Posted by admin on January 31, 2009 under Trivia | 
Sorry, I haven’t been around much this week. I really want to write something about the Joe Torre book, but I’ve been having a hard time putting it to words.
I was listening to Car Talk (yes, I listen to NPR) this morning and their weekly questions was….
What ways can a baseball runner get on base without getting a hit?
They said there were five. Of course, two were easy – walk and getting hit by a pitch? I came up with two others, but I’ll admit that I had to google the fifth.
If you want to answer the question for yourself, here’s a link to their Puzzler.
Posted by admin on January 28, 2009 under Funny Stuff |
Well, that’s what his Wikipedia said (credit to the River Ave Blues for pointing this one). According to his slightly tweaked Wikipedia entry – Jeter is an eighteen time all star pitcher and captain of the L.A. Lakers. Jeter spent his entire career with the Lakers starting in 1915 when he was just eight years old. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment and a fact that I didn’t know.
But it goes on…his jersey number is 211122224541 and was born in Pequannock, Old Jersey. If you wanted to do know who made these editorial changes to his bio, check out who he made his debut for the Boston Red Sox, on May 29, 1977. Gotta love it!
Posted by admin on January 26, 2009 under Hot Stove |
If you didn’t already hear, the Yankees resigned Andy Pettitte for another year. He ended up signing for $5.5 million with an additional $6.5 million in incentive based bonuses.
It’s a lot of money in my book, but the amount he’s guaranteed to make is less than the original offer from the Yankees. But in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think that will matter to anyone besides Andy after a week or so.
I’m just glad to see Andy back in pinstripes for another year and not just for sentimental reasons. It really does give the Yankees a solid rotation and someone that will eat up innings. It looks like we now have pitching staff that can take on any batting line up that comes their direction.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bit more relaxed. I’m not so worried about the 2009 version of the Joba rules. It also means that Phil Hughes will probably start the season in the minor leagues, but he’ll probably be pitching in the majors again pretty quickly.
Posted by admin on January 25, 2009 under Hot Stove |
February 3rd, Joe Torre has a book a coming out called The Yankee Years but it’s already causing controversy. Whether it’s a ploy to sell books or something else, I don’t know.
According to NY Daily News, Torre detailed how Yankees General Manger Brian Cashman back stabbed him several times, especially in October 2007 when Torre was negotiating with the Yankees owners to extend his contract.
Torre talks about Alex Rodriguez and how he was called A-Fraud by other players in the Yankee dugout. From what I’ve read so far, it doesn’t say whether this was something that Torre felt or if he was just talking about the way the other Yankee players felt.
Also included is A-Rods relationship with Derek Jeter, saying that the third baseman was practically stalking Jeter, wanting to be like him with the same sort or reception in New York, by the other teammates, etc.
My first reaction is that I didn’t expect something like this from Joe Torre, someone who was so “stoic” and generally did so well with the press. Of course, we’ll have to read the book to get the true context.
Does any of it really matter? Joe Torre is managing in Los Angeles now and the Yankees have a new manager that has to step up to the plate and lead the Yankees into the post season.
This just in from Josh Q. Public, Torre will be on the David Letterman show the day the book is realsed. That should be an interesting interview.
Posted by admin on January 24, 2009 under Required Reading |
It was a quiet week for the Yankees – no major signings or anything that was super newsworthy. However, there were definitely some blog posts worth checking out.
River Ave. Blues has a video of the Yankees staff moving their tophies that’s definitely a must watch. I would’ve paid for the honor of moving the World Series Trophies, although I would be pretty nervous about breaking them.
Along the same lines, Sliding Into Home has a photo update of the exterior of the new Yankee Stadium. I’ll admit that seeing photos like that make me a little giddy about seeing the new stadium in person.
I may be the only Yankees fan who didn’t already know, but I stumbled across Phil Hughes’ blog at Yardbarker this week. He gave away an autographed hat that he wore in high school. It’s definitely not every day that you see a player like him interacting with the public like that.
Posted by admin on January 22, 2009 under Hot Stove |
I’ve been hearing/reading a lot of talk about the Yankees and pitcher Andy Pettitte. As of right now (they’ll probably make a deal as I type this post), there was an offer from the Yankees for $10 million to Andy. Depending on who you read Andy either rejected it or the Yankees took the offer off the table. However, there’s still plenty of time left when anything could happen.
Which raises the question – do the Yankees need Andy Pettitte. They just signed C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, so do they still need a 36 year old pitcher who is probably past his prime?
For purely sentimental reasons, my answer is yes. However, I decided to do some purely unscientific (and very sarcastic) research to see if the Yankees really need Pettitte. What I did was add up the total number of wins the Yankees projected 2009 rotation had in 2008. There’s a lot of ways to interpret the numbers and really they don’t mean much – they are just numbers, but it looks like the Yankees could use Pettitte to really guarantee themselves a position in the 2009 post season.
The 2009 rotation looks like it’ll be C.C. Sabathia who had 17 wins last year, A.J. Burnett who had 18 wins last season, Chein Ming Wang who had 19 wins in 2007 (I’m not counting 2008 because he was injured halfway through the season).
Then it starts to get a little grey and blurry. We have Joba Chamberlin who was injured and became a starter halfway through the season – he had 4 wins last season. Then you have Phil Hughes, and while the expecations are high, he did only have 5 wins last season before he was injured too. I’ll even be nice and throw in the six wins that Mariano Rivera had.
That’s 69 wins. Throw in a some wins from the bullpen and it’s still short of the 97 wins that Tampa had last season to clinch the American League East.
It’s more than likely that Joba and Phil will have more wins this season, unless of course they get injured again or another pitcher is put on the DL for an extended ammount of time. I’m pointing to A.J. Burnett who does have a track record with some time on the DL.
Andy Pettitte had 14 wins last season which would definitely put the Yankees a lot closer to 97 wins. He may be past his prime, but he’s still only 36. There’s a good chance that he still had more wins in that arm – at least another season’s worth. I know I’d be a lot more comfortable with someone like Pettitte holding down the tail end of this rotation.
Of course this is all based on pure speculation, zero scientific fact and could all be thrown out the window if the Yankees sign Freddy Garcia or Ben Sheets.
Posted by admin on January 21, 2009 under Off The Field |
You know it’s a slow day in the Yankees news department when you can find stories like this one on one of the (unnamed) major Yankee blogs:
According to FoxSports.com, Jeter and his recent girlfriend Minka Kelly were house-hunting in LA. Now, it’s perfectly likely that Jeter was simply helping his LA-native lady friend pick out a new home, but you never know.
I thought I had landed on the wrong blog for a minute…I can’t wait for the season to start and we have some real news. I’d rather hear a story about how he’s been practicing his defense at short stop during the off seaon. But, at least he does have good taste in women, compared to a certain third baseman. I’ve never watched Friday Night Lights, but maybe I should check it out one night.
Posted by admin on January 20, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I’d like to think I know everything about baseball. I played baseball growing up, been watching it since I was six years old and I’ve been to more ball games than I can count, but every once in a while, I’ve come across terms I don’t know or are a tad bit blurry.
Hot Stove. It’s a term that I’ve been hearing a lot, but wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. Turns out the answer was pretty much in front me this entire winter and I just didn’t know it. It’s just a cool way of saying the off season and all of the trades, signings and rumors because apparently back in the day men, would stand around hot stoves and discuss baseball during the colder months. I guess, it makes sense to me.
Mendoza Line. It’s the level where if the players batting average drops below it, he has a pretty good chance of getting sent to the minors because no matter how good his defense is, it’s not worth the weakness he is in the batting lineup. The average is usually around .200 and there’s a pretty good story about it involving Geroge Brett and Mario Mendoza. You can read it here at Wikipedia.
The Infield Fly Rule. This is one I think I know, but really don’t know exactly. I know if I think about it long enough, I can figure it out, but I thought it was time for a refresher course. If there are runners on base and the batter hits a high pop-up in the infield that is so obviously catch, the ump will automatically declare the batter is out without waiting for the play to finish. This prevents the fielder from dropping the ball on purpose to tag out the baserunners and then throwing to tag out the batter. Thanks to Stiletto Set Sports for the answer on that one.
Posted by admin on January 19, 2009 under Funny Stuff |
I was watching the Colbert Report during my lunch break (thank god for my DVR and one of the many benefits working from home)
Thre important facts he pointed out about the new Met’s logo:
- The logo looks a lot like the Domoino’s logo, part of the Mets pledge to eliminate themselves from the Playoff’s in thirty days or less.
- It’s shaped like a baseball diamond and a section of the stands – where the world series will be played and where the Met’s will be sitting to watch the game.
- It doesn’t actually say Mets on it. It’s like fans, they really don’t want to be associated with the team.
Of course, he does also mention something missing from the new Yankee’s patch – a Roger Clemmens on steroids attacking the city, which I’ll admit did make me laugh too.
On a side note, sorry about the odd formatting of the embedded video player. You think Comedy Central would know there’s more than one kind of browser.
Posted by admin on January 18, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Found out Yesterday that sometime last month Don Zimmer had a minor stroke. He’s recovering now and working to regain his lost mobilitiy and speech. Hopefully, he’s back in time to be a bench coach again this season. Of course, it would be even better if he was bench coach for the Yankees.
