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Yankees 5, Reds 6: Rally Falls Short
The Yankee offense finally got a couple hits with runners in scoring position, but it wasn’t quite enough to come back from a 6-3 deficit in the 9th inning. Ivan Nova gave up five runs in six innings, allowing seven hits, and striking out a career-high 12 batters. The bulk of the damage against Nova came on a three-run Joey Votto home run that landed just over the wall in right field. The first seven outs Nova recorded were all by way of strikeouts. The 7th inning was pitched by a combination of Cody Eppley and Clay Rapada , and neither allowed a hit before the 2012 version of 2011 Hector Noesi , David Phelps , came on to finish out the game. Phelps struck out three batters, allowing one hit and one walk in two innings. An unearned run scored after Phelps made a diving catch on a ball in front of the mound, but overthrew Nick Swisher trying to double off the runner at first base. Unfortunately, that proved to be the difference in the game. With the hopes of a comeback in mind, Raul Ibanez and Nick Swisher led off the 9th with a double and single, respectively, before Reds closer Sean Marshall struck out Russell Martin , who had homered earlier in the game. Andruw Jones also singled, then Jayson Nix drove in Swisher to pull the Yankees to within one. Sadly, that chased Marshall from the game, and Derek Jeter grounded the first pitch he saw from Jose Arredondo to third base, barely beating out a game-ending double play. Curtis Granderson worked the count, but ultimately grounded out to first to end the rally and the game. The offense was led by two singles and a home run from Jayson Nix, with Ibanez and Swisher reaching base twice, as well. After some typical Ibanez-ing in the outfield, it was nice to see Raul continue to attempt to make up for the constant adventure of his defense. The Yankees will attempt to take the series tomorrow afternoon, as CC Sabathia takes on Johnny Cueto at 1:05 p.m. Comment of the Game: long time listener , because I’m nothing if not a fan of name puns. Continue reading
Posted in Local, National, Yankees, Yankees Gossip, Yankees News
Tagged audio, cbeck3, facebook, national, nba, pinstripe, sbn, yahoo, yankees
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Prospect Retrospective: Kerry Wood
Prospect Retrospective and Career Profile: Kerry Wood I’m old enough to remember when Kerry Wood was a young phenom instead of a grizzled veteran. Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine and see how Wood was viewed as a prospect. Kerry Wood was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the first round of the 1995 draft, from high school in Grand Prairie, Texas. One of the best high school pitchers of his generation, he drew comparisons to fireballers like Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens . Drafted fourth overall, he didn’t sign right away and pitched some games for his high school team after the draft, including a 200-pitch outing in a double-header. He walked six hitters in his first seven professional innings, but his mid-90s fastball and unhittable curve pushed him up the prospect lists quickly, Wood pitched for High-A Daytona in 1996, as a 19-year-old against older competition in the Florida State League. He went 10-2, 2.91 ERA with a 136/70 K/BB ratio in 114 innings, allowing just 72 hits. He also spent a month on the disabled list with a sore elbow, and there was grumbling that he was already paying the price for pitching too much in high school. I had him as a Grade A- and the number two pitching prospect in the minors. In my comment for Wood in the 1997 book, I wrote “Scouts are always on the lookout for Texas high school pitchers, hoping for the next Nolan Ryan. They haven’t found him. Between 1980 and 1990, nine Texas high school pitchers were drafted in the first round. None of them, that’s right, none of them, developed into decent major league pitches. Here’s the list: Rickey Barlow, Jimmy Jones, Jackie Davidson, Wayne Dotson, Scott Scudder, Brian Bohanon, Todd Ritchie , Todd Van Poppel, and Robbie Beckett. . .Wood could be the next Nolan Ryan, but he could also blow his arm out.” The Cubs sent Wood to Double-A Orlando to open 1997. He had serious control problems, posting a 4.50 ERA with a 106/79 K/BB in 94 innings, but they moved him up to Triple-A anyway, where he posted a 4.68 ERA with an 80/52 K/BB in 58 innings for Iowa. He made 29 starts and threw 158 innings, fanning 186 but walking 121. This struck me as a very aggressive and unwise workload. I gave him a Grade A- in my 1998 book, noting his amazing stuff and his strong K/IP ratios, but with some caveats: “The Cubs took a big risk by promoting him to Triple-A. His control was bad in Double-A and I don’t understand what Triple-A hitters could teach him about control that Double-A hitters couldn’t. I can’t shake the feeling that he is going to get hurt. He was overused in high school, and has already had elbow trouble in the pros. He was healthy last year, but while his mechanics look smooth from behind home plate, if you watch him from the first base side, it looks like his motion puts strain on the elbow. Don’t get me wrong, this guy is a gem. I don’t doubt his ability, but I wonder if he is being handled correctly, and if he will stay healthy.” Kerry made one start in Triple-A in 1998 (fanning 11 in five innings), and spent the rest of the year with the cubs, going 13-6, 3.40 ERA, with a 233/85 K/BB in 167 innings with just 117 hits allowed. His 20-strikeout game in his fifth major league start was phenomenal and possibly the best single-game pitching performance in major league history. You know the rest of Wood’s story: at his best he was very much like Ryan and Clemens, but he just couldn’t stay healthy. He wasn’t quite the same after 1998 Tommy John surgery, and eventually his shoulder proved troublesome as well. He had a brief career revival as a closer, and it is fitting that he ended his career as a Cub after brief diversions with the Indians and Yankees . All told, Wood finished with an 86-75 (.534) record, a 3.67 ERA, 1582/666 K/BB ratio in 1380 innings, just 1083 hits allowed, and a 117 ERA+, with a 23.4 WAR. Continue reading
Posted in Giants, International, Local, National, Yankees, Yankees Gossip
Tagged chatting, chicago, chicago-cubs, florida, giants, kerry, minor, nba, tmannino, yahoo
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Pena’s May Struggles
Carlos Pena’s return to our beloved Tampa Bay Rays came with warm smiles and nostalgic memories of past greatness but also a hope that he still had some of that ability left and that he would help power the Rays to another postseason birth and into the World Series. After all, Pena is the second highest paid Ray at $7.25M, just a mere $250K behind rotation anchor James Shields . We knew the glove and the clubhouse presence were still there but we wanted to know if there was still some juice left in that bat. It didn’t take long to remind Rays’ fans everywhere why they loved Pena and to put our minds at ease that he still had some power in his bat. His very first game back with the Rays was dramatic. It was Opening Day and the Rays were hosting the hated New York Yankees and Pena came up with the bases loaded in his first at-bat back with the Rays and launched a grand slam off of ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia. If that was not enough, Pena included a storybook ending walk off opposite-field single to the wall off of the best reliever that the game has ever known in Mariano Rivera . Pena’s first game back was a success: 3-5 with a homerun, walk off hit, and five runs driven in and he would not stop there, hitting another home run in game three as the Rays swept the Yankees to start the 2012 season. Welcome back home, Carlos Pena. Pena finished the month of April off exactly the same way he started it with another 3-5 performance. Pena was using the entire field and driving the ball with authority and putting smiles as bright as his on Rays fans everywhere: But the calendar turned to May and we all knew that Pena’s .377 BABIP from April would not last. Some regression was in order but the month of May has been more than simple regression, it has been a disaster of a month thanks to more strikeouts, some bad luck, and the inability to go the other way. Pena’s month of May in comparison to April has looked like this: Stat April May AVG .286 .138 OBP .412 .275 SLG .488 .224 wOBA .394 .242 wRC+ 157 51 RE24 7.16 -4.03 BABIP .377 .206 BB% 14.7% 14.5% K%% 26.5% 33.3% He only has three extra base hits this month and has nearly doubled his pop up rate. Here is a look at his spray chart for the month of May: As you can see, Pena is pulling nearly everything rather than using the entire field. Pitchers really are not working him any differently, using the same approach they have for years: away-away-away. This coupled with striking out at an alarming rate and having a 23.1% infield fly ball rate are what have been killing his month of May. It is only half of a month and a veteran like Pena has to know by now what his problems at the plate are. Pena has to get back to hitting the ball to all fields and driving it with authority. We know what Pena can do. We have seen what Pena is capable of, not only in past seasons but just this past month, and I certainly hope he makes the proper adjustments soon so we can all put a smile back on our face when he steps into the batter’s box again. Continue reading
Posted in Giants, Local, Yankees, Yankees News, Yankees Rumors
Tagged article, career, chicago, exercise, game, games, weather, yahoo, yankees
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Friday Morning Applesauce: Mets Offense Explodes Late, Lawrie Drops Appeal For Mets Series
It was a fun game yesterday, wasn’t it? Trailing 4-0 it was pretty hard to envision the Mets coming back to win against Cincinnati, but comeback they certainly did . In the end it was a very entertaining 9-4 win that featured both a bomb from Ronny Cedeno and a ridiculous play in the field from Daniel Murphy . The box score can be found here . The Mets will now pack their bags, don their favorite hockey jerseys , and head to Canadia to face off with the Blue Jays . The Mets will get a bit of a bonus in that series as 3B Brett Lawrie dropped his appeal and will miss the entire Mets series while serving his suspension . Yesterday we had some quotes from Terry Collins which suggested the Jennry Mejia would be headed to the bullpen when he was done with his rehab assignment. Sandy Alderson spoke about it some , and it doesn’t seem quite as certain as Collins’ comments would have led me to believe. It’s nice to actually have faith in the GM…isn’t it? Before the game yesterday, Sandy Alderson had some comments concerning the current bullpen . I’m excited to see Robert Carson get his shot, having a second lefty in the pen will be a welcome addition. Patrick Flood took on the issue of Bobby Parnell the closer with a look at his statistics in different situations. I love when people use actual evidence before even attempting to come to a conclusion. Around MLB: Brandon Beachy has been a very good pitcher since he broke into the bigs last year. He threw a complete game shutout yesterday as the Braves rolled over the Minnows 7-0 . The Nats couldn’t keep pace with the Bravos yesterday, dropping the series finale against the Pirates 5-3 . Hooray! That team from Philly got themselves back above .500 yesterday with a win over Theo’s Cubbies . Here’s hoping for a losing streak. Fangraphs took a look at the struggles of Atlanta pitcher Mike Minor to this point in the season. He’s certainly not as bad as his ERA would indicate, but I hope he doesn’t bounce back anytime soon. Mike Newman is usually a fantastic guy to read. Yesterday he took a look at Nats prospect Alex Meyer and wasn’t all that impressed. Over at Minor League Ball they have an updated draft board up. It’s always nice to get a look at how some of these guys are being viewed around the interwebs, I’m sure we’ll see several more of these as the draft gets closer. The Yankees dropped their game to our next opponents yesterday, and in typical Blue Jay fashion the long ball played a big part . Anyone else a little scared for our bullpen this weekend? Finally for today, Orlando Hudson was DFA’d by the Padres . Anyone out there still interested? Anyone? Bueller? Continue reading
New York Yankees News: 5/18/12
– It’s only May, but Mike Axisa at RAB is already looking ahead to the trade deadline to analyze which players the Yankees might be interested in obtaining. Injuries have been a real issue so far this year, so it’s not a stretch to think they might make some kind of move, unlike last year. Who is on your radar? – The Yankees claimed infielder Matt Antonelli off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles yesterday. Antonelli is a former first round draft pick with the San Diego Padres , and can play first base, second base, third base, shortstop, and left field. He will report to AAA Empire State this weekend. – Mark Teixeira plans to talk to Joe Girardi about whether taking a day off makes sense after battling problems with his health for weeks. After seeing him hacking while playing defense last night, I don’t know how there is any question to this. I’m not sure if his illness is hurting his play at the plate, but I can’t imagine it’s helping at all. -After spraining his ankle against the Orioles in his last start, Ivan Nova’s status for Saturday was in question, but it now looks like he won’t miss his turn after all. Very good news, since it seems like every seemingly small injury is DL-worthy with this team right now. – For all the talk of Alex Rodriguez having a slower bat speed of late, Michael Eder at The Yankee Analysts breaks down A-Rod’s numbers, and finds that this is really just a conjectured narrative. Plenty of people have said that Rodriguez can only catch up to the slower stuff he’s thrown, but Eder uses his fancy numbers to put that to rest as well. A-Rod hasn’t been hitting for the power we expect of him, though I truly believe it will come around, but a lot of the criticism for why it hasn’t been there so far is unfounded. Continue reading
Posted in Local, Yankees, Yankees News, Yankees Rumors
Tagged actions, archives, may-18, nba, pinstripe, pinstripe-alley, podcasts, tickets, yahoo, yankees
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Blue Jays 8, Yankees 1: Kuroda, Bats Struggle
” You can only tip your cap so many times to the other guy .” Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that Alex Rodriguez quote in the morning news. The Yankees fell to the Jays 8-1 on Wednesday night in Toronto behind poor pitching and a serious lack of hitting. In five innings of work, Hiroki Kuroda got knocked around for seven runs on eight hits, three of which landed beyond the fences. He also walked two while striking out six Jays. Six of the seven runs scored off of Kuroda came via the long ball. In the second inning, J.P. Arencibia took Kuroda deep to give the Jays an early 2-0 lead. In the third, Edwin Encarnacion hit a three-run shot to increase the Jays’ lead to 5-0, and in the fifth, Jose Bautista launched a homer that reportedly left his bat at 117 mph according to the YES broadcast. The only other run Kuroda allowed came on an RBI single by Kelly Johnson . In relief of Kuroda, Clay Rapada tossed 1 1/3 innings, striking out one while walking one. He also allowed a solo homer to Kelly Johnson to begin the bottom of the seventh. Later in that inning, Cody Eppley entered and completed the game painlessly, allowing just two hits and striking out one. On the offensive side, only Robinson Cano , Mark Teixeira and Raul Ibanez had hits. The lineup also worked six walks on the day, as Kyle Drabek had some command issues (four walks) in an otherwise fantastic seven innings of work. Teixeira’s hit resulted in the only run of the game for the Yankees, as it hit a lip in the turf, bouncing over Edwin Encarnacion’s head and into right field. It’s hard to win games with only three hits, and even harder when the pitching fails to perform as well. It’s only one loss though, and there’s always tomorrow. Box Score. Comments of the Game: The string of music linking, since nothing during the game was worth talking about. Continue reading
Posted in Giants, Local, National, Yankees, Yankees News
Tagged blue, frank-campagnola, national, nba, network, pinstripe, pinstripe-alley, sports, tickets, yahoo, yankees
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The View from Gamecock24′s Seat
GC24 watched the Wei-Yin Chen and the Orioles shut down the New York Yankees last night from section 12. Continue reading
Posted in Local, Yankees, Yankees Gossip, Yankees Rumors
Tagged archives, baseball-nation, koopa-troopas, nba, network, orioles, photos, script, yahoo, yankees, zachary-beard
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Chen Dazzles, Orioles Down Yankees 5-2
Wei-Yin Chen and the Baltimore Orioles got the best of the New York Yankees tonight 5-2 at the Yankees’ home away from home. Chen pitched a fantastic game tonight for the O’s, going seven strong allowing only a two-run home run to Curtis Granderson in the seventh inning. The Yankees managed four hits off the southpaw, two of which came in the seventh inning, and worked two walks, one that came in the seventh inning. CC Sabathia , on the other hand, was not ace-like. Earning his first official “L” of the year, Sabathia managed to pitch six innings, allowing four runs on eight hits while walking four batters as well. He did, however, strikeout six. The start was disappointing mostly because Sabathia’s last four consecutive starts were exactly eight innings long. Sabathia hasn’t pitched exactly six innings since his April 11 start, ironically, in Baltimore. Granderson’s home run was the only bright spot for the Yankees, and if not for jubilant fan in left-centerfield extending his glove to catch the ball and steal it away from Xavier Avery , the Bombers would have been shutout. New York was 1-9 with runners in scoring position this evening. Not a formula for for victory. Comment of the game: Bango31 sums up the game. Continue reading
Posted in Local, Mets, Yankees, Yankees Gossip, Yankees News, Yankees Rumors
Tagged archives, development, game, nba, paris, philadelphia, sports, yahoo
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Why The Russell Martin Hate?
Russell Martin , the bane of many Yankee fans, is hitting .182/.314/.318 over 29 games, good for an 81 wRC+ . Mark Teixeira , who’s largely gone under the radar in 2012, is hitting .223/.275/.369, good (bad?) for a 71 wRC+. Not only has Tex been an inferior offensive player this year, but he’s doing it from an offense-first position (1B) and getting paid about thrice as much ($22.5M vs. $7.5M). I was fairly confident Tex was going to have a solid season about three weeks ago . I’m not so sure anymore. At least Martin, though he’s not hitting, is staying patient and drawing his fair share of walks. Tex is not. His OBP is the worst on the team among regulars. Last season he belted 39 homers and slugged .494. I’ll be happy with 25 this year. I intended to talk more about Martin and why he gets the brunt of the criticism, but I think it’s all relative. Unfortunately for athletes, they often get compared to who preceded them; in Martin’s case, it was Jorge Posada , who was not only one of the top offensive catchers of this era, but in Yankees history. On top of that, the Yanks had a top catching/hitting prospect ( Jesus Montero ) that they parted with in the offseason, probably due, at least somewhat, to Joe Girardi’s preference for defense-first catchers (like Martin and himself). Mark Teixeira, on the other hand, replaced a collection that included Josh Phelps , Andy Phillips , Doug Mientkiewicz , Cody Ransom , Richie Sexson , Juan Miranda and a declining Jason Giambi . Oof. In that sense, Martin takes unfair criticism just because his predecessors were better than Tex’s. There are obviously more factors like how Tex has been in pinstripes longer (by two years) and helped the Yanks win the 2009 World Series, but that’s not enough, in my opinion, to justify the Russell Martin hate (when other players are also underperforming and getting paid more). Is it that he’s from north of the border? [Stats are as of Thursday.] Continue reading
Posted in Local, Mets, National, Yankees, Yankees News, Yankees Rumors
Tagged credit, god, jetanumba2, national, tickets, world-series, yahoo, yankees, yankees news
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Good News!
Mood Music – Life For Revenge by Dark Moor This post is probably more interesting than meaningful, but that could be why you’re here. That other thing that you’re doing can wait another five minutes for something interesting to read on the internet. I mean, the post is called Good News with an exclamation point. Who doesn’t like good news? Probably communists. Communists hate good news but love exclamation points. This post will be a mixed bag for any of you who happen to be communists. I don’t like pure DH splits. For his career, Player X is hitting ___ when they play in the field and ____ when they DH is almost certainly going to introduce a substantial selection bias. The vast majority of players do not spend a lot of time DHing in the prime of their careers when they’re having their most productive offensive seasons. If they do get more than a game or two, it’s likely the result of injury. So, I would assert that — in a majority of cases — players will put up worse numbers as a DH not entirely as a result of not playing the field, but also as a function of being old or injured. But, lots of players really don’t like the way DHing takes them out of the action of the game. Jorge Posada was famous for it. While I would guess that most hitters would regress to their true hitting levels once they had enough time to get used to DHing every day, I could definitely see different players handling it differently. It seems logical that some guys would take to DHing better than other guys. Jorge Posada really hated DHing. Probably because when he was a DH, he would be on the bench to hear everyone else laughing at how the back up catcher was so much better on defense. Here is a rudimentary attempt to make a more fair DH split: For each season, I will split plate appearances into times up as a DH and as a fielder. Then, show the corresponding OPS in each situation. So, for example: Alex Rodriguez has come to the plate forty-two times as a DH so far in 2012. When playing the field, he has OPS’d .863. So, we would expect him to also be an .863 OPS hitter when he is a DH. Back in the early 2000s when he was OPSing around 1.000, we would expect him to be a 1.000 OPS hitter when he was a DH. So, we can use the number of plate appearances as a DH and the OPS as a non-DH to make a weighted average. And then we can see if his actual numbers are better or worse than that weighted average. If his numbers exceed the expectation, he is hitting proportionally better as a DH than as a fielder. Here are his numbers: Expected OPS is found by dividing the total by the total number of plate appearances, completing the weighted average. So, if as a DH, A-Rod hit with exactly the same OPS as when he was in the field for that season, he would have an .899 OPS as a DH. It makes sense for this to be below his career OPS, as the bulk of his time at DH has been later in his career. But, the good news! is that A-Rod has a career .935 OPS as a DH. He’s actually been a better hitter as a DH than as a shortstop or third baseman. As someone who is going to be DHing more and more for the next five plus seasons, it would be kind of shitty if he struggled with DHing or really hated doing it. It’s only 257 scattered plate appearances, so it is by no means definitive, but it is definitely encouraging. I did the same thing for Jeter, Ibanez, and Jones. As Ibanez and Jones have bounced around multiple positions, I compared their numbers as a DH to whatever position they spent the most time at in that particular season. So, A-Rod and Jones have been proportionally more productive from the DH spot, while Jeter and Ibanez have been proportionally worse. With so few plate appearances as a DH for Jeter, it is not terribly meaningful. But, as he is also expected to start doing more DHing, it might be something to keep an eye on.* *He has a 1.037 OPS in twenty-nine plate appearances as a DH so far this year, so that’s good. Jones doesn’t seem to be bothered by DHing, which should be a good thing. If he’s the DH against a left handed starter, we’re not sacrificing Brett Gardner’s defense to get his bat in the lineup. But, what I think that we can all agree on is that Raul Ibanez really needs more playing time in the outfield. Just look at those splits! Continue reading
Posted in Giants, Local, National, Yankees, Yankees Gossip, Yankees News, Yankees Rumors
Tagged careers, credit, game, ibanez, national, pinstripe-alley, tickets, yahoo, yankees news
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