Archive for June, 2009
You may have heard about the list floating around purporting to be a list of players named in the Mitchell Report. This list is a fake, and it excludes at least one player who was confirmed to be on the Mitchell Report list (former Yankees pitcher Jason Grimsley). You’ll notice this list is heavy on names from the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets. I think the person who came up with this probably had a motive, and probably is a fan of whatever team is least represented by the list. Anyway, here it is in its entirety:
1.Nomar Garciaparra
2.Manny Ramirez
3.Johnny Damon
4.Trot Nixon
5.David Ortiz
6.Shea Hillenbrand
7.Derek Lowe
8.Pedro Martinez
9.Brian Roberts
10.Jay Gibbons
11.Melvin Mora
12.Jerry Hairston
13.Jason Giambi
14.Alfonso Soriano
15.Raul Mondesi
16. Aaron Boone
17.Andy Pettitte
18.Jose Contreras
19.Roger Clemens
20.Carlos Delgado
21.Vernon Wells
22.Frank Catalanotto
23.Kenny Rogers
24.Magglio Ordonez
25.Sandy Alomar
26.Bartolo Colon
27.Brent Abernathy
28.Jose Lima
29.Milton Bradley
30.Casey Blake
31.Danys Baez
32.Craig Monroe
33.Dmitri Young
34.Alex Sanchez
35.Eric Chavez
36.Miguel Tejada
37.Eric Byrnes
38.Jose Guillen
39.Keith Foulke
40.Ricardo Rincon
41.Bret Boone
42.Mike Cameron
43.Randy Winn
44.Ryan Franklin
45.Freddy Garcia
46.Rafael Soriano
47.Scott Spiezio
48.Troy Glaus
49.Francisco Rodriguez
50.Ben Weber
51.Alex Rodriguez
52.Juan Gonzalez
53.Rafael Palmeiro
54.Carl Everett
55.Javy Lopez
56.Gary Sheffield
57.Mike Hampton
58.Ivan Rodriguez
59.Derrek Lee
60.Bobby Abreu
61.Terry Adams
62.Fernando Tatis
63.Livan Hernandez
64.Hector Almonte
65.Tony Armas
66.Dan Smith
67.Roberto Alomar
68.Cliff Floyd
69.Roger Cedeno
70.Jeromy Burnitz
71.Moises Alou
72.Sammy Sosa
73.Corey Patterson
74.Carlos Zambrano
75.Mark Prior
76.Kerry Wood
77.Matt Clement
78.Antonio Alfonseca
79.Juan Cruz
80.Aramis Ramirez
81.Craig Wilson
82.Kris Benson
83.Richie Sexson
84.Geoff Jenkins
85.Valerio de los Santos
86.Benito Santiago
87.Rich Aurilia
88.Barry Bonds
89.Andres Galarraga
90.Jason Schmidt
91.Felix Rodriguez
92.Jason Christiansen
93.Matt Herges
94.Paul Lo Duca
95.Shawn Green
96.Oliver Perez
97.Adrian Beltre
98.Eric Gagne
99.Guillermo Mota
100.Luis Gonzalez
101.Todd Helton
102.Ryan Klesko
103.Gary Matthews
The Yankees have traded the Pirates a couple of prospects for journeyman utility player Eric Hinske. The Yankees will also receive cash as part of the deal. Hinske is a former Rookie of the Year award winner and won a championship ring with the Red Sox in 2007.
I’m not sure how Yankee fans are going to take this. Hinske will surely get some playing time, but is the cost of 2 prospects really worth it for a utility guy who’s over the age of 30? The prospects were Casey Erickson and Eric Fryer. Neither were expected to be big league-ready by the end of this season. Hinske was not happy with his lack of playing time with the Pirates. Will he feel any better about his lack of playing time in pinstripes?
I just happened to be surfing through random pages of Jalopnik when I found this interesting piece about the bullpen car the Yankees used in 1972. The Yankees made a deal with Datsun (now Nissan) to use the B1200 compact car as their bullpen car for the season. They decked it out in pinstripes and put a logo on the side, but otherwise it was just a regular B1200. It wasn’t even a convertible! I think the Yankees may have been the only team that made their relievers get into the passenger seat of a regular car and ride 100 yards to the pitchers mound. I hope they at least rolled down the windows so the pitchers could wave to the fans.
Mark Teixeira, Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, and Nick Swisher all hit home runs on Monday night en route to a 5-3 Yankees win over the Tampa Bay Rays. Gabe Kapler added a homer for the Rays in New Yankee Stadium, which is now on pace to demolish all previous home run records for a Yankee stadium in a season. The physicists, meteorologists, and astrologists are all working round the clock to figure out what is going on here. The current theory is that the old Yankee Stadium is creating unexpected wind patterns that causes the ball to carry out and turns a slap hitter like Johnny Damon into Babe Ruth.
The Yankees start a series with the Red Sox in Fenway today. The Yanks are 0-5 against their division rival this season and hold just a 1 game lead in the AL East, so this is going to be a playoff-like atmosphere for fans of both teams. I’m not a psychic, but I expect some tension between the two clubs at some point this week. There will be ejections in this series.
The Yankees are in first place and appear to be headed towards a division title this season. In spite of that, I think Joe Girardi is a terrible manager who deserves to be fired. Girardi’s Yankees are winning in spite of him, not because of him. In Sunday’s game against the Rays, he had Derek Jeter bunting against Matt Garza with the score tied at 1-1. Jeter didn’t get the bunt down and nearly hit into a double play. When asked about the call after the game, Girardi claims that he did it because Garza is tough on righties and he wanted to give Tex and A-Rod the chance to drive in the runs. Is there a problem with this logic? The answer is a resounding “YES”. Jeter is hitting over .300 in his career against Garza and has struck out only once. Why not give him the chance to hit away and drive in the runs himself. Tex and A-Rod can drive in Jeter after that. That’s how we get rallies going. If Girardi wanted to manage a small ball team, he shouldn’t have acted like such a high-and-mighty jerk when he was such a great manager with the Marlins. I mean seriously, how do you win Manager of the Year and still piss off the owner enough to get fired?
Joba Chamberlain may have pitched one of the best games of his major league career today. In addition to making an amazing diving catch (which he turned into a double play), he gave up just 2 runs over 8 innings and, oh yeah, the Yankees won the game over the Indians by a final score of 5-2.
Joba’s fastball averaged 94 mph over 8 innings, which should be a good indication that we can loosen the reigns on the Joba rules.
Nick Swisher is coming out of his slump. He hit 2 doubles today an another one of his outs was to the warning track in center field.
The Yankees did not have an error in this game. That makes 18 straight errorless games, a new major league record (former record holder: the Boston Red Sox).
River Avenue Blues conducted a little unscientific poll to see how Yankees fans felt about the team now that we’ve entered June. Despite yesterday’s disappointing loss (Eric Wedge was trying so hard to give that one to us), Yankees fans are probably more confident in their team than any other fans in baseball. 98 of 124 respondents gave the Yankees and 8, 9, or 10. I can see why, considering the Yankees are in first place despite having more problems than the Bush administration in the first two months of the season. Wang struggled early, but it looks like he’s going to be a #2 or #3 quality pitcher by the time when get into the dog days of summer, and that’s with CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett at #1 and #2. I’m not sure if anyone’s going to be able to top those 3, and after that it’s Pettitte and Joba, two guys who could probably be fighting for the role of ace on my teams.
Not only am I confident the Yankees will hold their current lead in the AL East, I think they’ll run away with the division. I wouldn’t be surprised if they win it by 10 games and they beat up on everyone else so bad that the 2nd place team won’t even get the wild card.
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