When Kei Igawa didn’t even garner an invite to the Major League camp this spring, no one was surprised.  It was widely accepted that the once highly-touted Japanese hurler is no longer on the radar in the Bronx and that he would be playing out his final year of his big contract in the minors before presumably heading back to Japan.  Igawa had proven himself to be a decent minor league pitcher.  He holds the franchise record for wins in Scranton, which is more a testament to how long he has pitched there without being able to translate to the big leagues.

As Donnie Collins of the SWB Times-Tribune points out, the move makes a lot of sense for the Yankees. Between veteran arms like Mark Prior and young prospects like Andrew Brackman, Adam Warren and Hector Noesi make their way towards the majors, there is little room for Igawa in Scranton.  Still, you have to feel bad for the guy, despite the fact that he has become a rather expensive minor league pitcher.  His 2011 season was already off to a rough start when his home in Japan was hit hard by the tsunami, leading to a trip home while he tried to connect with family members.  Now, he’s been relegated to the Double-A bullpen.

The Bob Feller memorial patch debuted yesterday and it’s as good as any. Right up there with the Bob Sheppard patch, miles ahead of the GMS patch. A fitting tribute to a special guy.

Just in case anyone forgot how bad Johnny Damon is in the OF (and the TB fans will learn, if this doesn’t teach them immediately):

h/t to HBT.

For the second straight year, the Yankees have come in at number one on FanGraphs’ rankings of each of Major League Baseball’s organizations. The money quote from Dave Cameron:

The big dog of big dogs, the Yankees continue to show what an organization can do with access to massive amounts of cash and the understanding of how to use it. They’re not perfect, but they’re still the gold standard for clubs in Major League Baseball. The Yankee brand has never been stronger.

People like to crack on the Yankees for their payroll, financial resources, market size, etc., but lost in that is the fact that the Yankees deserve a hefty amount of credit for being so successful from a financial standpoint. You need look no further than Queens to see just how wrong the people who think simply playing your home games in New York City guarantees a franchise baseball and financial success. While he was never the wise baseball man he envisioned himself to be, George Steinbrenner was a terriffic businessman, and the Yankees’ financial strength is the legacy of that, as well as the sound stewardship of the current ownership and their lieutenants.

I’m a little surprised that the Fangraphs writers rank the Yankees first in terms of current talent, honestly, but even if you just leave them in the anywhere in the top five the ranking would probably come out the same. The Yankees have a very good team, a top farm system, a very talented brain trust running baseball operations, and more financial resources than anyone else in the sport. For as much as we may be impressed by the Tampa Bays of the world, or as much love as the Red Sox may get for their savvy moves, as Cameron says, the Yankees are still the gold standard of the sport.

On July 8, 2010 when Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins walked off the field after being hit in the head at second base, the announcers said, “Justin walking off the field on his own — that’s always a good sign.” And that, sums up the complicated process of detecting and treating a concussion. It wasn’t a good sign. Nobody looking in from the outside can see the signs of a concussion.

Morneau will take the field today in a regular season game for the first time since his injury last year and he, along with the rest of Major League Baseball, will start the 2011 season with a new seven-day disabled list for concussions.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program is a world leader in diagnosis, evaluation and management of the neurocognitive effects of sports-related concussions. Dr. Michael Collins, Ph. D., assistant director for the program, is a leading clinician and researcher who has treated elite athletes all over the world and youth athletes on all levels.

Dr. Collins believes the seven-day DL in MLB is a step in the right direction for the handling of concussions.

“It gives the team, the medical staff, the athlete, a lot more flexibility in making the right decision,” Dr. Collins said.

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In our roundtable piece, I propounded this theory:

In 2009 and 2010, Curtis Granderson posted BABIPs of .275 and .277 respectively, both way under his career average of .314. Thanks to Kevin Long, his BABIP should return to career levels. I have a theory that the cause for his BABIP depression in 2010 and 2009 has to do with a conscious swing adjustment. In those two years Granderson significantly increased the percentage of flyballs that he hit over career norms. Flyballs generally go for hits much less often than groundballs. The issue is that he’s basically been an automatic out whenever he has hit a flyball to leftfield because of his swing – he has only hit the ball hard when he has pulled it. I think his swing adjustment will allow him to hit flyballs to left field with authority.

In this post, I’m going to examine the evidence for and against my theory, and hopefully I will come out with a solid conclusion. Before the swing change, it was pretty clear that Granderson was a dead pull hitter. He seemed like a match made in heaven for the new Yankee Stadium and its beckoning right field porch. He began his Yankee career with a blast, launching a meaty fastball from Josh Beckett into orbit in the second inning of last year’s opening day. And then he struggled. And then he got injured. And then he struggled again. Granderson, being the diligent child of two teachers, approached the Yankees’ hitting coach Kevin Long about making some adjustments. Long, pursuant with his philosophy of keeping swings simple, worked with Granderson to clean up his swing. Granderson returned triumphantly; he scalded the baseball for the remainder of the year. He even managed a a .411 wOBA in September despite suffering from a .266 BABIP. He managed to show us the incandescent baseball player the Yankees acquired in December of the past year.

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For a while now we’ve been hearing that Brett Gardner has wanted to improve his bunting skills. The Yankees’ resident speedster has the look of that scrappy little guy who plays the game the right way and all that, but it turned out he actually couldn’t bunt very well. Supposedly Gardner really wanted to change that this offseason, and add the bunt to his repetoire.

As you can probably guess, I am not a fan of the sacrifice bunt. It’s a bad decision in all but the rarest of circumstances that decreases a team’s run expectancy. If used in the rare circumstances that it’s an acceptable decision (pretty much only any time that playing for a single run makes sense), but the biggest problem with the sacrifice is that managers almost unanimously overuse the tactic. That said, there’s a meaningful difference, both in the sense of strategy and effectiveness, between a sacrifice bunt and bunting in an attempt to get a hit.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at Gardner’s bunts today.

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