The first tryout is from Mike Eller. His submission has not been edited and appears exactly as he sent it to me. Please use the comments to review and critique. Thanks!

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Expectations for Sergio Mitre were not very high, to put it mildly.• First start in the Majors since 2007.• Recovering from Tommy John surgery.• Coming off a 50 game suspension for taking a banned substance.• A career never highlighted by long stretches of good health and/or dominating stuff. Except, there he was last night, taking the hill for the Yankees, filling in for an injured C-M Wang. Cue John Feinsand:

Great job by Sergio Mitre tonight. Who knows if he’ll prove to be the answer to the Yankees’ fifth starter situation, but we’ve seen unlikely heroes such as Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon step up in years past, so why not Mitre?

The Yankees aren’t asking this guy to be their savior. Throw five or six innings of three-run ball every five days and let the rest of the team take care of the rest. That’s it. I think Mitre can do it, but only time will tell.

And furthermore, from Filip Bondy:

Mitre came up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he had posted a 2.32 ERA that might be more promising if everyone didn’t remember his less than sterling outings with the Marlins back in 2007, part of a 10-23 career mark with a 5.36 ERA in five major league seasons. Since then, the news was even worse: Tommy John surgery and a suspension for a positive drug test.

Mitre went out there, threw his 90-mph sinkers and kept the Yankees in the game. He threw strikes, worked fast. He hung in there for 5-2/3 innings, gave up three earned runs, good enough.

“Good enough”. “Yep. That just might work.” All the Yanks need from their #5 starter right now“is he be merely good enough to keep the team in the game.” Mitre might be able to do just that. I hope so.

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A great grab by Cap’n Jetes to end the game.

Five straight wins.

Sole possession of first place, at least for now.

A win for Mitre in his first MLB appearance since 2007.

ARod running (SB, CS)

I’ll keep this brief since it’s way off-topic for me here.

I feel terrible for Erin Andrews. She has been working for years to establish herself as a reporter. She doesn’t do photo shoots or anything to emphasize the obvious. ESPN uses her wherever and whenever possible because Erin means ratings and pageviews. She and other women have fought to establish themselves in a male dominated arena where it’s tacitly acceptable to make crude comments and the like. The fight for respectability has got to be like walking up the down escalator.

The reason for my choosing to comment is that I was lucky enough to meet her last year at the All Star Game Fan Fest.

My boys and I were walking past one of the sponsor’s booths and Erin was being escorted in.” We stopped and took pictures with her before the line and the madness began.” She could not have been nicer to me or my boys, getting to their eye level to talk and laugh.” Before I took my picture with her, I wished her luck with the clowns that were sure to follow. She smiled and said she was used to it. Then she sheepishly handed us these “cards” with her picture on one side and her credentials on the other. She was embarrassed to do it and she said as much. “I have to hand out these silly things“, I think she said. You could tell she wasn’t comfortable with it. I thanked her and dove out of there before the riot ensued.

I know she’s used to the catcalls and the constant barrage of pictures taken of her without her knowing, but at least those were in public. No expectations of privacy exist while patrolling the sidelines in a football or baseball stadium or in a basketball arena. In your hotel room, however…

What happened to her is a crime and those guilty need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

So true, so utterly raw and uncensored:

Why would Halladay waive his no-trade clause to go to the Mets? He has been telling anybody who will listen for a week now that if he leaves Toronto, he wants to go someplace where he can win. That ain’t Queens. The Mets have an injury-riddled, top-heavy roster, no prospects, an inefficient GM and a manager better suited for open-mic night at The Improv. Gosh, what’s not for Roy to love? I’m sure Johan Santana would give his New York experience high marks.

Haven’t the Mets learned that getting rid of all their prospects and building a team based around a few stars isn’t a sound plan? Their organization is so bereft of talent that they signed Angel Berroa and rushed him to the majors.

The Yankee haters will have another reason to hate the team: Yankee Stadium will host Notre Dame vs. Army. Looks like Hal is trying to please the old man:

Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said on Monday that the club is happy to return college football to their stage in the Bronx and that his father, George Steinbrenner, is also very enthusiastic about the plans for the game.

So many people hate the Yanks. Probably a number close to that also hate Notre Dame. Put them together and you will have a ton of ‘haters’ ready to bark. At least the Yanks have been relevant in recent years.

Speaking of the Irish playing at Yankee Stadium, maybe this sparks a memory:

The original Yankee Stadium played host to the famed 1928 “Win one for the Gipper” matchup between Army and Notre Dame, which resulted in a 12-6 Irish victory. The game was scoreless at halftime, when Notre Dame head coach Knute Rockne gave his famous speech — later captured on celluloid by actor Ronald Reagan — in the locker room.

Nobody likes losing. Nobody likes rooting for a loser. Nobody likes playing for a losing club. But what I DO like is when a player will own up and be responsible for his actions. Witness Jose Guillen:

“I hate making excuses,” he said. “If I suck, then I suck. And I suck. That’s the way I’m playing. If you suck, you suck. You have to take responsibility in this game. Right now, that’s the way I feel.

“Yes, I suck.”
[...]

“I’m embarrassed by the money that I [am] making,” Guillen said, “and playing the way I’ve been playing. I’ll swear that on my kids’ (lives). I feel very embarrassed.

“Sometimes, I feel I should take money out of my own pocket and buy tickets for every fan. Because you know what? For a $12 million man, these are not the numbers you should be expecting. I admit it. I’m not playing to my potential.”
[...]
“it’s just not working. We all suck as a team. That’s the way it is. it’s not a problem with one individual. it’s about 25 guys. Right now, we suck.”

At least he’s being honest. Wouldn’t it be great to see him do something charitable* with some of that $12m?

* maybe Guillen is charitable, I have no idea. But perhaps a bigger donation to the local charities/efforts might go a long way.

Four home runs, five games. And the Pirates paid the Yanks $400K, half of Hinske’s remaining salary, to play for the Yanks. I said this a few weeks back when the Hinske deal was announced:

Eric Hinske might not be the answer that most teams are looking for, but for a mere $400K (the balance on his 2009 salary), they could have had Hinske to fill in at either corner IF or corner OF spots and produce solid results. And your team could have had him, too. So when you complain about your team’s GM not doing their job to fill needs cheaply, look at a deal like this and wonder.

Hinske is tested in playoff environments and he knows what his role is. And guess what? He’s doing exactly that.

Thanks Pittsburgh.

I don’t (yet) liveblog games and I don’t (yet) do every game updates. However, after getting home from mercy-ruling the other team in my softball game tonite, I settled in to catch the back half of the Yankee game. Crisp game, nothing special. Until the top of the 8th.

Izturis on first, off with the pitch as Brian Roberts loops a shot to the rightfield pole. Izturis slides into 2nd, goes past the base, but because the ball’s still in the air, he heads back to first. It seemed like Cano decoyed him a bit, not sure. Izturis then heads to third as Roberts motored into second. Izturis would have scored in a blink had he not run the bases poorly.

Next batter, Markakis, pokes one down the 1B line. Teix scoops it up and in the most awkward looking throw since, well, any Giambi throw, he wrong-footed a strike to Molina. Molina turns and makes the tag, somehow holding onto the ball.

Adam Jones up, 2 outs, Roberts now on third. Wild pitch to the catcher’s right. Molina skids to the ball and fires a perfect ball to Phil Coke, who barely got the tag on Roberts.

Two great defensive plays to preserve a 1-1 tie.

I can’t stress how much Teix’s defense has meant to this team. I lost count how many great plays he’s made so far. Yes, I am thankful.

When I read this headline, I was stopped in my tracks. Not because I’m surprised, but because I remember a few short years ago when Vlad Guerrero was a FORCE on the field, everywhere on the field.

“Vladimir Guerrero to be DH for the rest of the season”

It’s another reminder that Father Time gives no free passes. I’ve got this hip “thing” going lately, too. And I didn’t play 6+ seasons on the concrete-like turf in Montreal. Let’s remember when Vlad had the wheels, the hammer and the cannon:

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Are you:

• Interested in writing about baseball?
• A fan of the Yanks?
• A connoisseur of all things stats-related?
• A farm system junkie?

If so, please let me know. I have been considering adding a teammate or three to the IIATMS roster to help fill in the holes here. Here’s what I am looking for.

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Just when I allowed myself to remotely consider what I have been arguing against (taking on the Wells’ contract as part of the deal to get Halladay), Josh from Jorge Says No! sets me straight (with a great Mom-ism):

As my mother once told me, “even the cookie monster can have too many cookies”.

Thanks for shaking me back into reality.

And, by the way, Josh has a wonderful piece about Vernon Wells and his contract that you simply must read. Here’s a sample:

But how about defense? Wells has always been a good defensive outfielder, even winning a gold glove for three straight seasons (’04-’06). However, Wells’ defensive prowess seems to have evaporated this season. According to my new favorite site Fangraphs, Wells’ UZR (which measures the number of runs a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs and error runs combined) is by far the worst in the majors at -21.3. Even worse is Wells’ UZR/150 games, which is -31.9. The problem for Wells centers around range, which scores a pathetic -22.4, by far the worst among players who qualify. Those numbers place Wells as one of the worst, if not the worst, center fielder in baseball.

Thanks again, Josh. I hadn’t looked at the defensive side of Wells and that was a big miss on my part.

The Yanks have long been the bottomless pit of cash, able to absorb every mistake they make (Irabu, Igawa, Pavano, Jaret Wright, the last few years of Giambi, Farnsworthless, etc.) and often the mistakes of others (Abreu, Swisher to name just two). And that’s just within the last decade or so.

What the Yanks have is the deepest revenue stream that gets deeper daily, via the new ballpark, streaming games, insipid fan clubs, etc. That puts the Yanks in the fortuitous position of being able to “relieve” a small/mid-market team of their over-priced players for virtually nothing. I have gotta believe that many teams would be eager to deal their priciest players for next to nothing, if only to regain the “financial flexibility” to start over (and eventually overpay someone else).

The Yanks hoisted bags of cash to keep CC from heading to California, Teixeira from Baltimore or Boston, Burnett from Atlanta. They already got Madoff’d by ARod to the tune of a 10 year, $275m contract. Jeter’s contract is up after next year but clearly he’s showing that he can still play at a high level, even at age 35. He’ll want a big contract to take him from age 37-41, no doubt.

So that leads us to the pursuit of Roy Halladay. Sure, the Yanks could send Joba and Jesus Montero and a few other highly thought of players to Toronto for a year and a half of Doc…. assuming that Toronto really would deal Halladay intra-division, which I still doubt.

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