Telling Figures Indeed

Record of the New York Yankees prior to the injury to overpaid, overrated, choking loser Alex Rodriguez: 14-14, 4.25 runs scored per game.

Record of the New York Yankees after the injury to overpaid, overrated, choking loser Alex Rodriguez: 6-10, 3.75 runs scored per game.

Yep. it's all his fault when they lose.

Oh Happy Day

Saints be praised -- the Rays are in first, the Yankees are in last.

Tampa manager Joe Maddon may only want his guys to celebrate for a half hour, but I'm gonna savor this until at least tomorrow morning. Woo hoo!

Why, Indeed?

Following up (sort of) on Jim's post about Trump's crack-back on Alex Rodriguez, we find Fox Sport.com's Tracy Ringolsby offering this nugget o' joy:

If Alex Rodriguez really is the "franchise player'' that should have the richest contract in baseball history, can someone explain why he has never played in a World Series game? He won't turn 33 until July 27 and has finished among the top 10 in MVP voting in nine of his 12 full seasons, but he ranks third among active players in terms of games played without a World Series appearance.

His one-time Seattle teammate, Ken Griffey, Jr., is at the top of the active chart, and Frank Thomas ranks second.

Not to say that a player has to be in a World Series to be considered one of the game's most talented, but the bottom line for history isn't the bottom line in a checking account but rather the success of a team. Team success is tied to championships.

Nice of him to toss in that last bit. I guess Ringolsby can admit that A-Rod is talented, even if he isn't clutch enough to make it to the World Series.

But to address his original question...why has A-Rod never played in a World Series game?

Can it be all his fault? Since signing that record contract, Rodriguez' OPS+ have been 160, 158, 147, 131, 173, 134, and 177.

For those of you who aren't guys sitting in their basements "spilling food on ourselves" (as Ozzie described it), OPS+ measures how productive a batter is relative to the league average. So in 2007, when Rodriguez was all chokin' in the clutch and stuff, he was 77% better than the average player.

I'm no rocket scientist, but I think most people would think that is pretty good. Perhaps a guy who's 77% better than the league average would be someone you'd want on your team.

So why hasn't Rodriguez been in the Fall Classic? Call me crazy, but I think these might be contributing factors, that no sane person could blame on Rodriguez' obsession with the almighty dollar:

** In 2001, out of all the Rangers' starting pitchers, the lowest ERA was Doug Davis' 4.45. Rick Helling, Kenny Rogers, and Darren Oliver starting 82 games (more than half the season) between them, and posted ERAs of 5.17, 6.19, and 6.02.

** The 2002 Rangers got their pitching together a little. Very little The league-worst 669 walks allowed may have contributed to a team ERA of 5.15.

** The '03 Texas team narrowly missed an ignominious Triple Crown -- they finished with the worst ERA (5.67) and most HR allowed (208), but managed to squeeze into thirteenth place in walks allowed (603).

Few teams have made it to the Series with pitching that bad.

** In 2004, the Yankees rolled to a 101-61 record before getting rolled themselves by Boston in the ALCS. Rodriguez put up a .258/.378/.516. Why couldn't he be as clutch as that nice Derek Jeter (.200/.333/.233)?

** Rodriguez had a famously bad 2005 ALDS versus Anaheim. So did Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson, Al Leiter, and Tanyon Sturtze. Not that anyone noticed...

** Rodriguez had a more-famously bad 2006 ALDS against the Tigers. That nice Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada were the Yankees who did squat (the team totals were .246/.289/.388). Chalk it up to four games of life sucking for the Yankees at the worst time.

** Last year, the boo-birds were all over A-Rod's .267/.353/.467 as Cleveland clobbered the Bombers in four games. Perhaps sub-par compared to what we've come to expect from Rodriguez. But perhaps the Tribe found it easier to win the best-of-five series after clobbering Yankees ace Chien-Ming Wang in both his starts.

To sum up -- why hasn't Rodriguez been in a World Series? Several reasons: the Rangers were a really, really bad team when he was with them. And in his four years in New York, the Yankees have either run into better teams or just picked the wrong time to have a crappy week.

Hope this clears things up...

Yankee Fan Was Right

A-Rod is a wimp!

Alex Rodriguez passed out during the birth of his first daughter.

“The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head. The other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm. And my mother was like rubbing his back. And he is passed out on a couch. And I am there, in the middle of labor,” Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of the New York Yankees star, said on an episode of the YES Network’s “YESterdays” that is scheduled to be broadcast Wednesday night.

“And really, I am not being paid much attention to besides the doctor and a couple of nurses,” she said. “And he is there moaning. In between pushing, I am going, `Honey, are you OK?’ and `Are you breathing? Are you OK?’"

Look for plenty of jokes about this for the next eleventy bajillion years...

But speaking as a guy who was also nearly overcome by the miracle of childbirth, I have to ask: why does Yahoo consider this the sixth-most important baseball story of the evening?

Not That It's Wrong

Ozzie Guillen had this to say about Yankees captain Derek Jeter:

"At the All-Star Game (where Guillen managed him in 2006), I looked around to see if he has anything I don't like. No. He's the perfect man. "

Uuuuummmmmmm...OK.

Now, why does this remind me of an episode of Scrubs?



No, that's not it.



Hmmmm...closer, but not quite. What else ya got?



In the immortal words of Charlie Brown: THAT'S IT!

Not that it's wrong, of course...

YES, What Would They Say?

I'm watching the Yankees home opener. Before the game, the YES Network was running a short piece about the history of Yankee Stadium, with hack Yankees play by play announcer Michael Kay saying again and again, "if these walls could talk."

If the walls of Yankee Stadium could talk, they'd probably ask, "why is a perfectly good 30-year old facility being torn down just to help further enrich the wealthiest sports franchise in the world? And why is public money being used to pay for it? And why is Derek Jeter still playing shortstop? He's terrible!"

They might also point out that they are not the same walls as the original House That Ruth Built, which were mostly torn down in 1974 to make way for the rebuilt park. So please stop talking like they are. Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle never played in this park. It's a different building.

Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty...

Sweet zombie Jesus! Just when I thought the baseball media couldn't get any more inane or insulting than the pin-heads currently running the show at Tribune Tower, I had the misfortune to chance upon this today.

This week's Baseball Weekly's cover story is a profile of Alex Rodriguez by Jorge L. Ortiz (couldn't find a link, sorry). Here are the first two paragraphs in his piece:

In Alex Rodriguez's latest national TV ad, he looks behind him to find a youngster shadowing his every move at third base. The scene soon turns into a crowd of kids who appear to come from different countries.

The ad's theme is open to interpretation, but it would be easy to draw a parallel with A-Rod's first few years in New York: looking over his shoulder, feeling crowded, concerned about what might be lurking behind him.

So it's come to this...our media's obsession with A-Rod's mental state has grown to the point that they're parsing his TV ads looking for clues.

I'm no mind-reader, or psychologist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest just what that theme might be: the company Rodriguez is shilling for (and Ortiz never indicates which company that is, or exactly why those kids are "lurking" behind the third baseman) wants to sell an ass-load of product, and think that using Rodriguez will help them sell it.

I'm old enough to remember when sports reporters would tell you what happened on the field and why it happened that way. The pursuit of grander themes or deeper motivations were the parlance of Roger Angell or Roger Kahn. Nowadays, not even the highlight shows will tell you what actually happened in a particular game, unless someone hit a home run.

Nowadays, it's all about feeding the 24-hour news cycle. And that means focussing on stupid crap like A-Rod's latest commercial in a weak attempt to uncover deeper motivations or grander themes.

The difference between the guys peddling this stuff and Angell & Kahn -- Angell & Kahn could write. The vast majority of today's baseball media -- typists, rehashing the same scripts over and over.

Angell, Kahn, and others made baseball journalism something worthwhile, something fun and interesting to read. Now, thirty years on, it's a shambles. As the poet Shelley once said:

Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Despair, indeed...

Them's Fightin' Words

Perhaps it's a sign that the Tampa Bay Rays are becoming a team to be reckoned with: the Yankees start a brawl with them during a Grapefruit League game.

If this is how the teams are gonna roll during meaningless exhibition games, the regular season should be a treat.

Speaking of over-reacting...ESPN reports that Ozzie Guillen "reacted to some shoddy bullpen work during a recent Cactus League game in Hermosillo, Mexico, by breaking a couple of chairs in the clubhouse."

Hey, at least it's about something important...

New York Yankees 2008 Preview: The Joe is Dead, Long Live the Joe

2007...the year that sucked/was groovy (pick one)

The 2007 Yankees didn't go 162-0 and win the World Series in three games, so Yankees fan (and owner) will say that the year sucked. A rational, unspoiled fan would note that the Yankees went 94-68 despite yearlong problems with the starting rotation and much of the bullpen, and despite playing Doug Mientkiewicz at first base for a large part of the season. The Yankees passed on obtaining Johan Santana over the winter, but did remodel the manager's office, replacing Joe Torre with Joe Girardi.

They can put it on the board, yes!

Oh, can they ever. The 2007 Yankees were an offensive juggernaut, scoring an ungodly 968 runs, 5.98 per game. They led the league in both OBP and slugging, which is a pretty good way to score a lot of runs. Getting a career year from an inner circle Hall of Famer doesn't hurt, either, and Alex Rodriguez gave them that. I don't expect the 2008 team to score quite so early and so often, but even a falloff of 100 runs is still going to leave them as one of the two or three best offenses in the league.

CF-LF Johnny Damon
SS Derek Jeter
RF Bobby Abreu
3B Alex Rodriguez
LF-DH Hideki Matsui
C Jorge Posada
DH/CF Jason Giambi/Melky Cabrera
1B Morgan Ensberg/Shelley Duncan
2B Robinson Cano

Having a career .314 hitter with some power batting ninth isn't a bad option to have. The lineup comes with a number of caveats, however. As great as A-Rod is, he will likely fall back a bit. The next most productive hitter was a 35 year old catcher. Cano will be the only regular in the lineup under the age of 32. I don't see anyone in this lineup likely to have a better season that he did in 2007, and several candidates to fall off.

Pitchers or belly itchers?

The 2007 Yankees were almost exactly league average in runs allowed. The rotation was in a state of flux much of the year; they gave 38 starts to the likes of Kei Igawa, Tyler Clippard, Matt DeSalvo, Darrell Rasner, Sean Henn, Jeff Karstens, Carl Pavano, and Chase Wright. Mike Mussina had the worst year of his career, and Roger Clemens was league average and not the savior he was expected to be. The 2008 rotation will turn to youth:

SP Chien-Ming Wang
SP Andy Pettitte
SP Phillip Hughes
SP Joba Chamberlain
SP Mike Mussina/Ian Kennedy

CL Mariano Rivera
RP LaTroy Hawkins
RP Kyle Farnsworth

Mussina is 39 and can no longer be counted on either for health or front line pitching. Pettitte is 36 and can't go on forever either. Luckily for the Yankees, the kids are alright. Hughes and Chamberlain both have the potential to be #1 starters. Kennedy is more a #3 guy, but when you already have two #1's, a #3 is what you need. Wang is looking better to me every time I see him; his strikeout rate increased from an unsustainable 3.14 per nine innings to 4.70. Rivera slipped a bit in 2007; his hits per nine innings was the highest since his rookie year, although his strikeout rate bounced back up again.

Witnesses for the defense

In 2007 the Yankees were a pretty decent defensive team overall; they were third best in fewest errors and fifth in defensive efficiency. That's a bit hard to fathom from looking at some of the pieces, all of whom are a year deeper into their thirties this year. Jeter, for all of his other virtues, remains a horrible defensive shortstop. Damon can't throw a ball across a my living room. Having Cabrera in center for much of the season will help.

Farm aid

For years, the Steinbrenner Yankees focused on obtaining veterans and allowed the farm system to rot. This is no longer the case. The Yankees have a very strong system with a number of potential impact players, albeit many with considerable risk. Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy are all ready for the rotation right now. Edwar Ramirez and Alan Horne may be in the bullpen by midseason. Outfielders Austin Jackson and Jose Tabata will team up at double A this year and are about a year and a half away. There are a number of high upside, high risk players at lower levels.

Watch out for that tree!

The warning comes too late for Giambi and Mussina; both have already crashed. As much as I love Jorge Posada, there is not a lot of precedent for a catcher to carry the workload he has as he gets closer to 40. Abreu, Damon, Jeter, and Matsui are each 34, and Pettitte is 36. The Yankees do have the resources to cover most of these, but a serious injury to Posada would be catastrophic.

I can make a hat, or a broach...

Despit having just spent several paragraphs talking about how old and decrepit the Yankees are, I still have to come to the conclusion that they are as good a bet as any to win 90+ games and reach the postseason. Brian Cashman and the rest of the Yankees staff has a huge financial advantage over the rest of MLB and they use it well; not only at the major league level but in the scouting and signing aspects as well. Having cash to burn helps the Yankees sign high risk, high upside prospects that other teams shy away from. Sure, many of them will crash and burn, but the ones who break through can become major stars.

After 12 years of Joe Torre, the Yankees are now managed by Joe Girardi. In his one year as manager of the Florida Marlins, Girardi guided a very young team to an unexpected 78-84 record, but may have done some serious damage to several of his young pitchers. With Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy going into the rotation this year and the massive pressure to win with this team, that's something to keep an eye on.

Dim the Dashboard Lights, Please

Godspeed, Scooter.

Good Luck with That

In the wake of Giambi's recent apology for "doing that stuff," Selig asked the New York Yankees star to cooperate with baseball's steroids investigator within two weeks.

But Selig deferred a decision on whether to discipline Giambi for his remarks, saying how the slugger deals with the former Senate Majority Leader will be taken into account.

Selig's statement might be interpreted by some players as a threat to punish Giambi and might make it harder for Mitchell's staff to persuade players to cooperate.

[snip]

"I'm still trying to figure out what he's in trouble for -- freedom of speech?" outfielder Johnny Damon said. "You can always go back and get someone in trouble for what they did in the past, whether it's stealing a pack of gum or whatever."

Fool Me Once, Shame on A-Rod

Of all the stupid, ginned-up "controversies" that have followed Alex Rodriguez around since he was traded to the Yankees, this just might be the stupidest.

This kind of stuff may strike some fans as not being cricket (to mix a sports metaphor). But smarter people than me (people who are actually involved in the game) have hinted that this kind of thing happens more than we think at the Major League level.

And this is the kind of gamesmanship that happened all the time back in the Golden Age of Baseball. Fans of a certain age who long for the days when the players were hard-nosed and smart instead of overpaid and soft should be loving this!

I'll even go out on a limb and read some minds: if Derek Jeter had done this, the same people who are tut-tutting at A-Rod would be praising Jeter's cleverness.

Clemens to Start in Chicago

Looks like the White Sox get to be ESPN. No, I haven't seen it on the schedule yet. But do you think that the guys in Bristol will be able to help keep themselves away from the Most Important Start of the Year?

Oh, Snap!

Sometimes, it's nice to see that you're not the only person who feels the way you do. Jim and I have long felt that Roger Clemens' retirement/un-retirement antics are shameful, selfish, and, ultimately, counter-productive to his chosen team's chances of winning the World Series.

Today, I saw this from ESPN's Scoop Jackson:

He's a self-absorbed, beyond-arrogant, bigger-than-the-game, I-have-no-respect-or-honor-for-the-concept-of-team, I-only-pitch-when-I-feel-like-it, any-team-should-feel-blessed-to-have-me, Randy-Johnson-will-never-be-on-my-level, the-world-revolves-around-me, kiss-the-ground-I walk-on, worship-who-I-am-because-I-am-the-me-myself-and-I-in-MLB pimp.

But again, my problem is not with Roger, it's with us. The media cowards. Because all of us, for too long now, have looked past all of this and validated what I've said my whole life: "Pimpin' ain't easy, the media is just scared."

That just might be the greatest thing I've read today -- a media guy who corroborates my feelings about both Clemens and the media...

Will Wonders Ever Cease?

It’s not often I say this…or even want to admit this…but I have to agree with David Wells:

"Roger might set the tone for the 40-and-above guys," Wells said of his former Yankee teammate. "Hey, I might do it. He's a smart businessman."

In the next breath, however, the hefty lefty caught himself. No, the 231-game winner said, he couldn't follow the Clemens plan after all.

It's not just that Wells turns 44 in two weeks or that he was recently diagnosed with
diabetes. It has more to do with the ballplayer's code that requires you to show up day after day throughout the endless grind.

"I don't think I would ever do it because of the fact I personally think it would disrespect the team and your teammates," Wells said. "You look at the other players. How are they going to respect you? What are they going to think if you're not there
pulling for the team?"

Jim has mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: everybody loves the Rocket, and his little perks about not traveling with the team and (allegedly) not showing up at the yard when he didn’t feel like it. But would the fans and the media be as accepting if some other player got the same perks? Somehow, I doubt it.

Yankee Goes Home

On the plus side, at least we won't be treated to the endless speculation of "Where will he go?" this year.

On the minus side, we will have to listen to all the gab about how great it is that he's back in pinstripes...

The Doors of Perception

Making a bold move to turn around the team after its poor start, the New York Yankees fired their strength and conditioning coach.

Is it Marty Miller's fault the pitching staff has fallen apart? I dunno. And it seems like the GM doesn't know, either:

"It got to the point where the perception is there's a problem here," general manager Brian Cashman said.

I realize I'm just some guy in my basement, and not an MLB executive...but shouldn't you base your decisions on reality, instead of what some people perceive is reality? I guess if it's good enough for the Executive Branch, it should be good enough for MLB...

If It's Up for Grabs, He'd Probably Drop It

Jim has expressed his love for MLB Mosaic. But I'm a man who takes pleasure in simpler things, and am here to express my love for MLB Gameday Audio. Baseball on the radio is one of God's gifts to the human race (it ranks right up there with the Beatles, peanut butter, Jane Austen, and, of course, baseball itself).

Anyway...I'm listening to the Yankee's/A's game on the Oakland station, and one of the announcers mentioned that Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter had four errors on the season already, and thus this year's Gold Glove award is "up for grabs."

Intrigued, I went to ESPN this morning to check the field stats. Derek must have made a boo-boo last night, because it lists him with five errors (most among the 12 AL shortstops ESPN has listed as "qualified").

Jeter also ranks eleventh in fielding percentage, tenth in zone rating, and eighth in range factor.

I seem to recall that last year, Yankee Fan and Baseball Pundit were all over Alex Rodriguez for his allegedly poor fielding. I'm sure that these folks wouldn't want to hold a double standard, and will shower Jeter with boos as soon as possible.