnson. I wanted Micah Owings, and he is contributing this season as a starter for the D-Backs, while Ross Ohlendorf is on the minor league DL. Alberto Gonzales has been awful at Scranton and will soon lose his job as Attorney General. The thing is, Randy Johnson wanted out. He wanted to go to Arizona to be near his family and held most of the cards. The D-Backs aren't stupid and they also know that he's 90-years old and coming off back surgery. We got what we could get, and now Unit is on the DL with another herniated disc. It's over for him probably, and we have a few decent prospects for what amounts to a bag of bones and an attitude. Luis Vizcaino may have something to contribute before it's all said and done.

Signing Bobby Abreu last season was genius. Watching him crap himself for over a month, makes it look awful. Another anti-Beckett move that isn't as bad as it looks right now. Kei Igawa hasn't been very good, and we spent too much money for him, but I highlighted in a recent post that his numbers against good teams have been excellent. He's had 3 hideous outings, 3 great outings, and one so-so. If he turns out to give us a 4.50 ERA and a handful of innings, it's a poor deal that won't kill us. The main killer for the Yankees is the horrendous bench that Cashman put together. With a $200 million payroll, Cash tried to skimp on BUC and utility infielder and frankly first base. All of those things have flopped. With injuries to Damon, Giambi, and Minky we've been exposed. Melky is occasionally great, and often WAY overmatched. He's an everyday player for this expensive club. Cairo has been called into duty as a regular and he's junk. Look at the numbers. Andy Phillips? Kevin Thompson? WIL NIEVES??!! These are Yankees?

I'm all for giving minor leaguers a chance to fill in where needed, but it's out of control. There aren't Cano and Wang waiting in the wings to save us as they did those years ago. There is talent, but it's still working it's way up. Can we kill Cash for this philosophy? Yes, maybe. It's horrible in the short term, and potentially very good long term. If we end up winning 4 out of 5 World Series with Wang, Hughes, Chamberlain, Tabata, and company we'll forget about this season. If not, this will be an ugly mark on Yankees history that rivals anything we've ever endured given the payroll and the profile.

A Torre Loss

That's a Torre loss if I've ever seen one. Put up another sheep next to Joe's picture NoMaas. Here's why:

1. Top 10, Thompson leading off. The young guy gets a single to spark our rally. This is not a bottom of the 9th walk off situation. Abreu bunts. First, WHY??!! Abreu's career batting line is .300/.410/.500 and that kind of player shouldn't bunt. EVER. Those numbers tell you that he will get himself on base 41% of the time, which is better than all but the top 2-3% of players in the sport. His .500 slugging means that there's a very good chance he will hit an extra base hit, which would easily score the speedy Thompson. Second, he failed to get down a good bunt the first time. Everyone in the park knew it was coming. You saw him fail once, and Thompson is inexperienced at 1st. You actually drew a temporary reprieve for your insanity, but it all when awry and you ended up giving away an out. You may as well have had him stand there with the bat on his shoulders and take 3 strikes. Matsui's strikeout with one out and the bases loaded was a devastating failure, but it all started with Abreu and Torre.

2. Scott Proctor batting??!! Why did you call up Basak if you're not going to use him. I know you're trying to squeeze more work out of Proctor, but he'd already thrown two innings and a bunch of pitches. Accept the fact that he'd done his job and move on. The Yankees are not in a position anymore to piss away at bats in extra innings games. We're headed backwards now, not forwards. Losing ground in both the division and wild card after we stormed back is just a waste.

3. Scott Proctor pitching to a left handed batter with Mariano Rivera available. You'd managed 39 pitches and 2.2 innings of work out of Proctor. Runners on 1st and 3rd with two outs is a chance to escape after Proctor very nearly gave away the game to the previous batter on an infield single by Omar Vizquel. 39 pitches is a lot of pitches, and Proctor was very wild to Vizquel one batter earlier. Why chance it? You'd battled that far and Mariano is just the guy to come in and throw the cutter to the lefty. What happened? Proctor gives up the walk off single on the first pitch. Senseless.

By no means is this a "Fire Joe Torre" post, but he lost this game for us with a little help from Hideki Matsui and Kevin Thompson in the 10th. We're falling farther and farther back in the wild card, and the division can just be kissed goodbye at this point. Can we count on another hot streak like our recent run? I think it's possible, but we just crapped ourselves on this West Coast swing, and it will be very tough to make up for it now.

Igawa's Back

Well, it looked good for a few innings. Igawa's never going to be a great Major League pitcher, but he can bring some value to the team if he pitches the way he did for at least part of today's game. It's in the best interest of the Yankees to avoid pitching the former Hanshin against patient lineups, limiting him as much as possible to the bottom team in the league, but he can be serviceable. I enjoy reading PeteAbe's LoHud Yankees blog, but I find myself increasingly in disagreement with him on several points. His comments today on Igawa rubbed me the wrong way, actually.

"You simply can’t walk Ray Durham twice with Barry Bonds on deck. How can an experienced pitcher do that? This is not a kid, this is a guy who was an All-Star in Japan. It doesn’t speak well to the quality of the hitters in Japan—or the Yankees’ scouting in Japan."

As for point number one about Ray Durham. 100% in agreement. With regard to the comment that Igawa was an All Star in Japan, check out our man's BB/9 over the last 4 seasons he played in Japan:

2006 2.11
2005 3.13
2004 2.43
2003 2.53

For the Yankees this season, Igawa has posted a 4.33 BB/9, which is about 2 batters per 9 more than he walked with Hanshin. I think you see Matsuzaka going through the same thing in Boston right now. It's not a surprise that Japanese hitters aren't up to MLB snuff as a group. Is anyone surprised by that? It seems like a kind of a pot shot to me that is a little unwarranted given the success of virtually every Japanese position player to move to the Majors. We know Matsui doesn't hit the same number of home runs. The league average pitcher is better in the Majors than the league average pitcher in Japan. Likewise, the league average hitter in Japan is worse than the league average hitter in the Majors. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

The fact of the matter is, you can't easily account for Igawa's up and down season. Here's a dirty little secret that will toss PeteAbe's jab at Japanese hitters out the window.

Against Baltimore, Tampa, and Seattle

13.1 IP
25 hits
7 walks
22 ER
7 Ks
14.85 ERA
1.650 WHIP
1.00 K/BB
4.725 K/9

Against Oakland, Cleveland, and Boston

17.1 IP
10 hits
7 walks
4 ER
14 Ks
2.08 ERA
0.981 WHIP
2.00 K/BB
7.269 K/9

The first three teams are basically league average at best, and piss poor at worst. The second group of three include the best team in baseball, the second best run producing offense in the sport, and an A's club in the top third of the AL in OBP. It's a simple matter of inconsistency. The performance against SF was sort of a tweener with respect to these two groups. It's tough to knock Japanese hitters or the Yankees Japanese scouts on Igawa when three of the best clubs in the sport couldn't hit him. Hanshin fans knew that he was inconsistent and it frustrated the shit out of them for 3+ years. Many Tigers' supporters breathed a sigh of relief when he was posted, not because he was awful but because he was tough to cheer for as a fan. When he took the mound you could either find yourself elated or ready to kill after 5 or 6 innings.

The other thing PeteAbe has been doing a lot is referring to those people who disagree with him about Josh Phelps as "statheads". First, that's an insult to statheads everywhere. If you properly use statistics, you can make a very convincing argument for why Josh Phelps is a more valuable player at 1st base than Mientkiewicz, Cairo, or even Andy Phillips. All you have to do is compare the number of runs that he will give up due to poor defense and the number of runs his bat will create with the appropriate playing time. It's probably not a pretty picture, but it would at least get you close to the truth. The "statheads" that PeteAbe is referring to are generally folks who have discovered RATE statistics, range factor, and the like, which many more informed "statheads" will tell you are not a very good measure of first base defense. Every position's defensive responsibility is different. There is a wonderful "Defensive Spectrum" devised by Bill James to help us understand which positions are most challenging with respect to their defensive assignments. First base is only a step closer to the center than DH. Basically, a first baseman has to scoop balls in the dirt, bounce between the bag and the gap to keep runners honest while fielding their position, field a few bunts, and maybe make a throw every once in a while. If you have a gold glove first baseman, wonderful. Kudos. Congrats. If not, it's not that big a deal.

The qualifications for being a good defender, or a league average defender, at first are not measurable by RATE or range factor the way the others are measurable. I should throw catcher in there as well. Mientkiewicz is a better defender than his RATE statistics, so Pete has a point. He scoops and throws and fields the position cleanly. He plays behind runners and makes diving stabs. Cairo also makes a few plays in the field that Phelps probably can't. At the plate it's obvious. Minky creates 3.38 runs/27 outs. Phelps created 3.80 per 27 outs. Cairo is at 2.55 run per 27. At worst the argument between Phelps and Mientkiewicz is even given the defensive situation. The argument that Pete and his minions at LoHud Yankees blog are engaged in is the wrong argument to begin with. The choice that is being given is a false one. It's not either/or, it's to platoon or not to platoon. Phelps didn't get enough at bats as a straight platoon, and that's the fatal flaw of Torre's philosophy.

Anyway, I'm a fan of the LoHud blog and I'll keep reading, but I think it's worth noting that some things are just best left unsaid. By calling out people on the other side of your argument as "statheads" you place yourself in the same category as Murray Chass or Tim McCarver or Joe Morgan. The whole clogging up the bases thing comes to mind. Statistics are our friends as long as we use them responsibly....meaning correctly.

Greater Dynasty: Yankee or Ming

There's not much info out there about the newest Yankees from China. The Chinese Baseball League is really a startup and while the Chinese have had baseball in some respect since the 1800s, it never took off like it has in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. That's changing and it can only be good for the sport. It's probably too early to expect any players from China to do anything Stateside, so you have to wonder why the Yankees would have two young kids come over to play in their system. I think there are a couple of good reasons:

1. The Yankee brand gets first dibs.

You can't overestimate the impact of this. Chien Min Wang is Taiwan's favorite son, and that extends to any Chinese who care about baseball as well. The Chinese government considers Taiwan a part of its domain, wrongly in my opinion, but there are some cultural points that connect the nations and Wang is a part of that from a baseball perspective. Now the Yankees have two legitimate sons of mainland China in the system and the publicity that goes along with it.

2. They are only 19.

If the scouts say these kids have potential, and the scouts are any good, it's better to bring them to the minors to grown in a bigger and more challenging environment to see how far that talent will take them. If they have Major League tools, albeit very raw ones, the only way they have a chance to put them to the test is by playing against the world's best in the minor leagues. If they stay in China, they won't get the coaching or the level of play that would best stretch their potential. At 19, they stand a chance to grow and fill some needs in the farm system down the road, even if they eventually wind up playing somewhere like Japan.

3. What if....

This is kind of an extension of the other points. If either of these players has been scouted with any kind of real thoughts about stardom, we could get great value before anyone else has cracked the market. That's a stretch, but there has to be at least a 1% chance that a Major League contributor has been mined from a group of raw and unrefined Chinese players. Let's hope against hope that this is true, although we probably should expect nothing.

Here's what I dug up on these players:

Zhang Zhenwang - catcher, Tianjin Lions #22
19 years old, 5'11", 176 pounds

Zhang played for the Chinese entry to the 2006 Konami Asia Cup, won by Nippon Ham and MVP Yu Darvish. He didn't play in any of the 3 games. China was blown out in each. Before that, he was a member of the Chinese WBC team. He played a half inning as a defensive replacement in the final game against Taiwan, in which they were eliminated. He never batted. In his most recent game against Shanghai, he batted 9th and went 0-2 with a walk.

His favorite player is Daisuke Matsuzaka.


Liu Kai - LHP, Guangdong Leopards #28
19 years old, 6'1", 172 pounds

It's tough to find anything on Liu, as he's not as experienced internationally as Zhang. I see that his favorite player is SoftBank Hawks pitcher Toshiya Sugiuchi. He may have struck out 16 in a game against Shanghai recently. I checked both Chinese and Japanese news stories about it, so I think it's right. The team is the one part I'm not so sure about. Whichever team it was, 16 Ks is pretty sweet.

In his most recent appearance for Guangdong, Liu closed out an 8-6 victory with 2.1 innings of scoreless relief. He allowed a single and two walks during those innings against Beijing on Saturday.

That's all I have now. When I find more, I'll let you know. New storm's a brewin' folks. Good to be out ahead of it.

See you tomorrow. Go Yankees!!!

Chess King

All I can say is, if Wang's slider is that good now, he's unhittable. What he did with the slider against the Mets is uncanny. That's the slider that Matsuzaka had in Japan, and the one he's only had marginal control of since coming to the States. If Wang has his plus fastball, his world class sinker, and can throw that slider.....whatever. I actually thought that Clemens presence in New York may be a good opportunity for Wang to add the patented Clemens Splitter to his arsenal, because I think he could learn it and I think with the sinker it would be devastating. That slider almost eliminates the need, but sinker, slider, splitter would be Cy Young material.

Baseball Prospectus Chat

Greetings COH readers.

I will be hosting a chat at Baseball Prospectus on Thursday, June 14th at 12pm ET. For most of you that's today. For me, it's actually a 1am start on the 15th, so I'll be able to tell you all about the future.

Join me for a little Q&A and tell your friends. The more the merrier. I'll be ready to answer your questions about Japanese baseball, and hopefully anything else you might have on your mind about the current crop of Japanese players in the Major Leagues.

Thursday, June 14th and 12pm ET. Be there.

What a Win, What a World

So many sinkerballs. I felt like that game should have been played below sea level. Wang outduels Webb and Bobby Abreu continues his scorching June. What's not to like. The Bombers are at .500 and are climbing past the pretenders in the wild card hunt. I predict that three weeks from today we will be either tied or in the wild card lead. That day.....Independence Day. The Fourth of July. Write it down.

I was over at MLB.com checking out the updated standings when I noticed something a little funny. At least it struck me as funny. You'll notice that it's hiding in the left margin of this post, inconspicuously. It looks like an ad, but it's there for this comment. "Mike Mussina is pitching today!" I'm not sure that's exactly the sell that the good people at MLB TV were looking for. Yeah, Moose still has something left in the tank and we expect good things from him. Certainly we expect better than the 5+ ERA he's vomited from the mound this season. I don't think anyone ever gets excited enough about a Mike Mussina start that it deserves an exclamation point. "Roger Clemens pitches today!" That I'd understand. Moose, huh? Good luck to you MLB TV.

The other note today is actually posted over at Matsuzaka Watch. It's not baseball related, but I had no place to put it. It's related to good ol' Wacky Japan. Trust me. Go there and ponder the madness......

Make Enemies and Friends

Off day for the Yankees. Time to break things up with a little something from Lutan Fyah and Chezidek courtesy of the German selectahs at 45ers.de and YouTube, the home for all the best in dub plate sessions. Thanks and praises. Master Star Sound!!!

9.5 Weeks

Although there is really nothing sexy about 9.5 during these recent weeks (boy am I stretching for this theme), the Yankees current place in the standings looks a lot more like Kim Basinger than John Merrick.

The Red Sox scored 22 runs over their 7 game West Coast swing, which is 3.14 runs per game. If you take out the 10 run outburst in the first game against Arizona, they scored 12 runs in 6 games, which is easy to calculate at 2 runs per contest. Fortunately for the Yankees, the Red Sox woes coincided with a stretch against some pretty awful clubs. We did a number on both Chicago and Pittsburgh and have closed the gap a little bit. The wild card is a 5.5 game deficit, which isn't beyond reason now. Even 9.5 games looks like something we can make a good run at, the way things are shaping up now.

What more can be said? Abreu and Cano look great. A-Rod continues his MVP season. Jeter is Jeter. Melky is playing very well, especially in center. The only weird thing is that it all has happened since Giambi stopped "clogging up the bases with his bad heel" as Tim McCarver mumbled during the last series with the Red Sox. Giambi has some real value as a threat, but I like the way the offense looks with Damon at DH and Melky playing the field. First base without Mientkiewicz really hasn't lost much, and it's rather amazing that Miguel Cairo is a significant offensive upgrade over Mr. Eye Chart.

Here comes Arizona. They are one of the worst teams in baseball at putting runners on base, so we will have a good shot at another series win with Wang, Mussina, and Pettitte taking the hill. That sounds really good. The Red Sox get 3 games with Colorado. Let's hope Todd Helton and company can put up some crooked numbers against the Red Sox frontline guys. See you tomorrow. Go Yanks.

Rocketing Forward

Since the Yankees and Red Sox met at the Stadium at the end of May, both clubs have played 18 games. I'm cherry picking this period simply to illustrate something interesting about the ebb and flow of a season. Both clubs have gone 10-8 since that time. The Red Sox went 6-3 to close out May and have started June 4-5. The Yankees finished May with 2 out of 3 against the Beantowners, but slumped badly with a 3-6 finish to the month. June has seen the Yankees go on a 7-2 tear, effectively making up the ground that they gave to the Sox when the deficit in the standings stood at 14.5 games.

The Red Sox opened the season going 16-8 in April and 20-8 in May. The Yankees, by contrast, went 9-14 and 13-15, respectively. Each month is a 7 game separation in the standings. This month, to date, we've made up 3 games on the Red Sox. According to BP's Adjusted Standings, we should be about 5.5 games back of the Red Sox. That is all without Rocket in the rotation. Those numbers are built on Pythagorean wins and losses, where runs scored and allowed are factored into an appropriate record. Here's where we stand today:

Red Sox
322-238 (61 games)
5.28 runs scored/gm
3.90 runs allowed/gm

Yankees
329-285 (60 games)
5.48 runs scored/gm
4.75 runs allowed/gm

Isn't there something obvious about why we're so far behind the Sox here? Runs allowed for the Sox is very very good, while it's awful for the Yankees. To translate those numbers to a 162 game schedule, you'd get the following"

Red Sox
855-632

Yankees
888-770

Lets take a look at the ERA for the Sox and the Yankees by starting rotation:

Schilling (3.49) vs. Wang (3.73)
Beckett (2.88) vs. Pettitte (3.11)
Matsuzaka (4.63) vs. Mike Mussina (5.63)
Wakefield (4.22) vs. Rasner/Igawa/Pavano/Karstens (6.43)
Tavarez (5.25) vs. Hughes/Clippard/DeSalvo/White (4.96)

Here's where the stability of Clemens takes over. Replacing the combination of 4 semi-established, Major League back end guys with Roger Clemens means that we can significantly improve our run differential with one simple, but expensive move. Even if Rocket pitches to a 4.00+ ERA, he'll be shaving runs off the prior results every week. Likewise, the #5 spot is easier to fill because you only have to plug in Clippard until Phil Hughes is ready in August some time. Clippard has been fair and has actually managed to pitch to a 3.60 ERA and .235 BAA in his 4 starts. If he improves....wow. If he regresses, we'll look to Igawa. If he turns out to be a complete bust, Cashman will figure something out. Bring up Ian Kennedy!! ;)

The other ERA that seems out of whack is Moose. He's just got to get better, even if it's only a little over a run per 9. He's not that bad. He should be able to muster a 4.50 at worst this season, which means he has a bunch of great starts ahead of him. The gap will close. The only question now is will it be enough.

Hard Boiled Wang

I ran this artwork last season, and I'm reviving it now as NoMaas has done their own version on the same theme. Great minds think alike.........

Heroes and Villones

Ron Villone came up to the Yankees as his minor league deal was set to expire. Anyone with half a brain knew this was a bad thing. Here is an interesting split for you:

Villone appearances 1-4

7.2 IP
4 hits
2 walks
3 Ks
no runs allowed
0.00 ERA
.783 WHIP

Villone appearances 5-7

2.1 IP
9 hits
3 walks
no strikeouts
7 runs allowed
27.00 ERA
5.143 WHIP

Why Lord? Why?

Abreu for Dye?

Rumors are being floated about a trade between the awful, awful White Sox and the semi-awful Yankees involving Bobby Abreu and Jermaine Dye. At least in terms of name value this looks like a swap of equal players, equally slumping this year. What it is in reality is a stupid trade for the Yankees. Why?

Bobby Abreu
career OPS+ 135
career EqA .311
career RC27 7.46

Jermaine Dye
career OPS+ 109
career EqA .268
career RC27 5.80

That deal is so bad, you'd almost have to draw and quarter Brian Cashman for making it. Look at the EqAs! Both players are struggling. What that means is that both will get it going. When they both get it going, Bobby Abreu will get it going at a much more effective rate than Jermaine Dye. If you make this trade, and both players get it going, you will be the team getting it going much less than the other team gets it going. Got it?

Pirates of the 9th Inning

DhjawiuyttL

That's how you spell "DL" in Doug Mientkiewicz speak. You never want to see a guy get hurt. Never. As much as I wanted to see Minky out of the lineup, and as good as he's been at 1st defensively, the kind of injury he sustained is really unfortunate. I can't say I'm sorry to see someone else getting his at bats though.

Let's look at what the Yankees first base 4-some has done with the bat:

Doug Mientkiewicz (2007 to date)
138 plate appearances
OPS+ 77
EqA .228
WARP3 0.7
RC27 3.15

Josh Phelps (2007 to date)
66 plate appearances
OPS+ 106
EqA .263
WARP3 0.9
RC27 4.80

Andy Phillips (2006 performance)
263 plate appearances
OPS+ 77
EqA .225
WARP3 0.3
RC27 3.78

Jason Giambi (2007 to date)
179 plate appearances
OPS+ 122
EqA .286
WARP3 3.5
RC27 5.79

Okay, putting Giambi in there is cheating, but it shows you that despite his atrocious defense, that probably would end up costing runs over the course of the season, he probably is still a greater value to the Yankees standing at the bag with a glove on his head than the other 3 players. He's out, so the point is moot. Replacing Minky with more Phelps and a dash of Phillips is probably more of the same based on what Phillips did in 2006 for the Bombers. He looks a lot like Mientkiewicz version 2007 with the stick. However, if he can translate any of the success he's enjoyed at the AAA level, we may actually benefit a great deal from the injury. Here's Andy Phillips' AAA career 162 game average (including 2007 to date):

162 games
631 AB
110 runs
188 hits
30 2B
5 3B
35 HR
109 RBI
65 BB
113 K
.298/.364/.527 for an .891 OPS

Those numbers look pretty good. He hasn't been able to do anything resembling this at the Major League level, but then again he's only had 294 at bats in 142 career games with the Yankees. He actually had a very nice June last season, OPSing .970 in 69 at bats. One thing is obvious, he should never hit against lefties, particularly with Phelps on the roster. Phillips left-right split is fairly extreme. Let's compare his and Phelps MLB career splits:

Phillips
Left .188/.224/.265 (.489 OPS in 102 at bats)
Right .250/.288/.458 (.746 in 192 at bats)

Phelps
Left .291/.355/.483 (.838 OPS in 443 at bats)
Right .256/.327/.462 (.789 OPS in 820 at bats)

The irony is that Phelps should get all the at bats, given the fact that his numbers against righties are better than Phillips over a much longer sample. Still, as a platoon, this could be a decent solution to the 1st base round robin that we've been looking at for awhile. To give you a sense of what Phillips adds to the Yankees if he takes over Minky's position as the lefty batting platoon-mate of Josh Phelps, Minky had a .722 OPS against righties in just over 100 at bats. That's about Phillips territory. Don't expect much to change at the bottom of the order if Phillips gets to hit. More at bats for Phelps would be a good thing, but don't count on it.

It's On!

Scott Proctor: Super Fool.

On one hand, Proctor throwing at Youkilis' head was a message that the Yankees aren't going to take being thrown at anymore. We get plunked at a fantastic rate and we never retaliate effectively. Proctor nearly gave Youk a close shave on his goatee, which was uncalled for, but I don't think he was head hunting. I think he was trying to throw under his chin to make a point after the Cano HBP, but he missed. It can happen when you throw 94-95 and don't have Mariano-esque control.

There will be fireworks before this series is up, for sure. I expect a fight. I don't know what kind of fight there will be, but Jason Varitek is likely to be involved. Can't you see it? A fight at this point would be very bad for the Yankees, and would hardly be a big deal to the Red Sox. Suspensions to both teams might kill the Yankees, while slowing the already wicked pace of the Beantown boys. The Sox can survive a little ruffling of their feathers. The Yankees can't at this point. We need to string together a few more weeks of nice play to put a dent in the Tigers' 6 game wild card lead. It's already underway, our assault on the wild card. We need to follow through.

What happens if the Sox plunk Jeter? I say, "We fight." Jeter and Posada are perhaps the two Yankees that we can't afford to lose, so you have to protect them. One of those guys gets hit and you have to throw at Ortiz and Manny hard. Damon, Matsui, A-Rod, Cano, Abreu, Melky, Minky.....what do you do? If beanball is on the menu, how do you react? The umpire is sure to issue warnings at the first sign of trouble, and perhaps it would be smart to offer them prior to the game tomorrow. Mussina's not throwing at anyone, so it takes the bullet out of Schilling's gun. I honestly don't think he's throwing at anyone either though. Beckett is the guy in the series finale. Both pens are also in prime position to play tit for tat, particularly if any game is a laugher.

As for actual baseball, we've strung together a couple of good games now. Wang was not great, but got the job done after Wakefield imploded. I think I'd give the Sox the edge in the Schilling/Mussina matchup, and I'd give the Yankees a very slight edge in Pettitte/Beckett. We hit the Red Sox starters well, but Mussina hasn't been in good form so far. The key is to win the series and put more pressure on Detroit. If we can be within 2 or 3 games of the wild card by the end of June, I think we'll have to consider it a successful month. Being less than 10 behind the Red Sox would also be a success. To make things interesting, I'm going to make predictions on each game, whenever possible. Just a little spice to see how good my prognostication skills are. If I'm good someone can take me to AC or Mohican Sun. Tomorrow.

Red Sox 6, Yankees 5

"Hah!"

I read where A-Rod said he'd only shouted, "Hah!" when seemingly disrupting the concentration of the right side of the Blue Jays infield on the dropped pop up. Manager John Gibbons commented that the Yankees have always played the right way and that A-Rod's move was bush league, rather than an example of Yankee Pride. He's right.

A-Rod pulls these kind of unnecessary stunts on occasion. Think back to the now famous glove slap against Bronson Arroyo if you doubt it. It's bush league and it's not the right way to play the game.

That said, the Jays are getting all fired up about it without ever admitting their own shortcomings in botching the play. Even if A-Rod shouted, "INCOMING!!!" you should probably make the catch as a professional ballplayer. Dropping that ball is simply a lack of focus and concentration. It wasn't the right thing to do, but dropping the ball is as much on the Jays as it is on A-Rod. If he'd shouted, "I got it!" then you'd have a better case. Since it seems he did not shout anything of the sort, we can chalk it up as a bush play by A-Rod and a poor defensive showing by the Blue Jays. I'd recommend that the Bombers wear kevlar body armor when the two teams meet again. It will surely get ugly.

Detachment

In a way, it's strangely freeing to watch the Yankees fall apart this dramatically. For years we've watched this same core group of players win 90-100 games and fizzle out in the playoffs. They were in it every year, and they always had a chance at the whole enchilada. We, as fans, became a bit jaded by expecting the club to win the World Series every year and got angry when they failed over and over despite the excellent regular season position. 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. All very good teams. All fell just a bit short. 2004 was the killer.

Now, it's painfully obvious that the run is over. I'm not giving up on the season, but this group has clearly found its last leg and is quickly losing the battle to age and perhaps complacency. No fire. No drive. No real sense of identity or spirit. I'll get into the fixes for the franchise later, but my initial thoughts are that these players should stay or go.

Stay
Posada
Jeter
A-Rod
Matsui

Go
Nieves
Mientkiewicz
Phelps
Giambi
Cairo
Abreu
Melky

???
Cano
Damon

The stays are still well above average performers at their positions. The gos are either below average or in serious decline. The question marks are basically stays, who are on the bubble, Cano for tradability and Damon as a player in decline. Both are almost certain to return. Cano could end up being too good, so the trade would have to be something big. Now pitchers.

Stay
Pettitte
Wang
Hughes
Bruney
Britton
Proctor
Mariano

Go
Mussina
Pavano
Igawa
Myers
Villone
Vizcaino
Farnsworth

The problem you see immediately with this scenario is that the offense is still in pretty good shape. You are essentially trying to upgrade the bench and the 4th outfield position in particular. Melky has been a concrete boot on the team when we've struggled on offense, and he probably needs to be at AAA. The real changes on offense are DH and right field. Both Giambi and Abreu have almost no value when they aren't hitting. It's nice to get some walks in there and get on base, but you are paying both men too much money for their services unless they are 900+ on the OPS. They are probably in enough of a decline that a high 800 would be a reasonable expectation, but those players come cheaper than our boys.

The pitching is a mess. Clemens clearly picked the wrong horse in this race and I wonder how much he privately regrets choosing the Yankees now that things are so dire. If we can get the wild card, he will be overjoyed, but no playoffs would have been easily doable in Houston and a lot closer to the family. Igawa is bad. Pavano is toast. The guys in the pen haven't done anything for us and should be gone. Moose is the big question mark. He has another year, I believe, but do we really want him out there every 5th day now? I'm not sure. What he does in the remaining run for the wild card will determine whether we really want him back in 2008. As of today, I just don't know.

Highest on my wish list for 2008 are:

1. One more brilliant young(ish) arm
2. A top corner ourfielder in right
3. A cheaper DH
4. A good all around 1B
5. A younger BUC who can hit a little
6. Anyone who can hold a lead from the pen

Chances are, we can accomplish #s 2, 3, and 4 without too much difficulty. #s 5 and 6 are possible with a little creativity. #1 is the tricky part. There just aren't all that many brilliant young arms available.

In a Nutshell

There's the season in a nutshell. The Yankees start a COMPLETELY overmatched and unprepared Matt DeSalvo and then turn over a winnable 3-0 game to Ron Villone who proceeds to shit the bed. I don't care how good Ron Villone was in his first 4 appearances this year for the Bombers, he's a bad pitcher. Always has been. Always will be. Case closed. There is nothing in the history of Ron Villone that could possibly support him as an effective Major League reliever. Nothing. Go ahead. Prove to me that he is worthy of an MLB job, or at least prove to me that the job he gets should be on a good team.

Bad pitcher. Bad. Awful. Disgraceful. Putrid. Hideous. Terrible. Ugly. Dog shit.

When Matsui hit his 2-run shot in the 8th the game was 7-0 thanks to Villone's 4-run vomit. Had we a real relief pitcher, or a starter that could hold down 6 decent innings, that 3-0 lead would have been made 3-2 and it would be competitive. It was not. It was a little breath of life in an all but dead corpse that is the Yankees' season.

Yankees Fix #1

12.5 games back might just be enough to have the most optimistic Yankees fans off the "we can still do it" bandwagon. The AL East is toast, and the wild card is slipping. 8 games back for the WC is doable, if only because the 7(!) teams in front of us aren't all that impressive, save Detroit. The team needs a fix, and I will start my season long look at how the Yankees can get better with this little suggestion.

It appears as though the Angels have shown some interest in Jason Giambi. At least there were rumors a week or so ago that they would like to acquire him to add some power. Whether his current outage has nixed that interest is a big question, but I think we need to part company. If they'll take on his salary, we should make a deal. I propose that we ask for Mike Napoli in return. Napoli would be a very nice backup to Jorge, and is only 25/26 years old. He looks good enough to step in should Jorge get hurt or retire in the not too distant future. As insurance he's platinum, as a replacement he's at least silver.

Removing Giambino would make room for Mark Teixeira. If the Rangers are going to shop him, the Yankees should be first in line with a pitching prospect or two. I'd withhold Hughes, Chamberlain, and Betances, but anyone else is fair game. Send 2-3 pitchers of various quality for the young man and get it over with. The Yankees could plug in Tex for years to come and focus their attention on other things. Having BUC and 1B set up for the forseeable future would allow the team to concentrate on other things. It would also help us shake things up for 2007 and see what happens with the wild card. The sooner we make these moves the better. More fixes in the days, weeks, and long ugly months to come.

Time Away

I'm back. Italy was a refreshing break from all the hoopla around the Yankees, but I find upon my return that the team hasn't accomplished much. The loss today has the team teetering on 11.5 back, pending the results of the Red Sox game. The wild card is also a longshot as things stand with the team 7.5 back. Steinbrenner is chirping and Brian Cashman is going to get fired.

I don't believe that this team will make the playoffs this year. I really don't. What was once fueled a bit by passion and frustration is now a bit more of a cool and rational analysis of the hole we're in. This group has not shown any life and it's becoming more unreasonable to think that the Bombers will be able to make up 11-12-13-15-20 game deficits against a very good Red Sox club. The wild card is something to shoot for, but the Detroit/Cleveland duo has been more dynamic and sports a far more tension-filled and bubbling back and forth that should keep both clubs motivated through the stretch.

I won't give up just yet, but my mind is half on next year. What has to happen?

Whether or not we make the playoffs there have to be changes. The same bunch of players cannot keep coming back with the lack of performance we've seen. The first move may come this year with Giambi being looked at by the Angels. He's had his moments with the Yankees, but Cashman should unload him while he can. Giambi is a DH-only player who sucks a giant chunk of our payroll. He's deteriorating physically and doesn't really hit. Get rid of him now if you can. Yes, I mean today. No bad feelings, but it's time.

That brings the 1B/DH spot into question. Minky is a stop gap. He is playing well now, but he doesn't have much time left. We may be able to get away with another season out of him, if we fill the DH slot with someone less expensive. We can actually make the bench stronger by making a DH platoon of some kind.

Goodbye to Abreu. He may put up his numbers at the end of the year, and he may have several more seasons of .300/.400/.500 left in him, but at what cost are we willing to find out? There are better outfield options out there for the Yankees. Ichiro is just one of those options. I know that Ichiro is overrated in some respects. His OBP is virtually a mirror of his batting average. The thing is, the Yankees have been able to get on base, but far too often runners are left out there for a lack of the RBI hit. I know our offense is a 900 run powerhouse, but there are times when we've seen the club fail in stretches. Score 20 one game, but go a week without reaching 4 runs in a game. Ichiro would bring some consistent hitting the top of the order.

The pitching is less a problem than it has looked so far. The talent is there, but the age is a factor. Mussina is on board for next season, and we can probably get Pettitte back. Wang is not a question. Hughes will be up to stay. That leaves us with a 5th slot to fill. Pavano is toast. Igawa is a possibility, although far from the most attractive one. Joba Chamberlain, Kennedy, and the rest are still a season or two away. It may be time to make a giant splash of some kind. Zambrano, if we can get him. A trade for Johan Santana? Cash's tenure in the Bronx may depend on some kind of bold move like that.

Anyway, there's more time to go over all this, and we're not dead yet. It's time to start thinking though because things are broke. Trade Giambi now, and shake things up. The rest will follow.

Buona Sera

COH may or may not be updated over the next 10 days as I will be in Italy for my sister's wedding. The only thing the Italians will want to talk about with regard to baseball is maybe Joe D. Good by me. If I can post, I will. If not, GO YANKEEEEEEEEEES!!!

WAKE UP BOBBY!!!

New Focus

I'm resetting the focus here at COH, because it's too frustrating to continue basing hopes and dreams on winning the AL East. I'm going to pretend that the division race is over. I know that it's way too soon to concede anything with a talented bunch of ballplayers and 4.5 months of baseball in front of us. The Red Sox are simply far superior to us now, and show no signs of collapsing anytime soon. Beckett's blisters aside, that club is hot and we are blowing every available opportunity to close in on their 8 game advantage. I'm done hoping for that. If we eventually overtake them and sit atop the division, I'll crack some champagne and shake my head at the amazing run that put us there. At this point, hoping for it ends up leaving too many fresh scars after each dismal defeat.

Instead, I'm going to watch the wild card race. We're behind the following clubs as of today (games back in parentheses):

Cleveland Indians (4.5)
Oakland Athletics (2.0)
Chicago White Sox (2.0)
Seattle Mariners (1.5)
Minnesota Twins (0.5)
Baltimore Orioles (0.0)

As you can see, the Yankees are in the mix of the early wild card race. Unlike the nuclear hot Red Sox, these teams are plagued with problems that rival our own. The Orioles are just bad, and are without Kris Benson and Jaret Wright for the year. The Twins have serious concerns about Joe Mauer's health, and are without him indefinitely. The Mariners are fielding a fairly awful pitching staff that only seems to make the Yankees look bad. King Felix aside. The White Sox are former champs, but they have mediocre pitching and an offense at the bottom of the league OBP leaders. The A's seem to hang around every year. They have good pitching, and a few surprise performers on offense, but lack the punch necessary to go on prolonged winning streaks. The Indians are the toughest team to critique. They have the biggest lead on this group, because they're actually a good ballclub. In order to make up 4.5 games on Cleveland, the Yankees will quite simply have to continue pitching as well as they have and hope Abreu and Cano will wake up.

We don't see Cleveland again until August, so we have to make up the games against other teams. I expect we'll be able to leapfrog the O's, Twins, and Mariners within a week's time. We get the White Sox next and can help ourselves with a big sweep against them. If we can manage that, we will probably also put together enough of a hot streak to pass Oakland in the process. Realistically, a good stretch of games over the next two weeks would help us to close in on a better record, a tighter WC race, and just maybe a few games in the AL East if we're lucky.

Losers

Nothing more to say than that. Sox score 6 in the bottom of the 9th to upset Baltimore, and we can't buy a hit in the 8th or 9th innings with runners in scoring position and a one run deficit. Our lineup of high priced All Stars is now 8 games in back of the Red Sox and 5.5 in back of Cleveland for the wild card.

Whatever happens from now on, this should never have happened until now. $200 million of horseshit.

More Like It

When you face pitching like the Mariners throw out there every night, you are supposed to paste it. Batista is one of those guys that has bounced between the pen and the rotation everywhere he's been, and he showed why against the Yankees today. He threw the ball in the general direction of the plate, and the Yankees promptly hit it back the other way. That's the way it is supposed to happen.

A-Rod is struggling right now, with a 1-13 stretch, but we had to expect that kind of correction at some point. He still looks confident up there, so there's nothing to worry about in the short term. I'm guessing he'll have a multi-home run game sometime in the near future. In the meantime, no one can get out the Captain or Jorge Posada. The two top hitters in the American League have their averages well over the .370 mark early in the year. In stark contrast, Abreu, Cano, and even Johnny Damon look awful at the plate. Abreu keeps swinging at that pitch away that dies around foot level. He can't lay off of it and looks like a minor leaguer with each swing. Cano swings at any pitch not behind his head. It's uncanny how little plate discipline he has shown this year. Bounce the ball to him, he swings. Throw the ball a foot over his head, he swings. Inside under the hands, swing. Note to Robbie Cano: stop swinging so much. Damon just looks like a shadow of himself. The swings look "slappy" and each plate appearance looks like a struggle not to lose, instead of an attack on the pitcher. Could his back and calves be that bad? To his credit, he knows he has to play, but he may be DL-worthy if not for the urgency of the current situation.

I'm also a little worried about Giambi. To his credit, he can take a walk any day. If he was standing up there on a peg leg, with one arm in a sling, and a bandage wrapped around half of his head, he'd find ball four. The back foot looks bad though, and his hot hitting start may start to slowly fade into the past unless the new orthodic can work a little miracle when it arrives. Regardless of the outcome of this season, you have to worry a little about how this lineup will look in 2008. Do you resign Abreu, or go after Andruw Jones, Ichiro, Fukudome, or someone else? Any of those players would actually get to a ball in the outfield and make a diving grab. Do you resign Giambi after 2008? His skill level is high, but his body is falling apart. I wouldn't resign him. Damon...you invested in him for 2008 and 2009, so maybe you need to shut him down later this year if the situation is right to do so. In order to get two more decent years out of him, you may need to bite the bullet in 2007 and either play Melky or make a trade to let the former caveman get his broken down body together.

The pitching looks to be getting itself together. DeSalvo turned in another great effort against the Mariners, but I would NOT start him against a patient club. He has exactly two strikeouts in his Major League career now, and doesn't have pinpoint control of any of his pitches. His fastball is fair, and his offspeed stuff is mixed in effectively, but he's a poor man's Mussina without the big curve or the power fastball. Where Moose has "heavy" pitches that seem to overpower hitters, DeSalvo's pitches look a bit light and hittable. The Mariners have a .315 On Base Percentage as a team so far, which is only better than Texas (.308) and Chicago (.301) in the AL. It's not hard to see why, when you watch Mariner after Mariner swinging at the first pitch. DeSalvo gets helped out by the Seattle boys, when he gets behind many of the leadoff batters 2-1, only to find himself wriggling out from behind the count by taking advantage of the lack of plate discipline. If he had to face any of the better teams in the league the results may end up different. Keep your fingers crossed for a fast Rocket warmup, and a fast Hughes rehab.

Keep it rollin' boys. See you tomorrow. Go Yanks.

I Hate This Team

This team is not only bad, but completely and utterly not enjoyable. I can't even stand watching the games. If it's not one annoying or frustrating thing, it's another. I keep watching because that's what fans do, but this season is torture. 3-0 Seattle in the 4th with chance after chance for the Yankees wasted by Cano and Cabrera. Melky is a scrub right now. He is a negative VORP, useless waste of a roster space and he HAS to go down. We can do better and we HAVE to do better. The Red Sox lost and we can't cash in.

It's still early in the game, but it's painful. What happened to "Matsui's Best Year"? What happened to Cano's coming out? What happened to the ultra-patient and On Base nutso lineup that Abreu would contribute to? It doesn't exist and it's burying us along with the hamstrings of our starting pitchers. I hate this team.

Is it over?

I'm not really a pessimist, as one might guess from my recent posts about the strength of our healthy and improved rotation. I don't think the Yankees are as bad as they played during that disastrous stretch that included 5 out of 6 losses to Boston. The recent successes have proved that much.

The problem is, today's loss coupled with Boston's win put us 7 games back in the AL East. The Central figures to produce the Wild Card with both Cleveland and Detroit ahead of the Yankees by 4.5 and 5 games, respectively. Certainly 4.5 games is not tough to imagine given the lineup and healthy pitchers we have now. Right now the other teams chasing Cleveland in the WC are either at .500 or only one game over. We're right there with the rest of the pack.

Is the division over? 7 games with 12 remaining head to head with the Red Sox. Doable, but how likely is it that we can win the required 10 out of 12 to take the lead? 9 out of 12 puts us one back. The Sox rotation looks dominant right now, so it's hard to imagine that anything but an injury or injuries will derail them. It's early, so this may look a little silly, but here's what each team would have to do under several head to head situations for the Yankees to come out as division winners, assuming the Red Sox play :

Yankees win 9-3 against the Red Sox the in their remaining 12 matchups
Red Sox (84-44)
Yankees (83-46)- .643 win%

Yankees split 6-6
Red Sox (87-41)
Yankees (95-34)- .736 win%

Yankees lose 3-9
Red Sox (90-38)
Yankees (104-25)- .806 win%

This all depends on the Red Sox continuing their scorching pace against the rest of the league, which may or may not happen. If they do, they will come close to the all time record for wins in a regular season. At any rate, even a slight slow down would make it difficult for the Yankees if we lose the remaining season series with the Beantown Boys. Looking at the win% numbers that the Yankees would have to post over the remaining 129 games, it becomes apparent that the 12 Red Sox games are our playoffs this year. They carry that much significance. A split with the Sox would almost certainly mean the Red Sox would have to slow to 90 win pace (a .558 win% over the remaining 129) while we win at 100 win pace (.617) the rest of the year. Possible, yes. Difficult? Most certainly.

Losing the remaining 12 game "series" with the Sox means a wild card hunt for the Yankees in all likelihood. That's something much easier to accomplish, but hardly guaranteed with the Tigers and Indians fielding very good ballclubs this season. We've dug a healthy hole for ourselves, and it's time to start sweating a bit. All I can say is, "Beat the Red Sox". If we do, we have a great chance. If we don't, we may match the fate that we dealt Boston in that late season 4 game sweep last year. Turnabout is fair play, and revenge is a dish best served cold. Let's go fellas. It's winning time, or it's dying time. It's getting late, early. And all the rest of the appropriate cliches.....

NOTE: I did all this math very quickly and haphazardly. It may be off in a few places, but it's close. The point is still the same....

UPDATE: Steve at Was Watching built on my post to make a more comprehensive look at this situation. Give it a read. I posted the following comment over there, and I think it's worth re-posting as an addendum to this COH tidbit.

"Let's assume we can make up 2 games in the standings on the Sox before we play them next. 5 games back entering the matchup at Fenway.

If we throw Clemens, Pettitte, and Moose at the Red Sox and earn a sweep (somehow), we'd be 2 games back with June, July, August, and September to play. What a difference that would make. Everything would be back in order.

If we lose more ground, let's say the same 2 games, and then lose that series, we'd be looking at a 10-11 game deficit and probably the end of the AL East hopes. In the first week of June.

You could argue that the next 3 weeks are the AL East stretch run, and the next meeting is the opening round of the AL playoffs. It got late early."

A Warm COH Welcome Back

I thought I should do some kind of tribute to Roger Clemens for his return to pinstripes, but how to fete such an icon of the modern era. How to pay the proper respect......Wait. I got it. Classic YouTube.....



By far the best moment of this clip takes place at 3:51 (or at 1:05 remaining). Watch at least until that point, or you will be very sorry. Welcome back Rocket Man. It's been a long, long time....

Even Steven

Back to .500 is Mission Accomplished: Part One. If anyone ever doubted that pitching wins championships, there is no room for disbelief after seeing our gigantic offense fail time after time to make up for the awful deficits that our patchwork rotation was creating game after game. A healthy rotation has recently produced an 8-3 stretch that deserves an asterisk thanks to a blown call on a stolen base in the 8th inning of that Mariners debacle. The record says 8-3, and that's all that really matters, but we can take some comfort in knowing that the quality of those 11 games was 9-2.

I'm hoping to see Moose get that 7th inning in his next outing. Using 5 relief pitchers to get 9 outs is just hideous. I leave it at that. Wil Nieves getting his first hit was like winning the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. You send in your application never expecting to win, and then they show up at your door with balloons and that giant check. Seeing him get thrown out at 2nd trying to stretch was a bit like the good people at Publisher's Clearinghouse apologizing for the mistake and heading to your neighbor's house with the goods.

I must say that I prefer to see Abreu hitting two and Jeter 3. Abreu's OBP is so good that Jeter should see some great RBI chances. He is hitting around .420 this season with RISP. I hope Joe sticks with it, though I doubt he will.

One interesting note is the rather caustic and lengthy hate mail I received yesterday about my piece. I think my article was pretty clear. I tried to explain that the Yankees back end rotation looks much better now that Clemens and Hughes are replacing Pavano, Igawa, and the other assorted AAA guys we had running out there. I think we can make a little run at the Sox. I also said that the Sox are a great team and that they could just as easily continue to run away. Some people out there are just so psychologically and emotionally disturbed that they seize upon things as trivial as sports, or even more trivial things like small time sports blogging, to vent their excruciating frustrations with life. It's not the first hate mail I've received, but I find it interesting nonetheless. At first, it always gets my back up. I'm the type to fly off the handle when confronted. I'm a fighter at heart. The thing is, I end up feeling very sorry for the people who take so much time and energy to basically shout themselves raw to release whatever tortured demons are inside of them. You have my pity.

Here's to another win and a step closer to 5 over. That's next on the list of things to do for the Bombers. See you tomorrow. Go Yankees.

We're Coming

Red Sox fans have been reveling in the idea that their team is 6 games up on the Yankees and that Clemens is a desperation move that the Bombers made to salvage a lost season. They act as though they never wanted him, and that they wouldn't have been snuggled up in the latest #21 "feetsy" pajamas with "Rocket" bobbleheads at the head of the bed. It's such a farce.

What escapes the attention of those fans is that the Yankees have righted the ship. If not for a blown call by an umpire to be named only by drunken sailors in wharf barrooms, the Yankees would be staring at an 8 out of 10 game stretch in which they outscored opponents by 60-33. Still, over that 10 game stretch we've won 7 of 10 and outscored teams by 60-35. Over that time, not coincidentally, we've seen great performances by Wang, Mussina, and Pettitte. We've also seen a glimpse of our minor league depth with strong showings by Hughes, Rasner, and DeSalvo. By the time we meet the Red Sox again we should be able to counter their pitching with our own frontline guys. By the we will have completed 9 of the 19 games between the teams at the end of May, with some important showdowns in the stretch run. The scary part of the final 10 games is that we will have Clemens and Hughes to add to the rotation. Matching up the pitchers from June forward, the rotations look like this:

Wang - Schilling
Mussina - Beckett
Pettitte - Matsuzaka
Clemens - Wakefield
Hughes - Tavarez (flavor of the month)

Certainly, in a head to head series you'd only see 3 or 4 pitchers at once. The thing is, we should be able to make up ground on the Sox with wins in the 4th and 5th spots of the rotation alone. June, July, August, and September give us something in the neighborhood of 30 games started by Clemens and Hughes that will be countered on the Sox' side by Wakefield and Tavarez. There's always the possibility of a big trade, or an injury of some kind, but we'll be making the Red Sox margin of error very thin by fielding this kind of team. It would be stupid to get too excited about the Yankees with a 6 game deficit in the standings and a very good Red Sox club capable of pulling away as much as falling back. We could just as easily find ourselves 10 games back in two months time, wondering what happened.

My point here is only that we are healthy now, and fielding one of the best rotations in baseball in a very short time. Anything is possible. Even if we had to settle for a wild card, we'd be the scariest wild card team ever.

As for Andy Pettitte's start, I think it's important to note that he has been beyond brilliant this season. He had a rough last outing against the Red Sox, but let's put that aside for a moment. In the 41.1 innings he's pitched (leaving out that game) he has posted a 1.74 ERA for the Yankees. The K:BB isn't pretty, and the K-rate is below 5 per 9 innings, but he's dominated every team he's faced. As long as he stays healthy, he should give the Yankees every penny of that contract he got from Brian Cashman. Add in the incentive that his signing gave Clemens to join us, and you have to forgive a handful of other boneheaded moved that Cash Money has also thrown at us from the offices of Yankeeland.

We're coming. See you tomorrow. Go Yankees!!

1000 Words (All Curses)

From bv over at River Avenue Blues

Revisionist History

I love when something big happens and there's a bunch of fallout in the media. You knew that there'd be words about Clemens from Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, media pundits and more. You could almost hear Red Sox Nation simultaneously shouting, "&^%& you Roger!" after his appearance at the Stadium. Yankee fans would have done the same. If Clemens had picked Boston, we'd all be cursing him from now until October.

The hilarious part of the whole thing is the reaction of those people who say he's going to stink and that he's in decline and that he can't pitch in the AL East. I read a comment somewhere that said Clemens was facing Russ Ortiz in Houston and will now have to face David Ortiz. That's just funny on so many levels. The boys over at Firebrand of the American League analyze the signing, and I think do a fairly good job of it. I think the point that people are missing is the fact that Clemens has a relationship with Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, not to mention the Boss, that he simply just doesn't have with anyone on the current Red Sox roster. Terry Francona, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Mr. Henry and Theo Epstein....they're probably all nice people, but not Clemens brothers in arms. The respect that Torre's players have for him is something that we can't overlook. Jeter too.

I know Clemens came back for money, but there is more to it. I also know that anyone who is now saying that they didn't want him, or don't need him is just fooling themself. I find the Red Sox (Ortiz, Schilling, Tavarez, etc...) disingenuous because we all know where things stood breaking camp. Look at this from the April 9th Boston Globe:

"You can never have enough pitching. Just ask Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia. Appearing yesterday with manager Terry Francona at a promotional event for Dunkin' Donuts, the Sox infielders were asked who they'd most like to see in a Sox uniform. "Roger Clemens," they replied without hesitation."

Bob Ryan wrote as recently as May 3rd that Theo Epstein should throw Henry's wallet at Clemens because you can never have enough pitching. He was right. If Boston added Rocket to Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka, and Wakefield they'd be the odds on favorite to win the whole thing. They'd probably have the entire New England region doing the conga line thing, kicking dirt on the Yankees grave and worshiping at the altar of their returned hero. All the talk of raising #21 to the rafters and Roger wearing his "B" cap on his Hall of Fame bust. Forget all that today because Clemens is a washed up 44-year old pitcher who can't hack it in the AL East and will only give the Yankees 5 or 6 innings of fair pitching.

Denial is more than a river in Egypt.

Nothing is guaranteed. Clemens may have some struggles ahead. You just don't know until he steps on the mound and throws. Until he does that, the pessimism is just sour grapes based on emotion and not precedent. The precedent says that Clemens will be very good and that the Yankees just got a whole lot better. For fun, I went to check the seasons that Nolan Ryan pitched past 40-years old. I wanted to see how Roger Clemens stacks up against his hero, and how much precedent there is for a 40-something Hall of Fame strikeout king from Texas to continue dominating this late in his career. I'll list the ERA+ numbers of Ryan on the left and Clemens on the right:

40 years old: 142/112
41 years old: 94/145
42 years old: 124/221
43 years old: 114/197
44 years old: 138/???
45 years old: 102/???

Ryan wasn't nearly the physical specimen that Clemens is today. Clemens' workout routine is grueling and he still holds much of his power. He may not give you the length that he once did, but if he helps to the tune of a 138 ERA+ as Ryan did at the same age, he'll help the Yankees fight for the playoffs and likely start Game One. That's what the Yankees paid for. Again, nothing is guaranteed, but to write him off out of spite is ignoring some important things on the side of precedent.

Jerry Crasnik of ESPN writes that the Yankees have reverted to their old ways. He writes:

"The irony is, Cashman's new master plan for the Yankees was heading away from the time-honored practice of throwing money at every problem. The Yankees traded Gary Sheffield to Detroit for three young pitchers in November, and they rebuilt their farm system by refusing to deal away Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Hughes and their other top prospects for immediate, high-priced help. New York's minor league talent, ranked 27th in the game by Baseball America in 2004, currently checks in at No. 7.

But there's nothing like a crisis to make a club revert to old habits. Think about it: The Yankees are about to spend $4.5 million a month on a guy who's 3 months older than Jamie Moyer."

That analysis, too, is a little off base. Crasnick is operating under the assumption that Cashman is on a cut payroll, develop the minors, shy away from spending system. What Cashman is in fact doing is slightly different. Cashman is not spending on things that he can address in more cost-efficient ways. He is running the Yankees in a Moneyball-esque mannerm, where he will find gaps in the market to fill his needs. He won't go sign Carl Pavano anymore when he can develop Phil Hughes, Humberto Sanchez, Tyler Clippars, Ross Ohlendorf, Dellin Betances, Joba Chamberlain, Adam Kennedy, and so on. He WILL drop a truckload of money on Roger Clemens' doorstep, or Johan Santana's. The power of the $1.2 billion New York Yankees is the power to buy the luxury item. The intelligence of Cashman is to know which item is truly of luxury value. The rest of the roster can be filled in with internally developed players. Clemens, Pettitte, and Mussina are all stop gap pitchers in the present, while the minor leagues are beefing up. You'll see him go out and buy another player or two over the next couple of years while he concentrates on position players. It doesn't happen overnight, so you spend on short term, high upside deals.

Hum Drum Monday

So, nothing special happening in Yankeeland these days. I thought I'd write up what's on my i-Pod now and a brief description of why each song has impacted my life in my quest for enlightenment.

1. Memories (Cats - Elaine Paige as Grizabella)
This song is a tear-jerker with the powerful, yet delicate, tones of Paige......

Okay, I've never seen Cats. I have seen two stellar pitching performances from the Yankees though. Wang's near perfect game was just what the doctor ordered, and Rasner stepped up to the plate for consecutive wins. Torre has been able to rest the overworked pen a bit (with the exception of Brian Bruney) and we have something positive to build on moving forward. The first goal has to be .500, then 5 games over, then 10, and so on. That's the way the Yankees (and I'm assuming every other team) go about digging out of a hole in the standings. The Yankees seem to have become professionals at this particular craft over the last few years, so there's hope that it can happen again.

The hope for a magical run now includes Roger Clemens. In a big surprise, the Hall of Famer in waiting stepped up to the mic with Bob Sheppard and greeted the fans. Talk about dramatic entrances. That one was made for the fans to boost spirits and turn around the disgruntled and frustrated tone of the season. It worked. There hasn't been much to celebrate this season. We've had some wonderful moments thanks to A-Rod, but the pitching has made it a very sour start. Now that our top 3 are finally healthy and making their turns, it looks like we will start to win games in bunches. We can set things up to win series, which is the key to going on long winning streaks. Adding Clemens to the mix gives us the fearsome foursome that we all looked forward to at the start of the year. With all the speculation about "will he" or "won't he", and about whether it would be for the Yankees or Red Sox, there was always a sense that the AL East would be Clemens' 2007 home. Thankfully, Torre, Jeter, Pettitte, and Giambi were constantly in his ear and it seems rather likely that this decision was made a very long time ago. I suspect that Clemens knew he was coming to the Yankees well before Spring Training.

The signs all point to it now that it has been confirmed. He wore his Yankees' Championship ring to the SJU appearance he made. The Pettitte signing. The appearance in Tampa. The Yankees probably sensed that keeping Torre would help to lure the Rocket back, and that having Pettitte in the fold as well would lock it up. Clemens played slightly hard to get by involving the Red Sox in the potential destinations, but when all is said and done it was just a way to raise the dollar figure. If the Sox had been in 2nd or 3rd at this point in the season, Clemens would have waited to see if they'd make a run before agreeing to the Yankees deal. It would have been for less money. Thanks to the Sox fast start, and our poor health and place in the standings, he was able to get the timing right for a big money deal. The Yankees have won 5 of 6 now, so waiting may have cost him some of his leverage. Let's face it. If the Yankees won 11 of 13 or something, with a healthier rotation, and if we'd made up most of the ground on the Red Sox over the next couple of weeks, Clemens would have made less money. The time was right for the Hendricks brothers to cash in their chips and bring the big guy back to the fold...while things still look tough.

I'm happy to have him back. I hated the idea of trading Wells for Clemens back in the beginning. I thought Wells had done enough for the Yankees to stay and pitch the way we knew he could pitch. Clemens was a Red Sox and he had his chance to choose the Yankees when he went to Toronto. At that time I just saw the Yankees buying another big name toy instead of sticking with what worked. Over time I came to appreciate Clemens for the hard work he put in. I know he cares most about his image and his money and his personal accomplishments in the game. I also think he's as tough a competitor as there is anywhere, and I think he's about winning. The fact that he can still pitch at Cy Young level in his mid-40s shows how much he cares about working and practicing and perfecting his craft. It keeps the money coming in, but at this point there's nothing much left to prove to anyone, except that he can lead a team to a title. He may or may not duplicate the success he's had in Houston the last 3 years, but he'll be better than most of the pitcher in the AL. He'll see some kind of spike in his numbers, but even with an increase he should dominate. Adding Clemens is as much for October as it is for June, July, August, and September. We need him now to get the team kick started, but we need him to start big games in the playoffs.

I'm guessing that Clemens will win 11-12 games for the Yanks down the stretch and post an ERA in the mid-3's. He should strikeout a billion guys and get a few standing ovations. In the end, signing him will be judged by our post-season success or failure. We've been there every year without him, but we haven't gone very deep, and we haven't won. If we fail again, people will write it off as an entertaining bust. If we win, Clemens' bust at Cooperstown may sport a Yankees cap and it may be made of gold instead of bronze.

Wangpin

If there was ever a huge start this early in the season, Wang Chien-min gave it to us today. His performance was brilliant. He rules New York like the Kingpin (to continue my Marvel theme from yesterday), and since Wang means "king", I think we've found our Wangpin. Wilson Fisk move over, the Yankees ace is the baddest big man in New York.

New Charm

I'm going superstitious. I'm going voodoo. Anything to get this pitching staff kick started. I abducted Mariano Rivera last night and subjected him to a series of laboratory experiments designed to transform our pitching staff. Fortunately, gamma radiation is not among the list of banned substances in the collective bargaining agreement. Hopefully, this will fire up the rotation and give the rookies the push they need to get us a couple of wins against Seattle.

If this works, I'll be abducting Carl Pavano and reclaiming $6 million of his wasted salary on bionic upgrades. Stay tuned.

Nothing Left to Do

At this point, all you want to do is throw a hammer through the TV screen. Kei Igawa must go to AAA. Colter Bean must never show his dough-ish frame in Yankee Stadium again, unless it's for someone else....at which point I welcome him. This is a full blown crisis. The sweep in Texas was a product of good pitching. When we get our real Major League starters on the mound we win. Otherwise we are simply humiliated.

Here the plan, phase 1:

Igawa to the pen.
Rasner to the pen.
Bean back down.
Clippard up.

You have to get Igawa out of the mix for now. We just can't afford to watch him pitch up in the zone to Major Leaguers anymore. He and Rasner need to eat innings to keep the regular bullpen members from blowing out their arms. The formula should be, quality starts are rewarded by quality bullpen relief. Less that 6 innings and more than 3 runs gets Igawa or Rasner. The regular guys rest on those days. Bean is finished, but you can bring up Clippard and use him in tandem with DeSalvo as #4 and #5 for a week or two. That brings me to phase 2.

Bring in Clemens.
Make a trade.

It's on Cashman now. He made this f-ed up mess. The fans are upset, the Boss is upset, the pen is overworked. Either Cashman fixes this or he must be held accountable. He made move #1 by firing Miller. He needs to fix the back end of the rotation now. The first thing he needs to do is fly to Houston and offer Roger Clemens $25 million to pitch for the rest of the season. If Clemens doesn't take it, then tell him to piss off. The next move is a trade. Get Jon Lieber. Get Carlos Zambrano. Get Charlie Hough, Carl Hubbel. Get Cy Young himself. It's getting late early with the slop we're forced to field.

The hammer is poised.

Future Phil

There's a little something for both sides of the "Phil Hughes Too Soon" debate today as our young warrior made his second Major League start, looking to impress his bosses. The 20-year old phenom did just that by tossing 6.1 innings of no hit baseball against a very nice Rangers lineup. Everything we'd been hearing from the Yankees regulars about what they'd seen from Hughes was in evidence as he baffled the Texas lineup with electric stuff. Fuel to the fire for the "he's ready" crowd.

Pop goes the weasel.

On an 0-2 pitch to Mark Teixeira, Hughes overextended his front leg trying to drop a tough curve on the big first baseman and popped his hamstring. MRIs pending, he will be out a month to 6 weeks. Tough break for the man of the hour. Fuel to the fire for the "too soon" crowd.

Check out Will Carroll at Baseball Prospectus today for his take on the situation. I had a short e-mail exchange with him earlier and I tend to agree with his point of view, that Hughes showed he was ready. He was throwing a no hitter against a good team and demonstrated to everyone in the administration of the club and everyone in the Evil Empire that the kid is for real and he's for real in a now kind of way. The injury was unforeseeable, unless you believe that we should have known that the training staff in the Bronx has been borderline to outright incompetent with the hamstring injuries to Mussina, Wang, and Matsui already this year, at which point you need to wonder if a mass firing of that team is in the making. He popped a hammy in his landing leg. He didn't blow out an elbow, strain a shoulder or a back, or otherwise compromise his future. The fears of a structural injury which would forever alter his pitching mechanics were not realized. While the injury is unfortunate, it's something that has happened to 3 other veterans on the team. It's not a direct result of his age or his lack of conditioning.

A final point on this situation. The training routines are almost completely different, but we can learn something about young pitchers and their ability to dominate from a young age by looking at the Japanese. Daisuke Matsuzaka started his pro career at 18 and famously struck out Ichiro 3 consecutive times in their first matchup. He went on to win the Sawamura Award at the tender age of 21. Currently, Yu Darvish has 2 and a half pro seasons under his belt in Japan and is still only 20. He has 5 straight complete games to begin the season this year after a ran shortened opening day. Darvish has all the physical tools and he throws 122 pitches a game. He's as strong and mechanically sound in the 9th as he is in the 1st. He is the best pitcher in Japan now, and would likely still be competing for that honor even if Matsuzaka was still playing for Seibu.

It's not a directly related point, but it does go to show that we baby pitchers a lot. They can handle it if we train them properly. In the end, there's probably a happier medium between the routines in the two countries, but the fact remains that age and lack of experience against tough competition is a myth. Hughes injury may or may not have been prevented by either a longer stay at AAA or a more aggressive training routine, but I'm on the side that says he was ready a week ago, he was ready today, and he'll be ready when he comes off the DL in a month or two. We have our loaded weapon and we'll be able to use it in the stretch run.

Japan Ball

Since the Yankees had an off day, I had a chance to catch up on some writing for my other blogs. Here's what you are in store for around the way:

Matsuzaka Watch
Yankees and Red Sox merchandise rules the roost in retail. My "Golden Week" shopping turns up a few surprises....

Darvish Watch
In his 6th start of the season, Darvish pitched his 5th complete game. A 2 hit, 2 walk, 8 strikeout shut out.

Yuki Saito Watch
Waseda University's freshman ace took the mound for the 2nd time as a college man. The 1st time was 6 one hit innings. The 2nd was....almost as spectacular.

Uehara Watch
After a delayed start to the 2007 campaign, free agent to be Koji Uehara has gone to the mound in back-to-back days to pitch the 9th inning. So far, so good.

Baseball Japan
Nothing new, but some links to my pieces at Baseball Prospectus. A few new BP articles are due from me in the next several days. Keep checking back there for more.

Hopefully, a change of scenery will do the Yankees some good. I'm looking forward to Phil Hughes 2nd trip to the mound, and I have my fingers crossed for a lights out performance. I'd like him to stick around despite what many others feel about his readiness. He's ready enough. See you tomorrow. Go Yanks.