Well, we’ve missed him all year –minus the taped Jeter intros– but maybe we’ll have him back to do the finale:
Everyone knows the only fitting way to close Yankee Stadium is with Bob Sheppard returning to be the public-address announcer for the final game. His health has kept him from doing a single Yankees game this season – which would have been his 58th – but rest assured he has visions of returning for the finale.“
If I can be there, I shall be there.“
There’s no truth to the rumor that his voice echoes even when not in the Stadium. We can only hope that he feels well enough. He’s been such a remarkable presence for decades, it’s only fitting that he’s there to turn off the lights. I sure hope so.
Whaddya know, back-to-back “only in baseball” injuries…
“I would like to have something to tell you, something like a fight or anything else,” Giambi said. “But it was nothing like that. I walked into the bathroom door at the hotel and split it open.” The cut resembled a gash a boxer would get during a fight, but didn’t keep Giambi out of the lineup.“There was so much blood the maid probably was wondering where the body was hid,” said Giambi…
File this one under “injuries that only happen to baseball players“:
The Los Angeles Angels right-hander managed to cut the tips of his middle and ring fingers on his pitching hand while pushing himself up off the bench in the visitor’s dugout at Detroit’s Comerica Park on Tuesday night.
……
As for Weaver: How the heck did he do that?“
I went to push to get up and gripped where the staples in the upholstery come together, and it just got me,” Weaver said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It sliced me pretty good. It felt like a paper cut, but a lot deeper.”
This seems rather delayed in it’s response, but I found it rather, um, bitter, and therefore fun to read. The columnist, Bill Livingston from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, comes off sounding like an old, jilted divorcee in discussing the full page ad that CC Sabathia took out once he was traded.
I have nothing against people buying newspaper ads. It helps pay my salary. But just as political ads are deconstructed for truth and nuance, why not other ads?Outside of the Chicago teams, which of the Central division teams, AL or NL, are big spenders? C’mon, this ain’t new. Stop acting like this is a new trend. The greatest population densities are located on each coast. That’s where the media and money go, more often than the Midwest. Hate it if you wish, but it’s the way it is. And untilLet the target audience remember Sabathia turned down four years at $18 million annually from the Indians. The idea of athletes leaving money on the table is as hilarious as the idea baseball players care about the viability of teams in the “flyover states.”
In view of the poverty statistics, which list Cleveland as the second-poorest city in the country, it was nice of Sabathia to honor the little people who paid the freight for his on-the-job training until he moves on to greener pastures. Maybe $72 million over four years doesn’t go as far as it used to, although it would seem to go far enough to test MapQuest.
Of course, he uses this as a way to discuss LeBron and his eventual departure to an East or West coast team…
Early into this blog’s life (maybe that’s the name of a yet-to-be-made movie), I discussed Tom Verducci’s Year After Effect and it’s relevance for the coming (2008) season. Around the all-star break, I took a look at those Verducci’s YAE predicted would struggle and how they were faring.
It’s like training for a marathon. You need to build stamina incrementally. The unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season. It’s a general rule of thumb, and one I’ve been tracking for about a decade. When teams violate the incremental safeguard, it’s amazing how often they pay for it.Here’s the way I track it: Find major league pitchers 25-and-under who broke the 30-inning rule.
In 2005 and ’06 I found 17 pitchers I defined as at-risk of the YAE. None made it through the next year without an injury or a higher ERA. Ten of them broke down, the most seriously hurt being Francisco Liriano, Gustavo Chacin, Adam Loewen, Scott Mathieson and Anibel Sanchez. Eleven of them had worse ERAs, by an average of about a run and a half. Remember, it’s a general rule; there are exceptions, the superlative Justin Verlander being one.
So what do the Yanks do if they want to protect Joba? Do they simply ignore the YAE guidelines and just hope he works to condition his shoulder during the off-season and during the Spring Training? Do they just turn him loose? After all, he’s 23 and a big strong guy. He’s not built like a young Pedro Martinez or Mariano Rivera. And judging by the maturity he showed in Texas by calling out the trainer when something didn’t feel right, he seems to have a grasp on the importance of staying healthy.
Or do they keep Joba on a 6 day rotation to keep his appearance count lower?
Blogger buddy Shyster had a typical well-said about this subject:
What’s more, if the whole idea of starting him in the bullpen and then moving him to the rotation didn’t work this year, what’s to say it would work next year? Chamberlain himself said that he would have preferred to have one role all season for the sake of consistency, so why jerk him around again like this in 2008?I’m not suggesting that the Yankees throw Joba to the wolves.
They should be careful. The should watch his pitch counts. They should rest him the moment he shows any signs of trouble. But for God’s sake, let the boy pitch.
00:02:15. Two minutes, fifteen seconds. And a little touch of irony.
That’s how long it took the officiating crew to conduct the first instant replay review last night. Fittingly, it was an ARod home run that will be remembered as the first reviewed HR as it was ARod’s non-HR that kicked off the IR hubbub so many months ago.
“We all believed it was a home run, but since the technology is in place, we made the decision to use the technology and go look at the replays,” Reliford said.The umpires then headed for the third-base dugout where they viewed “several” replays on the monitor according to Reliford.
“And the replays we reviewed were conclusive that the call we made was correct,” [Crew chief Charlie] Reliford said. “We had it going right over the pole. All four of us had it going right over the pole on the field. And our views of the replays
confirmed that. It was not inconclusive; it was conclusive that Brian’s call was correct.“The crew took two minutes and 15 seconds to make the call.
Added Reliford: “Everything went exactly like they trained us it would go.”
There’s an analysis by a prominent economist (a former number-crunching chief economist for three former city comptrollers) who details what NYC will lose if the Mets and/or Yanks miss the playoffs in terms of lost revenues. It doesn’t detail the profit lost, just the revenues, so the numbers look pretty big. 
The economist “factored in that Mets fans are primarily based in Brooklyn and Queens, while the Yankees draw from across the region, including Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut“, hence the larger number for the Mets than the Yanks, in case you were wondering.
Friends, due to a milestone morning (my little one going to kindergarten), I got into work late and need to tackle some work stuff. They pay my salary so they get first dibs, sorry.
I’ll try to get to some things shortly, as time permits.
Thanks for coming back. I truly appreciate it.
We’ll see if he puts his money where his mouth is…
“I know that players become free agents and say it isn’t only about the money, but now that I’ve been in this environment I know my priority as a free agent will be to sign with a team that has a chance to win. Money can’t buy happiness when you’re losing.”
–Adam Dunn via Peter Gammons blog 9/1/08
“I didn’t do what I was supposed to do today“You sucked. It’s exactly what we expected you to do. Want to do something unexpected? Try lasting 7+ innings and allowing less than 3 runs and less than a runner an inning. That’d be exactly what you weren’t supposed to do.
But Yankees starter Sidney Ponson didn’t fare much better and couldn’t retire a batter in the fourth inning, during which Detroit scored six runs to make it an 11-8 game.Ponson gave up seven runs — six earned — on nine hits in three-plus innings.
“
I didn’t do what I was supposed to do today,” said Ponson, who endured his fourth consecutive subpar outing.
At what point does Girardi call Cashman and tell him he can’t, in good conscience, roll Sidney out there one more time? How can Girardi look his veterans in the face and tell them to bust their tail every day from here on out when he pencils in Ponson’s name every 5th day? There isn’t some kid from AAA who might stand to gain something from the experience of pitching in the bigs? C’mon…
Make our long-standing nightmare come to an end and let Ponson go.
This would be better if it came from Hank, but it comes from Tyler Kepner of the NY Times:
But the Yankees might wish they could tell Brewers Manager Ned Yost to cut back on C.C. Sabathia’s innings – the Yankees don’t want their 2009 opening-day starter to be too tired when he arrives in the Bronx.
I was starting to compile the list of likely SP targets for the Yanks, then Tim at MLBTradeRumors.com went and did the work for me, sorting available FA by their K/9 IP rates:
Player K/9
John Smoltz 11.57
A.J. Burnett 9.31
C.C. Sabathia 8.90
Randy Johnson 8.74
Ryan Dempster 8.15
Oliver Perez 8.14
Randy Wolf 7.90
Ben Sheets 7.45
Bartolo Colon 7.09
Pedro Martinez 6.93
Andy Pettitte 6.80
Derek Lowe 6.38
Mike Mussina 6.22
Odalis Perez 6.01
Tim Wakefield 5.81
Jamie Moyer 5.75
Josh Fogg 5.26
Tom Glavine 5.26
Kyle Lohse 5.06
Brad Penny 4.90
Greg Maddux 4.60
Braden Looper 4.37
Kenny Rogers 4.31
Jon Garland 3.96
Paul Byrd 3.89
Mike Hampton 3.83
Sidney Ponson 3.79
Livan Hernandez 3.47
